Desiree Kiesel: Speech and debate. At its core, the purpose of it is around elevation of voice. It’s designed, and I think it’s one of a shift that, that I know I am constantly conscious of making, which is not, oh, we help them find their voice. No, their voice existed. We gave them a platform for it. 

 Mandi Morris: Welcome to the ML Chat podcast. I’m Mandi Morris, your host here with my co-host, Andrew. This conversation today with Desiree was so powerful and humbling. What an incredible educator. 

Andrew Brandt: I really enjoyed the discussion and to win a few unique places from her talking about speech and debate and AC academy’s structure that I think formative experiences for her that have really helped design this approach to teaching and leading.

That’s very student. And human centered really good. She brought it back to her teachers as well. I think it was a great way to ground how we approach teaching. It goes deeper than just finding, helping our kids find the right answer.

Mandi Morris: We’ve [00:01:00] had quite a few guests recently that have brought up the importance of students feeling excited about their learning.

Mm-hmm. And I love that Desiree spent time talking about that today. And also through the lens of speech and debate where students have a lot of autonomy to choose topics that are exciting to them. And she also talked about students show up for the electives that they love. Students also show up when there is a topic that excites them, that they want to learn everything they can learn about that topic.

And I think it, it is just, it’s not coincidence that we’re hearing this from a lot of educators and administrators on the podcast recently, really leaning into what gets students excited about being at school and 

Andrew Brandt: learning. Totally. I even just talking now, we could spend a lot of time unpacking this more, but I also realize that, that we just gotta jump into the episode.

So I think this will be a great one for everybody to listen to. 

Mandi Morris: Absolutely. Let’s go. 

Desiree Kiesel is the Director of Teaching and Learning at North Marion School District with over 20 years of experience [00:02:00] in education in the Woodburn School District. She served as a language arts teacher, speech and debate coach and administrator, and was among the first to intentionally include code switching and Spanish language events to expand access for multilingual students.

She also served at the Oregon Department of Education as the English Language Arts specialist supporting standards and instructional practices statewide. In her current role. Desiree leads district-wide initiatives to expand opportunities for students, build collaborative systems, and empower educators, and ensure that every learner has access to their chosen path.

Desiree, welcome to the ML Chat podcast. We are really excited about this conversation with you today. 

Desiree Kiesel: Thank you so much for having me. 

Mandi Morris: So tell us a little bit about where you are today and the work that you’re doing today. You have served in a lot of different roles and I am looking forward to diving into them.

It’s always very interesting when people land up in the ML space and they’ve had just, uh. Varied background and a lot of different [00:03:00] experiences. It’s so interesting. So I’m looking forward to diving into all of that. But let’s start just getting to know where you are today and the work that you’re doing in your current role.

Desiree Kiesel: Sure. I am, like you said, the director of teaching and learning for the North Marion School district. North Marion is located in the northernmost point of Marion County, which is in the kind of central Willamette Valley of Oregon. We are a really small, rural community. I like to tell people that our entire campus is on one footprint of land, so all of our buildings are within walking distance of each other and surrounded by hazelnut fields and cow pastures, like very literally.

So. It is beautiful out here, but we are out in the middle of nowhere and we serve five different small communities that have really come together. And so the, our campus, our school district is really the core, the heart of those five small communities altogether, we have about 1600 kids, K 12. If you think about a [00:04:00] typical high school, our whole campus, K 12, is.

About is smaller than your average high school. So very tiny. Our community as a whole has really changed over the last 10 years. We went from a primarily monolingual English speaking community. To a larger, over 50% of our students now identify as La Latinx, and are about 40% are considered language learners.

And so part of the work that I’ve been really fortunate to be a part of. Is helping teachers recognize that shift in demographics and thinking about how we can be more deliberate in how we serve the community that comes to school every day. It’s one of those things that I think people are really aware of and we’re pretty reflective of a lot of the small communities that are around us, and simultaneously what that means in terms of the shift in [00:05:00] practice has not always been easy and the work has been.

Challenging at times, but really rewarding as we’re seeing. It start to to benefit and really impact our students and their achievement. 

Mandi Morris: And I wonder, being at Woodburn School District, that would’ve been a different experience. And I wonder how you’ve taken what you did in a system that was more built out, more established and taken that to transfer over into a much, much smaller school district.

I know there are pros and cons, right? ’cause in a smaller district, in some ways you can. Move the ship more easily, but then might not have the same amount of resources or access to the same amount of professional development or awareness around English learners. So I wonder what that has felt like for you and what are some tips that you would have for others listening around how you’ve accomplished what you’ve done there?

Desiree Kiesel: Sure. So yeah, interestingly, Woodburn is [00:06:00] actually. Literally a five minute drive from North Marion. In fact, we end up with a lot of students either through inter-district transfer that end up coming to our school district. And so being able to lean on the good work that Woodburn is doing is actually been really beneficial, both from what I brought with me after my time there to even just being able to call up colleagues and being like, how are you doing this?

We need to. Deal from you. And luckily, because I think when you’re small, and even Woodburn, which is a bigger community than where we live, is still considered rural in the sense that we are still so far from major city hubs like Portland or Salem that we qualify as rural, Woodburn qualified as rural, even within like federal guidelines.

