On this episode of the Innovative Schools podcast, you're gonna get 50 out of the box strategies to engage at risk students in your classroom. Come on, let's learn together. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Innovative Schools podcast. We have a special episode for you today.
Jordan Bassett:This is actually a recorded session from the Innovative Schools Summit in Las Vegas in 2025. This was our, what we call our fifteen fifty session where we have a panel of experts who are just shooting off a bunch of different ideas about a topic. So this one is about engaging at risk students in your classroom. I'm not gonna take up time introducing everybody because they're gonna do that. You'll also probably hear from Kevin, who you've heard on this podcast, but he'll be there kinda emceeing and moderating this whole discussion.
Jordan Bassett:So I hope you learned something. Get your paper and pen or notes app or whatever open so you can take some great notes about some of these different strategies, and we'll see you at the end.
Ernesto Mejia:My name is Ernesto Mejia, and I am part of the CoolSpeak family.
Charles Williams:Charles Williams, CPS administrator and founder of CW Consulting. CPS. Okay.
Jobi Lawrence:So Jobi Lawrence, and I serve as the director of product development and strategic partnerships at UCLA Crest.
Connie Hamitlon:I'm Connie Hamilton. I am a former elementary and secondary teacher, former elementary and secondary principal, and district curriculum director, now author consultant.
Tracie Berry-McGhee:Hello. I am Tracie Berry McGee. I'm with the I Defy Me movement where we focus on girl empowerment.
Kevin Stewart:Awesome. Alright. So grab your grab your pen your pens, your paper, your, your iPhones, your Android, your iPads, whatever you got, and, get ready to take some notes. You're gonna wanna take notes. We will also be putting the strategies up on the screen so you can take pictures of them.
Kevin Stewart:And, so if you're ready, you ready? Alright. Let's roll.
Ernesto Mejia:Alright. So first and foremost, do our students a favor and stop calling them at risk unless you see them introducing themselves. Hey. My name is Ernesto. I'm an at risk student.
Ernesto Mejia:You probably don't. And as doctor Vincent Pinto says, no one rises to low expectations. If you give me that expectation, not much to rise to. So let's just change the labeling. It can be at promise.
Ernesto Mejia:I I come up with that promise scholar because I want you to own the word scholar. So let's just change what we call them.
Charles Williams:So one of the things I have is shadowing their future self. Now I know a lot of times in school, we have them shadow careers or you know, those positions that they want to have in life. But what if they could shadow someone who's going through the same thing that they're going through? I became a father at 18, and so I oftentimes have young men sitting in my office, who are about to become fathers, who are fathers, and having real conversations with me, and understanding that I overcame those obstacles, and the things that I went through. And so allowing them to shadow their future selves, not who they think that they're gonna end up being, but what they could possibly become.
Jobi Lawrence:I love that. So when I thought about strategies, I wanted to organize my strategies into themes, and I wanted to start where the most important work starts, which is with the school connection that we make with our students and helping them see themselves as learners, as champions, as leaders in our schools, in our classrooms. So a strategy that I like to implement is called the two by 10. So you spend two minutes for ten days in a row with one student talking about anything and everything non school related. So two minutes a day for ten days with any student, and the only rule is you can't talk about anything about school.
Jobi Lawrence:It's gotta be non school related, And you'll get to know so much about that student, and you'll make so many connections that you can then carry back into the classroom and carry back into academics with the student. But it really starts with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Get to know the students, find out their interests, really figure out what drives them and motivates them and empowers them. So it's called the two by 10.
Connie Hamitlon:My first strategy to share is to hire your students as consultants. So instead of you being the one that is constantly giving feedback on their progress and where they are in their learning, They can provide feedback to you on the assignments that you are providing, the activities, the lesson, the structure, and that will give you feedback and also empower them to be heard and have their voices included in some of the decisions that you're making.
Tracie Berry-McGhee:When you're working with girls, bless you, think about the importance of them being therapists to each other because they already feel like they talk to each other about they share all the tea. Right? So, call it lyric therapy where you choose a song and then you have it break break it down so that they can analyze it and then discuss it with each other.
Connie Hamitlon:Alright. Create a fix it file. So instead of having students constantly shown what is wrong with their work or get having an opportunity to redo their work, bring them a work that is already incomplete or incorrect and allow them to analyze that work, identifying some of the misconceptions and providing the corrections for someone else's work. And that positions them as experts, as people who are knowledgeable and students that can find and correct errors without the stigma that it is their error that they're correcting.
Jobi Lawrence:Awesome. So, another connection and belonging builder. This is a strategy that I like to call silent graffiti wall. So, you have a place in your classroom where you have chart paper and you have sticky notes and you have prompts. And these prompts allow students to be anonymously expressing their thoughts, opinions, fears, hopes, dreams on the wall, and they're not attributed to anyone.
