Dr. Katy Smullen: Transforming Mistakes into Growth

Lower School leader Dr. Katy Smullen joins host Mark Riffee to unpack how Bullis students transform mistakes into growth. They dig into Responsive Classroom routines that create psychological safety, how inquiry-based learning invites try–fail–try-again cycles, and the language teachers use in the moment—plus how Bullis partners with families so the “why” is clear at home. A practical, heart-forward look at rigor and joy in early learning.

Bullis Voices is produced by the Bullis Office of Communications in Potomac, Maryland.

Questions or ideas for future episodes? Email communications@bullis.org.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Bullis Podcast, where we take a look behind the scenes at what actually happens in our classrooms and why it matters. I'm your host, Mark Riffey, Director of Communications at Bullis. And in each episode, we're going to highlight one program, one practice, or one person that helps BOLIS live out its mission to inspire students to be joyful lifelong learners, caring global citizens, and scholars who embrace challenge. Today, I'm joined by someone who sits right at the heart of that work in the lower school, Dr. Katie Smollin, Assistant Head of Lower School for Academics. Dr. Smollin spends her days thinking about what great learning looks like for young children, how we build classrooms where students feel safe, curious, and willing to take risks. And that leads us to today's topic: how we transform mistakes into growth. We're going to talk about what happens at bolus when a student gets something wrong, academically or socially, how teachers respond in the moment, how our responsive classroom approach supports that, how inquiry-based learning actually invites kids to try and fail and try again, and how we bring parents along so they understand the why behind it. Dr. Smolin, thank you so much for being here and for helping us pull back the curtain a little bit on lower school learning.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for today.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Well, we're excited to have you as our inaugural guest. Could you start just by giving us a little bit of background about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Yeah, so I have been in education over 15 years. Um, I started off as a middle school teacher and coach and moved my way down into elementary school. And I feel like that is where I have found my place with the youngest learners. And I feel it's a big part of raising these children. Like I don't have children of my own, but I have been raising hundreds of lower school children for years now. And it is a privilege of a lifetime to help them learn and grow in their like life process.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

So you obviously have a lot of experience helping kids transform mistakes into growth. What does that mean in a lower school context?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

I think recognizing that kids are going to make mistakes. We know in brain science that our full frontal cortex is not developed until we're like 27 years old. And that is just so evident and true in everything that students are doing. Making mistakes is like a core curriculum of childhood. It is how we identify and solve problems and learn how to be a human in the society that we're in. And so we focus on when you make a choice that maybe is not the greatest, you're not a bad person. Like that's just the moment. How do we learn from it? How do we grow from it? How do we identify, like, why do we maybe make that choice? Or we also identify, okay, we made this choice. It wasn't the right one. Next time, what could we do differently? And the same thing goes with our academic learning. Sometimes you choose an answer and it's wrong. And that's okay because you actually learn so much more from your wrong answer than you do from your right answer. Um, you know, just thinking about science, like that's how we got penicillin, right? Is through mistakes. So we really encourage our students to make mistakes. And I think there's a lot of conversation about failure. Like we want kids to fail. I wouldn't say that's true. We don't want kids to fail, but we want them to have resilience when they fail. And we want them to have that desire to pursue growth rather than perfection. We don't want them to aim for the 100%. We want them to aim for being better than they were the day before.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Makes sense. So I'm thinking about how that seems to play in really clearly with inquiry-based learning because there has to be a lot of trial and error in inquiry-based learning, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Yeah. And it's a lot of it is about curiosity. It's like, what do you think? And I think a part of inquiry-based learning is helping our teachers to shift their pedagogy from giving students the answers to keep asking them more questions. And so you start with a question and then the students come up with answers. And then you ask them, well, why do you think that? What do you think is going to happen next? And then they keep coming up with different answers and they start going down their own curious path. There is many different types of inquiry. You know, there's free inquiry, but I would say in the lower school, we definitely still have to have guided inquiry because we're still really young. We're not quite sure where we want to be curious and we want to guide them through their learning. But I think the greatest thing that a teacher or even a parent can do is answering a question with a question, especially when it's a question that has a longer answer or just an answer that you know your child could get to. And so if you keep asking them questions, that helps them solve it for themselves.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Why is it so important for kids to learn this as lower schoolers, not upper schoolers, not middle schoolers, but but learning as lower schoolers how to turn mistakes into growth?

