6. Learner’s Sense of Purpose

What is Learner Agency?

Discussions around the importance of Learner Agency in the educational process.

Beth Strike (00:07):
Welcome to the Central Rivers AEA Learning on Demand podcast. I'm Beth Strike and I'm the Director of Creative Services & Communications. Most importantly though, I'm a mom of two who loves learning about innovation in our local schools. Today I'm here with Jen Sigrist, Executive Director of Educational Services and a leading expert on future ready practices. We're going to dig back into this learner agency stuff again. I'm learning a lot. I think we're on podcast number six, episode six. We're going to talk a little bit today about learner sense of purpose. And we were just laughing a little bit before we started. I'm still trying to understand exactly what we're going to talk about today. So you're going to help me with this one a lot. I don't have much of a framework on this one. So let's just dig in and think about first, Jen, welcome. I think I forgot the whole welcome thing.

Jen Sigrist (00:57):
I bet. This one, yeah, it's deep already. We can tell.

Beth Strike (01:00):
Yes, exactly. I'm ready to dive in. Okay, so let's think about this. How can teachers see themselves as facilitating the learning journey?

Jen Sigrist (01:09):
Right. Oh gosh, that's such a deep question because we want kids to be able to make a difference. We want to make a difference. It's the whole reason we get into education. And we think that as parents too. We see our little child, we're like, "Oh, you're going to make a difference. You're going to be better in the world than I was. You're going to make a difference. I'm going to make a difference by being your parent." We want to contribute. That's this big driver that we have. And yet when we think about our education system, there aren't a lot of opportunities for kids within this system to make a difference. They're just kind of expected to go through it in a very traditional sense.
And of course, we have examples of situations where we have kids trying to understand community service or things like that. But for the most part, we're just kind of asking them to just go through it. And so when you ask, gosh, how does a teacher facilitate this as a learning journey, it's not necessarily set-up to be a journey that we've asked teacher to facilitate before. We've kind of asked them to get kids through it. So your question is really deep. That's probably why this conversation you're like, this is going to be a tough one. Because your first question right out of the gate, like yeah, that is tough. How do we do it? It's a mindset shift. We really have to think about what is the end outcome that we want for kids? And when we think about it as a parent, that feels so clear to me. If you ask me what I want for my kid, oh gosh, I want them to be happy and healthy. I want them to work well with others. Be kind. I'm sure you have things for your girls that are coming to mind.

Beth Strike (02:59):
Oh, yes. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think we were talking about this too. So if we think about just even in our own lives, you were just asking me to reflect like, where do you feel like you've done your most meaningful work? Where do you feel like you've got the most purpose and you're contributing and all of that? And so it just sort of makes sense that as teachers, we want to create those same kinds of conditions for kids so that they can feel that sense of purpose and meaning and connectedness to what they're trying to learn about. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jen Sigrist (03:30):
Sure. Well, we know that's when you were most engaged. So, not only do we want our kids to be happy and healthy and contribute, we know that for our selves, that we're more engaged when we feel like we're contributing. So I know at work, when do I feel like I'm most engaged? It's when I get things like tasks. Solve this problem. Compliance work doesn't necessarily make me feel like I'm most engaged.

Beth Strike (03:59):
It's a lot of energy to do that.

Jen Sigrist (04:00):
It does. It's part of my job and I know that, but doesn't necessarily make me feel that sense of purpose. But, solve this problem or here's an idea, run with it. What can you do if you have this? Brainstorming. How can we make this better? Those kinds of questions and open-ended ideas in my work excite me. And you've seen it before, because I start talking with my hands and I get really excited. I know I start talking fast and oh gosh, probably even louder. Those are the really exciting things. And as teachers in our classroom, we don't feel like we have time to do that. We don't feel like we have time to say to students, "Run with this. What do you think?" And so, one of the things when you talked about, okay, what does that look like for a teacher to facilitate this learning as a journey is okay, how do we limit the notion of the standards are something we have to march through and really think of it more holistically. What are the big ideas that we want for learning?
I think it was Marzano's research that said if you spent 30 minutes on every standard, we would need nine more years of schooling in the United States. I don't think we're going to find nine more years. I don't think any kid is going to want to be in nine more years of schooling. So clearly, standards aren't meant to be one at a time, hit everything sequentially and for 30 minutes a piece we know we have to prioritize some things and we know we have to spend more time on others.
And I would first ask teachers to get back to kind of our core belief and what are the big ideas? What do you want them to walk away knowing and being able to do? What do you want them to believe about this subject? What do you want them to come away knowing and being able to do as it relates to that content? And those shifts, instead of here's the list of standards that I have and I'm going to march through these, is one of the, I guess, biggest shifts in thinking you can make if you're facilitating a learning journey, rather than marching kids through the conveyor belt of getting through school.

