Episode 49: Equity-Focused School Leadership with Mark Anthony Gooden

Many teachers will say that teaching is a passion of theirs, which is why they put so much time, energy, and creativity into their careers. But many of them also have a passion outside of teaching. So what’s more perfect than combining both of your passions in order to make a difference in the lives of others? My guest on today’s episode, Dr. Mark Anthony Gooden, was able to do just that. Mark shares how to implement and best practices for equity-focused school leadership.

No matter where you teach, having educational equity is a necessity. Mark gives insight on how to increase your awareness and the journey you personally need to take within yourself to make any necessary changes. Driving equity in education requires school leadership, which Mark identifies as leaders by role or passion. Since Mark’s passions are equity and education, he used his various skill sets to educate others on equity-focused school leadership.

 

Topics Discussed:

  • Ways educators can increase educational equity in their classrooms

  • The 5 practices of equity-focused school leadership

  • Mark’s emphasis on the importance of being a life-long learner

  • How teacher skills can be utilized in other spaces, organizations, and careers

Resources mentioned:

Related episodes and blog posts:

 

Meet Dr. Mark Anthony Gooden

​​Mark Anthony Gooden is the Christian Johnson Endeavor Professor in Education Leadership and Director of the Endeavor Antiracist & Restorative Leadership Initiative (EARLI) in the Department of Organization and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University. Mark’s research focuses broadly on culturally responsive school leadership with specific interests in principalship, anti-racist leadership, urban educational leadership, and legal issues in education.

Mark is the 2017 recipient of the UCEA Jay D. Scribner Mentoring Award and the 2021 recipient of the UCEA Master Professor Award for distinguished service in teaching, curriculum development, and student mentoring. His research has appeared in a range of outlets, including American Educational Research Journal, Educational Administration Quarterly, Teachers College Record, Review of Educational Research, and The Journal of Negro Education & Urban Education. He is the Past President of the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA).

CONNECT WITH mark

 
 
 
 

Read the transcript for this episode:

Lily

Dr. Mark Anthony Gooden is the Christian Johnson endeavor professor and education leadership and director of the endeavor of anti racist and restorative Leadership Initiative in the department of organization and leadership at Teachers College Columbia University.

Lily

Mark's research focuses broadly on culturally responsive school leadership with specific interests and principalship, anti racist leadership, urban educational leadership and legal issues in education.

Lily

Welcome, Mark, so glad to have you on the podcast.

Mark

Thank you, Lily. Glad to be here.

Lily

Wonderful. Well, I always start with the same question, which is a large one. So take it in whatever direction you'd like. But can you tell us about your journey as an educator?

Mark

Absolutely. I started out as a mathematics major. And I was one of those folks who wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do after college. Except this was a little bit nerve wracking because it was my fourth year college mathematics major who had already changed from an engineering major. So I think the sexiest career they were offering me with something like an actuary scientist.

Lily

Very exciting.

Mark

Yeah. Nothing against them. I just, it just wasn't the thing I wanted to do. I wanted something a little more engaged with people.

Mark

So it just so happened, I had been tutoring some kids in mathematics as part of my fraternities service going into high schools. And there were a couple of kids there who were really struggling. And I worked with them over a period of time.

Mark

And at the end of the semester, they just they came back and said, hey, you know, because of working with you, I was able to increase my grade from failing to like a B plus, or B. And, you know, I was like, as a no way, and it's Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Mark

So I just said, Oh, maybe I should be in education. So I signed up for a couple education classes, right at the end of my, you know, my four year undergraduate career. And I ended up getting a scholarship to the Ohio State University Go Bucs, to study mathematics education.

Mark

And much to the chagrin of my advisor who would rather rather I have gone in like a degree in mathematics, or maybe being a PhD in mathematics. And I just said, I am just not feeling that.