So just this interesting aspect of. What are the resources that are available to those two different types of communities when they aren’t located near major hubs? In [00:07:00] terms of what did we glean you? You hit on something that’s really so true, which is when you’re small, like we tell people. I like to say to people that we are.

Small enough to be nimble. Like you said, we can turn quickly, we can make adjustments, and we are big enough to have some resources. North Marion has been recognized, gotten some grants that have been surprising to folks. We were able to get some literacy grants from the state just because of the work we’re doing and really expand A lot of the literacy we’re, we’re the literacy work that the state of Oregon is doing.

We really being able to grow in those areas, so we’re small enough to like. Be nimble. We’re big enough that they recognize us and give us some resources. Yet at the same time, like having a big enough population to, I, I guess get the bang for your buck is always a challenge when we bring folks together to do a training.

I can bring [00:08:00] every language development teacher on my campus and fit them in my office and just, we are tiny. We definitely are tiny. In some ways, the. Benefit of that. Where we’ve really been able to see the growth is because we are so small though, our teachers and their direct access to district resources, like my teachers can literally walk into my office.

And if I think about larger school districts you were mentioning, you had. Some connection with TTSD. I don’t know many colleagues in larger districts that would say, yeah, I have direct access to the Director of Teaching and learning. I could email her, she will respond, she will be in my classroom to give me feedback, and that that exists here.

So our ability to collaborate and really work as a team and have a meeting where we’re bringing all the minds to the table and not have it just be. A mess because there’s so many people has been really beneficial. It also allows us to the start of your question where like, how did we [00:09:00] gain pull from those resources Is that we can bring those things that we see happening in other districts and set them in front of everyone and analyze them and say, is this gonna work for us?

And the work we’re doing? We have the ability to, I think, to really. Implement, we, we’ve adopted a Carnegie change science mentality around things where it’s, we’re gonna try it, we’re gonna see if we get results, and if it’s not getting us what we want, we’re gonna change and we’re not going to be forever married to a decision because, and I think sometimes in larger districts, that ends up happening.

We make a decision, we invest time and energy into it, and hence we have to give it another six years to see if it works. And for us, we’re small enough to go, that didn’t work. Let’s try something different. And it could be a week later, it could be a couple months later. And we’re able to see really quickly some of those things that as leaders, we look for, is this a implementation issue?

Is this a fidelity [00:10:00] issue? Is this just around getting people the right training? We can figure that out pretty quickly because we can have those like one-on-one conversations. We can be in classrooms, we can see what’s happening and we can quickly collate. The information we have, the data we have and figure out like.

Is this shift needed or not? Right now, where we’re really seeing this all play out is we’re at the point with the state of Oregon occasionally. I’m not sure what their cycle is right now, but they ask for you to resubmit your ML EL plan and say, this is how we are approaching our language acquisition work.

And so that is due this year, and we’re able to say, okay, what are we doing? What needs to be better? What are systems that need to be built around it and really write ourselves from scratch? And that has been just a really inspiring work this year of having an opportunity to really look at what we’ve accomplished so far.

What do we want to keep leveraging and scaling up and what do we wanted to say? Not working time to start with something new. [00:11:00] 

Andrew Brandt: So I, I’d love to hit on this for a second. ’cause you’re talking about something that. I think speaks to a lot of our listeners being in rural or small districts, and it can be easy to get caught up on what you don’t have because there are a lot of resources that come when you have more students, more size, more capacity to be, be hiring specialized support, and those are real.

I think it’s important to stop and recognize what you and all these others have and which is, I think you’re naming very well, is that in a lot of ways it makes you more as a smaller, in a smaller district, you’re a lot more agile. In some ways you’re David and as you kind the David Goliath, like where you can be quick, you can be nimble, like you said, you got access to the director, you can pull the team together and because you’re agile and quick, you can take on Goliath size challenges that large districts as they’re listening to this, they’re drooling.

What you’re talking about being able to do in a matter of a meeting or a month or even a year, that take them years and years of trying to turn a shift. [00:12:00] And so I think it’s important for us to pause and realize there are some real assets in being small. ’cause you can make a huge impact. 

Mandi Morris: Yeah. It really stood out to me that you were talking about your ability to drop something.

If you can analyze it and say, this isn’t working for our teachers and or our students. And we’ve had on the podcast other school districts that are just huge, right? Like school districts that have. 65, 70 schools in a school district, and all of those schools are busting at the seams. And these are school districts that when they take on new philosophy or pedagogy and they’re trying to implement it in their school district, they know it’s going to take us three to four years just to train all of our teachers.

And what happens if you’re a year into an implementation that big and you’re getting all of this feedback that this isn’t working or this isn’t effective, or this isn’t, those teachers, the initial adopters are being told, give it time. Give it time. Be positive, please. We have another three more [00:13:00] years to go.

And I, it’s such a cool acknowledgement that you’re calling out like that ability. To be able to analyze things, bring all the voices to the table, and to be able to let go of things when they’re not working well for you. 

Desiree Kiesel: Yeah, absolutely. And I think connected to that, the other benefit of that small is.

We know our kids. I can click through all of our language learners and I can see them. I know their faces, we know their individual scores. We can really start thinking about not just as what are we doing at this big, broad roller of a problem to solve, but like we can get minute details. We can think about this specific kid.

