Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

What's up, folks? Dr. Eakins is here. I have a special episode with my good buddy, Jorge Valenzuela. He's here, and we're talking about instructional coaching design. But before we get into that, just a reminder, if you haven't purchased or pre-ordered the book Leading Equity: Becoming an Advocate for All Students, it is available right now. It's coming out in about a month, a little bit over a month. So if you order it right now, I'm actually offering book study. So shoot me an email with your receipt of your purchase, and we'll get you signed up for the book study that we'll be starting July 23rd.

               Jorge Valenzuela has years of experience in education as a classroom and online teacher, a curriculum specialist, and now an educational coach and consultant. I'm really excited because Jorge and I have some projects that we'll be working on together very soon, so more announcements to come down the road. Currently, Jorge is an adjunct professor at Old Dominion University and the lead coach at Lifelong Learning Defined. In this conversation, Jorge shares his instructional coaching design when he works with schools and districts. We discuss modeling instructional practices, going beyond worksheets, and culturally responsive coaching.

               Welcome to the Leading Equity Podcast. My name is Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins and, for over a decade, I've helped educators become better advocates for their students. What is an advocate? An advocate is someone who recognizes that we don't live in a just society. Advocates aren't comfortable with the status quo and are willing to speak up on behalf of others. No matter where you are in your journey towards ensuring all of your students are equipped with the resources they need to thrive, I'm here to help you build your knowledge and confidence to ensure equity at your school.

               Welcome, advocates, to another episode of the Leading Equity Podcast, a podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their school. Listen, listen, listen, folks, I am so excited because I have a buddy of mine, someone I consider a brother. This is a guy that I met about a month ago, and we just connected. I'm really excited to finally get him on the show. So without further ado, Mr. Jorge Valenzuela is here today. Thank you, Jorge, for joining us today.

Jorge Valenzuela:

Brother Sheldon, what's going on, man? You good?

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

Yes. Yes. It's funny now I'm thinking about it. We've actually known each other a little bit longer because we connected with something with Hedreich Nichols. So that was when we first, first met each other.

Jorge Valenzuela:

Yeah, that's right. So I need to shout out Hedreich, and we have to shout out IDEAcon and both ladies over there, Amber, Lindsay, all of them.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

David, all them. Yeah.

Jorge Valenzuela:

Hey, hey, hey, what's up, y'all?

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

Yes, yes. So we are here, we're recording this. I'm really looking forward to this. Now, I know who you are, and I'm sure a lot of our audience members knows who you are as well. But for those, that small percentage that have absolutely no idea who Jorge is, could you share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do?

Jorge Valenzuela:

Yeah, brother. So I have about 19 years of experience in education. I started out as a classroom teacher. And then I became a district administrator, which is more of a curriculum specialist. And then after that, I became an education coach, author, and advocate. So I move all around the country now, actually, for the past eight years. I was unknown for a while, but now I'm known. So I've moved all around the country, and I help schools with instructional coaching. Sometimes we build initiatives into that coaching.

               So a lot of the coaching initially starts with tier one instruction, but then we move into STEM, equity, SEL, project-based learning, things like that. But I consider myself as a coach and, at times, I'm working with the superintendent, assistant superintendent, the director, the principal, but mostly with the teachers.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

When you say tier one or instructional coaching, do you model things differently with a newer teacher versus a veteran teacher? Or do you primarily work with newer teachers? Who's, I guess, your audience or clients that you primarily work with?

Jorge Valenzuela:

Yeah. Definitely, that's a really good question. So when we're deciding on PD, it's a process that we use. I have a five-step instructional coaching model. After we determine if we're focusing on tier one instruction, on project-based learning, whatever we are doing, we typically make three strands. One strand is for the administrator, and that's for them to learn more about this initiative or this instructional need and how to support it.

