Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala, author of The Human Side of Changing Education and Director of the Institute for the Future of Learning, offers invaluable insight into the process of asking schools to change, which requires asking people to change. “An unbelievable force for change is the teachers’ passion and mission that's in their hearts.” Adult learning is essential to achieve the desired student learning outcomes. Transformational leaders coach with compassion, make their learning explicit and model being a lead learner. Her advice for leading change: “ground yourself in your call to adventure, your mission; take tiny baby steps with relentless consistency; do not do this work alone; find your peace.” https://www.the-ifl.org/
Dr. Bob Maxfield welcomed Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala, author of The Human Side of Changing Education and Director of the Institute for the Future of Learning, to the Podcast for Leaderful Schools, as part of the series on resetting education after the pandemic. Guests are asked to reflect on what we ought to be doing differently in education as we emerge from the pandemic. Dr. Maxfield’s regular co-host, Dr. Suzanne Klein, was unable to join him for today’s conversation, and in her place Dr. Elaine Middlekauff joined as acting co-host.
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala grew up in North Ireland and first came to the United States in 1997, for a six month project in San Francisco. After about a decade of working in adult development, leadership and management development, she “recognized a recurring theme that much of what she taught people in those programs, as well as in coaching sessions was essentially to unlearn what they’ve learned through a standardized system of education.” That revelation prompted her to create the Institute for the Future of Learning as a non-profit; with a mission to help transform the one size doesn’t fit all model of education. While studying for her master’s in Education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Ms. Wilson Jungalwala recalled the impact of Dr. Eleanor Duckworth’s “Having of Wonderful Ideas” class. Professor Duckworth studied directly with Piaget, enabling Ms. Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala to experience what inquiry-based learning actually is from a learner’s perspective.
Currently the majority of her work is writing about the topic, coaching leaders, keynote presentations, workshops and conducting research. She credits the research she did for Arthur Levine of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation with the genesis for her book, The Human Side of Changing Education. “When we're asking schools to change, we're asking people to change. If we're not focusing on the adults we're never going to see the outcomes that we're looking for with the students. When you're asking human beings to change it goes against how we're wired. I think about David Rock’s research on neuroscience and leadership and the acronym SCARF: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. All those are thrown up in the air when school or district is going through change.”
“You've got a lot of folks with an amygdala hijack; we lose our rational thinking mind but also too few change initiatives actually tap into what is an unbelievable force for change, which is the fact that I would say 99.9% of the teachers I know enter the profession because of the mission that's in their hearts to deliver. Rather than engage in what Richard Boyatzis called “negative emotional attractors”, if you were to tap into that mission as part of an overarching change process then you've got some real opportunity for change. The biggest tool is the passion and the mission that's inherent in every single person in your building. Apply Carol Dweck’s growth mindset to adults. I have seen some folks really turn around if you actually start being curious about their experience, what they see as being potential obstacles, how we might come together to mitigate or overcome those obstacles and what is it we're actually moving towards. It's part of a broader adult development behavioral change arc.”
Dr. Maxfield wondered what has gotten in the way of unleashing the passion and mission of teachers. Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala posited it is a “century plus bureaucracy. The goal of any system is status quo. Practically every human being, at least in the western world, has gone through school and has a very distinct set of mental models of what it is, and what it isn't. The system is resistant to change and the vast majority of people have an idea of what school is therefore, we need to do more of that. Go ahead and change, but don't do anything to jeopardize my child's future. There's so many external forcing function pieces in place to hold this, again not one thing, just a lot of significant forces at play at once.”
When asked what tools she would encourage people to embrace, Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala replied, “When you start asking people what's right with them as opposed to fixating on what's wrong with them, you're much more likely to enter into a productive conversation. Another great tool or resource is Richard Boyatzis's work. His latest book, Helping People Change, gets into the neuroscience of how coaching with compassion is so much more helpful, and actually produces behavioral change compared to coaching with compliance. In The Human Side of Changing Education, I profiled the work of William and Susan Bridges on managing transitions. I use that framework because they talk about how change is an event and it's external, while transition is internal, it's a process and it's psychological. You need to start with the people, their vision for what's possible, bring people into the co-creation of that change, and then with each other, we get through that change together, and each person's experience is different.”
