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Dr Christopher Bronke, from Novak Education in the US, discusses Universal Design for Learning; its core principles and practices, how it can be effectively implemented and how the model benefits all learners.

Link: Novak Education

Kolber’s Corner – Steven Kolber shares the Literature Circle reading strategy.

Link: StevenKolber.com

Australian Edu Podcasts – Matthew Green talks about his podcast The Art of Teaching, and his experiences of producing and maintaining a pocast.

Link: The Art of Teaching Podcast

Timecodes:
0:00 – Opening Credits
1:31 – Intro
7:13 – Kolber’s Corner
16:47 – Interview – Matthew Green
37:46 – Feature Introduction
40:35 – Interview – Chris Bronke
1:31:29 – Patron Shout-Outs

Read More for transcripts.

Feature Interview Transcript (unedited, prepared by Otter.Ai)

Click here for interactive transcript.

Cameron Malcher  00:00

Joining me now from Novak education in the US is Dr. Christopher Bronke. Christopher, thank you for your time.

Christopher Bronke  00:04

Thank you so much for having me. I just love joining these conversations and to be hanging out with you all in Australia. Like what an honor. So I appreciate it.

Cameron Malcher  00:13

Well, thank you very much. Thank you a date. It’s we’re here today to talk primarily about a sort of big picture overview of understanding of Understanding Universal Design for Learning and how it benefits learners. But before we do, can you tell us a little bit about your background in education and how you came to do what you’re doing now? Yeah,

Christopher Bronke  00:30

so I’m about to finish up my 20th year in public education as a high school English teacher. For all of that, the last 12 has been teaching a class and also being a high school English department chair, in a school of 24 to 2200 students, depending on the given year. So the staff that I oversee or have been overseeing is, like 20 to 22 English teachers. So you know, so a good size, you know, it’s comparable to some schools entire school. And for me, you know, I was really blessed throughout my career to have some amazing mentors, Janice schwaR Wars is one I just want to shout out, because I was like to give some love to the people that like, you know, brought me to the spot. She was my first year of high school English teacher, when I was a student. She went on to to hire me as a teacher. We were department chair colleagues, and then she was eventually my principal at one point in time, and I’ve just, you know, really taken a passion for literacy. In particular, I use that the most broadest sense as possible. And then Dr. Kay Novak, who’s the you know, founder and owner of Novak education, and, you know, one of the foremost minds of universal design for learning in the entire world. She and I met probably 10 or 11 years ago, doing some work for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And we stayed in touch and as her consulting work continued to grow. So did my role with her. And so I’m actually about to finish my last year in public education and move full time as a Senior Educational Consultant with Novak education starting, essentially, May 24, when the school year wraps up for me, here in Illinois. So it’s been a journey.

Cameron Malcher  02:29

It sounds like it, then what was your doctorate focusing on? So

Christopher Bronke  02:33

my doctoral dissertation work was all around standards based grading, I’m a huge proponent of blowing up traditional assessment programs and pathways, I think grades are not really the way to go. And you know, that actually really paired beautifully in a lot of respects with universal design for learning. Because when we think about removing barriers, right, the traditional grades can be a barrier for a lot of kids. And so as I started doing more work with with Novak Ed and more work around and both learning more about but also then sharing more about Universal Design for Learning, I realized just how deeply entrenched this idea of standards based grading can really be a foundation that works well with all that. And so it was a win win for everyone. But my focus in particular, wasn’t just standards based grading, but it was how teachers can move to standards based grading, despite working in a system that is still traditional grades, because that’s my own classroom. My own classroom has been standards based grading based for five years, but I still have to give grades at the end of the day. And that’s where most educators who want to make this move live, like at the end of the day, their principal still tells them like, Hey, buddy, like you got to put it a B, C or D and F when you know in the gradebook. But there are ways to still Aquino navigate the entire year or semester, you know, quarter whatever, you know, sort of system people are on. We just need to figure out how to get more people to do it.

Cameron Malcher  04:10

Well, just perhaps to help bridge maybe the contextual divide between Australia in education and American education. You know, here in Australia, similarly, we have a nationally mandated need to have ABCD or E grades on our reports. But then every state or territory has kind of left to interpret that to a certain degree, how they implement it. What does it look like in your teaching context? And how does your notion of standards based grading differ from that?

Christopher Bronke  04:43

Yeah, no, I appreciate that question. In that context, I think we’re similar in a lot of respects. I mean, you know, everyone still has to get those actual letter grades, you know, especially somebody works in the high school setting. You know, the colleges want to see those grades and there’s all those sorts to pieces. For me, what it really came down to, was taking a step away from thinking about school and learning in terms of grades. And in terms of percentages, and you know, I think, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s layers there, right? There’s letter grades, there’s percentages, you can use both one can lead to the other, you can use without the other. And really just saying, like, here are the 13 things I want to make sure I know my students learn by the end of this term. And for me, I just use a one point scale one, you learned it, zero, you didn’t. And then I just have a conversion chart that says in order because I still have to put a grade in the gradebook, right? So at the end of the semester, it’s like, alright, to get an A, you have to have gotten on one or mastered everything, and, you know, and so on and so forth. You work yourself down, but we’re not talking about your the conversation with students isn’t, which I heard for many, many years in my career. You know, Mr. Brockie, I got an 87 on this paper, what I gotta do to get an ID, which everyone has heard if you work in any system has to give grades, right? Or, you know, how were you round up my 89.4? My conversations are, you told me I still didn’t master standard acts. What else do I need to do to show you that I can do that? And it’s like, okay, cool. Like, show me everything you got. So becomes less about assignments and grades and more about like, just showing me the evidence that you can do X, Y, or Z.

Cameron Malcher  06:37

Oh, excellent. sounds really interesting. I mean, there are certainly similar conversations happening around Australia about about how we move beyond our grade scale. If we’re ever allowed to

Christopher Bronke  06:49

say, this is not far reaching. I’ll put it that way. I mean, a microcosm of microcosms. But I’m hopeful.