               Next, we have a strand for what we call BTs or beginning teachers, and that's more of a longer PD. But then we have a strand for a seasoned teacher where they might already know the tool and understand how to use it or that aspect of instruction, but this is just a workshop for a refresher or for helping them just with some planning time where they can sit and they can think about what they need to do, but in a structured setting.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

Okay. That makes sense because I've been in those PDs where you got such a spectrum of abilities or experience when it comes to teaching, and I like that you have it broken up into various categories so that you are meeting the individual needs. So it sounds like your instructional coaching is equitable as well. Good stuff.

Jorge Valenzuela:

It's got to be. Yeah, man, it's got to be. So I typically don't differentiate process, but the topics. Let's say if we're focusing on learning a visible thinking routine. So I'll use a visible thinking routine as a structure that everyone is learning in the workshop, because if they're in the same school, then they should be using similar strategies.

               But they might focus on some informational texts that might be dealing with something that they specifically need, whether it's an assessment tool, whether it's project-based learning, whether it's an equity initiative, whatever. So they'll have a article that focuses on what they want to learn about, but to structure it is the same for everyone.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

Okay. Okay. All right. So one of the things that you tagged me in on this article written, looks like it was published on February 18th, this year of 2022. I got to say this year. I got to make sure I ... Just in case someone's a year later listening to this. But A Simple Tool for Aligning Instruction and Assessment, I think this is really ... When I read it, I was excited and I was like, "I got to share this with folks." I'm like, "This is a must read."

               I'll leave a link in the show notes so folks can look at it as well. But I wanted to just start off by asking you, what was the premise behind creating this article that you put together?

Jorge Valenzuela:

Yeah. So there's a tool in there. It's a backward design and planning tool that's inspired by Understanding by Design by Jay McTighe and the late Dr. Grant Wiggins. I want to shout out Jay McTighe, he actually retweeted it-

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

Wow.

Jorge Valenzuela:

... and said that this is an excellent tool. So I'm really happy about that. But it was inspired by him. I learned it from an instructional designer named Gina Olavinaga I say almost eight years ago, back in 2014 or 2015. We were using it in our PBL workshops, but the tool is perfect for helping any educator, no matter where he or she is, align what their learning goals are with formative assessment, but also with instructional strategies.

               As I've gone into schools, part of the work I do in instructional coaching is to do learning walks. We should never design PD for any teacher if we don't have a teacher in the room when we're having a discussion about what we're going to do or if we're not really going into the classrooms and seeing what's happening. The classroom is the incubator for what's needed in any school and what's next in education.

               So instructional leaders, in order for us to have our finger on the pulse of what's needed in that school, we need to see what's happening. What I'm seeing is that, in a lot of cases, we have educators that might be a career switcher or they might have gotten a textbook and a lecture in their pre-service program. So they don't always understand what the conversation needs to be in their mini lesson, which would be the learning goal and then what that modeling looks like to unpack the nouns and the verbs, but then how the learning goal is really dictating how they're differentiating their strategies and what the kids are working on.

               So I just thought that that tool, since it helps a lot of the people in my workshops, I think it would help educators everywhere that may never meet me or be in the workshop.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

Okay. I like the point that you said, how can we help teachers with instructional practice if we never get a chance to observe them? One of the things that I've seen a lot of instructional teachers do and some districts offer is they still have a class to teach as well or they're co-teaching with a teacher, also, so that they can still have that practice in addition to the observation piece.

               Is that something that you've seen as well or something that you've tried to help your schools have? If, let's say, they do have instructional coaches at the district or at the school level, do you work with them as well on those type of topics?

Jorge Valenzuela:

Yeah. I've seen that a lot of instructional coaches, they still have to teach a class or two. A lot of the curriculum specialists though, I'm seeing that they don't. So I realized, I want to say about 10 years ago, very quickly when I was learning how to facilitate workshops for adults, I learned very quickly that teachers do not like it when the PD person is no longer in the classroom in some form or another.

               So I make sure that I still teach at ODU and that I'm still practicing and bring in that insight into the workshop with the teachers. And not only that, so I'll back up a little bit. In my instructional coaching model, we focus on methodologies for having a systematic approach to planning a curriculum and then how to facilitate it using evidence-based and high-yielding strategies.

