Making the Shift

The fastest way to change a classroom isn’t a new program, it’s a new workflow. We sit down with educator, author, and TEDx speaker Dr. Catlin Tucker to unpack what helped her go from early-career burnout to designing learning that feels engaging for students and sustainable for teachers.

We talk student-led learning in plain terms: teachers stay essential, but students do more of the thinking, talking, and meaning-making. Dr. Tucker explains why the best classrooms have a productive buzz, what she looks for when she walks into a “wow” room, and how teachers can scaffold collaboration and communication so students can work with real independence. If you’ve ever wondered how to get out from the front of the room without losing control, this conversation gets practical fast.

You’ll also hear how blended learning and the station rotation model help teachers differentiate instruction and meet students where they are, plus how AI in education can cut planning time while improving rigor, scaffolds, and student choice. We even shift to the home side with better family prompts than “How was your day?” including high-low and a simple 3-2-1 reflection that gets kids talking about what they learned.

If you care about classroom engagement, effective instructional design, and realistic ways to reduce teacher workload, press play. Subscribe, share this with a teacher or parent, and leave a review with the one small shift you want to try next.

The Stories Behind Our Story

Transcript

Welcome And Spring Break Catch-Up

Matt Graham 0:01

You're listening to Amplified, the Chesapeake Public Schools podcast, your front row seat to the stories behind our story.

Jay Lewter 0:18

Hello, listeners, and welcome back to Amplified. I'm Jay Lewter, and today I'm here with Matt Graham. Matt, how you been?

Matt Graham 0:26

I've been good. I've been good. I had a great spring break. Did you have a good spring break?

Jay Lewter 0:31

We had an amazing spring break. Lots of time on the road and seeing all the sites and doing lots of family time. A great spring break. I hope you did.

Matt Graham 0:38

Oh, yeah. We did a little staycation. We visited our local resort at Virginia Beach, Virginia for a day. But we did some house projects, spent some quality time with the kids. It was a nice, relaxing week with the family.

Introducing Dr. Catlin Tucker

Jay Lewter 0:52

Awesome. I'm so glad, Matt. And look, this month on Amplified, we have a really special opportunity for our listeners. We're sitting down with Dr. Catlin Tucker. Dr. Tucker is an educator, an author, a presenter, and she's been working with Chesapeake Schools for quite some time. Isn't that right?

Matt Graham 1:11

Oh, yeah. She is an expert in blended learning. She has a book called The Shift to Student Led. And you have a signed copy, right?

Jay Lewter 1:18

I do have a signed copy. Matt, you're funny. We principals a couple of years ago had an opportunity to hear from Dr. Tucker, and we dug into the shift to student-led. A lot of us, as principals, were using the shift to student-led for professional development. She talks about 10 shifts that teachers can make to turn their students' classrooms into a more student-centered environment. And that is my first brush with Dr. Tucker and the work that she's been doing. And it really did transform a lot of classrooms and a lot of opportunities for our students when I was an elementary school principal. But Matt, I think you've had a unique opportunity to work with Dr. Tucker as well.

Matt Graham 1:55

Yes, I was uh invited to be on her podcast, The Balance, earlier this year and back in November, and it was a great opportunity. She wanted to see how we developed a student-led podcast. This was back at Great Bridge Middle School, and how that basically has evolved. And now we're at a district level podcast and how it connects with our families, our communities. It highlights a lot of things that we're doing and how podcasts can help build that trust amongst the community. So I had a great time talking with her, and now we get to flip the script and we bring her to our podcast.

Jay Lewter 2:30

Yes. And we're excited to talk to Dr. Tucker about that partnership with Chesapeake Public Schools and how her work is impacting all the classrooms around Chesapeake. And I think it's important that our families and our teachers can hear directly from Dr. Tucker about all those cool opportunities that our students are experiencing, right?

From Struggling Teacher To Redesign

Matt Graham 2:48

Absolutely. So let's take a listen. We are here with Educator, best-selling author, Ted X speaker. That's right. Right? And uh author of what, seven books, I believe?

Speaker 2 3:03

Eleven. Eleven.

Matt Graham 3:04

Oh, Dr. Catlin Tucker.

Jay Lewter 3:07

Welcome, welcome. Thanks for being with us, Dr. Tucker.

Speaker 2 3:10

Thank you for having me.

Matt Graham 3:11

Let's take a moment to get a little background on you for our listeners and what drives the important work that you do.

