Click here for the full podcast
LL 0:04
Welcome back for another episode of the Leader of Learning podcast. This is where educators can come to find inspiration to transform education through effective leadership. I’m your host, Dan Kreiness. Let’s get started.
Teru Clavel 0:21
To me, it’s the leadership that makes all the difference in the world. And they’re showing that that leadership has a direct effect on the student outcomes.
LL 0:31
Hey there, Leader of Learning. Thanks so much for joining us here on Episode 65 of the podcast. If you’re a new listener, thank you so much for checking us out. If you’re a loyal listener, I really appreciate you coming back for Episode 65. It’s going to be a really great one. I have a very interesting guest that I’m about to talk to in a few minutes. But before we get there, I just wanted to make a few announcements that I think are very exciting for me and my show. First off, I don’t know if you caught it, but I was a recent guest on the On Education podcast with my friends Mike Washburn and Glenn Urban. That is an amazing podcast that is not only wildly popular and successful, but one in which I am a huge fan. I’ve gotten to know Mike and Glenn over the last few years and they just run such an amazing podcast and they are not afraid to talk about anything involving education, including politics, and I just get so much value each and every time I tune into that show. So I hope you check me out on the On Education podcast. Speaking of On Education, I did want to let you know that I have made the difficult but important decision to leave the Education Podcast Network that this show has been a part of for a little over two years. And while I am sad to leave my friends over at the Education Podcast Network, I’m excited to join Mike, Glenn, the On Education podcast, and many other podcasts on a new podcast network called The On Podcast Media Network run by the guys who are involved in On Education, what involves other podcasts that are too many to list here. But if you follow on podcast media, you can see all the amazing shows that are part of that network. And I’m really excited about what the future holds for this podcast and all of the podcasts that are part of that network. Also, I’ve recently been introduced to a brand new space for educators that I’m calling a one stop shop for connecting and communicating with other educators and that is called Ed Space. If you visit go EdSpace.com , there you can find channels catered to content creators like me, whether they have podcasts or books or blogs or their keynote speakers, and you can connect with other educators and are not just confined to individual apps like Twitter, like Instagram, like YouTube, everything is in one place. It’s very much video based, but it’s also really conversational and Leader of Learning has its own channel on Ed Space. If you go to go Ed space com, sign up, create your own account, and then search for leader of learning podcast in the podcast category, you can actually post messages and leave feedback for each of these episodes or anything you want, right on that channel. So this is my plug for Ed space, I would recommend that you join by creating a profile for yourself, make sure that you put in all your personal information, including the organization that you work for. And then definitely go to that podcast channel and find a leader of learning podcast or any other podcasts out there that you really enjoy. And leave some feedback, leave a video, leave some comments as a response to a video. I think this could start to be a really great way for educators to continue to connect and just build an amazing community where we can all learn with and from each other. Finally, I want to plug one more time the leader of learning YouTube channel where you can now find full video versions of each of the interviews that I do for the episodes on this show. This particular episode is the last one that I did not video, but all the other episodes from here on out you can find video versions on YouTube. Obviously, you can go to YouTube and search for leader of learning or even easier, type in leader of learning. com forward slash YouTube and subscribe and watch as soon as you get a chance.
Now on to Episode 65 my guest in this episode is Teru Clavel, who is the author of a book called World Class and in the book she talks about comparing her and her family’s experiences in East Asian schools with US schools. You’ll hear in the episode that I did have some hesitation when it came to interviewing to Teru because she is not a classroom teacher and has not been an educator before. However, as we got to talking, and as I continued with the interview, I really did appreciate the knowledge and the experiences that she brought to the table. Her family spent a lot of time in East Asia and her kids experienced what the schools were like over there. So she has some really unique opinions about schools across the world, not only in terms of her degree in comparative education, but also her family’s experiences. This is an interview unlike many of the interviews I’ve done on this show before, so I’m really interested to get your feedback. Please reach out and after you finish this interview, let me know what you thought and weigh in with your opinions on your take on where we stand with our US schools. Without further ado, here is my interview with Teru Clavel.
