Shownotes:
It’s an enthralling convo with Starr Sackstein, where we unravel the transformative power of innovative education and learner empowerment. We explore her new book, "Student-Led Assessment," discussing how empowering students in their learning journey can transform the classroom. Starr's insights on gratitude, the power of acknowledgment, and striking a balance between hard work and personal fulfillment are not only enlightening but also incredibly inspiring. Whether you're an educator, a parent, or just someone passionate about personal growth, this conversation offers a treasure trove of wisdom! 🌟📚💡
About Our Guest:
Starr Sackstein is an educator, author, and advocate dedicated to transforming education through innovative practices. With a background in secondary education, she has championed learner-centered experiences, assessment reform, and technology integration. Her insights, shared through speaking engagements, workshops, and online platforms, inspire educators to reimagine traditional teaching paradigms. Starr's commitment to fostering critical thinking, growth, and equity underscores her role as a thought leader shaping the future of education.
Websites: mssackstein.com and masteryportfolio.com
X/Twitter: @mssackstein
Instagram: @starr53177/
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, social-emotional learning, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Website - LainieRowell.com
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Instagram - @LainieRowell
Evolving with Gratitude, the book is available here! And now, Bold Gratitude: The Journal Designed for You and by You is available too!
Both Evolving with Gratitude & Bold Gratitude have generous bulk pricing for purchasing 10+ copies delivered to the same location.🙌
Just fill out the forms linked above and someone will get back to you ASAP!
Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: [00:00:00] Hello, friends. Welcome to the pod. We have Starr Sackstein with us today, and I am so excited. Hi, Starr. How are you?
Starr Sackstein: Hi, Lainie. I am so excited, too. So, thanks for having me.
Lainie Rowell: It's a delight. And of course, this was one of those episodes where it took a while to hit record because I just got caught up chatting with you. I'm going to just take a moment to very quickly introduce you to any listeners who may not have heard of you before. Starr is an educator author. She is an advocate for transforming education through innovative practices.
She is a very prolific author. I could list all of her books, but that would take our entire run time. So, I'm gonna just leave it there and I'm gonna toss it to Starr in case she wants to add anything that I left out. She does have an upcoming book. Maybe she'll mention that title and anything else that's going on that she's excited about.
Starr Sackstein: Sure. I mean, there's so much, honestly, and if you talk anything assessment, chances are I could geek out for hours and hours on assessment. Those who love assessment as much as I do feel that way. I know that assessment could be a dirty word for some people, but I try to make it as fun and engaging and non threatening as possible when I'm working with folks.
And I try to make everything that I do when I'm working with teachers really practical. I understand that teachers have so many things on their plates. The last thing that they need is something that just adds a lot of stress. So the latest book is actually called Student-LED Assessment, and it's all about portfolio and student led conferences.
A lot of people have asked me after reading Hacking Assessment, how do you do that? How do you fit what you've done when they see the videos on YouTube. How do you fit what you've done into a class when you have 34 students and you're kind of living that dream? And so this book kind of just works folks through building cultures in their space that allow for things like that, and then structured ways to start building it into your space.
Lainie Rowell: I am so excited to read this, and I have to tell you, I often say, our students are our most precious, abundant, and underutilized resource we have in our classrooms, so, the idea of student led assessment, student led conference, all of it, I'm here for it.
Starr Sackstein: I think we underestimate our kids a lot, honestly.
The way we treat them with walking into a space, expecting them to kind of be these empty vessels that take things from us. And at the end of the day, especially now, because they are so well connected and they have access to a lot of resources that we may or may not also have ourselves.
They are so knowledgeable and it's a shame to not use them as a resource in their own learning space. So, definitely advocate for that as much as possible. Put it in their hands, let them try and fail, support them when they do.
Lainie Rowell: Well, and this is a podcast about gratitude and what I hear is gratitude for all the wonderful experiences and background knowledge that our learners bring to the community.
Is that fair to say?