Jobi Lawrence:But students then feel comfortable being able to say what they need, share what they need, and be able to create prompts that really dig into social emotional needs and give students a chance to be vulnerable without identifying themselves so you can start to get to know what those challenges are that students are facing. And they're many times more willing to share them anonymously if everyone else is also sharing things on the wall. So silent graffiti wall.
Charles Williams:So yesterday, my wife and I, we drove out to the Valley Of Fire. So anybody from Wapaw Valley in the house, I'm not sure. But as we were driving, I all of a sudden saw all this green. And I was like, how in the world do they have green grass in the desert when my grass at home in Chicago is brown? I had no clue.
Charles Williams:But I started seeing all these high school learning labs, and it made me think, what if we created very hyper local real world problem labs, allowing our students to go into spaces and really take their learning, take their understanding and create real world solutions to things that are impacting them and their communities. And so, I I saw that out there, Transforming agriculture out in the middle of the desert, and I was like, how much more real do you get? So shout out to Moapa Valley.
Ernesto Mejia:Okay. Use your story as a mirror and not a spotlight. Stop telling them, I went through it. I know what it was like, and look at where I'm at now. No one's like, great.
Ernesto Mejia:Can't wait to be where you're at. However, when you use storytelling and mirrors so that they can see themselves in you, When they hear, I came back as an immigrant, as a migrant student, when they hear, my father was murdered when I was 13 years old, when they hear that I was not a good son to my mom, they themselves then come later and ask, hey. So what was it like after you lost your dad? Hey. So how did you turn it around with your mom?
Ernesto Mejia:So make sure that they see a mirror and not a spotlight in your story.
Charles Williams:I'm I'm gonna piggyback off that one because I had something in the same vein, but it was called an ask me anything box. Imagine creating space where your students can anonymously submit questions. You don't have to answer all of them, but anonymously submit questions, and you actually have those conversations. You answer a question to your class. I remember the very first time one of my kids asked me, hey, AP, have you ever smoked wheat?
Charles Williams:And I was like, yeah. And they they they were not expecting it. But having that transparency, having that vulnerability allowed us to then build connections, and they start to see you as a person rather than somebody who just operates within the classroom, maybe plugs themselves up in a closet at the end of the day, but to see you as a real person. So allow them to ask you questions, but you choose which ones you're gonna answer.
Jobi Lawrence:So home visits and phone a family Fridays. You I really can't stress enough. Many times our families from our students who have high needs are the least likely to come to school, are the least likely to be comfortable feeling like they can engage and be empowered. So really meeting them where they are, finding ways to bridge that homeschool connection because we know research is abundant about how students who are more connected with their families, with their schools do better. They have better outcomes overall.
Jobi Lawrence:So find ways to connect either like phone a family Friday, find good things to call home about every student about on Fridays, or set up those home visits and meet families out in the community and meet them in their homes and really engage with them to find out what makes them tick outside of school. And, once you find out what's working for them in their homes, it will forever change the way you think about what you're doing in school.
Connie Hamitlon:My next strategy is to create backstage passes for students. This gives them a free pass to get a preview of content, to get a sneak peek at notes and materials in advance so that when students are introduced in the whole class, they already have some familiarity, which will peak their engagement because they have that context that is there and that connection. They already have a little bit of prior knowledge, and so it elevates their esteem just a little bit, too. And the backstage pass can also give them a preview of what's happening behind the scenes. So, any time that you need a little support or you have a choice that you are debating between, anybody that has a back stage pass can be that person who comes and makes the deciding factor about how a lesson is gonna unfold when you're on the fence about going one way or another.
Tracie Berry-McGhee:Create a non non judgment zone. So we all hear the kids say, we listen and we don't what? Right. So create a space on maybe one day out of the week where everyone can get in a circle and say one thing that we listen to and we don't judge. We don't comment on with on it.
Tracie Berry-McGhee:We just listen and we don't judge. So a no judge zone non judgment zone.
Connie Hamitlon:Create your classroom into a game lab where you provide materials, dice, cards, whatnot. And then as a culminating activity for students to show what they know about the content or around a unit of study, they can create a game that has questions and responses. Some of the higher level questions or deeper thinking can have better movement on a game board or gain gain more points, but they get to decide what the rules of the game are using those strategies.
Jobi Lawrence:So real talk exit tickets. Once a week, come up with a real talk question for students to be able to put on an exit ticket, and then they have the opportunity to make it public or private. So they can submit it to you in private if they want to or they can share it in public. And these are questions such as, what do you wish more adults understood about you? Or what's one thing that's on your mind today?
