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In Search of Catholic School Excellence
Exploring the programs, people, and practices making a difference in Catholic education. Join host Thomas Boles as we hear from principals, teachers, and innovators shaping the future of Catholic schools. Whether you're a leader looking for ideas or an advocate for Catholic education, this show is your guide to what’s working—and why it matters.
Be sure to check out the show notes, as each episode comes with a companion guide to help you implement the ideas discussed during the episodes.
**Transcripts are generated automatically. Please excuse any errors.
Welcome to In Search of Catholic School Excellence, the show where we spotlight the programs, people, and practices making a real difference in Catholic education today. If you're a school leader striving to build a community of faith, excellence, and innovation, you've come to the right place. Each episode brings you ideas that are working, stories that inspire, and new possibilities for your school's mission.
Let's explore what's working and what's possible
Hi folks. Welcome back to another episode of the, your favorite podcast. I'm joined again by Becky Wong fearless leader of tech things in the Diocese of San Francisco. Hi, everyone. Thanks for being here, Becky. Oh, no problem. This week we're talking about public speaking, and not just public speaking as a general nicety, but actually a focused part of your program, a part of what you wanna do.
And the reason why this comes up to the forefront is we're getting ready for the end of the year, and at least at the time that we're recording this, and eighth graders are getting ready to graduate. So you get time for this, the graduation speeches. You've got confirmation if they haven't done that yet.
They have confirmation speeches and things like that are happening at schools. And it makes me think of there's most places you have one or two kids who are gonna give that speech. They're gonna be the valedictorian, or they're gonna be, like, the head of the student council, or they're gonna be, like, the bright, sunshiny kid who can do no wrong.
And so therefore, they're gonna be the ones who do the speeches. But when you think about it, like, why couldn't everybody do a speech, right? Why couldn't everybody have that possibility? We want them to be that good. I think back to our old school, we had a sixth grade teacher who was in charge of language arts, who had every kid give a public graduation speech at morning assembly.
It was only three minutes, and typically it was a lot of thank yous, but they would work on it and develop it. They- everybody had to get up in front of the entire school and give that speech. And that was still probably very uncomfortable for a lot of kids. But when you've put all the work in ahead of time for years it becomes part of your program, you really can push kids forward.
So if we think about this, if the goal of what we want is for all kids to be confident, and when they graduate, they leave our school, they're confident, they can advocate for themselves, they can advocate for those who otherwise wouldn't be able to advocate for themselves, that confidence comes from slowly building up the experience enough so that moment is not scary.
If you ask a kid to get up in front of the school and give a speech tomorrow, that kid would probably be afraid. But if you've had lots of moments along the way, then that's not such a big moment, and that's what we wanna get after. So before I blabber for another half hour here- ... I wanna invite Becky into this conversation.
If this is a big part of what we want for our kids to do, how do we do this? How do you see this showing up in schools in much more than, "We like to do presentations"? For sure. I think what you talked about is so true. It's like, give every student an opportunity to just speak. Just imagining transitioning from eighth grade into high school, what such an adjustment already, and then students are expected to give presentations or just, participate in the conversation in a class, participate in discussion.
And just those things, if they practiced this whole time while they're still in elementary school, it'd be so easy, but at least they'll be more comfortable. Speaking up, sharing their thoughts, defending whatever essay or information they have to share with the class. So such an important skill, and you and I guess people don't believe it.
We're shy. But we have to get up- So shy ... in front of people all the time. And it's funny how you said kids would be very afraid to just stand in front of class. I'm very afraid to- ... just stand in front of a whole group of audience, even to... Actually, easier to stand in front of kids than a- adults. But just having the practice and the ability to do it, it just becomes second nature as soon as we do that.
So the very first thing is, for sure, is giving students the opportunity. I know from a teacher's perspective, there's so much we have to cover in the day. Math, English, science, everything. It's like, how do we squeeze it in? Because giving kids the time to, every single student, especially of a class of 20 or 30, I had 39 my first year.
Even giving them a minute, that's like more than an hour in a day to present. But carve out that time and make the effort. I know the students are nervous, but at the same time, like you said, you'd be surprised who's, would be really excited to showcase their knowledge, their skills, and just having someone ask them their opinion on something.
