85 epizodas: Istorija su instruktoriumi ir mokytoju Bobby Dayley

18 balandžio, 2025 /
Spenceris Tuinei /

Sup su "Sup

00:00 / 25:29

Wendy Dau: Welcome everyone to the next episode of Provo City School District’s what’s up with the Sup podcast. I am superintendent Wendy Dau. This week I am joined by Provo High Instructional Coach and History Teacher Bobby Dayley. I visited his history class recently and wanted to bring him in on the podcast for a follow-up conversation. His class was focusing on a specific instructional strategy that students use in AVID classes where students are using primary source documents, and they were discussing the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But first, let me give you our updates.

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Wendy Dau: Welcome everyone. Today I am with Bobby Dayley, who is a teacher at Provo High School, as well as an Instructional Coach. Welcome to the podcast.

Bobby Dayley: Oh, thank you for having me.

Wendy Dau: So let’s get to know you just a little bit. How long have you taught at Provo High School?

Bobby Dayley: So, I have been at Provo High School for, this will be my fourth year, and then I was a student teacher at Dixon Middle.

So oh, been five years in the district.

Wendy Dau: That’s awesome. You still teach one class even though you are an Instructional Coach, and tell us a little bit about that class.

Bobby Dayley: So I teach an East Asian history class, an elective class that I got approved for this school year. And when I got the instructional coach job, I was like, can I teach–

Wendy Dau: still teach my class?

Bobby Dayley: Like no one else is gonna want to teach this other than me. So it’s a class that I petitioned for and got and was able to teach this year. So I’m super excited about that.

Wendy Dau: So what draws you to East Asian history?

Bobby Dayley: So I served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in South Korea.

As an 18-year-old boy, like there, I kind of fell in love with the culture and the place and my studies at college. I got a minor in Asian studies.

Wendy Dau: I didn’t know that. That’s awesome.

Bobby Dayley: That’s one of those resume things that’s probably at the bottom somewhere.

As I was teaching in my social studies career, I was like, oh, maybe someday down the road I’ll meld it with a East Asian side and have the opportunity to do that.

Wendy Dau: And it was clear that the students, this is something they’re very interested in, like they chose this class. This is not a required class.

I wanna have this class from Mr. Dayley and I wanna learn about this.

Bobby Dayley: Well, and it’s, I have the best students. They make all the magic happen.

Wendy Dau: So tell us a little bit about how you structured the class. because I thought it was a really great lesson that you did where you were trying to get kids to use primary source documents, to cite sources, to cite evidence.

And they were even like– kind of evaluating the credibility of sources and different pieces, but just talk a little bit about how you structured that and what your thinking was behind that, because that took a lot of planning on your part to prepare for a lesson such as this.

Bobby Dayley: I think this lesson started when we were working a college history class and compiled some of these atomic bomb documents together. Just a reference for those that didn’t know was dropping the atomic bomb necessary? Was it necessary based off of the evidence from the time– did the United States needed to do to end World War II?

So some of the process of that was kind of compiling those documents. And East Asian History class is my second time. because it was new semester. Last semester I kind of gave them the documents and let them kind of make their own decision and we moved on. This semester I’ve been really trying to focus on helping kids develop, reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills.

because they’re not all gonna be history teachers when they grow up. But they’re gonna, all gonna need communication skills and so, building off of those goals. I took these documents and tried to scaffold it in a way to help students be able to read the documents, understand what they’re actually saying, and then be able to use that in an argument for the seminar that we that participate in.

So that was kind of the idea of building that lesson is kind of help everyone keep stepping up until they’re ready to talk about the documents and the answer to the question.

Wendy Dau: So they did that ahead of time?

Bobby Dayley: Mm-hmm.

Wendy Dau: Okay. So because it was clear that they had, I mean, I saw tons of notes on they had annotated, they were ready to roll when they came into class.

Bobby Dayley: I think I’d introduced the documents the Monday before. We had time on Wednesday and Friday to analyze the documents with, some of it was, I mean, in. Education. We talked about the I do. We do. You do. And so we did a lot of, I do, We do on Monday and Wednesday. I was gone on the Friday, and so they got to kind of continue to practice those skills that we practiced in class on the Friday and put it all together on the Friday in preparation for Tuesday.

Wendy Dau: That’s great. What were some of the questions that you asked them? Because I thought these were really great and we got lots of different discussions that came as a result of it.