Partnering With Chesapeake Classrooms

Speaker 2 3:18

Yeah, I started my career as a high school English teacher. And I will be honest, the first five years were not great. Definitely did not realize, I think, what I was getting myself into as an educator. I had all of these really elaborate fantasies when I was in credential school, working on my teaching credential and my master's in education, and then got into classrooms and felt like, maybe I'm just terrible at this, right? Like I can't actualize this classroom I'd been dreaming about. And it was really through this process of unlearning all the things I thought I knew about being a good teacher that actually helped me shift the focus from me to my students and totally change the experience in my classroom. And I think that that process, that redesign for me really fuels almost everything that I do even today.

Jay Lewter 4:05

Awesome. I know that I sort of discovered you, Catlin, when the shift to student-led first came out in 2022. And I was an elementary principal in those days and saw your TEDx talk about how teachers shouldn't be the ones that are tired at the end of the day. And I think that kind of inspired me to start doing some PD with my elementary school staff around the shift to student-led. But even more than that, you've been working with Chesapeake schools for a couple of years now. So tell us a little bit about uh the last few years with Chesapeake Schools and more about that partnership with our school division.

Speaker 2 4:41

Yeah, I actually think the very first time I came out here was to be the keynote at the big summer conference. And I was talking about this shift to student-led learning, which I think sometimes parents might hear this and they're like, wait, teachers need to lead the learning. And absolutely teachers are critical. But I feel like teaching and parenting, there's like a lot of similarities. Like we're trying to put ourselves out of a job. We want these people to go out in the world with all the skills that they need to be successful. And if we don't start releasing that control to learners, then they don't develop those really critical skills. So that's that was kind of the origin story of how I landed here. And then over the course of the last three years, I've had the absolute privilege of working with teachers around instructional models that allow them to pull small groups, differentiate instruction, which is just like making those teacher moves to try to meet kids where they're at, make sure they get what they need to make progress. And then also like give them opportunities to lead their learning, be self-directed, collaborate. And so we've been working with the station rotation model, student-led strategies. I just finished up a day with the curriculum and instruction folks, the teaching and learning team, talking about, you know, how to support this work moving forward.

Matt Graham 5:55

Yeah, we literally just she was done on the stairs. And I had to go knock on the door and say, all right, you finished. All right, come on down and chat with us.

Burnout Sparked A New Approach

Speaker 2 6:03

And I know you're you're working more on leveraging AI as well. Is that right? Yes. So a big part of my work is helping teachers leverage these AI-powered tools to really elevate their design work. Now we have this opportunity to design more effectively for these increasingly beautifully diverse groups of learners in a fraction of the time. So, yeah, how do we use tools to differentiate the way students access information and navigate tasks? It's been really, really exciting.

Jay Lewter 6:35

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like your time in the classroom in those first five years or so, where even you were already experiencing burnout as a very novice teacher, was that the inspiration for you to say there's got to be a better way?

Speaker 2 6:49

Well, I almost left the teaching profession. I had this career crisis. I thought, oh my gosh, I cannot do this for the next 30 years. What am I gonna do? And so I pressed pause on that real big decision, decided to have my first child. And while I was home, I was teaching online college-level classes, and my interest in technology was kind of piqued. So when I decided to go back to my classroom, I said, I'm gonna give it one more year, but I'm gonna treat this classroom like a laboratory. I'm just gonna try stuff, see what works. If it doesn't work, we'll we'll talk about it. I'll get student feedback, we'll make changes. And it was integrating technology and shifting workflows, letting students really take center stage, asking questions, exploring, discovering, making meaning, that I was like, oh my gosh, look at how capable they are, look at how engaged they are. Like this is the classroom I had dreamed about, but I was actually the one blocking the reality by being at the front of the room and talking the entire period, which nobody was enjoying.

Matt Graham 7:47

Yeah, the stage on the stage, right? And nobody really wants that. I mean, and you see the learning happening when you the students are interacting. Yes. And you're almost taking the backseat being that facilitator.

Speaker 2 7:59

Well, and in this age of AI, as AI continues to rapidly kind of evolve and take over all these different spaces in our in our lives and our world, the characteristics, the qualities that make us uniquely human, our ability to communicate, to collaborate, to kind of think outside the box together, this is what's going to make students really special in this future. And they need opportunities to stretch those skills, practice kind of building those muscles together.

The Skills Students Need Now

Matt Graham 8:28

What are those things that students need the most that you see? And maybe those things that teachers need the most to be effective?