SPEAKER_00 5:17

At this age, they're sponges and their brains are developing at such a fast rate. And the sooner we get them to understand that when we make mistakes, we're growing, the sooner they'll be able to continue to develop that grit and perseverance. And in lower school, the stakes are kind of low. I mean, yes, we want our students to learn. We want them to be successful. But when you get to like middle school and high school, we're talking about SATs, we're talking about GPAs and starting to get into college. And so the stakes are a lot higher. Also, when you're older, the social mistakes that you make are a lot more serious and a lot higher. In lower school, our social mistakes can have big consequences, but not as big as when you're older. So the sooner we help them learn through those mistakes and grow and learn how to make better choices, the better off they're going to be in life.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Can you talk about how responsive classroom plays into that and maybe kind of define responsive classroom for us?

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Yeah. So responsive classroom is a really, really wonderful approach to ensuring that we're building a really strong community in our lower school. So our students feel safe, they feel valued, they feel seen. And every part of our lower school has very predictable language, communication, rules, routines, expectations so that the students can feel that predictability. So when they go from their homeroom to art class or to movement class, they know that the expectations are the same. My favorite part of responsive classroom is logical consequences. You break it, you fix it. It goes for things like you break your computer, okay, let's figure out a way we can fix it. You break your friendship, we figure out a way that we can fix it. And it goes for everything and everything you do in life. And it also applies to grownups too. I sometimes feel myself like as an adult talking to my friends like I would talk to a kindergartner. And I'm like, oh, well, it applied here as well. And so, like, we still, as adults, have opportunities to learn and grow and to model that learning and growth because we're not perfect either.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Could you talk about how teachers are trained in responsive classroom and and what that kind of looks like day to day?

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Yeah. So it's really wonderful. We did a four-day training with all of our lower school teachers. And then we also have a couple of teachers who, Irene Roshette and Kara Bloom, are trained in the next level. And so they're kind of our leaders in responsive classroom and they observe the teachers and give them extra support in some of the strategies. I think one thing is every single classroom starts their day with the morning meeting. And the morning meeting is all about building community and making social and academic risks, like playing games, sharing their feelings, sharing their thoughts, but also really starting to get the students to come to school to be enthusiastically like ready to participate. We also have teacher language. So there's three different forms of teacher language. We have the reinforcing language, and it's where teachers are saying, I notice, you know, that Mark is doing X, Y, Z, and it's it's reinforcing the positive behaviors, reinforcing the following directions. And then sometimes we have to remind we might say something like, remember, like we need to double check our work, or we need to make sure we're following our bullisbees. And then there's the redirecting language, which sometimes this just has to be short and quick. We hope that our teachers are constantly living in like the reinforcing language, constantly noticing the positive things our students are doing and reinforcing that with their peers. Like we're noticing, like so-and-so is following those directions. They're they're following the expectations. And then like sometimes you have to redirect. And a lot of the redirectings is just when something's unsafe or something's unkind and it has to be done. All of our teachers also support the students with logical consequences and collaborative problem solving. So when students make a mistake, we we solve that problem with them collaboratively. We ask them questions, we ask them to be involved in the repair, not just you made a mistake, here's what you're gonna do about it. It's what was the mistake? What can we learn from it? How can we repair this relationship? How can we repair the computer or the pencil or whatever might have broken? And the more we get students involved in that and we think about the growth in making mistakes, the better they're going to be in solving that on their own. Because sometimes there aren't grown-ups around and they have to identify how they can solve problems when there's not a grown-up to fix it for them.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

What would you say to a parent of a student who maybe keeps making similar mistakes or or just isn't demonstrating the growth that they would like to see?

SPEAKER_00 10:13

I think first and foremost is we have to also recognize the developmental stages of children. Um Responsive Classroom also has this wonderful book called Yardsticks, and it kind of breaks down the ages. So it's like two to three, four to five. And there are very specific developmental growth and challenges that students have at every age. And sometimes it's hard for us as grown-ups to remember what it was like being nine, but being nine is really hard. And when you go back and you read through and and you're like, oh yeah, that's right. This is where this developmental shift is happening, we have to first look there and be like, is this a part of just like their age and their developmental shift? And then also we just have to keep working with them and we need to use positive language. Of course, sometimes it gets frustrating. I I get it. But the more we can encourage and ask questions and really lead with curiosity in how we can get them to the point, the better off they're gonna be. Because often I think a question that grownups always ask kids is, well, why did you do that? They don't know why. And that's really important to understand is that they often cannot say why. And sometimes it's just an impulse. And that's developmentally appropriate. So we have to like go back and question and ask them questions, okay, what happened leading up to this? All right. So you were starting to get frustrated. And then because that frustration built up, you did what you did. Maybe it was like hit your sibling. Okay, what can we do next time to stop? The frustration's building. What do you do now? Maybe you walk away, you take a breath. And that helps them understand okay, not only what do I do in a situation when this happens again, but how do I recognize those signals in my body or my mind to stop myself in that moment? Because it's hard. It's really hard. And all kids are different. We all have different brain chemistries, and you know, we have students who have ADHD, dyslexia, like all those different elements or even things going on in their life outside of school, inside of school. It really depends on the kid in the situation. And we have to thoughtfully ask them questions and give them a lot of love and care in the moment because they know they made a mistake and they have a lot of remorse and regret. You can see it like when they know they made a mistake, especially when it comes to like a social mistake, like hitting somebody or saying something really unkind, they have remorse and they regret it. And so the best thing that we can do as an adult is like, I see that you feel upset about this. Now let's talk about how we got there and really lean in with that curiosity and asking questions first and foremost. It's hard to any parents listening, give yourself grace and patience because it's not easy.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

