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The Make It Mindful podcast, hosted by Seth Fleischauer, explores education through the lens of mindfulness, focusing on practical, transformative solutions for teaching and learning. Each episode features conversations with educational changemakers, authors, psychologists, and leaders as Seth uncovers what they do, why it works, and how listeners can incorporate those insights into their own educational practices. By applying a mindfulness lens, the podcast encourages listeners to look objectively at what’s really going on in education, using that perspective to create positive, lasting change.
Seth Fleischauer (00:01.176)
Hello everyone and welcome to Make It Mindful, the podcast where we explore how to keep schools relevant by looking through the lens of mindfulness and asking the question, what's really worth paying attention to here? I'm your host, Seth Fleischhauer. In each episode, I interview educational changemakers striving to understand what they do, why it works, and how it can lead to practical transformative solutions for teaching. This week, my guest is Judy Pollack from the University of Virginia. Welcome, Judy. Thank you for being here.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (00:28.253)
Thanks so much for having me, Seth.
Seth Fleischauer (00:30.628)
Could you start please by introducing yourself to our guests? Sorry, sorry, sorry. Let me start that over. That was wrong. See, it happens to me too. I'm 50 episodes deep, right? You are our guest. You don't have to introduce yourself to yourself. Okay, one moment. Could you start please by introducing yourself to our listeners?
Judy Paulick (she/her) (00:35.163)
Sure. You're just trying to make me feel better. So thank you. I appreciate it.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (00:58.348)
Sure. My name is Judy Bollock and I am currently an associate professor of teacher education at the University of Virginia. I got here by sort of a long circuitous route, but I was after college, I was a teacher in Compton, California. I taught third graders. And during the summers while I was teaching, I was also working as a
sort of short -term trip leader through Habitat for Humanity and getting to go do builds, but also always visit the schools in countries all over the world. I, can I start over? I'm sorry. Okay, because I'm going to end up with too long of a story. Okay.
Seth Fleischauer (01:49.346)
Yeah. I do want to get into that international stuff though, because I work internationally too. but we'll get there.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (02:00.388)
Okay. All right. So, I'm Judy Pollack and...
Seth Fleischauer (02:05.112)
Here, here, I'll, I'll tee it off for you, okay? Judy, could you start by introducing yourself to our listeners and just let them know who you are and what your work is right now. I think we'll pry into your background as we get in here a little bit, but just give them that basic understanding.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (02:22.71)
For sure. So I am currently an associate professor of teacher education at the University of Virginia, where I train elementary teachers and focusing on language arts and family engagement. yeah. And, my gosh. Okay. I'm starting over and I won't do this again. I'm sorry. This is like the easiest part. And I...
Seth Fleischauer (02:43.876)
Bravo! That's what they say in Chinese. You got it!
Judy Paulick (she/her) (02:53.634)
Okay.
Seth Fleischauer (02:59.748)
Judy, you start... Now we're just gonna giggle the rest of the time. Judy, could you start by introducing yourself to our listeners?
Judy Paulick (she/her) (03:14.484)
Absolutely. So I am currently an associate professor of elementary education at the University of Virginia. And I train elementary teachers for language arts instruction and family engagement. Here I also coordinate our elementary teacher ed programs. And my focus is very much on that intersection of language arts.
and literacy and equity and family engagement. the ways that we can, that language arts teachers or teach elementary teachers in general can learn about families and then bring what they learn back to their language arts instruction and to their classrooms in general.
Seth Fleischauer (03:59.428)
Yes, my gosh, I love this. And our listeners should know that this episode is part of the 2024 National Literacy Month with RIF Campaign, a partnership between the Bee Podcast Network and Reading is Fundamental. And so this literacy piece is obviously what relates it to Reading is Fundamental. The culture, the community engagement piece, I think that's what the Bee Podcast Network thought when they set you up with me, right? Because this is work
Judy Paulick (she/her) (04:22.306)
You.