How could we tweak something for them individually as well as look at the overall health of the system or different aspects of each individual. Individual building, we can get pretty granular with the students we work with. And it’s one of my favorite things actually, when we have all of our, our English [00:14:00] language development teachers together in the room, because our students follow each other.

They start in kindergarten, they go all the way. They move from building to building. We have two elementary and middle school and a high school, and our two elementaries are. Split up K two and then three five, and it was done in part that has its own challenges. But part of that split was because the community said, we don’t want two different elementary schools.

We want kids to know each other and really get to know each other and follow each other and be together. So when that happens, and you get all these teachers in the room, here’s this fifth grade teacher or our elementary school teachers talking about a student that they had, and their middle school teacher is giving them an update.

Oh yeah, this kid is currently doing this. We, I know exactly who you’re talking about. Manny still loves to wear red hats, like they know these kids and it definitely, it helps kids from not falling through the cracks. It hurts worse too when it’s not working because you know specifically where the system is failing and who it’s failing.

Andrew Brandt: Desiree, [00:15:00] this begs the question as we talk about being able to be agile and nimble. And focus on the needs. What are you doing now? What is the need or what’s the area that you’re focused on to help drive growth and development for your language learners? 

Desiree Kiesel: We are really focused on two specific areas. One is a behemoth.

We’re not exactly sure how to solve it, and that’s what our newcomers part of it is around the staff we have access to and making sure they have people who really understand what that. Early access to language looks like and getting them the right classes. So that’s just a, that’s a huge challenge we’re facing.

The other huge focus is the fact that our language acquisition time, our language development time is a small drop in the bucket. So it’s really about how is language. A part of every single thing we do. And so it’s the core. It is about what their primary [00:16:00] teachers, their homeroom teachers, their math teachers, their science teachers, all those other teachers, how are they creating access points and removing barriers.

To core content and making sure that all of our students are able to really dive into to what it means to be a learner. And for us, one of the things we’re really talking a lot about is the concept of collective responsibility. There. There was a shift a few years ago around with John Hattie’s work around collective efficacy and it’s, that’s an amazing concept.

And one of the things we realized though, is that collective efficacy is a byproduct. When there is collective responsibility where people believe, I have a personal stake in how well my students are doing, and it is my responsibility as their teacher to get them to the standard to achieve this goal.

And when I have that belief, when there is a collective responsibility within a building, within a district, [00:17:00] then that ability to go. And to do that, let’s have some efficacy around how we’re rolling this out or how we’re using this strategy. That becomes a natural. It’s, of course, I would do that as we try to shift the culture.

And when I talked about earlier, the fact that our population has changed, and I think as our language learner population has grown, we’ve had to shift this mentality of those kids are your responsibility and then everyone else is my responsibility. And that I would argue that was never a good mentality.

But it may have worked better when there was 10 kids that were being impacted that way. But when we’re looking at, there’s at least 10 kids in every classroom, 15 kids in every classroom that are being impacted that way. Now, that collective responsibility, it has to be mine. I have to have some ownership in it, and that means my practices have to shift.

So that piece of like. How language acquisition just dives into everything we’re doing is really [00:18:00] the focus of our work right now. 

Andrew Brandt: Do you have any, any strategies or approaches? ’cause you, you named something that I’m sure everybody listening is like, amen. And then they’re waiting there with bated breath.

They’re like, is there something that Desiree’s figured out? And maybe that’s what you’re referred to at the beginning, that you’re still trying to figure out the answer to that yourself. How do you build that? How do you cultivate that in your team? 

Desiree Kiesel: Oh, I think one of the e, and this is where small benefits us.

Again, one of the easiest ways to cultivate it is give it a face and give it a name. And when we know our students and we realize, oh, this is really about helping this specific student, not just this broad concept, that’s where we start to see some shifts. I’ll give an example as some of the work that we’re doing around literacy and early literacy, which is really a state initiative in Oregon, we’re really focusing that literacy work around how do we create access points for students and especially students [00:19:00] who, through the nature of being a language learner, reading is not gonna be automatic, right?

It’s not the first thing that comes, it’s pretty far down the line actually, and. We did some activities with our high school and middle school this last two years, which is really around painting the picture of what it looks like to be a reader at all these varying levels that our language learners are coming to our classroom in.

And our instructional coach that works directly with me designed like she took the instructions for an activity and for a student who’s like an English only student, it looks like this and it’s just. The instructions. You read them, they’re very, what you’re seeing for a student who he looks like he speaks English really well, he is very, has social English.

We can have really good conversations, but really when it comes to like multi-syllabic words, et cetera, decoding is really difficult. So those directions look like he recognized the first part of this word, but not the second part of this word, for example. [00:20:00] And then for those students who are. More at the beginning of their language acquisition, the directions were actually written all in Spanish with some cause suddenly in English to mimic for those teachers who only speak English, oh, this is like reading French or literally reading Spanish, and I recognized one word and two words, and suddenly when they’re like.

This is what it’s like to be a kid in my classroom reading my directions, which seems so simple. Like I, this should be second nature and this is what it looks like for them. Suddenly like that reality of what their students are experiencing. The social affect of feeling embarrassed, I should know this. I should be able to do this activity that you’ve asked me to do because I’m smart, but I can’t ’cause I don’t know what you asked me to do.

