A Back to School Special: BRI’s Plans for the Fall

0:00 hey kirk good to see you thanks for uh thanks for ringing me up yeah i’m glad uh glad you were able to get some reception out there on the on the beach can you hear me over the surf i can it’s it’s like it’s a clear day so i’m not having any interference hey i’m so glad we’re doing this uh welcome back uh episode we uh

0:21 establish some kind of ground rules that’s cool like what what do you see this looking like sure um i mean i figure we can just kind of talk through things from the top or i mean should we share some ideas in the chat box or do you think you know i’ve got kind of a basic outline yeah chat box is kind of kind of tough out here and there’s only two of us so i don’t think we need to like raise hands or anything like that um it sounds like just a sort of a

0:44 discussion back and forth i think we could probably just talk through it do you have an idea of what you wanted to talk about yeah i think we’ll just touch on sort of the welcoming everybody back and then walk through sort of what we’ve been up to this summer um and then maybe touch on one of our e-lessons that we shared last year just about building classroom culture how it is you can establish the ground rules for for conversation that’s good that’s good i like this

1:05 now that we’re kind of reconnecting this way i think it’s good to kind of understand like what’s expected and and what it is how we’re going to interact and it sounds like we’ve sort of mapped out what we’ve been working on in a little bit of a preview and i think that’s a good welcome back so i think we i think we establish our expectations sounds great all right now let’s do it all right let’s do it

1:27 [Music] hello and welcome to our back to school special my name is kirk higgins i’m the director of content at the bill of rights institute and i’m joined by my colleague gary good to see you i’m so glad you called how are things oh not as good as you it appears gary it seems like you’re really taking advantage of the

1:47 summer break it is yes exactly this is a great special because you know summer is a fantastic time and i’m just ready to get back to work although i have to say we have been continuously working through the summer so uh this welcome back is a really nice preview of what’s coming up yeah absolutely uh looking forward to it and you know it has been a busy summer

2:07 for us we’ve been still working on um some content trying to develop a new few new uh uh new aspects but what have been the big accomplishments for you so far this summer gary well you know i’m just coming off of uh some two really great events that we hosted we went ahead with our student program our constitutional academy

2:28 we did it virtually it was fantastic if i may say kids from across the country came together and what a group kirk i have to say they have been staying in touch still with each other their ideas on impacting the community have been incredible they learned a lot not only from the program itself but from each other and they’ve been working on a really

2:48 cool program that we’ll actually be sharing with a lot of people called our my impact challenge program you think we’ll be talking about that today kirk yeah i think we’ll touch on that a little bit and that’s sort of thinking about community involvement how students can get involved and really uh make make change within their communities is that right yes absolutely yes it’s a it’s a great curriculum and

3:08 project that they can do that they develop it’s all about student agency that was sort of our big theme uh of the constitutional academy it was called called american voices so it was about all the viewpoint diversity across our country on so many different issues but also honoring that they as young people themselves not only have a lot to say and think

3:28 about but also how they communicate uh through spoken word written word and like you said through impact which is pretty cool um and then we are still in the middle right now as of the recording of this uh of our summer institute uh the theme of that was justice and the judicial branch and we had a really nice balance of scholarship with our uh

3:50 our established scholar our our expert a woman named barbara berenson who some of you may have seen um as well as a lot of our curriculum we introduced llph or life liberty and the pursuit of happiness which we might also talk about sometime today um but the teachers were amazing we had about 50 teachers from across the country and they really voiced a lot of what

4:12 their experience in 2020 has been and a big focus on what they expect in 2020 in 2021 i’m pretty amazing you’ve been able to do all of that from the beach gary it is i have been hard at work here at the beach i just uh okay all right reality is i’m actually here uh in my office uh safely behind closed

4:32 doors uh working hard on all of our bri stuff so you blew up my spot there kirk oh it’s all right i can still see a little bit of the beach in the corner so it rolls in and out yeah yeah um no but that’s great gary it sounds like those programs were really effective and and that we were able to to make a shift in presenting those online which is the

4:52 first time that we presented um that those programs online there are programs that we do every year but obviously in a new format given um everything going on with the continuing uh covet 19 pandemic absolutely and it was entirely because of who was there right both the students and the teachers they were just so willing to bring questions and ideas and share with each other and they really

5:13 even though it was online um those that came really said that they appreciate just having some contact with other people across the country and and even though it couldn’t have been in person um it really was great to see them interact with each other and really form bonds yeah that’s really exciting and and i think we’ll touch on that community aspect um in a little bit but i did want to share you mentioned life liberty pursuit