Seth Fleischauer (04:28.216)
that I do interculturally. work with students in Taiwan. I also teach students here stateside about cultural competence. And I was so fascinated to learn about this focus of yours specifically around like home visits and ways to leverage the assets that exist within a community and how you can translate that into real teaching. And so I want to unpack
a lot of the parts of this and why it works, what it is and why it works. So first of all, you talk about like an asset based approach to home visits. I am a huge fan of home visits. I learned about them when my stepmom who's a teacher in the 90s, she did them through her school. And it just like blew my mind how like positive this was for everybody involved. Right? Like you've got
The parents who feel like they really know who the teacher is because they've broken bread with them or metaphorically at least or maybe sometimes literally. You've got the student isn't going to feel as nervous going to the classroom because they know the teacher. The teacher has literally seen where this person lives as a way to like understand them on a personal level that goes way beyond what you're going to be able to just get from being in the classroom.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (05:40.418)
Mm -hmm.
Seth Fleischauer (05:53.312)
especially in those first few weeks. And so it just starts off the year on this like incredibly like personal and and like such a such an authentic connection that you've made. But your work is about how to do this right. And what I just described is something that like feels like it could be, you know, universally good no matter how you approach it. But you talk about an asset based approach. What does that mean? What are the teachers looking for when they're doing these home visits?
Judy Paulick (she/her) (06:23.503)
That's a great question. And I'm also glad that you already have this background and understanding and had this personal experience with home visiting as a positive experience. know, home visiting has this association with social work and public health.
workers where it can be, and with all best intention and with lots of great outcomes, can be professionals going into homes and seeing what's wrong and, and helping to try to fix what's wrong. And, you know, clearly, yes, there are things that, that those professionals are able to identify and
Seth Fleischauer (06:53.113)
Mm -hmm.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (07:09.61)
support and even with teachers sometimes are, you we have Head Start teachers and early childhood teachers go in and help families get acclimated to schools. And that is can be really helpful. But again, it's about kind of imposing the structures of schools and schooling on families rather than going in and learning about who families are, what they do, what their experiences are and what their assets are. And so when we're thinking about assets in terms of
going into homes, we're thinking about, I frame it around Luis Mol's work of funds of knowledge and Tara Yoso's work of community cultural health. And so it's kind of all of the things that families are providing to their children in terms of language and skills, the stories that families tell, the values and
Goldenberg calls cultural models that that families have from their in their life. It's all of this this stuff that if we're going in with into homes thinking, okay, well, you know, families are doing are are not doing this and not doing that, then we're not going to see those assets. So for example, like
I'm a language and literacy person. And so a lot of what I'm thinking about are the family literacy practices that families are already engaging in. So things like when families are texting or writing letters to relatives and other contacts, people that they, their loved ones elsewhere, when families are doing things like storytelling and engaging in storytelling that may, that
may be similar to or different from, you know, kind of mainstream dominant ways of storytelling when they're reading religious texts in the home, when they're playing video games with each other. All of those things are literacy practices that families are engaging in and that teachers can learn about and learn from. But it's deeper, it's even deeper than that. It's also about
Judy Paulick (she/her) (09:33.062)
Again, this idea of cultural models or Zaretta Hammond talks about kind of the ways that families engage in culture. And so that may be things like, you know, things that teachers would be able to see on an everyday basis, how children dress, what they, you know, the music they listen to, the books they read, those kinds of things.
but it's also the deeper ways that families engage with each other. it's thinking about, know, one example I really like is, you know, kind of mainstream white American culture is very competitive, right? Like competitiveness, being competitive is a value that is, it is a virtue, right? And so it's, and it,
Seth Fleischauer (10:19.904)
of virtue, right? Yeah.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (10:25.738)
And it shows up in classrooms a lot too, right? Like if we were, I know when I was teaching third graders, we would often review math concepts using like Jeopardy and they would play against each other. But there are like so many cultures where cooperation is the more, is the virtue, right? Is the cultural model. so you can, but if you can go in.
to a home and listen to family stories and look for the evidence of those cultural models, then those are things that you're able to bring back into the classroom. it really is, or just even like how families, how family members engage with each other when they're having conversation do.
Do children look adults in the eye? Is that a thing that happens? How stories are told? There's so much richness that you can see when you're engaging with families that you wouldn't necessarily know by talking to a child or even reading their writing or other ways that we typically have to learn about.
children and their lives and what they value.