Mark

And so that began my journey. I started teaching right after that first masters in 1994. Really love teaching, I found it to be challenging and demanding and rewarding all at the same time. And I did that for about four years, and started to take courses there in Columbus, Ohio, which is where I got started. And I was eventually leaning toward becoming an administrator.

Mark

And I, as a result of learning and continuing to engage with people around these interests and ideas, I ended up wanting to still wanting to get a PhD, but was really thinking of the idea of extending my learning into the professor. And so that's my journey, there's more there.

Mark

I got my first Assistant Prof job right out of Ohio State, still in Ohio at the University of Cincinnati. And the rest, as they say, is history. So I've been moving around in about for the last 22 years in higher education.

Mark

But prior to that, I spent some time in K 12 education really, really enjoying the idea of engaging with learning and being a learner. And I also had this issue that I never really wanted to leave school. So education made sense to me, you know, so to be in higher education means I've never really left school.

Lily

Yes, I think that's amazing. Yeah, and I resonate with so many parts of your stories. I too, actually was a math major, I was a math and English major in college, and I could never really decide between the two. And also, and I was like, I have no idea what I'm gonna do after college, you know, I just like doing both these things. And I also liked being in school.

Lily

And then I stumbled into like, I couldn't get into an advanced English class. And so I had to take this education class, which at first I was like, what I don't know, that doesn't interest me, and then loved it. And from that one class, Alright, I'm changing it up, but I'm gonna go forward. I can combine both math English, everything into education. But yeah, I totally resonate with that. I've just been letting it unfold and go through it.

Lily

Also the part where you're like, I thought I was gonna be an administrator. I often talk to teachers who we feel very limited by the options out there, right? I could be a teacher, I could be an administrator. I don't want to leave school or education either. But when I started if I want to be a teacher in the classroom forever. It felt really weird. limiting to me, so I appreciate you talking about the things that came up for you along that way.

Mark

Yes, absolutely.

Lily

So tell us what you do now.

Mark

Yes. So I am the Christian Johnson endeavor professor in education leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University. That's a mouthful. You know what they say? Right, though, the longer the tighter the least important that person is or something like that.

Mark

But yes, if I'm really honored to be serving in that role, and as a result, I get to engage with some exciting and motivating people who are my students, of course, I teach courses like leadership for social justice, I've taught a popular course on the school to prison pipeline.

Mark

And just this past summer, just just a couple of weeks ago, I finished a course for leaders called law and ethics, which I co taught with a friend and colleague from for many years back, Laura McNeil.

Mark

So it's just really, really exciting to teach those courses and to do that kind of work. And just for the next, oh, four or five days, I'll be stepping out of the role of the department chair of the department of organizational leadership, so I've had a chance over the years to serve as a professor, but also to extend my repertoire of things that I engage in around leadership.

Mark

So studying leadership has been great. But it's also been enlightening to engage in leadership at multiple levels. So yes, I've done all of the above and very excited to be able to return and focus a bit more on the research, not exclusively, but put a large amount of attention on that now.

Lily

Yes, those courses sound amazing and so valuable. I love hearing about them. And we'd love to hear more about your research, too.

Mark

Yeah, absolutely. So there are a few focus areas for my research. Since early on, I've been doing work with principals. So the principalship has been just a foundational area of study for me. But I've moved it into a couple of different directions. And one of those has been antiracist leadership, which really gives me the opportunity to engage with leaders around their conceptualization of race and how it impacts their practice.

Mark

But that concept has also been expanded with me doing work with some some other colleagues around this concept of culturally responsive school leadership, which we got a chance to do an exciting literature review, as an initial study of that some years back, I guess, about five or five or so years, gives back.

Mark

And we moved that into a direction where we could really see what was happening in the literary literature in a broader cultural lens, and understand a little bit more how leaders bring that work into their space, in that good in schools through concepts like critical consciousness, really supporting cultural responsive pedagogy in classrooms and teachers who engage in that work.