Jobi Lawrence:Or what's one thing you've struggled with recently? So real talk exit tickets, non academic, just again, ways to connect with your students and help to bridge those social emotional needs.
Charles Williams:So the next one is gonna be a relevance challenge. Those of teachers in the room, I know sometimes you're at you have students who are like, why are we doing this? This is stupid. We're never gonna need this in real life. Well, if they want to challenge the relevancy of your lesson, then challenge them to come up with a mini lesson where they improve on that relevancy.
Charles Williams:Allow them to have that voice. Allow them to say, I don't see the connection because maybe they don't. And if they don't, more than likely, some of their peers don't understand it either. You do, but they don't. So allow them then to take the lead on that and say, well, you show us how it's connected to the real world.
Ernesto Mejia:Let's stop asking all students, what do you want to be when you grow up? Because let's be honest, half of them are lying. Because if I ask you if you changed your major when you were in college, that meant you probably changed what you wanted to be when you grow up. So instead, let's start changing questions to what is it that you would like to change in your community when you grow up? What is it that you would like to change in your family when you grow up?
Ernesto Mejia:What is it that you would like to change about your life when you grow up? Now, it doesn't matter what career path they take, they can still try to make those changes and not feel as threatened by that question.
Charles Williams:So one of my favorite phrases that I've heard is that our students cannot be that which they do not see. So how many of our students, we take them out on field trips and they're academically focused? But instead, what if we changed it from field trips to experiences? What if we allowed our students to experience things that they typically would not be able to see? Back home in Chicago, we partner with a group called Embark, and that's exactly what we do.
Charles Williams:Four times a year, we take the entire school out on experiences all across the city. And so students, I oftentimes have, are like, I don't wanna go make a candle that stupid. And then they come back, and they're like, smell my candle. So give them an experience and allow them to see something that broadens their horizon, so that way they could understand there's more opportunities out there than I may have thought before.
Jobi Lawrence:I love that. So I'm gonna move to passion, interests, and building confidence. So, these strategies are all about finding students' passion, helping them find their own interests, and then helping them build their confidence through those passions and interests. So, my first idea is podcasting their passion. Creating a classroom podcast using technology where students become guests on their own podcast, they can become the host and interview another student, but it has to be around a passion that they have.
Jobi Lawrence:And so they come, they can do research on their passion, they can just share stories about their passion, they can just come and talk about it sort of off the cuff. But you create a podcast and then those podcast episodes become something that the class gets a chance to access and listen to and those are something that live long after your classroom that year. So podcasts are passions.
Connie Hamitlon:I would love to see more classrooms replacing remediation or reteaching with that transferring that time into preteaching instead. Giving students a preview of the information in advance that gives them a one leg up around their peers. They have exposure to some of the questions that are gonna be posed. They have an opportunity to first glance over some of the content. So, now they're seeing it for the second time.
Connie Hamitlon:And you will see the engagement in your classroom, their willingness to participate skyrocket when they have an opportunity to preview it. And now we're building in the same amount of time that we normally would have provided as a remediation or a reteach where you're going out in the hallway with so and so to get a little bit of extra help, but instead, you get this opportunity to get the preview.
Tracie Berry-McGhee:Create a week of mindfulness. So on Mondays, you might do a mindfulness moment where they videotape themselves doing, like, a lesson on mindfulness, where they get in their mindfulness voice and they say, let's take a moment to just take a deep breath in and out, in and out. And you have them to be on the speaker for that for that morning on Mondays. On Tuesdays, you could do a TikTok Tuesday, but it focuses on mental health, and they give a mental health tip that they've researched. Wednesdays, you could do a way back Wednesday, but they have to do like way back games like double dutch or jacks or bolo bat or some of those fun games that you used to do, but you're going to beat them at it.
Tracie Berry-McGhee:And then Thursdays, maybe like try something new. So they have to talk about what they've tried new, maybe it's a new food or a new concept that they've done in the in their neighborhood. And then Fridays, a free your mind Friday where
Connie Hamitlon:you do like a whole spoken word contest and that person gets to spit on the mic on in the intercom during school hours. Introduce the concept of under committing and then normalize that. So students often think that they have to know the answer and they have to be either all in or all out, which will allow students to either raise their hand and offer or clam up and not participate, maybe even give you IDK responses. So if you normalize under committing, like we all do as adults, we're constantly saying, there's an 80% chance that this is going to happen or it's a fiftyfifty shot or I'm going to give it a 20%. We use that in our normal everyday conversation to communicate that we're committing less than 100%.
Connie Hamitlon:So, if we invite students to commit less than 100% to their responses, we give them an out so that they don't have to be all in. I love it when a kid says, I'm 20% sure. If you're 20% sure that you are correct, that means you're 80% sure that you're wrong. So if you were wrong, you were right that you were wrong in the first place.