Seth Fleischauer (11:55.062)
Okay, I have so many questions because I really want to understand how this works and I really want to understand also if you're not at a school that does these types of home visits, how can you leverage these assets? And there's a couple of different like lines of questioning and I'm hoping that we'll get to all of them. The first one I want to do is that question, right? So like if I am a teacher who wants to leverage these community assets,
I do not have access to my students' homes. What can I do to learn about those assets to be able to leverage them in the classroom?
Judy Paulick (she/her) (12:36.198)
I'll go back up just for one second if that's okay, just to describe, because the only way that teachers and communities and schools get the visits going is by advocating for them in the first place. And I just wanna shout. just wanna.
Seth Fleischauer (12:50.872)
Mm.
Thank you, thank you. Yeah, yeah. Don't want to skip over that part. Yeah, thank you.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (12:55.97)
Right. And so I want to shout out the organization. It's called Parent Teacher Home Visits. They're based in Sacramento, California. They've been training folks and supporting schools. And generally schools are using Title I funding to fund because you really need to make sure that teachers are being compensated for the visits. They started their work more than 25 years ago and they've been kind of
evolving their organization as well, which has been great to see in evolving their training. But they help to get the structures in place in school districts, and then they partner with school districts to make sure that it's an option. So I just want to make sure that we're not like off the bat ruling out the possibility that a particular context could implement home visits. And then these home visits that they do are generally like, they do them, or they...
suggest doing them once at the beginning of the year and once in January to kind of build the relationship and then continue or to initiate the relationship and then build it. And the visits are very much about relationship building. so I just wanted to, and yeah, I just wanted to kind of put that out there first.
Seth Fleischauer (14:12.086)
And yeah, and I do want to thank you too. Part of what this podcast is about is mindset. And what you, I think, just called out with me was like a fixed mindset toward the teacher perspective of like, I'm overwhelmed. I understand that you're telling me something that is like idealistically great, but like, how do I actually work it into my schedule? I was kind of coming with that fixed mindset. So I appreciate.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (14:34.892)
Yeah. Yes, yes.
Seth Fleischauer (14:39.552)
you calling me out on that and backing up and saying like, Hey, even if you don't have that, if you don't have this, it is possible to get it and here's an avenue. So thank you. Thank you for doing that. Now, let's assume that in the, the meantime, while, while we, while we were looking towards these roads of like bringing it into our, into our class, these, the funds and being able to, to make it happen from, from like a, you know, a systemic level. what else can we do as teachers?
Judy Paulick (she/her) (15:08.768)
Yeah, so well, I think that all of the any relationship building that teachers do with families pays off in space. So that starts on before school begins with once you once teachers get their class lists and making some sort of contact with families and finding out what kind of what the preferred contact Avenue is for the family, whether it's texts or email or phone calls.
and then doing that on a consistent basis, right? Like, so building and doing it, especially if there are children and, know, as teachers, there are often children from day one where you know that there might be some challenges. And so, but starting off that communication positively so that you can build a relationship because often there's you know, there's a tension. I work with a lot of young teachers and they are worried about engaging with families because they're like, I don't have children. don't, what do I know?
Seth Fleischauer (16:07.118)
Hmm.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (16:08.682)
And a lot of, you know, there are lots of families who've had, you know, either just unpleasant or neutral or traumatic experiences with schools and schooling, and you don't want to engage with teachers. And so the more that teachers can humanize themselves and reach out and build the relationship and build trust with families, I think that's the, I mean, that's so much of the goal.
And then it creates opportunities. So even if this isn't a home visit and isn't going into a home for, you know, these visits are generally about maybe 25 minutes. And it's really just about having a conversation with the family. It's really just about building the relationship and centering the family because so much of what happens in interactions between families and schools is just centering the school. It's you.
come learn about what we're doing. Let me tell you about your child, right? We know that families are children's first teachers, most consistent teachers, best teachers, you know? And so having, creating avenues for the relationship building and the trust building allows not only for families to feel valued,
Seth Fleischauer (16:59.854)
Mm
Yeah, yeah,
Judy Paulick (she/her) (17:26.338)
by the teacher, but it also then creates space for the teacher to learn about the family. if you can do that through other means, I mean, it also happens through the ways, know, back to school night is, is happens everywhere. So how do you do that? Do you do that by talking at families for 20 minutes, or do you do that by inviting families then to come to share about themselves, having them, you know, fill out a form or make a video or.