5:34 of happiness our new online digital resource uh for u.s history classes um that that was the big thing that i did this summer so uh we got that uh resource published it’s an online free digital textbook if you’re interested in finding out more we’ll have a link uh down in the description of the video uh for you to check that out but uh we work with over 96

5:55 of different scholars from from across the country to write the the text um and we really think it’s something really tremendous i mean not only does it have planning tools to help you plan out your your everything from just a single class to an entire year but it is a fully digital text so it can be delivered um in you know in whatever format you may need

6:15 um you can give assignments out and it’s all aligned to the apu’s history framework as well so you can get in there play around there’s uh over 400 different pieces of content that you can use in a myriad of different ways from narratives to background essays to primary source activities

6:35 um lesson activities so it’s really something tremendous and we’re excited to get it out there excited to share it with you all and so i hope you’ll i hope you’ll check it out um but you know along those lines gary you said you had the opportunity to talk to teachers uh but we’re all sort of sitting on the edge of of a new semester one that is going to be unlike i think any semester that that we’ve been through as educators

6:56 uh what was sort of the sense that you got from the teachers that you were able to talk to and the students too absolutely yeah being able to talk to the students and teachers and and not only in our programs but also you know people have been reaching out for the past couple of months um from classroom teachers to uh people in districts and like we said and students and the one consistent bit of feedback

7:17 that’s at the top of everybody’s mind is the phrase i don’t know what’s going to happen um and i get that right i mean we we we we’re in we’re in a nation of lots of school districts um and states are making decisions um and the ways those go how districts interpret them decisions are being made

7:38 there’s many many many decisions being made and with with good intent to base it on something right but but the effect is that it things did not pass quickly as we didn’t know right in the spring and so in this planning the uncertainty of what class will look like is still real as of the time we’re

7:58 recording this and when i say that i mean teachers still many across the nation don’t know in the coming weeks if they will be in person with a full class if they will be entirely online with with classes if they will be in person for some of the days and not others um increasingly uh

8:19 there are teachers who are are wrestling with the idea of having what we call simulcast where they actually have some students but also are accommodating the students who are not comfortable or not able to come to class uh and kind of running two classes simultaneously um and so a lot of this the the word is really about uncertainty right and what this all

8:40 looks like um the other thing if i can say has to do with building class culture what’s on what’s on the minds of both the students and almost all the teachers we talk to is there’s a difference between starting a year with everybody getting through two-thirds of it and then switching um

9:00 versus starting here with a class of kids that you may not yet have met and how to build culture how to how to establish that there’s a huge difference between changing from something that exists with a class to starting that way and that’s and they’re working really hard right i mean everybody is just really trying to figure it out but it’s tough it’s really

9:21 tough yeah no absolutely and i think you know especially with everything coming up this fall too obviously we have a presidential election which is always you know is the big focus whenever those things come up i mean there’s a lot of there’s a lot of civic activity that’s been going on over you know this summer and i’m sure that’s going to continue into the fall so you know there’s a lot i think going on outside of the classroom that there’s

9:43 opportunities for that to bring into the classroom um but challenges there too and i think culture you were talking about culture i think that’s a really interesting one and um i think i’ll just mention it we can walk through a lesson we had put together last year at the beginning of the year um uh talking about sort of using the constitution to build uh civic culture in your classroom right

10:04 so how is it that you can help outline the parameters in which you can have good um civic and civil discourse um civil conversations where people feel as though they’re they’re comfortable bringing forward their opinions that those opinions are going to be treated with respect and legitimacy and um that they’re there’s not developing animosity which that becomes even

10:24 more of a challenge at a distance when you haven’t been able to meet online or been able to meet in person um and so i’ll pull that up uh really quickly um just so that we can step through it because this will be one that that we make um a few tweaks to given um the current situation yeah absolutely if

10:45 i can jump in while while you’re talking about that that’s a lot of the feedback we got is is seeking foundational things right seeking foundation in what they teach and when i say that i mean that in two different ways there’s like foundations in the content itself right just foundational concepts that need to get there but also the the foundational platforms the

11:07 foundational how to how to convey this how to how to engage with it um and i say that just because this whole idea of cultures and and i think what you’re pulling up here is is part of that foundation i think what has happened in the past few months is that teachers have a great question across the country which is what

11:28 is essential to teaching now right there have been ways that we’ve been developing it for years and years and years when everything sort of changed when it’s sort of like a reboot happening it’s it’s asking teachers to say what is the key things that must be taught because i may not be seeing you as often or in the same way and yet there are