All right, guys. I’m excited to bring on my guest in this episode. Teru Clavel is a comparative education expert, best selling author, and she has been I’ve seen a lot of these and heard a lot of these. Teru has been interviewed on so many places that I don’t even know if I can name them all here but CNN, the TODAY show, CBS, really spreading her message and her story around. I love the message about sort of comparing US schools to schools all over the world. Welcome to the show Teru, thank you for giving us some time here. And before we get into it, if you could just give a maybe a better description and introduction of yourself. Who are you? Where are you? What do you do?
Teru Clavel 6:34
Sure. Thanks for having me, Dan. So I currently live in New York City and my book, World Class is about my parenting and education journey, having started in New York, and then in 2006, when I had two kids, two boys who were under two years old, a work opportunity came up for us to go to Hong Kong. So we were in Hong Kong for four years, during which time I had my third child and a daughter and throughout our journey, which was a 23 year journey and local public schools, we intentionally did enroll our kids not in international schools, which is the typical place to enroll expatriate children, but in local public schools, so four years in Hong Kong, local public school, and then another work opportunity came up for us to go to Shanghai. So we’re in Shanghai for two years, and then Tokyo for four years from 2012 until 2016. And then in Palo Alto, California for two years and Palo Alto is deemed to have the best or the time the “best public school system in the state of California” that has the largest public school system in the in the country. And then we came full circle came back home New York City in the summer of 2018. And so during that time, I went back and got a masters in comparative and international education and I became an education journalist. So both my professional and personal experiences are discussed in my book World Class. So I would love for everybody to pick it up and talk to me about it. We can talk about whatever you like here and the book.
LL 8:09
Yeah. And and we’ll get into the book in a minute. I want to be honest with you and my listeners when I first was sort of introduced to your story, I saw and listened to some of the interviews that you’ve done to kind of, I guess, research for myself what I wanted to talk about in this conversation. I did, to be totally honest, start having thoughts about “Okay, here’s this woman who has a lot of thoughts about education, globally speaking, and especially about US education, but has not necessarily worked as an educator, you know, ‘in the trenches.'” But I guess I’m intrigued by, because I do think you bring a great level of expertise and one that is potentially really different, but also qualifying in terms of the knowledge that you have. So this degree in global or comparative and international education? Can you describe that a little bit in terms of like, okay, I’ve not been an educator, but I know a lot about education.
Teru Clavel 9:10
Sure. So I’ll actually be the first to admit that in writing and publishing this book, one of my greatest fears was that teachers would not accept it because of the fact that I haven’t been a classroom teacher. And the result has really actually been that teachers have been some of my greatest advocates because I am a teacher advocate and I talk about, I have a whole teacher, whole chapter rather, devoted to teacher training, I should say teacher recruitment, retention and professional development in a competitive context. And I did make it halfway through my second masters in in teaching except then I got my book deal. So then I decided to postpone completing that if I ever actually do, but yeah, so you know, the background is really that I am half Japanese. I grew up in a culturally and linguistically Japanese home in the United States. And so whatever I learned in school was definitely more of a foreign culture to me than my home culture. So I didn’t start speaking English until I don’t know, I was, I guess three or four years old when I started preschool. And the whole comparative International education context was very normal to me because my family lived in Japan and I spent my summers in Japan and I went to school in the summer in Japan, because their academic year actually, their summer vacation starts at the end of July. So I would finish up school here end of May beginning of June and then go over to school there for two months. I mean, the background is I’ve always been fascinated by education, because what was happening in the classrooms of Japan … it was just completely different from what I was experiencing in the US. And so I had this opportunity to go back to school. And I i’ve been fascinated by education, but I know myself and I know I’m not a classroom teacher, but I’m fascinated by policy and comparing international education systems. And so most of the people who go into my program graduate going into jobs at the UN, OECD, the World Bank, places where there’s a lot of not only understanding different models, but for instance, countries will subsidize the education systems of other countries. And so the Gates Foundation does work like that and a lot of other well endowed foundations and then several Think Tanks, so I loved it because, whereas my book is about comparing the classrooms of Shanghai and Tokyo and Hong Kong to the US, the comparative international education degree did a did a global sweep. So though I may not be most up to date on what’s going on in the classrooms of Brazil, or Germany, or Zimbabwe or Australia, that stuff that we definitely study, France, I mean, I can go on and on. So it was pretty amazing.