It's exciting. It gets them engaged, and it translate into so many other areas. It's not just specifically like ELA or just public speaking itself, but when they do have the confidence, they can do so much more, as opposed to "Oh, I'm terrible at math. I'm terrible at this. I'm terrible at sports."
Anything, when they have that confidence, they could do so much with it. Yeah, you don't want them going off without the confidence to participate. We want them to be Swiss Army knives. I can think of a, a student, shout out to Daniel Borja, who, UC Santa Cruz, I believe. She came back in ninth grade and came back to the school and she was like, "I got to school and the teacher asked a question and I just jumped right in and I started participating.
I looked around the room and nobody else was participating. And I thought, that's so weird that they're not participating. Why is everybody else so quiet?" And she was a bubbly, kind of kid, so she wasn't necessarily afraid, but she's a strong student and the culture was that this is how we participate.
This is how school goes. Mm-hmm. This is not a teacher talking at you. This is us discussing the topic. And I think if we think about what we're really after, what we're... We don't want the kids to go off to high school, we want them to be wonderful examples of what we can do. But we don't really ever formalize that.
I know we've talked about this in for- in other episodes, high schools will come and pitch their school, and they'll show a little video of what their kid looks like. And "This is what a kid at Cigar Cathedral looks like. This is what a kid at Reardan looks like," right? They go through the whole thing.
And that's a beautiful little summary of what that kid is like. But as eighth graders, as a faculty, do we ever make the video or even the fake video in our heads of what- ... that kid looks like when they leave? And I want that kid to be confident, to be, raising their hand, to be participating, to want to join in service To want to help somebody else out, to want to read in class, and if that confidence is not there, I get it, it's ninth grade or 10th grade, whatever it is, they're self-conscious, but we can overcome that. We can help them overcome that and really become beautiful students, beautiful human, right? That comes from our school. We can be so proud. Yep, that's what our kids look like.
And it's great that you told that story because if it's part of the culture, it'll be second nature. And not to go off on a tangent, but when they do have that confidence, can you imagine if s- our students spoke up for themselves? Mm-hmm. Hopefully no one has this, a bullying issue at school, but it'll probably bring down those kind of problems in school because students will stand up for themselves.
They'll say something as opposed to... Honestly, I was the wallflower. If anybody said something- ... I'd be like I'm just gonna walk away from this. There's a fight in that corner. Let's just stay out of it," so I was lucky growing up. I didn't really get picked on, but can you imagine if, I had to defend myself or even speak up?
If you have that confidence, if you're used to talking in front of a group of people, then it wouldn't be so difficult. Even thinking about a, the best defense is a good offense, right? If you're a confident kid who is willing to take the risk and say, "Hey. Hi, my name is Thomas. We have lockers next to each other," or, "We have, the same class together," like- Right
I want to get to know you," that kind of person is going to make friends, which makes you less self-conscious. So it's a whole cycle that allows the kids to not be so far behind because they're not willing to be out there, and they can fully participate, they can fully engage with everybody around them.
And it's funny, from a teacher's perspective, you know how there's a whole discussion of AI is ruining our kids' brain, is rotting everyone's brain because no one has to think about anything. There's no more critical thinking. And you and I, we get a lot of those questions like, "Hey, we're doing a lot of in-services, in presentations on like here's how you can use AI in your classroom," but teachers always bring up like, "Well- What are our kids doing about thinking anymore?
They're just looking something up. And I'm like one thing is that use AI as a tool to research, but it always let them know, like at the end of whatever paper or whatever they're doing research on, whatever they're writing, have that presentation portion or element to it. That's the real product you want from them.
Let them know that's the expectations, not to finish that five-paragraph essay. But the point is to be able to talk about it. Even if the information was generated by AI, they are learning if they can defend it or explain it. Yeah. That's huge. If you think about in that moment where a five-paragraph ef- essay type thing where they spent a lot of time building up to this, I think that's where most people think of like this public speaking, right?
