Educating at the Cutting Edge

The York School is a progressive school for a modern world and its teachers are world-class educators. Join host, Natasha Estey, in conversation with Associate Head, Academics, Justin Medved, about what 21-century teaching and learning look like at York, what makes our teachers great, and the future of K - 12 education.

You can follow Cohort 21 on Twitter or search the hashtag #Cohort21. Follow Justin on Twitter. You can learn more about academics and wellness at York by visiting our website.
Visit YORK Talks online and subscribe to YORK Talks where you get your podcasts. 

Written and Produced by Natasha Estey
Sound Editing by Andrew Scott

Transcript

Natasha Estey: 0:02

Hi there, and welcome to Season 2 of YORK Talks, a podcast for families wanting to learn more about how The York School - Toronto's leading co-ed independent school delivering the IB curriculum from JK to Grade 12 - views education. I'm your host, Natasha Estey. This season, join me in conversation with teachers from the Junior, Middle, and Senior Schools about their craft and get insights into some of the most progressive approaches to education today. Hello, and welcome to Season 2 of YORK Talks. I'm so glad you're here. I'm looking forward to this season and getting a chance to speak with some of our progressive educators. But before we get into all that, I am thrilled to be speaking today with our Associate Head, Academics, Justin Medved. You might know Justin as the past Director of Learning, Innovation, and Technology at The York School where he led the way in ensuring that technology was integrated into the classroom and 21st Century pedagogy was developed to enhance learning. Justin has taught in the UK, Africa, and Asia and is connected to a global network of educators and thought leaders. He's a Google Certified Teacher, Apple Distinguished Educator, Co-Founder of Cohort 21 and the CAIS Strategic Change Accelerator. As Associate Head, Academics, Justin inspires teaching and learning at York and ensures the school is delivering academic excellence, supporting the whole student, and is delivering on its IB-focused mission. Justin, I know it's a very busy time gearing up for the school year. So thank you so much for joining me.

Justin Medved: 1:49

You're welcome.

Natasha Estey: 1:51

So you've been a much loved and highly valued member of the leadership team for a number of years now - you've been at York for a number of years. But you've recently moved into this new, exciting, and important leadership role. So how how's the transition been so far?

Justin Medved: 2:04

It's actually going to be my 20th year this year, believe it or not. The transition has been smooth. I'm really excited to onboard my former Associate Director of Learning, Innovation, and Technology, Afzal Shaikh. And as my mentee, as he cross-trains into his new role as IT Director, and I move into this role of Associate Head, Academics, it's not actually that much of a departure from what I was doing before. I think you can say that I was leading from the middle an aspect of our learning experience and larger value proposition because I had that expertise that aligned pretty closely with the mission, vision, and values of the school built on a foundation set long ago. Our school laptop programme is about 22 years old. So when I started in 2001, it was in its infancy. And it was actually that exposure to what's possible with laptops and technology in the classroom that led me to pursue a Master's and just kind of a career focus in and around the intersection. And the whole department, really, that I have built over the last decade or nearly 15 years is the Department of Learning, Innovation, and Technology and a lot of my messaging is around the intersection of those things. I think it's where the magic happens.

Natasha Estey: 3:31

Well, with my admission hat on, I always loved your comment of how it was all about technology in the service of learning and teaching and technology in the service of education. And in many ways, it was almost a curator of the best tools to enable that to happen. And I just loved thinking about it that way.

Justin Medved: 3:50

If we think back to the foundations of The York School history, the founding Tech Director, her name was Dianne Dowman, and I was her mentee - she mentored me, but she was a teacher first. And I am too. I started at The York School as a Geography and Phys Ed teacher. And so very different than sometimes how schools approach hiring for that role, they tend to look for someone maybe more technically inclined, and that makes a lot of sense for a bunch of reasons. I learned all those pieces along the way. But what informed all my decision making in the leadership of that role was really through the lens of the teacher, the learner, which I think gets you to a different place. All of my decisions were really aligned already with the larger goals of the curriculum, the challenges teachers face on a daily basis. And so I think there was a nice synergy. I hope to think that there has always been a nice synergy there.

Natasha Estey: 4:47

It's interesting. One of the things I'm hoping to ask the teachers I'm going to be speaking with throughout this season is about their own journey to becoming a teacher and that sense of what it is that drew you to the profession. And for many teachers, they talk about it as a calling. I'm just curious because you are, you know, probably at the very heart a teacher. And so what about your own journey to teaching and your sense of what it was that really has called you to making this your profession?