Mark

And then last but not least, as I hinted to earlier, I do work on legal issues in education, which I again, find exciting and relevant. And I'm able to bring that to my students in a way that initially, I'm not sure if they think is going to be exciting. But once they get into it, it's just really so great to see them engaging with all these cryptic terms in the law and understanding how it applies to their work as leaders.

Mark

And one of the things that's really interesting in our country and your listeners will appreciate this is, as a country, we do very little to educate teachers about the law. And so many teacher prep programs have no courses, I would venture to say most have no courses in law at all.

Mark

And so when teachers are in the classroom, and they're engaging with students, who for some reason, have a penchant for picking up different legal terms and saying, We have rights. And there's this case called Tinker versus Des Moines, and we've heard that we have first amendment rights, and you can't do that. And so teachers like, Oh, my God, I know that stuff. could they? So that is a big challenge that we need to be aware of.

Mark

Many, if not most, leadership, prep programs have law courses, but not all, not all, we actually use some research in the class that points to that issue. And so it's an exciting course, but it's one that we need to expand on the presentation of those ideas, but it's also an exciting area of research for me as well.

Lily

Yes, absolutely. I've never really even thought about that before, which is my own ignorance. You know, I didn't ever have any law classes. I got my masters at UC Berkeley, like many many years ago in education, nothing about law and was one of those teachers you talk about, you know, being feeling like I don't speak this law, legal language at all seems like I was a kindergarten teacher. I don't I don't know the language around this.

Lily

But that that is a barrier, right? Like being able to have an understanding, being able to at least understand or access that language of the law is so beneficial and allows teachers, educators, leaders to have so much more power in a conversation.

Mark

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Lily

Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. That's fascinating. So switching kind of into the educator role. I know you mentioned working a lot with school leaders around access equity. Can you talk a little bit about how educators can increase educational equity?

Mark

Absolutely. So I would say like one of the first things educators can do is just work on really increasing raising the awareness about the inequities in the US, because I find that people have kind of this inherent understanding and belief that there may be inequities. But oftentimes, they get sort of outside noise saying, you know, that's not really a thing. And that's just sort of these people crying victimization.

Mark

So as educators, if they're really serious about learning more about educational inequities, they need to raise their awareness about the inequities in the United States. Beyond that, once you start to educate yourself in that way, you have to commit to a journey towards equity, which starts with self inspection.

Mark

I always say to people is you really have to think about this way of being the asks questions about how am I in America benefiting from certain inequities? And how am I being marginalized? And so once you can start to go through that, once again, that's raising that inequity, but it's also giving you a structured way to think about.

Mark

Once you get there, you have to recognize that you must do something to disrupt the inequitable system. I mean, once you discover that it's there, and I have full faith and believe that people open their minds up and start to study this, they will see it. And once you see it, you have to commit to disrupt in it.

Mark

And if you don't do that, if you just stop at raising awareness, if you just stop it feeling more comfortable getting uncomfortable, if I'm feeling more comfortable having these difficult conversations, all things that are necessary, but not sufficient, you must do something to move toward disrupting inequities.

Mark

And if you do not, then you really have have done something like have a really rich conversation that have left these status quo things in place. And things that have continued to marginalized kids, for so many years, will still be in place. And so we have to do that we interrogate the system for the purpose of disrupting the inequities.

Lily

Absolutely. And I'm curious, do you have any advice for teachers who feel like they're ready to do that? And maybe their school systems aren't?

Mark

Yes, good question. Well, you know, I know we're late, we're later going to talk about five practices of equity focused leadership that if you didn't know, I certainly recommend that people grab my book and just go through those steps.

Mark

Because those five practices give give teachers and leaders and let's just say, I generally, I usually generally use the term leaders, because I'm thinking about poses, leaders for equity, it gives them an opportunity to go through a framework that is set up, to help them develop an approach, that doesn't include them just doing the work.

Mark

So case in point, so in the book, we talk about a first step, and I want to be clear, because I always say this when I'm talking to leaders, I feel like they're leaders by position. And we've already talked about principals, we've already talked about assistant principals, to some extent, are leaders in general superintendents, and so on and so forth.

Mark

But there are leaders by passion. There are folks who say, I want to become a better educator, I want to stand up and fight for those students who have been marginalized. Those folks, I say a passionate about this work. And they're the ones we want to bring into this conversation as well.

Mark

So if there happens to be one, and I'm hoping all of your listeners, one of the first things is leaders must prioritize equity, they have to make sure that is at the forefront of what they do. They have to also be clear that they're prioritizing equity. Because once they develop that understanding and awareness, as we talked about earlier, they get a chance to see those inequities, and then they can move toward a transformative vision.

Mark

I mean, that's the thing we were saying earlier, like, how do I transform that system? How do I change it? You know, how do I disrupt those practices?

Mark

Well, the second thing is, you have to prepare yourself for really moving into a space where you interrogate who you are, as being living in this space, living with particular identities in your body. And so as a result of that, you you ask questions about around race.

Mark

For instance, we talked about the different identities like doing the work around interrogating race in your life, and understanding that intellectual work and the emotion work that goes in that process. So prioritize prepare yourself for the intellectual and emotional work.

Mark

The third one is, I would say To say, in a humorous way, you need to assemble a team, you're kind of like the Avengers, you want to bring together folks who can support you in this work. This is very difficult work. It is emotionally taxing, even though people will start to discover many things about themselves and recognize where they are within this, this racial hierarchy and putting up my quotes when people can't see me.

Mark

But it gives them a chance to understand that and I put the racial hierarchy in quotes, because for some people, that's Oh, that's not real. That's kind of an outdated thing. But it very much is this thing that we sort of look toward when we map inequities on to people. And I'm speaking of this by race.

Mark

In the book, we talk about five others as well like socio economic status, gender identity, and sexual orientation, we go through a number of those different types of identities and their exercises, where folks who pick up the book, we get a chance to work through those individually, but can also do that with colleagues.

Mark

Next, there's change. I mean, this work is really about understanding that there's a change process that happens when you engage in equity. And I always say, equity work is like change work on steroids. You're asking people to do something fundamentally different. Yes, it is a type of education reform. But you're really looking at folks to do like a needs assessment, understanding what's wrong.

Mark

There are also tools that are discussed in the book like engaging in equity audit, for instance. So that we have some understanding, going beyond what I said earlier, that inherent inequity and recognizing there's a systematic way that we can ask questions, there's a systematic way that we can collect our own data as a team, which is highly recommended in a book, so that people won't argue with their own data.

Mark

But they also recognize that we're doing this work together. And we're going to approach these issues together as we work towards solutions.

Mark

And then last but not least, developing and working in a way that is sustainable. It's very important that folks understand that equity work is something you should engage in on a daily basis. You know, it's something that needs to be a part of your routines.

Mark

There's also a discussion of, you know, what are the roles you play and being a person who dismantles equity? And what are the routines that you build into some of your teammates, for instance. And so doing that a little bit each and every day, ensures that it's kept at the forefront. And I said a little each day, at least a little each day. I mean, obviously, they're bigger tasks than others on other days.

Mark

But you just want to make sure in my point is that it becomes a part of the system that you're using to break down the inequitable system. So so so very important there. And I know there's a lot of content in that one. So so I'll stop talking in case there's another question and a follow up you may have.

Lily

No, I love that. Thank you for walking us through the five because I think, again, you know, I work with many teachers who feel like they want to do equity work, they want to do work that's aligned to what they truly believe. And they don't necessarily, they're not necessarily part of a larger group who wants to do that.

Lily

So I think hearing these five, you know, you can form your own group, right? Where it's like, even if your school is not, you know, having this at the forefront, you can, as teacher, you know, team up with some folks follow the five practices and really commit to doing that going forward, even within a system that maybe you don't feel supported to do that with.