The final tool Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala would recommend is Joseph Campbell and his framework, The Hero's Journey. “I see that narrative arc with leaders leading change. Your school will not transform if you're not transforming. As a leader if you can make your learning explicit that gives others permission to do the same. It helps reorient the schools to become 'institutions of learning' as opposed to 'institutions of knowing'. As the teacher, as the superintendent, as the principal, ideally you're modeling what it is to be a lead learner. What excites me about it though is I think there's tremendous opportunity here for leaders to emerge. And that's what brings me back to Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, on the call to adventure. If we could help each other really listen to the mission that's inside each of us and help us move forward with that, then great change would be possible.”
“There were school districts doing tremendous work before COVID. A local school district was three-four years into a high-quality interdisciplinary project-based learning curriculum that was superb. With COVID, they were back to here’s your desk, space, all the pods and the physical set up of the room felt like 10 years in the past. From the book, The Third Teacher, how things are physically set up has a significant impact. I wrote an article on Corwin’s blog describing a school district in Maryland in which each teacher committed to become a master in mind brain education. When district leaders thought about bringing adults and students back to school, they modeled leading with well-being for adults and students alike.” Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala acknowledged that with COVID “the stakes are heightened as the veil is lifted and we can’t ignore it, and sides are more entrenched. There is the potential here for schools to play a very different role and that takes level 5.0 leadership to lead that work. I read an article by Arundhati Roy, the writer and activist, and she gave this clarion call with the heading “Pandemic Is a Portal” and I thought this is where we are. Humankind is going through a massive transition right now. There's tremendous opportunity here for leaders to emerge. That brings me back to Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, on the call to adventure. If we could help each other really listen to the mission that's inside each of us and help us move forward with that, then great change would be possible.”
When looking ahead to the 2022-2023 school year, Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala advises listen to teachers. “We could really start to bring the teacher voice forward and listen to their experience. We could have more teachers and parents and students in conversation together to talk about their experience. I would like schedules to fundamentally change. Teachers have no time for prep and students have no time for recess. Neuroscience tells us that kids need time for recess. That's when the brain does the majority of its work and secondly, we all know that we need time to prep, to debrief, to be with colleagues.”
A driving question Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala introduced was what we should put under the heading of D.N.R. (Do Not Resuscitate). “What should we not resuscitate from the old model? What's just one of the things we should stop doing? School change is too much like evolution by barnacle, where we just stick one thing on top of the other. We never take a step back and say, okay what's working well. What should we keep? What's not working, what should we stop, and then what should we start doing?”
For future prospective teachers, Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala hopes “principals and superintendents will go out into their communities and find teachers that represent the diversity of the children in the classrooms, and invite a much broader and diverse range of people into the profession and honor the difference that they will bring. If I'm a child in the classroom and I can see a role model, a teacher who can reflect back my lived experience and the best of it and what's possible, then we have a tremendous opportunity for change right there in the communities. I'd also diversify the age. I know so many people who tell me they failed at retirement, so many folks in education. You can't not do what you're doing, so you find opportunity elsewhere all within the broader learning umbrella. There is massive talent there, so when you think more flexibly about recruitment in general, you can see what might be possible.”
Dr. Maxfield supported increasing flexibility and broadening the options for teachers. “Does getting into teaching require signing a regular contract? Maybe you teach in a high school three days a week, because you've got a particular passion and we figured out a way to certify you to do that. That could allow that recent retiree to have some free time but still do what he or she likes.” Julie Wilson Jungalwala expanded that idea to include flexibility of role: subject matter experts, pedagogical experts, coaches. With the challenges of recruiting teachers and teacher education students, there are corresponding shortages of school administrators. Dr. Maxfield noted “with forty new or newer superintendents in the Detroit metropolitan area, the candidate pools were smaller. The problem is not getting better and the pandemic has accelerated that as well.”
In closing, Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala gave some final words of advice to those who want to do things differently and better as we move forward. “I'm prepared to bet that your listeners have a mission; that they have a clear call to adventure; they do have a sense of the work that they would like to do; the change they would like to see in education. Rather than allow the fear, uncertainty and doubt to bubble up, your only job once you hear the call to adventure is to take the next step. Take the tiniest baby step, and if that seems too big, make it smaller. And once you start taking those baby steps, it's like a trail of breadcrumbs, you start to get some traction and then you start to meet people of like-minded mission and connect yourself with those folks. That's your support group, you need them, and they need you. So ground yourself in your call to adventure, your mission, take tiny baby steps with relentless consistency and do not do this work alone, find your peace.”
https://www.the-ifl.org/ Julie M. (Wilson) Jungalwala (@juliemagretta) / Twitter
Jungalwala (Wilson), Julie Margretta, The Human Side of Changing Education: How to Lead Change With Clarity, Conviction and Courage, Corwin, May 24, 2018.