Jobi Lawrence:I'm still trying to do the math. Just kidding. Math wasn't maybe my thing. So I'm thinking about just again sort of something that builds on students' passion and interest and helps them build their confidence as a leader in the classroom. And one idea that I came up with was called create a class challenge.
Jobi Lawrence:It kind of kind of goes back to yours about like, what's something that you wish we were teaching in school that we don't? And they get a chance to be creative and they work in small groups and they create a class. It can be like sneakers 101, like learning about the hottest sneakers. Right? Or what's something that interests them?
Jobi Lawrence:And then they create a class around it. And so when they create their class, they have to think about everything like you said. What would a syllabus look like? What would the lesson look like? What are your objectives?
Jobi Lawrence:What are the standards that you would teach to run that class? So giving them a chance to think about those real world things that they don't learn about in school and then coming up with a class where they build out the entire class to teach everyone else about that thing. So it gives them a lot of opportunities to work together, gives them a chance to be innovative and creative, and again, explore their passions, things that they have real world knowledge of, and things that they would like to bring to everyone else. So create a class.
Charles Williams:So this next one I have, I I'm calling it choose your own detention. It's almost like a choose your own, you know, adventure. But what if we flipped the idea of a consequence into growth? Like, yeah, I I messed up, but instead of just putting me in a room, instead of just saying, hey, you don't get to eat lunch with your friends, what if instead now I get to choose what I get to do? Maybe I get to read to a lower grade level.
Charles Williams:Maybe I get to tutor. Maybe I get to, I don't know, engage in a service project. But I get to choose the outcome of that, and maybe through that process, I start to build connections. You start to learn a little bit more about me. Hopefully, hopefully monitor it, so I'm not just getting in trouble to be able to engage in that service project, because now you could tap into that.
Charles Williams:But instead of just punitive measures, giving an opportunity to say, how are we gonna give back? I know that we talk a lot about restorative practices and about healing the harm, but just giving an opportunity for me to choose how I'm going to fix this.
Ernesto Mejia:This one might be a twofer. So first part, create a deck of trading cards of your staff when they were in high school or middle school. With that picture and if they were a quote, unquote, at risk student, why were they considered that back then? Then you know how we love to complain about, well, we don't teach real life skills, like how to change a tire, how to balance a checkbook, things like that. Create those challenges and put the quote, unquote, at risk students as the lead of those teams, and the team that wins the challenge gets access to that deck of cards to see all of their teachers back in the days.
Charles Williams:I'm trying to imagine you in middle school, sir. With with hair? So what if we replaced homework with home impact? I I know there's a big movement happening right now to say that we're moving away from homework and things like that. But what if instead of saying, hey, go home and and work on this assignment.
Charles Williams:Go home and read this chapter. What if instead we said, hey, you know what? What if you went home and I don't know, cooked a meal with your family? What if you went home and interviewed your neighbor about an experience that they had? What if you went home and and learned something about your neighborhood or your community?
Charles Williams:Just allow them to start investing within their community, and it's they could be successful in that space. Because so oftentimes, what we know is that with homework, are barriers in place, and what we are labeling at risk is has nothing to do with their academic or their abilities or even their choices. So give them something that they can do and be successful in.
Jobi Lawrence:This kind of connects to that. So it's really setting up the give back to the community projects, giving your students an opportunity to choose a project where they give back to the community, thinking about other at risk populations like your elderly, maybe there's maybe your class has something where they want to adopt an animal or something with an animal shelter. But giving kids a chance to find a purpose outside of academics because sometimes they don't find their purpose there, they struggle there with academics. But when they're given an opportunity to do something real world and make a difference, it really fuels them. So, them find ways and I think so many of our students need the opportunity to see how important it is to give back.
Jobi Lawrence:I think we don't do enough of that in our schools and it's a great opportunity for our schools to become active in the community and give back to other parts of the community that maybe could use some extra help. Have your students pick a project. It could be one project for the whole class. It could be small group projects. But again, engage your families, engage the community, and then find a project where you can really give back as a classroom and then celebrate that.
Jobi Lawrence:And really ask kids, how did it feel to have a purpose, to give back to someone else, to do for someone else, to help someone else? And really start to build that passion in them to give back and give back to their communities.
Connie Hamitlon:Create a summary around your content and allow students instead of writing a summary to express it as if it were a tattoo. So, thinking about all of the different components that go into creating a tattoo. Is it going to be a caricature? Is it going to be realistic? Is it going to be an outline?
Connie Hamitlon:What kind of colors are going to be involved? Is Are there going to be metaphors or analogies? Are we going to represent something with a giraffe or whatnot? Will it be literal? Will it be figurative?
