#081 - Kurtis Hewson | Making Meetings Less Weird

In this episode, Kurtis Hewson and I dive into the Collaborative Response Model and discuss how establishing formalized meeting structures from the start can help avoid awkward confrontations. We also explore the layers of collaboration, separating the student from the problem, and how everyone has something valuable to contribute. Kurtis opens up with an embarrassing confession from his time balancing teaching and administration, and we talk about the importance of connecting with like-minded people for collective growth.

Kurtis Hewson is a leader and co-founder of Jigsaw Learning. He’s a passionate advocate for creating collaborative frameworks in schools to support student success and enhance educator effectiveness. With a focus on fostering responsive relationships at both the district and school levels, Kurtis designs structures that empower educators and develop leadership capacity. He is also the co-author of the Corwin bestseller Collaborative Response: Three Foundational Components That Transform How We Respond to the Needs of Students.

Follow Kurtis here: https://www.jigsawlearning.ca/

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Thoughts shared on the podcast are purely our own and do not represent the views of the Anglophone South School District or the relevant jurisdictions associated with my guests.

Transcript

Lucas Clarke (00:00.588)
All right, live from Canada, two of the Maple Mines panel, which we'll talk more about. We should have some information released on that panel more so like when this episode comes out. But Curtis Hewson, thank you so much for coming on today, sir.

Kurtis Hewson (00:15.12)
Thanks so much for having me Lucas. Real honor to be able to chat with you this morning.

Lucas Clarke (00:20.536)
The pleasure is all mine. you've done a lot of speaking, a lot of writing, guess. Walk me through the phase of your teaching career when you say something is missing and I'm gonna do something about it.

Kurtis Hewson (00:34.168)
Yeah, sure. So actually in my 28th year in education and it's gone by in a snap, feels like, and working from a teacher to administration, teaching post-secondary, and then moving into the work that I do now, which really just kind of organically grew out of a desire to make a difference for kids.

And it really started with a school that I came into as a principal. It was the third school that I had become administrator in. Super honoured to be part of this amazing community of adults that were doing amazing things for kids. And it was through our conversations and just trying to do all that we could to ensure success for all that we began to think differently about how do we interact? How do we work together? How do we

really leverage the incredible expertise that we have in this building to be able to support as many kids as possible and moved away from these isolated islands of excellence, great teachers doing great things in their classrooms to how could we create this really robust collaborative community to meet the needs of so many more kids together. And I think that's really been the driving mantra to the work I do now around

framework we refer to as collaborative response, which is really about leveraging the most important critical resource that I think we have in education and that is the adults that we have in the building, the teachers, the support staff, all of those that are there to with a driving passion to make a difference for kids and that's the exciting work that I get to do now Lucas.

Lucas Clarke (02:23.876)
That's awesome. even I remember, like when I taught in Alberta, I taught grade 11 and 12 social studies for a few years and I would often go, every session I could go to, which I did go to all of them when I was there, was the diploma marking sessions in Edmonton. when, like I remember my first time walking into that, like it's kind of a sketch, it's not a sketchy, it's like an intimidating room to walk into because you're in the Alberta education building.

Kurtis Hewson (02:49.562)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (02:53.092)
It's fun though, because you walk in and there's probably 200 like minded individuals who are teaching the same course that are kind of going through that kind of same social studies battle. But I guess the only reason I'm bringing this up is I remember like learning so much from just like my table. Like there's six people at a table for marking and I'm like, there is such a wealth of knowledge in this just this room alone.

which was one of the reasons why I wanted to start the podcast initially was like, again, you can talk about social studies forever and I enjoy doing so, but like just being able to sit with every single one of those people and just understanding like, okay, there's so many like theories and things that we're doing, but there's also just so much lived experience in the classroom that like can actually help guide us, not even just classroom management, but just making it more interesting and kind of.

learning from the mistakes from others, I guess, is a pretty obvious one for that. And that's what I do like about the collaborative response. I guess, what needs of the students did you see that weren't necessarily fully being met? And what were the barriers that teachers maybe wittingly or unwittingly had from actually accommodating those needs?

Kurtis Hewson (04:12.462)
Yeah, so right there in your little anecdote that you shared there, Lucas really captures why we wanted to create some really robust structures and processes for collaboration because in our school we had centuries of teaching experience. If you added up everybody's years of experience, it was massive. And how could we leverage that? Because what I'm struggling with in this classroom, there might be a solution two doors down.

Lucas Clarke (04:29.56)
Yep. Yep.

Kurtis Hewson (04:41.316)
that I'm not even aware of. Even though in the school we're getting along, we're talking to one another, but how could we harness that and really make it purposeful? So I think in response to your question, I think every teacher struggles. This is just a fact of life. I think we have to first acknowledge that none of us have this completely figured out and that's okay.

It took me a number of years before you could admit that I don't know everything. I don't know exactly what I'm doing, right? Yeah, it is.

Lucas Clarke (05:17.412)
Well, it's a human endeavor with human beings, so it's never going to be fully... It's not a science necessarily.

Kurtis Hewson (05:25.84)
Absolutely. So Going back to your point about just that those six people in the room and the wealth of knowledge How could we create? formalized structures that not only Allowed us to be able to say and acknowledge that I don't know what to do. Can someone help me that that's not only okay It's expected. It's what we should be doing and how could we create formalized structures where we're coming together?

to be able to admit that I have this student and here's the struggle that I'm having and I'm not looking to pass it off. I own it. How can my colleagues help to support me? And when we can create really formalized structures that allow us to engage in productive, meaningful conversation, what I find is...

We formalize those structures, but then the informal conversation that happens in the hallways, in the staff room after school, go to a different level. They reach a place of, come into a room and I wanna talk about my practice, what I've tried in the classroom, what's worked, what hasn't. And I always shudder a little bit when I hear a school say, well, we don't talk shop in the staff room. Well, why?

This is so critically important what we're doing with children. Why wouldn't we want to talk about what we're trying, what we're doing, what we're seeing success, where we're struggling and just making that a part of our everyday existence in a school.

Lucas Clarke (06:51.3)
You

Hahaha

Lucas Clarke (07:07.012)
Well, that's, again, when I was thinking about, people have asked me, well, why start a podcast? And I would say one of those things was in the staff room, it's really weird to just be like, I'm eating my pretzels and hummus, living my life. And I ask you, Kurt, I'm like, hey, how has your teaching changed over the years? It can come across as very, no one wants to answer that question at 12, 10 p.m. on a crazy Tuesday. like, what? Lucas, shut up, I'm trying to eat here.

Kurtis Hewson (07:13.326)
Yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (07:29.392)
No one sits next to Lucas anymore in that situation, right?

Lucas Clarke (07:35.958)
I'm dissociating.

Yeah, and like, honestly, as I've like even just a few just down the hall, like people would just tell me crazy stories about like teaching in Kenya and teaching in London and teaching in all these like crazy places that wouldn't necessarily come up if you didn't ask those like weird questions, if that makes sense, like on a podcast format, which is definitely fun. But then you get the. What I think for me. The podcast has taken has helped me take the pressure off myself.

And I think that really comes into the sense of when it, I guess one of the purposes of needing a collaborative response model is that teachers are afraid to ask for help for whatever reason. And we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be really good at our craft, even if we're brand new. Like we have this kind of like, so is that one of the reasons for making this like a purposeful structure rather than like an informal option on a PLF, if that makes sense?