It seems like there's a big social emotional component to all of this. How is perseverance reinforced within the social emotional learning curriculum in the lower school?

SPEAKER_00 13:27

There's so many parts of social emotional learning that is constantly woven into our reading, writing, and arithmetic, if you will. So not only here at Bullis do we have a social emotional learning course taught by our lower school counselor, Liz Martin Each, um, where she really focuses on the CASEL standards, um, which is like our social emotional core competencies. Part of responsive classroom is really focusing in on like how do we build community. We know that in order for students to feel safe to take risks and safe to try things, they have to feel that they belong. And it's not just children, it's all humans. And so we really spend the time to build, especially the first six weeks of school, build that classroom community, build the opportunity for students to feel seen and heard and valued by their teachers, by their classmates. And then it's woven into our curriculum. Like in math, you know, students are constantly working together in different opportunities and trying challenges. We've been really doing a lot of Peter Liliadoll's building thinking classroom tasks, where the students work in groups and they really think about hard problems where they have to think strategically and work together and learn how to problem solve and cooperate, which can be hard when you have an idea, but someone else has a different idea. You try both and you see where you go with it. Or you try one. If you don't get what you need, try another strategy. So a lot of it is building that community so that they continue to feel like they can take risks academically.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

How do teachers and parents work together to help their kids develop grit?

SPEAKER_00 15:08

I think a lot of it in lower school, and something that we believe really strongly in with our reporting and report cards, is that we don't give letter grades or percentage grades in the lower school. We give our students they're meeting the expectations they're developing or they need support. And we really try to normalize students developing and needing support because not everybody is going to meet expectations, especially at the beginning of the year. Everybody should be learning and growing. And I think a huge shift that we're making this year, which we're really excited about, is we've changed, we have like personal skills. And some of the things were like students complete their homework or they share with others. And it was on a meets expectation developing or need support scale. We have changed those to actually go in conjunction with our language of a portrait of a graduate. For each section of a portrait of a graduator, we have two indicators. And for our students, it is now on a frequency scale. Like we sometimes see them doing this, we often see them doing this, or you know, we're rarely seeing them do that. And it gives them the opportunity to grow and learn, but also in the context of what we value as a school. And we say that our portrait of a graduate is something that we really value for our students to learn and grow. So we should be reporting on it. And I think the communication that our teachers have with parents is really reflective and really thoughtful and ensuring, like sometimes we have new parents that come to our school and they're like, wow, like you guys are emailing or calling us a lot and we're just not used to it. And it's like, well, because we're a partnership and we are a team to work together to help all children grow. And so, while some parents might, it might feel a big shift, maybe coming from a public school, because you'll hear from your teacher not just like their bi-weekly newsletter, but also, you know, just a check-in during the week or something happened at recess and they just send a note to let you know, hey, this is what happened. Here's how we worked through it. Because it's important that we keep that open dialogue and we keep that open communication so that we can partner together to help their child and all children grow and learn.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

I'm wondering how are you and Miss Bransteadter and the lower school team thinking about the portrait of a graduate and how it relates to developing perseverance in students?