11:49 these key things these foundational pieces that are still there both in what i’m teaching but also how i’m teaching and this is from from the from the mouths of the teachers themselves yeah no i think that’s right and i think getting down to the one of the basic things that i think about um in you know this roots into a lot of the the principles and virtues that we talk about at the

12:09 bill of rights institute a lot um but the the key thing here i think in this activity reflects that is how is it that we interact with one another because on a very foundational level that’s where relationships within classes begin right we are you form a community in your classroom what what are the rules by which that community is interacting how is it that we are formally or

12:30 informally going to share our ideas and go through the process of education which can at times be a very vulnerable activity um in one in which you are wading into an area where you may know something you may not know something but we’re challenging ideas and we want it to be a place where uh people are feeling creative and supportive and inspired uh to kind of work at some of these questions

12:50 um and so this is an e-lesson that we put together last year um and we’ll be continuing these e-lessons this year and i think once we wrap up with this we’ll talk about a few other resources that we’re going to be releasing throughout the semester to continue um to support educators but um but this one i always really like because it’s sort of taking taking a very fundamental piece of our civic reality which is the constitution

13:12 and looking at that as a means of talking about rules and expectations within your own classroom but what i think is interesting here is that the process of developing that doesn’t come down necessarily just to the educator but it’s on the students to develop what those rules are and i think this is a really unique opportunity to do that because all the students being in different places interacting with each other possibly for

13:33 the first time um have an opportunity to understand that what they’re waiting into with the educator is sort of an unknown right there’s a there’s a shared uh understanding that this is going to be something new but that we’re all going to work together to make the most of it and i think this activity is a way of of thinking about how it is that um how it is we can set those expectations

13:54 expectations and set some parameters around what discussion is going to look like so that you can get the most i think out of out of a distance learning environment absolutely yeah i mean it it’s exactly as we sort of started talking about the experience of both students and teachers in terms of involvement and agency um

14:15 and what i really love about this one is it starts off with just narrowing down to what does it mean to be a citizen but not in the traditional sense i think in terms of you know your eligibility but it’s more your membership of something right your participation in something and i think it’s a great way to start the class because if you are a member of

14:36 this class if you are a if you are a student in class there is this membership which requires what does that participation look like it requires going a little bit deeper into what are the expectations what are the habits we’re going to form early on um in a classroom and that’s that’s why again this is a perfect example of

14:57 taking the spirit of this particular lesson and i if you look through it it has things like pencil and paper that are shared in groups and there’s an assumption of being in a class which may be the case but it’s flexible enough to say but even if it’s not in a class what is that essential piece of this lesson is understanding what it means to be a member of a group in this particular

15:19 case a citizen and back to our other curriculum we talk about citizenship that way quite a lot right what is your contribution to this um but also as we said before that term agency right that students are are there’s a buy-in because the students are part of the building of these habits from the very very beginning it’s ways for them to to connect beyond

15:42 the very surface to say we are we are laying out the foundation of what this class will be this coming year and i think that’s super powerful in this lesson yeah absolutely and i think it does it already challenges sort of the assumption we’re not talking about legal citizenship right in the definition of the law we’re talking about

16:02 citizenship as membership and i think that’s really key um and stepping through this you know like you said i think this is a fairly flexible lesson you know you can’t uh break students into group although sometimes you can depending on what what uh tool you’re using uh you know to interact with students online um there are ways of doing that um but even if you can’t just asking students to to send in via via chat or

16:25 or their ideas you know uh verbally discussing those different ideas of different concepts and things um trying to group those things together um this i could even imagine this being sent out as an email maybe after the first class and having students respond and a teacher then showing up with those different groups and then walking through the second half of the activity with the students from

16:46 there how else about you adapt this i’ve just given your own experience now having having adapted our couple programs this summer gary yeah i mean that’s a great question because it’s it’s funny had you asked me about this in march i would have a certain perspective on how to do it now after a number of months doing things and again all of our viewers out there you i’m imagining

17:08 at some point maybe you’ve been on some kind of teleconference in the past four months um that those adaptations that habits happen as as if there’s not one way to do it but it is decided collectively right so so part of what i’ve learned is that almost every time i’ve interacted in some sort of teleconference and the way even in the ones that i

17:30 designed the speakers themselves let’s let’s call them the teachers of a particular session um are part of but establish these classroom habits um with the people there so perfect example of this is every time we had a speaker at our summer events um they each had a different way to say how we’re going to interact that was

17:51 established not only to the the participants but with the participants so almost every time there was this established i would like to present this way if you have a question you could click the button that says raise your hand or unmute yourself or write in the chat or write it on a separate um you know

