The Principal's Handbook

Episode #30- Choose Your Own Master Class
. [00:00:00] In today's episode. I have two guests with me, Beth Pandolfo and Katie Cubana, who wrote the book, choose your own masterclass. And we're going to be talking about how you can use this book to have differentiated PD for your staff,
And we're also going to have a discussion. About how much technology teachers should be using in the classroom due to the amount of time per day that kids are on screen. So this will be an interesting conversation that you won't want to miss. That's all coming up next, right here on the principal's handbooks. So stay tuned.
Welcome to the Principal's Handbook, your go to resource for principals looking to revamp their leadership approach and prioritize self care. I'm Barb Flowers, a certified life coach with eight years of experience as an elementary principal. Tune in each week as we delve into strategies for boosting mental resilience, managing time effectively, and nurturing overall wellness.
From tackling daily challenges to maintaining a healthy work life balance, I'm Barb Flowers. We'll navigate the complexities of [00:01:00] school leadership together. Join me in fostering your sense of purpose as a principal and reigniting your passion for the job. Welcome to a podcast where your wellbeing is the top priority.
Well, welcome to the podcast today. I am so excited to have guests with us today. Today I have Beth Pandolfo and Katie Cubano with us, who wrote the book, Choose Your Own Master Class,. So I'm really excited to have them. This is a wonderful book.
And today we're going to talk about the book and share some ways that you could use it in your classroom or in your school. So I'm just going to start by having the two of you introduce yourself and then talk to us about why you wrote this book. I'm Beth Pandolfo. I have taught English for over 20 years at the high school and college level. And currently I'm working as an instructional coach in a central New Jersey school district for grades six through 12.
And I'm Katie Cubano. , I taught English for a little over a decade before moving into an instructional [00:02:00] coach role. , I'm home with my one year old right now. , so not currently in the classroom or instructional coaching. At the moment actually supervising student teachers for, uh, the College of New Jersey.
And loving this new, , way to be a part of, , the work I care so much about. Oh, that's awesome. In the book, Choose Your Own Master Class, it's really interesting how it's set up because it is different topics and they are actually standalone chapters. So talk to me about, , why you decided to write a book and why you decided to write it in this format, what that meant for you.
Well, Katie and I met in 2019 when we began working together as instructional coaches on a team. And we were part of some book club experiences. And we just, we noticed how much as English teachers that we loved the idea of uniting people through a book club, but also all of the problems that come with that.
And some of them were [00:03:00] that, you know, it was going to be a book club faculty meeting, but then they had to go over testing protocols. So then the book club got rescheduled. And then we noticed some people love the book and not everyone loved the book. And we were just thinking about how could a book be designed that could get buy in from everyone, that could withstand long stretches of time between readings.
So that was part of our thought process. And then the other part was personally, When we first met, it was kind of amazing. We both were listening to and reading the same kinds of things. And as educators, we really both got a lot of inspiration from things we were reading outside of education. So, you know, books from like Adam Grant or Brene Brown or podcasts that Katie was listening to, which she can, chime in.
We loved the on being. Podcast. And we always saw everything through the lens of an educator. And it kind of gave us these [00:04:00] unique, interesting ways of seeing that were unique, that weren't like filtered through educational publications and watered down and renamed. And we were thinking like, that would be a great If we could bring all of these ideas from outside disciplines, so teachers could think about them in their own way and how they applied to the classroom and then maybe Katie can talk a little bit about how we piloted it in the school with this book list book club and how well that went and it reinforced.
are thinking about it. Yeah. So we noticed that we were super energized and excited to talk about what we were learning from outside of the silo sort of of education. And, , we decided that we would create a short series called the Bookless Book Club, , , for our colleagues. , we were working as, again, as instructional coaches on the same team at the time, We were serving all of our colleagues, , teaching grades 6 12 in all [00:05:00] disciplines, , so it was a big task and one that, you know, we really enjoyed.
And what we found was, again, not only did this feel super energizing for us to be talking about ideas from outside of the field of education, but whenever we happened to sort of be sticking around at the end of a meeting or maybe we were having an instructional coaching session and, you know, it had wrapped up and we started talking about what we were reading or something like that.