SPEAKER_00 17:27

This is actually something I'm very passionate about. I love the portrait of a graduate. I think it goes hand in hand with our mission. We use very similar language. And if we are going to say that this is an important value of our school, and we say that our students are joyful lifelong learners and they can dive deep into academic, artistic, and athletic endeavors, which stimulate individual and collective growth, that's really hard for a kindergartner to understand. So we broke it down into like performance indicators of like showing curiosity, practicing new skills. And so when you talk to a kindergartner, you might say, Can you ask questions and find answers in different ways? Can you practice new things? And so the more we use that student-friendly language that ties to our portrait of a graduate, it helps build them up for success to continue that common language. So, as a leadership perspective, what Jenta and I have been really trying to do, and we've we've been working on it the past two years with our teams, is breaking it down into what does this look like for a kindergartner? What does this look like for a fifth grader? And then everybody in between, and how do we constantly communicate that language to our students? One of my favorites is scholars who embrace challenge. And that's a big part of like the turning mistakes into growth. Because we want our students to be able to identify new ways to solve problems and also try hard when things are hard and don't give up. We want them to have that productive struggle because we know like that zone of proximal development where the challenge is just hard enough and your ability is just hard enough. And it's just right there in the middle. It's a sweet spot. We will always want to keep finding that for our kids, but sometimes it's hard to get to that zone because sometimes we give up. And sometimes when things are hard, we just stop. And so we really want to work through with our students to be able to persevere through that and recognize, okay, you didn't get the answer the first time, let's try a different strategy. It really works perfectly for math because math is one of those things that there is a final answer, but the way that you can get to that final answer is limitless. And so sometimes if you don't get the final answer the first time, let's try a different strategy. And so, really trying to live in that productive struggle. Um, Joe Bowler is one of my favorite math aficionados that she calls it the pit, the learning pit. It's like when you're just sitting there and you're like, man, I don't know what to do. Do. That is where you want to be because that's where you learn to dig out and you learn how to grow and identify different ways to get to the final answer. And that's also where you lean on your classmates. A big part of like building thing in classrooms is walking around and seeing what other people are doing. It's not copying, it's learning from others. And that's a big part of what we do in the lower school is like learn from your classmates and use their strengths to support maybe where you need support and vice versa. And so that's a big part of the responsible classroom and community building is ensuring that you feel comfortable asking not only your teacher for help, but your classmates too. Because everybody has different things that they bring to the table.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

How do teachers find that sweet spot of productive struggle for every student when they're working with a class of 16?

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Oh, yeah. I will say it's hard, but our teachers are really good at it. And it's all through differentiation and finding different ways to challenge students through the same task by giving hints and extensions. It's interesting. I will say, in my experience, like math, there are kids who just get math and they can memorize the multiplication table, they can just use the algorithms all day long. But then when it comes to like a problem to solve, they struggle. And students who maybe struggle with the algorithms and like the quick math, they thrive in solving problems because they're able to slow down because they've always had to slow down. And they think about, okay, this is what I need to do. And so when you put those two together, it's amazing because the student who knows how to solve the problem can share the ideas, well, this is what we need to do. And the person who knows how to do the algorithm can then support solving the algorithm. And then they put it together and they just put their two brains together. In ELA, that's something I will say, like as a person who has dyslexia and ADHD, reading is really hard, but it's also a superpower because I read slowly. So my comprehension is so good, but I will never read as fast, fluently, or accurately as anybody else. Whereas we have students who read really accurately and fluently, sometimes because they go so fast, their comprehension needs support. And so it's really like, where is your strength? And then where do we need to reinforce your weaknesses with your strengths and using that strength-based learning?

SPEAKER_01 22:39

So, what should we take away from all of this? How does everything that you've talked about inform the way that you approach your job as assistant head of lower school?

SPEAKER_00 22:50

As an assistant head of lower school, I'm like the vice principal, and Miss Brandsetter, who is our head of lower school, is the principal. And I and sometimes kids or parents think it's like this big disciplinary, like you're in trouble. And I think trying to like normalize that it's not necessarily being in trouble when you go to the principal's office. Sure, you made a mistake. But we do in the lower school, we do what's called a reflection form. And it's where students have to slow down and think about okay, what did I do? What could I do differently? And how am I going to make that change next time? And it's really about slowing down. The long game, right? Is going beyond elementary school. And it's really making sure that we are building students who can take risks intellectually because we want them to be successful in their life. And if you don't take risks, you don't get opportunities. Like when you play it safe, very little gets to happen. Um, and we want them to be able to maintain relationships through conflict because, as you and I know, as adults, you're gonna have conflict. You're going to have colleagues or other adults or even in college, like classmates that you don't agree with. But you still need to be able to maintain that relationship and figure out how you can work through that conflict, but also have respectful discourse. The more we give our students the opportunity to learn and grow through conflict and through making mistakes, the more successful they're going to be going forward in life. Um, because they're not always going to have grown-ups around to support them. And I think for any parent or any teacher, any adult, you're going to make mistakes too. And sometimes, like I would say as a teacher or even as an administrator, when I make a mistake, I name it to the kid. I say, you know what? I made a mistake here. Here's what I'm going to do differently next time. And them seeing you do it actually makes a bigger difference. We have to model that we're not perfect. We have to model that we make mistakes too. And we want them to know that, like, sometimes you might impulsively react in something, but you might just try it again. I need to slow down.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Well, Dr. Smollin, thank you so much. This was great.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

All right. Well, maybe you'll come back sometime.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

I'd be delighted to that's our show for this week.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Thanks so much for listening, and be sure to check back in for our next episode next week.