Mm-hmm. This big presentation thing that's gonna be 1,000 points in your grade, and you're gonna fail if you don't do well. There's this huge high stakes. Now, if the kid could meet that, then you're pumped, right? Because that means the students are prepared, whatever. If they're reading off of the whatever, then that may be not so great, but there's nuance to good speaking.
But the point being is if it's only those moments, then you're not getting very far, right? But how much better is that- That the kid can defend their thinking, or that you actually... The whole thing, problem with AI in general is that you're getting the correct answer, but you're not getting the student voice.
And so it's like, give me your voice. You just made me think about this, but in high school we had, it was December finals coming up, and I was going off. We were in a basketball tournament, we were gonna go away, and I was gonna miss the final. So my teacher invited me in, and he said, "You're gonna take the final early."
And instead of handing me a test- ... he just started talking with me. Oh, wow. And we had this incredible conversation about all the content that was on the test, and I was, like, hook, line and sinker in his class. I loved his class. I was so into the topic, so it was not a problem.
But we just had this very high level. I'm sitting there, I'm a 17-year-old, 18, no 18-year-old, and I'm having this conversation with my history teacher, who is brilliant as far as I'm concerned, and we had a 20-minute conversation. And he was like, "You know what? I think you're good. I don't- ... I don't think we need to worry about it."
And I was like, "But that's it." I knew the information. I lived the information, and if that wasn't a better sign of me understanding than sitting there writing all the answers- ... on a piece of paper. I hope I never get him in trouble. God, it was like a billion years ago. But shout out to Mr.
Sanso, one of my favorite teachers of all time. That was a great opportunity to showcase what I can do in that subject, and so I think we wanna give kids opportunities to show it. This goes back to the idea of inviting different methods of answering the question, right? So some kids may wanna write an essay because they do better when they can prepare, and they can take their time, and they can process.
Mm-hmm. But we want them all to be able to talk about that subject. If they can only do it with a book in front of them, then we've missed the point. And not everyone's gonna be outgoing. Like you said before, neither of us are very... We have to do it for a living, or we have to do it just to be part of a society, but- Right
that's a skill that we have because it's necessary. And so even a shy kid should be able to pull it together for a presentation, or a conversation for that matter. Talking to adults, having the ability to, a guest comes into your classroom and be like, "Oh, hi, Mr. Hi, Mrs. Welcome to the eighth grade."
"Welcome to the fourth grade," right? Whatever class it is. "We're learning about this today." You telling me that kid would be lost in saying that? No, that's, that should be natural. It should be easy. It takes some steps. It takes work. That should be what we're after. And that's a good point, that public speaking isn't about just memorizing and just regurgitating that speech word for word, verbatim.
But the idea is that, and going back to your story, is that your, the students care. They learned it, they understand it, they... I don't know, I feel like they've incorporated in their, their lives as opposed to, "I'm gonna memorize this, and as soon as the final's over-" It's gone ... "it falls out of my brain."
Yeah. That's like the traditional route memorization. But afterwards, we don't use that information, and we don't care about it. But it's, it sure sounds like you're like, "Oh, I love this subject. I care about it," and you still remember it, and you can utilize that. And a lot of teachers I know get frustrated when students aren't applying what they know.
This is all part of applying what you know, as opposed to, okay, memorized it for chapter one, and then all of a sudden chapter two builds on chapter one, and they're like, "Oh, I don't know how to do this." Yeah. Yeah. This happens in math all the time that we're like, "What? You got like a perfect score on your test, and you can't, you didn't apply what you know?"
And that's when the idea of changing the way we learn or- Yeah ... probably even going as far as changing the way we teach and what we expect from our students instead- Oh, yeah ... of just like getting all the answers right as opposed to thinking about is that correct? And going back to AI is, AI makes mistakes.
It hallucinates. Have students talk about, oh, why they agree or disagree about. Yeah. Making an argument, playing devil's advocate, and I'll play devil's advocate with you for a moment. Not every subject, and, I can say this for my education for sure, not every subject was so interesting for me, right?
But could I be expected to, a drop of a hat, give a song and dance about anything that I had learned? And the answer is yes. Like traditional ways, like people raise their hand and y- like you, you participate in that, or the teacher's gonna call on you because that kid won't raise his hand, so they gotta call on him.