Our colleagues were likewise just so engaged by the opportunity to talk about what from outside of our immediate circumstances they were reading, listening to, thinking about, and how it applied to our work. , so with that in mind, we launched this Booklist Book Club. We decided on five or six texts from outside of the field of education, , invited folks to come to some PD sessions, totally voluntary, during the school day. They would come and we would either have an excerpt or a video stimulus or something to either read or listen to, [00:06:00] which gave them a sense of the ideas that the author had. So for example, one of the books that we love doing that really informed some of our thoughts on the book too was Range by David Epstein.
He talks about the importance of really diversifying interests and pulling from those interests as a means of understanding the world in a better way. , so. That was one that, that we brought in. And again, , our educator colleagues just, the conversations were so rich. , and I think that they really appreciated the opportunity, as Beth mentioned up front, to think through something without it having trickled through the education bubble.
, they were getting access to those ideas directly, and they were able to consider how they might apply them to their own contexts and come up with creative solutions. I just want to add something to that also, when we stepped into the instructional coaching role, suddenly we were in meetings with principals planning professional development, and we actually noticed time constraints, and [00:07:00] barriers to, you know, why professional development sometimes looked the way that it did.
And we just thought that we could package this almost as, like, we can be your instructional coach. Here's PD that you can The questions are there. It's differentiated. It offers choice. It can withstand, you know, stretches of time between reading. There's questions to jigsaw across chapters. So as an administrator, you could do this transformative kind of PD experience where everybody is getting to choose their own master class.
And from everything Katie and I read, it's these cross disciplinary conversations and looking at things through a new lens that is where you come up with creative solutions. So we were thinking like this empowers teachers to come up with the solutions that work for their students from research based insights.
So the way we structured the chapters where we highlighted three thought leaders from across different [00:08:00] disciplines. And then we said, like, this is what we think. And then we kind of, it's really like, what do you think? And what would work for your students? So we just thought it offered a really dynamic experience for teachers and really lightened the lift for administrators.
And just thinking about teacher retention. That if teachers could feel respected as creative individuals where they make choices and come up with original solutions, that's empowering professional development. I just want to say I was really excited, too, when I opened up the book because I'm really big into personal development as well, like what you're talking about with listening to podcasts and other people outside of education.
When we so just one quick example. , when I read Adam Grant's book, Think Again, and one of the quotes that really resonated with me is that the best way to change people's minds is to have them change it themselves.
And as an instructional coach, that really helped my work [00:09:00] with people because. Just because I thought that their supervisor was coming down on them and that that should, you know, inspire Improvement or change that doesn't work for everyone. Some people that makes them feel resistant So sort of it really inspired me to tap into what the person cared about And then have them rethink their practice because it mattered to them.
So it was like gems from these books that I felt really helped me with my job in a way that reading every instructional coaching manual wasn't going to help me. Because even these books about business or economics, they're all about people and education, you know, it's like the Starbucks quote is we're in the people business serving coffee, like we're in the, education business, you know, serving children or where, no, yeah, we're in the, sorry, we're in the people business and like, we're serving education.
So it's really these insights about people, what works in [00:10:00] organizations, what works, you know, from the field of psychology and neuroscience, and then, you know, putting that lens, that spotlight onto your work and making decisions. that makes sense based on what we know about how people interact with one another.
So I think that's to me what was so powerful and I wanted to make available to teachers during the school year when, when you're, you're doing the work and you're not picking up a lot of these nonfiction texts during the school year. That's summer reading. So we were thinking, how could we deliver this that it could be on the spot PD that you go into work tomorrow and you just think, okay, the kids aren't doing what I want them to do because they need to buy in.
I kind of missed that part. I thought they would want to do it for the greed. I thought they would want to do it because it's the right thing to do. But no, I need to get this buy in. And then suddenly that makes sense to me, not because my principal told me. Because I figured it out and now I understand and that's what we wanted to give [00:11:00] to people and package it in a way that was digestible during the school year.