Kurtis Hewson (08:36.74)
Yeah, absolutely. so picture this, Lucas. We come into a meeting that's been structured in our school. It's happening every three to five weeks. And I can go into further detail if you like around layers of collaboration, because I believe every school needs four layers of collaboration. But one of those layers, imagine that you're asked to come into a conversation that's going to be facilitated and you're required

Lucas Clarke (08:53.22)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kurtis Hewson (09:06.554)
to not only bring up what's a celebration that you've seen in the last few weeks, and someone's going to ask you why, why did that happen? And when you say, have a student and here's the success I've seen, and somebody then says, what do you think you did that led to that success? It activates a layer of reflection, of sharing, and other people in the room hear, well, I tried.

this strategy and it really had an impact and now people are learning from one another. And then the second question we're going to ask you is what is a student that you're concerned with right now and what's one key issue that you're experiencing right now? And we set up that in time before you come to this meeting, you're taking a look at your data that you have, whatever that looks like, and we're asking you not to bring your most complex student.

to the forefront, but a student that our data says is close. In high school, I often say it's your bubble kid. Who's the kid that's sitting between 45 to 55 % in your class right now, just on the cusp? And what's one key issue? And then what's going to happen is other teachers in the room are going to, we're going to deliberately ask, once we've clarified that key issue, we're going to ask.

Who else has a student with a similar key issue? Just a name, no story, just the name, because we're trying to reinforce that it's not just you. There's others that are experiencing this. And then we turn the attention to what could we do to address that key issue? Not the student. In fact, at this point, I don't really care about the name of the student. Right. Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (10:54.488)
That's good. Like you're separating the name from the issue because you're not because you probably have like feelings associated with that name of like struggle. But like let's just part and parcel or parse this out and then actually hone in.

Kurtis Hewson (11:02.041)
my goodness.

Kurtis Hewson (11:06.424)
Yeah, and and the second that you say, well, the student I've brought together or to the meeting is Micah. Micah is my son, by the way, he's graduating this year. Love Micah. But man, I've brought Micah to this meeting and then everyone in the room goes, yeah, I've had Micah. I taught his mother every like it. It goes every which direction. But what we're trying to say is I've brought Micah, but my key issue is I cannot get this kid.

Lucas Clarke (11:14.788)
Okay.

Lucas Clarke (11:23.406)
Hahaha

Hahaha

Kurtis Hewson (11:35.29)
to stay focused on task for more than two minutes. Now we might ask a couple of questions around when do you see that happen? Is it when they're working independently, when they're working as a group? Just tell us a little bit more. And we want to get that key issue really solidified that, okay, so what I'm hearing from you, Lucas, is your key issue is staying focused on a task when working independently. And then we're going to say, okay, who else has a student? Just a name.

No story, just a name, because we want to make sure this isn't a conversation about just Micah or about just Lucas the teacher. And then we say, what could we do? And I often say this is that beautiful brainstorm where we leverage everybody's expertise in the room. And I come up that, you know, one of the things that I do is this in the classroom. And you hear that and go, that's, that's interesting. One of the things I do is this, but what if we were to do this and we

During this part of the conversation, it's heavily facilitated so that we're not judging the ideas, that nowhere is anyone allowed to say, yeah, I've tried that, that doesn't work. no, trust me, you don't know Micah like I know Micah. This wouldn't work. We just open up the possibilities and then we come back to say, all right, Curtis, from this conversation, what's one thing that you commit to go back and try with Micah to see if it makes a difference?

and I assign it as an action. So we say that through this process, it's highly solutions oriented and action focused that we're not walking away and you know, the bell goes off and we're ready to go back to the class and yeah, that was a nice conversation. No, I leave with here's a commitment that I'm willing to try and it's through this formalized collaboration that man, it just radically changed the way that we talk about how we're.

Lucas Clarke (13:24.036)
Mm-hmm.

Kurtis Hewson (13:32.196)
how we're working in our school.

Lucas Clarke (13:34.692)
Well, yeah, I remember this was actually one of the ideas I was more proud of that I because honestly, when you're at a big school, like my old school, for example, I was brand new. We have 90 teachers and educational staff at this school. it's 1600 students. It is a massive school. So we're doing our PLF and we as far as I know, we did we had a collaborative like a CRM, like collaborative response meetings, and we would go through those and

I found, and this is a question I'll get to after, is I remember we had an instance where there was a student that just would not stop swearing, which is, pretty standard language. find we are becoming progressively more loosely punishing, if that makes sense. It's almost like, but we don't hear it as much because it's like, okay, just don't swear. then honestly, it kind of goes away after a while. But anyway.

there was something going on where one of these students was actually bugging one of the other students and like bullying and like saying mean things. And the conversation was about trying to create a safe space for learning, which is like a pretty obvious goal for all of us, but trying to show them.

Like what actually happens with your body when you're kind of in that mindset of like being defensive, like you're not, you can't actually retain information and properly learn if you're not in like the proper mindset. So I remember I was like, I felt my heart racing. Cause again, like that new teacher, like you don't want to speak out and give that idea. But I actually, I remember yelling across the room because we were in a massive music room and they were at the very front and I was in the back. And I said, well, why don't we get them to make a presentation to the principal.

saying why they should be able to swear at people in their class and make them feel uncomfortable. But it sounded so like, why would you do that? But then my point was, the student's going to see their argument fall apart in real time. They're going to be like, I'm actually completely in the wrong here, even though I keep saying these things and doing these things. But anyway, I think that is one of the kernels of the purpose of the collaborative response is that

Kurtis Hewson (15:36.655)
Mm-hmm.

Kurtis Hewson (15:48.93)
Absolutely.

Lucas Clarke (15:50.486)
If I wasn't like, I was so scared. But if you have those five people with maybe a mentor that you've had before, and then it's not as intimidating, then you can kind of feel those ideas a bit more.

Kurtis Hewson (16:00.772)
man, Lucas, you've hit the nail on the head around why we formalize this conversation. That we don't create situations where you're feeling uncomfortable sharing something or man, I've got an idea but I'm not sure if it's gonna fly or if five of my colleagues are going to roll their eyes the second I... Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Lucas Clarke (16:03.873)
You

Lucas Clarke (16:22.98)
Am I gonna get fired? am I not gonna get a continuing contract here?

Kurtis Hewson (16:28.432)
We want to create situations where not only is that acceptable, but expected that we want people saying what if what if could we try this and what we find through this formalizing the that collaborative team meeting and again it's one of our our layers that we set up by by making it highly structured and facilitated by a facilitator that

is purposefully ensuring that if we have five people in the room, nobody gets to sit quiet. We are going to ask Lucas, what do you think we could do? And the great thing about the process is when you come up with an idea that is absolutely ludicrous, that nobody in the room can, we established norms.

Lucas Clarke (17:16.452)
That's almost my name, so that's gonna come up.

Kurtis Hewson (17:26.488)
that make it a safe space so that nobody in the room can go, my goodness, are you kidding me? What are you talking about? That everything comes up as a possibility, but then we, it's that old jazz analogy of we riff on each other. We hear an idea and go, hmm, I wonder what if we were to do that but to switch it up a little bit? You know, I'm worried a little bit and I'll go to your example.

Lucas Clarke (17:27.15)
Yep.

Lucas Clarke (17:32.087)
You

Kurtis Hewson (17:52.954)
about a student creating that presentation, but what if we put them into groups to be able to do it? And then somebody else jumps in and said, what if we took a student that was really strong and enjoyed creating these presentations and partnered them up to create that? And then someone jumps in, you know, I'm thinking that in my phys ed class, I could be doing something similar with that as a possibility.

And again, we've got someone taking notes that's recording all of these ideas. And then when we come back to say, all right, Lucas, what's one thing that you're willing to try? You can look at that amalgamated idea generation list and you can mentally parse out what you think is, you don't say it out loud, but in your head, you're going to go, the first two ideas are bonkers. I'm not doing that.

Lucas Clarke (18:45.892)
Trash.