You should be able to briefly talk about anything that you're learning, right? Like- ... information just can't pass and just be gone. Even some of the subjects that I probably wouldn't take again if you could ask me to. Like I went back to college to take more math classes as a math teacher because that was interesting to me.
There's a whole lot of classes I wouldn't do again, right? In some other subjects. And I don't wanna, I don't wanna put down any subjects, but just, for my own personal interest, history and math were gonna be my two biggest ones. So those would be easy to go back. But I would be able to talk about any of those things that I was learning at the time Because we were being prepared, and I think that's what we're expect- the expectation should be.
It should be a higher expectation, and we should be making more connections so that things do stick. Because if it is just memorization of stuff- Mm-hmm ... eventually we can put a robot in that seat and the robot can give me those answers. I don't need the answers anymore. I need that kid to show me that they're thinking, that they're making connections, that they're doing something with this information.
Otherwise, why are we feeding it to them again? That's right. Does the information matter? If it doesn't matter, then let's ch- let's choose some different information. Yes, and going back to teachers asking us about AI and whatnot, it's like maybe we should just stop asking them about facts because one teacher was like, "That AI overview is so annoying."
Anytime they ask the question, they're like, "Hold on. It's right at the top." They don't even have to look at the different search results anymore. It's just at the top. And I was like, "That's good. We just saved five minutes of our lives." Yeah, and AI will use a bibliography, right? It'll list the sites where it pulled that information from, and you can see if that's Bob's website or if it's the National Institute of Technology or something, i'm not here to defend AI, but is this more of, "Oh it's there. What can we do with this?" For me, it's like, what do we do with all this time? And it's funny because when I was teaching English back in the day, it's like different chapters. Here's your chapter on persuasive essays. And I s- I said to the kids, I was like, "Okay, just, we'll just pick random topics or we'll list topics," and then the culminating activity would be a debate.
And for some of the students, and I'll just randomly pick "Hey, you get first pick. Do you wanna be pro or you wanna be con?" And someone has, ends up being con and they'll say to me like, "But I don't believe it." But one day you're gonna have to de- defend someone, something that you- Yeah ... don't believe in, but that's your job.
So my kids got really into it, and just to think about, and they started believing. They're like, "Oh yeah, you know what?" It's just to look at the other side or the other perspective and to- ... the big picture where they realize like, oh, that's not so bad. Because one of the topics every year it's like school lunches.
Defending school lunches. We hate it or we don't hate it. Why is it so great? And school uniforms. And sometimes, I guess from a student perspective, like school uniform's terrible, right? Everyone loves free dress. But then they realize the pro version or the team that was on defending uniforms, they realize they had a stronger statement than the kids who weren't defending uniforms.
It's every year when we pick topics, these are, that's what they'll bring up, school lunches and uniforms. So they don't realize oh wait, school uniforms are great. Oh wait, school lunches aren't so terrible. So it's a whole perspective for them and for them to realize oh, not just to think of their initial reaction to everything, to look at everyone's side.
Yeah. I wanna steal another story from my high school days just because you make me think of, we used to have these brain breaks in English class, and sometimes the brain breaks would veer off and turn into these other discussions. But Mr. Pardini, who's still there, he would challenge us like on our thinking, and so you'd have to you'd wanna get into this discussion about something and why do you believe that, and really be able to talk and defend what it is that you agree with or disagree with. And sometimes you gotta play the devil's advocate and you really gotta shoot something down to know that it's absolutely bulletproof, right? It's absolutely gonna be successful. And I love that idea of- Not necessarily like nitpicking so that you're in confrontation, but just how do, can we poke holes in this so that we can then fill them up permanently?
And so that idea of discussing and sharing the information, and then having an opinion about it, I think all of those things just make for much better versions of that. So it's yeah, go ahead and use the facts, but those facts help you defend your opinion or to build an idea or whatever it might be.
And I think that's a super valid way of approaching this. Yeah. And one thing I did notice, or I almost have to point out to students "It's okay to change your mind." Yeah. But sometimes they're like, "We're so sure." Then they hear the other side, they're like, "Oh." It reminds me of the science and like the scientific method.