’cause the language in front of me doesn’t match. It’s having those moments where we give humanity. To this experience that’s really starting to shift the culture. The second part of your question that is the harder piece is then how do you translate that into, and now do this practice and now do [00:21:00] this thing?

And we’re, what we’re trying to do with that is adopt a really clear. Model and framework for that work. We’re specifically using the plus framework, which comes out of Portland State and research they’ve done around language learning, and it’s very much like PS, IOP or glad, those kind of models of what are the instructional strategies I need to be incorporating every day to remove barriers to access.

Andrew Brandt: So I love that and I wanna especially focus on that first part. ’cause the second part of it, what we do next, every district’s gonna have an approach and that we could discuss all day. But I think the first part is very real and it’s also very approachable. Just keep grounding it back in the kids who’s being impacted, how they’re being impacted, tell their story.

’cause I think there’s something very real inside each of us that comes alive when we can see the humanity and the student. That then helps drive the answer to the second question. I think sometimes we get too caught up on the second question of the [00:22:00] how. And we forget that if we could just focus on the why and the student that then helps drive the how.

But let’s focus on the kid telling their story. ’cause naturally that pulls that at all of us. To figure out how to give them the education and the love and the support that they deserve. 

Desiree Kiesel: Yeah, absolutely. I think that also is, connects back to that collective responsibility. It’s one thing to say we have a collective responsibility and move this number from here to here and grow 10%.

It’s another thing to say, I really want Michael to grow from here to here, and I owe it to him because. He told me the other day he wants to be an astronaut and I think I should let him get some skills to read so that we can get him to that spot. Those shifts when it’s suddenly very personal is, and our, our language acquisition teachers see it every day.

They get to meet with those parents. They know that the hopes and the dreams and the aspirations of these students. I think it was, it was one of the pieces that I really [00:23:00] loved going backwards a little bit around my time in Woodburn, just because as you’re working with families. You suddenly know why you’re doing the work you’re doing.

’cause these families are just doing this amazing thing to help their kids and the dreams that they have for their kids are the same dreams that everybody has for their kids. And so it’s that, that why of the work is just. So obvious at that point. You want to know what that kid’s story is going to be in 10 years, when, what are they going to email you about?

As a high school teacher, I used to tell kids all the time, I’d get that random email, right? And it’s okay, this is the thing that will allow me to stay in education for at least 10 more days. You know, this email that tells me like, what I did impacted, I saw something. I made an impact. Okay. I’m okay because education can get heavy and it’s knowing those stories and the growth you’re helping with these individuals.

Individual kids. That is what keeps you going. 

Mandi Morris: Desiree, you have such a varied background [00:24:00] and let’s go there. How did you get into education? You’re speaking to what keeps you here after 20 years committing your career to this work? Did you always know that you wanted to be an educator? Where did the journey start for you?

Desiree Kiesel: Sure. No, I was not gonna go into education at all. In fact, I have two parents that are educators. Who by the time I was in high school, were no longer educator. It was not paying off for them. If anything, I had a lot of deterrence. I went to school initially to do communications and then I, I grew up in the Woodburn school district, was a graduate of the Woodburn School District and had done, uh, speech and.

Through the Woodburn School district and the high school team. And when I was in college, I was participating on their speech and debate team, and my former high school coach reached out to me and said, Hey, I have a job. It pays a hundred dollars a month if you wanna come and work with kids. And as a college student, I was like, a hundred dollars a [00:25:00] month.

Buys me some textbooks, maybe pays for my Top Ramen for the week. That sounds like a pretty good deal. I went back and would come like once a week and work with her students and I fell in love with teenagers. Like they were just so amazing, especially working with kids who were involved in speech and debate, like watching their brains just develop and watching them get excited about.

Policy, and I’m just gonna say it like really nerdy, geeky things. Just watching them get so excited about it, it just made me get hooked. So I shifted my major to literature and decided to pursue teaching. I was really fortunate when it came time to look for my first jobs, Woodburn happened to have an opening for both an English teacher and a speech coach, and that felt like a pretty.

Like a destiny type of thing to go back to the community. That had done so much for me as a student and I applied and got my [00:26:00] first teaching job there. It, the community had changed even in the five or six years since I had graduated. Our language learning population had. Skyrocketed. Our number of Latinx families we were serving had grown.

So the school district looked a bit different, but it still looked like home. And there was this aspect of being able to go back to that community. Woodburn, it’s a hard thing to say to people who have no idea what Woodburn is, but Woodburn is just such a unique special community, and there was a. Really special thing about being back at that school and having students where it was like we know each other because we both grew up here, and that that was like its own special club that not a lot of people get to belong to.

So I began that teaching career. I served as both a language arts teacher and a speech and debate coach for a lot of years. I was also just really fortunate that as part of that. Woodburn at that [00:27:00] time, one of the things, it was in the middle of No Child Left Behind and Woodburn was considered a failing school.

We had not met adequate yearly progress. I believe at the time. It was like you had to, within seven years, had to cer show a certain number points of growth, and we had not met that growth over multiple years. And the federal government was about ready to come and shut us down as a high school. They were going the time.