               So for a school, we'll pick maybe five or six strategies, some evidence-based and some high-yielding, meaning that the effect size is more than 0.4. Sometimes they say, "Hey, Jorge, would you model that with our students?" So that gives me an opportunity. You'll actually see that on Twitter or on Instagram where you'll see me working with kids. The reason why is because how will I know what their pain points are if I'm not in there with them?

               One of the things I've seen now in the pandemic and as we're moving into having schools in person is that young people, a lot of them have apathy. A lot of them are bored or really forgot how to socialize. So that helps inform my practice. And then that helps me let them know, "Hey, if you want the buy-in from your folks, you still need to make some time for being in the classroom."

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

All right. So I got a question because you said a lot of our kids have apathy. I would say I've seen especially at the elementary level, all they get is worksheets. I love my son's school. However, he's in the third grade this year. I can tell you that if he misses a day of school or if he misses a couple days of school, when he comes back, he's coming back with worksheets after worksheets after worksheets and the worksheet daily stuff, and it's overwhelming.

               So not only is the apathy there, but it's overwhelming with the amount of makeup work, and it's just all worksheets. How do you help teachers get away from just worksheets only? Or maybe I should ask. I'm just assuming that you're not for worksheets only. But how do you help teachers, especially at the elementary level who that's kind of their go-to, what is your methodology to support them with going a little bit beyond the worksheets?

Jorge Valenzuela:

Well, I think that since I'm always modeling in our workshops and in our ideation sessions focusing on their pain points so that I can raise equity for them and provide them the information in the way that they need it in order to receive it. I encourage them, and I also incorporate strategies for them to learn more about their students so they can raise equity for them.

               For example, we do empathy maps, which focus on the strengths and assets and the interests of their learners in tandem with their academic SEL and their career needs. So when the educator sees that, they're like, "Okay, Sheldon's son, he loves music." So automatically, if we're using this information for making instructional decisions, then we already know that a worksheet's not going to work.

               So we build in the tools, scaffolds, and strategies that are going to capture the engagement of this specific learner or groups of learners.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

Well-

Jorge Valenzuela:

So that's a way to do it. And then I show them how to put that into a curriculum.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

I can hear my teachers saying, "Well, that's one student, but I got 30 kids in my classroom and not all 30 of them like music." So how do we-

Jorge Valenzuela:

Differentiate? Remember what I-

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

... differentiate without making them feel like they're making 20 lesson plans?

Jorge Valenzuela:

You keep the structure the same, but the content is differentiated for who's in the classroom. So let's say we're doing a project. Everyone is working on the same project. Let's say it's a passion project. So we're all going through a design process, call to action, public service announcement, YouTube video, whatever, but their topic is their topic. You see what I'm saying?

               It doesn't mean that we only take that into account, but what I'm saying is this, is that educators need to take into account who's in their class and then start designing lessons that support or better support who they're trying to reach. So you may not be able to do that immediately, but through doing things like circles or visible learning, where young people have to write down what they're thinking, reflect on it, and then have an open discussion, when this is done over time through strategies and not worksheets, then we get to learn them more.

               And then they can also learn where we are as teachers and where we can actually have conversations and be honest and be like, "Look, I'm still learning how to teach." I think that what needs to happen is this. Whatever is being learned in the classroom needs to really be a collaborative effort between young people and the adults. So that also means being honest of where we are in our curriculum design.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm glad you're bringing these things up because, like I said, I see it a lot. I've actually heard Zaretta Hammond talk about it as well, about worksheets only kind of thing, and so I wanted to know what your approach was as well. Now, let me ask you this question because, again, as we're thinking about assessment, but on your end as a coach, what is your methodology to coaching a teacher? Walk us through that process.

Jorge Valenzuela:

A teacher or a team of teachers?

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

Let's do both. So it's different, I guess. Maybe start us with if you have a small group, let's say, a department that you're going to work with. How would you approach that?