I love that because I do think there's so many different, like you said, nuggets that you read from these personal development books that maybe they don't even need to read the whole book, but just having that from you in this book is really helpful and they can then integrate it into their teaching.
Yeah. And that's something I'm, you're a fan of Brene Brown. There's lots of nuggets from her that you, I'm sure you apply all the time because they really stay with you and, you know, they inform how you act. So that was what we wanted to offer teachers, um, or educational leaders. That's what we wanted to offer educators in a book club.
So when I saw some people like Brene Brown and other people that I had recognized who weren't in education, I got really excited because, like you, I love that idea of incorporating that into what we do in education. I think there's so many good things that we don't take enough [00:12:00] time to talk about.
We spend so much time on just content that we don't always get to hear from these different thought leaders who have great ways that we can improve teaching and instructional practices through learning from them as well. I also love that you talked about the idea of, choosing your own masterclass and people having differentiated PD because I know as a principal, one thing that we always struggle with when planning PD is thinking about, , people like specialists or who might not have, , reading PD they need to do or math PD that they need to do.
Do you want to go through and Let people know what the topics are that you included in the book. Sure. , one thing I also want to say is when Katie and I, , if you can imagine, we had 15 different topics. Yeah. Yeah. And then, then we had the challenge of, it can't just be, we didn't want it to be the Beth and Katie book.
We actually took people from our work and we were just like, okay, like this person from the PE [00:13:00] department. Yeah. Like what chapter are they going to want to read? What is this person going to care about? So we tried to really think grade 6 through 12 and pick colleagues from across disciplines and that helped us curate , what we thought, you know, maybe some things that all teachers would care about and then maybe that some people would lean in, , closer to.
So the book consists of six standalone chapters and standalone, almost like they're long research articles. They have an estimated read time, so people can pick according to their interests, their most pressing need, the amount of time they have to read. The first chapter is on emotional intelligence, and we highlight three thought leaders.
And the first one is , Leonard Mlodinow, who is a neuroscientist. And so he talks about the brain research and how our emotional lives affect our decision making. We highlight Mark Brackett, who is a part of the Center for Emotional [00:14:00] Intelligence at Yale. He consults with CASEL,
. So he's very involved in emotional intelligence and does a lot of work with educators and schools. And then lastly, Sean Ginwright, who is a professor and an activist. And he talks a lot about How are emotions affect our decision making chapter two focuses on balancing technology use in the classroom.
We highlight ideas from Jenny O'Dell, who's an artist and professor of art and design. , she talks a lot about how addictive technology has come to take our attention wholly off of our external world and place it sort of. Only on our phones and our technology at all times and what we might do to get free of that a little bit and to start, , seeing a different way for, for us to interact with one another, , Cal Newport, who's a writer and researcher.
We highlight his ideas on addictive technology, , and what the individual can do. , so Jenny [00:15:00] O'Dell talks about it more from a cultural perspective and Cal Newport takes on what steps individuals can take, To reconnect in very authentic ways, with those around them through conversation. He talks about prizing conversation over digital connection.
And then Johan Hari, who is a journalist, , did a deep dive on big tech. So on the tech industry and attention in society. So we have, , the considerations of how technology needs to be rebalanced at the cultural, the individual, and the society level in that chapter. , chapter three is fostering civil classrooms for a more civil society.
, and in this chapter, we highlight ideas from journalist and writer Ezra Klein, , founder of Vox, the website Vox, the news website, and, podcast host, The Ezra Klein Show, one of my favorites. , we look at his ideas on barriers to civil discourse, and we consider the implications for the classroom there.
We look at ideas from Adrienne Marie Brown, who's [00:16:00] an activist and facilitator on, , turning toward interdependence. So learning to, both respect our deep, , seeded individualism while also thinking about what aspects of interdependence might help us move forward in a way that allows us to relate to each other, , more civilly across difference.
And we highlight ideas from Frances Kissling, who is a women's rights activist who has done extensive work, communicating across the deep divide around, , abortion. So, , we really consider ideas on how we find the good in the position of the other and how considering that might help us to move forward and, , Become less divisive in our society.