Starr Sackstein: It is so fair to say and honestly, I have so much gratitude for what I've learned from kids over the years and continue to learn from them. That's one of the great things about social media when I hear about, after teaching 12th graders and they go off into the world and then sort of having the opportunity to check back in on them more regularly, I have this burst of pride every time I hear one of them is going into education and I just want to do whatever I can to be supportive of their experience so that they have a nice long career and they love what they're doing too.
Lainie Rowell: That's amazing. I'm gonna ask you a very wide open question that you can take kind of in whatever direction you want.
We already leaned into gratitude, loving that. But what does gratitude mean to you? How would you describe that? And you can take this in whatever direction you want, personal or professional, however you want.
Starr Sackstein: For me, gratitude is really about, first of all, being aware of the things in my life that help me be the best me in a lot of ways.
So just being aware of how lucky I am in a lot of ways. I feel like I've been kind of, I know luck is probably a bad word just because, I had listened to this, audio book about overcoming imposter syndrome, which is a whole other thing. But one of the things they said is that if you have imposter syndrome, you often explain your success as luck.
And I always kind of feel like I was in the right spot at the right You know, Peter DeWitt happened to be in a chat that I was in, and we happened to connect and all the things, but the bottom line is I had written a book already, and I had already put the work in, and I had done all the things, and I don't know why it's so hard for women to take credit for the work that they've done and be proud and vocal about the work that they've done, so I'm grateful for the fact that I have had opportunities to allow the things that I'm, like my strengths, that those strengths help other people and I, I feel pretty fortunate that not only have I had the opportunity to really lean into the things that I have developed over time, whether it's my writing or my speaking or working with teams, I just, I feel like to be aware of those things and then also treat them with the reverie they deserve.
So I try to acknowledge the people who have had that kind of impact on me or situations that have pushed me in directions. And I mean, I guess that's where gratitude leaves me. It's just like that good feeling on the inside about knowing that it could have gone a million different ways, and even when it goes a million different ways, there's gratitude to be found in that as well.
It's all an opportunity to be reflective, think about how things could have gone differently, and I think if you probably would have asked me that question, Lainie, ten years ago, I probably would have answered it very differently, but I feel pretty fortunate now with the folks I surround myself with, I'm really grateful for the opportunities.
And, you know, the things I don't expect, I'm kind of grateful for too.
Lainie Rowell: That was beautiful. And I have some thoughts as you're sharing, because one, you're talking about awareness and that's the first thing you need to do in gratitude is you have to notice.
You have to actually be present enough. You have to be aware enough. You have to notice what it is that you're grateful for and the definition of gratitude that I lean on and I didn't ask you for a definition, but I want to bring it to this because to me it connected to Dr. Robert Emmons defines gratitude...
I'm paraphrasing here, but seeing the good and acknowledging that often it's coming from others, but not always. And he will be the first to point out it's a myth to think that gratitude means you have to be self effacing. So what I hear from you is this acknowledgement of the hard work and friends, we talked for, for a bit before we hit record.
This is a very hard working person. She is firing on all cylinders. She's go, go, go. It's, the hard work that you put into it, and then also, you know, you mentioned Peter DeWitt. Well, you were ready for him, right? You had already done so much work that when your paths crossed, it was like, okay, well, this is someone that I can collaborate with, we can help each other, and we can go further together.
But, but you did your stuff too. It's not just someone else did it.
Starr Sackstein: It's true. Yeah and this is something I want to talk more about with women in general. We are brilliant. Women do so much, right? We do everything. And I was thinking about this a lot the other day, my husband actually came home from work and I was just like, I need you to acknowledge me for the queen that I am.
And he looked at me like, what? And I was like, I work like an animal. And today I fixed the refrigerator when there was water issues. I did three loads of laundry. I cooked you dinner and I did everything I had to do so that I could make money for the family too, all in a day. And it's like, I'm a pretty fortunate person, not everybody gets to have the opportunities I have, I am well aware of that, and I don't take any of it for granted, I think that when I was younger, maybe I was less aware of how unique some of the situations I got myself into were, and the older I get now, as I'm like, mid to late 40s, You know, Starrting to see the other side of things and really taking stock in what matters, I think that's what changes.
I love the work, but I also love my life. I love my family. I love being able to enjoy my spoils. Like, what's the point of all of this if I just keep working until I work myself into a grave? And there are too many people in education that do that. I don't think there's anything noble about retiring and dying three months later because you didn't listen to the signs that were all around you all the time.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, I mean, I can take this to my time in the classroom, my interaction with peers, with my own family, is that when I am not taking care of myself. They all suffer. I can be pretty intense and I don't want that intensity to be negatively impacting my own kids, other people's kids, peers, anyone that I'm coming in contact with.
And I also just have to really quickly say, I love that you expressed your husband, your needs. And I appreciate that. I may have done this early on in my marriage because my husband's pet names for me are Big Dog and Boss Lady. He had a very early stage in this relationship. Oh my goodness, friends, you can't see this, but we have the, is that a nameplate that says girl boss?
Hashtag girl boss. There we go. So he very early acknowledged and responded to the fact that I need a lot of affirmation.
Starr Sackstein: Honey Hamilton always talks to me about love languages and what matters and I never thought I was an affirmation person, but acknowledgement is important to me. I can feel what I feel on the inside, but it's nice and I don't need gifts. I don't need anything like that, but it's nice after I've worked hard to do something, especially like, I'm not a person who like loves to cook or loves to do all these things. I mean, I'll do it. I'm happy to do it. But like, it's nice when someone appreciates it, acknowledges it and, and has that level of appreciation. And I know that matters to me. And I think that's why I go above and beyond to let people know how grateful I am for them when they, when they, they kind of, you know, do it for me on the other side.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, and I think one of the misnomers at least I had originally thinking about the love languages or the researchers actually distill it down to more like three but is that it's not like we're just one. And so there might be days where I need more of those words of affirmation.
There might be days where acts of service will go so far with me today because I am drowning in anyone that is willing to take something off my plate is going to be one of my favorite people. So I think appreciating that, you know, we all have days where we need different things, but it is nice to have that awareness of, okay, I mean, I have, in recent years, really become aware of how much I need affirmation.
It's possibly too much.
Starr Sackstein: I don't think so. After years of therapy, I don't know why it's so hard to ask for what you need, but for me, it's always been really hard to acknowledge my needs and get my own needs met. And I think that I have internalized that so much that I just learned to meet my own needs.
And then I've been uncomfortable asking other people to lighten the burden of whatever it is. And maybe in the beginning, It came from a lack of trust that people would be able to do it the way I wanted them to do it. And I acknowledge that that's not an awesome quality to have, but that's definitely something that I have experienced.
But I think that the older I get, I don't care anymore about certain things. Like, things aren't going to be perfect. That's cool. I could wrap my brain around that. That's fine. And. I don't have to be everything to everyone anymore and just giving myself permission to say no to somebody who wants something from me or to not work for an evening even if it's going to make someone else's life easier.
Sometimes, especially with my travel schedule, I just want to be with my family. I don't want the computer open. I don't want to be on my phone. I just want to do something silly and hang out and let that be the thing that drives what's happening at that moment. And I need to do that more. I think all of us need to do it more.
Lainie Rowell: I do. And I think probably in particular educators, because there is this altruism in our profession that is good, but sometimes it's to an unhealthy level, where, where it's, it's too much self sacrifice, it's too much not taking care of ourselves. And so I can completely appreciate that. And also, I just have to say, complete transparency.
I am definitely someone who it's part altruism and it's part perfectionism that I just, I will feel more comfortable if I can do it for you because then I know it will happen how I want it to happen. Again, that's not a brag, that's something to work on.
So actually I think this takes us to your new book because to me, isn't that exactly what we're talking about is we as educators take all of this assessment on ourselves and we don't leverage the self assessment, the peer assessment, all the things that we have in these very capable humans that we get.
And no matter how different they are, and we know variability is the rule, not the exception, but there are great things in all of our learners that we can tap into.
Starr Sackstein: 100%
Lainie Rowell: Do you want to talk a little bit more about that? Cause I love this topic. And I do work on assessment as well.
Not the breadth and depth that you do, but this is my big point whenever I talk assessment. How can we engage our learners more? How can we empower them more?
Starr Sackstein: I feel like this is the one area of education that most educators are most uncomfortable giving up control in. I was one of those educators. I'm pretty comfortable admitting that it took me a long time to recognize the fact that I wasn't the only person in the room who knew anything, I mean, there were so many things that I learned about myself in the classroom over the 22 years I've been doing this at this point thinking in terms of, just my own fear of letting go of how I would do it, because honestly, when I looked at certain things too, my clarity wasn't great, there was a lot of things that I was doing that kids helped me do better, and it started with something small, like when I did my National Board Certification is really when I got a very good sense of how metacognition and reflection in general could be a very powerful tool for helping someone understand what you know and can do and after I went through that experience, I like brought it into my classroom immediately.
I was like, there's no reason why I can't teach kids to do this so that I have a better understanding, first of all, of where their head is. I can't see what's going on in between their ears. And when I'm designing the assessments by myself, there's only going to be what I decide. is going to be on. They're only going to be able to demonstrate what I'm asking them to do.
So how do I broaden that perspective so that they could identify what's important to them that they want to share, as opposed to me saying, this is what I'm looking for, even though we covered A through Z, we're only really going to look at L through P. And all that other stuff that you learned isn't as important as what I'm talking about right now.
So, when you start thinking about how nearsighted a lot of assessment is, for a lack of a better word, you have to invite kids in because they know a lot more than we give them credit for and they know a lot more than our assessments often allow them to show. We have to leverage what they know in a way that's going to be meaningful or else our instruction is never really going to meet their needs in a really holistic way.
Lainie Rowell: I appreciate everything you're saying, and one of the things that I'm thinking about as you're talking about teaching metacognition and the importance of reflection, and also this transparency of thinking, is how I would phrase it, just because, there is so much going on in those beautiful brains that we don't get to see.
And when we're really thoughtful in, okay, how can I make that visible so that I really understand what's going on? One of the things that I love to do is have students create video tutorials when they have to explain it and it's recorded and we get to hear their thinking, obviously that's great assessment piece because we're going to understand if there's a problem where that happened and if they can explain it to the level of teaching someone else that's a lot of metacognition and reflection going on there too.
I love practices that really make that thinking transparent.
Starr Sackstein: Well, I mean, those kinds of alternative assessments are so much more authentic. I think that students are so much more capable of teaching each other. Sometimes they just say things in a way that we can't access, especially the older we get and the farther we get from their experience and the language changes and the way they speak. When I first started teaching, I was literally three or four years older than my students.
That was a long time ago, but now I'm much older then the students I would have been working with, and I'm older than a lot of the teachers that I work with, too. Not all of them, but, I think that with that wisdom comes a certain level of comfort of letting go of the control. I don't need to be the Starr of the show anymore. That's a very funny pun that I didn't even realize I was saying, but,
Lainie Rowell: I'm here for it, Starr. I'm here for it.
Starr Sackstein: You know, I actually feel a lot more confident in the backgrounds now. And I don't feel like I'm being unseen when I am. I like to shine the spotlight on other people who have something valuable to say.
And I think at this point in my career, going back to the gratitude, it's been a real honor and pleasure to be able to share my platform with other people who have important things to say.
Lainie Rowell: I love your emphasis on the learner language, like the peer to peer language. A nine year old is going to say something to another nine year old way different than I would.
A seventeen year old is going to say something to another seventeen year old way different than I can. And so, one of the things I love about this, where we're really leveraging the brilliance in the room and our learners is, yes, the proximity to learning.
It's been a while since I did that. But also, we have to acknowledge the attention that we have, and that we cannot be doing a million things at once. And so, when I put kids in a position where they can be in charge of something, and if that frees me up, that means I get to direct that attention to something else.
And that could be small group work, that could be direct instruction with an individual, it could be observing and learning and getting some really good data on what's happening in my learning community.
Starr Sackstein: It's spot on. I mean, I think that that's really hard for teachers too. Like when I'm working with a teacher team and we're talking about what you do when you're empowering kids, I know I was so guilty of this, like, I'd hear the most amazing conversation happening in a group and I totally swooped in and started getting involved and totally ruined the flow. I was excited, and I wanted to contribute to what was going on, which ultimately derailed them.