Connie Hamitlon:If students can take their learning and represent it as a tattoo, there is a lot of evidence that they deeply understand that if they can explain all of the choices that they have made in their tattoo.
Tracie Berry-McGhee:Have a paint paint what you can't say day. So, you create canvases and have the kids to just paint what they can't say say. Make it a silent session. So, you may play music, but allow them to just paint what they can't say. And then, later on, each person can go and look at the art and interpret it in their own way.
Tracie Berry-McGhee:You'll get a lot of different messages that they can't say, but they're getting it from the expression of the art.
Connie Hamitlon:When you have an activity that students will benefit from additional practice and you're tempted to pull out the worksheet, you can easily gamify a worksheet by just taking it and just cutting it into slips. So, now you have something that they can draw. You put them all in the center of the table and they each draw one. They quiz each other or they pick their question, or they can pick one for somebody else, they can solve them. And so, gamifying it, a worksheet, just ramps up the engagement component.
Connie Hamitlon:It allows them to interact with one another. And it's not a lot of additional prep time for teachers. If it's something that you already have, you can very simply gamify something that you already have in your file.
Jobi Lawrence:Love that. So create vision boards. So this kind of goes back to the idea of like the future me. But again, not just about who do I want to be in terms of college and career, what where do I see myself? But as students are getting older and starting to think about what does the future me look like?
Jobi Lawrence:Am I going to be a parent? Am I going to be kind to people? Am I going to have animals? Am I going to what what is it that I want to see in my future? Not just about jobs because so often we're just focused on what do you want to do after school?
Jobi Lawrence:Where do you want to go to college? What do you want to be? And so often what students wanna be is less about a career and more about who they are as human beings. So help them figure that out early on and help them start to think about what are their talents? What are their interests?
Jobi Lawrence:And how do they explore those in ways that it can help lead them to maybe a career that's gonna be fulfilling for them? Or but start with their interest, with their passion, don't start with what they want to be because I think that's some place that really boxes kids in before they even know again who they are and now they're already trying to decide what they wanna be. So future me Fridays is envisioning themselves as human beings first and then finding ways to turn that into a career path that maybe would be interesting to them.
Charles Williams:So I don't know about you, but a lot of my students, they they have brands. Like, we're we're all trying to build brands, and they're like, I already got my own clothing line. But what if they did that within your classroom and within your school? What if they figured out, what is my brand? What is my voice?
Charles Williams:What is my my my model, my colors? Whatever it might be, even now, what they're gonna do is they're going to cultivate a body of work. So the the the work that they do in your classroom connects back to that brand, and they begin building a portfolio representing who they are and how they're showing up in your space. Because now that there's not a a student, right, it is my brand, it is my voice, it is speaking out, and every I get to pick what goes into that, tapping into the work that I actually wanna do.
Ernesto Mejia:If if this rock hits you, I'm sorry. You're trying to engage your classroom, but you're not reading your classroom energy, their vibe, their attention level. I'm reading you right now, and you have pool written all over your forehead along with last night was fun. Your energy level's low. Sometimes when you show them that you can do the impossible, they'll listen to the next thing you're going to say.
Ernesto Mejia:So let me show you by example. I'm going to control the way your right foot moves from here, and there's nothing you can do besides freak out. Everybody point with your right index finger. Lift your right foot up off the floor. Twist your ankle to the right.
Ernesto Mejia:While looking at your foot, don't look at me. Keep on twisting your ankle to the right. I'm gonna make it go the other way or stop. Keep on twisting your ankle to the right. Keep on looking at your foot.
Ernesto Mejia:Now draw number six with your finger and see what happens to your foot. I just stimulated your brain. I just gave you a little bit of energy, and now I can begin to continue to engage you and continue to tell you and teach you things that you don't think are possible because I just did the impossible.
Charles Williams:I really didn't wanna, like, do it up here in front of me. I was like, no. But I love that. And the way that you taught them, I would say, let your students teach you. Let them find something that they are passionate about, and it doesn't have to be structured, it doesn't have to be organized, but maybe they are passionate about something.
Charles Williams:And let them teach you about it. You don't actually have to learn about it, but give them a space to have them teach you. They've talked to me about all sorts of things. I have no idea the difference between different anime and manga and all those other things. But guess what?
Charles Williams:I give them space to tell me all about it, and how the different animations and the different characters are Because you know what? They love it. And they are seen, and they are heard, and if you were in my session earlier, that's what we talked about, to be seen, to be heard, and to be valued. So allow them space to teach you something that they absolutely love, and if you do learn something, if you do capture something, guess what? Throw it out one day and see how they light up because now they've taught you something that is valuable to them, and now you've held on to them.