Cameron Malcher  06:57

Well, I’ll be interested to discuss a bit later on how that connects to some of the principles of universal design for learning. But to start off with, can you give it how do you describe Universal Design for Learning for someone who’s hearing about it for the first time? Yeah,

Christopher Bronke  07:10

I mean, I’ve got a couple of different ways that I try to frame it. When I’m working with staff, I think the most macro level is when we University design, we are as the designers of the learning experience. And I say that I don’t say just the teachers, the designers that could be teachers, curriculum designers, instructional coaches, assistant principals, anyone who has any hand in this work, we are doing everything we can to remove every possible barrier we can think of, for every single student that we can think of, so that everyone has the most equitable choice and chance at success for their learning. That’s the like, the macro level picture of it, right? And I know that sounds really pretty and you know, like, unicorns and such but but it’s but it’s achievable when you then start to break it down into, you know, what, what does that mean, right? Like, it’s not like this is an unresearched or on, you know, developed concept, but but in short, how to remove every possible barrier for every possible kid.

Cameron Malcher  08:22

And how do you? How does the Universal Design for Learning? Well, I’ll just read it was UDL from now on, but yeah, how does the UDL approach achieve that goal? without it becoming? You know, I think one of the most common that is the word myth or misunderstanding is the most accurate, but one of the most common things I hear people say in opposition to UDL is, I’m not going to plan 30 lessons for 30 students. So how does what principles does UDL incorporate? That doesn’t make it 30 individual lesson plans to meet all those needs?

Christopher Bronke  09:00

Yeah, I think there’s a couple of ways to approach that, I think one is from the team planning lens. And that would be like UDL without PLCs or professional learning communities or some sort of like teen time on the regular, it is hard. There’s no doubt about that. So you know, the district in which I work over the last couple of years, we’ve pretty much all but gotten rid of common planning time for for grade level teams, or PLCs. That makes this really hard. And so there’s like at the most macro level, if you aren’t going to commit yourself as a district or a school to saying teachers are going to get X amount of time per week or every other week to do this work. You’re going to struggle to get this work to grow because it is it there is a labor lift to it and you know what? Good practice you should have a labor left to them, but they should also the time dedicated to that labor left, right. So like my first point is like teachers have to have dedicated PLC even if you don’t want to use the PLC term. What Never term you want to use teachers at that time. The second thing that I like to talk about too is there’s a phrase, and I’m gonna give two iterations of this phrase that we kind of use in the UDL world like one is, what is needed for the few is good for the many. Hmm. And so if you think about that, conceptually, and I’ll give a quick analogy 15 years ago is like my, like, third, fourth year teaching something like that. I had a student who had a visual impairment. And this was before we, I could just put everything on Google and just like change, font size, and all that sort of fun stuff, right. So like, I had to go to the copier machine, like anything we were going to read, I had to go in large on the computer. I did that for that one student because that was what that one student needed. Who was I to think I didn’t know if that would have been good for other students. How many more students might have realized that they actually could read better with a larger font size. I mean, heck, how many of those students actually might have also had a visual impairment like diagnoseable, visual impairment, that they didn’t have the funds means or possibilities to figure out they had, but had I given them that, you know, in large font, they would have been like Brockie, like, reading is so much easier right now. Right? And I look back, and I’m like, Why didn’t if I was going to do it? For one, why didn’t I ask other people, right. So like, what is needed for the few, we used to say, is good for the many. And that’s a case where it could be. But there’s also like, now a caveat on that, like, what is needed for the few can be good for the many, because there are also some accommodations that you know, is needed for the few that actually could hurt some students and that so it’s not an absolute, but this idea that if you’re, if you’re working in a classroom that has any sorts of like inclusion, where there are students with special needs involved in it, whatever you’re doing for that student, consider how every student might want need, or could use that and go from there. And so I don’t look at it as 30 individualized educational plans, I look at it as just thinking about, like, what are the biggest needs? And then how do I scale those needs for everyone. And when we start to do that we can really unlock a lot of pathways for a lot of learners.

Cameron Malcher  12:27

Well, can we then talk broadly about what are the key design or learning design principles that underpin UDL to help scale those needs, but we’re meeting those needs. Yeah. So

Christopher Bronke  12:40

there’s like two pockets of three in terms of how I conceptualize it. And this isn’t just me, but like, this is me taking all of the research from cast and from Novak and all the different people and like, this is how I synthesize it. I think there are like here, our goals. And then here are how we try to go push for those goals. So the three big goals or like concepts or the framework are, we believe in variability that at any given moment, not only is every student different from every other student, but that each individual student in any given moment can be different than they were just 510 1215 minutes ago. We are variable humans. And I think the more that technology infiltrates and I don’t use that word infiltrates with a negative connotation per se. But as technology infiltrates the educational environments, that variability within each student is exponentially greater than it was 1015 years ago, the number of times I will see a student in my class, for example, seat like check their cell phone, and then you can visually just see them be a different disposition. And they just work as mom texted them dad, girlfriend, best friend, coach, someone sent them something that like now has them as a different human than they were five minutes ago. So we the first thing is UDL, we embrace that idea of variability. The second thing that we like just this is the one that you have to hammer home to have success across a district this because a lot of teachers are gonna say, Oh, you’re just trying to make learning just super easy for everyone. It’s like, no, that’s not we’re trying to do we believe

Cameron Malcher  14:20

sorry, to people who say that ever explain why that’s a bad thing.

Christopher Bronke  14:23

Well, in that I also push back on that because I’m about to do right now. plainness Yes. So we do want to make learning easier for everyone, but not by lowering the standard. And so the second principle for UDL is that we have firm goals with flexible needs. So the goal isn’t changing. If you feel like you are using UDL, and it’s making the the goal itself lesser that you and not holding yourself as the educator to that high standard of that goal. The goal of you know, that should not change, but all of the ways our students can get that goal should? And yes, does that make it quote easier? Yes, but it doesn’t make it less rigorous. Like those are those are synonyms we can have an equally rigorous goal with with less resistance to achieving it. And so that’s the second principle. And then the third principle is we just want all of our students to be expert learners, we want them to not be experts in their contents are not experts in specific disciplines. If that happens, that’s fantastic. You know, if a kid leaves my class, and they want to go write haiku poetry, because that’s a passion of mine, and it became a passion of theirs. Awesome. I’m not, you know, waking up each morning praying for that to be what ends up happening, right? We want them to be experts of their own learning. We want them to know how they learn to know your like your podcast, I was looking into some of your work you’re big on like, what’s the research out there? You know, what are the big tenets of UDL is kind of centered around is this idea of pushing back on what for years have been the Ark of educational, you know, lesson and unit planning. And that’s this idea that there are learning styles, right, that there’s the auditory learner, and then there’s the visual learner, there’s the kinesthetic learner. And you know, what? The American Psychological Association, they debunked that. And they didn’t debunk it in that, like, we don’t learn in different ways. But what they said is like, no one person is one sort of murderer, right? Like, what we do is we learn how we learn. And so I know like, if I’m in a math class, personally, I actually am like, I want a lecture, like I like I’m, I don’t want to go play with manipulatives in a math class, because I will not figure that out. Right. And in, you know, my English class, which is my, you know, specialty area, like I want to go play and I want to actually be active, I want to be moving around and like letting like the moment speak to me in terms of that sort of thing. And so it’s not that they’re we don’t have moments in which we are kinesthetic, or auditory or visual type learners, it’s that we are all all of those. And what we’re trying to do through UDL, and by removing barriers, and by supporting their reflection in their own development of learning, is get them to best learn when they are which type of learner in which situations and how to do something with that.