Bobby Dayley: I gotta be honest here. because a lot of those questions, I had a lot of AI support there too,

Wendy Dau: I wanna talk about that more in just a minute too.

Bobby Dayley: We started with a question based off of historical context saying how necessary was it for the United States to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II based on the reasons given at the time.

So having students really look at the information that was available to the world leaders in 1945 and not just. Reacting retrospectively to, oh, this is what happened, and this is what we knew, or this is what we came to know, but thinking about, okay, 1945 in their shoes, what did they know? Was this the way that they felt like they needed to go and was it necessary?

And the structure of the seminar was to give them a choice in answering. So each of these four questions they could answer. Absolutely unnecessary, unnecessary, necessary, or absolutely necessary. And I like the distinction between the necessary and absolutely necessary. because it gives a little bit of like wiggle room for the students to kind of really reason out what they’re trying to say.

It’s like, oh, I think it was absolutely necessary. Versus like– I think it was necessary, but I don’t know. There’s some things that I have questions about. I like the answers that they could do there. There are questions about was it the atomic bomb necessary considering alternative strategies that could have been used?

Yeah. How necessary is it for ethical considerations to be considered in a war, especially against a powerful enemy? How necessary was it to target cities of large civilian populations rather than some random remote area? Then we talked about questions with long-term consequences, and the last question that we ended on was if you were in this position in 1945, what would you have done?

How necessary would you have seen the atomic bombs?

Wendy Dau: I thought it was really good that you help students distinguish between making that decision in 1945 versus. Using our 21st century judgment to look back. because even if you’re trying to make that decision in 1955 or 1960, knowing what we did about the Cold War Soviet aggression, those pieces, that’s a different conversation right than 1945 when we have suspicions of things that are happening, but not, we don’t know exactly how this is gonna pan out.

And just recognizing how difficult it is for leaders. To make these decisions.

Bobby Dayley: And it’s not like, not trying to say, oh, you have to agree with the decisions that were made. But just having a little more empathy of like, oh, this was a tough situation to probably be in. And I can understand why someone would make the decision they did, even if I don’t agree with the decision.

Wendy Dau: That’s right. And how there were so many really educated, really experienced people that were giving different responses to this– to this situation. Right? So that adds to it as well. Tell me a little bit about just how, because you did such a good job of engaging every kid, so how do you structure that so that your kids want to be part of it. But also just how are you building that atmosphere in your classroom? Because they felt very safe to share their opinions and could talk through things, and it was clear that they didn’t feel like they were going to be judged. There was just a level of respect and civility, and it was a really great feeling.

So talk a little bit about how you build that as a teacher.

Bobby Dayley: Well, again, I think it’s a shout out to the students there, group of students we had able to participate, bought into the process, and sometimes they look at me like, Mr. Dayley, we know how to do this. And they roll their eyes, like how are we still looking at it?

I say, because we keep discovering more information. We keep getting more out of it. So really it’s to them that they have bought into the process of, okay, if we slow down our thinking, eventually we’re gonna be able to think faster and be able to communicate more effectively. So I think partially it’s to them and like their hard work.

But I also think just making sure that the ground rules of like having an open discussion, obviously, like it’s kind of scary to have, have an open mic night in the classroom. I think having clear ground rules, like, okay, this is what respect looks like, this is what your expectations are and the participation. And also giving the the kids an opportunity to having written– and having kind of formulate their own thoughts before sharing them. Gives them a bit more of a chance to make sure that they know what they’re thinking. Because I think, I mean, for me, I have to write things down in order to be able to process it and speak it, and for kids to be able to write things down as well. I think that’s important.

Wendy Dau: You did a lot of things in this lesson that were very purposeful and intentional that I wanna draw attention to. I hope teachers are listening to this because I was so impressed by so many things. So one of the pieces that you did is by separating them into these four corners, if you will.

Then you have them talk with each other. So they get to kind of make sure that their understanding of the documents is what– so now I’ve got a small group. I’ve got a small safer space, right? Then there’s one person that’s gonna kind of speak out and represent that group. So that can be, maybe you’re a little more extroverted individual from that group that’s going to do that.

But then as you break it down, they’ve all had an opportunity to discuss more and now they feel like, okay, I’ve kind of formulated my thoughts. So not only have they written some things down, they’ve had some time to really process the information and think about it. Now I’ve had some time to talk about it, and now I can share out in the whole class.