At the time, I believe the rules were like. They would close the high school fire, all the teachers, the principal, they could hire back no more than like 20% of the teachers. They could not hire back The principal, I was a like a second year teacher being told, it is likely you’re about to lose your job ’cause we are gonna be closing the school down if something doesn’t change.

And I was really lucky at that time, the superintendent and the principal of the high school were really visionary and it was right as Bill Gates had decided that. Fixing schools was gonna be his new passion. And he started the small schools [00:28:00] initiative, which was to take large, comprehensive high schools and break them up into smaller autonomous high schools.

So as a teacher, I was able to get into a leadership pathway and help design schools within the high school, and we got the grant and which infused. Quite literally millions of dollars into the Woodburn High School, and we went from Woodburn High School into four small learning academies. I worked specifically with the Woodburn Arts and Communications Academy and was one of their instructional coaches for a bit.

So yeah, it was. And within that. The solution to No Child Left Behind is because we were a brand new school, we gotta start back to zero. So we gotta start making adequate yearly progress from Year Zero and with the change in small schools, and it very much mirrors what my experience in North Marion has been.

We went from a large school of about 1600 kids to suddenly a small school of about 350 to 400 kids, and we knew those kids well. [00:29:00] They were our students. 

Mandi Morris: So what happened with those students? That is an incredible story. And you’re talking through, I love, like you’re talking through kind of some of the history of Nutella.

I’m like, yeah, I remember that. I remember Scholar. I was like bringing it back to life. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone though who worked in a school that actually got one of those grants. And what I love the concept of breaking schools now you’ll hear like they have academies, but I almost feel like it’s a light version of that where they’re.

Very much so. Still part of the comprehensive high school, and they have some classes of their day that they’re in an academy. What was that experience like for you, and in hindsight now, what success did it have? What drawbacks? That’s such a unique experience you had. 

Desiree Kiesel: Yeah, I will say Woodburn not only got that grant, but we kept that going strong for over 15 years.

Two years ago, they finally decided just economically, they couldn’t continue to sustain it, but we were one of the longest lasting small school systems from that [00:30:00] initial bill. Great Grant, which was really amazing. What I really saw was systems that. Focused on understanding individual students and their needs, and specifically small groups of teachers who could design to be.

Driven by student passion and we, like I said, we were the arts and communications school. We also had an Academy of International Studies Wellness, business and Sports School, and a science and technology school. And to be able to take students and recognize. Core learning needs, whether it was language acquisition or other potential barriers to access and then infuse that with this thing that it was about.

What brings you to school every day? ’cause I’m an English teacher, I’m a language arts teacher. Literature only brought a couple kids to school every day. It was the other classes, it’s the art classes, [00:31:00] it’s the music classes, it’s that technology class. It’s. The wood shop class, it’s those things are what keep a kid hooked.

And so to be able to say, here’s this thing you love, we’re going to access that thing you love and use that as our vehicle to get you the skills you need to be successful, to build your language, do all those things. We saw amazing turnaround in terms of our test scores. Our graduation rate suddenly was one of the highest in the state, and specifically was one of the highest in the state.

For Latinx students. So the impacts that that change alone made were phenomenal. It really, it put Woodburn on the map in a lot of ways. 

Mandi Morris: In your experience there. I can hear from what you’ve shared with us today, what an impact it’s had on the work that you’re doing now, even from the perspective of that student centered approach to education.

And it’s so cool when you hear someone’s [00:32:00] story and you can look back and it’s, oh wow, all of these stepping stones really brought you to where you are to be able to do the work that you’re doing now. But I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about speech and debate. I am. I love the idea of. Speech and debate being a powerful tool for English learners, and it’s not always a space for English learners to feel like they could be effective or included.

And so I’m so excited to hear you talk a little bit about how you took an approach to really including and empowering students who speak multiple languages. 

Desiree Kiesel: Absolutely speech and debate. At its core, the purpose of it is around elevation of voice. It is, it’s designed, and I think it’s one of a shift that, that I know I am constantly conscious of making, which is not, oh, we help them find their voice.

I know their voice existed. We gave them a platform for it because they had so [00:33:00] many powerful. Things to say all students do. So speech and debate is just really about, here, let me help you learn how to organize those thoughts so that you’re really like, articulate with the words you wanna use, and then I’m gonna let you have this platform to just constantly be sharing that with others.

Within Woodburn, it was building that program was, it was so essential that we were drawing from the wealth. Of passion and experience that that every part of that community had to offer. And we would do a lot of work with going into our English classrooms and our ELD classrooms to advertise and get kids to join the speech team.

We would really focus, when I was coaching students once they had joined, it was really about. Helping them explore what they were passionate about. There’s various different events [00:34:00] kids can do, whether it’s events where they’re doing research and writing their own speeches to events that are more like drama type events where they’re finding different pieces already exist and then and presenting those.

And when it was about writing their own events or their own speeches, it was about keying into things that they were passionate about. And when it was about using pieces that already existed within that student population, it was really about saying. Your heritage language is a gift and you deserve the right to use it.

And so we worked really hard with students to find pieces where they were able to use both Spanish and English, and then even more take advantage of like natural accents that they had as language learners, et cetera. And so giving them finding pieces where they could just go and just. Speak and be who they were in their natural voice.