Kurtis Hewson (18:46.788)
The last idea that Houston came up with is definitely not something that would work with this. But the one idea that this person came up with, I'm interested in that. And we find through doing this over and over and over again, people, when they first start, they access low hanging fruit. I like to say, you know, I'm not gonna go so far out of my comfort level to try something really out of my wheelhouse. I'm gonna, oftentimes,

Lucas Clarke (18:52.59)
Yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (19:14.67)
I'm going to commit to trying something that I was likely already planning to do or is not that far of a stretch. But eventually what we see in this process is people saying, you know, I'm really interested in Lucas's idea, but I need some help. I'm not quite sure how I would do that. And then we say, all right, who's the best person to be able to help? Would it be advantageous if you went and watched Lucas's class for a period? I'll come free you up.

to be able to go and watch how he does that in his room, if that would be helpful. We often refer to this as distributive coaching. The idea that no one has a formalized coach role, but everyone in this room has expertise. In fact, we often say in these collaborative team meetings, every person is an expert and every person is a learner. Everyone has something to contribute and I don't care if you've been teaching for two months or if this is your 32nd year, but...

every one of us can learn something as well. None of us have this 100 % figured out. We don't. It's not a possibility.

Lucas Clarke (20:23.958)
And I find it funny too, like sometimes you don't realize how much you've learned until you have to explain it to someone else. Like I remember, this is not like behavior or specific, but I remember my friend Devon, like, cause he, it was funny that we had so much turnover in my school that I was like the department head in my second year. I shouldn't have been, but it's like the people who were in the, like then the other social teacher was in their first year. So I was kind of going through like the onboarding, I guess, and showing them like the curriculum and

Kurtis Hewson (20:42.98)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (20:54.252)
And we talked for like two hours and I was like, I never really realized there was this much to this. So I find like even with other teachers, again, even like a podcast forum, once you open them up, like so much comes out that you don't actually realize was in there. And they're like, I didn't even actually know that I knew that. Like that's kind of what I think is fascinating about that.

Kurtis Hewson (21:09.434)
So the beauty of this Lucas is within our school when we first started to implement and try this and again it adjusted. This was back in the mid 2000s when we first started this within this school that became the genesis of the work that I do now. And we were adjusting, trying things and realizing, you know.

We probably should establish norms in these meetings because we've never actually said out loud. How do we expect each other to behave in this? So we were constantly trying to figure this out, but it was fascinating and it goes back to your point that we would have people that had taught together for two decades in the school, but had never actually talked explicitly about their practice. They had grown up, their kids were

best of friends, they spent time outside of the school, but had never actually had the conversation, what do you do when a student does X in your classroom? So it was fascinating once people started to open up their toolboxes and to be able to really understand that, my goodness, that's a really fascinating idea. And it's been two doors away for the last 15 years and I never realized, or my goodness, I...

Lucas Clarke (22:28.194)
That's burnt.

Kurtis Hewson (22:34.2)
You attended a session at a convention that shared a website that I've never heard of. The fascinating thing is I was in a collaborative team meeting yesterday. This is what I do now. I get asked to come in and facilitate and help set these up within schools. And every time I'm in without fail, I always hear of something that I never heard before. Whether it's a website, whether it's a strategy, whether it's an idea, some innovative thinking, like it.

It blows me away how incredibly knowledgeable and talented our staff are. And this, I'm not just talking teachers. We try and pull in educational assistants into these conversations whenever possible because the wealth of knowledge they have is staggering and they're a really untapped resource in a lot of our schools.

Lucas Clarke (23:26.744)
Yeah, all the all the EAs actually from my old city are on strike right now. So I'm cheers out to Koopie and former Murray right now. But anyway, I'm trying to think like kind of a side question here. Like we're talking about the collaborative response. We're talking facilitating the meetings in your experience. What do you think are some of the things that teachers are most like resistant to do? Because again, in a weird way, humans don't like change and kind of don't like being told to change.

Kurtis Hewson (23:30.189)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (23:56.76)
which is, that's just a human attribute. But what are kind of like, like there's no magic Kool-Aid to drink here and everything's going to be perfect. But what are some of the core things that teachers maybe like should attempt to? I don't even really know what I'm asking necessarily, but like, what do you see as like some of the most things that they should do, but aren't, if that makes sense? It's a very simple, like basic question, but.

Kurtis Hewson (23:58.714)
It is.

Kurtis Hewson (24:16.356)
Yep, I got you.

Kurtis Hewson (24:21.988)
Yeah. Okay. So right at the very, very core, which again, these collaborative team meetings, we talk about four layers of team in our school. And I'm going to give you just kind of a quick layout. Yeah. You bet. And I don't care if your school has 90 teaching staff or three, we need these four layers within the school. And the great news is when I talk about these, you're going to be able to say, yeah, I recognize that.

Lucas Clarke (24:33.39)
Yeah.

Yeah, let's go through this. So four levels of collaboration you were saying,

Kurtis Hewson (24:51.182)
Yeah, we do that. The first layer, we call it collaborative planning. And essentially it's, do we have opportunities for teachers to come together and just look at their data and talk about their practice, not focused on any individual student, any school that's engaged in professional learning communities or breakspear sprint model, examining student work, pardon?

Lucas Clarke (25:13.944)
The what? Break what sprint? Break what sprint? never heard what you said.

Kurtis Hewson (25:17.956)
Sorry, Simon Brakespear, the author, he talks about learning sprints where we set up a three week sprint in our classroom where we identify here's one thing we're going to try. We're going to do it for three weeks and then we're going to come back and talk about how it went. So whatever this framework, whatever framework you're using in your school. So you talked about department meetings as a department head. That would be something I would consider would fall into collaborative planning. We're coming together. We're meeting.

Lucas Clarke (25:33.732)
Interesting.

Kurtis Hewson (25:47.194)
We're discussing what are we doing that we think are going to impact all students. Okay. That's that first layer. The second layer is this collaborative team meeting that I've discussed. And I'm going to come back to your question here in a second. This collaborative team meeting is where I bring, have asked student, here's my key issue. And then we talk about what could we do. Then the third layer is we refer to it as the school support team. And it's intended to be the key personnel in our building.

Lucas Clarke (25:59.012)
That's all good, yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (26:17.006)
that are meeting on a regular basis to talk about students who need support beyond the classroom. So within my school, this was myself as principal, the assistant principal, our learning support teacher, and we had a family school liaison that worked with us in the high school, more around family supports and social dynamics. Anyway, the four of us every Thursday morning would meet and say, who are the kids that we need to be paying attention to? Oftentimes it was...

teachers coming and saying, I've got this going on and we need to talk about it. So I've worked with a larger high school where they didn't have one school support team. They had many. Sorry, I shouldn't say I'll qualify that. They had four within the school. There was a grade 10 team, a grade 11 team, a grade 12 team. Each team had one of their assistant principals, one of their school counselors, and then a learning services member that were on and...

People knew that if I'm struggling with this kid in grade 11, this is the team I go and refer.

Lucas Clarke (27:22.596)
Hmm, like it's not a subject question. It's a grade level student question. Interesting.

Kurtis Hewson (27:26.318)
Yeah, well, and it's more of a man. I've got a kid that I'm suspect that they're cutting. I need to bring this up to somebody and so we have a team that is really focused in on what are we doing to support the kids beyond the classroom? How do we coordinate that and then our fourth layer we refer to it as case consult. But again, think of these as as layers, not. Actual specific meetings.

The case consult is intended to be the layer where we are going to meet about one kid. So we've said in our school, Micah is, we're really worried about what's going on. And so we're going to have a meeting about just Micah and we're going to invite the people teaching Micah. We're going to bring his parents in and we might bring in an external partner as part of the conversation. And what we find is if schools haven't thought about the layering,

Lucas Clarke (27:55.203)
Yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (28:24.236)
Oftentimes, every school does the one kid meeting. Every school. We find if people haven't thought about the layering, we get caught in lots of one kid at a time conversations, which is really unsustainable. It's overwhelming. If I'm an administrator in a school of 1,200 kids, if I'm doing one kid at a time conversations over and over.