Cameron Malcher  17:29

I also think, sorry, just to go back to one of the things you were describing there, I think also that idea of making learning easier without changing the standard is probably the most succinct description of the process of scaffolding that I think often gets misunderstood. You know what I mean? And often, you see things that are meant to be considered scaffolds or AIDS becoming the goal rather than the stepping stone to the goal. So I just think that the way you describe it, there is a wonderfully succinct explanation of how scaffolding is meant to work as opposed to how it often gets implemented. You

Christopher Bronke  18:08

know, it’s funny, you mentioned that camera like just literally was filming a content video 20 minutes before popping it with you about scaffolding, about using graphic organizers. And I said explicitly, the goal isn’t I can fill out your one graphic organizer, right, the goal is, I can learn how to get my mind to get me to a point to develop content, specific to the task and audience of the purpose. And like that’s 1,000% I think one of the big things with scaffolding as a whole, specifically graphic organizers, when we think it through the UDL lens is that most teachers give here is the one if they give one here is the graphic organizer, as opposed to like, here’s the visual graphic organizer, if you want to do some sketching work. Here’s the like, linguistic one, here’s the traditional outline, right that you could write your graphic organizer, right. And then here is your your verbal one, you want to just go on a quick walk around the hallway and record your thoughts for what you’re planning to do with this content creation. Like all of those are things we all go through. I mean, I use all three of those in my content creation. And it’s just one quick example when you mentioned scaffolding, those are all scaffolds. But if we’re only giving students one of them, we need to ask ourselves why some of the students aren’t using it because well, maybe it doesn’t work

Cameron Malcher  19:29

out for them. Right. Yeah. But then. So how, what are some of the, you know, when we think we’ve described the three key principles that you’ve said, underpin UDL, what is the practical manifestation of those when you’re trying to plan a lesson to account for the variability that you mentioned? What are the key strategies? You know, and you mentioned, you mentioned cast before, just for those who aren’t familiar with cast as well as know that education You want to just give us a quick background on them before we move on?

Christopher Bronke  20:02

Yeah, so I’m blessed to work for Novick education. So I’ll start there. Dr. K Novak, author of I think she’s up to 14 books or something like that, check it out UDL. Now UDL for equity, she has a wide range of books that will cover this topic. And we as an organization, you know, consult with districts, organizations, states, what the country’s, you know, whoever is looking to work on on this, you know, these concepts. And then cast is sort of like the mothership company that, you know, created the guidelines and has all the technical stuff. I don’t mean technical stuff is in a negative way that maybe sometimes it can sound, the brilliant research, they are the ones who like assembled the body of research, and if you go to their website, you can go to one of their pages where like, they will give her every single like micro principle of UDL. Here’s the research. Here’s the research. Here’s the research so and cast and Katie Novak, the two wards actually worked really well together. We’re blessed to collaborate a lot, too. So. So yeah,

Cameron Malcher  21:09

the reason I the reason I pick up on your mention of that was because I think I have most commonly seen apart before I started reading Katie Novak’s books. I had most commonly seen the cast little matrix of, you know, less than applications. And I’m just wondering, which, which one of those or how did those principles say, help address the principles you’ve just outlined?

Christopher Bronke  21:34

Yeah, perfect. That’s such a great segue into it. So if you look at their, their matrix, and, and it’s beautiful, and I’m not going to put this in any way, shape, or form, and, like all critical, but when I look at that, it’s still somewhat scientific. There’s like language there that at least for me, when I first started doing this work, which I should say, like, you know, Kay brought me on the team, because I was doing UDL without even realizing it. And then she’s like, Oh, like this silly. I actually learned about Katie, after doing like, it wasn’t like, I went to a workshop. And then I revised it was like, This feels like good teaching. And then Katie was like, hey, this works. And then I kind of learned the terms. But I was I was learning the terms. I was like, I don’t want to like, as a teacher, I don’t talk like that, right. And so I tried it. If you know, for those of you listening, you can go to cast, you can find their their matrix. It’s beautiful. It’s super interactive, and it’s really helpful. But here’s how I break it down. In most simplistic terms, if we want to achieve those three goals I just talked about, right? This idea of, you know, embracing variability, the firm goals, flexible means and expert learners, there are three types of barriers in the way for our students. And this is where I like just try to kind of talk as a teacher and or how I think, as a teacher, there are barriers for how students engage with the learning, there are barriers for how students actually get the learning and do the learning, and their barriers, how students demonstrate the learning. And so like, when we sit down as a common team to plan, we don’t have to worry, I mean, we can and we should, like dive into the research if we get time for but like, I mean, you know, like, common plan, time for teachers is so finite, right? Like, the amount of time that we actually have to like go dive into the beauty that is the robust nature of CAST website. It’s, it’s always there. And so like, I like to just say like, Hey, here’s the quick summation. Like, when you’re planning lessons and units, just ask yourself those three questions. What barriers are there for how kids are going to engage and stay engaged? That’s the harder part. How are they going to learn it? Are there? Is there more than one way? That’s always the question I asked, if you only have one way for kids to learn it, we got to be better. Right. And then same with demonstrate, like, when they get ready to demonstrate that we’re gonna get, there’s only one way, we’ve got to be better. And so those three kind of like, quick barriers are just nice. I think, for me, at least, like teacher friendly ways to work through a really robust research based concept in a really practical time.