Jorge Valenzuela:

Yeah. So often when I'm tapped, they say, "Hey, we want to do project-based learning," or, "We want to do performance task or any other initiative that's happening." So I always say to them this. I'm like, "Look, whatever we are going to do, it's going to be collaborative. It's going to be outcomes-based, and it's going to focus on aligning what you're already doing to that new thing."

               I've seen that a lot of them really getting excited about being part of the process. So what a lot of coaches won't tell us is that there's a lot of pressure to start something new when the old hasn't been actualized yet. I was in a training by Morgan Vien, and she said, "We call that replacing an old system with a new system." So that doesn't really work.

               One of the things that I learned in the PhD program is how to create knowledge. You start with a problem statement. Where are we now? What's our current state, and what's our desired state? What is it that we are trying to achieve? So when I get a team and they want to boost critical thinking skills or literacy skills, but when we get into the classroom and see what's going on, they don't even have alignment between the learning goals and assessment.

               Then that's where I can step in and say, "Hey, I know you want this, but you need this first." Does that make sense what I'm saying?

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

Yeah, yeah.

Jorge Valenzuela:

So then after having a problem statement that really identifies what the instructional issue is, then we can go ahead and we can define what that issue is. A lot of times I'm seeing that it's really tier one instruction, that a lot of teams still haven't understood. So just starting with what the basics are, number one is having standards that are aligned to an evidence-based lesson or curriculum.

               So that can capture their local standards, their graduate profile, SEL skills, career skills, whatever you want. But there's got to be a focus on numeracy and on literacy. If your lesson or your curriculum isn't lifting that up for young people, then you're not really giving them a foundation into what they need in order for higher learning in other areas. So that's just your written curriculum. How do you facilitate that? Well, evidence-based and high-yielding strategies to really do that, and then a way to monitor student achievement, but also the impact of my teaching strategies.

               So once we have those things laid out of what we want to really accomplish, then we can focus on the desired outcomes. What does that look like? Teacher confidence, self-efficacy, student engagement, being inclusive, intellectually safe, where young people and even the teacher is not afraid to say what they don't know or what they need to learn and also not afraid to get feedback if what they're doing isn't right.

               So once we've established that, then I take that small team or sometimes it's a big team, like 20 people, and we do some learning walks. We go visit our classrooms of who we are trying to serve, and we make sure that we let them know we're coming, only one person in a room at a time. We don't put anyone's name on the notes. We focus on the instruction, and we don't stay for more than 10 minutes.

               And then once we do the learning walks, our third step is to have a data debrief and really celebrate our glows, but then talk about the grows and how do they align to our problem statement and to what we say that we want to see, our outcomes. And then once we have that, then we talk about, okay, how can we make this happen? What is the PD that we need? And also what are the barriers, strict pacing, lessening teacher workload, things like that?

               This is so important for really breaking down or decomposing a big problem into smaller pieces. And then we design the PD. Of course, me being the main thought leader, I'm thinking of what's needed based on my experiences, but we also have their input as well. And then we do milestones. There's no way to accomplish all of those things in one shot. And then we also make strands like how we said earlier, strands for seasoned teachers, for our BTs, and for our admin.

               And then lastly is the implementation. The implementation is where we work with teachers and we collect more data afterwards so that we know what the effect or the impact of our work, but also we're listening to what our teachers are saying so that I can structure future PD that's based on their advice. So it's not perfect, but it's a five-step strategy that I've been refining, improving upon in the past few years.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

What's the timeline on this as far as from start to finish?

Jorge Valenzuela:

Yeah. I typically do two, three years with a school or a district. Yeah. So that enables us to focus more on growing the staff and offering work or solutions that are sustained over time and that they can be improved. And then, of course, there is some turnover. So when we get new teachers, then we already have those PD strands already built out, and they're aligned to the stuff that we are doing.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

Now, when it comes to cultural responsiveness or sustaining or relevant, whichever one we want to go with these days, how is that embedded within your coaching?