Beth Strike (06:30):
Oh, that makes so much sense. And it just seems to me that that just really sort of punctuates the point you've been making in earlier podcasts about, again, that's why we need kids to be more the drivers of the learning, because it's hard to explore your passions and really find meaning if you don't feel like you are able to affect any of the decisions about what you're learning and how that all works. So that makes a lot of sense to me. I hope I said that right. But as a parent, that's kind of what I'm thinking.
So you talked about this a little bit, so again, let's just go back to, if I'm a teacher and I'm successful at doing this, what's it going to look like and sound like in the classroom?

Jen Sigrist (07:07):
Yeah. Well, so those big ideas that we talked about, rather than thinking of this list of standards that you have to get through, you're thinking about these big ideas. And to help you do that, you can look at your standards, you should look at your standards, and you've probably got some other supporting documents with you too. Maybe it's the universal constructs in Iowa. It's the 21st century skills that we have. The SEL competencies. You've got a variety of things. So maybe you have those around you, but you're thinking, what's the big idea that transfers beyond this class, it transfers beyond even my content, it has application in other classes, other content areas, and if it even goes beyond the scope of the walls, if you will, to careers outside of education? My fail safe was, well, if you're going to be a teacher of this, you need to know. If you're going to be a professor, you could know this. Okay, now that one doesn't count. You don't get to use that one.
But if you think about how it transfers, that can be one of the shifts that a teacher can make to know that they're on the right journey themselves to being this facilitator. So thinking about those big ideas and really getting down to those transferability pieces. Knowledge is there, content is there. So it's, what are those pieces that are going to transfer beyond that class and really be, you're going to find some skill, more skill based pieces that are going to go beyond just that content.
So a classroom piece then I would also say to add is that time to reflect. So we often talk about building in checks for understanding, which is a move that a teacher can make to know that students are understanding the content that they need to understand. That's great information for the teacher. That's a teacher centered move which has its place. So if we're thinking about that learner centered learner driven place it's, does the learner have the chance to reflect and say, hey, how am I making meaning of that content? How does that relate to me? What do I think about it? Do I agree? How often do we give the kids a chance, give our learners a chance, to say whether or not they agree with what they-

Beth Strike (09:38):
I didn't even think kids think like that about school.

Jen Sigrist (09:41):
Well we have to help them. We don't give them the chance all that often when we feel so rushed to just get through. I'm not sure if I give my kids a chance. I'm not sure my own sons.

Beth Strike (09:51):
I was kind of thinking about that myself. Like, do I ever set the stage for them to disagree? I'm sure I do sometimes.

Jen Sigrist (09:56):
But we have to do that intentionally. How do I feel about my child disagreeing with me and what will I do as a parent if they do? How do I support that? Is that okay in this situation? I've had talks with my children about this is what your dad and I believe, this is a belief we have. You'll have to decide how you feel about that. But right now, you're going to do that.

Beth Strike (10:23):
Right. Exactly. When you're 18, we don't want to know what your beliefs are. But I love where you're going with that. It's just giving them this idea that you can think for yourself and you can develop your own ideas and thoughts about anything really. And isn't that sort of like at the crux of what critical thinking is all about? And don't we want more of that? People to be able to really take an idea and scrutinize it in the most positive way and think about how it fits and all of that.