Cameron Malcher  24:13

It reminds me of a common sort of summarized model, a phrase for differentiation, that’s also often promoted as a way to offer options for gifting for, you know, high potential and gifted students as well, which is a choice of content choice of process or choice of product. And I see that sort of reflected a lot in the way UDL approaches lesson design as well. Yeah,

Christopher Bronke  24:39

and you know, it’s interesting 1,000% agree with that. And I think that, that, that that framework is they’re synonyms, right? They’re kind of the same framework. In I don’t know, you know, Kevin, if this is not where you want to go with this, but you mentioned differentiation. I think it’s really important. If we have a few minutes for me to kind of talk Yeah, because you know, a lot of times what we get when we start work with teachers like, well, but I differentiate all the time. I say, well, that’s great. You should be, like, good. But but those aren’t synonyms, like universal design and differentiated instruction are not synonyms. And we need them both. And here’s how I like to frame it. If we don’t universally designed from the start, the data with which we are going to try to differentiate is flawed. And so I’ll give you a quick example, if the only way a student of mine had to learn about plot structure was through an article that I gave them. And the only way they had to demonstrate that knowledge of plot structure after that article was through a quiz. Cameron, you might be illiterate, and hate quizzes, and get a zero. And I’m saying to myself, Cameron knows nothing about plot structure, what is going on, but really, camera just can’t read. And if I had given Cameron, an audio version of that learning material, and the chance to verbally share with me what he learned about plot structure, it’s not saying he’s going to be 100%. But you might now be, you might understand most of plot structure, but your data that you’re giving me now is like, who he gets just about everything, but he doesn’t quite understand the importance of the climax. So my differentiation is now pointed to that. But if we don’t University design up front, there are so many other variables and barriers at play, that it’s impossible for me to know what actually I’m differentiating on. And by differentiating on because you can’t read my differentiating on because you didn’t understand the content, my differentiating on because the content was boring to you by differentiating because the way that you had to demonstrate the construct concept didn’t work for you. I don’t know. So I’m guessing, and so doing di but to what extent and for what purpose. So we need both, is what I’m saying like we really, really like UDL doesn’t replace Di. But di is not super effective unless we’ve University design first. Although

Cameron Malcher  27:24

just to just to clarify, I know that you were talking about differentiated instruction, but just to clarify, when you say di you’re meaning differentiated instruction, not direct instruction, because for a lot of our Australian listeners, there’s a big debate about explicit and direct instruction going on right now. So those those initials getting thrown around in different contexts.

Christopher Bronke  27:41

Yeah, Cameron. So again, if we can, yes, I was meaning differentiated instruction for that entire little diatribe. I just went on. Yeah,

Cameron Malcher  27:48

we’re just clarifying.

Christopher Bronke  27:50

Appreciate that. But we can also universal design direct instruction. I think one of the myths of UDL is it’s like, oh, I can no longer direct instruct. Yeah, not at all. Like if you were to come to a Novak workshop, whether it’s me or Katie or miracle or any of our like our consultants, like we do moments, stretches of direct instruction. But we’re University designing that direct instruction by giving you multiple ways to take notes during it by giving pause points where you can talk in turn and or reflect and in your reflection. You can write, you can draw, you can chat like we’re building in those pieces. No one is saying that the teacher at the front of the room is going by the wayside. We just want to see that reconceptualize so that all of our learners needs are met when that teacher is at the front of the classroom. So that is one pushback we get sometimes like, oh, di or, you know, direct instruction is now a thing of the past. You’re telling me that, like, I don’t ever get to teach again. So no, but if you were to keep these things in mind, when you think about the barriers that could be there for kids, I think about this all the time, I used to direct instruct, you know, in my early career, without giving students different ways to take notes, and so on, so forth. And I would write on the board, Karen, I’ve got the handwriting of a like a three year old chicken. I don’t know what any of my students were actually able to take the notes that I was giving them. As I reflect back on it, like that’s my own, like I was bad. So like direct instruction can still be there, but we can direct or we can University design that direct instruction.

Cameron Malcher  29:30

Could we just really zoom in to help people understand and so if, when you are universally designing a lesson you you’ve you’ve managed to make the stars align and there’s a faculty planning session to plan you know, whether it’s a unit of work or even just the lessons for the next couple of weeks. When you aren’t sitting down to actually plan that lesson. You know, you’ve mentioned incorporating different ways of students engaging with and representing information, even if we’re not planning 30 different lesson plans to meet 30 different student needs, what are we planning to make sure that we are incorporating, meeting all of those needs, without it becoming the creation of possibly, you know, I think another one of the myths or another one of the push backs I’ve heard very commonly is that idea of creating resources or work or lesson activities that are not going to be not necessarily going to be used, or that might be redundant. And people seeing that as sort of a wasted time or effort. So what actually goes into planning to make it both effective and time efficient?

Christopher Bronke  30:42

Yeah, so I think I’m just, I’ve never used this phrase before. So debuting this as we go, because I do kind of, as you’re talking and thinking about, like, all the ways I think about this, I think about it is like a three to two. So three, is that we have engagement barriers. So if we do one of these three things in every lesson, we will help break down those barriers, and is have students self reflect, have students self assess, or have students self engage or rethink, like in their own language, the learning goals. So one of those three things, one of the biggest things with engagement, and I’ll go off this on a quick little tangent, and I’ll come back for a second. We think macro level, holistic, we in education, we think of engagement as a visual thing. I know kids are engaged, because I see the head nods and the smiles and, and that’s, that’s affirming, and it’s beautiful. But you know what, I can smile in my head nod way through the best of PD sessions, and not hear a single thing anyone is talking about. And

Cameron Malcher  31:51

certainly a lot of young people who have undiagnosed conditions learned that’s a good way to stop people harassing them in a class Exactly.

Christopher Bronke  31:57

Like, I once had a buddy of mine, we were in a PD session, either because you’re the head nod guy, so you never get called out. I’m like, Uh huh. But if we ask them, or, you know, make them, you know, do one of those three things self assess, self reflect or engage with the learning goals, whether they do it with a smile or frown, they are engaged. So that’s step one, make sure that all of your lessons have one of those three things. So that’s the three. And then by two by two, for the learning, make sure there’s two ways for them to learn it, ideally, in different modes, right? So a video and a text or an audio and like you something that’s read, you know, actual print or, you know, computer screen words, and then something that’s, you know, they can listen to, ideally, the listen to thing would have closed captions, and then you’re killing a couple of birds with one stone, so to speak, right, but more than one way. And you know, I don’t know about you all in Australia, but like, we’re fighting like some pretty hard, like chronic absenteeism here in the States. When you plan to have those, especially if one of those like like an audio version, you’re also kind of helping navigate. When students return from chronic absenteeism, you’re, you’re not having to be the one to go meet with that kid, because you already did hear you. Now that kid doesn’t get those both options. But that’s, that’s okay. I mean, because we have a finite amount of time, like, at the end of the day, we just do. Right, but it’s, as you said

Cameron Malcher  33:32

before, if you’re using a platform like Google Classroom, or, you know, some other LMS, then it’s there no matter what, yeah, exactly. Right. And then same thing

Christopher Bronke  33:41

for how they demonstrate the learning, right. So you know, ideally, as many ways as possible, two ways to share what they’re learning, right? The most simplistic, and this is coming from an ELA humanities guide, but it’s like, you can read it, or you can talk it now. In a one hour, maybe less than an hour, I don’t know how much we’re gonna chat for, as I’ll stay for two or three hours camera. But, you know, we can talk about like, you know, some people say, Well, if it’s, I’ve got to write a paper, kids have read a paper, it’s like, well, they do, right, but even there, there’s text to speech options, right? There’s all sorts of variables, like they’re, in theory, like write a paper has three options to it. I can handwrite it, I can, I can type write it or, you know, can type it right, or I can text to speech it or sorry, other way around speech to text it right. And so like, if we do three, two into those three, one of those three in every lesson for engagement, and then two ways to learn it, two ways to demonstrate it. That’s, I know that that may sound overwhelming. I get it if you like, if you especially if you’re like joining this podcast, and you’ve never heard of UDL, you’re like what? But I promise you if you just sit down and just take a moment, breathe, you’re probably doing some of that already. And I always say like 95% of teachers that I work with are doing some of this in some ways, in some places, and doing UDL or being a UDL practitioner on the regular is just a matter of doing it all the time with deliberate and intentionality, so that it’s happening. Well, I

Cameron Malcher  35:21

think I think also, it’s worth reflecting on how many of those principles have become independent practices that are focused on in parts of education. Like, for example, you’re talking about self assessment, self reflection, and you know, a big push in certainly here I am in New South Wales, in curriculum delivery at the moment is on, you know, how teachers use learning intentions and success criteria, which is effectively self reflecting on a goal self assessing towards a learning outcome. So, and also the, you know, the multiple modes of representation is a common differentiation strategy, as well as a learning design strategy. So, these things, I think, and the research behind them have informed independent practices, and people don’t often see them as a united whole, towards that goal of helping student learning.

Christopher Bronke  36:16

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I’m blessed to get to work for Novak Ed. One, because the Katie’s incredible and the work we’re trying to do is so powerful. But while we preach UDL, our actual macro level goal is just more inclusive classrooms. And so like, that’s really what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to create more equitable learning environments. And so you know, whether you you’re want to think about it through that lens, but it but it ties all these initiatives together, right, like I you know, I’ve been in districts before, it’s like, well, we’re doing equity this week. And next week’s PD is going to be on Dr. And then next week’s PD is going to be on learning goals. And then next week’s PD is going to be on grading practices, and then we’re going to come back to the equity one, and you just keep skipping around all these things. And yeah, to me, the beauty of UDL is that it brings them all together. And so like, you know, if anyone listening to this right now is someone who has any sort of decision making power in your school district who oversees PD, like you don’t have to think about these things in isolated ways. And you don’t have to do the hard work to make the connections. Just use universal design as the umbrella for inclusive classrooms, and increased equity. And if you embrace all of those principles, it’s going to happen because you can’t ignore you know, something such as you know, equity. When we think about engagement. I like, again, as an ELA teacher, I can’t ignore which books I choose if I’m actually thinking about equitable inclusion, for engagement. Because if I don’t, if I don’t get the book that gets a kid engaged, because they can’t see themselves in the characters. So it’s not about like, Oh, our engagement focuses on like, you know, more inclusive texts. Sure. But that becomes a one off. Instead, it’s like, no, we’re looking at, you know, you University designing, removing barriers for engagement. And that would mean, you know, XY and Z and you can you know, you can strap it to all sorts of disciplines, you know how that plays out. So, for me, it is the PD focus. That does all the other PD fo sigh I don’t know. It’s become plural. They’re gone. Pretended does Cameron.

Cameron Malcher  38:50

Well, on that notion of inclusive classrooms, you know, when we started this conversation, one of the examples you gave was the likelihood that people might have in their class, someone with an undiagnosed reading or visual disability, for example, or difficulty. What you know, and I’m sure pretty much every teacher will have had the experience of encountering a student who clearly demonstrates behaviors or symptoms of particular learning challenges or difficult difficulties of whatever reason have gone undiagnosed or unsupported. And, you know, I think the big three certainly here in Australia, the big three are usually ADHD, some form of autism spectrum disorder, and some sort of visual processing difficulty, whether that’s dyslexia or some of the more rare versions like dyspraxia or other things. How does universal design for learning particularly help those students in the classroom?

Christopher Bronke  39:48

Well, I think it helps in two ways. I think it helps the individual student in their learning. And I think it also helps the individual student get a better job chance at the right supports that are needed. So let me start on that, that train. And it kind of goes back to like, when we University design, we get better data to differentiate. It’s the same thing with regards to trying to diagnose, you know, part of universal designs, you know, big concept is like it is for improved classroom instruction for all. And you know, you know, and I, pardon me, I should have had a little bit more research about, you know, the Australian education system, like here we have like, multi tiered systems of support. So MTSS. And when we think about there’s like, Tier one is classroom instruction. Tier Two is, you know, the next level of intervention, tier three is the most intense, right? How do we know if a kid is ready to go to tier two, if we haven’t removed all the barriers in tier one, we don’t write we’re guessing, we’re saying this kid has a reading diagnoses or has you know, ADD or ADHD or dyslexia or like, oh, you know, whatever these things might be. And all those are super legit, you know, diagnoses and things that our students are struggling with. But, but as a classroom teacher at the most foundational level I, and I’ll use myself as an example, I 10 years ago, I couldn’t have gone and talk to someone who works in our special services department with any sort of confidence that I knew what the heck this kid could or couldn’t do, other than they failed my reading quizzes, so they must be able to read or, you know, or their, their, their, their paper was awful, because their handwriting and spelling was like, whatever it might be, right? Or, you know, or, you know, I actually saw a math student the other day, who was trying to like write their answer to a word problem. And the handwriting and this is high school, the handwriting was just literally illegible. What like, so are we saying that that’s a processing, you know, concern? Are we saying that’s an intellectual? Like, did the kid we just don’t know? Right? So when we think about how UDL actually is the framework, or the foundation, the bedrock on which a, whatever you want to call it, and you know, get we call it, you know, MTSS, or whatever sort of multi tiered or tiered series of support is, unless we’ve done everything we can to remove as many barriers as possible at the classroom level, those who are then trained to take that data and start to make some accommodations and diagnoses. They don’t know what they’re accommodating for, you know, or we don’t even know what we’re designing that tier two curriculum for because a lot of schools have a second tier of, like a support class, for example, right? Like we, you know, where I’m at, we have a math and a reading support class. But if we haven’t removed all the barriers from tier one, what are we supporting? We don’t know if we’re guessing. And so, you know, when we think about removing those barriers, and allowing students to truly demonstrate with as much freedom and support as possible, but that we talked about this earlier, as much scaffolding as possible, then we just say, okay, like, they had multiple graphic organizers, and they weren’t able to get to X, Y, or Z, you know, or you know, the math class and we gave them like the step by step like process for the solution of a problem reminders, and they couldn’t get to XYZ, well, then we got to ask ourselves too, well, could they read those reminders? Or did we give them an audio version of those reminders as well right like there’s so many more layers to it that we realize before we can get to saying a kid actually has or or should be considered for diagnoses X, Y, or Z and and you know, full disclosure camera like I am not trained as a special educator. My wife is I work with a bunch of people who are I mean, I adore how deeply they support students in so many different ways. But at the end of the day, I think it’s people like me at the classroom tier one level like that just got to be better to help them be better.

Cameron Malcher  44:25

Well, that does lead I suppose also then to one of the the other common myths and push backs I hear about UDL, which is the belief that it is more of a you know, it is more of a support for students with learning disability or difficulties, and not a universally or generally applicable framework. How do you how do you respond when you hear that one?

Christopher Bronke  44:51

How many curse words can I use? No, I mean, I just think it’s I’ll use a mild when I think it’s crap. Um, you know, like I have no diagnosed and or that I’m even self aware of learning disabilities that I can think of I’m, you know, lucky, blessed and feel great about that. It’s, you know what it is? This two summers ago, I’m working on my doctorate and I got to take an educational district, a doctoral level Ed stats class. Cameron, I need all the damn help I could get. Yeah. I mean, I was truly rounding in that thing. And you know what, none of that was universally designed, other than the fact that lectures are recorded, so I can at least go back and watch them, pause them think, Wait, work, but I have no discernible learning disabilities. And I was. I mean, it? Yep. Bless that my wife was also in the class and has it like an undergrad in business and math. And so had it not been for that, like, I was the, quote, regular ed kid, or, you know, the kid who doesn’t have any accommodations, who we don’t know is drowning. Might get that see. And we might be think, good for Johnny. He got to see me like. But I don’t, I don’t care about my grade, I want to learn the stuff. So I would have gotten a C, I didn’t think so. Excuse me, my wife, my wife being there. But I don’t want to see and I don’t care about see, like, I want to know that I left that class learning that stuff. And you know, what, can I tell you anything about standard deviations right now. I mean, kinda like, like a thing that moves a curve, a little something along those lines, right? I end up with an A in the class, but I can’t tell you a single thing I learned. But man, if there were a couple of other ways for me to learn that stuff, and to demonstrate my learning other than multiple choice quizzes, might have been different thing. And I think we all again, you know, one of the things I often open workshops with is like thinking about the time you struggled to learn something. And how did you What were your chances to demonstrate that learning? And it ends up being like the same thing? Well, it was class X, where I learned it through a lecture, and I demonstrated it through a test. Well, that has nothing to do with whether students have special accommodations or not. That’s every single learner that we ever worked with. And if those are the only two options that they have, we got work to do.

Cameron Malcher  47:35

Hmm, yeah, yeah, no, it’s, again, I think some of those misconceptions often lead to less effective implementation as well. And so people then create their own sort of evidence of ineffective modeling rather than ineffective implementation. Yeah, totally on that notion of, you know, things being universally designs that people can engage with. And I think engagement is one of the big challenges and for a long time, you know, we know that novelty, for example, is a big part of effective learning that when people recognize when you learn as recognized something is new and novel and interesting. And I think that has, I think maybe the colloquial or even just common use of the word novelty has given people a misunderstanding of what it means to use novelty as an engagement strategy. But I think it’s also kind of affected the way people understand engagement generally. So when we talk about the strategies for engagement, and to use your example of the stats class, and not feeling like you had a clear sense of where to go, what are some of the ways and some of the strategies embedded within UDL that helps engage students, even if it’s not necessarily content they’re personally interested in, but then also that give them a clear sense of their place and role in the learning to overcome that engagement barrier?