LL 12:38
I really do find that fascinating. You know, to be totally honest, again, I think in terms of your background and expertise, I probably would have been one of those teachers or educators to push back a little bit and say, “you know who is this lady and what does she know about schools and teaching if she hasn’t done it” but I think that degree is seems unique. And I think it definitely sounds like you got a lot out of it. And I’m glad that you mentioned that you went back at least started the degree in teaching. And, you know, that’ll be interesting to know if you ever get back around to it at some point, but okay, you touched on your experiences, especially with your family moving around. So, you know, I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you at least to kind of describe for the listeners and for me, what did you see? What what are you seeing in terms of that? Let’s, you know, put that degree to good use comparing education systems around the world. What do you noticing?
Teru Clavel 13:36
Well, I want to then focus in on what’s going on in East Asia and specifically Shanghai in Japan versus the US because, and I do want to kind of deconstruct what it is you’re saying about teachers because that’s the first thing I’ll say I kind of think about the differences in macro and micro terms and macro being the big kind of larger changes, the systemic changes, that need to take place, and the micro being kind of the actionable steps that teachers and parents can see immediate changes in so we’ll start with a macro. And the teachers, that’s the first thing that is really important and you know I’ll be the first to say teachers in China and Japan are highly highly respected individuals. In Shanghai my kids saluted their teachers at the front gate, in Japan they bow to their teachers at the beginning of class at the end of class. Teachers are referred to as like teacher Smith and not Jane or whatever the the teachers first name may be and the actual word teacher, the characters, mean “leader of future generations,” “leader of the future” so every time a student says the teacher’s name it’s basically saying “leader of the future Smith,” you know, so it really ingrained in these kids minds that you have to respect the teacher and in the US, you know, during the 2017-18 academic year, I traveled across the country and interviewed countless academics, attended so many conferences, and I visited, I don’t know how many classrooms in different places and we’re talking rural, urban, suburban, magnet,, award winning to struggling “transformation schools.” And there wasn’t a school that didn’t have an issue with retaining teachers. And you know, there’s tons of research on this. You can call it the leaking bucket, but we don’t invest in our teachers, you know, most teacher, you have more than one job. And when you think about this reputation that teachers have in terms of majoring in teaching, it’s “when you cant do, teach,” you know, and it’s kind of this lowest common denominator when we really should be shifting that model and recruiting the best and the brightest from undergrad to become teachers and then investing in their training and their retention. And we just don’t do that. You know, and and in places like Japan for over 200,000 applicants for very few spots to teach every year in Japan.
LL 16:00
And, you know, can I ask you a question? Sorry to cut you off. I’m just intrigued and I really appreciate your insights there. It’s fascinating to learn about and understand how other nations and other systems really do place such a different value and level of respect on teachers and the teaching profession. In the US, and I’m not really an expert in this area, but I’m pretty sure I’m almost positive that there is not a sort of centralized system of standards when it comes to teacher credentialing. And so where I live in Connecticut, and I’m not too far from you in New York, I started teaching in New York City schools. In both of those states, you need a master’s degree not to start teaching, but within a certain timeframe, five years or 10 years. There are other states where not only do you not need a master’s degree, but basically you can kind of jump into the classroom depending on the situation and depending on the subject area, with you know, really just a bachelor’s degree in a related field. And so I guess I’m wondering in terms of like the background of teachers between the US and these Asian countries, is that a difference to in terms of their levels of expertise and their own background and training?
