For teachers, those gaps in reading comprehension can make it challenging to meet the range of needs in a classroom. Some students may be ready to analyze, discuss, and apply what they have read. Others are still working to identify key ideas, make connections, or recognize when they do not understand the text.

Unfortunately, national reading data suggest these challenges are becoming more pronounced. The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed continued declines in reading performance. 40% of fourth graders perform below the NAEP Basic level. The average reading scores declined for both fourth- and eighth-grade students.

Balancing Whole-Group and Small-Group Explicit Instruction

The growing national focus on the science of reading reflects the urgency around helping students become proficient readers. Developing strong foundational reading skills is a critical aspect of this work. Explicit instruction is a critical part of that work. Students benefit when teachers clearly explain and model literacy skills and provide structured opportunities to practice with support.

Most classrooms include students with a wide range of reading skills. As a result, explicit instruction does not always need to look the same for every student. Balancing whole-group instruction with differentiated small-group instruction allows teachers to be more responsive to students’ specific needs. In small groups, teachers can adjust the content, level of explicit instruction, scaffolding, and the intensity of instruction based on what students need to make progress (Siegal, Hall, & Mesa, 2024). Research supports this differentiated approach. Studies have found positive effects when students are grouped according to their academic needs. Differentiating literacy instruction for those groups can further improve student learning. In fact, students in classrooms where teachers differentiate their small-group instruction have outperformed students in classrooms where teachers use small groups but deliver the same instruction to every group.

Creating Opportunities For Students to Apply Literacy Skills

Explicit instruction, whether it happens whole-group or in small-group, is only part of the literacy landscape. Students also need opportunities to work with the text and apply the skills and strategies they are learning independently. They need time to practice identifying important ideas, asking questions, looking for clues to draw conclusions, and recognizing when they do not understand a text. Ultimately, we want students to be able to do this work with increasing confidence and independence.

Research also suggests that students benefit from a combination of teacher-led instruction and opportunities to practice new skills with peers or independently. Finding the right balance between these learning experiences is important. We want to provide explicit instruction and differentiated support that students need when learning key literacy skills. At the same time, we also need to create opportunities for them to take more responsibility for making meaning on their own and in collaboration with their classmates. Reciprocal teaching offers a powerful structure for doing that in classrooms (Siegal, Hall, & Mesa, 2024).

Reciprocal Teaching: A Structure for Collaborative Meaning-Making

Annemarie Palincsar and Ann Brown developed reciprocal teaching, which is an inclusive, collaborative, multimedia meaning-making strategy. It engages students in using four comprehension strategies to make sense of a text: predicting, summarizing, questioning, and clarifying.

What makes reciprocal teaching particularly powerful is the combination of explicit instruction paired with active practice. Students are taught the comprehension strategies they need, but they’re also given structured opportunities to apply those strategies as they read, discuss, and make meaning with their peers.

The research supporting reciprocal teaching stretches back more than four decades. In their foundational study, Palinscar and Brown (1984) found that seventh-grade students who struggle with comprehension made significant gains. They were also able to maintain those gains over time and transfer their learning to new comprehension tasks.

A decade later, Rosenshine and Meister (1994) reviewed 16 studies of reciprocal teaching. They found positive effects on reading comprehension. Importantly, their review found stronger effects when students received explicit instruction in comprehension strategies before engaging in reciprocal teaching.

Explicit Instruction Is Essential to Student-Led Learning

That finding reinforces a really important point: student-led does not mean the teacher is absent. If we want students to independently summarize what they have read and ask questions that deepen their understanding, we need to teach them how to do those things first. Then, we need to create opportunities for them to practice using those skills with support and feedback before expecting them to navigate the routine independently. That’s where onboarding becomes critical.

Reciprocal teaching has continued to appear in larger research syntheses. Hattie (2009) reported an overall effect size of 0.74 for reciprocal teaching, adding to the substantial body of research supporting its potential to positively impact student learning.

Onboarding Students to Reciprocal Teaching

Reciprocal teaching asks students to apply several skills simultaneously. They need to understand their individual comprehension lens, apply it effectively to a text, communicate their thinking, listen actively to their peers, and engage in discussion, building on one another’s ideas. There are a lot of moving parts, especially when students are first learning the routine.

That’s why investing the time and energy on the front end is so important. If we want students to eventually navigate reciprocal teaching with confidence, independently in small groups, we need to:

• explicitly teach the skills
• model the process
• provide opportunities for supported practice
• give students feedback as they develop those skills

In my previous post, “Onboarding Students to Student-Led Learning Strategies,” I shared a five-step process for gradually releasing responsibility for student-led routines. That same process can be used to onboard students to reciprocal teaching. The upfront investment, though not insignificant, allows students to eventually manage this powerful literacy routine with less teacher direction, creating more opportunities for them to actively make meaning with their peers.

Let’s look at what each step of the onboarding process might look like with reciprocal teaching.

I Do: Explicitly Teach Each Comprehension Lens

Before asking students to use reciprocal teaching in small groups, teachers should explicitly teach each comprehension lens and model the thinking involved.

• For summarizing, teachers can model how to identify the most important information and key ideas while reading. A think-aloud can make visible how they determine what is essential, distinguish key ideas from supporting ideas, and decide what information is not worth prioritizing. Students need to understand that summarizing requires them to determine what matters most and communicate those ideas clearly and concisely.
• For questioning, teachers can model the difference between questions with easy-to-find answers and those that invite deeper thinking or discussion. Language like “on-the-surface questions” and “below-the-surface questions” can make this distinction easier for students to understand and remember. Question stems can also help students move beyond simple recall questions to generating questions that encourage their peers to analyze, make connections, and consider the implications of details in a text.
• For clarifying, Teachers can model how to pause when they encounter an unfamiliar word, confusing phrase, unfamiliar reference, or challenging concept. A think-aloud can make the internal process visible: What exactly is unclear here? What information or strategy could help me make sense of this? Students need to learn that strong readers don’t simply continue when they are confused. They notice their confusion, identify what is unclear or unfamiliar, and take steps to resolve it.
• For predicting, Teachers can model how to use evidence and clues from the text, along with what they have already read or learned, to anticipate what might come next. Sentence stems such as “Based on _____, I predict _____ because _____” can reinforce that a strong prediction is not a guess; it is grounded in evidence from the text and prior learning.

We Do: Practice Together with Teacher Support

After explicitly teaching and modeling the four reciprocal teaching comprehension lenses (summarize, question, clarify, and predict), teachers can give students opportunities to practice each one with support before asking them to coordinate all four in a small group.

• For summarizing, Teachers might share a small section of text and ask students to identify two or three ideas they believe are most important. Students can first jot down their ideas independently, compare their thinking with a partner, and then work with the class to construct a concise summary. As students share their thinking, the teacher can ask questions like:
  • Is this idea essential to understanding the section?
  • Is this a key idea or a supporting detail?
  • Could we leave it out without losing the meaning of this section of the text?
• For questioning, students might generate one or two questions about the next section of text using the question stems introduced during the “I do.” They can compare their questions with a partner and consider which are more likely to generate an interesting discussion or deepen understanding of the text. The teacher can highlight examples that move beyond recall and ask students what makes those questions particularly effective. This reinforces the distinction between on-the-surface and below-the-surface questions.
• For clarifying, teachers might ask students to identify a word, phrase, reference, or idea in a text that causes confusion. Instead of immediately explaining it, the teacher can ask a question like: What could we do to clarify this or make sense of it?” Students might reread the surrounding text, look for and use context clues, break apart an unfamiliar word, or talk with a partner. This helps them practice not only recognizing moments when their comprehension is breaking down but also selecting a strategy to resolve the confusion.
• For predicting, students can use clues and evidence in the text, along with what they have already read, to make a prediction and explain the thinking that informed it. A scaffold such as “Based on ____, I predict ____ because ____” can help students connect their predictions to evidence rather than simply guessing. Sharing and comparing predictions also reinforces that there may be multiple reasonable predictions when they are supported by evidence.

Fishbowl: Observe, Analyze, and Refine

The fishbowl strategy gives students an opportunity to see how the four comprehension lenses work together before they are expected to independently navigate reciprocal teaching in small groups. To prepare for the fishbowl, the teacher should select a text that is accessible to the class and divide it into short sections. This makes it possible to move through repeated rounds of reading, discussion, feedback, and adjustment.

The Inner Circle Practices the Strategy

Teachers can select four students who are comfortable speaking in front of the class and position them in a circle at the center of the classroom where the other students (or outer fishbowl) can see them. Each of the four students in the inner fishbowl is responsible for one of the four reciprocal teaching comprehension lenses.

• Summarize
• Question
• Clarify
• Predict

The rest of the class sits around them in an outer circle and observes. Students read the first section of text, then the four students in the inner circle discuss what they read using their assigned comprehension lenses.

• The summarizer identifies and communicates the most important ideas.
• The questioner poses a “below-the-surface” question designed to deepen the group’s thinking about what they saw.
• The clarifier surfaces a word, phrase, reference, or idea that may need further explanation.
• The predictor uses evidence from the text to anticipate what might happen next.

The Outer Circle Provides Feedback

After the discussion, the teacher pauses the inner circle and offers specific feedback. The goal is to reinforce what students did effectively and identify two or three moves to focus on in the next round. The teacher might comment on the quality of the question, the evidence used to support a prediction, or how effectively students built on one another’s ideas.

The teacher then invites the outer circle to provide feedback. Students can identify what the inner circle did that helped the conversation move smoothly and productively. What did they hear that they might want to replicate when it’s their turn? What suggestions do they have for strengthening the discussion in the next round?

Once the inner circle has received feedback, students read the next section of text and engage in another round of reciprocal teaching. This gives the inner circle an immediate opportunity to apply the feedback they just received.

The teacher can repeat this cycle as many times as needed. Over successive rounds, the inner circle has opportunities to refine its use of each strategy and demonstrate an increasingly strong example for the rest of the class. At the same time, students in the outer circle develop a clear understanding of what effective reciprocal teaching looks and sounds like. By the end of the fishbowl, students have moved beyond understanding the individual comprehension lenses. They have seen how those lenses work together to deepen comprehension and support dynamic discussion of the text.

Students Do: Practice Reciprocal Teaching with Feedback

When students are ready to practice reciprocal teaching, organize them into groups of four. Assign each student one of the four comprehension lenses:

• Summarizer
• Questioner
• Clarifier
• Predictor

Instead of one group practicing while the rest of the class observes, all groups engage in reciprocal teaching simultaneously. Students can use the same process they observed during the fishbowl. They read a short passage and discuss it using their assigned comprehension lenses. As they move through additional sections of text, students can rotate roles. That way, they have an opportunity to practice each comprehension lens.

Provide Real-Time Feedback

While groups work, the teacher circulates and listens to their conversations. This creates an opportunity to provide specific in-the-moment feedback. The teacher might:

• Encourage a summarizer to distinguish between a key idea and an interesting detail.
• Challenge a questioner to pose a question that requires more than recall.
• Prompt a clarifier to identify a strategy for resolving confusion.
• Ask a predictor to connect a prediction more explicitly to evidence in the text.

The teacher can also provide feedback on how students are managing the collaborative aspects of the strategy:

• Are they listening to one another?
• Are they building on each other’s ideas?
• Are they asking follow-up questions?
• Are they inviting quieter members of the group into the group conversation?
• Are they encouraging one another to elaborate on their contributions?

We don’t want students to focus solely on completing their assigned role. We want them to work together to engage in meaningful conversation about the text and deepen their collective understanding of what they’re reading.

Gradually Reduce Scaffolds and Support

As students become more comfortable with reciprocal teaching, the teacher can gradually reduce scaffolds and the supports provided. Question stems, role cards, and graphic organizers are helpful during onboarding. However, as students develop confidence with reciprocal teaching, the goal is to gradually remove scaffolds.

Self and Peer Assessment: Monitor Progress and Provide Feedback

After students have practiced reciprocal teaching in their small groups, they can use an asset-based continuum to reflect on both their individual use of a comprehension lens and their contribution to the group’s discussion. For example, a continuum for the questioning role might describe a progression from:

• Asking questions that help the group recall or clarify information
• Asking open-ended questions that encourage explanation and analysis
• Posing questions that prompt the group to make connections, consider different perspectives, or extend their thinking

A student might recognize, My questions help my group clarify important ideas in the text, so I think I am in the developing stage. Next time, I want to ask a question that encourages my group to make a connection or think more deeply about what we are reading.

Peers can use the same continuum to provide feedback grounded in evidence. For example, your question helped us think about why the author included that information. Next time, you might ask a follow-up question that encourages us to consider a different perspective.

Teachers might create a continuum for each of the four comprehension lenses (summarize, question, clarify, and predict). They can also create one focused on the collaborative skills required to engage in a productive reciprocal teaching discussion. These continuums can be revisited each time the students use a strategy. This allows them to track their growth, identify areas for continued improvement, and set new goals over time. This process can help students become more aware of how they are making meaning from a text and more intentional about the strategies they use when comprehension breaks down.

From Explicit Instruction to Independent Readers

Reciprocal teaching requires an investment of time and energy on the front end. Teachers must explicitly teach the comprehension lenses, model the thinking behind them, guide students through supported practice, make the full routine visible, and provide feedback as students begin using it with peers. That process takes time, but the goal is not simply to teach students how to navigate a reciprocal teaching routine. The larger goal is to help students become more strategic, metacognitive readers.

We want them to recognize what’s important, ask questions that deepen their understanding, notice when comprehension breaks down, use strategies to resolve confusion, and draw on evidence to anticipate what comes next. These are skills students can carry beyond reciprocal teaching and apply whenever they encounter a challenging text in any class.

When we invest in a thoughtful onboarding process, we can gradually shift more of the cognitive work to students. Instead of the teacher always asking the questions, identifying the most important ideas, clarifying confusion, or prompting students to make connections, students learn how to do more of that work themselves and in collaboration with their peers. That is the payoff of the investment up front. Students are not just simply learning a new strategy; they are learning how to make meaning for themselves.

The post Strengthening Reading Comprehension with Reciprocal Teaching appeared first on Dr. Catlin Tucker.

Episode Description

In this episode, I chat with Gerardo Martinez, Executive Director of Educational Technology for Westminster School District, about what educators can learn from the field of architecture when designing meaningful learning experiences.

Gerardo shares how his journey from architecture to education shaped his thinking about instructional design and the role of physical learning environments. We also explore his innovative i4 teacher leadership program, why inspiration must precede innovation, and how districts can cultivate cultures in which teachers feel empowered to experiment and grow.

Finally, we discuss how AI is reshaping the design process and why the teacher’s highest-value work has never been delivering information, but designing learning experiences that foster curiosity, agency, and deep understanding.