That’s a very intentional strategy that really requires a lot of planning on your part. I just wanted to commend you for that because I thought it was so well done.

Bobby Dayley: Well shout out to all the coaches that I’ve had and– all this year at Provo High, we’ve been doing these mini PDs, and one of the things that was taught by Karen Brown, Julie Hoffman, and Kristin Pierce, to me is like this Four Corners activity, which really caught the students thinking. So I mean, it’s really just awesome to see teachers collaborate together and bring all these different strategies and things that work to the table and–

Wendy Dau: It just makes it so much better.

Bobby Dayley: It just makes it better.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, it really does. They talk a lot about making sure that students spend time in classroom talking and processing, like writing and speaking. Right? And that was your whole class. Your students were speaking, like you said, very, very little. You were just guiding the conversation. You also had a timer so that you weren’t spending too much time on any one topic, and that really allowed students to have kind of an area that they could focus on.

Maybe there was a question they felt more comfortable with. You did a masterful job in all of that planning that took place, and there was a lot of very sophisticated student talk. Sometimes when students are talking in classrooms, they’re not talking at that level. That was, you know, they were finding evidence that was really exciting. So what has surprised you about teaching an elective history class like that? Because I think it’s almost liberating sometimes when you’re not teaching an AP class and worried about an AP test or a class that has an Aspire test or something like that. You can just tell they have a love of learning about this.

Bobby Dayley: I think teaching an elective class yet, like you said, is really liberating. because you don’t have the weight of, okay, my students need to perform at this level on each of these standards. So it’s liberating in that way, but it’s also a challenge because then it’s that, okay, what am I going to do in this elective class?

No, I’m not maybe held accountable by the state or by the district or by the school at different educational standards. What am I going to do to help hold myself accountable to make sure that these students are gonna walk outta my class not just more knowledgeable about what’s happening in East Asia, but having skills that build upon their other social studies classes or their other classes that they take at the schools? Because in the end we want kids to graduate these skills that they can go on into college and the workforce and be able to produce all these many great things for our society.

So what am I going to do to hold myself accountable to that? And that’s been really fun for me to kind of not have someone else to be accountable to, but be accountable to myself as an educator and say, this is what I’m going to do. And being able to meld that, like, I can be accountable, but I can kind of choose how I’m gonna be held accountable, and I’m just gonna be honest with myself there.

Wendy Dau: Well, and what you were focusing so much on was the reading and the writing and the listening and the speaking, right? Which are these communication skills that are gonna be so valuable, and so that’s gonna help them in like, whatever walks of life they end up in, that’s gonna be very valuable.

Tell me a little bit about the students. What grade levels are they in? Are they all across grade levels? Are they seniors?

Bobby Dayley: Mm-hmm. So I, we have a mix of ninth to 12th graders. That’s awesome. So it’s really fun to see the 12th graders were, a lot of those 12th graders were the first students I ever taught at Dixon.

Wendy Dau: Tai taip miela.

Bobby Dayley: So it’s kind of fun to see how they’ve progressed in their journey, but I love seeing how these 12th grade students and these 9th grade students are gonna be working together and bouncing ideas off of each other. Just something that they’re gonna use in the workforce wherever they work, is they’re gonna have to collaborate and not just say, oh, I’m a senior, you’re a freshman, so we don’t work together.

Wendy Dau: But I just love seeing that in my class.

What do you really want students to be able to get out of any high school class? Like what are you thinking as an educator, as an instructional coach, as– I know you eventually wanna be an administrator. What do you hope students are leaving high school with?

Wendy Dau: What are those most essential skills? It’s, we could probably have a whole podcast about that.

Bobby Dayley: I think as a social studies teacher and what I’ve been learning as an instructional coach is those communication skills are essential.

One of the things I did when I taught geography is I asked my students, why do you take a geography class? And they’re like, because it’s required for me to graduate. That’s a good reason. Do you wanna be a geography teacher? No. Why is geography required for you to graduate? I tried to help them buy into that.

I guess I’m kind of answering this in a roundabout way, but I think in the end, I think I want students to be able to have the communication skills necessary to communicate whether that’s, mathematically, scientifically, historically, like be able to communicate with other people in an educated manner to that they know, like, and they can be informed about what’s going on in society.