The idea is not to successfully turn the liquid red or blue or purple. The idea is to discover, the path. How did we get there? If your team or your group or your lab partner didn't get the color to change or you didn't get the reaction, like how? What were the steps that you missed, or how were you successful versus another team?
It's all about the path, the journey, and students realize "Oh, wait, I don't have to be right all the time," right? Yeah. Being wrong is okay, too. But being able to discuss it no matter what. Let's switch to like the how. So I know that people are listening to this are hopefully nodding their head like, "Yes, we agree with you.
You're all wonderful." How do we do it? Yeah, exactly. I think most people think of, when we talk about public speaking, we're talking about the formal things, right? Mm-hmm. So you're talking about presentations in class, speeches in front of the school. You might have your science fair, your art fair, whatever it may be, where they're gonna discuss the work that they've done.
Reading at mass is a, an opportunity to get up. You have the notes in front of you. You just have to deliver, right? But all of those opportunities are great. But it's about the baby steps that we take along the way that give us those moments. Those are like the end product, the finished version of that, right?
Mm-hmm. Especially if you think about a kid graduating, if they're the last speech of the ceremony, that is the last time that kid is gonna give a speech for this particular group of people. Mm-hmm. That is the culmination. That should be the best speech they've ever given in their life up to that point.
But that's the end game. The end game is that they can go up and do that, that they can be, eventually they're gonna be best man- Someone's wedding ... maid of honor, right? Whatever. Maybe some of them will be priests, and they'll be giving homilies, right? And they won't wanna bore everybody to death.
They're going to give inspiring homilies. So we're hoping for all of that, but we gotta do these baby steps ahead of time, and I think that's where the gold is. So what do you s- what do you think are some of those baby steps? Now, we can brainstorm lots of ideas here, but what are some of the baby steps that folks can do on their way there?
From a teacher's perspective, definitely it starts with lesson planning. Carving out that time and looking at the end goal. The whole reverse engineering thing. Make the time. But a lot of it, for me, when I taught, is start with the writing. Choose topics what kids like. My English book was stale, but I loved it because it was like, "Hey, this chapter we're doing persuasive essays.
This chapter we're doing some sort of explanatory how-to essay." But we always brought it to the next level of "Hey, let's talk about it," or, "Let's discuss." Mm-hmm. Is what you're really writing what you really want? Funny story, I was telling you earlier, 20 years ago, I don't think we could do this now, I had kids write a how-to essay.
So my demo how-to essay, it's oh, how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It's just quick lesson one day. I was like, "Hey, everyone, just take 10 minutes to write how would you make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich." So I brought bread, peanut butter, jelly, and The kids, I have two kids. One would read their essay, and the other one would act it out.
And a lot of times they'll just miss little things like open the jar, and they're like, "Roll the peanut butter." So the kids are just laughing because they're rolling a jar of peanut butter over the bread. So then they realize "Oh yeah, we're gonna have to really spell out," the steps, especially- Yeah
if it's like a how-to, right? And it's just, it makes class fun, and they realize, oh, just to be careful of what you say, and how to say it, and whatnot. So just make it fun, carve out time, and start with the writing. What are your first steps? Yeah, I like that, and I think the new version of that is how to eat a Oreo cookie.
Oh. Which I've actually seen- I love that ... on job interviews as please explain how to eat a Oreo cookie, because they want to see their sequential thinking. Mm-hmm. So it's not just a fourth grade assignment. It is a job interview question. Be ready for it. I like that. I think you should plan for those things, but I also think you want to build in moments for the non formal, like very informal versions of this.
So if you're gonna have that kind of writing, and then you're gonna talk about that writing, and you want to be able the kids to have to do that, then you want to give them little tiny moments where they can practice those little skills, right? So obviously the writing you're doing already, but as far as the speaking goes, if you're doing a little bit of writing, you're doing a journal writing in the morning or question of the day.
Sometimes we would look at the gospel and, reflect on that. To always build in 30 seconds, a minute to, "I need three kids to tell me what they thought," and maybe have that rotate so it's not always the same three kids. But the idea that some kid would just put something down on paper or have a thought about something and then participate is the response that we're after, right?
"So we're gonna do this math question. Everyone try that yourself, and then I want two kids to come up to the board and do it. All right, go." And the idea that they can get up and do that, and then even if they fail, especially in a math problem- ... teaching algebra, whatever, there's a good chance there's gonna be a mistake But that's okay, right?
Because we've given that opportunity. They're so used to that opportunity. So little things like that, giving them a chance for to ask, answer the questions in class, not just raising their hand, but, and not just, forcing them, but just that it's part of the culture of our class- ... that three people are gonna respond to this every time.
We're always gonna be talking. We're always gonna be talking. Another one that I used to use as part of math, which people thought was crazy, we would have group projects like almost every day. Mm-hmm. Little tiny things. Solve this problem together, discuss this, here's poster board, put it together, and then I want you to get up and you guys talk.
And so they would solve this kind of system of equations problem. Mm-hmm. And then on, on butcher paper, and then put that up and then talk about it. So there's no speech, there's no like perfect lines. It's just this is what we did, and this is what we thought." We did that every day so that it was so simple, right?
Mm-hmm. They're not afraid of that because it's like everyone's gonna do it. It's just part of the deal. And maybe it's not you today, it's you tomorrow, right? So it's, I think if you put those little moments in, that also helps with your transitions. You have your entrance tickets, your exit tickets, and you're like, "Somebody give me this thought as we get, pull books out for the next subject."
Mm-hmm. You can have a kid get up and talk about that. You have that circle time in the morning or announcement time where you're just discussing happy news. I think building in just a couple minutes in e- everything that you're doing is really simple. There's so much time wasted in the classroom anyway.
No offense to the teachers out there, but there's so much time in transition and pulling new things out that you can build in moments where, "Today our scholars are these five kids, and they're gonna talk at these po-" you know those moments are coming, just build it into your schedule. Yeah, and I like that you emphasize that it doesn't have to be a formal speech every single time, because I hate to say this, I dreaded having kids write essays because it took so- You have to grade 'em
to grade them. It took forever to grade them. Don't grade them. I feel so bad. The kids are like, "Oh, did you write our essays yet?" I'm like, "No. There's so many of you to-" And actually read it. It'll take half an hour to grade one with, like- So bad ... many kids it take forever. And same thing with speeches.
It's oh, every speech is one to five minutes. Days. It would take days on end- Yeah ... through all those speeches. But again, great idea, just have short little things. And similar to what you said, exit tickets. We have exit tickets for math and whatnot, where it's like, takes 30 seconds.
You can't leave until you figure this out, kid. So same thing of how great is it for students if they could just verbalize the answers to their exit tickets. Something quick, right? And it's just having a different perspective on things. It's like, when we talk about public speaking, it's not just that one grand presentation at the end.
And that's actually not a great way to look at it, because then students know "Oh, we only need to do this once, then we're moving on," right? Yeah. If it's something that's a norm once a month, once a week, once a day, then they get used to it. Again, scary for kids like me, but if it's something expected, something that's normal in the classroom, it doesn't become scary.
And just like you were talking about with the writing writing's a great place to start because they start to formalize their thoughts so they feel better about what they're saying. They're not just going... You can do that also. Kids can record, maybe the first one, they can record a video of it, and then you can play the video.
So it's like, "I got to do my thing, and I got to send in the perfect one the first time." Mm-hmm. Eventually, you get to the point where they'll just do that on the fly, right? You can have them practice with their reading, right? So reading in front of the class, they already have the answer. All they have to do is vocalize it, right?
So the, the only part that is hard is then to translate that to volume in front of somebody else. So those are all little ways that we can scaffold these things so that we eventually get to that point where they can do it. Off the fly. And I think the end goal, and we can talk about some more strategies in a minute, but I think when it comes down to it, the end goal that we used to have, at least in, in our situation, was May of eighth grade, you could give the kids a topic, and in 15 minutes they'd put together a slideshow and present.
Literally within that 15-minute period, we could have classroom presentations. Because they know how to do the slideshow, they know how to find research. They they ... That's a culmination of all these things they can do, and they have no problem getting up and talking about it. That's a wonderful thing, but what scares me is when you go back to the beginning, right?
And in sixth grade we do these about me presentations, or fourth grade you do about me presentations, and the kid literally knows the answer to every question. My favorite food is- I hope so. But they would struggle with that, because they almost need notes- ... to talk about themselves. And you're like, "Whoa whoa.
Whoa. You know who you are. Forget the notes. Forget the slideshow. Talk to me about something you know: you. If you don't know you, you're in trouble." And that's a great start. You can even have kindergartners do the about me presentations. Oh, yeah. In fact, I would think kin- it would be easier for kindergartners- Oh, yeah.
They have- ... versus eighth graders. They don't know what color they like anymore. Kindergartners are so much easier because there's no self, they don't, they're not self-conscious. They're just like, "I'll talk to anybody anytime." Oh, yeah. For sure. So taking baby steps. I would say you don't have to reinvent the wheel, just start with what you have.
You have a planned lesson already on, it could be a writing assignment. Could be a quick writing assignment, could be a long writing assignment. Just add that extra element "Oh, talk about it." Or it doesn't necessarily have to be on that topic. You could talk about writing or doing research about the topic.
"Hey, what was the struggle? What was difficult about it?" It makes everything more engaging. I know that a lot of times when we give students free choice on a topic they want to write about, they're more passionate, it's easier to write, but when we do have to give those assignments that are hard and they're not interested in, you know- Yeah
every fourth-grader's gonna be interested in the California missions. But we can ask them "Oh, what was hard about d- the research?" Or just to, it's not just to build that mission itself, but talk about the process. What was hard, what was easy? Oh, yeah. In science there's so much, in history obviously it's the same thing- Mm-hmm
where you can just ask them and say, "What do you think about that? Is that something you'd like to study more of?" Or- Mm-hmm ... "Does this seem so scary to you?" Or- Mm-hmm ... "is this exciting to you?" They can respond to that, right? So start with the s- things are so easy. Their emotion, their opinion about something, it's just an easy way to start.
And, Kind of referencing back to what you were saying earlier, and again, writing essays and listening to all those presentations can be daunting because it's so time-consuming. But what if we broke up our class into small groups and students presented to the small groups just within the group?
Even if you have 30 kids, you can get through presentations relatively easy in an hour or even 30 minutes. I would say set limits on their presentation so they don't go off on a tangent. I'm very guilty of this all the time. It's like, "Oh wait, what about this?" It actually makes it more challenging, but a good challenging at the same time when we say, "You have one minute to give your presentation."
So then they have to think about oh, what are the important points or thoughts that they need to share with the group, as opposed to "Feel free to talk as long as you want," that's easy. Yeah. You can say anything. I could say nothing for five minutes, no problem. Absolutely. It's like on a test, if you write everything, the right answer's in there, right?
No. So limit the presentations to a time. I love the idea of videos, especially for those who are, perfectionist or wanna get it right, and again, cuts down in class time because you could have students post to Google Classroom or whatever platform, and it can be shared where... I know one assignment I said, "Post your video, but you also must watch three other students'- Right
three and three. Try to spread it out, everyone. Not everyone watch the same three videos." Right And write a response or some sort of reflection, or I usually have three questions like, "What did you like about their video? What can they improve on?" Then an extra comment about "Oh, any questions you have?"
That way students can hear, as opposed to they're sitting in class for two hours just listening. They're spacing out. They choose to... It could be a friend in the class where they're choosing to watch their video, and it could be done at home as part of homework, so it's quiet, they can absorb and have time to think about it, as opposed to everyone's watching videos in class at the same time.
Yeah. So there's many ways to do this. And I think that's good because you're not just, you're not just assigning these big enormous things, but you're teaching them how to do that, that small stuff, but how to give feedback as well. Mm-hmm. And that's, that's all part of the process. They can help each other get good, and, that peer sharing, they're sharing with each other and being able to give feedback.
It can only get better, so that by the time you see it, it's not terrible. And then that's, I think, one of the, also the main goals. All right, so as we get close to the end here, do you have any more strategies, and we can go bullet style of ways you can get kids to speak in class? Oh, yeah.