Episode Resources

• Gerardo Martinez’s LinkedIn

Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI transcription tools to support accessibility and provide a searchable, readable version of the podcast. While we’ve reviewed and lightly edited the content for clarity, there may still be occasional errors or omissions.

Catlin Tucker

Welcome to The Balance. I’m Doctor Catlin Tucker, and today my guest is Gerardo Martinez, the executive director of educational technology at Westminster School District, a district I have had the absolute pleasure of working with in terms of a professional learning capacity and was just so impressed by the work that Gerardo was doing in that district that I really wanted him to come on the podcast and talk about it. He has degrees in architecture, education, leadership and administration, 18 years of classroom experience, more than four years as a technology coordinator at the Orange County Department of Education, and just a really generous person when it comes to sharing his work and his ideas. And so I thought it would be so fun to talk about that work on the podcast. Well, I am super excited we found time to have this conversation. I’ve been wanting to do it since I was down working with your incredible group of educators and went to Westminster, and so I wanted to start by letting you kind of share a little bit about your journey in education. Where did you begin? How did you get to the work that you’re doing now?

Gerardo Martinez

Yeah. So, interesting how I stumbled into education. I do mean stumbled. So I graduated with a degree in architecture, and that was in the 90s. And the economy wasn’t doing too good. So I was applying everywhere. I had resumes out trying to get interviews, and then I realized I need to make some money. In the meantime, I had been doing some architecture work from home for an architect, for some homes he was designing, and then my mom owned a bridal shop, and I was sort of like redesigning her shop and doing some graphic work and fliers for her. But I needed a real steady income. So I remember that if you take the CBEST and you have a bachelor’s, you can substitute and you have the total freedom to kind of go in and out as you need, as needed. So I began substituting, but about 2 to 3 weeks after I began substituting, I walked into a middle school classroom where the teacher said to me, hey, I’m leaving. So if you want to interview for this position, you should.

Catlin Tucker

Oh, wow.

Gerardo Martinez

I’m like. And now I’m like, I’m right now I’m a part-time babysitter. And that’s all I know. And I barely can do that. So teaching was not in my, in my future as far as I could see. But then I thought, hey, wait a minute, I need interview experience. I need to get out there. What’s it going to hurt if they’re not going to hire me? So let me just go through that stress of an interview and get some practice for that. Well, I interviewed and I got the job. Why? I was asking, why in the world would you hire somebody with zero experience? Well, it happened to be at a middle school with kids from the same neighborhood that I grew up in. I’m bilingual in Spanish, English, and, that was the same population. And they thought, well, you’d be great. You could connect with the kids. And it is a bilingual position. So I thought, okay, let’s do this. So I began, but with my one foot in the door and went for like, I’m going to architecture. I can’t wait to get out of here. Not because I hated it, just because my passion and my love really was for design and architecture. But I kept interviewing and just nothing was biting. So I thought, okay, I’ll keep doing this. I’ll start the credential program. Next thing I know, a year had gone by after not knowing anything about what I was doing, they literally gave me a key and a box of chalk. That’s all I got on my first day.

Catlin Tucker

Oh my god.

Gerardo Martinez

So no books there? No. I was calling my brother, who’s not even an educator, and I said, hey, I don’t know what to do. He goes, don’t they have like some standards or something that you can follow? I’m like, oh, a mask. So anyhow, a year later I decided, okay, if I’m going to keep doing this, I need to start thinking and changing my mindset as well. I be designing buildings for will I be designing learning experiences, learning what students can do. And I actually took a little piece of paper and I sketched out an apple as a symbol of education, and I made my own little graphic logo with dimensional lines and callouts, like a floor plan, the kind of that the vision for what I was going to do next. I had no idea what that would look like, but I thought I would design learning experiences and so that, within the first year, the principal asked, hey, we need somebody to teach a technology elective. Anybody want to do it? And I put my head down. I didn’t want to do that because I knew nothing, and then nobody raised their hand. I had the most experience with technology from a design studio where we had an Apple II computer, one for the entire studio in college, and then I had some computer classes with, 3D drawing back then, and I said, sure, I’ll do it. So that began my journey of looking at understanding content and teaching and then collaborating with other teachers and the school site, and then learning technology and learning how technology plays a role in education. So that began my journey, and then I became an Apple Distinguished Educator, and then I became a EdTech coach, worked at the district office as a literacy coach, and just jumped around. And then the high school recruited me across the street from the middle school to teach film production, graphic design and architecture, and I thought, wow, what an opportunity. I’d love to do that, because that reminds me so much of studio when I was in school. So I went ahead and I took that position and it was in the same classroom, in the same high school where I went to high school, in the same drafting classroom where I where I learned drafting. Wow. This is this is a weird but okay, this is great. So I began a journey of just really, understanding this whole CTE world and pathways. And I’m like, oh my gosh, this is so much like a studio. This is active learning. This is where students can really build and make, meaning and make sense of what they’re doing, but they’re going to design. And that’s what I’m after with students. So I also realized that, hey, during that time I’m going to do a couple things. I’m going to teach them process over product. And I had a sign on the front of my classroom that says, process is more important than product. I want to teach you something that you’re going to learn that’s going to go beyond this classroom. And you may never be a graphic designer, film production, or an architect, but you’re going to learn how to solve problems. So I’m going to take you through the process and those three disciplines. And then I also did one more thing. I divided the trimesters into three things. First trimester. Let’s design for yourself. You know yourself best. So that’s the background knowledge that you’re going to have and you’re going to design for that. So it was either, I would have them do self-portraits with Adobe Illustrator, but they had coming out of their heads, they had to illustrate something that they do, not something they like, but something they do. So you like music? Don’t put that. But if you play music right, put that you’re going to put a guitar, you’re going to put a piano if you like to, if you like singing with me. But music, don’t put that. If you sing, then put something with vocals, anything related to what you do physically and with skills. So those were all about the self. The second trimester I went into care designing for others. Let’s start designing for classmates. Let’s do it like a magazine cover. If your, teammate is in the marching band and you’re on the football team and you’re going to interview each other and create a magazine cover for each other’s interests. So that began the whole process of learning how to understand a problem and how to design for others. The third trimester went into designing for community, either the school site, the school district, or actual city. So we would do projects and film, like doing historical projects for the city or entering competitions and that sort of set the stage as a framework for how I started to teach. I loved it, I loved teaching in middle school, I love teaching in high school, and that was awesome. So the whole idea was really influenced by my experience as an architecture student and being in a design studio, but that has a lot of impact in how I see education, which really is what we’re all after anyway.

Catlin Tucker

100% for everybody listening. So when I went down to work with your incredible Innovate Innovators group, I just used my teacher as architect metaphor in that session without even knowing your background at all. So listeners have probably heard me kind of compare the work of teacher as designer of learning experiences to that work of an architect, and the reason I make that comparison is truly because what I hope teachers will do will, like, take their professional expertise and create a blueprint for a lesson that allows students to be the builders of meaning, right? For students to be the ones constructing the knowledge in the classroom. And so I stopped talking and we had this total moment of like, oh my gosh, we see this so eye to eye. And what I think is interesting though is I don’t know. And maybe I’m curious, your perspective, like I don’t think teachers think of themselves that way as these architects of learning experiences. And I don’t know if it’s adopted curriculum. I don’t know if it’s something else that has like kind of gotten in the way of this idea, or it’s simply that so many teachers have created kind of a single experience for everyone for so long. But I feel like that’s something that metaphor for a lot of teachers is a little bit I don’t have. Jarring is the right word, but it’s not necessarily one of the roles they see themselves as having. As an educator, do you find that?

Gerardo Martinez

I do, I do it, and I agree with that. First, I’ll go back to the part where you say, how did it? Why did it resonate with me so much? So in architecture, when we’re going through school and then when you become an architect, you know, the whole purpose there is that you’re designing for some experience that’s known and many times for an experience that’s not known when you’re trying to be innovative and design something new that no one’s ever experienced. So it’s really about understanding what are those experiences? What is the, the moment that you want to create in that space? But more than that, it’s about the function of the space. How do you make a building function so that it meets the needs of what’s supposed to be happening in that organization, or whatever it is, or even if it’s just a home? So that’s partly where it started. And I thought, well wait, the classroom experience that was our experience is that we if we know our standards and we know curriculum, a good pedagogy, then we’re going to estimate what a good learning experience is going to be. As to get students to arrive at understanding the meaning of the standard or the objective or the skill. That’s that’s part of one way to look at it. But I started thinking about the classroom. The other thing that resonated with me is in the blueprint. So and as an architect, when you’re before you even do the you create the blueprint. You have to do a lot of research and understand a problem. You have to understand the client. You understand what it is. You may be designing for the South Pole, you may be designing for, you know, hot weather or cold. It just there’s so much terrain, landscape and, the weather, you have to really understand all those things. So understanding students and understanding that differentiation and learner variability and needs of students makes it a very complex system to try to, you know, rally around. Therefore you are designing a lesson, you are designing a blueprint. But when it comes to the actual classroom, another thing that resonated with me because I had just designed that space. There’s an architect, his name is Edward Allen, and he wrote a forward and a book a long time ago, probably about 25 years ago. And it’s a book about architecture. He wrote a forward and he made this, this comment about, this design studio being, this marvelous educational device. He saw it as it’s a it’s he marveled at it kind of because he thought it’s it’s powerful and it’s audacious and what it’s trying to do because you’re trying to do nothing less than to teach what would seem to be unteachable in a studio, like, how do you teach people to design something? And then he thought, okay, this is a space where you’re using your mind, your eye and your hand in concert to create something that you’ve never, ever seen before to solve a problem for function and experience and joy. So I thought, oh my gosh, that’s exactly what we do. But you need a blueprint. You just can’t really go in like I did when I first started teaching with a key and chalk, and they think that it’s magic. It’s going to happen. Yeah. You have to have a plan. So when it comes to teachers seeing themselves as designers, I often tell, you know, have a conversation with teachers about like, you know, we’re all designers, even when you got up today, I mean, look at what I’m wearing. You might judge that. Maybe my shoes and my socks don’t match what I’m wearing. But there was a design thinking there that was either lacked or hit it right on the spot. You were designing yourself today. What about your home? What about your kitchen? What do you love about. So I try to connect to people seeing themselves as designers and really trying to make those connections. And then I think of that right then I try to carry it into the lesson design. And lesson design is you’re trying to take in so many complex ideas from not just the, the, the content and the standards and the skills and the concepts that you’re trying to communicate to students, but you want them to unravel and dive in and get dirty with those things. So when they can make meaning with it, but they can also experience it. And so I started thinking, there’s obviously there’s two parts, the teaching and the learning. The teaching controls the experience and the conditions. That’s the educator in the classroom. But the students have to kind of weave through this experience. And why does the lesson have to start always in the same spot? Can it start in the middle? Can you start at the end? So I started really exploring as to how we could do that. And then just to kind of illustrate that, I visited the, the, Museum of the History of Classroom Museum in Germany, and that kind of explained a lot. Right? You see the design of classrooms from the 1800s through, you know, World War One and two, and nothing changes. It’s all the rows, it’s all the static. It’s that industrial model. But then you start to see new designs today for furniture that really start to give you ideas of like, wait a minute, maybe the space can start to be agile and maybe the furniture can be configured to foster AI, ways of engaging students or ways for them to engage with each other. So that kind of a design thinking and seeing themselves. So the designer, when I start to connect the content, the pedagogy and the technology and how the space is organized, then that really starts to impact how we might revisit as the design of instruction.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah, and I love the idea that we’re designing to achieve some kind of experience. Right. Or we want students. You know, when I think about my work in backward design, it’s like, okay, have we articulated that kind of standard aligned desired result for this unit? Like where are we all headed? What’s the destination? And that can help to inform all of those design moves that we make to try to ensure every single student in a class can make that journey from wherever they’re starting, which is not in the same place to that particular destination. And then also like another layer that I’m thinking about as you’re talking to is like, when we think about it as I’m having an experience, it’s not just like, hey, this is what we want you to walk away from this, this unit, you know, knowing, understanding, being able to do. But like, do we also like want to create experience where kids feel belonging, where they feel support, you know, and so when we start to really get clear about what is it we’re striving to create in this space for these learners, then the kind of thought process around how we design the individual or sequence of lessons that lead kids there, it’s a really different proposition.

Gerardo Martinez

We also have to know that learner variability. What is it about students’ strengths and deficits that we can tap into so that we can start to redesign the learning and really differentiate. Another thing that I think about the experience that it’s hard to design for and that just hopefully happens, is serendipity. That’s one of my favorite words in the world. Serendipity. That moment that you it’s unexpected. And you get that Where you see the students’ light bulb come, come on. Or they’re just happy about something they just discovered. And you see this sense of, I just want to say, like self-empowerment for themselves of them, like achieving something they didn’t think they could, achieve. Those are the moments that I think we all long for. And I think most teachers experience something like that. And how do you design for that? I think it begins by looking at the barriers to learning 100%.

Catlin Tucker

I think one of the reasons I always so I went through a rebuild after I lost my home in the fire, which was the first time I had ever had the opportunity to work with an architect. And, you know, instead of rebuilding the exact structure that had burned down, I figured you know, let’s make something positive. That’s let’s design the house I would love to live in the future. And the amount of questions that he asked to understand me, my needs, my preferences, how I, my family use space, what we liked about the old house, what we’re hoping to, you know, have in the new. And it was like exhaustive. And it was this moment, we have to get as curious about our kids as that architect was about me and my family to design a space that would work for us. And so when I started talking about teachers, architect, and I was also doing all this work in universal design for learning, also finding out that UDL or universal design has its start in architecture. Like how do we create spaces everyone can access. And so to me, all of those layers are so meaningful and interesting to me. And to your point, just like the architect designing a building that is accessible and inclusive, anybody can access it, navigate it. That is truly what we need to do if we want to design lessons that position students to get in those flow states to be able to kind of lead their own learning without hitting bumps or barriers and obstacles that make it really hard for them to be successful.