Jorge Valenzuela:

Yeah. One of the things that I do is I start with question prompts that really have not a lot to do with instruction, but more to do with individual people like, "Tell me the story of your name and why was it given to you? Tell me if you had a month where you can live in another country or in the country of your origin, what is that and why would you go there?" Another thing, what's your favorite type of music, things like that, things that relate to individuals.

               In the beginning of my workshops, that's how I open up. As soon as folks are into it and they're excited, I ask them a very important question. Were these question prompts culturally relevant to who's in the classroom? When they say yes, then I say, "That's exactly how you do it with the kids." You do this at several intervals of your instruction. You don't necessarily have to have a lesson or a culturally responsive teaching lesson.

               What you want to do is be culturally relevant in how you teach, and that comes from your students. One thing that Zaretta Hammond says is that what we're trying to do in education or in the classroom, or should be doing, is we should be trying to engage a young person as a learning partner, but you can't do that without a relationship. The prerequisite to any relationship is empathy.

               So the best way is to ask them questions or the way I do it is to ask them questions and have question prompts built in throughout the entire instruction and instead of trying to add to what they say, just accept that statement. Empathize with that. That's something I learned recently from Morgan Vien, who is another instructional coach. And then I like to do the empathy mapping as well. I have them do empathy maps before we make instructional decisions.

               So when they're making instructional decisions based on the actual needs and interests and likes of their students, then that's another way of being more culturally relevant, hopefully, with the intent of one day having them or having students see themselves in that curriculum. I think that before we can be culturally proficient, we have to be competent. You can't really skip a step, especially if we are teaching young people that belong to a different culture, generation, background, things like that.

               So it's a process. It's an evolving process. I look for ways of integrating that into my coaching.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

I love that. Thank you for sharing that because that's a great starting point. I think it's a great starting point, especially if you're trying to introduce a group of individuals who love kids, who are maybe they're new to teaching or maybe the idea of the relationship between the content that you're presenting and how the kids will accept it or how you can work with the students in order to make these things happen.

               In my book and this is a shameless plug, but it's coming out soon. I'm excited, Leading Equity: Becoming an Advocate for All Students. I have a chapter where I talk about vulnerability and being vulnerable and having humility with your students. One of the things that I talk about is not only do we ask our students these type of questions, what kind of music, where would you live for 30 days and those kind of things, but also we share that with our kids as well.

               I think a lot of times we, and when I say we, not you and I, but a lot of times the expectation is because we're adults, because we're supposed to be leading the classrooms, we're expecting our kids to give so much. But then at the same time, we don't give them anything back. So I talk about participating in these type of activities, these surveys, these type of inventory type of assessments as well, and let our kids get to know who we are, also, because I think that's important when it comes to the relationship piece and the empathy piece.

               If I'm a student and I never actually know anything about my teacher, I just call them Mr. or Ms. Whatever, that's as far as I know. Maybe I know they might have a child or they might be married, but that's surface level stuff. I don't know anything beyond that. So I like it when not only do our students do those inventories, but we also have ourselves participate as well.

Jorge Valenzuela:

Yeah. That's a really great point. I think we have to know ourselves. There are some people that are very charismatic and people just love to hear them talk. I don't consider myself a person like that. I did this this morning actually and yesterday and the day before is what I do is when I have the question prompt, "Tell me the story of your name," what I do is I briefly model that. So, yes, my name is Jorge with a J. The reason why is this. My dad, he's from Texas. His name is Jorge, or it was, rest in peace, with a G.

               He met my mom in the military when he was stationed in South America. Long story short, my mom had me in New York, and she wanted to name me after my dad, but she didn't know how to spell it in English. So she spelled it with a J but always called me Jorge. By modeling that, I'm sharing a little bit about myself. That's not looking pretentious or attention-seeking, but is just enough to model so that they can do it themselves.

