Chasing Bailey
Chasing Bailey is a podcast about a group of teachers, leaders, and others who dedicated themselves to changing the fortunes of a failing middle school in Nashville TN from 2012 to 2016. They succeeded, but their achievement was bittersweet. In 2016, the district closed that school. Still, those who were there knew they had stumbled onto something special, some important educational truths that might help all of us find our way out of the morass that COVID 19 has left us in.
How Choice for Students Gets Us to Responsibility
Families’ choice of school for their children is not the only kind of choice that matters educationally. It may well not be the most important kind, either. We heard from parents in Episode 4 who were concerned with whether or not their kids learned to think and act for themselves, and in the process, to take responsibility for who they were in the world. What do educators think about this?
When educators wrestle with questions of student choice and responsibility, the differences revolve around when and how much -- and almost never about whether choice and respons...
Reading Wars Redux: The Science of Reading
Folks have been debating how to teach reading at least since 1985. At that time, the issue was framed as top-down vs. bottom-up.
This makes the debate seem “tidy,” just two sides with clear delineation. You were FOR phonics (bottom up) or you were FOR textual understanding (top down), but you couldn’t be for both. In truth, there were no teachers then or now who don’t value both, who don’t tailor their teaching to the instructional moment of their students, individually and collectively.
Well, we’re at the reading wars again, but the...
What Do Parents REALLY Want?
Today we don’t talk enough about John Dewey’s call to educational equity and its impact on democracy. Instead, small groups of parents (most notably Moms for Liberty) are prompting battles in local school boards to ban books, to fight racially inclusive curriculum, and to limit the rights and constrain the very existence of transgender and questioning youth.
But some other parents – the majority it seems -- are fighting back to say clearly that these are not concerns they care about. What DO they care about? If this episode’s guests are taken seriously, families care...
Responsibility: Anchoring (Renewal in) Education
This is a “bonus episode,” not part of our regular schedule, but a conversation that nonetheless deepens and expands the ideas about education that ground the podcast. In mid-December, Bloomsbury Press published Responsibility, a book authored by Dr. Barbara Stengle for their Philosophy of Education in Practice series. To help launch the book, Barb decided to sit down with 4 colleagues and invite them to make sense of what she has said and done.
Professional Development? Learning In and Through Practice
Have you ever taken the time to really listen to teachers talk about their work, about their joys and frustrations, and about how they grow as they work together? This episode is an opportunity to do just that. Bailey teachers talk about their experience and offer wisdom for all of us as they do so.
00:00 Introduction to the Second Season Dr. Barbara Stengel
01:25 Introduction to Professional Development? The Bailey Experience Stengel
03:55 Bailey’s Team Structure as the Engine of Professional Development Stengel, Keisha Harding, Bailey Teacher Leader now a STEM Consul...
Autonomy? Trust and Responsibility
The headlines are still screaming at us … but those headlines are not written by teachers and principals. As we saw in the last episode, most media headlines simply don’t reflect the experience or concerns of those considered actual educational experts.
00:00 Introduction to the Second Season Dr. Barbara Stengel
01:25 Introduction to Autonomy (a tour through the headlines from Chicago and Denver) Stengel, Camilla Modesitt, Director of External Relations, Denver Language School
08:15 Principals’ Perspectives: “Professionalism and Empowerment with Balance and ‘Compliance’” Merida Freguada, Principal, Marrama Elementary
12:13 Principals’ Perspective: “Innovation in Name Only” Alex Wenzel, P...
Season 2 Episode 2 Teaser
The Pandemic is endemic, or nearly so. We’re still getting sick at all the wrong times, but the impact on most who actually test positive for COVID-19 are annoying rather than debilitating. But the pandemic left us with a huge educational hangover, and the headlines really are screaming at us. As always, our interest is in the experience of those who are on the ground.
Full Episode releases on November 1st.
Post-Pandemic Responsibility and Recovery
The Pandemic is endemic, or nearly so. We’re still getting sick at all the wrong times, but the impact on most who actually test positive for COVID-19 are annoying rather than debilitating. But the pandemic left us with a huge educational hangover, and the headlines really are screaming at us. As always, our interest is in the experience of those who are on the ground.
00:00 Introduction to the Second Season Dr. Barbara Stengel
01:30 Introduction to Post-Pandemic Recovery (a tour through the headlines) Stengel
06:37 The Bailey Perspective (featuring teacher leaders) Wh...
Season 2 Episode 1 Teaser
Mid-pandemic, the wish educators most often expressed was that the COVID 19 Pandemic would provide an opportunity for an educational reset, that educators (not politicians) might once again set the agenda.
What actually happened, of course, is not that.
The first episode of Season 2 of Chasing Bailey will be released on October 1st.
Season 2 Teaser
The new school year is underway, and we are getting ready for the second season of Chasing Bailey.
The first episode of the new season will drop October 1st. Plan to join us as we take a look at what schools can and should be doing post-pandemic. Later episodes will look at principal’s autonomy, teacher shortages, professional development, and what parents really want from schools. We’ll hear from familiar Bailey characters and then bring other educators into the conversation.
If you want to be part of our conversations, if your school is doing some...
Bonus Back-to-School Commentary: Let Teachers Teach!
September 16, 2023
Chasing Bailey
Bonus Back-to-School Commentary: Let Teachers Teach!
In this bonus back-to-school episode of Chasing Bailey, we listen as our commentator, Dr. Barbara Stengel, reads “An experienced educator’s plea: Let teachers teach!” This is a short essay Barb was asked to write for the Lancaster Newpapers Sunday edition as school was beginning in August. The theme of the piece evokes several Chasing Bailey themes (as will be obvious to regular listeners).
00:00 Introduction: How this Essay Came to Be Barbara Stengel
2:00 The text read by Dr. Steng...
Bailey Closes on Greenwood Ave.
It’s been a minute since our last episode … sorry to keep you waiting to hear just why Bailey on Greenwood Avenue was shut down, but I couldn’t explain how Bailey closed without the help of Principal Christian Sawyer and Dr. Alan Coverstone who was the Director of the iZone in MNPS and the administrator who got the ball rolling for the Bailey transformation – and those two guys are tough to pin down. Once we got to talking, I was fascinated by the way Christian and Alan reflected on their experience with Bailey, taking responsibility, not blaming an...
This Is What Success Looks Like
The question of a school’s “success” is the thread underlying this entire podcast – and the specific target we aim at today by listening to the voice and experience of four representative Bailey students. In the face of all we could put in the basket of “learning loss,” the educators at Bailey reconstructed their interactions and their expectations to experience success for themselves and their students …. Yes, success (or at least substantial improvement) in test scores, but success understood far more broadly and deeply to incorporate mental health, social and emotional capacity, academic achievement, and growth in intelligence. ...
Allyship at its Best? Black Teachers Lead the Way
October 31, 2022
Chasing Bailey
Episode 6: Allyship at its Best? Black Teachers Lead the Way
Have we unintentionally reinforced a stereotype about Black and white teachers in the last two episodes? In a majority Black school, do the Black teachers carry the social-emotional weight (and expertise), while the white teachers are the instructional and academic experts? That’s definitely not the story we wanted to tell about Bailey, so in this episode, we address the issue head on, inviting teachers and teacher leaders to talk about how Black and white learned to wor...
To Fail Safely: Teachers’ Creativity as the Lifeblood of Learning
September 30, 2022
Chasing Bailey
Episode 5: To Fail Safely: Teachers’ Creativity as the Lifeblood of Learning
In this fifth episode of Chasing Bailey, we consider the question of curriculum. What was the curriculum that powered academic success at Bailey and how did it come to be? The short answer is that teachers created the curriculum on the fly by focusing laser-like on their students’ needs and prior understanding, freed up to do that by a principal who saw brilliance in the teachers and the scholars. Turns out he was right …
00...
Love and Limits: Re-making Culture for/and Learning at Bailey
August 31, 2022
Chasing Bailey
Episode 4: Love and Limits: Re-making Culture for/and Learning at Bailey
In this fourth episode of Chasing Bailey, we turn to the critical issue of culture for learning and growth. We think about the transformation that supported the Bailey shift from “persistently dangerous” and academically unmoored in 2011 to solidly “Satisfactory” on the district’s School Assessment Measure in 2015. That movement was spearheaded by Chief of Culture Claire Jasper who, with her “Culture Team,” steered the change based on “Love and Limits.”
00:00 Introduction: Love and Limits: Re-makin...
Locating Leadership at the Heart of Teaching and Learning
July 31, 2022
Chasing Bailey
Episode 3: Locating Leadership at the Heart of Teaching and Learning
The third episode of Chasing Bailey looks at how teacher leadership multiplies the point and power of teams in schools. Four teacher leaders – Kelly Aldridge Boyd , LeKeisha Harding, Whitney Bradley Weathers, and Lindsey Nelson -- describe their experience and outline how they grew into their roles. Host Barb Stengel links the work of these teacher leaders to the actions of the school principal, Christian Sawyer, highlighting how his willingness to let go was as important as his efforts to guid...
Teaching is a Team Sport
This second episode of Chasing Bailey explores the first of several characteristics that marked the practice of education at Bailey: that is, teaming. Content teachers, special educators, teacher leaders, paraprofessionals, and residents learning to teach collaborated on both grade level and content-focused teams to encourage the growth and development of every scholar. Host Barb Stengel documents the difficulties in learning to team well and the remarkable successes that resulted from persistence and commitment. She focuses not only on the structure of the teams, but also on the infrastructure that teaming made possible: 1) a relentless focus on students’ growth, 2) a co...
"Let's Remember Who We Are": The Bailey Story
This first episode of Chasing Bailey sketches the four-year story of an effort to transform a “failing” public school in Nashville, TN, only to have success turn sour when the district office determined that the underserved students at the school -- mostly poor and mostly Black -- had to be moved out of the place that had become their educational home. Host Barb Stengel introduces us to several central players and to the important infrastructure elements – teaming, teacher leadership, residents, relationships, race, culture, curriculum, collective responsibility, and equity – that made a difference at Bailey, and that will be explored in depth...