Gerardo Martinez

Yeah. Yes. You know, you made me think about, a time when in order to be empathetic, to really understand a problem, one of the best things to do is experience it like somebody who can experience it like others. Right. We had an exercise and in when I was in school, in studying architecture, where they told us you’re going to check out a wheelchair and you’re going to go at the impact throughout the entire campus on a wheelchair. We want you to experience what it’s like to try to access a building. And it was amazing how people treat you. Some are very helpful. Some of them you know, you encounter a building and you see stairs and steps and you’re thinking, how do I get into this building? Oh, I have to go all the way around to the back and enter some kind of ramp for delivery or, you know, that’s so that’s why, you know, Universal Design for learning has that background and that start in architecture and having that empathetic approach is, is difficult when you’re a teacher, you know, the experiences from experiences of students’ personal lives that you have through a history of teaching. But it’s really hard to understand that you actually haven’t been in those shoes. You’re sort of an observer and a spectator, and you try to be. And you and some teachers are incredibly awesome at building those relationships and supporting those students. But I think that has a huge role in trying to understand our learners and try to understand how do we design a lesson that meets those needs. It is truly overwhelming to try to do that. It is really, truly overwhelming to think of. I’m supposed to reach every single student according to their assets and deficits and what enter I. And that’s a whole nother discussion that we can now explore with that.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah. And one of the things I often will point out, because you’ve mentioned differentiation is like differentiation. And now like with AI, it is so much more manageable to differentiate for students. And I think there is this misconception that when we talk about differentiation, somehow we are creating a separate lesson learning experience for everyone, which isn’t accurate. It’s those teacher moves that we’re trying to make based on the data we’re collecting, the observations we’re making, the what we know about our kids and our professional judgment to try to remove those barriers. And as much as we might try, it’s really like to your point, it’s impossible to meet every kid’s needs, every moment of every day, which is why I often talk about the other side of that coin for me is the student agency piece, which is sure, we can make the moves as teachers to do our best job to try to remove barriers and with differentiation. But if we give students meaningful choices about their experience, we’re also inviting them into the equation, saying, hey, now you get to remove a barrier for yourself. Which of these pathways and options speaks to a strength or an interest or a preference that you have? And I think sometimes we feel like we have to do it all and we don’t, you know, we can actually partner with students to make all of this feel so much more sustainable.

Gerardo Martinez

I think oftentimes when we’re designing lessons, we think of this long list of things that we’re trying to meet. But I think just focusing, focusing on one thing, often includes all the other things you’re trying to do. For instance, I’m thinking of this whole idea of agency. I mean, it starts with engagement. And I love, like, you know, you’ve made references also to, Rebecca Winthrop and Jennifer Anderson and what engagement is and looking at this behavior cognitive and emotional engagement. When I started to really analyze what those three things mean and how they play out in the classroom, it really started to change how I think about a student’s experience through a space. So can I design for all those three things to me so strategically that my lesson gets super long? I don’t think that I have to I think some of those things will happen in tandem or simultaneously or sometimes and mean you do. But it’s really about addressing those. Those things about the student that really start to help me rethink, okay, sometimes it’s just about a moment. It’s about a teaching moment. It’s about how I start. The lesson is how I inspire the students to think differently about a topic. And that alone, that beginning of that lesson, that participatory set or publication, however you wanted to create it. My wife used to teach me that great dissonance in the classroom. She’s a third grade teacher. I was middle school grade teacher when I first started teaching. She was helping me, and she says, start by creating dissonance and challenge the students on a topic and see if you can get them to start talking about that. And I thought, oh my gosh, that’s brilliant. So sometimes and how we do that in that first part of the lesson, you can cover so much ground on emotion and cognitive thinking and an inquiry so that you can tackle. So if you methodically start breaking down the lesson and designing it by every system, architects don’t design exactly everything they don’t do the electrical, they do the electrical plan, but they don’t do the actual engineering for it or the structural engineering. You get the architectural engineers, the foundations. And so there are many people that come into play when you’re building a building. So maybe you’re designing the big picture, and sometimes you have to break it down to go step by step to get those experiences. For students.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah. And I love that you mentioned that idea of dissonance and provocation. And I was doing some research for the book that I’m working on now is just digging into the power of curiosity, right, as obviously, if we can pique curiosity, which feels like it gets harder to do the longer they’ve been in school. Right? It’s like kind of buried underneath, but not only do we potentially get them kind of interested in what we’re teaching, but even some of the mechanics of how it starts to prime the brain to encode new information better is like so fascinating. So I think I just totally nerd out on all the, like, the kinds of ways in which we can design better. Also from like a neural network kind of perspective, which is really interesting. So I want to bring it back to your design, because when I was with your innovator group, you had designed that professional learning space, and it was one of the most beautiful spaces I’ve been able to facilitate a training. And even though we had quite the crowd that day. So I would love for you to kind of tell us about that process. Obviously, it sounds like you started with a computer lab and screens in front of people. And so how did you decide, like what informed the decisions you made when you were designing that space? How did you even get the opportunity to design that space? Yeah.

Gerardo Martinez

Well, actually, that was it. That isn’t the first space I’ve ever designed for education, but it started at the county office. Like I mentioned, I did, professional learning spaces there, and that began my connection to so many people in the world of architecture and, and furniture manufacturers and design and I did a lot of research and started really putting together my ideas. I eventually designed, two TK classrooms for a private school, where I made a tunnel between the two classrooms. I designed these bookcases for big picture books. And then there was a big circle about a three foot circle down in the bottom with had a little pad as a little door. Nobody knew it was a door until the teach. The two classes had to come together and you’d open it and they could all go into the next classroom right through this little tunnel. I made these reading circles where students would climb into these big padded circles, that they could sit there and read. I got all the little mobile furniture for little from the littles and so on, and I looked at the walls and so on. So I started to really study, like, how do I design for a TK classroom versus adult professional learning? So I had already had some experience in designing STEM rooms, etc. in other spaces when I was in Westminster to design this space. It really didn’t start with the idea of the space it really started with knowing that I needed to design a professional development program for teaching and learning. But I needed a garage, if you will think of Steve Jobs, Hewlett Packard, how they all started innovating and just experimenting and prototyping and testing. I thought, I want to do professional learning where teachers come together to really explore and reimagine how they could teach. But I don’t want this to be a place where I come to lecture at them, or any one of my, team lectures at them. And tell them how they should teach thought. We need to model the way we need to get people to experience. So I, I started actually with our strategic plan. I looked at what we said we were going to do in our vision and our mission. It was brand new in 2023. I looked at our strategic goals, what we said we’re going to do, what we’re going to do for academic achievement and continuous innovation. We actually added those words in there and I thought, okay, innovation, you said it. We’re going to do it. Let’s think about a space. So for a year of my, professional learning, we were meeting in an auditorium in a multi-purpose room for doing our PDs while I was designing this new space that I wanted, I interviewed all of our departments because I thought, this space has to be agile. It has to be not just for professional learning, but it has to be multi functional and faceted for different departments. So I’ve got a lot of information from different groups, but that all together started to synthesize and then I started to add it, adding the concepts that I wanted to see in the classrooms, that agility, that active learning, that student agency. And then I started looking at the room I were in, I design, I look at all planes. If it’s a box, there’s six planes. How can the walls help me learn? And how can they help me teach? But how can the floor also do that? And how can the ceiling do that? I literally go through each plane and ask the question and try to figure out, what can I do in this space to contribute to the entire experience of learning? So I did that with this space, and I knew I needed, I wanted three conference rooms because I thought about breakout rooms. But I was also thinking of small group instruction. If I want professional learning to experience small group instruction, but they need time to process, I need to give them little mini versions of the bigger space where there’s a whiteboard, interactive display, mobile furniture where they can get up and move around and just wrestle with the ideas of the strategies that we’re trying to teach them and try to work together in collaborative groups. Glass conference rooms became, kind of a cool little thing. It’s not uncommon to see that in corporations, but it also was a way of me communicating transparency. We see the learning happening in those rooms. But I also was thinking about our vision and our branding for our district. I was also fortunate that I was able to redesign our district logo, all of our school branding, all of our core values, all the graphics. It was a 60 member stakeholder input for all of that information. I took that and I synthesize it into an interactive, strategic plan digital. And then I started to design the graphics for the room. I wanted the room to be a manifestation of the vision, the mission, and our core values. What, you don’t read it on a wall, you see it in a room. So the room having that mobile furniture, having your cafe in it, having, a kitchenette was a way of me saying one at the end of the day, teacher, when you come here to DPD and you’re tired, I want you to feel like you’re at home. I want you to feel like you can get up and go grab something from the little fridge, make a coffee, sit up the stool height, bar stool table, or sit at the end in groups, go into a conference room, interact with the technology, interact with people. And then I wanted the room to start to reflect all those great things about learning spaces. Audio. Audio was a way of removing that barrier to trying to understand the words and the enunciation and the frequencies of every person who speaks. You turn your back to one side of the room, the other side of the room can hear noise, but they can’t really hear every articulate, consonant and vowel. So looking at audio technology that helps me enhance that and removing that barrier, so I had to train people like you guys. Everybody hates to hear the voice on the microphone. It’s not about you. This is not about you. This is about the learner. You have to think about them when you think you have a teacher voice. Your voice is actually super high within the first minute or two, and your energy just drops. And so the microphone allows you even to whisper and everybody can understand you. So thinking about like a universal design for learning aspects about a space and how barriers can contribute to learning. So I started to look at how can the walls help become that visible thinking that stand up and talk act of learning, interact with the whiteboard, make connections. Everybody grab a whiteboard marker and see how you can do that. And I also wanted to experiment with some things that I had tried. So one of the strategies that I often did with when I’m new in a new location, when I teach and professional learning, the first thing I do instead of going through the big interaction and talking about what you’re going to learn, I just huddle people around me. I want everybody huddle around me, come around this table here, and if it’s a writeable table, I put whiteboard markers on it or I’ll put chart paper or if it’s not readable and I’ll write a question upside down and I’ll say something basic like what? What is your belief about teaching and what is your belief about learning? And I give everybody whiteboard markers and I tell them, I don’t want you to answer these two questions. I want you to ask as many questions as you can think of for that question. And so they start populating questions all around. Is, are you talking about teaching for GCC early or adult or middle school? Is this math? So they’ll ask so many questions that then I send them to whiteboards and they have to map these questions, and they start to configure the patterns of the sequence of questions. And then I tell them, okay, go and answer those questions, organize yourselves, get into groups, and then come back. And we’re all going to talk about this big question. So that’s a way of using some of that inquiry, using the space and the furniture and changing that experience to be more personal and intimate, because I also challenge them to think about when you’re learning at home from your own kids or your grandchildren, where are they in proximity to you? And they often answer, they’re right next to me.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah.

Gerardo Martinez

And I and so I say this, this is strategy that I just use was about proximity and making it more personal and just changing it up to see how can inquiry and questions really get you to be more the ones who have intrinsic motivation to want to learn? Because I just got you to ask questions instead of you answering my question. So the space and in that I was able to do in the space that I design and we do variations of that, we use the whiteboards around the room, we put up reflection questions. A lot of our PDs actually start with that. We actually begin. We’ll do something inspirational that’s brief, and then we’ll do a reflection activity. And that’s that becomes the power of the space. But now this program that I built, I designed for it. And how did I get that opportunity? It was an empty room where we dumped everything.

Catlin Tucker

I love that, and I think, you know, I obviously facilitate professional learning all over in all kinds of spaces. And, you know, one of the things I’ve heard you say, and I feel like this is so true is the learning environment or the space can almost be like another teacher, right in the way that it supports and enhances the learning. Because I will tell you, being in a high school cafeteria with 120 people who are at those, like, you know, the tables where the bench is connected to the table and you got to kind of shimmy in and shimmy out. It’s just like it makes movement hard. It makes collaboration hard. It also I think people just the space really gives so many cues about what do I expect from you as a learner in this moment. And obviously I don’t have a ton of control over the spaces. You know, sometimes the configuration of the tables, I can tell them, hey, I’d love this or that or whatever, but I have this conversation with teachers to where I’m like, how you set up your space tells your students without you saying anything, what kind of experience they’re likely to have in here.

Gerardo Martinez

I call that the built pedagogy. So once that’s sometimes you walk into a classroom and you see the layout, the configuration of the tables and the desks, you see the front of the room, you see how it was just kind of, populated with charts and papers. You know, how learning happens in there and you know how teaching happens. That is a very difficult thing to get across to many of us, because I think one of the things that I think about is that teachers, we want a template, we want a lesson template, we want a space template. Right? I don’t have time to figure this out. I have time in the beginning, meaning to quickly create a theme in my classroom and decorate it and so on and make it look the way I want it to look. But we don’t. We’re not thinking about, well, wait a minute, how do I want to teach? I don’t want, I don’t want, I want to experience may activating learning. How do I want to be able to jump between a digital technology to tool to an analog technology which is paper and pencil? So or just an activity of how I guide them through instruction. So that built pedagogy. If you see another room when it has this mobile furniture, there’s different stations and zoning in a classroom that really starts to indicate, oh, this is going to be fun. What? I’m curious, what are we going to do in here? One of the best examples of that, I think, is a kindergarten classroom. They understand zoning in a classroom very well, yes, but their costumes are also happened to be larger. Yeah. And I think that’s one of the, the, the unfortunate things about in our system. And with real estate, our classrooms are just too tiny. We have 30 plus students and it’s just impossible to think about that. So in professional learning, it’s sort of the same way. Just a side story about that. When I was at the county, I was asked to, at a conference in the Disneyland Hotel. I was asked to, design a STEM space where people can explore STEM environments and STEM tools and furniture and so on. And then they also asked me, we want you to do a teacher, a session on STEM design and STEM classes. I said, how about this? I’ll design the STEM space and I’ll teach it in that STEM space. Yes, I did, and it happened. It happened to be in an open area where traffic was traveling through the conference. So every session I did was in that space. It was so much fun because it drew a crowd, because people were not hearing me. They were seeing and hearing me about what I was talking about. And that’s often how I did my professional learning on space design is when I had people come, I would have them experience learning instead of me describing the space I would get them to conclude, okay, tell me what you learned about this space today. And they were able to identify every object in there or every wall and surface and describe what it does. I didn’t have to do any of the teaching of that. They experienced it, and now I was able to do that. But for professional learning, I do wish I could start a company for all conferences, design conference spaces that allow us to teach the way we say anybody and everyone should teach.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah, yeah, 100%. I sometimes when I’m in a more traditional space and we have like the lunch break and I’m going to bring them back after I spend that lunch break reorganizing the furniture. Because when we come back, I’m going to facilitate it like a station rotation. And I very intentionally will set up no matter what kind of furniture I’m working with. And often it’s not like super fun flex furniture. I will set up the teacher led station as the horseshoe. If there is a collaborative station, it’s a couple clumps of desks together and then the station that is individual. I do as like rows, two sets of rows facing the back room, not facing me at my teacher led. And so we go through this whole station rotation at the end. One of the things I always pause to do is say, tell me about the furniture. Why did I arrange it this way? What did this, what did this communicate to you? And to your point? It’s like, oh, well, the you the horseshoe, we could all see you in your presentation. You could move around, you could answer questions over here. We’re working on our own. So but sometimes they’ll be like, why was our back facing you? And I’m like, well, you were on screens as a teacher. I want to be able to pop up and scan the room and see, as is my student, are you where I was hoping you would be? Right. So allowing them to come to those conclusions is far more powerful than if I just, you know, explained it. Okay, so I want to talk, I want to transition and I want to talk about the I-4 program I would love. So I love this idea of the inspire innovate implement impact. So what was the inspiration? What were you hoping to kind of achieve with the program? I just want you to kind of share it because I think it’s such a special thing that you’ve created with this. Well, now rolling groups of teachers, I just want you to share it here.