Books and articles referenced in the Podcast
Boyatzis, Richard, Helping People Change: Coaching with Compassion for Lifelong Learning and Growth, Harvard Business Review Press, Illustrated edition, August 20, 2019.
Bridges, William, Ph.D. with Susan Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change, Da Capo Lifelong Books, January 10, 2017. (25 anniversary edition)
Campbell, Joseph, The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work, New World Library, March 11, 2014.
Duckworth, Eleanor “The Having of Wonderful Ideas” & Other Essays on Teaching and Learning, Teacher’s College Press: 3rd edition, November 24, 2006.
Dweck, Carol S. Ph.D., Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Ballantine Books, December 2007.
Mau, Bruce, A collaborative project, OWP/P Architects +VS Furniture + Bruce Mau Design O’Donnell Wicklund Pigozzi and Peterson (Author), Bruce Mau (Author), David W. Orr (Foreword), The Third Teacher: 79 Ways You Can Use Design to Transform Teaching & Learning, New York, Abrams Books, March 1, 2010.
Rock, David Dr., Neuroscience research and SCARF, Dr. Rock holds a professional doctorate in the Neuroscience of Leadership from Middlesex University in the UK. https://www.euroleadership.com
1 page summary -Understanding David Rock’s SCARF Model https://conference.iste.org/uploads/ISTE2016/HANDOUTS/KEY_100525149/understandingtheSCARFmodel.pdf
Roy, Arundhati, “The Pandemic Is a Portal” in Rethinking Schools.org, Volume 34, No. 4 https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/the-pandemic-is-a-portal/ This text is abridged and excerpted from “The Pandemic Is a Portal,” in Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction., forthcoming from Haymarket Books. Used by permission of Haymarket Books. Copyright © 2020 by Arundhati Roy. Roy, Arundhati, “The pandemic is a portal”, Original publication in the Financial Times, April 3, 2020. https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca
Stern, Julie and Julie Wilson Jungalwala, “Slow and Steady Summer School Planning”, Blog: Corwin Connect, May 17, 2021. https://corwin-connect.com/2021/05/slow-and-steady-summer-school-planning/
Bob Maxfield:
Welcome to Podcast for Leaderful Schools coming to you almost live, from the School of Education and Human Services at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, and more specifically, from the Galileo Institute at Oakland University. My name is Bob Maxfield and my co-host, Dr. Suzanne Klein, is not able to be with us today, but she is ably filled in for by Dr. Elaine Middlekauff. Elaine is our executive producer for the podcast series, has been working with the Galileo Institute for the past year or so, and is a retired principal in two excellent schools in two local school districts. So Elaine, welcome to you and I'm glad you could join me today.
00:41-->00:42
Elaine Middlekauff:
Thank you, Bob.
00:43 -->01:45
Bob Maxfield:
So our guest today, and the series Podcast for Leaderful Schools has been focusing for the last 10 or 12 Episodes on what we're referring to as resetting education after the pandemic, and we've had, if you're a regular listener, you know that we've had people from school administration, we've had people from public policy, we've had people who are active in the political arena but for each of them, we asked essentially the same questions and that is, what do you think we ought to be doing differently, as we emerge from the pandemic. So our guest today, Dr. Julie Jungalwala is the Director of the Institute for the Future of Learning and she is, as we've learned more about Julie, she's a very appropriate voice for this continuing dialogue. So welcome Julie, we are just thrilled that you could join us. We want to begin by just giving you a chance before we get into your real work with the Institute, just tell us a little bit about yourself, what's your background, and how did you get to the point that you're at right now.
01:46 --> 04:35
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
Sure. Thank you so much for having me Bob and Elaine. It's great to be here. So what got me here? A circuitous path is the short version of the answer that question. I don't have a traditional K through 12 background so as you can probably tell from my accent I'm not from the U.S. I grew up in Northern Ireland and I first came to the U.S. in 1997, to San Francisco for a six month project. I was working in the field of adult development, leading and managing, management development, leadership development programming, and after about a decade of doing that work, this theme started to come up for me which was so much of what we were teaching people in those programs, and in the one-on-one coaching sessions was essentially to unlearn what they've learned through a standardized system of education. So that brought me back to the source, and I learned with some horror that not a whole lot had changed since I left high school 20 plus years ago.