Jobi Lawrence:So time capsule letters. At the beginning of the school year, ask students to write a letter to their future selves, give themselves some advice in terms of how they're going to succeed this year or what they're going be challenged with this year. But they're writing themselves a letter that they're going to then put in a time capsule and at the end of the year they're going to open it up and they're going to read that letter. And they're gonna reflect and I'm gonna conference with them on that letter. What did they think at the beginning of the year?
Jobi Lawrence:What advice were they giving themselves? What goals were they setting? What were they sharing about themselves? And then at the end of the year, now what do they think about that letter? And then they reflect on it and then they write themselves a new letter reflecting on what they learned that year.
Jobi Lawrence:And if they were to go back and change anything, how would they start the year over again? So it's that time capsule. It's the ability for students to reflect and see their progress. Often in one year, we don't see it day to day. But if you really look back on it and students look back at where they started at the beginning of the year, they can identify a tremendous amount of change, a tremendous amount of progress, and some confidence building across that year.
Jobi Lawrence:So a time capsule letter is just something that's a lot of fun. And then I conference with students on it.
Connie Hamitlon:I'm gonna piggyback on that that idea and and shorten it a bit and give students two examples of what they would communicate to themselves. So one thing is a message of when you need encouragement, how do you provide yourself with encouragement? Write that is down, seal it up in a note and write encouragement on the outside of the envelope. When you are successful, how do you want to celebrate? Write that down in a description, give yourself some the attaboys and write and put that in an envelope and write celebrate on the outside.
Connie Hamitlon:And then as students need encouragement or they accomplish something that's worthy of celebration, they can open that envelope and then they just replace it with the next one for the next time that they need encouragement, the next time that they want to celebrate. And it just is continuous. And now, they are talking to themselves, and they're improving the self talk that they have on their own to lift their spirits and help them when they're down and celebrate when they're being successful.
Tracie Berry-McGhee:That's awesome. As a therapist, I always love to make sure that our kids take care of themselves and understand the value of self affirmations. So, collect have them to collect the medicine, the prescription containers so we can recycle them and make prescriptions for the soul. So, actually, they're putting their own affirmations and they're cutting them in strips and putting them inside of the container. And when they need one, they can pull it out and they can also share it.
Tracie Berry-McGhee:Don't want to share a medication, but we definitely can share prescriptions for the soul.
Connie Hamitlon:I want to go to low stakes quizzes. So, when students have the opportunity to be quizzed frequently, they are have the opportunity to see their own growth. So we don't score it. It doesn't go in the grade book. It's just a perspective of where are you on the learning journey with the notion that as time goes through a unit of study that they will be able to see their progress, however small that it is.
Connie Hamitlon:They're they'll be able to see that they have grown from yesterday as a result of yesterday. They've grown today as a result of today. And those mastery moments and being able to chart that growth will continue to motivate them because they can see the progress even if it isn't as big as we would want it over the course of three weeks. And we do that one check once in a while, do more frequent low stakes quizzes that don't count in the grade book.
Jobi Lawrence:So the rest of my strategies are grouped under academic scaffolds that empower students. So my first idea is a Whisper help desk. This is a place that you set up in your classroom for students to get used to normalizing asking for help. And, they have choices. They can ask for help from the teacher and meet at the help desk, or they can ask for help from a peer and meet at the help desk.
Jobi Lawrence:But, there's a place where they go, and it's just a quiet place for them to sit and get the help that they need. So, they'll decide whether they want that help from a teacher or from another student, and that help desk is always open 20 fourseven whenever they need it, whenever school's in session. But, normalize asking for help. Teach students it's something that they should do, not something that people do when when they are embarrassed or something that should be ashamed of doing because we should all be better at asking for help. If we were all better at asking for help, our mental health would be in a much better place.
Jobi Lawrence:So, normalize that for students. Get them used to asking for help, teach them how to do it, advocate for them to ask for help, and self advocate for themselves. So that they get used to knowing what they need and then asking to get those needs met in the classroom.
Charles Williams:I like that. I'm just wondering if they turn it off and turn it on again, I just take a quick nap. I'm gonna say enroll the family. When students enroll at your school, are you enrolling the family? I used to work at a building where we had a trifecta.
Charles Williams:We believe that families need three things. They need education, they need income or a job career, and they need health services. And if those three things are taken care of, then the home is okay. More often than not, our students who are at risk are at risk because, again, things outside of their control. So what if instead of just complaining about it, instead of pointing fingers, What if we supported families?
Charles Williams:So what if we had spaces in our school where families could come in and build the resumes, practice interviewing skills, maybe host a job fair, not just for your students, but for their families? And build those partnerships with health care services so that way they could have those things in space in place. I guarantee you, if those things are all in place, you will see a difference in your children because their families are be going going to become whole again.