Gerardo Martinez

So in fairness, the that the term I was not my original idea. It actually was there when I got there. But there’s no descriptions, no definitions. And I had to ask, okay, what does each one of these I’s mean? Oh, it’s part of the edtech program. They used to be here and so on. And I thought, okay, I don’t see any evidence of what this was. I’m like, okay, no problem. That’s an opportunity for me to create and brand, but this is going to be so I really studied and looked into those words inspire, innovate, implement, impact. And I gave I gave them meanings. At the time I didn’t have a team yet. And then we put a team together and we started to really look at it. So the idea of inspired, it starts with that because we thought, okay, we need to look at professional learning in a way that gets teachers to think different, to start thinking of problem solving, and in order to get them to problem solve, I mean, it’s it’s it’s overwhelming when you see a problem and all you see is work, right? But then when do you when does one feel challenged to want to tackle a problem. And sometimes you need to inspire them to understand the problem. And so inspiration really begins with that. And also begins by now that we have a new vision and mission. Well, as 2023, how can we connect that vision and mission and inspire them to what we were saying we want to do? And then what are the possibilities? Fortunately, when this program started, again, I had it a few years back before the pandemic and then after the pandemic, I rebooted it to what it is today. And so I thought, okay, let’s, let’s rebrand, let’s rebrand and re-envision what this could be. And this was going to be about human connection. This is going to be about connecting to our professional learning communities. Because of that, that built in collaborative discussions about what do we want students to learn, and then really to empower teachers to really explore technology and artificial intelligence. So we thought, okay, can we use all of those elements to create activities that would inspire teachers so that when they come here, we’re sort of teaching it as the anticipatory set or that provocation or that think, here is let’s think about curiosity. How can I inspire teachers to think the human connection piece was it was important to us. We played videos where teachers were learning that students don’t learn from teachers they don’t like, and we played into those videos about, where a teacher is and a adult is being interviewed, and they just want to thank their former teacher for all that they did for them. Very emotional videos. Well, we found that our teachers, after watching those videos, were very emotional themselves, to the point that we found one teacher really crying kind of uncontrollably. And the reason she was crying, and it was a really great story, is that there was another teacher at that table that was her former student who turned around and said to her, thank you. Thank you for everything you did for me. And I get to sit at this table here with you now as a professional. Wow. So having those moments to inspire people through human connection, through the possibilities of artificial intelligence, it’s what we wanted to do so that we get people inspired and that emotional engagement. Then when we present a problem, do you guys want to tackle this problem together? It’s like, together we can do this. So the model of inspiring is also from the point of view that when I participate, even though I’m a director, I want to be in the professional learning, doing part of it because I want them to see that, hey, I’m going to roll up my sleeves with you, and I want to also attack this problem that I don’t actually have all the answers to either. Just like an architect, we know nothing about what this future building is going to look like, but if we really dig in to understanding the problems together, we can design something that’s incredible. And that’s where the inspired comes from. The innovation comes from that practice in the professional learning. Let’s innovate. Let’s think differently. So we focus on processes. We focus on removing barriers. We talk about, a lot of the universal design for learning without mentioning UDL. We actually talk about how can we access content, what tools do we have available to us. But first, let’s talk about the instructional strategies our PDS people thought we were doing a lot of technology PD and they and they realized that like, wait a minute, they talk a lot about instruction because, we also adopted a little, slogan, learning first, technology second from this book.

Catlin Tucker

Yes. Yeah. Say it again. Okay.

Gerardo Martinez

So learning so it’s technology second. And so we preach that. We say, hey, we’re the educational technology department. We’re not the technology educational department. Listen to what we’re saying. And we’re going to model that. And we’re going to talk instruction first. And the why of learning through every aspect of it. And we’re going to solve problems together, but we’re also going to look at the barriers to that, whether it’s physical, whether it’s a student, whether it’s a learning disability or variability. We’re going to explore as much as we can, and together we’re going to try to tackle and imagine. So once you inspire them, then you can start teaching the processes of innovation. How do you look at a problem? How do you work together? How do you use the room to explore that problem. And then the implementation actually goes into the classroom. I built the program to have instructional coaches, and we got Jim Knight to, data Sue and his organization to do this through training on what is job and better coaching look like and how do you coach teachers. So we created this cycle where we create the PD and we identify three objectives. Objectives for that PD. We want teachers to set a goal from that PD is something that they want to implement from that PD and get the support of their coach to work with them through the next five, six weeks. And then we’ll meet again for another PD and we’ll rinse and repeat. But in that next PD we want to start with reflection also. So we often inspire and then we go straight into reflection. We give three question prompts. They go to the whiteboards. They do some self-reflection. Then they start talking. And we literally move a little herd to each of the whiteboards, and we talk about each of the three reflection practices, about what just happened over the last 5 to 6 weeks. And then we try to make the bridge into the next set of objectives for the next strategies. So the implementation is tied to both the PD and then the 5 or 6 weeks of implementation in the classroom. And then the impact is a real impact for me was really about mindset shifting. Yeah, it’s shifting mindsets where we know with most of us in most classrooms have gone back to the front of the room, lecture, transactional teaching and learning. And it’s like, okay, here we go again. We’ve got to pull it back. We’ve got to like direct people to start thinking of themselves as the one who has to impart knowledge, but that the students are the ones who have to build that understanding of knowledge. So impact first. For me, though, most programs want to see what’s the impact on students. Show me the scores. Show me this class. Yep. And all that. And I said, yeah, that’s that’s great. And I know you’ll probably need that for funding or something. And I hope to get there. But I’m going to tell you right now, my, my goal is to see the mindset shift, the trust built so that teachers want to be part of this program and they want to come back. Yeah, it that’s where the impact came. And so three years into it now we do a reflection activity at the end of the school year is simple question where were you before this I-4 program? Who were you as a teacher? Where are you now in what’s what’s developing? And you and what’s been powerful about that is to hear their mindset shifting, their talk about their empowerment, their talk about their own agency, and then how they’re translating that to students by trying out a small-group instruction, station rotation, building, a choice boards, playlists and so on. Those things we get dig into and we connect them to engagement. We connect them to, we even looked at that self-determination theory that you talk about. We started to look at like, what are the experiences for students that we’re trying to achieve? And last year we started to add, let’s add the assets and strengths. So we had the teachers do strengths assessment with the students right through a program called primary. And then we thought, look a student may have low scores but they also have strengths. How can we feed this information into lesson design with the tools that we have, so that we can start to better understand our students so that we can create that differentiated learning in a more methodical way. And that’s that’s what the program is, is mainly been about three years into it. It has tripled. We’re going into our fourth year. We’re right now we’re recruiting to get teachers. And the challenge has been to scale up their up to the whole district. Yeah. But here’s here’s what I wasn’t I wasn’t concerned about this. And I’ll tell you why. As in the law of innovation, you get those enthusiasts those visionaries in the beginning. Yeah, those are the exact the percentages were almost exact. I said the whole population of teachers in our district, we got exactly those people. And through the PLC process, they go back to their school sites and engage in those questions, and they share the practices from the I-4 to other teachers. And that’s how we have the self recruiting into the program. But that’s been the way to do it. But it’s a very slow process. But I’d rather do it that way. And for a teacher to say, why am I here 100%?

Catlin Tucker

That was the difference. I mean, I mean, just in my experience, those moments when I get to work with teachers who opt in, right, like I’ve chosen to be here versus like the moments when you’re like, oh my gosh, everybody has to be here, right? Is so different. And the momentum clearly is a sign that people are seeing this as valuable. They’re talking about it. You’re getting more people coming in joining. And yeah, it was really it was really exciting to work with them. And I know that the AI piece is now another kind of layer in all of this. And just as we said, it’s learning before tech. It’s like it’s the pedagogy before we’re adding in the tech, the tools, the AI. And that’s a piece of the conversation that definitely like I see a lot of potential to make some of the tasks that we do as educators that are very time intensive and sometimes don’t get done because of that, more manageable designing with higher levels of intentionality, giving students construct specific options, you know, giving them access to more unlimited feedback. But how are you kind of like wrestling with AI and the way teachers are viewing it, how it’s being used in the program?

Gerardo Martinez

Yeah, one of the interesting things about AI as a conclusion, when I do board presentations, I make it a point to at the end of my presentation to tell the board what we’re learning about AI, and I have said it repeatedly, if there’s one thing that I’m learning about AI or that we’re learning as a team, is that we should be focusing more than ever on the instructional practices that we are supposed to be doing anyway, before AI. Yep. And what that means is process over product. And remember what I talked about the high school experience. It’s a process about how do we design our lessons so that this process and this experience is so well planned out, it’s not going to be perfect, but it’s better than what we were doing before because we’ve been intentional of knowing the problem we’re trying to solve with a problem we’re trying to get to. So I know is has become this obviously, this challenge where people want to complain about the cheating and all that. And I’m thinking, well, we’re focused on the wrong part of the problem. You’re focused on the product. Yeah, AI is good at product. Yeah. Right. So I’m seeking I mean these students are going to go to product. And who doesn’t want to take a shortcut, especially when you know it’s due tomorrow for the students and.

Catlin Tucker

Well, not something they’re interested in right. They’re like given a paper topic. They’re like, I don’t care about this. I’m just gonna have AI do it. And if all we look about and you’re. I love that you made that point. Because if all we’re looking at as educators and evaluating is the finished product at the end, then we’re totally missing the opportunity in the in between, you know, where. Yeah. I yeah.

Gerardo Martinez

You hit it on the mark. I was at a conference one time in 2023, and the session gave an example about a student who, had used AI to write an essay, however, they wrote the intro and the conclusion on their own, but they had AI basically create the body. The question to the audience of about 30 people in this session, was this student cheating? And I said, yes, it would you believe it? I was the only one in the room that said yes. Or you know what? Everybody else in the room said, wait, this student is using a tool that’s going to be in her future. That’s going to be something she’s going to have to know how to do. I said, look, I’m not against this. The AI in the in here, but it’s through the process. It’s in the wrong place. If the teacher had said, I want everybody, here’s a prompt that I’m going to give you like a fist, like a teacher prompt for discussion in collaborative groups. We’re going to add AI as another partner at the chair. At your collaborative group, you can engage with the AI and discuss this and look at viewpoints and ask it questions. And as a group, I want you to discuss what you and I. AI is just another partner in the group. If they had done that and then the teacher said, all right, because no more AI. Now write your essays. Then I would say that would be a proper use. And then that student is using it to really for their future. And it was very interesting. And I felt confident. There’s a little bit of doubt in my mind because I’m like, okay, how am I the only one that’s not agreeing with everyone else? But I stick to that to this day because it really has to do with this whole cheating thing. It’s that focus on that product. Like I said. Yeah, it said, let’s think about unpacking a concept, a standard unpacking, and a process. How can we use AI to help me look at something that I’m designing and then partner with the AI to ask it questions like, what am I not thinking? What, what questions do you have for me? If you were a learner, what questions do you have for me if you were going to observe me? So as I prepare for this lesson, coach me through this, and now I can develop something that’s more rich and can take students further than I thought I could do by myself without AI. And that’s where I believe AI has its place. And that’s why, as a district, we took the stance that teachers were going to be the first to learn AI, not students. We’re not opening any AI to students. We’ll eventually start adding the, walled garden. like SchoolAI, Brisk, and so on, but they have to be those walled gardens and we’re going to methodically and at some point we’re going to open it up to the students. But I need teachers to have, wisdom and understanding on what it means to use AI as it’s changing. I want to say daily. Yeah. So it’s it’s too powerful of a tool for us to just kind of go, okay, I’m not in agreement necessarily. What? That red, yellow, green light use of AI. I’m. And that doesn’t tell me anything. I can still do whatever I want. When you give me the green light, I can do whatever I want with this yellow light, but it’s not helping me think. So. How can it become a critical thinking partner in the process of learning one for the teachers as they design their learning? Or how can I ask it to help me remove the barriers in my classroom? When you tell it, here’s the lesson I’m designing. Here’s my room environment. Here’s my student population. Here’s what I know about my students. What are the barriers that I need to consider when designing for this standard? And for this idea and this concept? That’s where I think that’s best. I think in education, and I think we need to keep it there and help it be part of thinking, process, thinking, and not the product. I believe products are directly proportional to the amount that you invest in understanding the problem. If you don’t invest in understanding a problem and designing and ideating for it, if you rush through that like designing a lesson quickly, or just going to some source to give me a lesson, having AI give me the lesson, then the product is going to reflect that. Yeah. I think, the more you invest in it with the students, the better the product is going to be.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah. You and I have a similar approach because I definitely I talk about it on two sides and I always start with like again, if we think of a teacher as architect, teachers, designer, now we have this high power tool added to our tool belt that makes it easier than ever to really identify the needs of the group we’re designing for. Think strategically about the modifications that we’re making. And I think all of that was, you know, arguably totally overwhelming before and fair. It was like, it’s all time intensive work. But I do think like helping educators, not just throwing tools at them, but really teaching them how to intentionally design with those tools to leverage them. To your point, as thought partners, to improve their understanding of this work that they’re doing, the population they serve is so incredibly valuable. All right. So I feel like we could talk for another hour but I know we’re out of time. So I want to lob you. My final question which I ask everyone since this is the balance. Just curious if in your very busy life professional personal is there something routine mindset habit. What tip that you have kind of adopted that helps you strive for some semblance of balance?

Gerardo Martinez

Well, I’m probably not the best person to ask about it.

Catlin Tucker

I think most like to say that.