Seth Fleischauer (17:47.747)
You
Seth Fleischauer (17:55.939)
Mm
Judy Paulick (she/her) (17:55.975)
bring the child in to share a story, inviting families into the classroom to share something about themselves with the class. Like, I think there are just so many ways of making sure that when there's a publishing party, so we always, you know, at the end of a writing unit would have a little publishing party and invite families to that so that they have opportunities to be in the space, build the trust, see what kids are doing.
and share their expertise. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't have to be about being in the home. And maybe they should just be called family visits. I like the home piece of it allows the teacher to like literally step inside the family space. Like to literally center the family and to be surrounded by the family's artifacts so that there are points of
conversation, you know, like there's, there's ways to, to, to concretely learn about who the family is. But you can do that also through a quick zoom call with the family. We, know, during COVID we had our, student teachers doing home visits via zoom and said to the family, bring one thing that's important to you over to the zoom. And, and then it's the same thing. It's a discussion. It's a conversation.
the family sharing their stories. So I think the home visit and having the opportunity to, to like be in the family space is great, but it's definitely not necessary. And I've also, you know, I have teachers who will go to a soccer game because the parents are going to like, or a caregiver of some sort is going to be at the soccer game anyway. So then it allows you can have a little side conversation, cheer on the kid. It humbles you. It humbles the teacher to.
the family and it allows for the relationship building. So I think there are lots of ways to like get at the same ideas of centering the family and learning about the family.
Seth Fleischauer (19:55.278)
Hmm.
Seth Fleischauer (20:02.912)
Yeah, what I'm hearing is that home visits are an avenue and there are myriad avenues and it's about how you leverage those avenues. And really what I'm hearing is that it's about mindset, right? Like just like the asset -based home visit is about the mindset of discovering those assets and rather than the deficiencies, it's also a mindset of curiosity.
and wanting to learn more about the family by centering the family. I'm wondering, because know, mindset is a practice, right? So you can say these things to young teachers, but how do you help them truly adopt the mindset?
Judy Paulick (she/her) (20:35.682)
Yeah. what a great question. And I can't claim to have done it with all of my, with all of my student teachers, but you know what, a lot, it's start.
with understanding both your own, understanding the context of.
nice to start over with. Okay, just give me one.
Seth Fleischauer (21:13.005)
Yeah, please.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (21:20.098)
Okay, so I can't claim to have been successful in doing this with and for all of my student teachers. But I think it starts both by understanding kind of the broader social context and kind of inequalities and power differentials and oppression more broadly, because we tend to, we know what we know, we know what we've experienced. We also know that 80 % of teachers entering the workforce
course are white, monolingual, English speaking, fifth head women. And so, and, that's one kind of valid, great experience. And there are myriad other kinds of valid, great experiences that, that, that their students and their students' families will have had. So understanding both that there are lots of ways of knowing and being that are
normal and good and valid and also understanding their own positionality in terms of like, okay, well, what is my culture? Who am I? What are my cultural models? How do I enact them? So again, like this idea of like competition versus cooperation. Well, what, which one did your family value? And that's great. It's important to like, to
to have embraced and to feel like your upbringing was nurturing, but you also need to be able to acknowledge and understand that other ways of knowing and being are equally nurturing, good and valuable. And so we start with a lot of identity work and positionality work and understanding who you are, what you do to enact that, and that there are lots of ways of
doing the same thing. There are different ways of demonstrating love. There are different ways of demonstrating intelligence. There are different ways of being in the world. And so it has to start with that. And it has to also start with acknowledging that everybody has biases. It's the human condition to believe that some ways of knowing and being are.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (23:45.438)
normal and good, and others are not so normal or, you know, and to sort of otherize. And so if we can get to a point where we're able to acknowledge that, then we can push through it. And so we do things like identity wheels and taking the implicit associations test to understand that's like the through researchers at Harvard that who
to be able to see, what are the groups that we may have biases against? then we know that, and the research is really clear, that the ways to move past to deconstruct bias is to engage in productive struggle with people who embody the identity that, against which we have a bias. And so what better way to do that than to like,
work with the family to support a child. Like if you're the teacher, especially in elementary classrooms where you have, you your 20 or 24 kids that you're working with across the year, you have the opportunity to really engage with families to support that child. And so,
Seth Fleischauer (25:06.705)
Can you break that down a little bit more? The word you used was struggle, right? So you said that like productive struggle. Are you saying that ideally this is a struggle? for me, ideally it's like, come in and it's good, right? And there's like a give and take. like, mean, is that the struggle you're talking about? Like how much of a struggle do we want this to be?