And so thinking about all three of them and what are the implications for our work with students every day, , to help them start to heal the divisiveness that we see and what do we do in our classrooms that sometimes set kids up for [00:17:00] debates when maybe it's not a debate, maybe it's a conversation and how we can foster civility in the kinds of experiences we have in the classroom to foster civility because there's enough polarization and people on opposite sides trying to argue their point and maybe in schools we can be able to cultivate a different way of being.
Chapter four is supporting student growth and mastery through teacher leadership. So thinking about teachers as leaders and the leaders of their classroom and the thought leaders highlighted in this chapter. There's Renee Brown on daring to lead and a lot of her insights.
are about leadership and they apply to administrators and they apply equally to teachers. , Melinda Gates writes about responsive leadership in, in her book about her work as a philanthropist and a lot of , what she learned about going into other cultures and trying to, you know, You know, [00:18:00] fix things about how much you needed to really be responsive to the culture of what and these people's lived experiences in order to affect change.
And that is true as we step into a classroom and we have, you know, a different class of students. You can't it's not a one size fits all job. You have to listen to the people that you're there to serve. And then James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, and just about building good habits really provides a lot of insight of how you might structure your classroom norms and routines to help students build habits that help themselves and help the class as a collective.
Chapter five, we dive into reducing decision fatigue to increase equity. , so we talk about ideas from Daniel Kahneman, who is Nobel Prize winning psychologist and economist on our, , flaws in our decision making, reducing what he and his [00:19:00] colleagues, , called noise in, , the book of the same name. We look at, , insights from Emily Oster, who some of the parents listening may be familiar with.
She is an economist. , And also a parenting data expert. So she gives data driven parenting, , advice, , and she talks about the business of decision making and how, , you know, we look at how her discussion of how when we run our families. like a business with a mission statement and with goals that we revisit, , we can make some decisions in ways where we're not always scrambling.
, you know, so she talks about, for example, Kids birthday parties and how if you go to every birthday party, you're invited to and you have two or three kids that really adds up over the course of a year, you could spend a lot of weekends at Chuck E. Cheese. So she talks about coming up with a mission and coming up with some, some larger goals and priorities for your family.
. In this [00:20:00] small example, that would be deciding how you're going to decide which birthday parties you go to. , it sounds like minutiae, but we know that a lot of teaching is making these micro decisions about how we're going to spend our time. , whether it's, you know, what we always do on our prep, what our students should always do coming in the door, these things matter.
And these micro decisions. add up. So we look at, , her insights for informing how we might, , , do that work, , with greater confidence. And the last one we look at in that chapter is Barry Schwartz,
, and he talks about, , he's a psychologist who talks about how having too much choice, , can really harm our ability to make good decisions because we're always thinking that we could have done it a different way. And, , this one, I think we, we loved thinking about how. , the Pinterestification of teaching and the teachers pay teachers phenomenon, , especially when it comes to new and novice teachers, how that's, that's creating a lot of noise as Daniel Kahneman would say, , in the [00:21:00] decision making process and how we might, , start to cut out some of our use of those things in order to focus on what matters.
Yeah, and just another word on the paradox of choice, which also he refers to as the tyranny of choice, that you, you know, you don't need, you know, all of these variables. If you decide how you're going to decide, and maybe a paint, paint chips, you're just going to pick between three. And maybe in, you know, decisions you make with your students, maybe it's you've decided how to decide, so you're not going to make different decisions for different students.
Katie, you, Katie, did you say Pinterestification? I did. Yeah, I like that. Well, I just want to give an example, because there's a teacher this year who's new to our district, and she's a chemistry teacher, and on her first, one of her first days with the students, she literally, like, lit fire in her hand.
And it was just what a, what a way to start the year and the kids were on the edge of their seats. And then [00:22:00] I met with her when she was, you know, preparing for observations and she was looking at Pinterest and all the amazing things chemistry teachers are doing. And I said to her, you lit fire in your hand.
But honestly, from looking at Pinterest, she had really watered that down. She didn't see herself as Pinterest or Tik TOK worthy. She said to me, you should see the chemistry teachers on Tik TOK. I said, you lit fire in your hand. , so I think that all of this noise. And all of these options and choices become paralyzing.