Gerardo Martinez

Yes, I can imagine. I, I’m so committed to the work that I do, and I get excited about being innovative and being a creator. That I take that home sometimes. In other words, when I do interior design work, graphic design work, or architecture work, I often do it at home, and that’s not a good balance. But I’m passionate about being so focused on doing that that’s not something I can do at work. Meetings, interruptions, phone calls. I can never be really intentional and that, that focus. But one thing that I try to remind myself us of is and I’m reminded by my own family as well, it’s like a, you know, time for us, right? And sometimes I will do that. I will just devote to what I’m supposed to be doing here at home, like I’m taking these days off so that I can work on projects at home. I can do that in summer. Even though there’s some busy things to do this summer, I know I need to do this. I need to take time just to be home, be with my wife, go out with her, or just spend time at home and watching Netflix or something. Yeah. So that’s been kind of that. I used to have other hobbies with music. I used to have hobbies with drawing. But I don’t take time for those anymore. Perhaps I do, but I like taking pictures as well. You know, something that I do with my phone. I try to capture moments. I try to capture sunrise or sunset. I try to capture architecture, and I try to just make those as things that I’m capturing for what I enjoy looking at, even though it’s still sounds a little bit academic, but maybe I need to be looking at capturing moments that really describe life. Sunrise is one of the most beautiful things that I enjoy, seeing. I don’t get that much time to see it anymore. I do get up that early often, but my I’m working or I’m or doing something else, but that balance of just, you know, going for a walk and exercising is something that I do sometimes, but not at all, worthy of saying it’s balance.

Catlin Tucker

Well, maybe it’s in the act of taking the photo that is that moment of like pause to recognize those moments. Maybe it’s because life and I don’t know about you, but every year I’m like, I can’t believe how quickly this year flew by. And I think sometimes those moments, those like reminders, whatever it is that causes you to pause and just take something in, like a sunrise or whatever, I think that’s that’s valuable.

Gerardo Martinez

I did that with tomatoes the other day doing tomatoes, and I just loved the way the sun was reflecting on the tomatoes. And you can see every detail of the stem and the little paring it. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is a perfect summer moment. So I just was taking pictures just to capture that. Most people will think, why are you taking pictures of tomatoes? Yeah, I’m like, because it’s the moment. It’s that sunset part. And the way the sun’s reflecting on the tomatoes, it feels like summer. And that’s that was my moment.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah, well, I love that. Thank you so much for joining me for this conversation and just sharing your work and your passion. And I’m just like, so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with you and this amazing group of innovators that you have kind of cultivated in this program. So thank you.

Gerardo Martinez

You’re welcome. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Catlin Tucker

I always love getting to talk with somebody who has a real love of instructional design, since that’s an area of passion for me personally and this kind of understanding that Gerardo and I both have about the value and the role of the educator in designing experiences for the specific group of learners that they’re working with is something that I really value. I wish more schools and districts were messaging to teachers about how important that work is, that they do, supporting them in kind of expanding their instructional toolbelt. I love the conversation about spaces. I know it’s really challenging, especially for folks at the secondary level. You have a lot of kids, you have a limited amount of space. But I will say, even as a high school English teacher with a packed room myself, there were things I was able to do to get creative with my space. Having students kind of reconfigure the furniture for certain types of lessons. I remember the day I got rid of my big teacher desk. I just decided this huge behemoth desk was taking up so much room, and I wanted to create more space. I wanted to be able to move around. So I literally just took one of the smaller desks and put retrofitted wheels on it, so I could just kind of scoot around the room and be next to students supporting them, answering questions and, you know, not feeling kind of like I’m one signaling that this is my space and this is my area of the classroom. But really, that my role was to be nimble was to work alongside students, move around the space. So thinking about the new year and if there are any opportunities to kind of reimagine how you use your space. Because truly, when kids walk in the door, when they see the layout of the room, it sends a really clear message about the kind of learning that they’re likely to experience in that space. So kind of taking a step back, look at that classroom you’re setting up and what message is it sending to learners? So I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your week. If you have questions, comments, feedback for me, you can always reach out. I’m easy to find on social wherever you hang out online, or you can leave a question comment directly to me through my website. CatlinTucker.com I will include Gerardo’s LinkedIn profile if you have questions specifically for him. And of course I hope you guys have a great week. I will see you back here next Tuesday.

The post Teachers as Learning Architects: Rethinking Teaching, Space, and AI with Gerardo Martinez appeared first on Dr. Catlin Tucker.

At the beginning of the school year, teachers invest significant time establishing classroom routines and procedures. We teach students how to enter the room, access materials, transition between activities, submit their work, and ask for help. We know students need to be explicitly taught how the classroom functions and workflows operate if we want them to navigate our classrooms with increasing confidence and independence.

We need to approach teaching students how to learn with the same intentionality. Similar to parenting, one of our main goals as educators should be to prepare young people to navigate increasingly complex situations with greater confidence and independence. That requires an intentional, gradual release of responsibility in the classroom. We cannot expect students to become independent, self-directed learners if we make all of the decisions, guide every step, and do the cognitive heavy lifting for them.

The challenge that most teachers face is the tremendous pressure to cover content. That pressure makes it difficult to justify spending valuable class time teaching students how to learn. We become so focused on what kids need to know, understand, and be able to do for our subject area that we may neglect the skills they need to make sense of information, engage with complex ideas, work effectively with diverse groups of peers, and monitor their progress.

Let’s consider something as common as note-taking. I recently published a blog about guided notes and shared resources on social media about supporting students in taking notes. I received several comments about how students cannot take notes, but I wonder how many of those same teachers spend time explicitly teaching their students how to take notes.

• How should they structure their notes to effectively organize their ideas?
• What should they listen for or look for?
• How do they distinguish an idea from a supporting detail?
• How much should they write?
• How might they use those notes after a mini-lesson or lecture to study for a quiz or test?

If we want students to take notes independently, we have to first explicitly teach them how.

Supporting the Shift to Student-led Learning

The same is true for any student-led learning routine or strategy we value. Students need time to learn how to navigate these strategies with confidence. When I talk about student-led learning, time is often the biggest point of pushback. Teachers worry about how much time it takes to prepare students to work independently or with classmates. But independence requires a time investment. If we want students to facilitate discussions or engage in ongoing self-assessment, we have to teach them how. That means investing time up front to properly onboard them to these strategies.

The time investment may feel like a big ask. After all, time is the one thing most teachers don’t feel like they have enough of. However, investing in students’ ability to learn independently can save teachers significant time and energy over the course of a school year.

The more students can confidently initiate and navigate learning routines without constant teacher direction, the more cognitive work they can do. That creates space for the teacher to shift from transferring all of the information and directing every aspect of the learning experience from the front of the room. It frees them to spend more time observing, facilitating, giving feedback, and working with individuals and small groups to meet their specific needs.

The payoff also extends well beyond deeper engagement with and understanding of academic content. As students take greater responsibility for their learning, they have opportunities to develop self-regulation, self-management, and responsible decision-making. They have more opportunities to develop skills like collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving.

These skills are not separate from learning; they are essential to becoming a capable and confident learner. They are also increasingly important in the world students are entering beyond school. As AI’s capacity for handling increasingly complex tasks increases, the ability to communicate, collaborate, think critically, solve complex problems, make responsible decisions, and manage oneself becomes even more valuable. These distinctly human skills need to be developed through explicit instruction and practice in the classroom.

An Onboarding Process for Student-Led Learning

Onboarding students to student-led learning strategies and routines is not unlike teaching them subject-specific skills. We would not expect students to master a complex math process or write an effective argument after simply explaining the directions. We model the process, provide opportunities for guided practice, give feedback, and gradually release responsibility as students develop their abilities and confidence.

When I work with teachers, I use an onboarding process that mirrors the gradual release of responsibility that many teachers use to teach academic concepts and skills. The goal is to make the process feel familiar and manageable while giving students the modeling, practice, feedback, and reflection they need to successfully take on more responsibility for their learning. The process I use has five discrete steps.

I Do: Explicitly Teach and Model the Strategy

The first step in onboarding students to the new student-led strategy is explicitly teaching them what the strategy is, why they’re using it, and what they will be expected to do. We can’t assume they know how to engage in a productive conversation, give meaningful feedback, or even take useful notes. If we want students to eventually navigate these strategies without us, we need to slow down and teach them the individual skills involved.

Begin by explaining the purpose of the strategy and breaking it into its component parts:

• What does the strategy ask students to do?
• What skills will they need to use this strategy successfully?
• What specific steps are involved in the process?
• What decisions will they need to make on their own?

This is an opportunity to provide students with scaffolds, such as sentence stems or sentence frames, question starters, graphic organizers, checklists, or role cards that they can use for support as they begin using the strategy.

Then, we need to model the strategy. This is where a think-aloud is particularly valuable. Seeing us apply a strategy isn’t enough. They also need to hear the thinking, decision-making, and the cognitive work happening that would otherwise be invisible. As you model the strategy, describe and explain what you’re noticing, the questions you’re asking yourself, and why you’re making particular choices.

For example, reciprocal teaching requires students to summarize, question, clarify, and predict as they make sense of text or media together. Before students can manage that process independently, the teacher needs to explicitly teach and model the thinking involved in each comprehension lens.

Explicit instruction at this stage takes time, but the goal is not for the teacher to continue doing this work indefinitely. The goal is to make the skills and thinking involved in the strategy visible so students are better prepared to practice them with support.

We Do: Practice Together with Teacher Support

Once students understand the purpose of a strategy, the individual skills involved, and have seen those skills modeled, they need an opportunity to practice them with support. During the “we do,” the teacher shifts from demonstrating the strategy to actively engaging students in using it. The goal is not independence yet, but rather to give students a chance to try the skills themselves while the teacher is available to prompt their thinking, address confusion, and provide immediate feedback.

This guided practice can happen as a whole class with partners or in small groups. The teacher might pose a question, invite students to try a skill, or ask them to compare their thinking or work with a partner. Then the teacher can bring the group back together to discuss their responses. This creates an important bridge between watching the teacher model a skill and being able to use it independently.

The “we do” is also an important opportunity to begin shifting some of the cognitive work to students. Instead of telling students what is important, what question to ask, what is confusing, or what might happen next, the teacher prompts students to make those decisions and explain their thinking. As students practice, the teacher can listen for misconceptions, highlight strong examples, and offer feedback that helps students understand what high-quality implementation of this skill looks like.

At this stage, the teacher is still actively guiding the process, but they are doing less of the thinking. Students are beginning to practice the individual skills they will need to coordinate on their own. Once they have had the opportunity to practice each comprehension lens with support, they are better prepared to see how those pieces come together in the full reciprocal teaching routine.

Fishbowl: Observe, Analyze, and Refine the Strategy

After students practice the individual skills, they need to see how those skills work together. A fishbowl makes the complete strategy visible. A small group models while classmates observe, analyze, take notes, and provide feedback.

The teacher can invite a small group of students to sit at the center of the room and work through the strategy while their classmates observe. Before they begin, give the students watching a clear focus for their observations:

• What should they look for or notice?
• What does effective use of the strategy look and sound like?
• Where might the group get stuck?
• What small shifts might make the strategy work better?

Providing an observation guide or a short list of success criteria can help students focus their attention. It also prepares them to give specific and useful feedback. The goal of a fishbowl is not for the inner circle to perform the strategy perfectly the first time. The fishbowl creates an opportunity to practice, pause, receive feedback, and try again.

As the small group works, the teacher observes and listens. The teacher pauses the group to provide targeted feedback: What did the group do well? What’s one thing they might focus on improving in the next round? The teacher can then invite the students in the outer circle to share their observations and suggestions.

This process makes feedback an immediate part of the learning. The teacher and peers provide feedback while students are still engaged in the process. Students can then act on that feedback immediately instead of waiting until the strategy is complete. The inner circle then has the opportunity to apply feedback immediately in the next round.

The fishbowl also benefits the students observing. They are not passive spectators. Instead, they analyze the strategy and compare what they observe to the success criteria. They identify effective moves and notice potential challenges. This prepares them to use and improve the strategy themselves.

By the end of the fishbowl, students have seen the strategy in action. That will make it easier for them to use it confidently on their own or with a small group.

Students Do: Practice with Teacher Feedback

After students have seen the strategy modeled in the fishbowl, give them time to analyze what made it effective. Then, it is time for them to try the strategy themselves. Depending on the strategy, students may practice independently, with a partner, or in a small group.

At this stage, the teacher releases responsibility for managing the strategy to students. Instead of directing each step or prompting students through the process, the teacher steps back and observes. Students need space to make decisions, work through challenges, and build confidence. They are learning to navigate the strategy without relying on the teacher to tell them what to do next.

That doesn’t mean the teacher disappears from the process. As students work, the teacher circulates, listens, observes, and provides targeted feedback and support. Rather than taking over when students struggle, the teacher can use questions to guide them in problem solving. Teachers should provide just enough support to keep students progressing while preserving their ownership over the process.

This is also an important opportunity for the teacher to gather information:

• Which students are using the strategy effectively?
• Where are students getting stuck?
• What scaffolds are they using or no longer need?
• Are there aspects of the strategy that may need to be retaught or modeled again?

The teacher can use these observations to guide their next moves. Which students are ready for greater independence? Who would benefit from additional practice and support?

The goal of this stage is to give students repeated opportunities to use the strategy. As they practice, the teacher is available to coach and provide feedback. With practice, students should become increasingly confident managing both the academic and collaborative demands of the strategy, preparing them to use it more independently throughout the school year.

Self and Peer Assessment: Monitor Progress and Provide Feedback

As students begin using a student-led strategy with greater independence, they also need opportunities to reflect on how effectively they are using it. Self and peer assessment require students to think about the quality of their work. They must consider what they are doing well and what areas are in need of growth. To support this process, teachers can create an asset-based continuum describing what skills look and/or sound like at each stage of development.

A traditional rubric focuses on what students may be missing, lacking, or failing to include. By contrast, an asset-based continuum highlights what students are demonstrating and makes the next stage of development visible. For example, a continuum might describe the use of the strategy at four stages: beginning, developing, proficient, and advanced. At each stage, the language describes observable skills and behaviors students are demonstrating. This gives students a clear picture of their current skill level and what they can work toward next. Students can use the continuum to self-assess after practicing a strategy:

• Where would they place themselves right now on the continuum?
• What evidence from their work or participation supports that assessment score?
• What are they already doing effectively?
• What is one skill or behavior they want to focus on improving the next time they use this strategy?

The same continuum can guide peer assessment. Instead of asking students to tell a classmate what they did well or what to fix, students can use the continuum to guide their feedback. This helps avoid vague or deficit-based comments. Students can identify evidence of the skills a peer is already demonstrating and offer a specific suggestion for growth. The continuum creates a shared language for discussing progress. It also positions feedback as information students can use to improve, rather than a judgment of their performance.

The Investment in Independence Pays Off

At this point, you might be thinking this sounds like a lot of time to spend on a single strategy. Onboarding students to a student-led strategy requires us to slow down and explicitly teach the skills involved. We must model our thinking, provide opportunities to practice, and offer feedback. The time we spend doing this foundational work is an investment. Each strategy students learn becomes a tool they can use again and again, allowing them to navigate learning with increasing independence.