Judy Paulick (she/her) (25:12.096)
productive.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (25:21.698)
That's like great.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (25:33.466)
Well, I mean, think productive struggle can also be like, you know, I with my student teachers, I have them do these group worthy tasks where they feel like solve a puzzle together. And that is that can be struggle. And when you're working with people who are different from you, you're coming at it from slightly different perspectives. And I think that's what I mean by struggle is that you may be coming from like, I as a parent, I don't think, you know, first graders should have homework. I think my child should get to come home and
have dinner with the family and do what we wanna do together. But as the teacher, like maybe I think that it's important for them to be doing particular things at night. So finding like working together to figure out what's gonna work best for the child. I guess that's how I would describe the struggle. But sometimes it's more struggle -y than other times, depending on kind of where the family and the teacher are coming from. But doing that together in service of the child is...
is what is kind of the goal.
Seth Fleischauer (26:35.869)
I imagine that one of these struggles, and this is something that I struggled with as a young teacher who didn't have kids, but I had certain values, right? And I was raised with certain values. there are many cultures that haven't necessarily changed into modern times as they haven't embraced some of the modern thinking around like,
Judy Paulick (she/her) (26:58.786)
Yeah.
Seth Fleischauer (27:05.092)
gender roles and things like that. some of the more conservative family structures can feel like a values thing, right? Where it's like, if I'm looking at this family, it might seem like they're not giving, for example, their girl the same opportunity that they are giving their boy, right? Do you consider that like, is that an asset that you are?
that you can then leverage into the classroom? Like, how do you coach teachers to navigate that discomfort?
Judy Paulick (she/her) (27:40.437)
my gosh, that's hard. It's a lot, right? So I think that it's, as long as the family isn't doing something that is explicitly and actively harming.
the child, then I do coach my students to be able to see, so what are the opportunities that the family is providing? Like for example, providing for girls and like, what is it that the child is learning in that context? And then, you know, what are some, like, what are ways to understand how and why the family is doing what they're doing? And I think that's the...
That's the biggest piece of it is the understanding how and why. So the how and why is, is because it's part of, you know, thousands of years of, of a religious practice, for example. Right. So it may be it, maybe it's, it has to do with, like young girls covering themselves. I don't know if that was part of your, like your experience, but then, so how do we then.
Like, make sure that the family feels valued in what they do and who they are. Make sure the child feels honored and valued within the classroom so that the child can learn what they need to learn to be successful in the classroom. And then, you know, I mean, I also, for better or worse, in my teacher ed classrooms, make sure that we're also providing
you know, windows for children to see what's possible in the context where they live. And so it's not about like, you know, positioning yourself against the family, because that's not going to work anyway. The child is part of the family. The family is who the child belongs to and is, you know, and we want that, that, you know, family, like the love of the family is the
Seth Fleischauer (29:48.536)
Yeah, that belonging, yeah.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (29:49.354)
is the most important thing for the child. so, but I do think that we can make progress toward creating relationships that help to bring us closer together in what we're wanting. Every family wants what's best for their child. It's just that sometimes the definition of best is different than what is kind of mainstream white American.
Seth Fleischauer (30:19.577)
Yeah.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (30:19.734)
best for. And it's not teachers place to say what's best for children, but it's teachers responsibility to provide opportunities for children to see what the possibilities are and for families to see that too. But we don't get to undermine what families are doing unless it's actively harmful for children.