And not only paralyzing, you know, Barry Schwartz writes about that. It's like this opportunity costs. Well, I decided to light my hand on fire, but look what that other cool teacher did. I should have done that. And then you actually, even if you did something wonderful, you end up feeling not great about it.
And it's kind of a good thing to know because. You know, you do make a lot of choices, and it's [00:23:00] depleting to feel badly about the things that you choose. Particularly if you're lighting fire in your hand and the kids are on the edge of their seats and your supervisor walks in and says, she was one of my best hires.
And then I sit down with her and she says, you should see what teachers are doing on TikTok. I love that you bring that up because I do think that that's such a huge problem that we have right now with comparison because of the internet, no matter what you do, you feel like you're not good enough. And so teachers, it's hard to just enjoy teaching.
Yeah. And teaching is depleting enough. Without that extra noise to, you know, to make us feel, you know, more unworthy when many teachers are already so hard on themselves. You know, we're, you know, we're the, the A plus students who, you know, okay, we're going to do it better. I'm going to do it better. Even if you're really doing it, you know, exceptionally well.
The last chapter is called telling stories that lead to liberation. And this [00:24:00] is about how we talk to kids and about kids and how we think about kids and how the words that we use. , he is an activist and he writes, he writes about and talks a lot about what he calls asset framing that you look at people in terms of their strengths.
And when you look at people and think about them in terms of their strengths, not ignoring their weaknesses, it helps you serve them. Nobody wants to be seen as like, I'm on the school to prison pipeline. Like that person is not looking for help from you if that is how you see them. But if you see them as someone who hopes one day To go to college.
That changes how you interact with that student. , Elizabeth Gilbert, we highlight and she talks a lot about telling truer stories and about yourself and how when you talk negatively or think negatively about yourself that you put barriers in your way that are artificial [00:25:00] and you've constructed. And then Adam Grant on the power of rethinking.
So when we think of telling stories that lead to liberation, it's liberation for the educator, because we also tell ourselves stories that we're not good enough, and also how we deal with our students or interact with our students and our colleagues. And I guess the other thing that I want to say about the structure of the book, which we're really excited about, is if you choose one chapter, and you, there's introspective exercises to think more deeply, there are classroom strategies that you can implement, and then there are chapter specific questions for you to apply them to your practice.
And if you only do that, and you that's the master class that you've selected for this time in your life. That is a full experience. If you're part of a book club, and you have a colleague who read a different chapter. There are questions for each chapter that are designed for cross conversations. So even if you don't read every chapter.
You can [00:26:00] learn from who read about decision fatigue and kind of marry that to teacher leadership conversations and asset framing and telling to her stories. And we feel like that's where ideas come from. Katie and I, that's where we get our ideas. She says, I listened to this podcast. You want to listen to it?
And then I say, this reminds me of this. And she'll say, you know, Oh, that also makes me think about. And then we're like, let's write a book called choose your own. So we can, we can provide this, you know, kind of like as a gift to administrators, like here, we just actually planned your PD for the school year.
You know, and teachers are going to love it because they get to choose. And I love all the time that you put in it with the researchers and the thought leaders for each chapter because there are some great people in this book that you're referring to that, you know, have done a lot of great things. And so I think the fact that people can just go to this chapter and [00:27:00] learn like atomic habits, I would recommend for everybody to read, but I love how you broke it down and, you know, teachers can see how they can use it with kids.
I think That's such a great idea that you did and all the topics are such great topics and important in education. The one topic that I find really interesting that I haven't seen a lot written about Is the topic of, , balancing technology in the classroom because this is a conversation I always have with other principals, how much time should we be having teachers use technology in the classroom?
It's a great tool, but I also don't want to see kids on it all the time and it replacing teachers. We never want it to be the case that we don't need a teacher because. They have kids on technology all the time and they're just at their desk. So what is this balance of using technology? How do they use it correctly?
It's, it's a fine line and it's a hard, it's a hard thing to balance, especially when you know that kids are going home and are on technology. probably their whole evening [00:28:00] at home too. So I love that chapter. If you could just tell me a little bit about your thoughts on that and how you came up with that idea and where that came from.