Consider reciprocal teaching. Once students understand how to summarize, question, clarify, and predict, they can use those skills effectively in a small group. Now, the teacher has a powerful strategy they can use again and again. Students can engage with a text, video, podcast, infographic, or other source of information and work collaboratively to make sense of it. They have a process for identifying key ideas, asking questions, surfacing and resolving confusion, making predictions, and discussing their thinking with peers.

Students have a structure and the skills to do more of that cognitive work themselves. That shift creates something every teacher needs more of: time.

When students can manage meaningful learning experiences independently or collaboratively, teachers can use their finite class time for work where their expertise and presence have the greatest impact. They can:

• meet with a small group that needs additional instruction
• conference with individual students
• provide real-time feedback
• assess progress
• offer targeted support or extension

The return on that initial investment also extends beyond a single lesson or strategy. Students are learning how to manage themselves and their learning, work productively with their peers, monitor their understanding, and reflect on their growth. With repeated opportunities to practice these skills, they become more independent, self-directed, and metacognitive learners.

The reality is that onboarding takes time. However, the alternative is spending the entire school year directing and managing learning experiences that students are capable of learning to navigate themselves.

The ultimate goal is to invest time early so we can release more responsibility later. The more students learn to lead, the less teachers have to carry.

The post Onboarding Students to Student-Led Learning Strategies appeared first on Dr. Catlin Tucker.

Routines on their own are not enough. If the teacher is the only source of directions, reminders, and support in a classroom, students will remain dependent on the teacher. This can make transitioning to the Station Rotation Model challenging. In a rotation, teachers are facilitating their teacher-led station, differentiating instruction and modeling sessions for small groups, and need to concentrate on the small group in front of them. That means the learning environment should shoulder some of the instructional load. While the teacher is providing targeted instruction, the classroom should help students navigate tasks, troubleshoot simple issues, and access the supports they need to continue learning independently.

This post explores how intentionally designing the learning environment can remove barriers and support growing independence for even our youngest learners. From a UDL perspective, the learning environment is another tool we can intentionally design to remove barriers that might interfer with learning. The goal is to design a classroom that answers students’ questions before they need to ask the teacher. Students should be able to find what they need, solve simple problems, and move through the learning without needing the teacher at every turn.

When we thoughtfully design our classrooms with designated zones, visual supports, clear signage, intentional furniture arrangements, and accessible resources, the classroom itself becomes another teacher. The space can support students while freeing the teacher to provide targeted small-group instruction and respond to learners’ individual needs.

Create Designated Learning Zones

One of the most consistently supported strategies in the research on flexible learning environments is the use of classroom zones or micro-environments, designed to support different types of learning activities. Rather than treating the classroom as a single instructional space, zoning allows teachers to intentionally design areas that communicate the purpose of the learning taking place there. Classroom zones are particularly helpful for young learners who rely heavily on environmental cues to understand what behavior and activity are expected in a given space (Kale & Kawane, 2026).

From a UDL perspective, these zones remove unnecessary barriers by making the classroom more predictable and easier to navigate. Instead of relying on the teacher for constant direction, students begin to use the environment as a guide for what to do and how to do it.

When designing classroom zones, every area should answer these three questions.

• What happens here? What type of learning occurs in this space?
• What tools are available here? What materials or resources support the learning?
• How should students behave here? What should the learning look and sound like in this space?

If students can answer those three questions simply by looking around the room, then the environment is doing some of the instructional work for you. Below are several types of zones you might want to consider creating in your classroom.

Teachers do not need to create every single one of these zones. Instead, think about the moments during the day when students rely most heavily on you. Do they consistently ask where to turn in work? Do they ask where to find materials? What to do when they finish? Those questions will reveal opportunities for us to redesign the environment so it provides that guidance and support instead.

Supporting Student Thinking with Visual Supports

One way to reduce the cognitive load for young learners is to make thinking visible. Instead of expecting students to remember directions, steps in a process, or strategies, use visual supports that allow them to access that information independently when they need it.

Young learners have limited working memory. If they are trying to remember the teacher’s directions while also simultaneously completing a task, collaborating with peers, or solving a problem, their cognitive resources can become overwhelmed. Visual supports reduce that burden by making important information continuously available instead of interrupting the teacher to ask, “What do I do next?” or “How do I solve this?” Students can use resources around them to answer those questions independently.

From a UDL perspective, visual supports proactively remove barriers by providing multiple ways for students to access information and guidance. They also reinforce a really important message, which is that the classroom is full of resources that are designed to support thinking. Some of the most effective visual supports include:

• Anchor charts that capture strategies, processes, or examples that students can reference during the learning.
• Visual workflows using pictures, icons, and simple checklists that break multi-step tasks into manageable parts.
• Sentence stems that support collaborative conversations and academic discourse.
• Worked examples that show students what quality work looks like before they begin.
• Picture directions that allow emerging readers to navigate tasks without relying solely on written instruction.
• Content-specific reference tools such as number lines, hundreds charts, alphabet strips, sound walls, vocabulary cards, or graphic organizers.

It is important to note that we do not want to cover every inch of every wall with visuals. The research indicates that 20-50% of wall space should be kept clear to maintain focus and attention (Fisher, Godwin, Seltman, 2014). Too many visuals can be another source of distraction and cognitive overload. Instead, display the supports students actually need. Then teach them how to use those supports and regularly reference them during instruction. The more students see you using an anchor chart, pointing to a visual flow chart or workflow, or modeling how to use a reference tool in the classroom, the more likely they are to use those resources independently during a station rotation.

Arrange Furniture to Support Learning

The way we arrange furniture communicates what kind of learning we expect students to do in a particular space. Just as classroom zones signal the purpose of an area, the furniture within each zone should reinforce how students will learn there. In other words, the physical environment should communicate the expectations before the teacher ever has to explain them.

For example:

• A small table with four or five chairs around it naturally communicates conversation and collaboration.
• A quiet corner with soft seating encourages reading, reflection, and independent work.
• Open floor space with clipboards and whiteboards invites movement and hands-on learning.
• A maker space stocked with materials encourages creativity, tinkering, exploration, and problem-solving.

In each case, the furniture is sending students a very clear message about what learning looks like in that space.

From a UDL perspective, intentionally arranging furniture removes unnecessary barriers by making it easier for students to move between different learning experiences and participate in ways that align with the task and the teacher’s expectations. It also reduces transition time because students don’t have to rearrange desks. As you think about your classroom, ask yourself:

• Does the furniture support the type of learning happening in each zone?
• Can students easily transition between learning experiences?
• Is there enough flexibility to accommodate independent work, partner learning, collaboration, and student-led instruction throughout the day?
• Does the arrangement encourage movement without creating unnecessary distractions?

Remember, flexibility doesn’t necessarily mean we have to have flexible furniture. Even in classrooms with traditional desks and tables, teachers can thoughtfully arrange existing furniture to create distinct learning spaces that support different instructional goals.

The objective is intentionally designing a classroom where furniture helps communicate expectations, supports learning, and allows students to navigate the day with increasing confidence and independence.

Make Learning Supports Easy to Find and Use

One of the simplest ways to build independence for young learners is to make sure the tools they need are readily available. Too often, students interrupt the teacher because they can’t find a pencil, they need another piece of paper, forgot where the math manipulatives are stored, or they aren’t sure where to find supports like a graphic organizer or a number line. While each interruption might seem minor in the moment, it pulls the teacher’s attention away from small-group instruction happening at the teacher-led station.

Instead, think about creating a learning support station or a learning support zone where students know they can independently access the materials and tools they need to continue learning. From a UDL perspective, this is another way we proactively remove barriers before they interrupt learning. Instead of waiting for students to ask for help, we design the environment so many of their needs can be met independently. Depending on your students and the learning taking place, your learning support station or zone might include items like:

• Sharpened pencils, crayons, scissors, glue, paper, headphones or earbuds for listening activities
• Number lines, hundreds charts, multiplication tape charts, and other math reference tools
• Alphabet strips, sound walls, vocabulary cards, or high-frequency word lists
• Graphic organizers and writing templates
• Manipulatives for math or science investigations
• Timers to help students manage their work time
• Fidgets or other regulation tools, if they’re part of your classroom routines

The goal isn’t to fill a shelf with supplies. The goal is to teach students that these resources exist to support their learning and that they are expected to use them when they need them and put them back when they are done. That expectation is important. Many young learners will continue asking the teacher for help simply because it’s a habit they’ve developed. We have to intentionally teach students to pause before they ask the teacher and instead ask themselves:

• Is there a tool in the classroom that can help me?
• Can I use one of the visual supports we’ve created?
• Can I solve this problem with the resources available to me?

Over time, students begin to see the classroom as a resource-rich learning environment instead of viewing the teacher as the only source of support. That shift is a really important step toward growing independent and self-directed learners.

As you look around your classroom, ask yourself:

• If I were working with a small group, could my students find what they need without interrupting me?
• Are the learning supports students use most often visible and accessible?
• Have I explicitly taught students when and how to use those supports?
• Does my classroom encourage students to rely on the environment before relying on me?

Simply making resources available isn’t enough. Just like routines, students need to be taught where the supports are, when to use them, and how to use those tools. When we intentionally design classroom zones, make thinking visible with visual supports, arrange furniture to support learning, and provide accessible resources, we’re designing an environment that removes barriers, reduces cognitive load, and helps students develop the confidence to navigate the learning with increasing independence.

Want To Learn More?

Check out The Station Rotation Model & UDL: Elevate Tier 1 Instruction & Cultivate Learner Agency!

The post UDL and the Station Rotation Model in the Early Grades: Design the Environment appeared first on Dr. Catlin Tucker.

Episode Description

AI isn’t just changing the tools people use at work; it’s reshaping the tasks, decisions, and skills required across nearly every industry.

In this episode, I talk with Dr. Cameron Sublett, co-author of Applied Co-Intelligence: Preparing Career and Technical Education Learners for an AI-Driven Workforce, to explore what these changes mean for Career and Technical Education (CTE) and the future of career readiness. We discuss the Applied Co-Intelligence Model, the difference between AI exposure and AI displacement, the human skills that are becoming even more valuable, and why authentic, performance-based learning is critical for preparing students to work thoughtfully alongside AI.

Whether you’re a CTE teacher, instructional coach, school leader, curriculum designer, or simply thinking about how AI is changing education, this conversation offers a practical and hopeful framework for preparing students for careers that will continue to evolve.

Episode Resources

• Dr. Sublett’s LinkedIn Profile
• Applied Co-Intelligence: Preparing Career & Technical Education Learners for an AI-Driven Workforce
• Related Blog: Rethinking Career Readiness in an AI World: What It Means for CTE

Books Mentioned:

• Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI
• Human Work

Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI transcription tools to support accessibility and provide a searchable, readable version of the podcast. While we’ve reviewed and lightly edited the content for clarity, there may still be occasional errors or omissions.

Catlin Tucker

Welcome to The Balance. I’m Doctor Catlin Tucker and today my guest is Doctor Cameron Sublett, who is an experienced educator, a researcher, and is now the senior director of innovation and incubation at the Foundation of California Community Colleges. He leads initiatives to design, test and scale solutions to expand educational access, improve outcomes, and strengthen economic mobility across the state’s community colleges.

Catlin Tucker

So I’m very excited to have him on the program to talk with me a bit about the intersection between career and technical education and AI. Well, I’m super excited to have you on the podcast, but before we dive in, I’d love for listeners to get to know a little bit about you so you can tell us about your journey in education and kind of what led you to the work that you’re doing right now. That’s kind of at this interesting intersection between AI and workforce readiness and, you know, career and technical education.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Yeah, thanks for asking. So, let’s see, I’m the first in my family to go to college. That was a shock to the family. because I come from a family of plumbers and trades people. But I decided to go to college, went to college, and decided that I liked it and wanted more college. And then when I got to graduate school, they said, hey, you know, if you don’t want to pay for graduate school, you could teach. And I had never thought about teaching in my entire life because I had never met a teacher or an educator outside of the classrooms that I was in. And so I said, sure, I’ll give it a go, because free sounds good. And honestly, day two or day three, I fell in love because, I had never been given that platform before, and I had not realized just how much creative license you have. And I didn’t realize that I loved being creative as a person. And I also didn’t realize just how much edification I get from serving and helping others. And the classroom environment is certainly just an opportunity to open up doors and opportunities for folks that were like me first in their family to go to college and kind of looking to get through the, you know, the whole experience in the system. And so it was love at first lecture, I guess. And then I guess more college. Yeah. So then my first job out of graduate school was working at Santa Barbara City College as a faculty member, I was there for ten years, and it was the greatest experience of my entire life, made me fall in love with community colleges in particular. Finished my PhD in community college leadership, policy and research methods. And that, then allowed me to focus my research in that space. But then at some point, I kind of like did some reflection on where I come from. And again, I come from that background of tradespeople and plumbers. And I was wondering, how do I connect the dots, this love I have for community colleges and education, with the need for a trades workforce. And so that’s been the focus of my work over the past, you know, seven to eight years has been improving the nation’s career and technical education infrastructure.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah. Oh, I love that. And I just have to tell everybody listening. So I had the pleasure of being one of Doctor Sublett’s students. So when I was going through my, you know, doctoral journey, I think you taught the hardest class I personally took, for sure. Was it like a quantitative methods class?

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Yeah. Statistics.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah. I didn’t care for that. But I thought you were a great teacher.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Well, that’s nice. I’ll let you—you know, We’ve had this conversation in the past. I will say you sandbag your own ability because you asked the sharpest questions in that entire class. So, I think you have a hidden quantitative skill set. Yeah.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah, I think this is debatable. So I have my CTE credential. So I have actually taught in a career pathway myself. But for teachers who might be listening or educators who aren’t necessarily familiar with career and technical education or CTE, can you kind of explain what it is and how it is uniquely positioned to help prepare students for this kind of rapidly evolving workforce?