Speaker 2 8:36

Yeah, I think teachers first, I don't know that we can change the reality in a lot of classrooms if we don't figure out how to get out from that front of the room. How do we reimagine the way in which we approach instruction to break it up, make it engaging, position students to discover and explore together? But that also requires that we support them with that skill building, that soft skill building, so that they can be successful, engaging in conversations with each other about topics and concepts. They can navigate tasks with classmates where it's not all teacher directed and teacher-led all of the time. So that's scaffolding, that's modeling. It's all of those teacher strategies that we use to teach content, but it's teaching kids how to engage with each other and the content in ways that are more independent of, you know, just teacher at the front of the room talking for a bit and then transitioning kids onto practice.

Matt Graham 9:32

A lot of those collaboration skills and communication skills that are going to be effective in the classroom and then also in the real world.

Jay Lewter 9:38

Yeah. I just know that when I was a teacher and a principal, that when the bell rings at the end of the lesson and kids go, no, no, those are the great moments where you know they're just so immersed and so engaged that they don't want the learning to end. Right. And that's what we want for our teachers and for our kids.

Matt Graham 9:56

If there was one small thing that you could tell teachers, one little shift, maybe, because we just went through a whole lot, what would be sort of that one little shift to get that foot in this door to get it started?

Jay Lewter 10:07

And maybe an easy place to start for a teacher that's feeling a little overwhelmed.

One Small Shift To Start

Speaker 2 10:11

Yeah, we actually just did this today upstairs, which is a lot of teachers, they do rely on whole group instruction, which is fine, but let's reimagine it with these tiny moves. So if I'm gonna present a 15-minute mini lesson to my students or a 20-minute lecture at the secondary level to students, can I chunk that into five minute segments? So I am not talking for more than five minutes at a time. One, let's reduce cognitive overload. Kids can only hold so much new information in working memory. So talking for long stretches doesn't really work anyway. And between each of those segments, let's pause and let's use a cooperative learning strategy that lets kids actively cognitively engage with the content and each other. So for little kids who are really excited to chat, let's do a turn and talk, go knee to knee, share your idea with a classmate. At the secondary level, when they're a little more reticent to lean in, let's use something more structured like numbered heads together, where they're working in a team to kind of unpack something, make sense of it, and then somebody's numbers get in call. These are not huge moves, but they can really increase comprehension, retention, and then also their ability to just have these moments of engagement and conversation together.

Jay Lewter 11:22

And it's way more fun and way more engaging than sitting and listening to your teacher just go on and on. Never happens in Chesapeake schools.

Better Dinner Questions For Kids

Matt Graham 11:31

Well, there's those classrooms that you walk down the hallway, you hear all this noise, and then some people look at that and they're like, what's going on in there? Is there some something we need to call the principal about? But actually, it's like that organized kind of chaos where active learning is happening, and that's something that you do do want to have in here. For sure. So on the flip side, as a parent, my kids come home every day from school, and I want to know what is happening in that school. So I get stuck always asking, How was your day? And they're like, Good, or you don't need to know. Even from my seven-year-old, you don't need to know. I said, Well, I kind of do want to know. If you had to give an advice for the families wanting to know and ask their kids, hey, instead of saying, hey, what sort of high quality engaging activities do you have in your classroom? Like, what can we say to our kids to prompt that conversation maybe at the dinner table?

Speaker 2 12:27

Oh my gosh, yes. So two different things. And these are just teacher moves that I think I just use with my own kids around the dinner table, which was a high low. Tell me one high from your day, something that went really well, something that you just got and understood or excited about. And what was a low? What's something that you struggled with? What didn't go well? What are you confused about? Where might you need more support? I also like to take the classic like three, two, one, like, tell me three things you learned today, two questions you have, and one thing that surprised you. So now we're like putting them on the spot to kind of share out in more specific ways because I mean, at least you got your kids saying, I had a good day, or why are you asking? I think when they get into tween teen like realm, you might just like they might just be grunting at you and asking what's for dinner.

What A Wow Classroom Looks Like

Jay Lewter 13:09

That's right. Bruh. You get a bra instead of anything else. Yeah. So I know, Catlin, you are in and out of schools and in and out of classrooms all over the country. I'm curious, when you go into a classroom, how do you know that that's a wow classroom? How do you know this teacher has got it going on? I think they're doing a lot less.

Speaker 2 13:28

I think the students are doing a lot more. And to your point, Matt, learning is messy. So there's a buzz. There's a little like vibration in the room of kids having conversations and working through things. And I think one of my favorite moments when I am in a classroom is when somebody comes in with like a call slip or something from the office and they're not sure where the teacher is because the teacher is tucked in, actively engaged with kids. They're not directing the entire show. They're not standing there talking while kids are quietly listening. I love those moments. There's so much energy. There's so much excitement in those rooms.