I would say make it fun. Give them choices. But of course, don't give them free run of everything. Just say, I always give silly examples like, "Oh, you can write about this," but is writing about toilets a good idea? Somehow that comes up. They're like, "No. Darn." But if students are able to choose their topics or sides, like the pro and the con, they have more invested in it as opposed to, "This was assigned to me."
I would say other things to make it fun is have students dress the part. Our kids love free dress. "Hey, we're doing presentations today. Feel free to dress up." When I had the day in court project, when they're doing debates, I was like, "Oh, feel free to dress up if you like." And those kids, they really play it up.
Oh, yeah. I would say other things, have students bring props. The all-time favorite, show and tell. Kids love bringing stuff in. Of course, again, give it good examples of what to bring and what not to bring. I haven't done this so much because it takes a lot of resources and time, but can you imagine if our kids built sets or built- Yeah
Set. Or we can do it digitally now, which is great. It's free. We have all... Most of us have projectors for some sort of TV in class. "Hey, why don't you design your background?" Add to the effect. Could be something simple. Go outside and take a picture and have that as your background while you do your presentation.
Yeah. So many simple things. Yes. What are your tips? For me, I keep it, I'll keep it more big picture because I like all of the things that you said. For me, it's just find more ways to ask the kid questions, students questions that reflect their thinking, their opinions, their ideas and really just try to get them to participate often.
And y- I know you get blinded by the five or 10 kids in the class who raise their hand all the time and, but you've got to find a way to make connections, and this is a, this is for behavior, this is for classroom management. Mm-hmm. Finding connections with each of those kids. You know that kid is really interested in Pokemon, and so there's gonna be a Pokemon moment at some point in the year.
You better call on that kid, right? Yeah. The sports kids- Yeah ... you throw out the little sports thing to them every now and then. Those kids are gonna jump at that. The theater kids you've got kids who are interested in all kinds of things. But I love the idea of just, talk about things that they love.
If somebody called me up in class and asked me about music or basketball I could talk for days, right? They're like, "Please be quiet now." Mm-hmm. But that's what you want. You almost want the point where they feel so comfortable that they feel like a conversation is natural. Mm-hmm. And so they're not just sitting there zombie-like, they're participating.
And I, I know it's hard. It's hard to dream of this perfect world where all 30 of your kids are yapping at the same time. And maybe that's not, that's not- The good kind, right? Yeah, the good kind, but it's still something to be chasing after, and I just, I would really push you to get to know the kids, get them talking about themselves, about what they believe in- That's only gonna help you along the way.
So what's next, Becky? If you like this episode, quite a few episodes that we recorded that is in the same line or just promotes these things. Remember the one we talked about where what makes your school unique? If you build in public speaking, even informally, into your classroom and your school, these are things that will stand out in your school.
Like you said, parents coming on a school tour, they can tell when a student rehearsed the answers or they're told to say a certain thing. What are your other favorite episodes to go along with this one? I think this is what makes marketing easier. If the kids are talking a lot, you've got a lot of great examples to show folks.
You can have kid ambassadors. That's another way to practice. Have kids come and meet the new parents, have kids come talk to the kindergartners. There's lots of speaking opportunities there that will help build their confidence, but also make you look like you're amazing. So I think that if you look at some of those things that make us different, this would be one of those things.
Our kids are able to speak. Our kids are confident. They've got some self-confidence and they believe in what they're learning, what they're talking about. They've got personality. You should want our kids because they are out there. They're really showing themselves. So I think that's, those are places I would look, those two couple episodes.
So thank you, Becky, for another exciting episode and discussion. Oh, thank you. And here on the podcast- This stuff is easy to talk about. What's that? This stuff is easy to talk about. Oh, I know, 'cause we love it. We love it. I loved being a part of our program that we had at our old school, and I always push this in any school that we work with.
Because we're celebrating what's working and redefining what's possible. That's the real key. That's what this whole podcast is about, is what's working at the schools and how can we change what we're doing at our schools for the better. So anyway, I appreciate your time. We'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us on In Search of Catholic School Excellence.
We hope you heard something inspiring or something you'd like to try at your own school. Please share this episode and leave a review to help others find us. To see how we can support your journey toward excellence, visit ilovemytechteam.com. Until next time, celebrate what's working and keep reaching for what's possible.