Ernesto Mejia:Next strategy is help our students discover their intrinsic motivator. You know how everyone, even in PD, with students, like, once you find your why, I'm like, I've been looking for that thing, and I just can't find it. Where is it? This next strategy, there's a worksheet that goes with it that we can give you if you'd like. It's just asking why at least three times.
Ernesto Mejia:Let me give you a quick example. Ask a student once, why do you want an education? Man, I'm trying to make it rain. For those of you that think it meant water, that means he might he wanted money. Okay?
Ernesto Mejia:That was his first why. Second why, why are you trying to make it rain? Man, I ain't trying to be broke like my parents. Like, ouch. Ask him again, why aren't you trying to be broke?
Ernesto Mejia:Third why. He started questioning me. Sir, do you know what it's like to come home and have a piece of paper on that door saying it's no longer your home? Do you know what it's like to do homework near a candlelight? Do you know what it's like to not know if you're gonna have food that tonight?
Ernesto Mejia:I'm not going to allow that to happen to my family. I will get an education. Notice the difference between that and I'm trying to make it rain? He found his intrinsic motivator to get him across that finish line.
Charles Williams:So I know this one might be a little controversial, especially since Mike just talked about the impact that chat is having on our intellectual abilities, but there are there's an emerging field of AI mentorship. We recognize that within our schools that there is a lack of counselors and mental health supports for our students. In fact, it's about a one to 400 ratio. So what if we utilize some of those companions to say, hey, there's somebody there to talk to in real time, and that could alert the personnel who need it, in case there's a serious event happening. We know that our students have stronger connections virtually and socially than they oftentimes do in real life, IRL.
Charles Williams:Right? But in in in reality, give them an opportunity to tap into that and having that companion with them at at all times. And again, know it's emerging. I know it's a little controversial, but explore it. I know that there are companies out there that are beginning to do this work.
Jobi Lawrence:So if you can take advantage of an opportunity to do a student shadow, even if it's just for half a day, this is another experience, Mitch, like a home visit where you will never be the same after this. So pick a student who fits into a category of high needs. So maybe it's an English learner, a multilingual learner, maybe it's a student who has a disability, students on an IEP, students who are high needs, students from low SES, whatever it may be. Pick a student who maybe has a different experience than even maybe you had in school and spend at least a half a day if not a day shadowing them. If you could really feel what it's like to be in their seat and see how they experience school through their eyes, it would forever change the way you teach, way you lead in your schools.
Jobi Lawrence:And I would just highly encourage you have those empathy building experiences when you can and make sure every teacher, every staff member has that experience because again, it's really hard to change someone's mindset if they haven't really walked in the shoes of the students who we're trying to teach. And many of us haven't been in those positions. Some of us have and that's that's an asset we bring to teaching and an asset we bring to leadership. For for so many of our teachers and so many of our staff and so many of our leaders, they haven't walked a mile in those shoes. So, it's really hard for them to be able to put themselves in that position.
Jobi Lawrence:But, spend some time shadowing your students and again it will forever change the way you teach and lead.
Connie Hamitlon:My next strategy is implementing a kick the IDK bucket. So, instead of students saying, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know as an avoidance strategy, tackle I don't know with a small conversation, a brief conversation with students to find out why are they saying I don't know. Of course, sometimes they say I don't know because they don't know. But there are other reasons why students use I don't know and it works. And so, if we want to limit the amount of times that students just say I don't know instead of taking an academic risk, We have to empower them to communicate what it is that they do need in order for them to change I don't know as an endpoint and transition it into a bridge to learning.
Connie Hamitlon:So, instead of I don't know, I'm done, I'm off the hook, move on to somebody else, it becomes I don't know because I need the question repeated or I'm not ready because I need some additional time or I don't know because I don't understand one of the words within the question or within the prompt. And now, we're building students to be clear and articulate advocates for their own needs in a way that is safe and they're likely to see success when they do advocate for themselves.
Tracie Berry-McGhee:Speaking of I don't know, remember when you were growing up and you didn't have a brother or sister, so you had the role models in the community? They either were your blood sister or brother where you probably even like stick the pins and you became blood sisters. Can't do that anymore. Remember that. So, what happens if you bring about community with your elementary, middle, and high school girls and boys?
Tracie Berry-McGhee:So, you write dear little sister letters, the high school writes it to either the freshmen and then the eighth graders write it to the sixth graders and the fifth graders write it to the first graders. And then, you put those books together either the Dear Sister and the Dear Little Brothers and then you literally create a book and use it as a fundraiser. And each year, you'll be able to not only be able to give back to your schools, but they'll all have a collaboration that they can look back on.