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Great question. So I’ll try to answer this question. Not getting into trouble. I’m deeply tapped into the national CTE advocacy and research orgs in the country, and their answer to this question would be to remind everyone that the bifurcation, between CTE and non-CTE, the general education, pathway or yeah, journey, is unnecessary and unhelpful. Oh, interesting. And in fact modern CTE is best when it integrates itself into the educational pathway. But that said, there are some important distinctions to be made. Right. So CTE, career and technical education, is a relatively new rebrand on vocational education, right? And I think a lot of folks are familiar with that. If you say vocational education, people can kind of get it right. That’s that, you know, traditional educational experience aligned with agriculture or construction. And I think there is a lot to take away from that, historical understanding of CTE. We still very much are in the modern era of CTE. Focus on aligning students’ educational experiences in the classroom with specific occupational opportunities. So there should be no daylight in the modern CTE classroom between the experiences, that students get and the jobs that they’re preparing for, they should be fully integrated. And you can argue that’s not necessarily the case for the general education pathway, where it’s maybe more theoretical, like think about, you know, pure math, right? Or think about economics. You know, there certainly are economists out there, but not every student going through the economics pathway is going to go and become an economist. But, you know, most students, I would say, if not all going through an HVAC certificate program are going to go into, that particular trade. So there’s strong alignment between the educational pathways and experiences and, occupations in the CTE pathway. And I think that’s probably the biggest distinction. With that said, as I alluded to or alluded to earlier, you know, contemporary, advocates of contemporary, contemporary CTE will argue that the distinctions have blurred in recent years and for good reason, because vocational education does have a dark history of tracking low-income, marginalized, disadvantaged students into low opportunity occupations. So that’s your pathway. This is the pathway for others. Right. And so by integrating the two we walk away, consciously from that past dark history of tracking, and perpetuated marginalization to now an open, inclusive pathway for all students that’s going to lead to in-demand opportunities for all students.

Catlin Tucker

Oh, I love that distinction. That’s so interesting. And I knew that it was like obviously kind of an evolution or a different it was different from vocational. But that, that just that was really helpful, even for me, as somebody who has taught at a high school that has CTE pathways. But I don’t know necessarily when we were doing it, how aligned like it was everything kids learning really kind of helping them kind of focused on that career pathway that they had chosen. We had like health care pathway. We had all of these different ones. And sometimes I felt like it was almost kids opportunity to, you know, high school students don’t always know what they want to do. So it was a way to say, hey, this is kind of interesting to me. I want to check it out. Yeah. So that’s just that’s interesting to hear your because I.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Would say there’s governance structures that are different as well. Like for CTE programs, they have advisory boards and they have workforce boards that will monitor or provide feedback on the curriculum, the core sequencing and the programs. Are they in line with modern industry standards? I don’t think you can say the same thing about like in economics or pure math. There’s not a workforce for that sitting there saying, yes, that’s the exact economic theories or tools that we’re using in the workforce. But for, you know, those trades programs at the community college, that’s very much the case where you might have, you know, local industry, or employers represented on your workforce board that are saying, hey, this is the skill set we need today. These are the tools we are using, etc.. So there’s that direct connection with industry and employers that, in theory, exist to keep CTE refreshed, contemporary and modern. So it’s not falling behind of the workforce.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah. And part of why I actually asked you to join me for this conversation was a paper you coauthored, kind of talking about AI and the implications of AI on kind of the workforce generally, but more like, what does this mean for CTE, potentially. And there’s so much conversation it feels like, right now that is focused on AI either eliminating jobs or transforming the work that we do. And so from your perspective, what do you actually think is changing in the workforce, and what are the implications of those changes in terms of how we’re preparing students for tomorrow’s careers? And maybe that’s something that these boards are actually grappling with right now as these rapid changes are happening.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, that is honestly the million dollar question. That’s what everybody’s kind of focused on, right now. And if they’re not, they should be right. The tricky thing, though, is that it’s just so hard, to accurately, you know, determine the relationship between these changes we’re seeing and in AI and downstream impacts on labor. You know, in my own paper that you cite in my own work, you know, I try to not join the chorus of Hot Takers, out there because I just know that there’s so much noise in the data, and I don’t want to, you know, I want to be very careful, because there is obviously, this is a hot topic and a really pressing issue. And so I think a little bit of prudence and caution is important. So what I do in the paper is really just go back and look at the, large body of literature we do have on this topic. And there is a large body of literature. And even though, you know, AI is, you know, relatively new, at least in its latest iteration, technological disruption is not new. It’s in fact is very old. Right. And so, thankfully, we have a century’s worth of literature to draw from. Again, you know, AI is different. And I think the speed and scale at which it’s disrupting or could disrupt our labor market is different. But this is not the first game changing technology we’ve had, you know. So in the paper, I try to lean on that past research and, you know, I think we find that there’s, you know, a number of, trends that you can, you know, identify through past technological disruptions, like, you know, electricity, you know, advanced manufacturing and stuff like that. The arrival of the internet, and, you know, and so we try to we try to ground our conversation around AI and CTE on this body of literature rather than getting ahead of the moment. Let’s look backwards and see how things have shaken up the labor market over time. And so I think one thing that’s important for folks to know out of the gate is that, the way in which technology disrupts the labor market is not what folks tend to assume is the intuitive relationship. You know, if a technology pops up, it doesn’t necessarily take away a job or add a job. Technology, interacts with the labor market at the task level. So if you think about a given job like a given occupation, designated by a standard occupational classification code from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that job is composed of a number of discrete tasks, like nursing.

Catlin Tucker

Right.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

If you’re a nurse, right. You have a bunch of different tasks you need to do to perform your job. Technology influences nursing at the task level. Those discrete tasks nurses are required to perform. The technology could, for example, do the same, saying that a nurse might have had to do by hand manually the human labor. Right. And so then the need for that human labor that’s human skill goes away. So note taking, for example, now we have LLMs that are able to transcribe put together fantastic summaries. And so that particular task of the nurse is no longer needed. Do we still need nurses. Yeah. Because there’s a bunch of other tasks that the technology cannot do. The question is at what point is there that saturation across the task composition of the occupation that therefore rules out the need for that given occupation. So it’s just a, I think, important to understand out of the gate that people are worried about is technology going to take away my job? The important thing to ask is instead, is technology going to take away the skills I need to perform the tasks that compose my job? And then if you layer on top of it, the fact that the arrival of a new technology also means often the arrival development of new tasks, then the calculus gets really complicated very fast. Because sure, a new technology could eliminate the need for the human skill to perform a task. But that arrival also means the introduction of a new tasks that requires a new skill set. So I think what we’re seeing right now, and this is, I think, a safe thing to claim is that technology, AI is reshuffling the task skill, composition of given jobs. I don’t think it’s fair or responsible to say right now that AI is taking away jobs or introducing new jobs. I think we’re still early in the game. But what is pretty clear is that it’s reshuffling the tasks that are required to perform a given job. And it’s been leading to new kind of demands for skills that are, you know, related to those new tasks. So that was a very long winded answer to your question. Sorry about that.

Catlin Tucker

No, no, no, it makes me it also just makes my brain spin a little bit of like, okay, so maybe AI is taking over an increasing number of kind of time intensive, energy intensive tasks. So maybe over time you do need fewer people to for a particular position. But then I can also see the task some people in certain careers doing becoming much more sophisticated. And one of the things, at least I say when I talk to teachers is there’s this real fear around, you know, is I going to take my job? And I’m kind of like, well, if you just stand up in front of people and talk and like grade worksheets, maybe they could do those tasks for you. I can generate the videos you could show and it could do some of that, but it’s like leaning more into the human side of some of this work. Those, like what you call about, let you call like those transferable skills felt very uniquely human that become important. But I do think that was a really interesting takeaway from the paper that I kind of walked away with. And I can’t remember if you, your team wrote about so like travel agents or something, but it was like this idea that there’s this distinction between AI exposure in a job and AI displacement. And I would love for you to just flesh that out briefly for folks, because when I read it, I was like, oh, that’s a really interesting way to think about this.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Yeah, for sure. So we spent an inordinate amount of time, as you might imagine, given my background in statistics going through the data, like, how can you I wanted to I started off this project wanting to be able to quantify, like at what, rate or what’s what, what get take a given SOC code given occupation. How exposed is it to AI automation? And I quickly realized that it was just a really naive question to ask. Because it’s not so straightforward and simple. In fact, the measures that you might use to quantify that risk exposure themselves contradict each other all of the time. So there’s a number of measures that do exist out there. And we used all of them. And we show that really the narrative that you might arrive at the conclusion is going to change based on the tool you’re going to use. So that’s another takeaway for everybody listening to this is just be very, very skeptical, of someone making a claim about a given job or set of jobs or industry based on a quantitative analysis they’ve done. I mean, it’s really just assumed, like, you know, dependent on the measures that they’re using. These are just, really new technologies and our abilities to quantify and systematically and empirically measure their impacts is very, very, very limited. So take everything with a grain of salt there. But, we show in our analysis that, yeah, you can, you know, break out the universe of SOC codes. Again, those are the jobs that the, you know, the system the BLS uses to organize jobs, every job and or occupation. And, and the country has a SOC code, and for every SOC code, we have a breakdown of the skills in the tasks that compose that code. And so what we can do is given the skills that are required to perform a job, we can correlate that with the abilities of AI. Right.

Catlin Tucker

Oh interesting.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

We know AAI can do x. We know that nurses perform x. So there’s there’s an overlap there. Not 100% overlap because we know AI can do y, but you know or x and nurses also have to do y. There’s no overlap between x and y. So but we can quantify that nevertheless. And we do see that there’s, you know, jobs at the higher end of AI exposure. That is a correlation between AI capabilities and tasks to perform a job. And we see jobs at the lower end of the exposure. The question is, just because a job is exposed to AI doesn’t mean necessarily it’s going to be automated by AI. It very likely could, but it’s not inevitable. In fact, if we were to go back and look at the research over the years, which we did, we actually see that, with other technological disruptions and a need for a greater, you know, the technological disruptions that came heralded in a demand for more technologically capable workers. Right. And so that very well could happen with AI, where you take a job that has high AI exposure. That simply means that the AI tool is able to perform those tasks. But maybe those tasks that overlap then allows that worker to perform their job better, and they’re all of a sudden now, it’s multiple times more productive in their, in their, in their role because they know how to use the tool to, perform the task. But they’re also bringing in new value and they’re able to do that. Plus, so if that’s the case, we want to make sure that everybody in those jobs knows how to use the AI, because if you don’t know how to use it and there’s that overlap, then you could be right. Yeah. You know, left out of that labor market opportunity. So that’s where questions of inequity and inequality and disparity in the classroom really become paramount. Because if students are going through their educational experiences, some of which are getting an AI, you know, getting AI exposure, getting opportunities for meaningful, you know, learning experiences with AI, then they’re going to be prepared to take advantage of those exposure moments in the workplace. But if a student’s going through for whatever reason and is not allowed to use AI because of policies or prescriptive practices, right. Or they’re in a district or school that doesn’t have the funds or resources to bring those tools to the classroom where they’re, you know, they don’t have a systematic policy in place to make sure students are getting them in meaningful ways, then that exposure environment might disadvantage them because of this person shows up and is like, oh, I know how to use AI and know how to do it in a way that aligns with the task composition of this job, but also in a way that allows me to do it now in this new AI environment where the task composition is also multiplied and changed.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah, I love that. And one of the things that I think really resonated when I was first reading the paper, which is titled Applied Co-Intelligence Preparing Career and Technical Education Leaders for an AI-driven workforce, which I will include in the show notes for this episode. For anybody who wants to check it out. But I did my own. I was sharing with you were chatting before this episode about my own kind of K-12 skills, before tools implementation guide, and the whole thing is really about because my concern is people listening might be like, oh, well, we bought these AI tools. Our students are using them, teachers are using them like, we’re good to go on the AI front. And I’m kind of like, but are we also teaching the skills that students need to interact with that AI with a high level of intentionality? Are they using their judgment? Are they evaluating? Are they using feedback from AI to iterate? Like are they doing any of those pieces that I think would truly be necessary for them to be able to leverage AI outside the little bubble that is the classroom, and how it’s used there at times. And so in the paper you introduce the applied Co-Intelligence model. So I would love for you to kind of explain what it is. And how it can help educators, new curriculum designers, CTE leaders thinking differently about how we think about preparing students for careers in which I will likely play an increasing role as some kind of a collaborative partner in that work.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Yeah, I think so. The applied Co-Intelligence model is built on Ethan Mollick’s work. So I just want to name that out front. So Ethan Mollick is a professor at Penn and he had a book come out I think in 2024 called Co-Intelligence. And it’s all about his journey experience with, AI. In its current iteration, right when LLMs really hit, and it’s a fantastic work. If, folks haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. It’s an easy read. It’s enjoyable. You laugh, you smile, you learn a ton. And, and that’s true for me. I learned a ton after reading, Mollick’s book, though I wanted a corollary for the CTE environment, the CTE world. The book he’s written is really applicable for the knowledge worker, not necessarily the trades worker. The hands on tactile work that characterizes CTE. And so I just adapted his co-intelligence kind of model for the CTE world and applied co-intelligence. And I argue that, you know, like Ethan Mollick it’s not an option to retreat from AI you know, that’s one of his key arguments is that it’s not responsible, to just bury our heads in the sand refuse to work with AI. It’s not going away. Even if it were to go away, he argues it’s already in its current for us, massively disruptive and incredibly powerful. Even if it was to stop. Right? Like if we were to agree as a society, no more advancement, no more progress on AI. Let’s just halted. Great. It still exists now in its current state, and it’s incredibly powerful and very disruptive. So, you know, ignoring it, keeping it out of the classroom in my opinion, is very irresponsible. So we have to engage with it. And that’s his kind of key argument. And that’s the argument I make in the report as well, is that for CTE educators and system leaders, we have to have this kind of like lean in approach. And, and so that’s kind of like the core tenet. But then after you, you know, if you get past this argument about leaning in, we argue that every student coming through, every CTE pathway should leave with Applied Co-Intelligence. And applied Co-Intelligence sits at the nexus of three overlapping spheres of a Venn diagram. We say a student leaves applied Co and up with applied co-intelligence. If they develop a technical skill set which is the bread and butter of CTE. So if they’re in an HVAC program they know all the intricate details, technical understandings of, you know, being an HVAC, you know, technician or plumbing. So that’s fitting the pipes, that’s all of those technical elements that make someone certified for their training. So that doesn’t change. But what we want to also make sure is that there’s an overlap with that technical work and transferable skills. So that’s the human side of the equation. That’s being a very strong, communicator, interpersonal communicator, group communicator, team leader, team member. That’s also being a critical thinker. That’s being a analytical researcher. Right. These are all of the characteristics that really, like, underpin humanity, right? Being creative, being expressive. We don’t think those skill sets, I argue anyway, don’t argue that those skill sets are in any way diminished in an AI-driven world. In fact, I think they’re amplified, right?