But it made me feel important for the 30 seconds that I was doing it. And in retrospect now, I find that the hardest thing when those really excellent conversations are happening is to be a listener and observer. You know, use what you learn in a helpful way for the whole group after the fact or just make note of things so that when it comes time to share out as a whole group, you can acknowledge the students who had those great ideas and ask them to make the conversation more visible to the rest of the class as well so that everybody could benefit from it.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, it's not a natural thing necessarily to do, but it's an important thing to do. And I will tell you, and I know, Starr, you're with me, we spend a lot of time working with educators. And I still have to work really hard when I'm working with a group of educators to say, this will be a great PLC meeting if I talk the least.
That is my goal because there's so much that needs to happen. And I hear you when you're like, I overhear and I want to jump in. We're passionate about the things we teach about, so of course we want to be involved in the conversation.
So being super strategic about when we place ourselves in there and really focusing on can I just put my attention to observing instead of contributing.
Starr Sackstein: Well, to that effect, adult learners, I think it's even more important for us to stay out of it. For me, the best learning opportunity with teacher teams that I work with is kind of the workshop model where you have five, seven minute tutorial, you know, teaching moments, direct instruction, setting things up, and then you're really letting them, like, this is stuff they have to implement.
It does us very little good to be controllers of that space. I think they value it less, and they don't have to engage as much when we take over. It goes for all learners, not just adults, but I think particularly with adults, they're used to dialing it in. And we can't give them the pass to let them.
Lainie Rowell: I am guilty of this. It is very easy to sit in a passive role and just, okay, you do the talking, I will do the listening, but until I'm actually in there thinking about, okay, why is this important? Where does this fit into what I'll do? When will I put this into my practice? If I'm not doing those things, being actively engaged in that learning, it won't happen, and the research is very clear, if it doesn't get put into practice within the most 72 hours, but it's more like 48 hours, then it's just not going to happen.
Just going to be gone.
Starr Sackstein: Yeah, from my experience, I like to leave a professional learning experience with at least one nugget that I could do right away. And if it resonates with me, I will, I like, you know, I am definitely that learner that gets so excited about a new idea that I didn't think about that way.
Especially if it's like adjacent to the work that I do all the time. And it's novel to hear something that's like, Oh wow, I didn't think about it that way, and it could be really powerful, and then I go down the rabbit hole, like, how is this gonna change this, and how is it gonna change this, and then I get really reinvigorated, and I don't know.
That's pretty exciting as a learner. If we can get all our learners that excited about whatever makes them excited, then we're doing our jobs.
Lainie Rowell: And I think that's where gratitude comes into learning too, is we often go straight to, we're going to learn about this, but we don't even talk about why we should be learning about this.
Why do we care about the plant cycle? Why do we care about weather? I'm using very elementary examples here, but we have to get them bought into why this is something even worth learning about, even if it's only gonna be a little bit of what they take with them and then, when is this fitting into their world?
Starr Sackstein: When I'm designing formative tasks with teacher teams, like when we get a part of that whole experience, I'm using the impact team model that Paul Bloomberg and Barb Pitchford came up with. Part of that is articulating the why so that when students ask you have something ready that isn't because it's on a test.
I don't ever let teacher teams off the hook with that answer. And I'll actually preface it. Alright, why is this skill something we need to really lean into to with kids, and your answer can't be because it's going to help them next year, in their next class, it can't be because of a region, it can't be because of an SAT.
I don't want to hear any of that. What does this skill help improve their lives with? What is going to be the thing that gets them to be like, okay, I see the value in and I will buy in because I know it will get me where she or he or they say we're gonna get.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, and I won't pretend that I think we can get kids to be grateful for every single thing that we teach them.
But if we can at least get them to be grateful for the learning process. Your new book, you're talking about the metacognition and the reflection and just learning to learn that's something that will apply well beyond whatever they need next year or what's going to be on the state test or anything like that.
That's stuff that will serve them their whole life. I'm very excited for this new book and I know I got to let you go here pretty soon, but any final thoughts?