Seth Fleischauer (30:39.864)
Yeah, yeah, it's something I think about a lot because we operate inter -culturally at Banning Global Learning. We teach students who are in Asia, in East Asia, and we are very, conscious of cultural imperialism, right? Like we don't want to come off that like our way is the way and therefore you should act that way. At the same time, part of the value that we bring is that we are teaching about another culture. We are offering a different way of thinking.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (30:54.604)
Mm
Seth Fleischauer (31:07.0)
And so there are some lines, right? And it's because it's like, okay, you you want to center the student in their experiences, but you also want to prepare them to engage cross culturally. And so they might need to understand how their customs values, lifestyle fits into that larger cultural context and how they might be perceived if they, you know, talk about things in a certain way.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (31:18.902)
Yep.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (31:27.158)
Yep.
Seth Fleischauer (31:32.652)
And so I think we've started to like kind of get to like where the rubber meets the road here, which is how do we leverage these, especially literacy, because this is for the literacy month, these literacy assets when it comes to actual classroom activities and instruction, right? Like you mentioned a household that has literacy practices of texting their
Judy Paulick (she/her) (31:40.29)
you
Seth Fleischauer (32:00.092)
loved ones elsewhere of storytelling, maybe of religious texts and video games. These are all assets. How do you take those, that knowledge into the classroom and create an approach that's going to work for not just those students, but for all the students in the classroom who might have a different set of assets in their home, right? So how do you do this?
Judy Paulick (she/her) (32:25.09)
Yep. So I think we're only just starting to figure this out, right? So like, I also, just want to say that, that like, you know, this notion of culturally responsive, relevant, sustaining teaching, which is what we would be informing through these home visits has been theorized for now, it's 30 years and probably longer than that. And, but
but the like sort of rubber hitting the roadness has because it's so contextual has been has lagged and and the empirical research on it has lagged even more. So I what I'm saying are right. Yeah, exactly. Yes. So I have some suggestions, but I am sure that there are many, many more ways that one could do this effectively. And we need to continue studying that. I think
Seth Fleischauer (33:04.292)
Sounds like a standard educational issue. We're 30 years behind the research. I got it. Okay.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (33:20.182)
The first thing, this is low hanging fruit, is the literature, the children's literature that is available in classrooms and that teachers choose. I mean, I can also be from the library that teachers bring into their classrooms and making sure that that literature is, and I love the idea of like windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors, like that children can see themselves in the literature that's.
in the classroom, all children, every child can see themselves in some of the literature, that they are able to see the world and the variety of ways of knowing and being in the world, and that they're able to sometimes like step outside themselves into, you know, like be able to see themselves moving from one to the other. but.
Seth Fleischauer (34:02.276)
Hmm. Ooh, I'd heard the first two before, but I hadn't heard the Slight New Doors. I love that.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (34:07.33)
So I think making sure that the literature and being so purposeful about, know, across different social identities and across different kinds of experiences and across different like geographies, there is no like absolutely like anytime you're doing a reading a read aloud or having children read a text, making sure that it is purposefully helping to enrich.
those like understandings. think the other like in sticking with literacy again, having children creating books. So I've seen like in classrooms, you know, all families, all cultures have some sort of like bread product, right? And so finding ways to like creating a class book, that's the stories of bread across all of the different homes and cultures or
you you could do that with other things too. But I think bread is this thing that like really does like kind of like bring us together. Right. Right. And so so but but creating though also like just books that are the story like family stories. So then so so families are able to like bring their whatever a family story that's meaningful to them is
Seth Fleischauer (35:11.246)
Yeah, it's the metaphor for close connection with people you don't know, breaking bread, right?
Judy Paulick (she/her) (35:32.764)
into the classroom and then they're available to read and do it in English and in whatever the home language is of the family, if that's a possibility, right? Like without, right, severely like inconveniencing families. But we have so much technology that we can use for that. So books and books, inviting families into the classroom, I think is a really important way of doing that.
But then also like figuring out, well, what are the cultural models that families in the classroom are, like, what are their values? Right. And so if they're, when you think about nature or religion or, like kind of how people engage with each other, figuring out what those things are, and then finding ways to bring that into the classroom. So for example, if
If I go visit and I see that a lot of my families are, and even if they're not, so that we're exposing children to other ways of knowing and being, there's older kids taking care of younger kids as part of the kind of value or cultural model in the neighborhood or in the family. Why not do that across grade levels in an elementary school? Partner with, if I'm a first grade teacher, partner with a fifth grade teacher and find ways to.
to incorporate that as part of what we do in our classroom, that sort of caring for each other. If I think another piece of it, and if we're thinking about like kind of this idea of culturally relevant teaching and how we then enact it in classrooms using these assets, then we also need to think about like how the
the school is reaching back out to the community. So if there are things going on in the community that the teachers learn about through children, families, home visits that they can engage with. One of the schools that I was working with, there was like a one particular intersection that was problematic.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (37:55.42)
in like near the school where kids were trying to walk home and the teachers learned about it and the teachers brought it up with the administration and the administration talked to the to the officials in the town and they were able to get a like a blinking light there instead of a you know and so like those kinds of things where it's reaching out in both directions can be really powerful in building those continuing to build the relationship and building trust.
and making sure that it's not, you know, kind of teachers imposing this thing on families, but we're really integrating families' values into classrooms and schools as well.
Seth Fleischauer (38:38.69)
Yeah. So what I'm hearing from you is that there's not necessarily like a roadmap. It's not like take an X asset and like apply this formula to it and then you get an output, right? Like this is about this, right? This is about like understanding, being curious enough and, and, focusing on relationship building enough so that you understand the context of the asset that you're dealing with enough to be able to consider.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (38:48.222)
No. No.
Seth Fleischauer (39:05.924)
how you might bring it into the classroom in a way that's meaningful and authentic. And that the way that you do that is going to depend on on that context, but also on your own personal creativity as a teacher and what you happen to be teaching at that time. And I think that, you know, a lot of teachers, obviously we bring this job home with us, right? Like I was just in Asia the other day and and like woke up at two o 'clock in the morning and like
Judy Paulick (she/her) (39:18.858)
Yep. Yes.
Seth Fleischauer (39:33.634)
designed a virtual learning experience in my head for like an hour because it was like something that I was engaged with and passionate about and my fire was burning and rather it not be at two o 'clock in the morning. But you you you you find yourself as you go through your day like thinking about your day what you've done your students what you're what you're doing with them and if and the more
Judy Paulick (she/her) (39:48.13)
Yeah.
Seth Fleischauer (39:56.516)
context you have via that relationship building, the more likely it is that you will make those creative connections, whether they be, you know, a shower thought that you have or something that you're explicitly doing in a grade level meeting. I would also like to toss out the possibility of people using AI for something like this.
Because AI is a really awesome, really, really, really powerful for differentiation. And so if you have that cultural context and, you know, with everything AI, the more information you give it, the better result you're going to get. So if you can provide that context of like, here's what I know about my relationship with these people. Here's what I know about this asset. Here's what I know about why it's important to this community. Here's what I'm trying to do over here academically.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (40:27.188)
Yep.
Seth Fleischauer (40:38.852)
here's, here are my limitations in terms of like time and who I am and my, my identity, my background. Can you put this all together and do a thing that like, you know, give me 10 ideas about like how I can work this into my math curriculum. you know, I, I think it's, have you had people use AI for, for that sort of thing? I see you head nodding. Awesome. yeah. And you know, like everything AI, you have to have.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (40:47.966)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yep.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (40:58.604)
I haven't yet, but now I will.
Seth Fleischauer (41:06.264)
the human judgment on the other end of it to understand if it's a good idea or not. But it's a really great idea generator.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (41:08.48)
Right. And that also gets back to the judgment about, so yes, it's so much about knowing your students and who they are, but it has to start with knowing yourself and who you are and what you're bringing and not just normalizing your ways of knowing and being and then seeing everything else as other. And knowing what kinds of assets to be looking for because otherwise,
Seth Fleischauer (41:24.555)
Yes.
Seth Fleischauer (41:31.319)
Mm -hmm.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (41:38.146)
If you're limiting it to the things that you value, you're going to miss all of the other possibilities of things that are out there. So, like, for example, if we only see reading and writing as like, do you read to your kids at night? And like, do you write stories with them? But you're not looking at all of those other literacy practices that we were talking about, then it really limits the, then you're not able to see all of what you need to see. And if you don't,
Seth Fleischauer (41:47.789)
Yeah.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (42:07.988)
If you don't know that about yourself, you don't know to look for the things. And so there's all that stuff that it's almost like AI. you gotta, you gotta know yourself well enough to know what to look for to make the search terms.