Mark

Absolutely, absolutely.

Lily

Awesome. Well, yeah, definitely recommend checking out the book of Five Practices for Equity Focused School Leadership. And it seems like it would be helpful for both school leaders and also classroom teachers, educators who want to learn more about doing equity work.

Mark

Absolutely, I got the pleasure to work with a school district that I believe is one of the ones at the forefront of thinking the same. I had done some work with their principals and assistant principals. And they were saying, you know, had this really great term. So we would like to have some equity focus ambassadors. And so Oh, tell me more.

Mark

And so we talked through what that plan would look like. And they wanted to bring in some teachers, some folks who were equity leaders at their respective schools, and just had a wonderful time engaging with them. And they really embraced the work.

Mark

And they felt like really special, like, wow, somebody cares about what we think. And they have really wonderful ideas that really intersect and in powerful ways with the curriculum and raise really rich questions.

Mark

So I can say to you, over the time, we spent together for two days, there was not a dull moment where they were so engaged and excited about the work so so it's just wonderful to hear that and see that. And I encourage people to look for those opportunities, even if within your school, you can't build a critical mass, essentially.

Mark

The're communities. I mean, there are a number of online communities as well, where folks are encouraging each other in the work. And so I would recommend that, you know, that's another way to build in and enhance that learning as your listeners go forward and doing the work.

Lily

Absolutely. And having that agency to move forward and formed that community you know, and create ate the things that you want to see out there, I think is really powerful. Absolutely. And so changing gears a little bit, I would love to hear you reflect on kind of what you've learned about yourself personally, through your journey in education.

Mark

Yes. So that's such a good question. I would say one of the things I've learned is this idea of it sounds cliched sometimes, but just the importance of being a learner. Right? One of the things I've, I've come to understand about me over the years is, I like being in the educational space or forever in school, as they say, because I'm still excited about the prospect of learning new things, and applying new things.

Mark

And so, you know, I'm at the right place in, there's always something to be learned and something to move forward and conversation, something to build on to and a way to make a difference. I think this work can be overwhelming, and I gave a hint to this earlier is, I still, I'm happy to say I still get inspiration from my students.

Mark

It just so happens nowadays, my students are teachers, leaders that you know, district leaders and building leaders who lead students themselves, but they're still inspirational. I mean, I just get excited when they show up for sessions, if it when there's something online, or whether it's in person, on top of everything that they need to do.

Mark

As I said to you earlier, teaching was one of those most rewarding things but challenging, and it's so demanding, right? It was it was just when I first started teaching.

Mark

I was single and and I just remember working all the time, and my kids and my colleagues would laugh at me because my briefcases would get bigger like every I think every semester until eventually I had one of those encyclopaedia cases, which I said all this stuff, and they be like, What are you doing? What's in my work? I'm going, what are you doing? I just, I feel like I'm taking everything.

Mark

So it was just, it was hilarious, but it's kind of how it felt like I was just, you know, walking around. It was such an honor. And but it was also a challenge. Because I always felt like it was in the space of trying to catch up and do more. But it was always at that point, I would get some rich, quote, or some statement when I felt like oh, man, you know, you're always thinking not doing enough.

Mark

But then there will be that student who would say, oh, no, you were like, my favorite teacher. And he showed us this. And we talked about it. So I'm a little more motivated about math. And, and as Oh, yeah. And so it, you know, certainly it, there's a tension between those two things.

Mark

So yeah, those are things I've learned. I had some other thoughts here. But essentially, that's it. They all end with this statement. And even as I've learned a lot, I still believe that in this work, I have to be humble in my presentation of ideas. I've learned over the years that the content is difficult, but it's okay to laugh, right? It's okay to engage people around this. And there's some seriousness in moving them toward that point.

Mark

So be humble and presentation, but assertive in describing the realities of inequities. And in the middle of that, you know, we can motivate and inspire a lot, a lot more folks, by remembering the humanity of people who come to these sessions, right.

Mark

There's one of the things we say in the book, and it's your don't freeze people in time. And I've found so many educators, really, that resonates with them. Because in the process of public learning, or learning out loud, we know we're going to make mistakes, but nobody wants to be frozen at that point where I made that mistake, right.

Mark

And we all say crazy things. You know, we forget stuff. Nobody wants to be remembered that way. And Bryan Stevenson has just, you know, a wonderful quote from his book, where he says, "Each of us is larger than our worst mistake."

Mark

You know, and I think I say that to people in sessions. And just as a reminder, that, you know, you can make a mistake here, but we're not going to, you know, put the scarlet letter on you get your T shirt and talk about the mistake you made. Unless, you know, you're the kind of person that you want something like that. So we're not, we're not planning to do something like that.

Mark

And that really just, you can see, like the tension of people saying, Oh, I can sit here and learn it. Because I really want to know about this, I really wanted to be a better teacher. And I do believe this is the way to go. But we have to be mindful of that because so many people have made this work about conflict. So many products have made it about division.

Mark

And while some of the ideas are going to challenge some folks, and they're going to bring us some things that are gonna make people uncomfortable. It's not necessarily divisive, automatically. It's those folks not wanting to deal with it who tend to scream loud, but I have found are not the majority, they will imply they are the majority, but they are not.

Mark

And so as I said before ended at that point, I'm motivated and inspired by the teachers who show up to do the work, and who asked me the hard questions and who are looking for the resources in me, those are the heroes, those are the folks who are inspiring me to continue doing the work, even when it gets difficult.

Lily

Yes, I love that, that's so beautiful, don't freeze people in time, you know, and I would even encourage you, like, don't freeze yourself in time, too. That fits in a lot to your initial reflection to me of just keeping on learning too, that we always, ideally are keeping on exploring, trying new things, going into the difficult conversations, you know, moving forward with that, understanding that it's all dynamic it's not frozen.

Lily

It also makes me think of classroom teaching, you know, with K 12 education to have the classroom culture that you want to build, we want people to take risks, we want people to make mistakes, we want people to feel comfortable saying something that they regret, being able to recover from that and alright, no, actually I didn't mean it that way. Or I regret what I said and creating that culture, with adults, too, I think is harder sometimes.

Lily

So I think that's also something that's really interesting to think about, you know, going forward with teachers, you know, and how we can be educators and teachers and so many different ways. And it's always those same fundamentals, you know, of that class culture, of the pushing people to kind of like their zone of proximal development and whatever way that that looks, and facilitating those conversations throughout.

Lily

Well, thinking about you've done many things inside outside of the classroom. And much of our audience on the podcast are teachers who maybe want to be k 12 classroom teachers and expand their impact in some way. Or they maybe want to transition and aren't ready to leave education, but don't really know what they want to do next. What advice do you have for folks who want to expand their impact beyond the classroom?

Mark

Yes, yes, wonderful question. I can say over my man, I hesitate to say this, but I can say the years I let over my 26 years of formally teaching across multiple levels.

Mark

One thing I'll say generally, depending on where you where your listeners want to go, being an educator can take you just into a variety of opportunities, or places that are new and exciting. And I think the success has really increased directly in correlation with your openness to learn.

Mark

I say it is kind of a well kept secret, that teachers can do a number of things that other people still a little bit nervous about. I love working with teachers because when it's time to express ideas, and when they go to town, it's all over the place. Right? I'm just like, I've worked with folks who are not teachers. I won't say which professions, but let's get some time to look a little stolen. What do you what are you asking us to do?

Mark

You my favorite, I know you've been an elementary teacher, you, I love elementary teachers, because they bring the excitement, like right off. I mean, it's, I can be like, oh, like my excitement level was too low. Two things I appreciate about working in facilitating workshops with elementary teachers, one, they're gonna bring the excitement, more often than not, I can't remember a time when they didn't.