They weren’t trying to figure out how to say words or [00:35:00] anything. It was just like, say it. Just say it the way you’d say it because this is who this character is. So leveraging that was immensely powerful as we had more and more students filtering into the larger Oregon Speech Association who were.

Playing with these, these ideas and giving speeches about things they were passionate about. The organization as a whole were like, we’ve gotta figure out a way to, to leverage this. And there were speech coaches that came together and developed specific categories of speeches so that really early language learners, students who were in that emerging category could participate and that there was specific.

Judging criteria that was about making sure we were giving great feedback to those students as they were leveraging their voice, and it was also just about God honoring the experiences. Woodburn is a really unique community in that we have a large Latino population, but we [00:36:00] also have a fairly large Russian population, both Ukrainian, a Russian old believer, and I remember.

Having, we had a student who I think at one point now worked, had worked as like a translator for the UN who came as almost like Native Russian speaker who did a series of poetry about Chernobyl, for example. So it was just like, oh yeah, this is directly impact me. I have family connections to this. I’m gonna share this experience.

So it’s just, it was about like really. Acknowledging and saying your lived experience is something that deserves to have voice, and where can we create opportunities to leverage that? 

Andrew Brandt: This is such a fun discussion to have and hear the different experiences you’ve had between the gates, grants and academies, and then of course, the speech and debate.

Naturally, our teachers probably aren’t in a position to get a grant or break down their school into academies. But I think that it’s important to recognize the, the theme [00:37:00] and what’s going on behind the scenes, which really is around the student-centered learning and giving them a place where they can feel seen and heard, and then an opportunity to use their language in ways that excite them.

And I think we see that with the Academy work. Granted, there’s some cool opportunities there that not everybody has, but even in your own classroom, for our teachers that are listening, you can put together. You have like a speech and debate in your class and have them pick subjects that they’re passionate about and have ’em debate them and then find those passions they have.

And maybe they might not have an academy built around shop, but you can have an academy in your class built around whatever’s they’re passionate about and get them engaged. ’cause that’s where when students feel seen and heard and feel like their voice is unique and valuable, that’s powerful. And that excites learning.

Desiree Kiesel: Absolutely. Yeah. I think it’s at the core of it. Is that shift that we, I hope more and more we’re making to the, towards that concept of culturally [00:38:00] relevant educational pathways, right? Finding the right tools, finding places where we can interject those resources and spaces where the materials, the curriculum, the discussion looks like our students, and reflects the things they’re passionate about, the communities that they’re a part of, really.

Leverages and builds off of those funds of knowledge that they’re coming to us with. And, and honestly, the thing that’s the best about that, and it’s the hook for teachers is it’s so much fun. Like the, that’s the, it’s the stuff where when you see a student just thriving because the topic is suddenly so interesting to them that we really.

The need, the desire to have the language so that I can be excited is just, it’s naturally built in. And I think about what’s interesting in looping back to the speech discussion is we were, [00:39:00] we, I was talking about it as this kind of cultural relevance, but the reality is like the majority of the topics my students picked, one would not necessarily look at that and be like, oh, that’s a culturally relevant topic for that student.

It was. Relevant to them because it’s relevant to them. That was it. And so I had a student who did a speech on the power of forgiveness and its impact on our bodies and how we could be using concepts of forgiveness to better our lives, both mentally and physically. Right. Had nothing to do with anything except for that.

She was interested in it as a topic, and she found a way to research it and get excited. I had another student that made it all the way to state with a speech about hospital acquired infections, about the death rates, because most people don’t die from surgery. They die from whatever infection they got after their surgery because someone didn’t care for their wound correctly.

She was impacted because she had. People in her family that were impacted about that and then she was able to leverage that [00:40:00] into something really impactful. So like giving students platforms isn’t always just about the concept of like culturally relevant platforms. It’s just about creating the concept of it is relevant because you are passionate about it.

Andrew Brandt: And this is reminding so much of our conversation with Jeff Zwiers, the episode we released on January 20th and his discussion on big ideas and just. Finding those ideas that excite our kids and embracing the idea that we’re not just asking students questions and trying to get the right answer, filling in the blank, here’s what’s right.

And when we really embrace the idea that our students are unique and their ideas are unique and encourage them to express that uniqueness in them, it helps them grow more confidence in their language development and the fact that what they’re expressing. Isn’t right or wrong, it’s them. And that’s what’s, that’s what matters.

And I think you hit on the other part, is that when you’re teaching, when it goes beyond just how do I get my kids to say the right answer and it goes to, how do I help my kids really [00:41:00] embrace that voice that’s inside them and have the confidence to express that uniqueness. Then it becomes alive for the teacher too.

And I love how you’re hitting on that. ’cause that’s, I think that’s very real for both the student and the teacher. 

Desiree Kiesel: Yeah, I think I think about Art Costa’s work where she, he talks about the habits of mind and the traits that basically are the things that make us good human beings when we leave and leave school and become adults.

And one of the perks, one of the things I loved about when I was able to do speech and debate is. It was those aspects of creating independent thinkers, students who could form opinions, who could articulate their opinions, who could have a meaningful, thoughtful debate and contradict and give pros and cons and whatnot.