Catlin Tucker

I totally agree.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

I don’t think I’m the only person to make this argument. I can’t claim that. Right? Other people have made it before I did. Like we lean heavily on James. Jamie Minnesota’s from Lumina Foundation says book human work. If you’ve not read that one, please do. That one’s fantastic. And that one even came out before ChatGPT was released. But essentially he makes the argument that was an ever increasingly technologically driven workforce. The human side of the work becomes more and more important, right? So we argue the same in the Co-Intelligence model. But then the third sphere, right, is AI mastery. And we spent a lot of time defining what that means in the report because I wanted to make sure it was tailored to the CTE environment. There’s a I’ve heard a lot about AI literacy, and I’m sure you had to it’s just seems to be kind of thrown out AI literacy and literacy. And after going to so many conferences, I’m just like, what the heck does that even mean? Like, you’re you’re saying AI literacy, but do you even know what that means? And like if we were to compare that to reading, to say someone is literate is not necessarily a compliment, right? That doesn’t mean that their skill does mean that, yeah, demonstrated ability to read and then critically analyze the literature. To say someone is literate is to say you have a fundamental understanding of the thing, but you don’t have an advanced one. So I kind of attack the AI literacy framing that I believe exists right now in the space and say, we’ve got to get beyond literacy, y’all, and move towards. Some people have suggested fluency and we do as well, but we nevertheless we lay out a spectrum that moves from AI literacy all the way up to AI mastery and the key, you know, mechanism that allows students to move up that ladder is teachers, educators being intentional about the AI applications in their classroom. Yeah. And it needs to be, we argue, tailored to the occupations. One of my pet peeves is that we can’t seem to, get our discourse around AI beyond ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, when in fact there is a constellation, a universe, a galaxy of AI tools that exist out there used by industry and employers that are none of those tools. Right, right. And those are the tools we argue, that need to be in the classroom, just allowing your students to use, you know, on day one, saying, hey, welcome to my class, by the way. You’re welcome to use ChatGPT to support your learning in the class. We argue, is not good enough, right? Because there are tools for trades, people that are specific to the work that they’re preparing for. Those are the tools that allow them to reach AI mastery. It’s aligned to their occupation, not some untethered, generic AI application in the classroom.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. And I at least and in my from what I’ve kind of the conversations I’ve heard, it’s also like so much of the, so many of the tools that are being used right now, even if it’s not AI explicit on the surface, it’s like in the infrastructure of what’s happening underneath the hood, even where we don’t talk very much about that. Right. Like to your point, we’re talking about how do you get good results from a chat bot. And yeah, there’s value in that for the general public. But I like the point that it’s about mastery of the AI tools or the AI powered tools that you’re using for a particular profession, which you’re so unique depending on the pathway you’re in.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Yeah. We, in addition to the report you mentioned, have authored four other reports that are specific to CTE cluster areas and to write those reports. We interviewed dozens of folks across industries, and it was just really fun to catalog all the different tools that people are using. We talked to farmers that use AI to increase dairy production. Right. Like that’s far out to me. And that’s that’s not at the top of the discourse. It’s how can we make our students better prompt engineers? And, and so I think that’s a missed opportunity. We need to get those, you know, AI tools to increase dairy production in our classrooms for sure.

Catlin Tucker

Okay. So this is slightly different from the question I was going to ask you, but obviously there’s a lot of work to be done defining, like what those tools are and how we help students in a certain pathway like reach Mastery. How do you feel like the work in that transferable skills, like where do you think we’re at in terms of that work? Is that an area where you feel like, you know, we’re talking a lot about AI, but I’m like, how well are we doing on the transferable skills front? Because I don’t think we’re doing a great job necessarily in traditional classrooms.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Yeah, I, I, I share your assessment there. I don’t, I don’t think knocking it out of the park. And I think that’s particularly true about the CTE classrooms. And I’m not the only one to say that I can, hear out a number of reports that I lean on in, in my work showcasing that CTE environments are, overly technical to the detriment of the transferable skill development among learners. And, you know, it’s it’s difficult to find that balance in the classroom, to be quite frank with you, because there’s at the end of the day, industry certifications that students have to receive and that requires assessments and tests that are highly technical in nature. Right. And we want students leaving their HVAC and their plumbing and their welding and their nursing and their CNA programs to be able to pass the exams to get them their industry recognized credential and certification. And so there’s a lot of technical knowledge that goes into those assessments, and that oftentimes crowds out room for instruction around transferable skill development. It’s not impossible, though. It’s it’s certainly doable and certainly feasible, but it does take a intentional approach to rethinking how we deliver instruction.

Catlin Tucker

You mean like in, math class where a teacher will tell me they don’t have time for students to have discussions and collaborate around messy, real world problems because they’re so busy, like racing through the curriculum. It feels like the exact same tension. I need to get kids ready to take this standardized test on my subject area. I don’t have time for all of this real world life skill stuff that you’re talking about, which is the stuff that’s going to be even more important as we talk about AI and shaping the workforce. But I could go off on that for like 20 minutes on 421.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

In some respects, in many respects, AI is just exacerbating the problems that we have known to exist for so long. Yeah, if we had it, if we had a tackled in before. Right. I think we’d be in a better position right now to weather this disruption. But it’s just exacerbating a lot of the known issues that you’ve, you, you brought up right now and you’ve brought up repeatedly over, over your, your entire career.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we’re in this even weirder spot post-Covid where I don’t know how much of it is post-Covid world for kids who are like now in high school. And then they also have these tiny little glassy, you know, machines that they stare at and communicate through. But like, I even feel like I’m constantly wrestling with this tension of like, why don’t kids today in classrooms to want to talk to each other, right? So I’m like, well, I think we’re getting further away from the skills that are going to make them uniquely capable of being attractive in a future job market. Which is, I think, a little scary. So one of one of the things you kind of kicked off saying is like, I’m not predicting a future here. And one of the parts of the paper that I found really fascinating was when you kind of present, like both an optimistic and a pessimistic view of what I could mean for CTE learners, which I thought was really fascinating to kind of get those two perspectives. So can you kind of just share a little bit about like what you thought, you know, for going down this more pessimistic possible pathway versus more optimistic, like, what’s the difference.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Yeah it’s great. Well they’re related. The pessimist case is related in this possibility that the CTE classrooms we provide our learners do not equip them with that transferable skill set that you were just describing. And as that transferable skills that becomes more and more valuable, you know, is at a higher and higher premium because of, tech disruption we’re seeing, then those students are going to become disadvantaged in the workplace, right? If they’re getting an overly technical education in their CTE environments and they’re not getting intentional AI integration in ways that align with their occupational trajectory, then I think they’re going to be at a place of disadvantage in the workforce, I truly do. I think it could return to that tracking mechanism that it once was. Yeah. Especially given that we know CTE pathways themselves. If you think of the verticals of CTE, the different CTE cluster areas, we know that they’re stratified by race and gender and class. We just know more females go into nursing. It’s just proven over and over and over again. We know that more males go into it. In tech. We know more males go into construction and trades. Right. That’s not necessarily or inherently bad, but if it is the case that it’s harder and more difficult to integrate a AI intentional AI into those pathways, if it’s easier to get AI, for example, into nursing, but less easy to get it into construction, and you’ve got a female male disparity around AI exposure and training there. Right? And now we know it’s the case with rural and non-rural too, right? We know that CTE pathways experiences reflect their local economic environments. Right. I would direct folks listening to the call to the work of Celeste Carruthers, who has done a really good job, in her interstate kind of collaborative that she’s pulled together, investigating exactly what these disparities look like across states. And essentially what they find is that whatever the local economic racial dynamic is, CTE pathways reflect it. So.

Catlin Tucker

Interesting.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

If we don’t if we don’t make sure that every student coming through every CTE pathway is given an opportunity to become, you know, develop AI co-intelligence, then what we do is we turn CTE back into a tracking mechanism that reinforces racial income inequalities, inequities in society. That’s my that’s my big concern. We do a lot, patting ourselves in the back right now on the CTE world because CTE has come a long, long way. Contemporary CTE is incredibly effective. And there’s a raft of really good, causal research to show that it can get students through high school at higher rates, graduation, get students into college at higher rates of matriculation, and get students employed with higher wages. It’s powerful, but there’s the potential that we get this moment wrong and it goes back to being less than. And so that’s the case. In this case we lay out, but then the optimist case is that, you know, we respond to the moment with appropriate funding, appropriate urgency, appropriate system activity and strategy, and we make sure that, you know, whatever it requires, every student coming out of every CTE pathway is given opportunities to develop AI mastery in line with the occupations they’re training for. Then, even if the workforce continues to experience or experiences the sort of disruption people are talking about, they’ll be nimble and they’ll be able to shift and move. Right. And, and that’s the best any of us can hope for, is that if your job does get displaced, by AI, you’re left with a skill set that allows you to be nimble horizontally across the labor market, rather than all of a sudden your job goes away. And that skill set that you had, is no longer applicable elsewhere.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah. Yeah. That’s fascinating. So if you could make a handful of policy recommendations to leaders making the big decisions that shape the future of CTE, what would top your list?

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Well, it’s maybe unoriginal and probably predictable, but the funding has got to be there. Yeah, this is not this is not the time for federal retreat. For CTE funding. This is not the time for the, you know, to be pulling states, to be pulling back on their funding for CTE. You know, we’ve learned from, like I said, other technological disruptions, online learning and MOOCs, we’ve learned that, educators and education systems can pivot, but oftentimes they’ll do so very, very, very slowly. So I guess it’s not really a pivot. It’s more just like a painful trudge. So let’s not painfully trudge through this moment. Let’s actually do that pivot. Covid taught us that we could pivot actually very quick. We can do things very quick if we have to.

Catlin Tucker

Yes.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

So the funding has got to be there and it has to be substantial, right. Getting educators trained up on the AI tools, how to use them. Well, in the classroom, like we argue for in our applied Co-Intelligence report is going to require resources at the end of the day. And there’s just no denying that fact. Yeah. So we need funding. That would be you know, probably the first thing I would say. Second I would say to policymakers and leaders out there to, if you’ve not already build those bridges with industry and employers, right. Because the chief way to understand exactly how AI is upending labor markets is to talk to labor markets and have an understanding of what they’re seeing, because it’s happening to them as much as it’s happening to us. Right. And so if you want to know those tools to be using in your classroom, talk to your workforce boards. If you don’t have them, then make them. And if they’re not meeting regularly, force them to, you know, there’s a lot of work out there that just shows, the pervasive distrust and lack of urgency between employers and education providers out there. I would refer listeners to the partnership imperative by folks at the Harvard, Business School. It was a fascinating piece that basically showed that community colleges are, displeased with employers, and employers are displeased with the providers for different reasons. Yeah, yeah. So build those bridges and if they’re already there, strengthen them. There needs to be closer ties. The good news about CTE, contemporary CTE is that a lot of the policy that I would argue for is in place right. An evolution from Perkins four to Perkins five right there. I think the policy mechanisms are there. I think we need, you know, we need the implementation fidelity. And, we need to, you know, walk the walk. The policy is there.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah, yeah. All right. So I always wrap up this, the interview with the same question. The podcast is called The Balance. And I think I am just in a lifelong search for that myself. So curious in your own life, personally, professionally, whatever. How do you try to kind of strive for balance between the professional, the personal, a strategy or routine? What works for you?

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Oh, so we’re not talking about I know.

Catlin Tucker

No, we’re talking about you.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Lord have mercy. I think I’m the worst person to be asking that question to. Although I feel like you probably talked to a lot of people that are really bad at this balancing.

Catlin Tucker

Yeah, almost everybody come on. There are some people who just have the most Zen-like answers, and I’m just like, I’m so jealous of, like, how you’ve managed to create this in your life. But a lot of folks do struggle because I, you know, talking to people who are doing a lot.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Doing a lot. Yeah. I mean, no, this doesn’t answer The Balance question. This answers the sanity question, For me, exercise, I am a person that is not built for sitting. I am not good at staying still. And so, yeah, exercise is the key to my sanity in this world. And I think it’s my balance. It’s my fulcrum. And if that’s not in place, if I’m not moving my body, if I’m not exercising, if I’m not putting myself through these tests of endurance, then there’s no balance there. Then I’m vulnerable to my human and character flaws. So, for me, exercise is the fulcrum for my balance. That was a really lame answer.

Catlin Tucker

No, I think that would be my answer, actually, as well, the times in my life when I haven’t been like every single day working out are the times in my life where I think I’ve had the most challenges for sure.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

And people are like, Cameron, I tell all my PhD students, either on day one or, more likely, around day 80 when they’re stressed out and tired. My recommendation is, hey you all, don’t forget to carve out time for your body and your wellness. Exercise and they’re like, how can you do that? We don’t have time for that. And my answer always is, how do you not have time for that? Right. There’s always time. Carve out that time, that space for you. And then you’ll see the benefits and you’ll realize, oh, it’s non-negotiable. Got it. Yep. Got to do that.

Catlin Tucker

You make time for what you value for sure. Well, I want to thank you for joining me for this conversation. It was fascinating. I will try to curate all the links to the resources you mentioned, as well as your paper in the show notes. But just really appreciate your time on this.

Dr. Cameron Sublett

Oh, thank you so much. This was fun.

Catlin Tucker

It’s always super fascinating to listen to somebody who has really dug into the research on a topic I loved reading the paper that Doctor Sublett coauthored, and I think one of the things that really resonated for me in the paper, but also this conversation is just having a clearer framework to guide the decision making about how we design learning experiences, what we focus on when we’re talking about career and technical education, and making sure that the students going through those courses are not just getting the technical kind of experience and understanding that they need to be successful in whatever their career pathway is. But also thinking about, are we making space for those transferable skills? Are we really focusing on cultivating students who are going to be able to work as a team, be those really critical thinkers? Flexible, agile, kind of in their approach to solving problems. And then, of course, the AI conversation I find really interesting because everything in terms of AI is changing so quickly. But I loved Doctor Sublett’s comment about, you know, for each career pathway, AI is going to show up in a different way. And so making sure that students have experience with the kinds of AI tools that they’re going to need to navigate their profession successfully is really kind of one of my takeaways from this conversation, and the importance of truly partnering with people who are already in the field to understand what are those tools, how do we prepare our students for them? And I really did appreciate in the paper not just the framework, but also kind of the different perspectives of, you know, there’s some that might take kind of a more pessimistic view of where this could all go, AI and the impact on the workforce, but also this optimistic view. And we have this real opportunity right now to pivot, to act fast, to prepare people for this rapidly changing workforce, and really hoping that’s the decision that we make and that we’re really thinking about how to prepare educators so they feel confident and capable preparing young people for this workforce. So just a fascinating conversation for me, especially given my experience having taught in a CTE pathway as an educator when I was teaching at the high school level. All really interesting from my perspective through that lens, as well. Thank you all for joining me for this conversation. If you have any questions, any feedback, feel free to reach out to me. I’ll include Doctor Sublett’s LinkedIn information at the bottom of the show notes as well, including that paper and some of the other resources that we mentioned on the podcast. So I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your week. And of course, I look forward to seeing you back here next Tuesday.

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