Mark

And second, whenever we start to get into chart paper and writing down, they always have those little dots on the letters, as I say, as an elementary teacher, even when they are mixed groups, they do their thing, right.

Mark

And so, but that's all of those are like skill sets, around facilitating groups, and engaging with people outside of education. I mean, all of that I think is available to educators, some of the fundamental conceptualizations and leadership. I think they've moved from a space of teaching, at least for me.

Mark

I've seen serious overlap in my research writing, and my teaching and presenting that there are things that I learned as a teacher, that people tend to say, Well, why don't you know how to do that? Or where did you get that from? I started teaching middle school kids, and I would do that with them, like, and guess what it works with adults. Wow.

Mark

So, you know, you can teach almost just a broad range of folks or you can facilitate a large degree of sessions and types of sessions. I've been a master of ceremony. I've been a facilitator, I've given keynote speeches, none of those things. Let me say it a different way. All of those things that I've done have been improved by the fact that I started out as a classroom teacher.

Mark

And so I think that we too often don't recognize all of the, you know, this rich array of skill set, skills that teachers bring, and then the many things that you have to do not to mention organization, self motivation, staying healthy.

Mark

You know, my 16 year old daughter and you know, I would tell her like every year, I would get sick at the beginning of the year, my kids would give me an after that I was Good, I was like, it's something like my body learned to just, this is how the immune system works, I'm gonna go go go, I'm gonna get sick, and then I'm gonna be good. Like, obviously, I had to get my rest throughout the year.

Mark

But it's things that I can go on and on that I think once we take those skills and map them into other spaces, they're very useful. I recognized in higher ed space. And I'll say this as a last point, what's helped me in terms of becoming a professor who is courageous enough to try things in my classroom and make it more engaging for my students.

Mark

There is the fact that I had previous experience teaching, I worked at multiple institutions. And we sometimes take it for granted in the colleges of education, that people who are teaching, just say mathematics, for instance, know how to teach, sometimes they do, but oftentimes, that's their first time standing in front of people.

Mark

They don't have, inherently otherwise, all the things that you need, as a teacher was, whereas for many of us, who had already had those experiences, and we're confident at the K 12 space as professors, we didn't have that as a challenge. So, so long answer, but you know.

Lily

I love it. No, it's great. I mean, I think that I, when I was teaching, I didn't realize all the things that I was learning along the way. I think, partially, because as you've alluded to teaching is never done. And I never had time to reflect right.

Lily

So it wasn't until I was in different circumstances, doing similar things where I guess teaching adults, but using similar strategies to what I did as a kindergarten teacher, or seeing people who hadn't been teachers, you know, really struggling to keep track of multiple projects. And I was like, Oh, I'm used to keeping track of, you know, 30, kindergarteners, and all these things, and it's nowhere near as hard.

Lily

And so really getting that chance to kind of reflect on of course, we're all different and have unique experiences and perspectives to bring but having a chance for everybody to just reflect on what you've learned through teaching and how that could go forward and wherever you want to go next.

Mark

Absolutely.

Lily

Well, I'd love for you to share with folks how people can connect with you.

Mark

Yes, yes, you can reach me at my website, which is goodenphd.com. That same handle is good on Twitter, just put the at symbol in front of it. So @goodenphd. And then again on Instagram, which my handle is just once again, goodenphd as it is.

Mark

We'll love to hear from people in that they are old school, which is kind of old school. Now you want to do email, I'm kind of stealing the email some of my students email. I'll just DM you like what you can do mark@goodenphd.com

Lily

Wonderful. I will put the links to all of this in the show notes as well. But thank you so much for coming on and sharing more about your experience your research your passions, it was really great to have you.

Mark

Thank you, Lily. It's been a pleasure.

Guest User