That was really. Where the power was behind all of that work. And as a language arts teacher, how I work to incorporate that and as a director of teaching and learning, how are we talking about those larger traits of [00:42:00] thinking that we are really working with students on that their ability to solve a specific math problem versus their ability to be a problem solver are two different things.

And I think often we get really hung up on. That specific skill that may or may not be transferable and don’t give kids as much opportunities as we would want to get to those more higher level skills that students leave going. This is the thing that I then used and it honestly, it was my favorite part of being a speech and debate coach is when I could get a student afterwards who messaged me and said the.

Most important class I took in high school was speech and debate, because when my professor asked me a question and I was able to engage in a debate with them and they left going, oh, you’re fine, we got it. That’s those larger skills and the opportunities, the space we create in our classrooms to allow students.

[00:43:00] The time that it takes to engage in thinking and engage in discussion and engage in debate is so important. 

Mandi Morris: You mentioned something earlier when you were talking about students with really emerging English skills in debate and how you had a really specific rubric that offered. The kinds of feedback, and that resonated with me at the moment.

But then I was thinking about it again. And you’re talking about the ability for a child to solve a math problem versus being a problem solver and the types of feedback that our students get all throughout their day. Our English learners, yes. But students broadly, if the feedback students are getting all day long is you can’t.

Do this thing that I’m asking you to do. You can’t accomplish this very specific skill or you can’t recall all of these dates I’m asking you to memorize, to pass a summative assessment in my class. All of that negative feedback loop. It accumulates over time and [00:44:00] it makes me not surprised that we have the challenge with an exploding number of long-term English learners.

Like how do we have kids that are juniors in high school that have been in the program since kindergarten and they’re still in the program? I think there are various reasons why, and that’s that’s whole own conversation, but I do think a lot about what does that feedback loop sound like, and I think. It magnifies when you hit secondary because now students are in six and seven classes.

So the feedback that a kid is getting in first period, the second, third, fourth period teacher, there’s no connection between all the different feedback loops a student is getting, and it doesn’t really take much to where a student’s confidence and excitement. Down. And what you’re talking about here is, hey, if we lean into what is exciting for students, they show up for learning because they’re energized.

And then guess what happens when you’re [00:45:00] energized about something? It’s like that self-propelling snowball, like you start getting positive feedback because the people around you see you showing up and trying hard at. And so I think there’s really a thread here that’s connected about. Such a student centered experience in the school day and what it feels like to be a student that is seen, valued and really empowered to own their own learning.

Desiree Kiesel: And it’s so interesting that you brought up the, our long-term language learners. ’cause that’s one of our discussion points we’ve been having as well, where we have these students who. They’re hitting on year 10, and we were discussing with our high school team specifically just some of the impacts of that.

And they were specifically recalling conversations they had with students how, because of those negative feedback loops that you’re talking about. And because within Oregon, our only way to exit is through our ELPA test. And that the only feedback they’re getting on that is. Negative [00:46:00] feedback loops that there is this mentality that is becoming prevalent at our high school of this system is rigged against me.

There is nothing that’s feeding me to try harder in it. And so that piece of like, where do we flip that script for those students to really give them something to get excited about, especially when often those assessments. Are are so specific to that moment in time. I have this vivid memory as a teacher, a student coming up to me.

It was during alpha testing and she came up to me and she goes, Ms. Kiesel, what’s the thing that goes in your ears and you listen to the heart? And I go, stethoscope. And she goes, gushing it. And she walked away and I like looked. I was like, what? And I found out it was one of the questions on the alpha and like the thought that like.

I don’t get to exit because I didn’t know what a stethoscope was like. When is that [00:47:00] coming up in conversation? So this concept, like no wonder they, they start to feel like, no, this is set up against me. And so where do we create opportunities where instead it feels like this is set up for me. Like I have nothing to do but succeed because.

This is my topic. This is the thing I’m passionate about. This is the voice I wanna share. So yeah, I think there’s a lot of power in everything that you just pointed out and where we deliberately make those moments. And where do we shift from teaching as an English teacher? I’ll give an example. Like I really shifted how I gave feedback on papers too.

Red pens to instead, a list of questions that I would ask because when I gave them questions to reflect on, they became better writers. When I gave them red pen, they became better at that piece of writing, which by the way, will never exist again. They could fix that comma. Now that comma is [00:48:00] fixed and they will never write that sentence and know where to put that comment in again.

But if I ask the question about, talk to me about why you’re using commas that way, you know, that’s a different kind of conversation and it teaches them to be writers versus teaching the writing. That just happened. 

Mandi Morris: That is a really powerful shift, and I think it speaks to you as a heart. Your heart as an educator is about students owning their journey, and what you are doing there is you’re being a facilitator, a coach.

And they’re learning versus being the person in the front of the room who has all of the answers, and I have a clipboard with the right answer, or it’s in my head and I’m standing up here, and your job is basically to say yes or no and get it right or wrong. It totally is. Flipping where you are now facilitating your coaching.

You’re offering them those prompts so that they can reflect on their learning and own their learning. That’s where you really see light bulbs go off. I don’t know that [00:49:00] there was ever a moment in a classroom where a student was asked to recall a specific date or a specific fact, and they had a light bulb moment.

Stuck with them for life. So I, I love the heart of you as an educator. It’s just really about em, empowering students to love learning for life, not just to pass an assessment or get out of high school. 