               If you do a little bit of this every day in a culturally relevant way, but also aligned to what your learning goals are as much as possible, then you're building a community where, hopefully, no one feels marginalized because of who they are or their cultural identities and things like that. I think that what I'm seeing right now is that a lot of educators are tired of the buzzwords, are tired of having content being shoved down their throat. They want to see SEL in action-

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

And its-

Jorge Valenzuela:

 ... and all its counterparts in a culturally responsive teaching, things like that, and equity. So that's just how I do it. It's crazy. In fact, we had met in Illinois. But I was in Texas and I was a featured speaker at TCEA, and they asked me to do three sessions. One of the sessions was 90 minutes. So I was like, "There's no way that I can talk to all these people for 90 minutes and that be engaging. I just don't have that skillset."

               So I started out with the question prompts using a wheel. One of the teachers said, "Yes, SEL in action," which is the name of my guide and of my podcast. So that taught me, because I'm learning, too, that very small things that we're focusing on getting to know each other, build community, help us learn more about each other, which helps inform our next steps. So a lot of times, I might be given an hour keynote maybe. Anything over an hour, it's got to be interactive.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

Yeah. Yeah. I feel you on that.

Jorge Valenzuela:

It's got to be interactive. But I have 150 slides, but I'm going off who's in front of me, and they're seeing because my screen is being displayed on on the big screen. They're seeing me skip stuff and jump to other things, and they're like, "Wow, it's not scripted." I'm like, "No, it's not scripted because although the admin and I already had a discussion in the intake call, your needs is really what's most important, which should be the same thing in our classrooms."

               Also, I use words like that, not my, not I, ours, we. Those are little things that help educators feel and know that what we're doing is really for them and with them instead of to them.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

Bro, you're blowing my mind right now, and I love this.

Jorge Valenzuela:

You blow my mind, dog. You blow my mind. No, that's what I loved about you, man. Honestly, so I wasn't even known until the pandemic, and that's because I was an instructional coach, not a featured speaker. Those things aren't recorded, so people don't know who we are unless if they read the blog or the book or whatever. But when I went as a featured speaker into all these new conferences, I didn't know any of my contemporaries. I didn't know you. I knew of you, but I didn't know you.

               Just the fact that you came to my workshop the first day, sat in the front row, do you know what type of love I felt? I was like, "Dang, that's Sheldon Eakins." I was like, "Wow. Man, let me give that love back." So we had dinner and all that. Big shout out to [inaudible 00:35:49]. If we don't do that, she'll be mad at me. So I want to show her love. She's one of my favorite people as well.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

She's awesome.

Jorge Valenzuela:

But yeah. After that, man, you texted me and you were like, "Yo, I'm just checking in to see how you're doing." But that's what I'm saying, man. So however you feel, just know it's mutual.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

That means a lot. Anytime I go to a conference, I like to go to sessions. I know some people go to conferences and they kind of do the network thing. I like to learn, too. So I'll go to sessions. I saw your name. Again, we hadn't formally met, but I knew who you were. So I was like, "Oh, I can see what my man, Jorge, is talking about." So yeah, I went in there and with the expectation to be able to meet and say, "Hey, I'm Sheldon," and go from there and see what it was.

               But yeah, I enjoyed your session, the SEL. You had the wheel going. You had different ways of how to cope, as some strategies for us. I really like that type of stuff because, again, I've gone through a lot of things over the last couple years. I've had a lot of challenges. So I've really been focused more on the mental health side. I was a big person that was against self-help books and like, "Oh, no, not for me. That's not my kind of thing. Those are for losers." I'm not going to lie. I'm going to be honest.

               I thought that self-help books were for people that had problems. I really started to look at, okay, let me just read one. You kind of get a little itch. So I said, "Let me check one out." After that, it was just kind of like, "Dude, this is like your own personal mentor." Just a lot of the questions, thoughts I had, I didn't really know who to ask, and it was right there in the book.

               I listen to podcast shows now, and I read a lot of books and a lot of YouTube channels that I subscribe to that help me out on the personal side because I want to know not only how to be a better professional and educator, but how to be a better person, how to be a better human being. So I'm just grateful for our relationship as well.