Justin Medved: 5:12

Yeah, all my jobs seemed to focus around working with young people. So, you know, from the early days of pursuing swimming, and you know, distinctions and then finding my way into lifeguarding, but then eventually enjoying teaching swimming. And then you follow this summer camp trail, when you love the summer camp you attend, you find ways to stick around with the leadership programme, and then the Counsellor and then I found myself a Leadership Director in the camping. Queens at that time had something called - it had a Phys Ed Department. And so it was a Dual Liberal Arts Geography, dual major Phys Ed Major. And so in the Phys Ed Major, you found yourself either going down a kind of Kinesiology Chiropractor route, or it prepared you for having that teachable, the two teachables that you're required to have as a high school teacher. There's lots of ways to teach, whether you're a chiropractor, whether you're a coach, whether you're a formal Phys Ed teacher, you know, it's all teaching.

Natasha Estey: 6:18

Agreed. That's great. I love hearing the journeys. It's it's so fascinating to me how we all end up where we do and the path to get there. What or who inspires you in your work as an educational leader, and sort of a teacher of teachers, so to speak?

Justin Medved: 6:34

I'm really lucky. You mentioned earlier Cohort 21. So I built over the last decade, actually Cohort 21, if you're not familiar, that is a CIS Ontario professional learning community that I helped co-found with my friend, colleague, and I'd say inspiration in a lot of ways, Garth Nichols. He's over at Havergal College. But together, we saw a real missing community in CIS Ontario, that focused in and around professional learning networks. So CIS always have done a great job of professional learning opportunities and conferences - they do a wonderful job stewarding that. But there's a difference when you say we're going to build a community around a shared experience. We're going to come together. We're going to have an infrastructure and a facilitator and coaching model that supports it all around, reflecting on your own practice. And over the last 10 years, we've built an entire framework and approach, which is what we like to call action oriented inquiry, where you come to the Cohort 21 experience committed to an eight month process that is centred around a problem or challenge you have in your own practice, supported by colleagues from around the province, who are right there with you who are going to help you answer or solve the problem. So that's a really cool experience that is kind of unique to the offerings that CIS has. Collect really amazing educators, and they really are inspirations for me to just be aware of what's possible. Because every school has its own organisational weight, or just its own things going on. But when you can step outside your own school, and all you have in common is teaching, then you leave everything at the door, and all you're talking about is opportunity. And that's a really engaging environment to sit in.

Natasha Estey: 8:38

Oh, yeah. I love seeing all the Twitter comments or various posts that you see. And, you know, the hashtag Cohort 21. And it's not just, you know, obviously teachers from The York School that are part of that, but there's teachers from all different schools that are, as you said, part of this really interesting community. So how would you describe The York School's approach to teaching and learning?

Justin Medved: 9:01

Well, we've built a school around a very progressive approach that seeks to align with some great established best practices like the Ontario Ministry curriculum is very solid. We build on top of a framework that sits across the IB programme, which is a global research informed, holistic, broad based education that is pulling from various interdisciplinary areas, whether it's the service learning experiential, the kind of broad based offerings that it exposes you through. Sitting inside that is this kind of focus around inquiry as a pedagogical approach, agency of the student being a key important factor considered when planning. What's really great about the foundation The York School sits on is from a very early age, it was very much asking the question, how can we be better? And I think what we have as a real unique culture is one that is not afraid to change in pursuit of something better. And so while we have some solid foundations, we're very nimble, and you see it all the time. In the teacher unit planning and everyone's approach to just creating the best educational experiences we can we can offer.

Natasha Estey: 10:43

I pulled a really great quote that came from a video you did for someone else's blog, a teachers blog, and you talked about, I'll quote, you said, to teach here means to constantly approach teaching and learning through the lens of iteration and continuous improvement and refinement. To teach at The York School means to constantly challenge yourself to take risks, but to constantly question and improve on what you did before. So I think that really, what you're saying sort of highlights that. That idea is almost like that Kaizen philosophy of, you know, the Japanese automakers, the constant incremental change, you know, towards progress.

Justin Medved: 11:18

Yes.

Natasha Estey: 11:18

And do you think that there's elements of that, that differentiate The York School from other schools, other educational institutions?

Justin Medved: 11:26

In the way that we have the things like the ICE Programme, or we have, you know, Middle School organizational subjects and some of the cool things that we offer and do speak to really, really interesting and innovative programming, that can't be built. It's iterative. It's the result of a lot of iteration.