Teru Clavel 17:18
There’s no question that our bar is lower on average. And you’re right, we have one of the most decentralized education systems in the world, meaning that it’s not only up to the state, but districts have so much control over what happens with teacher training. So in the US, credentialing happens at the state level, and the individual schools typically or the district level will do all that hiring. A principal can do all the hiring for his or her own school, and in places like Japan, it’s done either at the municipal level or the prefectural level, depending on kind of the population density of that area. So Tokyo is its own municipality, and they have their own department of education. However, it is a highly, highly centralized education system. So their ministry of education sets the curriculum for the entire nation. And they will tell each district, “here are the three to five textbooks to follow the curriculum that have already been government approved.” And then you can make the decision as to which one you want to use. And similarly, the teachers are hired at that level. And so you know, it’s sad to me that you do have some states in the US with very high bars for becoming a teacher. A lot of those are in the New England area, Massachusetts is, you know, is known to have the highest educational outcomes in history that is very academically focused. I mean, you look at Cambridge and you look at the Boston area and how many colleges there are, that’s just an example right? And then you will look at some states that have huge teacher shortage issues that are crises and you can get an emergency credential by sitting in front of a computer online, turning the on button and having it run for, you know in 10, 20, 30, 40 hours get the emergency credential. And within a week you’re in the classroom teaching.
LL 19:06
And when I wonder if, sorry, again, to cut you off, you know, you’re talking about, essentially lowering the bar when it comes to teacher credentials. And I’ve heard you speak in some other interviews about and we’ll get back to this in a second, but in terms of like student mastery, and I guess I’m sort of making the connection in my head and tell me whether or not you agree or disagree, and maybe you can sort of expand on this a little bit. You know, it may make some sense as sad as this may seem, that in US schools compared to the experiences you and your kids saw in Asian schools, when it comes to raising the bar in terms of expectations for students and and the mastery of learning that it kind of makes sense that there’s like this trickle down, where if in some areas and in some states, as you’re saying that we don’t need our teachers to be “experts or subject area experts” and they can, you know, easily obtain emergency credentials, then maybe it just sort of seems to make sense that we’re not necessarily holding students to such high standards.
Teru Clavel 20:18
Okay, so you’ve definitely hit on a bunch of different theories, right? And there’s a whole thing about reproduction theory, which basically says, you produce your, I don’t want to say level of intelligence, right. But if your parents are well educated, you know, you can pass it on to your kids. Similarly, in the classroom, if you have highly educated and trained teachers, it’s much more likely that you can pass it on to those students. Right? So there’s an overall academic bar that that is passed on throughout the entire culture. And what is what I think is most interesting in terms of what you said is, we as a nation don’t think enough about the quality of the instruction in the classroom. It’s not about how many hours were spent in the classroom and it’s about that relationship and the learning that’s taking place between the teacher and the student. Right? And the relationship, the triangulated relationship, teacher, parents student is the most important. And there has to be clear, not only clear communication, but regular communication and transparency there. And something I don’t know if your listeners are aware of the PISA exams so I’ll briefly talk about it. The OECD is a think tank in Paris, and every three years, they test and share the results of this exam, the PISA an exam. And tests 15 year olds in the following three subjects: reading, science and mathematics. And it also talks about mindset and socio economic background, parent involvement, curriculum, tech use, and it’s a fascinating exam. And the results are really, really helpful. And the last set of results just came out last month, and I bring that up because people have especially in the US is preconceived notions about “oh, well in East Asia, they spend so much time studying both in and out of the classroom” and the reality is actually because the quality of instruction is so high in the classrooms, students spend less time studying than they do in the US. And that all comes down to the quality of instruction, right? And I’m the first person to say, I’m not going to blame teachers. I mean, they don’t get compensated enough. We don’t we don’t pay enough for the best and the brightest to want to come into the field. And I don’t think it’s fair for society to think that teachers should be martyrs, you know, they have to have a standard of living and a good lifestyle. I mean, if we’re going to pay our doctors, of course, we should be paying our teachers. And again, we don’t invest in their professional development. And I have to say, another thing is in these other countries, these teachers are not in the classrooms nearly as much as our US teachers.
LL 22:48
How come? You know, because that confuses me a little bit and only because I haven’t experienced you know, an education system outside of our own. When you say they don’t spend as much time in the classroom, do they not have as much of a workload or a caseload in terms of how many students or how many classes they teach? What does that mean?