And it prompted me to start the Institute for the Future of Learning. It's a nonprofit and its mission is to help transform the “one size does not fit all” model of education; that's the broad brushstrokes, if you will. And around about this time I was also studying for my master's in Education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and had a couple of really notable experiences there, one in particular was Eleanor Duckworth's “Having of Wonderful Ideas” class. Professor Duckworth, as you probably know, studied directly with Piaget, and that was my first real experience of what inquiry based learning actually is from a learner’s perspective. And it was like a mental spa. I was rejuvenated after every one of those classes; I would go to classes exhausted at 4pm and then emerge at 6pm like a new woman.
But my… what was sort of seared in my memory, this was towards the end of the semester, we were going around the room and sharing experiences and what was resonating with us. And I'll never forget there was one teacher, she was a teacher in the Boston, Boston Public School System, and she was going back into the system and she choked up and she said, “I still believe in this kind of learning but I'm going into a system that doesn't value it, and doesn't give me the time to let the kids engage in this kind of inquiry.” And there was a collective nodding of heads in the class and I was surrounded by 30 teachers, all you know incredibly passionate people and I just got this fell sense of the system that is an immense deride on everything that they're trying to do.
04:38 --> 05:15
Bob Maxfield:
That really... what I really appreciate is your connection of why this emphasis on K-12 teachers has to be rooted in what you learned and been working with adults, adults who are products of that system and because again part of the work we're doing with our Galileo project is understanding that adult learning is every bit as important as student learning. So let's focus a little bit more on that. You gave us an idea of how the Institute came about, but what is it really seeking to do, what are the two or three top priorities as you move ahead and we'll be talking later about your book and so we'll probably get into that as well.
05:16 --> 05:51
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
Sure, so the mission is to help transform the “one size does not fit all” model of education and majority of the work that I do is either coaching leaders one-on-one to help them do that work, writing about the topic, leading workshops on the topic, keynote presentations, two to three-hour workshops for example, and also conducting research as well. It was through the research that I did for Arthur Levine of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation where the initial idea for the book, The Human Side of Changing Education, for that genesis came about, if you will.
05:53 --> 05:56
Bob Maxfield:
Art Levine wrote the intro for that book, which was a pretty impressive thing.
05:57 --> 05:59
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
He did. Yes, Arthur's an exceptional human being.
06:01 --> 06:10
Bob Maxfield: So, well in fact, let me, let me turn to, let Elaine pick it up right there because it’s time to move into the book and some of the key points that you make there. Go ahead Elaine.
06:11 -->06:41
Elaine Middlekauff:
Julie, in your book The Human Side of Changing Education, it's centered on the premise that when we ask schools to change we're really asking human beings to change, and this requires special tools and human centered approach. So as you think about it, in what ways do folks who work in schools need to change and what special tools are required?
06:42 -->09:37
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
Sure, so the, when we're asking schools to change, we're asking people to change and we could enter into a debate here. I could argue both ways that there's so much you know everything has to be student-centered, which I fully believe in and get behind. At the same time, if we're not focusing on the adults we're never going to see the outcomes that we're looking for with the students. And when you're asking human beings to change it goes against how we're wired, so I think about David Rock for example, and his research on neuroscience and leadership and the acronym SCARF: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. And all those are thrown up in the air when school or district is going through change.
You've got a lot of folks with an amygdala hijack; we lose our rational thinking mind but also too few change initiatives actually tap into what is an unbelievable force for change which is, the fact that I would say 99.9% of the teachers I know enter the profession because of the mission that's in their hearts to deliver. And if you were to tap into that mission as part of an overarching change process then you've got some real opportunity for change.
But if you start leading me through a PowerPoint deck of 40 slides with a logic model and tell me about the ways in which you know I am failing. Well you're engaging what Richard Boyatzis called “negative emotional attractors”. The most you're ever going to get from me at that point is compliance. So the biggest tool is the passion and the mission that's inherent in every single person in your building. And I also take a strengths-based approach to both leadership and the change and helping folks develop their leadership capacity through a strengths-based lens.
And then of course we oftentimes, we talk a good game about Carol Dweck and the growth mindset when it comes to students. And oftentimes we don't apply that to the adults. “So and so” you know has been resistant to change for 10 years. You know they're not likely to change now. And I have seen some folks really turn around if you actually start being curious about their experience, what they see as being potential obstacles, how we might come together to mitigate or overcome those obstacles and what is it we're actually moving towards.So, I don't have a, you know, cookie cutter here, the 10 tools and resources; it's part of a broader adult development behavioral change arc if you will. But there's a lot of low hanging fruit that's there, that can really be leveraged.