And I think that’s something that we’re working on in our school district. Helping kids be able to communicate when they become adults and be able to understand what’s going on around them in the world and how that affects them and how that affects their families and what they’re going to be able to do to respond to that and be able to act on what’s happening rather than just waiting to see what the results are.

Wendy Dau: I also think one of the things that I appreciated about watching your class was you watch students have very differing opinions and it didn’t get personal, like they kept it to, this is my opinion about this particular topic. It’s not my opinion about you as an individual.

I’ve watched some instances where you’ve ended up with debates and there’s hurt feelings. None of that happened here because of some protocols that you have clearly set up in your classroom. And I think that’s one of the things that’s so rewarding about being a social studies teacher is you’re helping kids see different perspectives and lived experiences and it’s okay that somebody doesn’t agree with you.

That’s the way the world works, and we can still get along and we can still be friends. It’s okay.

Bobby Dayley: So we can at least get along with each other and be like, well. Yeah, you think differently than me and if I can at least understand why you think the way you do I’ve got that step of understanding that will help me.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, I agree. Think about some of the students that you feel like in this class or maybe the class you taught last semester that made the greatest amount of growth. What did that look like? What did you see happen those students?

Bobby Dayley: There’s a couple students in particular, and maybe not, they’re not the most high performing students in their school or whatever. They may not think of themselves as the most high performing students.

But just seeing little pieces of growth from these students of like, when they notice something about one of, like, if we take one of the documents like, oh. That’s interesting that they said that. Or when I show pictures of some of these different hard historical events that happened in East Asian history that aren’t talked about, like, oh, that’s hard. And like I think one of the comments that was made of, we were talking about kamikaze pilots, and I showed some pictures of some of the the portraits of some of the kamikaze pilots. And one student made this comment like, they don’t look evil.

And what a really insightful comment that I was like, wow, like a lot of these people don’t look evil, but some of the things that we associate with them in the past, and obviously like if your son or your grandfather was killed by a kamikaze pilot, you would see a kamikaze pilot very differently. But at the same time though, they were people too. And I have a copy of a letter from a kamikaze pilot they wrote to his daughter before he went on his final mission.

And you read that and you’re like–

Wendy Dau: This is a dad.

Bobby Dayley: This is a dad. And he went and did this. And yeah, he probably heard a lot of Americans and if his mission was successful he probably hurt a lot of people, but he’s also a person and some daughter is missing her dad.

Wendy Dau: Yeah. People in events like this are really complex. Right? It helps students not see– I think it would help adults not to be so immediately judgmental that these situations are far more involved than we think they are. And people are far more complex than we think they are. It’s kind of interesting that way.

What has been one of the greatest things about being at Provo High? Because you keep referencing how awesome the students are, and I hear this all the time. So tell me a little bit more about that.

Bobby Dayley: The students over at Provo High are just so fun to be around. They’re excited to learn. I’ll go in the assemblies and I’ll just walk around in between the different classes as they’re competing with each other and we’ll dance or we’ll do something crazy. And it’s just really fun to see their energy and their passions for what they do have. I know school is hard for a lot of students. And I mean– me too. Like, school is hard for me too, and it’s almost spring break for us here now.

I just love seeing their passion for what they have and that, and their passion for caring for others too. Like there’s a lot of the students care about people, and that’s really fun to see, like, them involve other students that may be different than them.

Wendy Dau: I definitely saw that in your class too. It was very, it was very interesting.

Tell us about the opportunity you had for students to use AI to interact with the documents that might be a little more shy about participating openly in a class. Because I thought this was freaking genius. I was like, oh my goodness, this is amazing. So tell us a little bit about that.

Bobby Dayley: Yeah, I mean, I know this isn’t like a whole district sponsored thing here, but if it’s going the way I think it’s gonna go, I think we’re gonna get there someday. Yeah. But the program I was using as a School AI– I know many other AI spaces do this too, but can manipulate the AI to kind of do what you want it to do.

If we’re talking about communication skills in a classroom, whether we like it or not, AI is gonna be a part of society, I think, for a while. And learning how to communicate with AI is gonna be an essential skill for us to be more informed and for us to learn from these things.

So, essentially what I did is I gave the AI the documents and gave the AI some instructions of, Hey, the students are supposed to participate in a Socratic seminar. I want you to ask these types of questions and have the students answer these questions based off of the documents I’ve given you. And you basically walk them through the Socratic seminar and the students can do that on their own on the computer.