Jay Lewter 14:06

I completely agree. As a former elementary principal, those are my favorite moments. You go in, you look for a teacher, and I know she's in here somewhere. And then you hear that you hear a voice from the back of the room. I'm down here. Yeah. And uh knee to knee with kids and just completely engaged, and everybody's doing their own thing. Everyone's uh working on the same goal but in a different way. Right. It's uh it's exciting to see. I would, I would, I would completely agree.

Matt Graham 14:34

As you continue to work in our district, what are the things that you are excited about based on those conversations and the partnerships and the sessions that you're providing?

Speaker 2 14:45

I think what is really exciting is if we get teachers in a place where they have the confidence and capacity to design with a model like station rotation, where for the the parents and families listening, you have a teacher-led station, an online station, offline station, students rotate through them. Now all of a sudden we can make sure that students are getting their academic needs met at that teacher-led station. I love this idea that it becomes an opportunity where if we're going to present instruction, but we know from the data, kids are kind of all over the place in terms of their readiness. Now we don't have to do whole group and clean up the mess left over in small group. We can be really proactive designing for small groups. And at the stations that are not teacher-led, I love the conversations we're having about where do these student-led strategies fit in? How do we make sure these other station activities are really dynamic and pushing students to think about their learning, think about their thinking, actively engage with each other around shared tasks. So it's almost like that coming together of the student-led piece, of the high-level instructional design. And once teachers are, you know, comfortable designing this way, now students who need more significant support or intervention, we can also accommodate that in a classroom, which is really exciting because teachers are here to make sure students succeed and they need that tool belt full of instructional models and strategies and AI tools that support them so they can feel effective in this work.

Matt Graham 16:13

And when I listen to that too, I'm I think in the back of my mind, all right, time, right? When we're making the lessons or using the instructional design, what do you say to teachers about, all right, how do I find the time to do all this?

Speaker 2 16:26

Oh man, before AI, it was a much bigger ask. But now we can design with a high level of intentionality in a fraction of the time with AI. So really helping teachers. And the last time I was here running a station rotation training, it was all about how do we utilize AI to differentiate? So to adjust the level of rigor and complexity, to create those scaffolds and supports that students need, how do we design meaningful choices for learners, right? All of that's so much easier to do with AI. And one of the things I really try to help teachers understand is the more you invest in that design work on the front end, the more you can actually spend your class time doing some of the tasks that are really high impact, like giving students feedback as they work that classically we've been taking home and doing in our evenings and weekends, which is not timely. It often means we don't do it very often. So it's almost like starting to reimagine where some of those teacher tasks live and what can we pull into classrooms to be more effective, but also to eliminate some of that paper trail that's that consumes the time we could be designing high-level engaging activities.

Encouragement For Teachers And Closing

Jay Lewter 17:37

It's so hard for teachers when the school day is over and then they've got stacks and stacks of the other work to get ready for the next day. You've got to finish today, you've got to get ready for tomorrow. I think station rotation and making some of these shifts really support teachers working in the moment and not having so much to take home in their teacher bag every night. Yeah, that is the hope. So why don't you close us out with this, Callan? How about a word of encouragement for those teachers that are working so hard each and every day and making such a tremendous impact on our students? Do you have a word of encouragement for our teacher listeners?

Speaker 2 18:12

Yeah, I would say don't let all the things that we could learn, all of the places you could grow as an educator, feel like you're not doing enough now. What I want teachers to remember is you're doing the best work that you can. And you are the lead learner in your classroom. So all we can do is commit to continuing to learn, grow, develop in this practice. And those are just a bunch of baby steps that over time can lead to really powerful shifts. But I think sometimes we put this pressure that, like, oh my gosh, I have to change all these things right away. And that's not the case. Just embrace your role as lead learner and know you're showing up and doing the best you can for kids every day. And over time, you'll expand your practice.

Matt Graham 18:53

Insightful, very insightful.

Speaker 2 18:55

That I'm inspired today.

Matt Graham 18:56

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for stopping by on Amplified, the Chesapeake Public Schools podcast, and sharing a little bit about your story, the great things that you're doing, not just within Chesapeake Public Schools, but nationally or internationally, really. So again, we're very happy that you're here and working with our division and taking the time with us today. So thank you so much.

Speaker 2 19:19

Absolutely my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah, and listeners, make sure you join us next time on Amplified.

Matt Graham 19:28

We hope you enjoyed the stories behind our story on this episode of Amplified, the Chesapeake Public Schools podcast. Connect with us at cpschools.com forward slash amplified, and be sure to subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcasts.