Episode 4: The Teacher As Change Agent with Paul Solarz
**Make sure to check out the guest blog on student agency by Paul Solarz this week.
How you can reach Paul and check out his work
Twitter: @PaulSolarz
Email: learnlikeapirate@gmail.com
Website: learnlikeapirate.com
Classroom websites: paulsolarz.weebly.com and psolarz.weebly.com
Transcript:
(transcribed by kayla.r.fainer@gmail.com)
Melissa Milner 0:09
Hi, this is Melissa Milner. Welcome to The Teacher As... podcast. The goal of this weekly podcast is to help you explore your passions and learn from others in education and beyond to better your teaching. The Teacher As... will highlight uncommon parallels to teaching as well as share practical ideas for the classroom.
In this episode, I interview Paul Solarz, the author of Learn Like A Pirate. I read this book when it first came out, and it affirmed many of my teaching strategies and philosophy overall. But more importantly, it added to my understanding of how to empower students and create an amazing classroom climate for learning. Enjoy my interview with Paul Solarz. Welcome, Paul Solarz, to The Teacher As... podcast.
Paul Solarz 0:55
Thanks for having me.
Melissa Milner 0:56
I think we should start with what do you want The Teacher As... podcast listeners to know about you and your work?
Paul Solarz 1:01
I'll give you a little background. I've been teaching fourth and fifth grade in the same school, Westgate Elementary School in Arlington Heights, Illinois, since 1999. This past year, I took a leave of absence to take care of my mom who had some strokes in 2018 and 2019.
So this past year, I've missed out on all the fun of quarantine. I don't know if that's how you'd say that, all the challenges of distance learning. I don't know what I should say about it, because I haven't gotten to do it. I know it's been a challenge and a struggle for some, but I don't have that experience that others have had. And I'm hoping to someday get back into teaching. It's not going to be next year, because I took a two year leave so I could stay working with her. But down the road, I'd like to come back to work.
And then just in those 20 years, I think that one of the things that I really discovered was the importance of having your students be partners with you in learning and not just always trying to feel like you have all the responsibility on your shoulders to make sure that everybody learns, that everybody's happy. I've really worked hard to partner with my students.
And that's why I wrote a book called Learn Like a Pirate, which is how I try to describe the classroom setup that I have. And that classroom setup, I call it a student led classroom. But it's a little bit of a misnomer. It's not where the kids just stand up, and teach each other and learn whatever they want. But more, I still plan the day, I still teach any kind of content, lessons or mini lessons. But my students know that they have to help each other when they're working independently or collaboratively or they do projects constantly.
We do so many things. They also have to keep an eye on the time, and they have to problem solve as things come up that I'm not necessarily right there thinking about. So my students have the ability to interrupt the classroom and lead the classroom. And I have to follow their lead or give them feedback that helps them to do it in a different way.
But the idea is I don't have to constantly be watching the clock and thinking about everything, because my kids can do it just as well as I can. So that's about my history and my philosophy at the moment. I'm really focused in on skills instruction and less focused in on knowledge and facts.
Obviously, we have to have a bit of background and some basics, but I think I, in my first 10 years of teaching, focused way too much on making sure my kids knew everything about the Declaration of Independence. Then I quizzed them, and I tested them and I made sure they turned in all their worksheets and they did all their homework.
And now I'm feeling like, let's get the ideas, the big concepts, the major points. And then let's create a new declaration. Let's create our own country as we break free from somewhere. And let's do that collaboratively while I teach you skills that you can actually transfer through the rest of the year and through the rest of your life.
So that's kind of where I'm at today. And I'll just throw out that I also really care about social emotional skills, and building self esteem and making sure kids know how to get along with each other, interpersonal skills and stuff. So those are big points for me.
Melissa Milner 4:14
Yeah, first of all, I'm sorry about your mother and the challenges you're going through with that. And second of all, your book is amazing. And it's definitely changed my whole lens of what teaching should look like and the students' role in learning. And I love this idea of like, let's just focus on skills and social emotional, and then they can tackle anything. In the work you've done, what's your proudest moment?
Paul Solarz 4:45
Obviously for me, it's always been about the students and how they felt our year. That quote, it's not what you've taught them, it's what you taught them to feel. Or those kinds of ideas where my kids, I think most of them would say it's one of their favorite years, it was definitely different. I think they got a lot out of the experience.
But when they come back and they tell me-- just first of all coming back on its own, I was a fifth grade teacher for a bunch of those years, 19 of those years. So they were going to middle school, and then they'd come back from a whole new school. And just them coming back shows how much they care about you and that you made an impact in their life. But the fact that they came back, and they often would leave notes on the chalkboard or the whiteboard saying, you were the best, or hey Solarz, or joking things that are just fun. And Uncle Paul they would call me every now and then, just different things.
And we were comfortable, but at the same time, it's a pretty rigorous environment. I mean, I have high expectations for my students. And they need to be responsible, and they need to care about each other. And there's a lot going on, but we do it kind of like a family. So I think the proudest thing is the legacy that I might leave on certain kids. I think any teacher wants to have an impact, a positive impact.
But as far as a personal accomplishment or professional accomplishment, I was fortunate enough to be named one of the Global Teacher Prize Top 50 Teachers in the World in 2015 and got to go to Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. And I got to meet with, well, 49 other teachers from that year and 50 teachers from the year after, and the year after, and the year after. Because I've been a few times now. And just meeting these teachers and hearing their stories just puts me in awe. I mean, they're just so altruistic.
All these teachers are doing things like feeding the hungry in their communities and creating international organizations that help bring healthy lifestyle choices and physical fitness and things to the first world countries. And then I've got friends who are bringing these things to third world countries where they're getting technology and education. And they're getting better quality learning environments that they didn't have in Africa.
We've got Koen Timmers who's doing the Kakuma Project. And they're in, I want to say it's in Kenya. I could be wrong. And they're trying to give a proper education to the students in this village. And they're doing it through Skyping with them. And teachers from all around the world are Skyping in to do lessons with them, and they're Skyping back. Now it's probably Zoom.
But the idea is, they're doing all this video conferencing. And it's not all about money, it's about access. And I think actually, that's the key there, is they need the access to the technology, to the resources, to the people who can bring them that higher quality education that maybe they don't have in that village. Because nobody's there that has had that experience before.
Melissa Milner 7:53
Right. Wow, that's powerful.
Paul Solarz 7:55
Yeah. And then it makes me feel like, what did I do? Why am I here? It really does. I mean, I love what I do, and I love bringing in the global impact, the things that we do in our classroom. But man, to think of what they're doing in the lives of children and students of all ages is just amazing.
Melissa Milner 8:15
So that sort of goes beautifully into our next question, which is: what structures need to be changed in education to allow for equity? I know you mentioned access, obviously.
Paul Solarz 8:25
Yeah. When I go to Dubai and Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates with this group of teachers, we talk about the Sustainable Development Goals from the United Nations. So we talk about sustainability of everything. So education would be a key structure, I guess we'll call it, where everybody in the world, every child in the world, every adult in the world deserves access to a proper education, access to information, access to help.
And so access to me is one the first levels. And then technology would be nice, but it's not required. But a nice learning environment-- I've been to Fiji. I've been in the classrooms in many, many, many different countries. But you go to Fiji, and the floors-- it's fine, because it works for them. But the floors are dirt. There might be a cracked concrete floor in some of them. But the dirt floors there, old desks from what would be pictures of the 1950s for us, chalkboards.
It's just not as easy of a learning environment perhaps as what I'm used to with my students. So that doesn't make it better or worse. It's just that everyone deserves access to classrooms that can work for them. And then I would say they need access to great teachers. They need access to programs or materials that teach them what they need to learn.
And I don't exactly know how to do it, but I do know that we should be looking at anything and everything to try to create that access for everyone. And then once you have that access, it's now about meeting the needs of each individual child. It sounds like we're just going to try to get to the point where we can teach everybody equally in the classroom. But that's not even the finishing point. You don't want to treat everybody as the middle or the medium level student. You want to tailor things to their needs.
So as soon as we can get access, then we need to start working on readiness levels and really differentiating or meeting the needs of each individual student. Every student deserves to have someone who knows what they're doing, and wants to be there, and they're not just doing it to collect a paycheck.
So I've been talking with this company called Concept Schools recently. They operate 30 different charter schools in the Midwest. So these schools are all in either inner cities or in and around major cities like Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis. And what they do is they hire the best teachers and administrators. And then their goal is that they differentiate instruction to meet the needs of each individual student.
So every student has their own plan. But they're a STEM focused charter school system, but really that's not what they're about. They're really more about getting their children accepted into college if that's the path they choose and making sure that all of their strengths and weaknesses are pointed out. They celebrate the strengths, and they really try to work towards fixing whatever weaknesses they can or building them up to get them stronger.
In my grades, the third through fifth grade level, they're doing a lot of reading, writing workshop, math workshop. They do a lot of hands on, everything in science and STEM. For the last 20 years, their success rate with low income minority students has been extremely high.
And it probably starts with the administration and the teachers. They are high quality. The buildings are high quality. The programs and materials are high quality. And they're doing well, all the students-- I can't say all. But large percentages of the students are doing amazingly.
Melissa Milner 12:10
So how did you hear about them?
Paul Solarz 12:12
Yeah, I'm just right outside of Chicago. So I'm always curious about how things are being done differently. So equity is on all of our minds right now. We're all trying to figure out, how do we make the world better? I want everybody to be happy. I just want everybody to be taken care of.
So this has been a really rough few months for many reasons. But what are these people doing in inner cities that's working? And they're doing what I described and I'm sure a ton more. This is just what I've read online and what I'm trying to understand from talking with one person in the program. So charter schools, I used to think that they were elite or they were-- I didn't understand the difference between magnet schools, charter schools and private schools.
Charter schools are public schools that are publicly funded. Well, at least these are. They don't require tuition from the students, and they don't have an application process. They take all the students that they can fit if there's enough applying. Applying is not the right word, but they have a lottery system.
So let's say it holds 400 students and 500 want in. A lottery picks the 400 for them. But this is just an ordinary school that gets to follow a little bit of different teaching guidelines and different ways of doing things. And they actually probably have less money to do it, because they don't get quite the local funding that the public schools would get. They get a little less.
So I think they're doing great work, because they're an organization that works on 30 schools at once. So that whole idea of consolidating or combining districts, that might be a good thing. But I have no idea of the solutions. I've just enjoyed the learning. I've enjoyed learning about it.
Melissa Milner 13:54
So the things you're zooming in on are related to current events obviously. I think we all are at this point. So what else are you zooming in on right now in your work?
[ZOOMING IN SOUNDBITE]
Paul Solarz 14:06
So before the pandemic hit, I was actually working in the United Arab Emirates, just for like a week at a time. I'd started in January, and I was teaching teachers how to integrate innovative and entrepreneurial skills into the ordinary curriculum. So I consult with a company, and that company is called STEM Revolution. And what they're doing is they've signed a contract with all of the UAE to teach all of their teachers from, I want to say, K through 12. But I'm sure I can be mistaking some of the details. And it's to get them to try to integrate more STEM.
But it's not solely STEM. It's more about innovation and entrepreneurship in the classroom. So what I did was I went for a week and trained my core group of - I had K through 5 teachers. I trained them on the second level. This was my first time doing it. So they get three levels, and I just joined when we were at the second level. And then I would go back and teach the third level, but that's when the coronavirus pandemic hit. So we're on pause, everybody's on pause for everything.
But that was really, really powerful. What I ended up doing was I looked through the materials. And the owner asked me to try to go through it a little bit, and make some revisions and rewrite parts of the curriculum. So I had fun doing that. I'm still working on that. And then down the road, we're going to be working on a book together on entrepreneurship, which is going to be really cool, too.
Melissa Milner 15:37
That's amazing.
Paul Solarz 15:38
Isn't that neat?
Melissa Milner 15:39
Wow!
Paul Solarz 15:40
Just these little connections you get in life that are just outstanding. The woman who owns this company, she is a retired engineer, but she has three sons. And all three of them have made millions of dollars on their own companies that they've created. And the best story for me is her youngest son did not want to go to college.
The older two sons had already gone to college, and he's like, I don't want to do it. And she said, well, you kind of have to. It's important to me, I want you to go. Well, he said, how about this? How about if I make a million dollars before I turn 18, I don't have to go to school. She said, fine, do it. And he made his million before he turned 18. And he sold one of his companies, and he has another company.
Melissa Milner 16:22
It's like the updated version of Junior Achievement, like when we were growing up.
Paul Solarz 16:26
Yeah. Oh, yeah!
Melissa Milner 16:27
Oh, wow.
Paul Solarz 16:29
And Junior Achievement was a great way to bring in entrepreneurial ideas. But now our ideas aren't just took to start companies. It's the mindset of an entrepreneur and how you can use that mindset in reading, and writing, and science and social studies, anything. You can really use a lot of those ideas throughout your day.
But yeah, that's what I was working on right now. I'm working on a book that kind of takes my Learn Like A Pirate idea. And all it is, is it really focuses in on how teachers can teach their students to better be responsible for improving their learning, their academic learning and their behavior, but where the kids kind of have ownership over their own improvements.
So it's a detailed book with the process of how you can get kids to just own the process. So if you teach them all the steps, and you use the mini lessons that I'm trying to write, then they should be able to take this process forward with only meeting mini lessons and feedback the rest of the way. They shouldn't need direct instruction too much.
Melissa Milner 17:33
That's incredible. I hope you share it. I hope we can do some of that in the States, because that's definitely changing structures to even look at education that way.
Paul Solarz 17:43
Oh, I can't wait. It's about halfway done. So we'll see where that goes.
Melissa Milner 17:47
Very cool. What's the best way for people to reach you if they want to know more about your work?
Paul Solarz 17:52
Sure. They can find me on Twitter at @PaulSolarz. They can email me at learnlikeapirate@gmail.com. I have a website learnlikeapirate.com. Or they can go to my school website. Our classroom website is pretty awesome if I can say so myself. It's got all the kids on there. That's the best part.
Melissa Milner 18:13
It's awesome.
Paul Solarz 18:14
Thank you! paulsolarz.weebly.com is my recent one. And then there's a psolarz.weebly.com that's my first one. So I kind of broke Weebly. We had over 500 pages. At the time, Weebly couldn't support more than 500. So I had to start a new classroom website. So I have two. But yeah, all those are pretty easy ways to find me. There's other social media tools, but those are the ones that I'm most active on.
Melissa Milner 18:37
Awesome. So I have one last question that I ask everybody I interview. What is your favorite movie, and why?
Paul Solarz 18:44
Alright, so you gave me a heads up on this. So I brainstormed, and I thought pretty long and hard about it. When my niece and nephew turned, I don't know, maybe 11 or something, my nephew would have been 13, but my niece turned 11. I made them sit down and watch one movie with me. And the movie I made them watch was Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Okay, I don't know how many people might say this is their favorite movie.
But for me, I just had to have them do it. We're from the Chicago area. It takes place all throughout the city of Chicago and some of the suburbs. It involves the Cubs, which is my favorite sports team. It kind of shows how this kid's ditching school, and he gets all these close calls with his principal and his parents almost getting caught.
There's so much creativity, and problem solving and innovation in the movie, which brings the geek out in me, which I thought was awesome. Like he made that doll on his bed turn over when the door opened and stuff, just so many cool things. And then when I just looked into Ferris Bueller online a little bit, it's apparently a John Hughes movie, which I don't know movies like other people do.
Melissa Milner 19:46
Like me.
Paul Solarz 19:46
Yeah, well, there you go. And he, to me, made some of the best movies of the 80s at least. And I'm 44, so the 80s was right in that time when I'm getting into movies like that. So that was pretty perfect.
Melissa Milner 19:58
Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Save Ferris!
Paul Solarz 20:02
Save Ferris. Poor guy! No, not really. That's what I'm going with.
Melissa Milner 20:07
Alright, so is there anything else that you want The Teacher As... podcast listeners to know, or look into or wonder about?
Paul Solarz 20:14
I would really like to just say thanks to you, not for just this interview. But you were one of the first people who ran Learn Like A Pirate, the Learn Lab Chat, for me. And that was just really important at the time. I needed some help, and you were there to help. And you've been there most of the years since then. And it's nice to reconnect in a stronger way. I'm appreciative of you. And I wish you luck with the podcast and anything else that you might do with it.
Melissa Milner 20:41
Thank you, and you're welcome for that. But also, thank you for giving me that opportunity, because it was a blast.
Paul Solarz 20:47
Yeah. Ditto.
Melissa Milner 20:50
If you enjoyed this episode, and have not done so already, please hit the subscribe button for The Teacher As... podcast so you can get future episodes. I would love for you to leave a review and a rating, as well, if you have time. For my blog, transcripts of this episode and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.theteacheras.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram at @melissabmilner. And I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates.
I am sending a special thanks to Linda and Lester Fleishman, my mom and dad, for being so supportive. They are the voices you hear in the Zooming In soundbite. And my dad composed and performed the background music you are listening to right now. My intro music was "Upbeat Party" by Scott Holmes. So what are you zooming in on? I would love to hear from you. My hope is that we all share what we are doing in the classroom in order to teach, remind, affirm and inspire each other. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap!