Supporting educators to create a generous, honest thinking space.

The practice of Public Learning is designed to help educators keep student learning at the center of their collaborative conversations. It is an opportunity to be metacognitive about teaching. When educators go public with the questions they have about their students’ learning and then share the data they collect to help answer those questions, learning becomes the centerpiece of powerful teaching. Public Learning is not a oneway street. It depends on a dialogue between the public learner and their colleagues. This dialogue requires social and emotional support—both to be vulnerable and share uncertainty, and to be open to Supportive Challenge from colleagues. Inviting multiple perspectives on the Public Learner’s student data is an equity strategy, as everyone shares the responsibility for supporting all students and helping the Public Learner see what they may not notice on their own.

A routine to SEE your learners and ADAPT to MEET their needs.

To dig, you need data. What is the “right” data? Look around you. Everything you see is data, and therefore an opportunity to dig. In a data dig, you are not trying to prove something. You are not measuring. You are gathering information that helps you better understand your learners so you can help them learn. Data digs aren’t one-offs. Once you dig, you want to dig further, in new places, all the time. GOT SOME DATA? LET’S DIG!

Supportive Challenge talk moves are designed to assist collaborative and coaching conversations about student learning. They support colleagues to have equity-centered, anti-racist conversations in schools by paying close attention to how we talk and how we listen. When integrated and practiced between colleagues, Supportive Challenge helps colleagues honor each other’s hard work while also enabling them to examine the ways bias and values drive their actions to rethink and disrupt patterns that are producing inequitable outcomes. By reimagining “challenge” to be supportive, Supportive Challenge consciously builds Adult Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) skills in community to create the conditions for stronger adult learning cultures. This tool is designed to supplement any collaboration protocols and coaching conversations.