Lucas Clarke (28:46.88)
And often that kid will likely repeat in conversation and more. So you're looking at hours of meetings for again, they might need it, but like you can put other systems in place to like get the same level of even higher levels of help and assistance without getting there.

Kurtis Hewson (28:52.365)
huh.

Kurtis Hewson (29:01.156)
man, you nailed it Lucas with the mention of systems. What we do is we're creating systems so that we have less kids that get to the one kid at a time conversation, but the ones that do are the ones that absolutely need to. So scaling this back then, we've got those four layers. That second layer is this collaborative team meeting. And what I find as far as barriers for teachers,

and I think this is just barriers for human beings, is first off getting comfortable to be able to come into a space and say, I'm struggling. This is a really hard thing for us to do. think about, go back to your second year self. And it's interesting when you're talking about, my goodness, they threw me into a department head in my second year, what were they thinking? I went into an assistant principal role in my second year. It was a fascinating, yeah.

Smaller Northern school. Yeah, they were trying to create a aspiring leaders like program. Yeah. And so I got tapped in my second year to move into this role and it, yeah, it was. And again, you want to talk imposter syndrome of I'm faking this thing, man. I'm, yeah, exactly. But actually I think it was one of the

Lucas Clarke (29:58.424)
See you.

Lucas Clarke (30:02.094)
Like, Kurt, you got this right. I guess so.

Lucas Clarke (30:11.608)
It's overwhelming.

Lucas Clarke (30:18.317)
Nuh-uh-uh!

Like I was in university a year ago.

Kurtis Hewson (30:26.798)
best learning experiences I had. I was in that role in that school for, I think it was probably five years, but it was what really solidified for me the idea that you can't expect the position to hold the knowledge and authority. You have to understand that other people around you know more. That the room is always smarter than any one person. So how do we leverage the room?

And that became really apparent when people would come to me. It was fascinating that it was probably within the first week that I even got assigned the role or announced that I was going to be the assistant principal. And a colleague came to me with a question that they had where I went, man, a week ago, you wouldn't have asked me this. it's because I've got this title.

Lucas Clarke (31:17.636)
You

Kurtis Hewson (31:21.144)
next to my name and let's be honest, it was a 0.1 AP. I was, they were just trying to create a situation where a person could learn how to become a leader through this. man, just because I have that AP, that assistant principal title, I don't know more than I did a week ago. I don't know how to answer this question. So how do we leverage the room? So coming back, the...

Lucas Clarke (31:27.332)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (31:35.022)
Hmm, interesting though.

Lucas Clarke (31:43.161)
Yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (31:50.128)
creating the space where it's not only acceptable to say, don't know, but actually expected. I think that's one of our hardest challenges. And it's through doing these meetings over and over and over again that we allow people to be vulnerable, to be able to say, I have this student and I'm struggling and I'm not trying to pass it off. I'm not saying I've done everything. I'm done. I'm out. I'm checked out. Somebody else has to take this kid or...

Lucas Clarke (32:14.052)
Mm-hmm.

Kurtis Hewson (32:18.07)
Or I'm not getting into a space of, well, there's nothing I can do until I get more time, until I get, until this kid gets better parents, until we get more funding for resources. We create a space of, it's not only okay to say, I'm not sure what to do, but it's expected. And I often say that we should be creating spaces and cultures of collaboration where it's a badge of honor.

Lucas Clarke (32:28.694)
You

Lucas Clarke (32:37.838)
Mm-hmm.

Kurtis Hewson (32:47.856)
to be able to say, I'm struggling right now, I need help. And it's not out of shame or lack of expertise or lack of professional knowledge, it's a reality. Like we need spaces where we can say, I don't know. And I think that's one of our biggest barriers, which is why I'm so passionate about creating these collaborative structures that we can operate in, because we need to allow people to say, to be

Lucas Clarke (32:51.492)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (33:00.588)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Kurtis Hewson (33:17.978)
to be vulnerable and open up and be able to say, don't know what to do. But then the next conversation is, okay, what could we do? What are his possibilities? What are ideas that we could share?

Lucas Clarke (33:33.976)
Well, yeah, I think the main thing that.

The reason why the staff room is not shop talk, if that makes sense, is that shop talk can very quickly go into a spiral of negativity, which I think we're all very much used to. And really, not even because of the potential of that, for some reason when I subbed for a few years, I never ate in the staff room. It was never like an antisocial thing. It was like, you know what? We have very social jobs. So for me, I was like, you know what? I'm just going to take 20 minutes.

Kurtis Hewson (33:47.834)
Yeah, perfect.

Kurtis Hewson (34:05.039)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (34:08.132)
I'm just going to eat my pretzels, eat my apple, my veggie sticks, whatever. And I'm just going to chill for a little bit before the chaos starts in the afternoon. I do think that if done well, the collaborative response model allows you to air the dirty laundry without making them smell it too, if that makes sense. It's like, OK, I don't want to go through 30 minutes of the dumping of all this, but you get to the...

Kurtis Hewson (34:27.396)
Yeah, that's a great way to say it.

Lucas Clarke (34:37.73)
the root of it without that, which I think is, yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (34:39.248)
So Lucas, fascinating thing about this, we say within the structure and when first introduced into a school, it's foreign, it's uncomfortable because if you've asked me to come to a meeting and share a student and a struggle that I'm having, I'm naturally inclined to want to tell you the story. I want to tell you everything that I've tried.

Lucas Clarke (34:52.067)
Yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (35:07.896)
everything I've known about this kiddo and through the structure, we often say the collaborative team meeting is no storytelling. you say, man, you need to understand Micah of what's going on, then we say, okay, that conversation exists in one of our other layers. Should we have a conversation about just Micah? If so, that's a case consult and let's get the right people around the table. Because in the collaborative team meeting, it's highly possible that we have three people around the table.

Lucas Clarke (35:26.808)
Yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (35:37.252)
that don't interact with that kid daily. We want to try and you bet when I can come and I'm I've prepared ahead of time as a teacher. And again, this is where we talk about the data and evidence becomes really important in this process that when I scan my data, whatever that is, let's say I'm looking through and we've said that this week we are coming together in a collaborative team meeting and the focus is

Lucas Clarke (35:41.188)
Yeah, but they can think about an idea, not a student.

Kurtis Hewson (36:07.376)
academic achievement. That's the overarching focus. So I know this is not a space to bring up a kid that is getting into all sorts of, peer altercations or, regulation problems or anything. I'm going to come ready with our student. And my key issue is let's go with a simple idea of, kids not checking assignment criteria before handing in assignments.

And again, that might seem like I've had teachers say, well, that's great if that's your key issue in my school. My key issue is I've got gang violence going on. I've got homelessness issues. I've got drug, drug addiction thing. And we say, those are real problems. They exist in one of our other layers in the collaborative team meeting. Let's talk about what's in our locus of control. So checking assignment criteria and in the meeting, we purposely facilitate that

Lucas Clarke (36:54.116)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Kurtis Hewson (37:06.364)
that you bring up that I have Micah and nowhere in the process can I talk about all the things I've done, I've tried, or let me tell you a little story about Micah. It's I have this kid and here's my key issue. And then we might ask a couple questions to clarify the key issue just to make sure we around the table understand it. But then we're gonna turn quickly into...

name other kids where we're seeing this so that it's not a conversation about, like I said before, about Michael or about Lucas the teacher, and then what could we do? That opens up a door for innovative thinking, for solutions-focused thinking. Venting doesn't happen in that conversation.

Lucas Clarke (37:40.174)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (37:51.202)
Yeah. And I guess that that opposite question would be like, how, like, I guess, have you ever gone into a school, organized, maybe like a facilitation of these meetings, and then kind of revisited that school six months later, something has been like, something is not working out, but it's because of X, Y, Z. Like, what kind of mistakes do schools make, like, in trying to implement this?