18:12 there’s separate platforms now where you can kind of take notes and send communications um that was always established by the teacher the leader of a session but not top down it was collectively how will we best communicate what is the best way for everybody to serve so what i found was my plans

18:32 for how to communicate were best served if i gave many options in the beginning and if we allowed voluntary voicing of different approaches from the participants themselves basically many versions of what this lesson is yeah i think that’s great um and so everyone knows we’ll go ahead we’ll

18:53 be updating this lesson and we’ll also post a link down in the description so if you want to see that we’ll also have a link to this original one if you just want to see how we approached it last year in a different kind of setting but but i think i think that’s all great gary and i think getting down here sort of the conclusion that you come to at the end of this lesson is the idea that hey you know we now have

19:13 sort of some informal rules that we’ve formalized a bit that we all have buy-in into that will now uh help us conduct conversation and discussion in the classroom for the rest of the year and so i think it’s a great way um and again we’re tying that back into something that’s foundational right back into our constitution does this right it’s our agreement that has been agreed to uh that become

19:34 the rules by which society our government and society interact and organize itself when it comes to what the role of government is and how it is that we we function um and so i think it’s it’s it’s an interesting both a civic lesson but also a practical way of of beginning sort of that conversation around what it means to form societies

19:54 what is the role of government how do those things come about um and then has i think hopefully a positive effect in your classroom yeah absolutely absolutely i mean even even words in that lesson themselves about the focus on producing not only a civil classroom but a productive classroom and and i think that was the lessons that we’ve been learning in the past couple

20:15 of months at least in our programs from teachers is it’s not it’s not just about getting along forming community it’s also how do we most productively communicate have everyone be heard have some sort of of progress of action that we have and that comes from establishing these things you know even the word constitution itself is a fascinating word

20:35 in terms of who’s coming together how it’s what’s being made and what its purpose is yeah yeah absolutely so um well great well i’m glad we were able to step through that lesson i hope it was useful for all of you watching um and again we’ll have those links down in the description below um but i just want to talk to a couple other things that we’re going to be doing this fall that we’re pretty excited about

20:56 um one that comes to mind immediately is constitution day is coming up on september 17th um so we will be hosting again like we did last year gary and i will have sort of a live format um walking through some different constitutional issues and topics that day um so we’re really looking forward to that it’s coming up really quickly i can’t believe it’s already the end of july here i know

21:16 um just yesterday i was on the beach yeah right just a few minutes ago i think uh but we’re also going to be producing um a lot of different uh youtube content this year uh one of which is uh uh scholar conversations or conversations with scholars from life liberty the pursuit of happiness so the uh the u.s history resource we were

21:37 talking about we like i said we worked with over 96 different scholars um to get those things written um by those things i just mean those different resources and elements and narratives um and so we’re gonna be having conversations with those scholars both about um the content that they wrote about but also just about what it means to be a historian how they go about thinking about these topics what it means for them to explore um

21:59 these different ideas have conversations with other scholars because a big part of that resource isn’t just uh another u.s history textbook whereby we’re telling the story of american history what we’ve tried to do is set up an environment in which students can engage and ask questions of the text that allow them to dig deeper so one of the ways we’ve done that is by having

22:19 point counterpoints where two scholars write essays about the same topic but from a different perspective so that students can see how it is that those kinds of debates and things unfold because history isn’t just something that happened it’s something that we’re all constantly looking and exploring and thinking about and trying to figure out what it means for all of us and what kind of context it gives us and so

22:40 we’ll be doing those um throughout the uh throughout the fall we’re really excited about that um another exciting piece connected with life liberty and pursuit of happiness uh is a series of calling a bridge to the past this is going to be a close reading of sorts but it’s going to be shorter and it’s going to be focused on visuals so it’s all going to be different visuals um the first round at least is

23:02 going to be from um lifelong pursuit of happiness but it’s going to be looking at those visuals and doing sort of a a close read if you will of those visuals so analysis and art analysis um it’s called a lot of different things but um our colleague mary patterson is going to be walking through those um i’m really excited about that i think looking at visuals is an interesting way of of taking in

23:22 content in a in a radically different way than just text no absolutely and this this actually came up through the both the summer institute uh and and constitutional academy because of the way that we were presenting this blowing up the concept of content was a really keep thing right and the idea of text are obviously very very important but the definition of text

23:43 case in point you know if it is a visual or something even audio you know there’s still content there to dive into and teachers are really really excited to to use the methodology of analyzing text no matter what that text looked or sounded like uh and so that’s super useful and i love that it goes along with what you were saying earlier that to

24:05 have to have dialogues based on a a resource that the nature of which is to invite people to dialogue uh and to analyze and that there are lots of different ways to take a look at it and you want to have those lots of different ways because these are complex ideas um that are benefited by so many different perspectives yeah absolutely um and i should say too

24:26 that you know even though these are connected to that resource they’re all meant to be viewed independently so there is no need to um to be working through the resource in order to get a lot out of these videos we really hope that um the videos are natively interesting themselves and that hopefully there’s something um that you can have your students review and look at or if you yourself find it interesting take a look hopefully i think we’ll all

24:47 get a lot out of them and a lot of a lot out of that exploration um in addition to those two items we’re also going to continue doing our close readings uh so that’s where we’re taking a text and really going through a line by line um analysis of a variety of different texts we’re going to try to sort of go through the sweep of u.s history starting uh in the colonial period and going up through as close as we can the present

25:07 day but we’ll see how far we get but that’s our uh that’s our intention now and hopefully those um you know bring out some good conversations and are also tidbits that you can use um in your classes um and then we’ll also continue to do our e-lesson series uh obviously we showed you an example of that um just a few minutes ago but uh we’re doing new ones all the time we’re going to have ones that are helping you tie back into again

25:29 foundational kinds of kinds of things especially as we move further into again an election cycle trying to find things that we can pull out have really meaningful conversations about historical events that may connect to things that are going on now but also exploring how conversations we’re having today are similar to conversations that we’ve had in the past what those foundational things are that we’re discussing and debating about and what that all means when it comes to

25:50 how it is we relate to one another particularly in civil society um so gary what other student activities and teacher activities do you have on the horizon for for this fall yeah well i mean if i were to give it an overarching approach to the fall i would say it ties back to how we started this conversation saying what does something look like what needs to be there and what what can it look like excuse me

26:13 in a somewhat uncertain future so as far as both student and teacher programs uh we’re charging fully ahead with with everything we had planned in terms of um helping support teachers and students with their exploration of either concepts in history or either um you know historical content so we’re taking a look again as an election

26:34 season we’re looking a lot at programs that have to do with uh the executive branch uh we’re still celebrating uh the our votes for women and the celebration of the 19th amendment uh which again august is is here uh um so so that’s huge um but beyond that we’ve we’ve got programs with students uh that are summits uh you know

26:57 taking a look at different things that concern them uh we are as we said launching our uh our newly refurbished version of my impact challenge which seeks to have students engage with their communities and and and go through a really cool process where they take a look at at different aspects of impact whether it is b is through

27:18 entrepreneurialism where they will work on business plans and budgets and understand how that works as well as policy and and how engaging communities and government structures work uh and philanthropy and community building and all these pieces coming together to really make a big impact um we’re having different types that still exist uh not only are our usual programs of of

27:41 having uh that balanced workshops shall we call them with uh with our scholars and and our curriculum um but also into techniques like um conducting socratic seminars uh socratic uh practice or or different methods uh and i said it ties back to the early thing i was talking about is everything we’re planning

28:02 the question that we’re always going to have is what can this look like if it is in person if it is not in person but um but beyond that also happening synchronously or asynchronously like big question that we have that we’re working through in terms of right now you and i are talking live but there’s also working not in tandem with each other but but still

28:23 working together asynchronously outside of this um we’re constantly working with teachers on on all these different aspects of how this content can can be engaging with their students and working with students to engage with others so everything’s moving full steam ahead yeah no absolutely and one other element when it comes to students interacting with each other

28:44 or think the vote platform will be up and running um this fall as well and so that gives students an opportunity to engage with those students across the country on just different topics where they can have discussions uh about those issues and i’m really excited about that yeah as well it’ll be an enhanced version if you’re familiar with think the vote you may know the the bi-weekly question questions but this is going to be a a weekly

29:05 really enhanced version uh we’re partnering with others we’re having a lot of fleshed out opportunities for teachers to to tackle i mean november 3rd is coming real fast uh and so lots of things to wrestle with but we’ve got teams of people who are supporting that and i have to say those teams of people are all teachers themselves who are really considering what’s important to teachers and students

29:26 in a really real way yeah absolutely and to that end if you have any needs or there’s any way that we can support you as we move into the fall please reach out to us um and you can find us on twitter uh at br institute on facebook at facebook.com bill of rights institute um and and we’re here to support you so if there’s anything that we can provide that we can

29:48 um or topics that we uh can cover that would be supportive or uh different lesson ideas that we could share that would be supportive um just let us know and we’re happy to help however we can and so with that again welcome back uh thank you all for joining us um we’ll look forward to continuing engage with you uh throughout the semester looking forward to it