Connie Hamitlon:My next strategy is something to be mindful of, to do less of, not more of, and that is to bring a negative connotation to when students have questions. It's cringey to me when students when when I hear thumbs up if you got it, thumbs sideways if you kind of got it, and thumbs down if you still have questions. What on earth is wrong with still having questions? When we unintentionally give this thumbs down and negative connotation to the fact that students still have questions. They clam up even more.
Connie Hamitlon:They won't ask their questions. They'll be embarrassed by the fact that it is taking them a bit more time to understand it. And so instead, we need to celebrate questions And you can do that with a question board. Wow, that's a good question. Put it on the question board.
Connie Hamitlon:And when we have a little bit of extra time or some wondering, we can explore those questions that are up there. So elevating the use of questions and celebrating inquiry to encourage questions instead of unintentionally discouraging them.
Jobi Lawrence:So, level up your classroom in terms of academic language. So, often for students who are what we call at risk or students who are from high need groups, a lot of our educators try to do what they think is most helpful and they do what we call dumb down. And they go to the lowest level of Bloom's taxonomy and they don't ask kids to challenge themselves using academic language. So really get good at scaffolding. Get good at if you're a teacher, get good at doing this in your classroom.
Jobi Lawrence:If you're a school leader, get good at coaching around this. But expect students to use academic language and scaffold them to be able to do it using sentence frames, for example, and sentence starters, building conversation story starters so that they have a chance to use academic language in context and make sure that they're using it. Because they don't get a chance to practice this on the bus, they're not practicing it at home, they're not practicing it out in the playground. The only place they're getting academic language for the most part is in the classroom. And if you let them off the hook, they're gonna take advantage of that.
Jobi Lawrence:So make sure you're building the expectation that they're using academic language because if you don't do that, you're not gonna give them a chance to be able to close those content gaps and to become fluent not just in English, but in their home language as well.
Charles Williams:So then, I have a few here that I wanna talk about being at risk. Because I think so often times that we talked about earlier, when we think about ask at risk students, we think about those who are troublemakers. Right? Those who are failing in in class. But what if at risk meant something different?
Charles Williams:I have a grandson, he's eight years old, know it doesn't look like it, but I have a grandson who's eight years old, who's on the spectrum. And everything changed when we had a teacher who just simply started to observe some of the patterns that were happening in class, some of the sensory needs that he had. And so what I would encourage you to do is just be observant. And I don't mean taking those anecdotal notes for the BIPs and for the IEPs and for all of those things, but instead, just pay attention to the students in your class and say, you know what? Maybe, just maybe there's something else happening here.
Charles Williams:Maybe when we're really loud in class, that student is shutting down. Maybe that we don't like to sit on the rug because of the texture of the rug. Maybe the lights are a little too bright in the space, and that is why they're tuning out. At one point, he eloped from class in a kindergarten that had 45 kids, and I said, you know what? I too would eloped from that classroom.
Charles Williams:So pay out pay attention. Thank you. Pay attention to the habits that your students have.
Ernesto Mejia:Stop pretending you know their family without having tried to build a relationship with their family. We've said it over and over. Oh, well, you know why he's like that. Right? You know who his mom is.
Ernesto Mejia:You know who his dad is. You don't even know them, so why are you asking the question? So instead, let's build a relationship. But also, let's see the true family dynamics. I'm gonna give you an activity that I do with families, meaning the student with their parents.
Ernesto Mejia:Build card towers, but the first time around, the students have to build and the parents can't talk. The second time around that they rebuild, the parents give instruction, but still can't talk. The third time around, they build it and everybody participates hands on, but the parents still can't talk. You'll find out what kind of family dynamics exist and what kind of communication exists.
Jordan Bassett:Alright. We got through all 50 ideas from that session and I hope there's at least one, but I bet there's several that you heard that you can start using in your classroom right now. If you missed one, you can obviously go back and listen again, but we're also gonna put all those ideas in the show notes for you to make it easy for you to kinda find those and jog your memory on some of that stuff. I wanted to take just a second before we close out to talk about the Innovative Schools Summit. We're closely aligned with them.
Jordan Bassett:I mean, we're all the same organization, but we have these summits throughout the year at several different locations, and I really wanna encourage and invite you to come to one of these summits. We do these fifteen fifty sessions sometimes on different things, as well as we have just dozens of experts teaching on so many different things when it comes to education, and we would love to see you there. If you come, if you already signed up for one, come find one of us. Find me or Liz or Will or Kevin. We'd love to talk to you and hear your ideas about the podcast or just whatever it is.
Jordan Bassett:Maybe you just need to talk to us about your work and that's great because we love hearing from educators because that's that's why we're here. You can go to innovative schools summit dot com to see what cities are coming up and the dates and everything like that. So I just wanna encourage you guys to do that. But hope you learned something. Hope you share this with a friend so that they can learn something too, and we'll see you on the next one.