Natasha Estey: 11:49

Struan Robertson in our Head of School has this concept of failing forward, which I think is such a great way to to think about how we do progress. And certainly within the the teaching realm as well. The York School does have a reputation for having really good teachers. It's one of the things we always hear, from an admission perspective. One of the reasons that families end up choosing The York School is because of the teachers. So what really defines The York School teacher and when we say things like, we have world class educators at The York School, what do we mean by that when we say those sorts of things, in your view?

Justin Medved: 12:23

Well, when we recruit we certainly look for teachers who have a disposition and have a track record some evidence to support the the idea that they come open minded, and are very interested in supporting the learner in both the social mode, social emotional learning, as well as the academic learner. And the intersection of those things is a really important piece. Now all schools will say that they support the whole child, and the way that we have elevated wellbeing into our current system and structure through our whole department of wellness, and the infrastructure we have around learning support, social emotional support, and our new North Star that clearly DEI and wellbeing as something that we have taken and said, this is so important, because it's just at the same level of the academic programme. I think, in the way that we've been able to communicate that on our website and through interviews, attracts a certain type of teacher that wants to play in that sandbox, so to speak. Our students constantly remind us, they say it - our grads all the time - these teachers really care about us. They wouldn't say that if they didn't really mean it.

Natasha Estey: 13:47

Especially in the context of what we've been facing and are continuing to face in terms of trying to operate as a school during a pandemic. I think that resonates even more strongly, how students have felt seen, and the relationships that they've been able to have with their teachers. So yeah, I think it's a testament to that point. So, we often talk about this idea of 21st Century school and 21st Century teachers. What does that mean to you?

Justin Medved: 14:17

It tended to mean the internet, so there was this notion of connectivity, being a huge cultural driver around the world. We know that technology has just changed the world in such fundamental ways through the phones that are in our pockets, the computers and what they could do over the last 20 years, we've seen such incredible change. And that's had an impact on work everywhere around the world, and on culture, and on all kinds of aspects of what it means to live on this planet. So what 21st Century teaching means now is is a school tuned to that ongoing change and to what degree is it actively trying to embed it into the conversation in the classroom? How is the classroom mirroring the outside world? In the way that DEI, many people say it's the third pandemic outside climate change and COVID-19. We've got a justice, equity, and inclusion crisis around the world. And this is an important conversation that needs to get elevated and be woven into a contemporary education because we're doing kids a disservice if we're not making that an important part of how they start to think and behave and navigate their and regulate their own behaviour and questioning. So, to be literate, right? So if we think back to like, 30 years ago, you would walk out with an education - can you read, can you write and can you do basic math? And that was the education. Profoundly different now, right? So much more is needed to navigate this world safely, responsibly. Because the information landscape is just so different. The textbook is redundant. We have so much information from so many different sources in so many different ways coming so quickly, managing it, understanding it, navigating it, recognising bias within it, like those conversations, and the speed at which they're kind of changing, that is a 21st Century learner. In order to properly navigate that, and I would say, our kids going through education, now we're in a fortunate state, because all the adults are just trying to figure it out, too. There was a time when teaching and learning - you could own it all. I was the master of my domain. I was the content master and I had all the answers. Yeah, well, that time is gone.

Natasha Estey: 17:04

Yeah, because it's like as the whole scholarship of teaching and learning advances, right, even beyond the whole justice layer to this, which is absolutely front and centre these days, researchers are learning more about how students retain information and what kinds of learning experiences best prepare them for whatever that next stage in their educational journey is going to look like. And you've got this movement away from this sage on the stage model to much more of this guide on the side model where inquiry based learning and interdisciplinary learning puts the teacher in a position where they're not always the expert, right? And so in many ways, they're both the teacher and learner as well. And that's actually really disruptive, but super exciting at the same time. So any any examples of what that might look like?

Justin Medved: 17:54

The tools that we have in our design programme reflect the tools that are really interesting right now. So kids are coding, kids are 3D printing, kids are playing with really interesting new technology that's creating rich experiences, right? Like the whole prototype, I can take an idea, put it into 3D CAD, print it, and have it in my hands in 10 minutes to then iterate on. Amazing, right? Then we can find ourselves in the centre of this amazing opportunity with data. So we now have tools and diagnostic dashboard tools that are available to us as teachers to see learning happen in real time to track student progress in real time. To have certain platforms teach certain things to the student that would have been once done by the teacher, but no longer need to be. So that frees up the teacher to actually have intervention conversations when they would have been marking, right? So now the kids are all working, I'm seeing everything and go these kids need reach ahead, these kids need extra help, these kids are just fine. I can now completely reorganize my time around support with data informed tools that allow me to have a completely different relationship with the students, right? Then, when we get into each subject area, there's going to be great stories that you'll find like how, throughout the pandemic, math has risen to the occasion and choosing different platforms to play in. Back to DEI, we're having really rich conversations with kids about what it means to be inclusive and the whole spectrum of identities. Our students have a greater and really comfortable understanding exploring those. And then asking ourselves, what does it mean to build a school where kids feel belonging, right? So that's in our programme informally, but it's part of their education. Our whole service learning and experiential learning is just really great. And we pride ourselves in not just taking trips, but having meaningful experiences that go beyond going somewhere and just taking it in, but doing things and experiencing things in unique ways that tie back to the curriculum.