Kurtis Hewson (38:14.352)
Yeah, 100 % and that's a great question. I've dealt with that twice in this past week Lucas. It almost always. It almost always comes down to structure. And what I mean by structure is if.

Lucas Clarke (38:18.986)
Okay

Kurtis Hewson (38:32.952)
If we picture six people sitting around a table and when we introduce structure, it can feel uncomfortable to start. And I often say a collaborative team meeting, if it's working well, should have a small level of discomfort naturally because people are gonna ask each other difficult questions and it's not to try and expose.

Lucas Clarke (38:53.828)
you

Kurtis Hewson (38:59.792)
each other for the frauds that we are, it's to dig into what is it that we know and what is it that we do. And so there's always that little level of discomfort. But when I come back to lacking structure, a school that says, well, we get along really great in the school. We don't need norms established. No, every school needs, when you come into these meetings, norms established. And I have yet to see a school

Lucas Clarke (39:03.246)
You

Yeah

Kurtis Hewson (39:29.582)
where they weren't collaborating great initially, and it went to the next level once they introduced norms. Like it doesn't hinder collaboration, it enhances it. So being able to explicitly say, agree, we will arrive on time and prepared, and making that an explicit expectation. And then the schools that do really well around this also have the conversation, what do we agree to do when someone breaks that norm?

Lucas Clarke (39:41.956)
Mm-hmm.

Kurtis Hewson (39:58.976)
What do we, and I don't mean that as punitive. I saw one school with that very norm of we agree we'll arrive on time and if someone doesn't, it's their job to bring snacks next time. but just we understand that these norms are important. Another thing, a structure piece, and again, we've come to understand that these structures don't just work in collaborative team meetings. They work anytime.

Lucas Clarke (39:59.988)
That's where I was going.

Kurtis Hewson (40:27.076)
your meeting as adults. And we've also seen now it's not just schools that need these structures. I've had lots of friends in the business community that say, man, we introduced norms into our weekly sales meetings and it's taken the conversation the next level. The second thing is, do we have roles clearly assigned that when I come into the meeting, we know explicitly who's taking notes, who's the timekeeper because we want to cap this conversation at

Lucas Clarke (40:47.0)
Yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (40:57.008)
10 minutes. want to start with celebrations and we're only going to take eight minutes for that. And again, when you first introduce that you go, man, this, this feels like a, it feels awkward.

Lucas Clarke (41:08.888)
Well, it's like the unwritten teacher culture is like, honestly, on the PD days, like we kind of just want to shoot the shit. We kind of just want to like, it's a bit more chill, students aren't in the building. We look at the facilitator and I've been the facilitator in meetings and I'm I'm trying to be serious, but I'm laughing at the same time. It feels weird. It feels weird trying to almost be the classroom manager.

Kurtis Hewson (41:14.096)
Yeah

Kurtis Hewson (41:17.829)
Yes!

Lucas Clarke (41:34.788)
classroom manager of your colleagues because you're like we're trying to actually get this going but

Kurtis Hewson (41:36.73)
Yeah.

And man, you've got it bang on. In a classroom, when we have clear routines, expectations, we know that amazing learning can happen when that's there. If it's not clearly laid out, sometimes the chaos can take over. And it's the same thing for adults. If we can agree, and again, it feels uncomfortable with this, but if we can agree that in this meeting,

This person's role is the facilitator and here's what they're going to do when they facilitate. This person's a record keeper. We have some schools that say, we've introduced the role of the interrupter. It's the interrupter's job to say, to interrupt somebody when they're on a tangent and say, well, what are we going to do about this? I saw one school where they introduced the role of norm. And they had it, it was a little bit funny because they introduced it with.

Lucas Clarke (42:19.246)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (42:32.292)
You

Kurtis Hewson (42:36.61)
And man, I'm going to date myself now. Norm from Cheers, and they had a little sample clip that they had shown of Norm walks into the bar and everyone, Norm! Anyway, it was Norm's job at the meeting. They had a staples button, you know, the red button that you push it and it goes, that was easy. The staples easy button. The person had that and it was their job. When somebody went off on a tangent, they were supposed to push the button.

Lucas Clarke (42:39.268)
You

Lucas Clarke (42:47.211)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (42:56.44)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (43:03.428)
You

Kurtis Hewson (43:05.218)
because it was reminding them of, it's easy to get off track and we're gonna pull it back in. I shared that with a school and I saw another school who actually put the staples that was easy button in the middle of the table and they said anyone can push this when they feel we're off track. And I've been in another school where they not only said anyone can push it, they said today our intention is to push that button twice. We're gonna make it a really clear expectation.

Lucas Clarke (43:09.241)
Yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (43:34.798)
that we want to set a goal of pushing it twice because it's expected that we're gonna get off track. And so let's set it as a norm. So those clear, clear expectations and Lucas, I'm gonna share with you, we've created a little guide and I also have a free webinar that talks about simple things that transform team meetings. Things like, do you have norms established? Do you have roles established? Is there...

clearly articulated what is the purpose of this meeting? Is that existing? Is there a clear agenda and note taking process? So that webinar and the little guide talk about those things. Going back to where this started from your initial question of where it breaks down, it almost always breaks down when we haven't attended to some of the structures because they feel weird, they feel awkward, feel mechanical.

Lucas Clarke (44:30.148)
Well, because you're almost, if you don't have the norm established, it's almost like rude. Like if you're talking, I'm like, hey Kurt, you need to stop talking. Like we need to move on. Like that can, that can be, and honestly, sometimes that'll happen because you're like, you'll have a very assertive teacher who's not scared to mix it up. And you're like, but then that can, that can damage the integrity of the meeting. Cause now everyone's like, everyone's kind of more closed off and.

Kurtis Hewson (44:34.628)
Yeah, yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (44:39.452)
my goodness.

Kurtis Hewson (44:45.029)
Yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (44:49.53)
Well, if, yeah, if I'm a leader who said, okay, I'm gonna interrupt you right there, Lucas, because we need to move on. That's a really, not only uncomfortable, but damaging interjection to make. we haven't talked, yeah, if we haven't talked about why, all of a sudden I do that and you've shut down. You're done, you're out, not only for this meeting, but I've probably really damaged that.

Lucas Clarke (44:58.884)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (45:02.828)
Yeah. Okay. Well, now I won't share.

Kurtis Hewson (45:18.576)
relationship for us. But if we've clarified beforehand that in this meeting, Curtis's job is to interrupt if we feel anyone's getting off task, it still might be a tad uncomfortable. But again, I've seen schools where they say the interrupter has a interrupter card and they just raise it when they feel that we're off. And if we can do this really well, no one gets offended by that. In fact, the school that had that

Staples that was easy button and I was a little nervous as an observer watching this meeting of what this was gonna look like They press the button and the person who was talking they literally stopped to it. Yeah, okay. Sorry guys I got off there everyone had a nervous little chuckle around it and then they directed right back It was a highly effective process that if somebody had just done that out of the blue, my goodness, I

Lucas Clarke (45:54.318)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (46:02.849)
Hahaha

Yep. Yep.

Yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (46:18.946)
I would not want to be in that space.

Lucas Clarke (46:19.438)
I even think too, like, if you gave everyone like a joker card, maybe, eventually everyone just like slowly, like, think that could be funny, like a funny way to like keep it lighthearted, but I like that idea of just, yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (46:28.272)
yeah. Well, it's interesting you say the cards. We've done this in meetings where we've said, okay, in this meeting, everyone's going to have a card that has a question on it. And the question might be, what does that look like in your classroom? How did you do that? Tell me more, whatever that card is. And today, the meeting, the expectation is everyone has to use their question.