09:38 -->09:52
Bob Maxfield:
What you're saying all sounds so logical though, in terms of you know unleashing that reason that most of us, that all of us went into teaching. What on earth got in the way, what is it that has caused that to be beaten out of people?
09:53 -->10:56
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
A century plus bureaucracy. The goal of any system is status quo. And I've been trying to think of another system through which practically every human being, at least in the western world, has gone through and has a very distinct set of mental models of what it is, and what it isn't. So, you have the system that's resistant to change, like any system is, you've got the vast majority of the population have an idea of what school was, therefore, we need to do more of that. You've got (pause) the (pause) It feels like it keeps increasing the pressure on standardized testing. It's ever more competitive to get into colleges. So yes, go ahead and change but don't do anything to jeopardize my child's future. So, there's so many external forcing function pieces in place to hold this, again not one thing, just a lot of significant forces at play at once.
10:58 -->11:36
Bob Maxfield:
A very current example of that is the debate going on in New York City and other places on the future of gifted education. You know, is it elitist? Does it need to be broken down in order to provide more access to children from poverty and children of color? Then the push back on that because well, we've always had a gifted program for our brightest kids. And that's how they got to Ivy League schools.
So, you know part of the question Elaine asked was, so what tools are needed. And what is it that we can equip our... in fact a little later we are going to ask you a question about how we attract more people into the profession. So, what are the tools that you would encourage people to be embracing?
11:37 --> 14:21
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
Sure, so my caveat here is I am a certified Gallup Strengths-Coach so I use that tool a lot, and when you start asking people what's right with them as opposed to fixating on what's wrong with them, then you're much more likely to enter into a productive conversation. Another great tool or resource is Richard Boyatzis's work out of Case Western. His latest book is called Helping People Change and he gets into the neuroscience of how coaching with compassion is so much more helpful, actually produces behavioral change compared with and to coaching with compliance, and there's so much compliance, so much compliance orientation in schools. If we could shift just that one lens, that would be a huge differentiator.
And then, in The Human Side of Changing Education, I profiled the work of William and Susan Bridges, their work on managing transitions, and I use that framework a lot because they talk about how change is an event and it's external, while transition is internal, it's a process and it's psychological. And I believe that every school leader, teacher, parent and student should understand the process of human transition. And understand that you don't just, you know, go off on a nice strategic planning retreat for six months or eighteen months and come back with a nice plan and assume all that's going to be implemented. You need to start with the people, their vision for what's possible, bring people into the co-creation of that change, and then with each other, we get through that change together, and each person's experience is different.
Then the final tool I would recommend is Joseph Campbell and his framework, The Hero's Journey. That narrative arc I see it over and over. I get a ringside seat with leaders leading change and your school will not transform if you're not transforming, it's a one-for-one. So as a leader you're going through your own transformational experience and if you can make your learning explicit that gives others permission to do the same. And it helps reorient the schools which are for the most part institutions of “knowing”, as opposed to “learning'' and as the teacher, as the superintendent, as the principal ideally you're modeling what it is to be a lead learner.
14:24 -->14:58
Bob Maxfield:
That's excellent. It sort of leads into, in fact you really responded to what we would make our next question, which is getting back to our theme, resetting education after the pandemic, because schools, you know, now we're well into a year in which schools have re-engaged and kids are back in school. And everybody made the great promises that we're going to do things differently and we're not- we learned things during the pandemic that we hope we don't replicate. But here we are, we're back there and what do you think? Do you think we've really learned anything during this time, as you work with your clients and your collaborators?
14:59 --> 15:00
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
Yes and no.
15:01 --> 15:03
Bob Maxfield:
Or are we doomed just to repeat the same stuff all over again?
15:05 -->17:05
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
Yes and no, I was chatting with the head of technology actually at a local school district, and she was saying, you know we were doing tremendous work before COVID. They were really.They were three to four years into this high-quality interdisciplinary project-based learning curriculum that was superb. And she said, “We went back and kids- here's your desk, here's your chair, space, you know all of the pods and even just the physical setup of the classroom, it's like I feel like we went back 10 years just even physically.” And you probably know from that book, The Third Teacher, that the classroom is the third teacher; how things are physically set up has a significant impact.