Yeah, so I think that this came out of, for me, my parenting role and for Beth, her, her role as an educator, not that it wasn't also important to her as a parent, just her kids are a little older than mine are, , thinking very carefully about screen exposure, the degree to which, , we want our children, all of them,, in front of screens.
We know very clearly now that there are real health risks, , We know that students are using both in school and outside of school, , screens to a degree that's posing a whole host of health issues, , mental, physical. And, you know, we said to ourselves, and this is in the chapter, tempting as it may be to place the onus solely on parents and caregivers, there is simply no way to separate.
Our concerns from the work of the classroom, nor from the screens in the classroom. [00:29:00] So we want to think very carefully. We had the pandemic. We had to rely on technology to a degree that was unparalleled, , to anything else we've ever seen in education. We also, before the pandemic, had lots of one to one initiatives.
Those were wonderful initiatives. They have given students and teachers Access to resources like never before. At the same time, they've given students and families constant access to things like Gradebook, to things like learning management softwares, and we started asking ourselves, , is this the new normal that we want?
Do we want students tethered to their screens? Both during school and outside of school and what role as schools now that we've gone through the one to one now that we're through the pandemic and back to in person learning, what role do we want to play in helping them have a healthy [00:30:00] relationship to technology?
So by no means does this chapter, suggest that we don't need technology in the classroom. Of course we do. It is invaluable. , but instead, , we look at , some thought leaders. We learn about. , how big tech as a business model is creating technology that's increasingly addictive, addictive as its goal and increasingly so, , and what the implications are for how much we have students on screens.
During the school day and and in doing their work at home, and we offer some very practical strategies for helping educators consider how they might rebalance their use of technology if they're finding that students are on the screens most days in their classroom, and I will say both as a teacher and an instructional coach at the 6 12 level students.
Are on their Chromebooks or their one to one devices in most classes on most days. Again, that is not I don't have research for that. That is just Anecdotal. We do, [00:31:00] however, offer, , in the chapter tons of research before we before we do the deep dive into the thinkers, about the impact of of technology on students and specifically,, the impact of having technology in classrooms.
, and the degree to which that impacts their successful outcomes in education. So just to give you a quick little a little hit on that research found no increased learning outcomes with an increased investment in technology. Globally, students appear to perform best on tests when they report a low to moderate use of school computers, so I'll just leave you with that.
There's lots more in the chapter, but just those two. Beth, do you want to add? Yeah, I guess I just want to add that during the pandemic, one thing that we really noticed, and we had no choice but to rely on technology, was that for students, and there's a lot written about this in research and in our chapter, that it basically flattens time and space.
Thanks. So we just found some students. They could [00:32:00] barely some students find their Google classroom and click on the zoom link, let alone then manage effectively, you know, for learning. And then we bring everyone back to school and teachers have created and as instructional coaches, we also created these amazing tech resources.
And it's like, do we use them because they're great and we have them or we're back in person. You know, we really were like, how are we going to make these decisions of what to keep? And how are we going to prioritize presence and connection in the classroom? Because these one to one devices in between students are becoming a barrier to civil conversation.
Deciding there are so many tech tools, you know, we talk about teacher decision fatigue. You know, you hear a new tool, teachers are like, I'm going to try that. It's like, Oh, you know what? You don't need to try that. It's actually the same thing as this that we already use. And because it's just the cognitive burden from, [00:33:00] of all of this information and all of these choices and all of these screens, It's overwhelming.
So just really rethinking it. It doesn't mean not to use it, but like, when are you using it? How are you using it? Why are you using it? You know, in what ways is it benefiting students? In what ways, you know, do you see that it's harming students? So really just taking, , Katie uses the term, an inquisitive stance.
Like, like, let's look at it. And, and that's why, again, back to this idea of choose your own master class. There's no part of this book where you tell anyone what to do. We're just like, here's what the research says. Here's what people are saying from outside disciplines. Only you know what works for your students and your classroom.
