 Welcome everyone to the Learning Loop podcast, your best source for educational insights and trends. I'm Chris, your host. Today's special guest is Natalie. Natalie is a lead curriculum developer here at CESA. Natalie's a former teacher who focuses on building the best lessons in curriculum for classrooms. Today in our episode, Natalie will share her's plans for National Education Week and how CESA is really coming to meet you teachers where you are. Natalie, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Chris. I'm thrilled to be here. We're so excited. I want to start with a basic question. We'll just lay our foundation here. How do featured collections like this one that we're releasing for National Education Week, how did these start in CESA with the curriculum team? How do we get started on some of those things? That is a great question. So our featured collection changes monthly and it has three collections of free content for educators. So no matter what your user status is, our featured content is free for the month. The first collection is always our special days. So this is created to highlight culture, heritage, holidays, nationally recognized special days. I don't know if you've ever Google searched. There are a lot. Some of these include like Donut Day, who knew. Kindness Day, which we definitely capitalize on a lot here at CESA and then even more fun like Pet Day. Our second collection is created with content to support educators in implementing popular national initiatives in education. So thinking about back to school. That's a national time where there's certain protocols, procedures, getting students acclimated to your routines, community building, and then also digital citizenship is another common national initiative or read across America. And then our third collection is our spotlight. And this showcases lessons that have already been developed that exist in our library that support learning goals during specific times in the school year. So National Education Month, bringing it back around, falls into that second collection. National Education Month is our national initiative focus for November. Awesome. So amazing. And all of these are available for free for any teacher to go in and grab and use. So what a tremendous gift that is being provided. I love it. How do you find the balance in CESA's curriculum between like instructional best practices, but also then the ease of use for teachers and students? Like we wanna make sure that everything's accessible, but we also wanna deliver the best. Like how do we balance that? And how do you guys balance that on the CESA curriculum team? Absolutely. And I think most educators probably can relate to that even in their own lesson planning. In the mold of, okay, I gotta teach objectives. I know best practices, but I also need to make this lesson fit in a certain duration. And I also need to make certain components so that my students are engaged and they have time to work on their own with a partner. And so that's kind of the approach that we've taken with our model or our mold in the actual lessons themselves. To support these best practices in ease of use, our lessons follow a predictable flow. So each lesson begins with an intro. You can think of this as you're modeling your direct instruction. And this intro gives context for teachers. So if I'm an educator who maybe has not had a ton of time to look at a lesson ahead of time, but I found this lesson in CESA and I'm like, you know what, let's roll with it. That intro is gonna at least give the teacher context to, okay, what are the objectives? What are the goals for my students? What maybe background knowledge do I need to quickly check up on or do my students maybe need? And then it also introduces students to the key vocabulary as well as the concepts. Next, all of our lessons move into a practice section. And this is your guided instruction. So students are facilitated through a hands-on exploration of the content. And then after they've gotten to practice, explore, get familiar with the content, we have a connect piece where students take their learning or their initial understandings and work with a peer or a family member. So they get to extend upon learning as they discuss and create. And then lastly, all of our lessons end with a show what you know. So this section allows for students to explain and check their own understanding of those initial concepts taught in the lesson. The section can also be used by teachers as a formative assessment so that they can check their learning outcomes and plan for future instruction. Perfect. Yeah, that's so amazing. And it's such a holistic view of what lessons really are and how they really provide the best for our classrooms. Quick question for you, an additional one here. When you think of that show what you know, how much are you guys emphasizing weaving in the new formative assessment tool into that? Is that gonna be in every show what you know or is that something that's kind of based on the lesson as you move forward? That is a great question. I don't want to commit and say that a formative assessment will be in every single show what you know. But we are working diligently to incorporate a formative assessment in all of our lessons. So a lot of times it does elude itself really well to that show what you know. And it's been interesting as a team we are really trying to showcase formative assessment and we're finding that a lot of times that is where we end up pocketing it in the show what you know. But there are some instances where we can utilize the formative assessment in the practice because the formative assessment does give us an option to basically turn off feedback. So we can have feedback turned on. So students could be completing what we're calling a formative assessment within the practice. And they're actually seeing what they're getting right or where they might have gaps in their learning. And that would still be considered part of the practice piece. And then if we wanted to turn off that reveal for students that's where we really use that formative assessment in the show what you know. So students are not seeing their answers and getting that immediate feedback it's going directly to teachers. Awesome, awesome. Just bringing the best tools in the best way in the best place for those lessons in there too to make sure that the educational lesson and the pathway that students are taking is also being best for them. I think that's an awesome mindset that you guys have and a great way to design these lessons also and include those tools in the best possible way. So that's super awesome to hear. Absolutely, thank you. We want your support, so that's good. Glad you agreed. For sure. What inspired you and or your team to make a collection around National Education Week? Yeah, absolutely. So I knew there was National Education Week. I'll be honest. I did not know until recently it's broader than that. The month of November is actually National Education Month. So that caught my attention in that I was like, ooh, wait, this initiative is not just a week. This is like the full month. So it probed me to kind of do a little research. And my understanding, and I preface that with my understandings, I don't want to like quote exactly what National Education Month is, but my understanding of the month is that it is a time to celebrate our public education, which most people know, but it's also a time actually to bring awareness to opportunities for improvement and highlight how education has evolved over time. And it should be evolving over time to meet the needs of our students. So as soon as I was kind of doing this research and learning a little bit more about the month itself and what it represents, I just thought, oh my gosh, she saw as a company, we do both of these things really well. So we support and we celebrate that learning loop made up of teachers, students and families, which we know should be a constant in education. That's something that is