I would love for your listeners to, you know, give some examples here. I'm not coming up with an example where a school or district has really taken this and is starting to implement deep change. There are schools that were undergoing significant changes pre-COVID and they used it as an accelerant. I'm thinking for example of a school district in Maryland. They committed a number of years ago that every single teacher would become a master in mind brain education, and that they would build the education experience around that and they really use that. I did an article on Corwin's blog where I described this in some more detail, but as they thought about bringing everybody back, you know kids and adults alike, they really did model "We are going to lead with well-being for adults and students alike." And the specifics of what they organized, it was extraordinary! So, where I do see good work happening it's where good work was happening before. I don't know of and I would love to hear other examples where change wasn't happening before COVID and now it is, as a result.
17:03 -->17:41
Bob Maxfield:
I wish I could give you some examples where that wasn't true but so far, it's still a conversation. And I think that the natural instinct was as people came back to school, specifically as we're working with superintendents out there, the immediate challenges right now of fighting off public concern about masks or no masks, or critical race theory, or any of the other hot button issues that are out there, have far eclipsed any conversation about doing things significantly differently. It's a sort of a hunker down mentality that unfortunately tends to set in.
17:42 --> 19:46
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
Yes, there is um. I could argue it's gotten worse. It feels like the stakes are heightened and it's not that you know all of this didn't exist pre-COVID, it's almost like a veil has been lifted and we can't ignore it anymore. And sides are becoming more entrenched and there is I believe, the potential here for schools to play a very different role and that takes I would say level 5.0 leadership to lead that work. But I can talk about this in more detail later if it's helpful.
I read an article by Arundhati Roy, the writer and activist, and she gave this clarion call with the heading “Pandemic Is A Portal”. And I read that excerpt and it literally gave me goosebumps and I thought this is where we are. If we take a step way back, let's go way up above everything that's happening humankind is going through a massive transition right now.
The world was put on pause for 12 to 18 months and I had this sense back in July when vaccination rates were increasing, "Okay light at the end of the tunnel" and there was sort of a “getting back to normal” kind of feel, and then Delta came. It was almost like there was a message out there, "Okay you didn't get it. We're going to put you back into lockdown for a few more months where you know, you don't get out of it that easy. Let me just let you sit with this for a while longer.” And I feel like we're still in it. What excites me about it though, is I think there's tremendous opportunity here for leaders to emerge. And that's what brings me back to Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, on the call to adventure and if we could help each other really listen to the mission that's inside each of us, and help us move forward with that then great change would be possible.
19:50 -->20:17
Bob Maxfield:
So embracing that mentality, embracing that sense of a hero's journey, if you look into your crystal ball and say that maybe we really can get out of this, are there two or three things or, what are two or three things that you would hope would be fundamentally different about schooling going into 2022-2023?
20:19 -->20:50
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
2022-2023. Listen to teachers. If we could really start to bring the teacher voice forward and listen to their experience and we could have more teachers and parents and students in conversation together to talk about their experience. I think we just started listening to each other. If I had a magic wand, I would like every single teacher..
20:51 --> 00:20:53
Bob Maxfield: That's a pretty good idea, though.
20:55.140 -->00:22:31.
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
That's doable. This one might not be doable but I'll put it out there. I would love every single teacher to start with the six figure salary. I would like that to be the starting point of the industry, for want of a better word.
I would like schedules to fundamentally change. Teachers have no time for prep and students have no time for recess. That's all manner of screwed up right there, when the neuroscience tells us that kids need time for recess. That's when the brain does the majority of its work and, secondly, we all know that we need time to prep, to debrief, to be with colleagues and their… Schools get creative with schedules in all manner of different ways, and if we could take this year as a oh, (sigh) “OK, we got through it, we cobbled the thing together, we got kids back” and then view 22-23 as OK…This is a great phrase I heard from a teacher locally here, what should we put in the heading of D.N.R: Do Not Resuscitate. What should we not resuscitate from the old model? What's just one of the things we should stop doing? School change is too much like evolution by barnacle, where we just stick one thing on top of the other. We never take a step back and say, okay what's working well. What should we keep? What's not working, what should we stop, and then what should we start doing? ( gesture)...back here, what should we start doing and there's no conversation about keeping or stopping.
22:31 -->23:01
Bob Maxfield:
When you were talking about the model that teachers face, and the loads that they have, I chuckled because I'm thinking about a conversation I had with my son when I retired from my superintendent's job and took a faculty position at the university. And I was telling him it was really hard work; I have like three classes and they meet like you know twice a week. And he started laughing because he says, yeah I got six classes every day, 170 middle schoolers and I'm supposed to...