Christopher Bronke  49:10

Yeah. Well, as for me, I always, when I think about my engagement work, I fall back on the work of Castle, which is an organization that is dedicated to social emotional learning. And I think social emotional learning is a beautiful thing that sometimes gets a bad rap. What it’s trying to do is teach students how to navigate the ups and downs of life, not just make them feel good about everything all the time. But we hear social like if I could, like wave a magic wand, and go back and like get that term rebranded. I would like take the emotion out of it because teachers hear emotion and they’re like, I’m not here to teach kids to feel good about themselves. But first I’m like, well, Why wouldn’t you? But that’s a whole nother thing, right? So what like what castle as an organization says is that we’re trying to teach five skills, self awareness, self management, social awareness, relationship skills, and decision making. So if we’re doing those five things, it doesn’t matter if you do or don’t like, what we’re learning, you still should have a reason to engage. Right? So like, if you don’t like the concept, but I’m teaching you social awareness. Part of that and self management part that is to self manage, yeah, this isn’t my thing. But I’m being called on to interact in a social setting with others, to engage in a way that makes sense and is meaningful. Right? Like, as adults, I think, generally speaking, we do that often. Right, like, you know, I mean, whether it’s just something as simple as like picking where we go to dinner, right, like, man, you know, personally, if I never had Mexican food again, I’d be okay. In life. My wife loves it. Right. So from a self management standpoint, I’m aware of that. And from a relationship skills standpoint, I’m also well aware that every once in a while we should be having Mexican food to keep her happy, right? Very simple example, but but we think about it through the lens of teaching skills, and not just thinking about it as like, how do I make a kid happier? Or how do I make a kid want to like, like this more, because you know what, at the end of the day, if a kid isn’t liking X, Y, or Z, we’re probably going to make them like it. But can we create learning conditions that make learning about it more enjoyable and have fewer barriers, right, like, that’s the key. Like, at the end of the day, they’re like, my brother is one of the most brilliant human beings I’ve ever met. Highschool degenerate, though, like, barely graduated, you know, got into fights, like all those sorts of things. He now travels the country doing like home audio and video install for like celebrities, like, Dude is like, brilliant. Like, there was nothing that any English teacher is going to do that makes him like Shakespeare. He didn’t give a damn about a sonnet. Right? But if we created environments in which he had to at least be self aware of that fact, and navigate the relationship skills around talking with others, who maybe did care about that, we start to create learning environments that that I think can have some productivity and some engagement that would change someone like my brother, for example, Eric, I love you to death gonna give that shout out. It he knows I use him as an example all the time. So it’s okay. But like, it just changes what our focus is. And it’s like, our Yes, I hope my my infection infectious love of the sonnet is enough to get everyone to want to. But it’s not right, or, you know, the math teachers like infectious love for, you know, the quadratic formula, like, I’m going to teach us it’s so much passion, that it’s going to work. And you know what, for a vast majority of kids in a lot of schools, it will, but in a lot of places, and for a lot of kids and the kids that need the support the most it’s not. And so I think when we rely on something like the castle, like those five skills, and we start to make it about teaching how to self manage, how to be self aware how to be socially aware how to make decisions, we can change the game a little bit.

Cameron Malcher  53:45

Mm hmm. And the other thing that connects to that, in my mind that you’ve talked about already, is the the principle of teaching for mastery or for students to master the content. And when I think of mastery, both whether it’s mastery, goal orientation, or mastery learning, the idea of increasing independence comes into that and you know, the general sort of term used in psychology is, is executive function and the ability as you were saying to self regulate, be self aware. How does in working towards that mastery of content and mastery learning? How does UDL particularly support that development as well?

Christopher Bronke  54:30

Yeah, I mean, when we’re trying to work towards that mastery learning piece, right, like that’s that mean? That’s one of the three principles and mastery or mastery learning paired with being expert learners, right. So UDL says we want to create students who are expert learners, meaning they know best, how they learn best, in which ways they learn best in which context they need to learn. I know it’s kind of a lot to follow, right, but what we’re trying to do, so when if we can accomplish that, we can then string that over towards mastery learning in any setting. Right? You know, I mean, Kevin, like, you know, think about yourself as a learner, right? Like, do you study or learn the same way in an algebra class as you would in a music theory class, or a you write, but we as adults, especially adults who work in education, who have said educational theory, like we get that we’ve learned how we learn how we matriculate that down to our even our kindergarteners and asking, you know, a kindergartener, you know, would you rather, you know, listen to this by yourself, or with another friend, just these small little moves of giving these like, you know, I know I talk, I always say, like, I talk in high school, because I live in high school. I think we can carry this down, right? Like I was with my nephews this weekend. And one of them this, the two that I was like, kind of chatting with like, one was six and or is six and one is eight. And, you know, I asked him a question. I was like, well, like, what do you thoughts, and the one kid was kind of like struggling to kind of put together verbally a thought, and I knew he was an artist and was like, draw me something done. There was, you know, like, so it can be that small. It just needs to be that deliberate.

Cameron Malcher  56:28

Right. So then, just to help bring all of these threads together, can you give us an example from your own classroom of what effective UDL looks like in practice? Yeah,

Christopher Bronke  56:43

so my favorite example that I like to use, is, when I am trying to teach students to think about when they’re writing their own narratives, what point of view they should choose, or when they’re writing their own stories, what what point of view they should choose. And I know not everyone listen to us as an English teacher by any means. But we all understand that story. Because that’s how humans learn. And we all understand point of view, because we’re adults. So I’d like to use this example. And so to attack the engagement barrier, what I did was one I just labeled it who lives who dies, who tells your story, which is a reference to Hamilton, which, you know, I printed this when it was at its peak of peaks, right? So like that automatically, like kids were like, ooh, it’s handled it right. And then this is a big UDL move that I want to make sure that we talked about. So I’m glad you asked me to kind of share an example. So then from there, I asked students, there are two required resources they have to explore. And then there are five other options that they have to choose one or two more of, and that’s a big UDL move, right. It’s like, I know, everyone has to look at this and looking at this might be your lecture. Totally awesome. Right? For me, the two pieces that have to look at one is a TED Talk. It’s the the TED talk about the danger of a single story.

Cameron Malcher  58:12

Yes, we

Christopher Bronke  58:12

use that one a lot here as well. Yeah, wonderful story, right. We’re seeing diverse voices coming into play there as well. Using a TED talk, which from an engagement standpoint, is breaking down some barriers, from a how they learn standpoint, I can use closed captioning. So they’ve got video, they got audio, they’ve got the text there, there’s very few barriers to that particular resource. Then the second one that they have to look at is also a video, which also has closed captioning. But it’s Lin Manuel Miranda himself talking about how he hears characters in his head. And so now we’re connecting it to the theme after the title and those two, like, generally speaking, I feel like I’ve done a pretty good job of breaking down engagement barriers, you know, for the most part, kids are pretty intuitive. And I’ve also broken down how they learn because everyone has access to the two things I need them to have access to. And then from there, there are five other resources that they can choose from. And they range again, because I’m trying to break down and like how they learn barriers. There’s like one blog, there’s a visual, there’s, you know, there’s all different methods that they can, you know, to get into it. And then for how they demonstrate to try and remove those barriers, they can write me their pitch of what point of view their story is going to be told from and why. Or they can use Flipgrid or any other audio, you know, recording device to talk through what they’re, you know, pointing or they can just come see me and just chat with me. But they have a written and a verbal place to do that. So real quick, that’s a one lesson that can be a one day thing. But that’s another place to where like working with a teammate is great because like building that resource bank of, you know, essentially that was seven resources, the two that they had to do with the other five, that can go a lot faster. But you also wouldn’t need all those five, you could have do those two, or even just one of those two as required. And that is to more, you know, like I might have grown over the years as if you’re, you know, looking to become, you know, more immersed in UDL, I hope yours will too, like, every year I’ll add in, or I’ll replace or those sorts of things. So, that’s just a quick little example of what that looks like.