Desiree Kiesel: Yeah, for sure. And I think to come full circle. As a leader, like our job then is to do the same for our teachers, right?

Like how do we create those opportunities for thinking and growth in the same way? If I’m up here with my clipboard, that’s like, I know what the right answer is, and it’s this strategy versus who are your kids? What are you seeing that’s working? What isn’t working? Give me feedback, speak truth to power.

What do we need to shift in this moment? Where are we as a system putting up obstacles and barriers for you as a teacher that actually make your job harder and make it [00:50:00] more impossible for you to create these access points? ’cause you are exhausted by the end of the day. Where can we narrow in on those leverage points so that we are.

Getting the be biggest bang for our buck. As an example, we, I think sometimes, especially when it comes to language learning goes so scattershot. We give them a gazillion and a half different potential strategies that it would be like having a toolbox that is full of so many screwdrivers you don’t even know where to start.

Like how do we just start to really narrow in and. I gave that example of the activity our teachers had gone through with the different types of what does this reading look like to different kids? And as we were talking, the debrief they did was like, what is a strategy that for you as a learner would’ve been beneficial?

And someone was like, well, if I had seen a model of what this was supposed to look like, it would’ve been really helpful. And then no matter which reading they had, all of them said, model. It’s okay. Sounds like model is a really effective tool that hits a lot of different things all at [00:51:00] once. Let’s just focus on that.

Can we focus on pre-teaching vocabulary that seems like six different kids got their needs met if we did some pre-teaching vocabulary. So rather than giving them everything, giving them big concepts and saying, what do we wanna do with this? And where do you as a teacher. The, that is marzano’s, the art and the science of teaching, right?

We can give them the science, but as artists, they’ve gotta figure out, like, I know my kids. I know that when I use this strategy, it just really hit, or man, it fell flat. What do I wanna do with? 

Andrew Brandt: I love that you brought that up to the teacher and then I almost want to take it even a step further and bring it to the administrator.

To me, I think it’s just human nature that. When we see from our perspective and from our perspective, we see, okay, this is what’s right and best and it’s so tempting to wanna prescribe for others. But what you’re talking about both of the student teacher level, I think just it’s important at all levels is to meet people where they are.

Say, Hey, I want to ask you, I wanna understand you and how you’re approaching this. ’cause then at [00:52:00] that point then you can say, Hey, I got some ideas that might inform how you can approach that. And it changes the conversation from, I got the right answer, I’m gonna help you get there to. Let me understand you and maybe together I can add something that’ll enrich your approach and that’s the beauty of learning together and each of us doing the best we can in our roles.

Man, this has been a great discussion. I know we are almost at time, but there’s a, a question I really wanna ask ’cause we’ve gone a lot of different places, but I want to go back to this question. So what advice would you give a new teacher? Kicking off right now. You’ve done, you’ve done a lot. You’ve learned a lot along the way.

What’s that bit of advice? You’ve given you a new teacher or even a teacher who’s been around for a while that’s just looking for a new way of approaching things? 

Desiree Kiesel: Yeah, I am a big proponent of the belief you’ve gotta move slow to move fast. And I think with standards lists that are a mile long and curriculum that is usually overtly packed with tools that [00:53:00] you almost don’t know how to sort through it, it’s really easy to.

Start day one and be like, we’ve gotta hit the ground running. We’ll never get through it all, but it’s okay to move slow, to move fast, and instead take the time to really. Like we were talking about, get to know your kids, asking questions, taking opportunities to, if you’re gonna have them write about themselves, if you’re gonna have them talk about themselves, those dividends of being able to recognize who your students are, the skills they’re bringing, the those backgrounds, they’re so exquisite and rich, and the stories they have to tell that.

Would bring you to your knees sometimes. It was one of the things I learned more as a principal, I think, than anything else, because often the kids that I got to have the most like deepest relationships were kids that were really struggling that got sent to my office. But when you knew their stories, it was like the fact you come to school every day.[00:54:00] 

Is amazing. Let’s start there and celebrate it, right? So when we can have those moments and then leverage those relationships, a question that we often ask in our interview processes is, do you want kids to like you? Why or why not? And it’s built off of a question from Gallup. It was like it’s, they identified it as a really good question to ask teachers and how they answer tells you a lot.

And when I hear teachers go, of course you can’t learn from someone you don’t like. It’s, oh yeah. Yep. So those moments that you are using to build those relationships where students. Are they know who you are too, what you believe, and what you believe about them, and what they wanna do to be a partner in that development 

Mandi Morris: desire.

This has been an incredible conversation. I feel humbled by having this time here with you today. I also just feel an incredible [00:55:00] amount of gratitude for an educator like you and all of the other educators out there. I, you acknowledged it’s hard and sometimes you’ve needed moments where you get the email and it’s Okay, I can do this for 10 more days.

Our profession gets caught up in funding ups and downs. It. It gets caught up in political and Social wars back and forth and when really, at the end of the day, the truth is classrooms are full of people like you that are showing up every single day to serve our students because we believe that our children are our future and we want them to be.

Center of the work that we’re doing, that we’ve committed our lives to. So I just wanna thank you for doing the work that you’re doing for being here with us and just sharing your story and sharing your work. I think it’s gonna mean a lot to a lot of people.