Starr Sackstein: Going back to your gratitude question, I think that we can all enjoy our lives, our careers, our circumstances a lot more when we acknowledge what we have.
We live in a world of deficit and the go to is always, let's focus on the things that we don't have, and then it becomes a quest for acquisition of things or feelings or experiences. And I spent a good portion of my younger life in that mode, where I met a milestone, and then it was like, what comes next?
And we were talking about this before too with the book. You know, you finish a book and you think, so glad I'm done. I'm really going to take a break. And literally two days later, it's like, what am I doing next? How is it going to go this way? What am I going to do this way?
And I know that I have to be more present. And I challenge the folks who are listening to be present and grateful for what you have. Instead of unhappy about what you don't have, because there'll always be things you don't have. But what you have is also fleeting if you don't appreciate it when you have it.
Lainie Rowell: Those are very wise words. Thank you for that Starr. And now it is time for your shout out.
Starr Sackstein: Okay, so there are so many people to shout out but the ones that come to mind first always Connie Hamilton super grateful for our friendship. She is the sister I never had. I absolutely adore her and she is brilliant.
And sometimes when I just need somebody to like give me a reality check usually when I'm undervaluing myself in some way, she's the first one to hold up the mirror and be like, come on now. It's amazing to hear. the way you think about yourself versus the way I think about you. And I'm always so lucky and so grateful to have her in, in my life in that capacity.
Katie Harrison is also a person who's not as well known as folks should know about her. She is a science director that I work with in a district in Delaware who's just absolutely brilliant and she's like the absolute best kind of leader who elevates her team and always goes to the end limit to make sure her people have what they need, they're seen, and I'm just so grateful for the space she holds, for the people she has around her.
And then my little team at Mastery Portfolio, I'm super grateful for Constance Borro, who is my partner. She's brilliant and she has helped me learn about business in a way that I never thought I would ever have to know. And then Crystal Frommert, who I do the podcast with Building Learner Centered Spaces, is also, brilliant.
I have so many math people around me now. It's very different as a humanities person. Emma Chiappetta, who's our mastery coach, who also like Emma and Crystal, have both written books and both of them are just brilliant ladies. And Katie Mead, who is our tech support, and then Alan who is our developer.
They are all people who make me better all the time, and I'm just really grateful for all of them.
Lainie Rowell: You surround yourself by the people who are going to make you better, right?
Starr Sackstein: I think so. I try.
Lainie Rowell: I think you are. And I know some of those people. So I think you are. No offense to the ones I don't know.
I will put all of your contact info in the show notes, but just from your mouth, what is the best way for people to connect with you? Where do you spend most of your time on the socials? Where do you want them to go to connect with you? All that fun stuff.
Starr Sackstein: Sure. So. I have a website, MsSackstein.com/. I'm basically branded Ms Sackstein everywhere, because that's who I was in the classroom, that's when I started this whole thing, so it kind of stuck. So my email's MsSackstein@gmail.com, my website's MsSackstein.com, @MsSackstein on The platform formerly known as Twitter, I refuse to call it by its new name.
I'm gonna go a little Prince on that scenario there. LinkedIn, I'm on a lot more. That's probably the best place to reach me because I'm not on Twitter as much as I used to be for a lot of different reasons. Like, the fact that I get, like, pseudo porn sent to me now. Like, I'm like, when did that Starrt happening on Twitter?
But it does. It does happen, friends. It's embarrassing to have to block a million different accounts that just show up following you.
Lainie Rowell: I totally get it, you don't want to be on the platform that's spamming you. We're gonna put all of that into the show notes, and it's MsSackstein- MS Sackstein. I'll make sure and have that in the show notes, and then, Starr, this flew by, It's been a total delight talking to you. I know our listeners are loving all the wisdom that you're sharing and just thank you so much for your time.
Starr Sackstein: Thank you so much. It's always nice to talk to somebody who makes me think about things in a different way.
Lainie Rowell: That's a very big compliment. I'm not sure I deserve it, but based on our conversation, I'm going to take it.
Starr Sackstein: You should. Awesome.
Lainie Rowell: Thank you all for listening.