Lucas Clarke (46:50.254)
Mm-hmm.

Kurtis Hewson (46:57.232)
sometime in the meeting. As soon as you do, you're gonna throw it in the middle and you're good. But what we're trying to do is normalize the idea of asking questions of your colleagues. And so even this person who's in the sixth month of their teaching career can feel okay to say, tell me why you think that works, because it's on a card and they can ask it of a 30 year vet. Imagine that happening in a...

in a school without those cards. It wouldn't. There's no way I would be opening my mouth as that newbie.

Lucas Clarke (47:28.898)
Well, yeah, that's true. Well, the weird part too is like, whenever we look at practicum students and like these brand new teachers, it's like, yes, they're new, but they've likely also come from like three months of direct contact and good relationship with a veteran teacher. Like, it's not like they're going to have nothing to bring to the table. So it's always weird to like assume that they'll have nothing. Like that's always been weird to me, like even myself, but obviously

Kurtis Hewson (47:54.052)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (47:56.77)
I'll throw out stupid ideas all day and tell me if they're stupid and we'll try and parse them out and figure it out. like not everyone is going to have that, I guess, like willingness to be vulnerable if that makes sense. But I've always, like for the most part, again, even so, maybe even to walk that back a little bit, like I just moved provinces. I went from teaching grade 11 and 12 social to being a...

Kurtis Hewson (48:06.264)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (48:21.614)
grade, middle school literacy and numeracy support and a resource team. So I am in a different world, like curriculum wise, subject wise, school wise. So it's been a lot. So the first month, of course, I'm going to be quiet because I'm just trying to listen. I'm trying to see I'm trying to figure out like, what are the dynamics of the school. But one thing I've reason I bring that up is I'm not obviously an assistant principal. But now that I'm on the resource side,

Kurtis Hewson (48:31.802)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (48:50.358)
I'm in every Wednesday at 9 a.m. we have an hour meeting and teachers will put in like an ESS, so like an education support services referral for maybe a student they're having a trouble with and they'll be tier one, two or three. So it's very organized, it's put up and the norm for our meeting is we don't go past one hour. So we kind of have the informal interrupter. It's always like, it's my principal, Jeff Matheson, he's a great guy, excellent leader but like.

Kurtis Hewson (49:10.49)
Yeah, awesome.

Lucas Clarke (49:19.096)
He'll always be like, he'll be like, Clark's going on a tangent. Like he'll jokingly say it, but like, I'm like, yeah, I am telling a story. Like I shouldn't, I don't need to keep going. So, but I do think, and they're effective and like we have action items and we'll go through, we'll go through like 40 items in an hour meeting, which if you didn't have those norms, you might get through three or four. So that's kind of what I've noticed on my new,

Kurtis Hewson (49:38.64)
Yeah, exactly.

Lucas Clarke (49:42.46)
Again, I was never part of those teams specifically at my old school because I was just like a general, not a general, but like I was a classroom teacher. I had my own kind of workload, but now I'm in a bit of a different position, which has been super fun. But yeah, it's one thing I've noticed about like that.

Kurtis Hewson (49:54.928)
So Lucas, yeah, I wanna tease out a few things that you said there. And the first thing is the meeting you just described, we would refer to that as the school support team layer. These are kids that are coming and we have people outside of the classroom who are trying to help determine what should be our next step. How do we help support? So what you just described fits that third layer that we would talk about in the school, which.

Lucas Clarke (50:00.376)
Sure.

Lucas Clarke (50:07.054)
Mm-hmm.

Kurtis Hewson (50:21.516)
is really exciting when we talk to schools about these layers, because they can go, man, we've got that. It fits in this layer. The second piece where you talked about either the practicum student or the new teacher coming into a new building. First off, the practicum student. This is something we don't realize is as a classroom teacher for the last 25 years, it's probably been 25 years since I've been in somebody else's room to watch them teach. We don't get that opportunity.

once we're a full-time teacher. A practicum student has probably come from experiences where they've been watching other people teach. Their toolbox is deeper than we think it is, just by very nature of observing. This is why we found out our educational assistants were a critical resource, because they were offered traveling with the student they were supporting, but they might be in multiple classrooms.

If we created a space where they could say, you know, in Mr. Clark's room, one of the things that he does to support is X. The people who have never seen Mr. Clark teach can go, that's interesting. Neat, neat idea. In fact, I'm going to make a purpose to go and chat with him after school because I, I'm a little bit inquisitive of that. And when we talk about the, the new teacher coming in, man, we just have a untapped

Lucas Clarke (51:19.779)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (51:33.049)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (51:42.165)
Yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (51:49.323)
source of knowledge that we didn't have in our school a year ago. So how do we create that space where we can leverage the what would you do in this situation? What would your old school have done in this situation? What would a colleague that you used to teach with with that we've never ever met? What's something they would have done in this situation? And so again, through this purposeful layering of collaboration, we create mechanisms where that doesn't happen by accident.

where you know maybe I would learn a strategy from a practicum student because I just accidentally sat next to them in the staff room and by some miracle this conversation went this direction. Like does it happen in schools without structure? Yeah it does but it happens by accident and I would suggest many times it doesn't. I may not know the

Lucas Clarke (52:46.732)
Yep.

Kurtis Hewson (52:49.228)
expertise or the exceptional skill set that somebody that I'm sitting beside or somebody that I've taught across the hall from for a number of years. Let's create spaces where we can parse and pull that out. And again, when we set structures for doing that, man, in 45 minutes, we can accomplish so much that without structure and process, that meeting might've been two hours.

Lucas Clarke (52:59.681)
Yep.

Lucas Clarke (53:18.948)
Well, and it's also it's it's not unfamiliar because like I've had classes that I've taught. I mean, Alberta, we have the 90 minute blocks for high school, but like I can remember sessions of 45, 50 minutes where I'm like engaged. Everyone's kind of in that zone. We're all we're all everything's clicking. And I've also remember like hard like, laboring through a half an hour on on communism. And like the students are just like,

Kurtis Hewson (53:19.184)
before.

Lucas Clarke (53:47.616)
and no one's interested. You can understand that difference. It's not unfamiliar to us.

Kurtis Hewson (53:47.758)
Okay, so.

Yeah, let's let's break that down. I would suggest most of time and this is my experience as a teacher as well. The 45 minutes of my goodness, the time just flew by. We were so engaged happened when I was well prepared and I had a really clear plan of action and what I was going to do. The times when I labored were the nights where I'm not feeling well. I didn't have a chance to get as prepped.

For today, I'm coming in to kind of wing it. And my goodness, looking at the clock and my good, it's two minutes since the last time I looked. How am getting through? Most of the time, it comes down to the planning side. So let me share a little story with this Lucas. As a principal, lots of times part of my role, especially in a smaller school in a couple of different circumstances, I was providing the prep time for teachers.

Lucas Clarke (54:22.424)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (54:28.772)
It's true.

Lucas Clarke (54:34.776)
Yeah. Absolutely.

Kurtis Hewson (54:48.836)
to be able to do that, I would cover off classes. And one of the worst mistakes I ever made as an administrator is we had one year where we had a contingent of grade five students and we were struggling with, do we keep them in two big, two classes that were large or break it into three? But we didn't have the resources to get that third teacher. So we said, what if the assistant principal and myself will break the kids into three?

Lucas Clarke (55:11.278)
Yeah,

Kurtis Hewson (55:18.624)
and I'll teach LA language arts, she'll teach math in the morning and then we'll make them into two bigger classes in the afternoon. So I committed myself to teaching grade five language arts every morning, which in a normal circumstance wouldn't be that big a deal. But as a full-time principal, yeah, I didn't have time to prep and plan for that at all. There was many times where I'd look up and go, my goodness, I gotta get to that class.