Maybe they are a little bit shyer or maybe they missed class that day. I know our baseball team had a game out in Vernal and I mean, that’s a–

Wendy Dau: Yeah, they’re not gonna be there.

Bobby Dayley: They’re not gonna be there. And I’d love the AI can do this is that it can provide space for the students to have a legitimate conversation.

Though it may not be the same experience as it was in my classroom, but they can actually engage and show me the thinking and that they are progressing in those communications skills like I want in my class.

Wendy Dau: Yeah. I just thought it was a phenomenal idea to mitigate a lot of different things to provide that.

Bobby Dayley: It’s very experimental right now, so I don’t know exactly how it’s gonna work.

Wendy Dau: I just thought it was very creative and appreciated that sense of where you’re trying to meet the needs of your students, because that’s a lot of work too.

Bobby Dayley: It’s fun to kind of think of those different ways too, and like, if we’re trying to help kids communicate, it’s not just with people, it’s with technology as well.

Wendy Dau: Lessons like this where kids are really engaged– sometimes I hear from teachers and I think I felt this way sometimes as a teacher as well, it takes more time on the front end to prepare for those kinds of lessons. Right? So, what are the rewards that come from having a lesson that’s more like this? Hard to do a lesson like this every single time for every single class period. That’s a little intense, right?

Bobby Dayley: Mm-hmm.

Wendy Dau: And that’s not the expectation, but what are the benefits that come from putting together something like this that creates this experience for the students?

Bobby Dayley: I think it was Nicole Marriott over at Shoreline. I heard her say to me once when I was in my student teaching year, and she said, those who do the work do the learning. And I was like. Hey, you’re right. So if I’m up there performing, I can, I mean, I don’t mind performing and giving my lectures every now and like, that’s what I do often in that class to get the information out– I’m the one doing the work.

Wendy Dau: Teisingai.

Bobby Dayley: So, what’s really cool about doing a lesson like this is I got to shift that load where my work was done on the front end, and then the students were able to display what they had learned. And yeah, it’s hard, and that’s not going to be the structure of every one of my classes.

Wendy Dau: No. Because that’s so a lot.

Bobby Dayley: That’s that’s a lot. And that’s a lot for the students. And I think at one point or another it’d be like, all right, we’re done with this. Right?

Wendy Dau: Right. Yeah, I think you’re right.

Bobby Dayley: I think we got the point, like, so being creative in the way you assess kids, I think is really important. Because if you’re trying to assess different things, I think you wanna have the different ways to do it.

Wendy Dau: Just gives that variety, right? Also allows them to think about things from a different perspective in a different lens. But then I hope teachers see how rewarding that can be.

You just watched so many kids because you let them move? They could start with an opinion, and then as they heard different arguments, they could move to a different opinion. That also gives students the flexibility to say, oh, my original thinking in this wasn’t quite right. I wanna change that, and it’s okay.

Like that’s a really powerful message to send to kids to.

Bobby Dayley: There wasn’t as much movement, but there was some movement amongst the kids as they set their, they’re like, oh. That was a good point. I actually kind of agree with that. I’m gonna move over to this area and ask each one of those kids, Hey, why did you move?

That would be a powerful thing to do. But with the way our conversation was going, it was the way we wanted to– we didn’t ask those questions.

Wendy Dau: Yeah. Well, I thought it was fantastic. It was really fun to be in your class and just wanted to highlight this bright spot that I saw at Provo High School yesterday.

Bobby Dayley: Well, thank you for coming by. Yeah, it was fun to have you. And I told them before they came. Got the superintendent coming, you better be on your best behavior.

Wendy Dau: They were. They did awesome.

Bobby Dayley: And they’re like, whoa, okay, Mr. Dayley.

Wendy Dau: I love it. They step up when they need to. For sure.

Well, thank you so much for inviting me and it was really fun, and thanks for talking with us about the class.

Bobby Dayley: Thank you for having me on.

Wendy Dau: Thank you everyone for joining me for this week’s episode of What’s Up With the Sup. As always, all episodes will be posted on the district website, YouTube, and anywhere you get your podcasts. If you have any topics or questions you would like us to discuss on the podcast, please email us at podcast@provo.edu.

And don’t forget to join us again next week for another new episode of What’s Up With the Sup. Have a great weekend everyone.