Teru Clavel 23:07
No, it’s quite the opposite, actually. So they may have more students in their classrooms, but they have more free time to work on their collaboration, cooperation, professional development with their peers, which is vital, right? That vertical and horizontal alignment that takes place and the vertical alignment is that the third grade teacher knows what’s going on in the first and second grades and the, you know, fourth, fifth and sixth grades. And then the horizontal alignment is that the teacher knows what’s going on in the classrooms have the same grade level, and then it creates a much stronger community. And then you don’t have gaps in the curriculum, like you typically have in the US, right? I mean, there’s so many countless stories where if your elementary school ends at the end of fifth grade, or sixth grade, those teachers typically have no idea what they’re preparing their kids for, in terms of what’s going to happen in the middle school. And that’s no fault of there’s. The system isn’t set up to create time and their schedules for that. And then you know, if you’re in a public school and the school board is changing the curriculum pretty regularly, that requires professional development, which takes them out of the classroom, and then there’s you know, and then if they change the science and the social studies curriculum in the same year, it takes them out of the classroom even more, and who’s heard it’s really the kids. So what I’m trying to say is, there’s just more time in these teachers schedules that pull them out of the classroom to do other things that you know, beef up their expertise, whereas teachers in the US are in the classroom almost all day long and have very few periods to collaborate or invest in their professional development.
LL 24:42
That makes me think of like, I guess so much in terms of what schools may or may not be trying to do as far as freeing teachers up for common planning time and you know, vertical planning time if it’s depending on the level of schools and the grades involved, but that that is really interesting to know that in Asian countries, let’s say what could seem like maybe overwhelming to us where where teachers have more students, but they also have more time to work on the planning and the meeting and the training that potentially teachers in the US don’t necessarily have. I’m wondering, especially in let’s say that the time you spent away from the US and US schools and the time you came back or or over the last couple of years since you’ve been back, are you seeing, have you seen in your experiences and in your research, some things that schools, districts, states, whoever are doing to better the situation for teaching and learning?
Teru Clavel 25:42
Oh, absolutely. Part of my travels and that 2017 academic year I went to some fabulous schools and if there was one thing that I would say, they all had in common, the thriving schools, it was a leader who was completely dedicated to the school, who was there for longer than five years. And what ends up happening in that period, and there’s research to back this up is that, you know, when it when a principal a headmaster gets to a school, there’s a lot of buy in required, right? By the students, by the families and by the teachers who’ve already been there and have been established members of that community. Because even if you’re new in kindergarten, and let’s say elementary school, that family may be a well established family within the larger community. And they may have older sibling and then you get this new person coming in. But within that five year period, they have gotten the buy in from the staff that’s there. And then they’ve also created a culture and have hired staff as well. So if you get them to stick around… and then what you need is a leader who is a staunch advocate for the needs of their students. Right? And basically, that means, I went to schools where, I mean, I visited the Science Academy, it’s a Magnet Middle School in the Los Angeles Unified School District and LA has a second largest school district in the in the country. And Carlos Lauchu, this man, look him up, he is incredible. He has these kids in this middle school who’re taking AP classes. And the outcomes of these students are better than a lot of high schools. And he will fight to get the teachers that can teach this content to middle schoolers, right? Because it’s heavy content. And middle schoolers are still middle schoolers developmentally, he gets so much parent involvement. And he’s a fighter. I mean, he will fight. And then I went to another school in LA Unified, a fabulous school, elementary school, and I talked about this actually in World Class, I happen to been walking across the courtyard and everybody’s dressed up that day, it was like a Halloween festivities day and I kid you not everybody was decked out which says a lot about the culture as well. Right? There’s so much buy in and when I see people were decked out it wasn’t like people would you know they had a headband on with antennas. It was like, no, people had makeup, nails, shoes, leggings, I mean, head to toe. And I’m walking across the courtyard. And when I was doing my studies, I talked to anybody who would give me you know, two minutes of their day to talk about the school and their experiences. And there was a guy moving these huge waste bins that were, you know, you could put several people inside these waste bins, and I said, “Oh, hi, you know, I’m here for the day. I’m Teru. What do you do here?” and he goes, “Oh, hi, I’m the principal. I’ve been waiting for you.” And he goes, “you know, we have this big party going on tonight. So my management staff isn’t here. So you know, I’m doing their job for them.” And he was so excited. And what another great example, right? I mean, he’s not sitting in his office doing his typical duties of the day. He’s literally moving garbage across the courtyard. And so to me, it’s the leadership that makes all the difference in the world. And they’re showing that leadership has a direct effect on the student outcomes, whereas previously, most of the research focused on the classroom teacher. Now they’re seeing that at a much higher level, the training and workings of that principle actually have a direct influence on students.