23:03 --> 23:04
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
(laughing) and I'm supposed to be okay with that.
23:06.210 -->00:23:13
Bob Maxfield: What's wrong with this picture? And you've got 25 year old graduate students in these classes. So it's like you know…
23:14-23:16
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala
No pity for you Bob.
23:17-->23:47
Elaine Middlekauff:
Well Julie, if you were to wave your magic wand a bit for the future of teacher education and how do we attract a cadre of people who are committed, not only to supporting students but also to that greater vision of possibilities? What would you do with your magic wand to help us have a greater number of students interested in going into education? I like six figures as a salary, but what else would you consider to be important to enable future prospective teachers to look at that profession in such a positive way?
23:48 --> 25:14
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
Yes, I would love and I don't know if this is possible, for principals and superintendents to go out into their communities and find teachers that represent the children in the classrooms, and the diversity of the children in the classrooms, and invite a much broader and diverse range of people into the profession and honor the difference that they will bring. The reality is we have a very white, westernized version of education. And the extent to which if I'm a child in the classroom I can see a role model, a teacher who can reflect back my lived experience and the best of it and what's possible, then again we have a tremendous opportunity for change right there in the communities. I don't know if that's happening right now. I’m going to call Cheree Davis and she's doing her doctorate in this work. And it just strikes me as a very logical next step that the teachers would reflect the diversity of the kids.
25:15 --> 26:21
Bob Maxfield:
That is a challenge, I mean I'm very.. I spent a couple years as Interim Dean of our School of Education before I finally retired for good. And each year we saw a drop in the number of applicants for our teacher preparation program and the reasons they gave were pretty obvious: the salaries, teachers aren't respected; the politicians are beating up on us; and frankly capable people can make a lot, have a better career somewhere else right now. And then embedded in that was a corresponding drop in the percent of students of color who were applying. Again using the same argument that, Why would I do that, it just seems to be you know using your terms it's more compliance than compassion, why would I want to be doing that. And so that’s.. You know it really is going to require embracing the kind of thing that you and others are talking about, to change the mindset too, so the 17 or 19 year old says, well maybe being a teacher isn't so bad.
26:26 --> 26:31
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
Yes, and I'd also diversify the age, so yes 17 to 19, also well what about 40-45? What about 60-65?
26:32 --> 26:32
Bob Maxfield:
Second career folks
26:35 --> 27:27
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
Yes, and I know so many people like yourself Bob, who tell me they failed at retirement, so many folks in education. You can't not do what you're doing, so you find opportunity elsewhere, all within the broader learning umbrella. There is a massive you know, I believe (pause) a massive piece of talent there, but again a good friend of mine said to me, well how many rounds of golf can you play? And you know how many Netflix shows can you watch? So really diversifying the age as well. And a lot of those folk have, they don't need to earn a higher salary, they would like to give back and there could be something. I think when you think much more flexibly about recruitment in general and see what might be possible there.
27:28 --> 28:00
Bob Maxfield:
Well, I think FLEX and flexibility is a key word. I think there's just been a few halting attempts to think about does getting into teaching require signing a regular contract? Does it require committing to being there five days a week, maybe it means you come in and you teach in a high school three days a week, and because you've got a particular passion and we figured out a way to certify you to do that, that allows that recent retiree to have some free time but still do what he or she likes. So that's where I think the flexibility issue comes in as well.
28:01 -->28:15
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
I love that idea and you've got me thinking about flexibility of role. So you're asking teachers to be all things to all people, but what if you had subject matter experts, what if you had pedagogical experts, what if you had coaches, and so again just thinking very flexibly about the different kinds of roles.
28:16 --> 29:16
Bob Maxfield:
Well, what you're saying about recruiting teachers and part of what Elaine and I wrestle with is that a corresponding shortage exists now in people applying for principalships and applying for superintendencies. Here in the Detroit metropolitan area, we've had, in fact we're working with a group of superintendents. We've about 40 new or newer superintendents in this metropolitan area folks who are either brand new or in their second year. And in each of those cases the pools were smaller than they were in the past. This is a problem that is getting worse not better. The pandemic, of course, has accelerated that as well to use your term from earlier. So as we get near the end of our time together, what final words of advice would you give to our listeners, folks who really are concerned with doing things differently and better as we move ahead?