Seth Fleischauer (42:11.587)
Yeah.
Seth Fleischauer (42:17.782)
huh. Yeah, yeah. Honestly, it's one of the things that I love about this opportunity of having AI is that like in order to get a good response, like you have to know what you're looking for. And in this case, it's incredible. As you say, it's incredibly important for you to not only know what you're looking for, but also to understand the cultural context around all of it. Right. And I think back to,
Judy Paulick (she/her) (42:39.201)
Yep.
Seth Fleischauer (42:42.756)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Do you know that the TED talk that she did on the single story? Right? You know, the idea being that like, as humans with our with all of our implicit biases, like we seek to tell that we fall into the trap of telling a single story about people. And then that story become encapsulates everything that you know and understand about them. And it's and please. Yeah.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (42:45.547)
Yeah.
Can I just, can I interrupt you for a second? Because that's literally what we start with in our teacher ed program. Like that is at orientation day one, we start with that Ted talk and, and then pulling it apart and thinking about, okay, so what is a single story? Why is it problematic? How does this work? And who are we?
Seth Fleischauer (43:22.188)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you are you are in the business of of of of enabling teachers to to break past the single story to get the entire context to get as many stories as they can. Yeah, it's beautiful.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (43:39.968)
Yep. And it also, the other thing that it does is like, you know, in this context of, and I think we like keep coming back to like teachers having lots of freedom and then they get constrained and then they have more freedom and then they get constrained. And I think we're in a constrained context right now in terms of what teachers are allowed to, or, you know, to do, or that there's so much they're supposed to be doing that there isn't the space for, for additional things. But I think.
Seth Fleischauer (43:51.661)
Mm -hmm.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (44:06.578)
this kind of knowledge and this kind of experience helps to, it helps with teachers feeling agentic in their classrooms and having that kind of agency, I think, allows then teachers to want to, I mean, I help, I think it helps teachers to want to stay in the classroom to feel like they, they, they know this stuff about their families. They, they are able to be, to, to
to approach their work in ways that like nobody else would be able to do exactly what they're doing because they have all of this information and background and it's it can be I don't know it's it's I've seen it be empowering for teachers also and that's part of what we want to we want to empower families but we also want to empower teachers.
Seth Fleischauer (44:57.704)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you, Judy, so much for being here. I think my mic just transferred to a different mic and so apologies for the change in audio. But thank you so much, Judy, for being here and for sharing your work, for diving into these deep questions with me. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love to have you as an ex as a - sorry, I'm gonna step that over. For our listeners, if you've enjoyed this episode, we'd love to have you as a subscriber.
You'll get more conversations about literacy as well as practical transformative solutions for teaching. You can also learn more about the Be Podcast Network shows at BePodcast .network .com. That is BePodcast .network. And learn more about reading is fundamental at www .rif .org. Last question, Judy. Where can our listeners find your work on the internet if you would like them to find it?
Judy Paulick (she/her) (45:35.714)
you
Judy Paulick (she/her) (45:56.354)
gosh, don't. Sorry. Wait, can I shout out the Reading is Fundamental? They are just launching their early childhood education. OK, sorry. Let's not, because I don't know Google Scholar.
Seth Fleischauer (46:02.411)
We'll just scratch that. We will scratch that.
Seth Fleischauer (46:15.582)
Yeah, yeah, me set it up. I, yeah. Okay, and I just said RIF .org.
Judy Paulick (she/her) (46:28.298)
And I want to also shout out our Reading is Fundamental is just in the process of launching an early childhood education center that has amazing materials, really, really well curated and well done for teachers and for families to support children's reading. the materials are
are very purposefully culturally responsive and culturally competent. folks can check those out with teachers and families.
Seth Fleischauer (47:10.164)
Awesome. We will definitely have that link in the show notes. Thank you so much again, Judy. Thank you as always to our editor, Lucas Salazar. And remember that if you want to bring positive change to education, you must first make it mindful. See you next time.