Lucas Clarke (55:34.934)
Yeah, but you're carrying a lot.

Kurtis Hewson (55:47.944)
and I've got nothing ready. It was the worst teaching that I've ever done in my life. And it was absolutely the worst learning circumstance. Like those poor kids. I won't speak for the assistant principal, but for the time I had for them for language arts, it was dead time. And it's because I had no structure. I had no process. There was no plan for execution. And as a result,

Lucas Clarke (55:50.308)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (56:02.82)
Hahaha

Kurtis Hewson (56:16.812)
Everything just fizzled it was poor and and I'll equate this back to meetings if I if we have a meeting that is well structured has norms established has a clear plan of action man 45 minutes flies by Whenever I hear a school say, I wish we could get rid of meetings. I I say no, I don't think that's true I think what you're saying is I wish we could get rid of poorly run or poorly

meetings. Meetings that are well structured and set up are engaging. They are and they lift spirit and we find that people in these collaborative team meetings don't say, I wish we didn't have them. They usually say, man, I wish we had more of these because I get so much out of this.

Lucas Clarke (56:52.546)
are kind of fun.

Lucas Clarke (57:08.462)
Well, and that's kind of the double-edged sword of like a lot of teachers will again, I feel like I'm kind of a nerdy person again. No one kind of just like makes a podcast on a subject without kind of being a little bit of a nerd. But I find even going to the teachers convention in Alberta, for example, like my wife's a teacher as well and she thinks I'm so cheesy and she's like not the same. She refuses to be on the podcast. Anyway, like we'll go to convention together.

And I'm looking at like sessions like two months before, like putting together my my my sked or whatever. And she's like, I'm just going to go to the keynotes. Like, what are you like? Why are you like anyway? And so. But I do almost feel like there's a bit of a I don't know if it's like learned helplessness is the wrong word, but it's almost not cool to like enjoy PD in a weird sense and teacher culture. So I guess like, how do you like, why do you think that is? I don't even like I don't even know why that would exist because we all we.

Kurtis Hewson (57:58.554)
Yeah. Yep. It is.

Lucas Clarke (58:07.364)
We teach people, so we obviously have a knack for the lack of learning. But so why are we so opposed to actually enjoying it?

Kurtis Hewson (58:17.068)
so I, again, I'm no expert or authority on that subject. think, yeah, I can speak from personal experience and I think sometimes it's seeing relevance or trying to, trying to, maybe it's even, I've been burned by experiences in the past of I've gone to sessions and

Lucas Clarke (58:23.652)
Well, no, I'm just kind of just tossing it out. Like, I don't even, yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (58:43.5)
It hasn't applied to me and it was a great time to be able to clean up my email during that particular session. And so I think by trying to make it, how do we make the learning apply, which is why the collaborative team meeting I feel is such a phenomenal game changing structure within a school, because I'm not coming into a meeting where Lucas is saying I've got Bradley.

Lucas Clarke (58:48.823)
Yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (59:12.354)
and let me tell you everything going on. And all of a sudden I'm, I don't even teach that kid, why am I here? I just spent 30 minutes of my life listening to somebody else's problem. And in the back of my mind, I'm going, this isn't the problem with the kid. It's how you engage them in the classroom. All of a sudden, this is not a valuable experience for me. But in the collaborative team meeting,

Lucas Clarke (59:24.505)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (59:37.092)
Mm-hmm.

Kurtis Hewson (59:38.276)
when I can get in and you come and say, I've got Bradley and my key issue is inappropriate interactions with peers. That's my key issue. Now, when someone turns to me and says, Curtis, do you have anyone like that? And I go, yeah, I got two names that come to mind right now around interaction with peers. Now I'm in, I'm invested. And when somebody then says, what could we do? And we actually set up the expectation and the structure to

Lucas Clarke (59:50.116)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (59:57.006)
You

Lucas Clarke (01:00:00.664)
Yep.

Kurtis Hewson (01:00:07.152)
Think outside the box, say what if, and actually someone's gonna stop me if I start to ramble, because that's one of our expectations in the meeting. And when I say, one of the things I try in my classroom is this, and I actually see two people start to write down a note in their book related to what I said. man, that is so gratifying to me as a teacher that, you know, I just shared something that's really not, yeah.

Lucas Clarke (01:00:16.45)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (01:00:34.35)
Someone's taking notes. They're not on their phones.

Kurtis Hewson (01:00:36.812)
And it's that idea of man, amazing to others, but commonplace for me. Like doesn't everybody do this? And no, they don't. There's going to be someone in that room that goes, man, that idea of setting intentional groups that you're shifting every week based on a lottery system that you set up in your room, that's really cool. I'd love to hear more about that. And all of a sudden I...

man, I can't wait to get into these conversations with my colleagues because not only am I learning things that will help me, but I'm contributing to other people's success and the piddly little things that I've been doing in my classroom for years that I don't think are really that sensational. Somebody else is going, wow, can you tell me more about that? That's.

Lucas Clarke (01:01:27.3)
Yeah, well, it's like if you, if you're seen as like a veteran who's level-headed and like enjoying your life and just doing your thing, there's so many things that you've had to figure out to get to that point that you'll take for granted that you're just like, yeah, this is just what I do. But you don't actually, again, kind of once you, because even before you were saying like, if the EA that's been in all these rooms says, like Mr. Clark does this one thing and Mr. Houston does this other thing, like.

Well, now that they've given each of us a seed that we can go to to talk to each other about rather than like not knowing what to ask because you're kind of giving the opportunities to get those little like seeds planted in your mind to actually grow something new rather than like never knowing what to ask the person across the hall because again, I've had it in my experience where I kind of like having my hands in all the areas of the school and I'll be honest.

Now that I'm not a classroom teacher, you're not really in like the trenches camaraderie anymore with the same because you're kind of doing support and kind of moving around and doing different things all the time and being a bit more responsive. But like I've had teachers say to me, they're like, I've actually never talked to that teacher. I'm like, what? Like, how have you not spoken to every person in the building nine times? Like, that's my I don't know. That's kind of been my thing for ever. But I guess but again, to the people that are.

Kurtis Hewson (01:02:40.656)
Yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (01:02:46.052)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (01:02:50.574)
maybe not as willing to go out of their way or maybe feel like anxious or awkward going to someone that they don't know and asking a question like that, even if they teach the same student, but yeah.

Kurtis Hewson (01:03:00.046)
Well, and I think this is one of the other reasons why I'm such a fan of purposeful, focused collaboration is it's natural within a school for me to connect with like-minded people, right? Like every school has, and I always did too, even as an administrator, the people that I really enjoyed hanging out with, whether it was sitting down at lunch or there were certain classrooms that I really loved going into.

Lucas Clarke (01:03:13.028)
Mm-hmm.

Kurtis Hewson (01:03:29.422)
And there were other ones that I didn't enjoy as much just because I didn't see things eye to eye. But what I found so powerful is if we can get into a structured conversation, even with people I don't necessarily see eye to eye to as far as teaching philosophy, having them share out, here's what I do in my class, here's the things I try. It was really critical that

This isn't a person I normally connect with, but I've just had my thinking challenged by someone purposefully within this. And that's really, really powerful for us in our teaching context. And I think it comes back to, and Lucas, you were talking about this of a veteran teacher, they just do their thing. They figured out ways to...

Lucas Clarke (01:04:01.294)
Mm-hmm.

Lucas Clarke (01:04:24.281)
Yep.

Kurtis Hewson (01:04:26.102)
engage students or to deal with certain situations. And I can remember early on when when we'd ask a teacher, so how what do you do in this situation? And the teacher would say, well, I just ensure I create a relationship with the student. If we don't have a mechanism where we can say how, how do you create that relationship? What do you do? Tell us explicitly. There's two sides of that. First off,

Lucas Clarke (01:04:50.51)
Mm-hmm.