LL 29:06
Again, pretty fascinating. And, you know, even before we hit record here, I was sharing with you a little bit about my research for my dissertation. And essentially, that’s kind of what I’m looking to study as well, but instead of how leaders impact the student growth and student achievement, I’m really looking more at how school leaders are affecting impacting and really inspiring the teachers so that in turn, they can pass that on to their students. And I feel like we could definitely keep talking about so much of this, but I’m going to try and wrap up a little bit. And as I do, I want to be honest again and say that while I had some questions that I knew I wanted to ask you about your background and, and I think you did really well at overcoming my skepticism about that you haven’t spent time as an educator in the traditional sense. I also wanted to ask you about what kind of work you’re doing other than writing a book to help schools and districts really try and better themselves and better their students in terms of making them more globally aware and, you know, master the material that they need to work through? What are you doing to try and help in that regard?
Teru Clavel 30:24
Well, that’s a great question. So my book just came out. And I was really happy that it’s gotten good publicity. And especially after I was on with Fareed Zakaria on his show GPS on CNN, it really hit.
LL 30:37
And, by the way, congratulations on the success of your book and those amazing interviews and opportunities that you’ve had. I think that’s really awesome.
Teru Clavel 30:46
Thank you. Thanks. That means a lot. And so I mentioned that because I think it’s important to get the word out. I mean, we look at what’s going on. I mean, to say we are in kind of a chaotic place right now on a national and global level is maybe an understatement. And it’s really hard to make sense of what’s going on right now, and especially how to explain that to our kids. And so what I want to do is talk to as many people as possible. So when I, when I’m on, you know, NBC or CNN it’s hitting a wider audience. And what I look at is, who are the people that are the biggest influence on our children, and they’re the teachers and the parents. And something that I found very, very interesting was, I felt like where I was in Asia, the parent responsibilities were crystal clear. And there was mandatory parent education by the schools to the point where even in Japan, if you didn’t show up, you had to opt out with a letter getting getting permission to not show up and in the US is much more loosey-goosey. It’s kind of like, you know, there’s no school for parents, and you can’t really tell a parent what to do and parents very rarely,
LL 31:54
Can I ask you to just be more specific there? First, you mentioned the word “responsibilities,” parent responsibilities and now you mentioned “parent school” What are the responsibilities? Is it for parents themselves to further their education? Or is it more about how parents can support their students throughout their schooling?
Teru Clavel 32:13
To me, it’s one in the same. So in in, in the places I lived in Asia, the parent responsibility came with knowing how to educate your child and to work hand in hand with the school go do so. Right? So we would have these meetings where we would meet with the classroom teacher, and they would say, this is what we are learning, what your students are learning in school, and this is how you can and should support them at home. And it wasn’t…And I want to make it really clear, Dan, that it wasn’t just “okay, so they’re learning how to write the alphabet or they’re learning expository writing, or this is the book they’re reading.” It was also about “at this developmental stage, they should be able to organize their own bags, ask their own questions, make their own lunches, you know, give them the freedom and the independence to do so.”
LL 32:58
I see, so executive functions, basically.
