Empower Blended Learning by Starting on the Right Foot

Transcript

Kris (00:00)

Welcome everyone to the Learning Loop Podcast, your best source for educational insights and trends. I’m Kris, your host. Today’s special guest is none other than Dr. Catlin Tucker. She is a blended learning expert, author, and speaker. Dr. Tucker is a leading authority in how to effectively leverage technology to empower engagement and improve learning. Dr. Tucker, welcome to the show.

Dr. Catlin Tucker (00:27)

Thank you for having me.

Kris (00:28)

We are so excited you’re here. Can you just kick off by just sharing a little bit about your journey into the field of education and what inspired you to focus on blended learning?

Dr. Catlin Tucker (00:39)

Yeah, I began my career as a high school English teacher. I actually spent 16 years in a high school classroom. But at about year five, I thought, my gosh, I have made an enormous mistake. This is not what I thought I was signing up for. And that is truly where my blended learning journey began, where I took a year off on maternity leave and was with my daughter teaching online college level writing courses.

and started to get interest in the potential of technology for learning. And I remember going back into my classroom after that year off on maternity leave and I thought, I don’t have anything to lose. I’m just gonna basically treat my classroom like a laboratory, start incorporating some of these things, see what happens. And obviously I’m still in education today and it totally transformed my experience since being a teacher, I’ve been a coach, a professor, I speak all over the world with the groups and organizations and schools trying to make this shift.

Kris (01:37)

I love it. I love to you reframing the way that you really think about education from a foundational level to be more of a laboratory trying new things exploring new things and really trying to Find and carve the best path forward. I love that You’re a blended learning expert. So I’m gonna lean into a quick a blended learning question here How do you recommend teachers strike this perfect balance in a blended classroom with the modern world in mind? What kind of things?

or advice that you give to teachers just to make sure that they’re preparing their students for when they leave your classroom moving forward.

Dr. Catlin Tucker (02:13)

Yeah, so I want to be really clear about how I define blended learning because I think since COVID there have been lots of interesting interpretations of what that means. But when I say blended learning, what I am really talking about is the combination of active engaged learning online with active engaged learning offline to give students more control over key factors in their learning time, place, pace.

But I think there’s this misconception that blended learning requires some special hybrid schedule or something like that, but it can happen entirely in a classroom. And so when we’re thinking about it through the lens of that definition, it’s that active agency that I think is critical. Are we using the integration of technology to shift students to the center of the learning experience?

allowing them to really drive learning, be curious, ask questions, explore, collaborate, create artifacts to demonstrate their learning. And so that active engagement piece is what I tend to focus on. And I really encourage teachers, don’t forget, it’s a balance, right? There’s offline, there’s online. Depending on the age of your students, there might be a little more offline time for our.

younger learners, or maybe a little more online time, but we really are striving for a balance between the two, no matter what rotation model we might be leaning on to pull those online and offline learning activities together. I also am really, when I focus on the online part with teachers, I’m also very quick to say, hey, let’s just not use technology to isolate learners, kind of keep them quiet so we can do something over here.

How are we really trying to tap into the four C’s of 21st century learning with technology and encourage kiddos to be collaborating around the technology to really investigate and create together?

Kris (04:09)

I love how many times you said the word active and how purposeful that is in really enabling students to be a part of that learning as a partner versus this transaction that we might see and experience sometimes. So I love that that’s a priority, not only in the face -to -face connection, but also in the digital realm too.

Dr. Catlin Tucker (04:12)

Mm -mm.

Kris (04:30)

I think, like you said before, with COVID, it’s good to reset that thinking and make sure that we’re having active conversations and learning all the time, whether it’s in person or digital as well.

Dr. Catlin Tucker (04:36)

Mm -hmm.

Kris (04:44)

I want to lean into another question here. You talked a little bit about students taking ownership of their learning. At Seesaw, we really value that. And so what strategies or frameworks do you recommend for somebody who’s really thinking, I want to start to pass this baton to my students. I want them to be more active in this learning process. What kind of things can somebody start with when they’re really starting that journey of working towards a blended learning classroom?