Cameron Malcher  1:00:23

And how did you find having run that lesson? I’m guessing a couple of times at least? How did you find the student engagement and achievement in that? Design? Yeah,

Christopher Bronke  1:00:34

I mean, without being, you know, like, too arrogant. I mean, it was, it was fantastic. They had a blast, you know, like, kids were chatting about the both of the TED talks, especially like, getting to hear I mean, you know, it’s all of us students are out there, like Google searching how Lin Manuel Miranda created some of these characters, but they also know the show, at least a lot of them do. Right. And, and also think it’s really important, I work in a predominantly white school to 80% 70 75%, white, something like that. But I thought it was really important for the to require text to be, you know, you know, authors and writers and creators of color, and for all the students to be able to see that. And I think, you know, the students of color that are in my class, while not a lot of them, I think they were really appreciative of that there was great, like, authentic conversation, like I didn’t have to create discussion questions like kids just wanted to talk with each other about like what they just saw, which I think is really for me, oftentimes, how will gauge engagement, it’s one metric of many, so I don’t want this to get like blown out of proportion. But if I hear students talking about things that they are trying to learn, without me prompting them, I feel like I’ve done pretty well, at least in terms of the first step.

Cameron Malcher  1:02:04

Now, you and I both come from English teaching backgrounds. So, you know, I know that we’ve centered a little bit of a conversation there, in your work with schools and more broadly, as a consultant in this field. Have you have you seen or can you give any examples of what this has looked like in, say, a mass classroom or a science classroom or different teaching contexts? Yeah,

Christopher Bronke  1:02:26

one of my favorite UDL examples, was a removing barriers for how students demonstrate learning around a math test. This was it was brilliant. And I depending on how much time you want to spend, I’ve got a I can give a couple of examples. But this one in particular was so super cool. We talked about like, all of those, those Castle strategies are like self awareness and self management, and like, demonstrate their learning. This teacher had a test, and it was actually was in a grad class that I was teaching around UDL. And we were in the assessment unit. And I’m not, I’m not a test fan, I’ll just go ahead and say it. And this teacher was like, I’m going to show you, like I’m gonna show you I can UDL a test. And like, please do because I’ll steal your example. And this, you know, for as successful as you can be, I think this teacher was, so here’s what this teacher did. They broke down. And this comes back to firm goals, flexible means, which is one of you know, like guiding principles of UDL, the, the test had four standards, or goals, four questions per Google. And when the students came into the room, they didn’t even notice this, but they sat down to take the test. And in the four corners of the room, were like butcher block paper taped up on the walls. And it was like, on one of them was one through four, the next one was five through nine, the next one was 10, through better math, 13, or whatever, when the four standards, one standard on each poster, and students started their test, working, working, working, and with about 20 minutes to go on the test. 15 minutes go on the test. Teacher said, Okay, I’m going to pause for a second. And I’m going to ask you to think about which of the and the questions weren’t in order. So they had tackled at least a question from each of the four standards at this point, if that makes sense, conceptually, right. Like they had to wrestle with each of the learning goals. I’m gonna pause. And if you look around the room, each learning goal is a piece of the paper. And there was a problem, like a math equation on each piece of paper. It wasn’t one from the test, but it was one that was part of that standard. And so then teacher said, go to the quarter, that has the standard that you were struggling with the most. And go and work on that problem with your classmates. I’m gonna give about five minutes, then you can come back and we’ll finish up the test. So kids would go to like, they’re like, oh my god, I owe this standard to I am so lost on. So, you know, six of us are huddled in the corner of sander to me, we’re working on that equation. And we’re like, no, wait, no, I totally remember in class, he said that you absolutely have to, like, you know, multiply first, or you absolutely have to, like, you know, the, the number outside of the parentheses is carried through like, I’m, I’m kind of vaguely using math terms right now. But, but they so we talked about, like self awareness and self reflection, right, which 1am I struggling with the most right, collaborative, like relationship skills, like working together? Then they went back to the test, and they got to finish the test. Simple, really simple. Now, you’ve got to create a good test that standards aligned, though, too. I mean, that that’s not as simple.

Cameron Malcher  1:06:04

Yes, yeah. And I think that part of the learning design is often something that is challenging as well, that doesn’t necessarily get factored in as much as it should do. Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s a fascinating example. And I can imagine it might take people a bit of thinking to wrap their head around disrupting a sort of test environment in that way. And yet, recognizing the benefits of that kind of collaborative learning, even in that context. Well, I’m

Christopher Bronke  1:06:37

not a mathematician, but I don’t think that there are many people who work in a field that requires a mathematicians mind who are doing it in complete isolation. Like NASA is not building a rocket ship with one guy.

Cameron Malcher  1:06:51

Please, I hope, yes. Yes. And yeah, and yet most of our education systems do still have one, one student one test one result for purposes other than learning. Correct.

Christopher Bronke  1:07:01

So that example is just a quick little one from a different discipline, because I know we ELA heavy tonight, but yeah.

Cameron Malcher  1:07:07

Well, look, Chris, thank you very, very much for your time for your evening. I really appreciate you taking the time for this conversation. The organization is Novak education. And as you mentioned before, the series of books are broadly under the title UDL now. And as you say, there’s so many covering different topics. I’m currently working my way through UDL in the cloud, because I’m currently working in an online school and finding that very, very useful. So thank you very much for your time. Once again, I’ll make sure there’s links to your profile and to those websites in the show notes. And thank you for taking us on this guide through UDL. In this interview. Thanks

Christopher Bronke  1:07:45

for having me. Cheers, everyone.