Teru Clavel 33:01
Absolutely! And they even the even get into mindset, you know, it wasn’t like… Here it is, you know, we silo the learning. It’s kind of like, what’s the mindset? What’s mindfulness and social emotional learning? And and then we silo our academic areas: social studies, science, math and language arts. And I’m not saying those subjects don’t exist, but they’re far more interdisciplinary. And the research has shown that all of this stuff, like the empathy, the social emotional learning, it’s already baked into the curriculum. Every story that’s read, every social studies lesson. The curriculum in Japan is very, very, I guess the right word is what I just used, it’s interdisciplinary. So, you know, the parent involvement piece is something I’ve always been fascinated with because, you know, parents here, I mean, especially if you are a parent of young children these days, and it’s different because my youngest is now 10 years old, but people get all their information, it seems from online sources, some of its malarkey , some of its really strong stuff, but you can find anything, which is even more confusing, I think to parents, because, you know, if you’re given 100 choices on how to bath, feed, diaper, burp your child, it’s like, well, what am I supposed to follow? You know, and that freedom can create a lot of angst as well. Whereas I feel like when I was in Japan, they said, Okay, this is the right way to do it. This is this is a tried and true way. And we’ve gotten results. And this is the way you feed your child. And again, we have results. And here it’s it’s it can be very, very confusing. So what I’m doing, getting back to your original question is, I love working with and talking to teachers, teachers have been a very, very receptive audience. And I talk to parents because parents have the ultimate responsibility and so much is done at home. And you know, there’s plenty of science that shows that what happens in the home between zero and three years old is so informative motive to, you know, lifelong success, whether it be how many words the child hears, reading with them doing basic numeracy, in discipline, letting the kids be bored, being self instructive and directed in their playing, you know, there’s all kinds of things that can be done. And then of course, supporting your child through elementary, middle and high school, and what that means. And I think that’s a great greatest mobilizer that hasn’t been explored enough in this country.
LL 35:26
Yeah, and I agree. And as you were speaking, I thought of a couple of things that relate directly to my work in my own school. And I’m guessing but I’m also hoping that what you’re saying is resonating with the listeners as well. I personally thought of two things that sort of hit home with me one is when you were speaking about educating parents, one of my goals as an instructional coach for the ELA department at my school, and this is a goal that I had that I’m going to have to be held accountable to by my administrators is to be able to hold at least one parent workshop this school year that helps parents understand how to better support their students in their ELA classes. And so the other thing that resonated with me is when you were talking about sort of that interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary approach, and my school, fortunately, is having an opportunity at this point, I think it’s such an exciting time for my school in my district, to become a STEAM Academy. And part of our preparations and planning for that to happen in another two school years really, is having teams of teachers come together to, as you say, start planning and and start thinking about how to not only pull all of these content areas together, but how to bring in some of those soft skills, some of those executive functions, the social emotional learning, especially the mindset, as you talked about, and so you know, I’m making all sorts of connections to what you’re saying, I’m learning so much. I hope that of course the listeners get a lot of value out of it. The book is World Class, of course, I know you’ve referenced that a couple of times, and I haven’t read it yet, I’ll be honest, but it sounds fascinating. I’ll pick it up at some point, maybe maybe when I finish this degree that I’m trying to finish up, but again, I really appreciate it. So the book is World Class. Where can they find that? And where can my listeners reach out and connect with you to find out more about your knowledge, your expertise and the work that you’re doing out there?
Teru Clavel 37:30
Yeah, I appreciate that. So you can find my book, hopefully your local independent bookseller, but also on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, a lot of online booksellers and your local public library as well hopefully, and you can find me on my website to teruclavel.com and I’m on social media Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. And definitely reach out to me I mean, these conversations are ongoing and as our kids in our world change, so too do our approaches to educating them, and you know, we’re all changing, right? I think if you ask me, whereas my fundamental beliefs and values haven’t changed in the last five or 10 years, you know, they’re they’re always tweaks to be made. So let’s have these conversations. I think they’re important.
LL 38:21
I really appreciate it, as always, for my listeners, the link to the book, World Class and all of Teru’s social media and other contact information will be in the show notes for this episode. Teru, I really want to thank you again, for this opportunity. We went like 10 minutes longer than I usually do with these interviews, but I think it was well worth it. And I just really thank you for coming on and enlightening us about the the education systems and and really, I guess, where we need to go to try and stay competitive in the global economy. So thanks again.
Teru Clavel
Thank you so much. Thanks, Dan
Transcribed by https://otter.co