29:20 -->30:53
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
Sure so I'll share a bit of my own experience. It might apply. I'm prepared to bet that your listeners have a mission; that they have a clear call to adventure, they’re, they do have a sense of the work that they would like to do, the change they would like to see in education, and it can seem completely overwhelming. Where do I even start? You can come up very quickly with the 10 reasons why it's a silly idea, or why it's never going to work, the fear, uncertainty, doubt really bubbles up.
What I would say is that's understandable. As my dad would say, it shows you're paying attention. Engage in this work in a Pollyanna fashion. But your only job once you hear the call to adventure, your only job is to take the next step. Take the tiniest baby step, and if that seems too big, make it smaller and could you make it fun. What would be fun?
And once you start taking those baby steps, it's like a trail of breadcrumbs, you start to get some traction and then you start to meet people of like-minded mission and connect yourself with those folks. That's your support group, you need them, and they need you. So ground yourself in your call to adventure, your mission, take tiny baby steps with relentless consistency and do not do this work alone, find your peace.
30:58--> 31:27
Bob Maxfield:
Pretty darn good advice. I would think that somebody listening to this would want to know a whole lot more about the Institute for the Future of Learning and we'll certainly put a link to your website. By the way, there's some really interesting tools readily available, including I thought a marvelous inventory on looking at whether, how equipped you are to move forward, how ready you are for change. And so I would encourage people to look at that. What else would you encourage people to look into as they become more interested in what you're about?
31:28--> 31:42
Julie (Wilson) Jungalwala:
So the website for sure, and then also I’m on Twitter. I'm not as active as I should be, and my Twitter handle is @juliemargretta , so Julie mar gr e double “t” a, after both grandmothers and my aunt.
31:45 -->32:19
Bob Maxfield:
Well, this has been an excellent interview. I have to admit I'm more than just a little bit impressed so thank you for that, and thank you for sharing your wonderful insights. And to our listeners, thank you for being part of the Podcast for Leadership Schools. I almost couldn't get it out, and we hope you'll stay tuned as we continue this conversation about the future of teaching, about the need to attract more people into our profession, and what we have to do to successfully emerge from the pandemic. So again stay with us as we continue this conversation. That's a wrap.
Bibliography of references for this Podcast:
Boyatzis, Richard, Helping People Change: Coaching with Compassion for Lifelong Learning and Growth, Harvard Business Review Press, Illustrated edition, August 20, 2019. Dr. Richard Boyatzis, https://weatherhead.case.edu/faculty/richard-boyatzis
Bridges, William, Ph.D. with Susan Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change, Da Capo Lifelong Books, January 10, 2017. (25 anniversary edition)
Campbell, Joseph, The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work, New World Library, March 11, 2014.
Duckworth, Eleanor “The Having of Wonderful Ideas” & Other Essays on Teaching and Learning, Teacher’s College Press: 3rd edition, November 24, 2006.
Dweck, Carol S. Ph.D., Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine Books, December 2007.
Mau, Bruce, A collaborative project, OWP/P Architects +VS Furniture + Bruce Mau Design O’Donnell Wicklund Pigozzi and Peterson (Author), Bruce Mau (Author), David W. Orr (Foreword), The Third Teacher: 79 Ways You Can Use Design to Transform Teaching & Learning, New York, Abrams Books, March 1, 2010.
Rock, David Dr., Neuroscience research and SCARF Dr. Rock holds a professional doctorate in the Neuroscience of Leadership from Middlesex University in the UK. https://www.euroleadership.com I page summary- Understanding David Rock’s SCARF Model https://conference.iste.org/uploads/ISTE2016/HANDOUTS/KEY_100525149/understandingtheSCARFmodel.pdf
Roy, Arundhati, “The Pandemic Is a Portal” in Rethinking Schools.org, Volume 34, No. 4 https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/the-pandemic-is-a-portal/ This text is abridged and excerpted from “The Pandemic Is a Portal,” in Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction., forthcoming from Haymarket Books. Used by permission of Haymarket Books. Copyright © 2020 by Arundhati Roy.
Roy, Arundhati, ‘The pandemic is a portal’. Original publication in the Financial Times, April 3, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca
Stern, Julie and Julie Wilson Jungalwala, “Slow and Steady Summer School Planning”, Blog: Corwin Connect, May 17, 2021. https://corwin-connect.com/2021/05/slow-and-steady-summer-school-planning/