And maybe that will be different next year. But you decide. You decide how to decide. Based on your school district and you know what the expectations are and what you feel is right. We really felt very strongly that we did not want to write a book that told people what to do. We [00:34:00] wanted to bring them into the wider world in a way that is digestible during the school year when everyone is so busy and so tired.
I just want to say one more word on the technology chapter two, which is that, , you know, we've seen a lot of discussion and rightfully so about the role of cell phones in the classroom, the role of cell phones in the school building, , what, what we need to do to rethink how students
exist with their cell phone throughout the school day, and that is such important conversation. We that is not something we touch on much in this chapter, because what we were seeing that was missing from the conversation is again. What is the role of the educator in considering those the other technologies that they're tethered to throughout the day that conversation about cell phones?
Super important. Also, we need to think carefully about how do we contribute to the amount of time , and it's a lot of [00:35:00] time, , you bring up, you know, grade six through 12 and I work in a K 5 building and I was thinking about as you were talking.
Probably first through fifth grader on the computers every single day, you know, so it's not just a six through 12, , we have children aged eight to 12, between four and six hours a day in the United States. Teenagers in the United States clock up to nine hours a day. And I think an important part of the conversation is that a lot of, you know, the decisions we make in schools are really well intentioned when we've invested a lot of money.
In these devices. So we don't want to not use them like that's not the answer because they are, you know, worthwhile for many, many things. So it's really just questioning how we're using them, you know, when and in what ways and and making decisions about that based on, you know, what is best practice. But, you know, I do know that when these one to one initiatives began, I remember there was, you know, it was like your kids needed [00:36:00] to be using them.
You know, the district bought them. Every student had one. Even if you'd never taught with a device before, there was lots of pressure to use them. And now, you know, that sort of, you know, got some momentum. And then it was the pandemic. And now we're in a place where kids did school on computers. So the computer is an extension.
It's part of it became the default. It became the default. And I like what you're saying. Be intentional, you know, be more intentional, really inquisitive about what you're using it for and not just defaulting to the computer, I think. That's a great point to bring up. Yeah, and I think an important discussion, again, we've talked a lot about cell phones in schools and what, what the responsibility is, , of the school administrators, , the classroom teachers to help students manage that relationship and that's a very important conversation and very, very needed.
But there's this other piece of it. How are [00:37:00] we contributing to the, , four to six hours a day kids eight to 12 are spending on screens? How are we contributing to the up to nine hours a day teenagers are spending on screens? And I do think that it's a responsibility that, that we have to, we have to shoulder.
And I think other than, you know, it's the screen time, but it's also what this, what these screens do to, you know, our attention and their attention, their ability to pay attention. And I just know as an instructional coach, kids are opening, you know, in 612, they're opening another tab, you know, they're playing a game, you know, they're paying attention, but they're also playing a game and another tab.
So, it introduces a challenge for students just to attend. And, you know, in some cases, it would be better to not offer them that distraction because it's so challenging, you know, I know it's challenging for me not to be, you know, if I'm reading on my [00:38:00] phone, not to think of, I have an idea, I think I need something from Amazon, you know, so the kids aren't doing anything that, is just objectively terrible.
They're human, and we're all human, and if, you know, we lose our attention, we're gonna open another tab also. We're gonna close the app we're reading in and open up Amazon. com, and our students are doing the same thing. .
, Beth and Katie, thank you so much for being here today on the podcast and talking about the book. There's so many great things. I can't recommend this book enough. So choose your own masterclass.
How could people get in contact with you guys if they wanted to reach out or ask any questions? Just at my email is fine and it's just Kate banno@gmail.com. There are not a lot of us out there in the world. Maybe just me, and that's, that's the best way you can follow me on Twitter, which confusingly I think is at Katie Banno.
That's okay. So just add in the I. Yeah. [00:39:00] Well, I'm on LinkedIn. , And I'm less active on Twitter now, X. Right. I say the email that I would prefer is through my website and it's connect at Beth Pandolfo dot com. All right. Awesome. And I'll put links to both of your emails in the show notes as well so that if people want to reach out to you, they're able to do that.
Thank you podcast. I appreciate you being here and I think there was a lot of value in today's episode.
Mhm. Mhm.