foundational. That's something that should stay. It might grow and expand to improve. But we also continue to involve and enhance the learning experience for students, specifically when we think about all of the tools and the usage within the learning platform and also the curriculum and the lessons that we have. So that kind of, yeah, just made me think, oh my gosh, she saw as just the great example of an innovative solution to demonstrate student-centered learning, what it looks and feels like, and our content really is exemplary of fun, engaging and interactive, but it also makes students accountable for their learning and gives them a safe place to take risks, explore and share their thinking, which I think is true of modern education from when you think of how education used to be when I was in school and then when I think of my parents and even my grandparents. So I just think Seesaw is a resource for students and teachers and families to continue influencing the learning over time. And I think we're gonna continue to meet those needs hopefully as we take feedback from multiple different parties and turn it into actionable items. Yes, yes, and providing also a gift during this time. It's just like a thank you teachers for doing what you do in classrooms and in families and everybody who's part of learning. This is our way of showing appreciation too, I think, as part of that week or month, excuse me, not week. Well, it is a week, that's what's so funny. So it's a month, but as far as when you think of like, oh, teacher appreciation, yeah, I don't know. I guess we need to change that. It really is a month. Teachers should be getting placed for the whole month, not just the week. They should, they should. They should just get appreciation all the time. That's what we're here to do. Absolutely, yes, put it in the right order. When you're thinking and when you design this collection, thinking about either the content that's in it or even just the pieces of content, even the nitty gritty little parts of it, what is your favorite part of this new featured collection for this week? Oh, that is such a good question. I would say my favorite part is that the collection showcases a variety of lessons that support character ed and core subjects. And it also shows how the lessons regardless of subject can be equally objective focused and fun. And I think as a former educator that's something that can often be something you struggle with in, I've got these objectives that I need to teach, but I also want my learning to be fun and I want it to be something that the students enjoy and they take away remembering the experience of the learning, not just the content. And so I think that this collection does a really good job with a really good job at showing how again, regardless of the content, you can have a lesson that meets those objectives focused without giving up the fun, but actually flipping it and enhancing the fun as you're doing the teaching of the concepts that you have to teach. Love that. It comes back to that earlier question about the balance of what students and teachers really want is that fun and that excitement, but we also need to make sure we're delivering on the standards and the content that we have to do. And so I love that you're using that balance there and really focusing on it being as even as possible where you're still doing a whole bunch of fun stuff and you're delivering it in a fun way so that students remember it, but you're also ensuring that you're delivering on those standards and that academics that needs to be had too, so I love that. What makes this collection special for educators during National Education Week? I know you hinted on a few things, but is there anything else that just makes this collection really special for this week? So I think the collection's really special because the lessons were specifically chosen. I mean, all of our lessons are fun, right? I'm not biased, but I would hope that when you think of Education Week, in my mind, this should be a week that is remembers, allows educators to remember the impact that they're having, but also that the relationships they're building with students and the atmosphere that they're creating within their classroom. And I think that all of the lessons within this collection really do support learning that's fun for all, including the teacher, because let's be honest, that the teacher should be enjoying what they're doing and there's a lot of aspects in education that don't necessarily allow us to do that as teachers, but your time with your students 100% should be a time that you are enjoying and you're finding to be impactful. So I think they'll see that the lessons, well, they're all ready to go lessons, so they decrease prep time. And they provide individualized learning for their students too. So if teachers decide to utilize these lessons this week, hopefully they will be having fun, but they'll also be given their students the opportunity to explore, collaborate, play, explain, and share, and just really delve into the multifacets that learning can be. Absolutely, and I'm sure that teachers who pick up on all these things, they're gonna enjoy it, they're gonna have so much fun and they're gonna also learn some things as they come out of using these lessons as well. So after all these conversations around this collection, what's in the collection, what does it do? How does it help classrooms? How can a teacher who listens to all this, how can they actually take advantage of this and use these lessons and find these lessons so that they can put them into practice in their classroom? So yes, we want these lessons to be used, right? So first, teachers can take full advantage of the resource by saving the lessons. As you and I discussed at the very beginning, one amazing gift of the featured collection is that the content is free for the month. After that month, some of these lessons may not be accessible depending on the type of user that you are, so I would save all of them, even if you don't know if you wanna use them this year, but start filling that bucket of content which you can do every single month with our featured content. And then I would say secondly, teachers should choose and implement a lesson in each content area at some point, not necessarily maybe all in this month if that's a heavy lift, but thinking about, ooh, I wanna try to implement a CSaw lesson in a different content area at least throughout my school year, especially if you're a newer user so that you can see different ways instruction can be supported in CSaw. I think that's also a key takeaway for educators is, we wanna inspire, they inspire us, but we also wanna repay that and inspire them. So one of the wonderful things about CSaw is they can create their own lessons. And so the featured content does give examples of different ways that our platform can be used to deliver instruction. And I think that it also allows teachers if they choose different content areas, they can see what types of lessons they're having the biggest impact on learning in their own classroom and the engagement with their students. Awesome, super, super practical next steps and tips for any teacher too, if you're really just, if you're new to CSaw or even a veteran to CSaw, this really will help you to figure out what works in your classroom and what works for your students and what works for you as a teacher too. So I love these really practical next steps that you provided and just helps them to just be very clear on how do they start to move forward and take advantage of all of these lessons as they move into this coming week. Well, we're at time Natalie, I just wanna say thank you so much for taking time here to be with us. Thank you for sharing your expertise around how lessons are designed, how you put together collections and really how we are continuing to deliver excellent lessons and curriculum to educators all around the world. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you, Chris.