Kurtis Hewson (01:04:53.752)
If no one's asking me that question, I might not be reflecting on what is it that I do that really works? You know, that I never really thought that me greeting the students every morning at the door doesn't seem that sensational, doesn't seem that far apart. But for the teacher who's answering their emails as the kids come in, that might be a radical different way of thinking. And for someone then to say, how do you get your classroom set up then to be able to...

Lucas Clarke (01:05:10.212)
Mm-hmm.

Kurtis Hewson (01:05:23.8)
spend 10 minutes at the door greeting everyone when they come in. How do you greet them? What is it that you do? Eight, that's a huge reflective practice for me to realize, hey, when I do that, that actually is having a huge impact. I just did it because it feels good and I like connecting with the kids, but this is actually having... Yeah. Yeah, but they're exactly... Someone else in the room is going, huh, interesting.

Lucas Clarke (01:05:41.113)
Yeah.

Like I'm just getting my day started. I don't want to just sit at my desk and stare at my screen. I was like, Hey, how's it going? My favorite is a go ahead.

Kurtis Hewson (01:05:54.16)
That's challenging my thinking because upon reflection I Don't often greet kids at the door and it's not because I don't think that's a good idea. I've just I haven't Had to think about it in a while of why am I not doing that? So again, you're creating the space where that not only Not only happens but is expected that that conversation is going to surface because of our structures in our process

Lucas Clarke (01:06:23.758)
Yeah, well, you're actively removing the barrier for connection. That seems to be like the overall thing for talking at the door, putting together these structured meetings, all those things. But I know there's a few things that I haven't necessarily covered with you in our previous discussion, but I think maybe we can keep some of these for our Maple Mines discussion as we go a little bit further. So I got two more things to kind of just discuss with you, Curtis, before we go. I always end off the podcast.

Kurtis Hewson (01:06:26.702)
Yeah, how did it affect?

Kurtis Hewson (01:06:43.447)
Absolutely.

Lucas Clarke (01:06:53.102)
couple quotes that I, I'm a huge quote guy, hence my nerdiness I mentioned before. But the first one is don't let school get in the way of your education. So I guess, what is it? Kind of this aspect of like, what do you do to connect? Like, what are these things you don't necessarily think about? what do you think has made you, maybe successful is the wrong word, but like again, like maybe successful that you wouldn't necessarily have learned in a classroom.

Kurtis Hewson (01:07:21.624)
I think for me, and I actually believe this is important for all of us in education, is I've looked outside of our profession for thoughts, ideas, and inspiration. And I'll give you a really specific example. When we were trying to really think about how do we create strong collaborative structures within our schools, I was engaged, and it was at a time where I had finished my master's,

in Ed leadership and my masters, the topic had been about how to create community and collaborative cultures in schools. So I had engaged in a lot of reading around professional learning communities and data driven. Like you name the educational thought leader in that area, Michael Fuller and Douglas Reeves, Richard Dufour. I'd read that, but it was when I started to look outside of education and read business books and

was exposed to a gentleman by the name of Patrick Lencioni who does a lot of business writing and other names like that. I found that it was hugely valuable to try and think of something outside of our profession and how would it apply. And I've heard this said many times before that there's no new ideas in the world. There's new application of ideas. And so

How do we look outside of our educational profession to learn from what's working in health, what's working in business and commerce, what's working in the nonprofit and how could we apply some of those things? It's been for myself hugely influential and I actually find now Lucas, I don't listen as much to educational podcasts and I don't read as many educational books as I did in the past. I find that I'm...

listening and reading more to marketing business and then thinking about how do these concepts apply to what it is that we do.

Lucas Clarke (01:09:25.644)
Let's. Well, even like the last few episodes I've done, like one was like I was like a tech business leader and the other one who's coming out actually on Tuesday, she's like the head of a marketing agency. So that's also kind of like the realms of interest I've been going into as well, because that's the other part. It's like teachers love learning, but it's also the education podcast can almost feel like you're at work and you don't really want to feel like you're at work all the time. So I can totally understand that. But even for myself, trying to, again, find different apps.

Kurtis Hewson (01:09:49.284)
Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (01:09:55.318)
and do that stuff, but I love that. So one last quote is, is what remains once one has forgotten everything they have learned in school. So what is it that you want people to take away from their time with you that they won't necessarily get with anyone else?

Kurtis Hewson (01:10:13.772)
I think for me the, what the legacy, if, if you want to refer to it as that is when I'm long gone as a voice for whatever minimal audience that is listening to that voice, it would be that remember the room is always smarter than any one person in it. And that idea that together we are better, stronger and smarter.

than any one of us on our own. And that doesn't mean that we need to just work in groups and everything is better because I think both of us have had experiences where working in groups was actually painstakingly poke your eye out with a new needle kind of experience. Yeah, noodle needle. But

Lucas Clarke (01:11:03.94)
Noodle could also work.

Kurtis Hewson (01:11:10.69)
If you're in well-structured, truly collaborative situations, it energizes. I've found over the last few years, especially when we've been talking so much about teacher wellness and burnout and that, there's less of that that happens when we're engaged in truly collaborative cultures. When we are truly in places where you come in every day and are inspired and energized by the people around you,

That's what makes this profession so so rewarding and exciting is when we can be growing learning and then helping others to engage in that process. Of course our our students are learners but our colleagues as well. So I think what remains after we're out of school is how do we create highly intentional and purposeful collaborative cultures.

and recognizing that together we are better than any one of us. A great coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Chuck Noll, was there, I forget how many decades he was their head coach. was phenomenal. Yeah, I think four. I heard this yesterday, four head coaches in their entire history and Chuck was there for a long time. He had this amazing quote and I'm probably gonna butcher it, so bear with me that the...

Lucas Clarke (01:12:23.588)
Yeah, they only have like three or something in like their whole franchise something like that. yeah. Yeah.

Lucas Clarke (01:12:37.156)
That's fine.

Kurtis Hewson (01:12:39.236)
The sum of the parts is never greater than the whole. It's how those parts work together. And what he was saying was just saying that we're bringing this group together to work. It actually might not be beneficial. In fact, it might be a negative experience. It's how they work together. And I think that's one of the key things we need to do in education is figure out how do we create robust, highly intentional collaborative cultures that

eliminate feelings of isolation and individualism in our schools. Our profession has been one categorized by isolationism for far too long. We shouldn't have situations where people go into their classroom, close the door and do their individual work. We need to create environments where every kid benefits because we're working as a team.

Lucas Clarke (01:13:35.758)
Beautiful, because I even think like when you said parts and some of parts I'm thinking like if you take an engine apart and put all the parts into a bag, it's not going to run very well. It depends how those parts kind of work together, but beautiful. Thank you so much for coming on today, Kurt. I really appreciate your time and I'm looking forward to Maple Mines. I guess before we go, where can people find your work and how can they follow up with you?

Kurtis Hewson (01:13:47.389)
that's beautiful. I love that.

Kurtis Hewson (01:13:59.598)
Yeah, so I would say the best place to go is to our website. It's jigsawlearning.ca So jigsaw just like the puzzle jigsawlearning.ca And on any of the social media channels i'm out there. it's husink27 on instagram

Lucas Clarke (01:14:09.732)
Hehehehe

Kurtis Hewson (01:14:20.944)
Twitter slash X. But probably the website is the best place. My contact information is there. All this understanding of collaborative response that has grown over the last two decades is there. And like I said, I'll share with you some follow up resources if you wouldn't mind throwing it into the show notes if people are interested.

Lucas Clarke (01:14:39.321)
Absolutely.

All right. Beautiful. Thank you, sir.

Kurtis Hewson (01:14:44.323)
Yeah, thank you.

Lucas Clarke (01:14:48.004)
Okay, so we should be.