Jorge Valenzuela:

Oh yeah. Me too, brother. I had a major loss back in 2011 and so that was the first time that I ever had to focus on healing emotional trauma. So that's where I learned about emotional intelligence, and I leaned a lot on the work of Eckhart Tolle. Well, he has a couple of books, Power of Now and A New Earth. So I did a lot of work on myself. Like you, well, no, I can't say that I thought it was for losers or stuff like that because I went through it. But I felt that it had to be a personal thing.

               That's until about a month and a half ago. I met Alcine Mumby of Envision Learning, which you know Alcine. In our workshop, she talked a lot about healing as a community in affinity groups. At first, I was very resistant because I'm like, "Yo, I already talked that out with somebody else. I don't really want to share that, and I don't necessarily want to hear another person sharing theirs."

               So when I had something re-trigger an old emotion, then everything Alcine said and her methodology with the affinity groups taught me there's a power, and the way to build a community is through healing together because there is generational trauma. There is trauma that are race experiences or that are gender experiences, which I didn't really realize that. And then me, as a male, I've also had to learn, and Alcine helped me realize this, is words or your intent may not always match your impact.

               So I think you saw on social media, I was in DC. I think I might have to build my own community, which I think you and I came together, but I'm also seeking out other opportunities where I can just hear the stories and the frameworks and tools that other people are using that look like me or look something like me or that have a similar background as mine so that I can continue having this conversation going.

               Because it not only helps me as a professional to not commit harm, but also as a father and as a husband, which I think that these are conversations that males from our background, I'll say Black and Latino, don't typically have because that's not how we were raised to have. But they're very necessary in the evolution of where we want to go as a people and as educators.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

Yes. Jorge, you and I could talk all day long. That's one of the things I appreciate. I appreciate that we stay in contact. I definitely consider you as providing a voice and leading equity. What is one final word of advice that you can provide to our listeners?

Jorge Valenzuela:

Yes. I think to always be honest with yourself, even about what you don't know and just be kind to yourself. If you're not where you want to be or you're not responding emotionally or in ways that are really consistent with what you're saying, don't be hard on yourself, but work on yourself. Seek out the right people. Seek out a coach. Seek out a community that is already actively working on where you want to be.

               Once you know better, do better. Dr. Maya, Angelou said that. That's basically it. Do things in love and just realize that love, it goes up and down. It fluctuates, but it's also a verb. It's something that we do even when we lost that feeling.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

That's what's up. If we got some folks that want to reach out and connect, what's the best way?

Jorge Valenzuela:

At Jorge Does PBL, that's my handle on all platforms, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, even TikTok. I still don't know what to do with that. But yeah, it's on there.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

I got a TikTok, too. I got one. I think my son is my only follower. But yeah. I hear you.

Jorge Valenzuela:

Jorge is spelled J-O-R-G-E. And yeah. On lifelonglearningdefined.com, that's my website. I hope to see you soon.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

And you have books as well. Why don't you shout out some of your books?

Jorge Valenzuela:

Yeah. So Rev Up Robotics is my STEM book. SEL in Action is my SEL guide. It's through ISTE, and it's the precursor to my upcoming book through Solution Tree. I have a PBL in environmental science book through ISTE with the fabulous James Fester. What else do I have? In the pipeline through Corwin, I have a PBL and SEL book that it's already under contract, already done. I just have to write it.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

I heard that. I heard that. Okay, well, get on that. Make sure you get on that because your publishers be on you for them deadlines. So make sure you get that stuff up in, man.

Jorge Valenzuela:

Of course, of course, of course, of course.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

All right. Well, it's always a pleasure, Jorge. Thank you so much for your time.

Jorge Valenzuela:

My pleasure.

Dr. Sheldon L. Eakins:

This episode was brought to you by the Leading Equity Center. For more podcast interviews and resources, head on over to leadingequitycenter.com.

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