Dr. Catlin Tucker (05:11)

Yeah, so this has been a real focus of my work over the last few years, which is this idea of shifting to student led. I have a whole book just focused on that. But really, the goal is one, we have to figure out how to get out from the front of the room. If we can’t do that, it’s really hard to shift the focus to students and have them be actively engaging and driving that learning forward. And so part of that is as a teacher, really thinking critically about.

Why and when am I at the front of the room? Are some of the things I’m explaining, unpacking, modeling, could I leverage technology to transfer some of that information, engage students around the technology? So if they’re listening to a podcast or watching a video or engaging around a complex text, could I use a strategy like reciprocal teaching to really teach them how to engage with it, unpack it, make meaning together?

that getting out of the front of the room is kind of key to shifting to a more like a more of a partnership approach to this work, which is really the only way we’re ever gonna find any semblance of balance as educators. So it’s strategies like teaching students how to engage in small group discussions. What does it look like to really explore and discover from a student perspective? How do we set them up to be successful doing those things? And how do we build in?

kind of like those metacognitive guardrails to help them think about what do they want to work toward and how much progress are they making and let’s reflect on a strategy we used and how we showed up in class today. So for me, it’s all of these pieces kind of working in tandem where we’re much more thoughtful about how we use our time in the classroom, how we support students in the meaning making process, and also how we engage them as learners to develop those metacognitive muscles.

Kris (07:03)

I love it, I love it, and I love how it’s blending together all of those pieces to create that true partnership that you’re having with that as well. You spoke about one barrier that sometimes is here and it’s being in front of the classroom, being that teacher who’s there. Are there other challenges that teachers might face that might get in the way of starting to build this partnership? And if you have any insight into how a teacher can maybe overcome some of those challenges that are in the modern classroom, can you just share a little bit about that?

Dr. Catlin Tucker (07:35)

Sure, I mean, we do not have time to cover the myriad obstacles that might surface for a teacher. I do think there are some mindset shifts, which is one, we live in a time where we are surrounded by information. Technology does information transfer really well. So we need to start thinking about if that’s the case, how does that impact how we use our time in this class? I also think there’s such pressure on teachers to cover content.

And at the end of the day, often they don’t feel like they have the time to onboard students to a particular meaning making strategy. Like, how do you engage in a small group discussion? How do you work through a jigsaw strategy? What does it look like to give meaningful peer feedback? So at the end of the day, those get kind of dropped because like, I don’t have time for that. And I think we need to recalibrate and think about what is really a value in this classroom? Like we can stand up here transferring information all day, but if they don’t have time to…

make meaning, to process, to really kind of try to apply what they’re learning, it’s not going to be super successful. And I think probably the biggest barrier, quite frankly, is just we have to let go of control. And that’s super scary because we worry about pacing, we worry about the curriculum and getting through it, we worry about classroom management, but actually releasing control and teaching students how to lead their learning.

is maybe one of the best ways to combat some of the reasons we have classroom management issues, which is the pacing of the lesson isn’t working for kids. The level of rigor isn’t appropriate for where they’re at in their learning journeys, right? When a teacher’s leading the lesson, it’s not the most engaging experience for students. So all of those pieces we have to kind of address and kind of to your point earlier when I shared my anecdote about treating my classroom like a laboratory.

I think teachers really need to embrace this reality that they are the lead learner in the classroom. They should be experimenting and taking risks. They’re gonna fail. They should be asking for student feedback. All of those things when we model it makes it so much less scary for learners to do all those same things in the classroom. And quite frankly, we ask them to take risks and potentially fail every single day.

Kris (09:46)

I love it, I love it. And I love how you framed it in a way that is also very approachable too. I mean, I think we as educators can sometimes be scared about some of those things that you have to meet those demands of the curriculum. You have to meet the demands of the district or what’s coming into the community and things, whereas it can also be something that starts with yourself. How can I change my mindset? How can I start changing the way that I think about teaching and education and the way my classroom’s even structured to start to take steps towards that? So I love the framing that you put in that and really starting to internalize that as somebody who’s maybe thinking about adding in a blended learning classroom.