Jen Sigrist (10:52):
Right. You're spot on. And if we don't give our learners an opportunity to reflect, and when I say learners, kindergartners can do this as well as high school seniors, to think about okay, what did I just come to understand and how do I think about that? And how do I feel about that? That's certainly a classroom strategy that we've talked about in multiple episodes of this student agency conversation that we've had, but systemically, it can also look like, so at a building level, you may even implement things like interest inventories to help kids see what I'm interested in, what I'm passionate about, to make connections to what I'm learning in class and what I may want to do as I become more self aware and in my discovery process, what I may want to do in life after high school. What I may want to discover and dig more into in my exploration of career fields in high school even.
So as a middle schooler, if my system, if my building, has an opportunity for me to take an interest inventory, which is something that's part of like the eighth grade plan, for example. But if I can do that and regularly revisit that, then I can think about, okay, maybe this class, or maybe this experience can help me explore that a little bit more. So those would be examples of a very specific classroom strategy when we talk about building in time to reflect. But then even some more systemic, bigger picture things, even building in personal learning plans or learning profiles. Your team or your building could develop those. You could do that even right before a parent teacher conference.
Maybe your whole system isn't ready for that, but you're going to have a parent teacher conference and you want students to have a little bit more than a reflection to share with parents at a parent teacher conference. And you want to add some more strengths information or some more interests that they're considering, and you could share that at a parent teacher conference so they know, oh, you're doing more than just teaching these standards to my child. So that might be another way to consider what it could look like.
I am a big advocate for connecting to real projects as well. When we talk about finding sense of purpose, one of my favorite resources is the United Nations sustainability goals. I know I've mentioned that in an earlier podcast, but not only is it a nonprofit, tons of free resources, but 17 different international goals that we can see for our planet and world, and even the impact to our local communities. Things like clean water, poverty, just these really big concepts that we can see the implications of getting involved in or studying pieces of those goals and the local impact of that helps students explore, what am I interested in? But then, as we've talked about voice and choice and driving their learning, to see that authentic connection gives me a sense of, gosh, I can make a difference. And that's really what we want to be about, right?

Beth Strike (14:24):
Oh, that's totally what it's about. And we can for sure, I assume we'll put in the show notes, a link to what you're just talking about with respect to those sustainability goals so that people can find those. So why does it feel to me like this all comes back to giving kids the freedom to direct their own learning? It feels like every podcast we do, we come back to that. It's just really that shift in mindset.

Jen Sigrist (14:45):
It is. Well, that's what Learner Agency is all about. And we've talked about the data is really clear. The longer a student is in school, the less engaged they are. The Gallup research has over a hundred-

Beth Strike (15:00):
It hurts my heart.

Jen Sigrist (15:02):
It does. Over a hundred thousand students each year complete that. And the longer they're in school. So when we look at the fifth grade data compared to seventh grade data compared to high school data, they are less engaged. And we know engagement impacts educational outcomes. A variety of educational outcomes. Whether you're talking academic standardized kind of assessment results, or you're talking about course completion and even graduation, we know that impacts it. So if engagement is such a critical piece of what we need related to the outcomes we want to see, giving kids the agency to own their learning is just a critical piece of increasing that engagement.

Beth Strike (15:50):
It's going to be like hot-wiring engagement.

Jen Sigrist (15:52):
Right. And we see it for ourselves. That's the piece that I keep reminding our adult learners is it happens for us. When we have choice, when we have a say in what we do, we're more engaged in it, yet we find it really hard to do for our students some times. And that difficulty in a lot of cases is just our own mindset about what we think we're supposed to do for kids. So I hope this conversation frees teachers up and frees their mindset to allow them to think about the true gift that they give students. The art of teaching that they have, which is setting up that great learning experience for kids so they can drive their own learning and fail forward under the safe umbrella of schools and really just take that ownership, be more engaged, find their purpose and ultimately make a difference.

Beth Strike (16:55):
I love that. Oh, Jen, this has been awesome. Thank you. I always learn so much.

Jen Sigrist (16:59):
Oh, I love talking about this with you, Beth.

Beth Strike (17:01):
Yeah. Anything else you want to add?

Jen Sigrist (17:03):
Oh, no, I just appreciate what our teachers are trying to do. And as they move toward this, I've said this before, stay with it. One small step. Isn't going to be easy. You won't always have that immediate success because it's hard. And it's really easy for a student, a learner to say, "Well just tell me the answer." So don't lose heart. Stay with it. Know that with perseverance comes that change in student behaviors of, oh, I can have an opinion. Oh, I can do this. Oh, I can have some ownership in how this goes. And then they'll start to take it. So stay the course.

Beth Strike (17:43):
I love it. All right. Thanks everyone for listening. That'll do for today. This has been another Central Rivers AEA Learning on Demand podcast.