Natasha Estey: 20:20

I feel that there's a lot of permission given to teachers at the level of the course their teaching or whatever to try new things, to bring in new approaches, to have different kinds of conversations. You talk about the nimbleness of the way in which the school is organized. I think that I've seen seen that play out in different ways all the way through the whole school. What does the future of K to 12 education look like to you? And how can teachers best equip themselves for that future?

Justin Medved: 20:49

The pandemic has pushed us very quickly into new territory. Things we would have never had our students do and be exposed to is now what's enabling us to run school right now. So we're living a disrupted education system at the moment. It's having us take a moment, we're trying stuff, we're being forced to do stuff. It's allowed us to see opportunities, allowed us to see what doesn't work at all, and wjat we don't want. So I think we're in like a huge lab right now. So we're in the future of education at the moment. Depending if we can get a handle on this, then there'll be this notion of going back to normal. And it will be interesting to see what we keep and what we don't. And that is really where we're going. It's hard to say, because it's a cultural piece around what we value in the wellbeing conversation is yes, we can do amazing things now. It's so incredible. But we're also moving lightspeed. And maybe fast isn't always better. So I think, thoughtful reflection after this is going to be really important.

Natasha Estey: 22:03

Absolutely.

Justin Medved: 22:04

I'll wrap up by saying, I'm really excited about the North Stars that we've established as our next strategic plan. We've got wellbeing, we've got the learning experience, we've got sustainability. And we've got diversity, equity, and inclusion at the core. So those North Star say, hey, we're going to really devote a lot of time, energy, and resources in the pursuit of those things in the next five, 10, 15, forever years. And that's really exciting because the past strategic plan had us saying things like, we're going to be academically the most academic. Or we would say, we are going to improve the learning environment, right? And so that manifested itself and obviously curriculum improvements, and maybe renos and other things. But now we're getting into some really meaty and interesting broad themes that are ambitious. We don't have all the answers. We're looking for lots of stakeholder ideas in the pursuit of it, and it's going to iterate on top. I really am feeling confident about those four areas and really like their direction.

Natasha Estey: 23:10

Mm hmm. This has been great, Justin. Thank you so much for your time and your candour today.

Justin Medved: 23:18

My pleasure.

Natasha Estey: 23:19

It's always such a pleasure to speak with you. I always come away from our conversations, just feeling really energized and inspired. I hope all our listeners feel that way too. It's a great start to the season. So I'm excited to be able to talk to teachers about the work they're doing kind of on the ground.

Justin Medved: 23:36

Yeah, it's going to be a real treat. And I'm looking forward to tuning in and listening to this.

Natasha Estey: 23:40

Excellent.

Justin Medved: 23:41

Yeah, enjoy. Thanks a lot.

Natasha Estey: 23:43

Thank you so much. Justin truly is a visionary educator, and leader. What stuck out for me from our conversation was the following. One, The York School has a culture of not being afraid to change in pursuit of something. It's a school that is nimble, but sits on a solid foundation and that we have interesting and innovative programming that is the result of a lot of iteration. The teachers I will talk to this season will provide good examples of this. Two, York School teachers are open minded, and are as focused on supporting social and emotional learning, as they are academic learning. Three, 21st Century educators are attuned to the ongoing change brought by technology and ask how the classroom is mirroring the outside world. To be a literate 21st Century learner means being able to manage, understand, navigate, and recognize bias in the relentless stream of information we are exposed to. And four, the education system has been disrupted and it's a huge lab right now. What our teachers choose to keep and discard will help shape the future of education for young people. You can follow Cohort 21 on Twitter by searching #Cohort21. Follow Justin on Twitter @jmedved. You can learn more about academics and wellness at York by visiting our website. Visit YORK Talks online at www.yorkschool.com/YORKTalks. Subscribe to YORK Talks where you get your podcasts and tell other families wanting to learn more about how The York School approaches education. I'm your host, Natasha Estey. I hope you enjoyed the conversation today. Please join us again for more YORK Talks.