Dr. Catlin Tucker (10:26)

And you don’t have to do it all at once, just one little thing at a time.

Kris (10:29)

Absolutely. Always start small too. Always start small. We always love that. At Seesaw we really emphasize the importance of keeping families a part of this learning process. In your experience, how can families be best part of the learning process in a blended learning classroom? Can you just share a little bit about that?

Dr. Catlin Tucker (10:32)

Exactly.

Dr. Catlin Tucker (10:47)

Yeah, I mean, I talk a lot about students and teachers and this partnership model, but we’re also trying to partner with families, right? Families were our students’ first teachers, and we really want to try to keep them involved in the learning for as long as possible. The challenge is that as a teacher, it is not sustainable, whether you have 30 students or 165 students, to be the person.

always communicating with families. So one of the fundamental shifts that I focus on in my work with educators is how do we support even little learners in owning the conversation about what’s happening in class, important dates coming up, what they’re doing well, where they might need more support with their families. So whether that is audio updates or an ongoing student family journal or portfolio or, you know,

emails from secondary students every other week home to parents. We need to find a way for students to really be that link to their families because they know their families best. They speak the primary language that the families speak at home. So how do we leverage that and support them to really own that conversation?

Kris (11:57)

And I think also you’re talking about that empowerment piece too of you’re a part of this You can make sure that you’re owning your path moving forward too And you can start with that easy communication line going straight home, but here’s what we learned about today Here’s what I’m excited about learning about next here’s where I want to continue to grow as well We have two quick questions here as we start to close up this next one is a loopy question This is just a silly question. We ask all of our guests podcast

Dr. Catlin Tucker (12:06.677)

Exactly.

Kris (12:26)

If blended learning had a mascot, what wacky animal or object would you choose to represent it and why?

Dr. Catlin Tucker (12:35)

wacky object. That’s a crazy question. Okay, I would say like one of those self -serve, like frozen yogurt machines where you can do the double swirl of like two different things together because hopefully you have agency and choice to choose your flavors and then you can decide how you swirl them together. That’s my answer.

Kris (13:02)

I love it. That’s actually a phenomenal answer. I love it because it’s totally customizable. Anybody can pick whatever they want to be able to meet their needs and then they leave with something delicious that they can have and take with them as they go home. Love it. Our final question here, if we have some thinking and forward thinking about kind of what’s coming next. What…

Dr. Catlin Tucker (13:14)

Exactly.

Kris (13:25)

In your opinion, what kind of motivates or inspires you to continue to advocate for these innovative teaching practices and make sure that blended learning is a model that is positive and impactful in the future?

Dr. Catlin Tucker (13:40)

I think I come at this from two different perspectives. Obviously, I was a high school English teacher and a public school with all the demands and challenges that teachers face. I know how demanding this work can be. I know how many amazing people we are losing from this profession. And I want to find ways to make this work more rewarding and sustainable so teachers are spending their time and energy in the parts of this work that light them up.

So that’s a big driver for me. And then I’m a parent of two teenagers and I know there are kids all over the world going and spending their days in classrooms that feel very out of step with their lives outside the classroom and they’re not getting their specific needs met and they’re not being engaged and they don’t like the experience. And to me that is so sad and something I really want to do a better job at serving them. And I think that those two things in tandem really motivate my work and my desire to support educators in this shift.

Kris (14:43)

Absolutely, I love it. You pulled on my heartstrings very firmly there, not only with the educator part, but also as a parent, you know, we want this bright and beautiful future for everybody and for all of our students who walk in. And I just want to give you a huge comment and a huge thank you for really having that be your driving force and one that really just helps to move your work forward because it’s making a true impact and one that, you know, with those foundational elements is your drive forward is going to be something that makes big change.

We are at time. I just want to say thank you so much for being here, Dr. Tucker. Thank you for taking time out of your day to share your amazing expertise around education and specifically your expert expertise, excuse me, in blended learning. We thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Catlin Tucker (15:30)

Yeah, thank you for having me. It was great.

Kris (15:32)

Absolutely. Bye bye.