Oct. 1, 2025
081: From Compliance to Curiosity: Contemporary Curriculum Leadership with Michael Fisher and Dr. Steven Weber
Want a curriculum that students can’t wait to engage with? We sit down with authors Michael Fisher and Dr. Steven Weber to unpack a fresh, visual playbook for curriculum leadership that swaps compliance for curiosity and puts student agency, trust, and transfer at the center. Instead of dense theory, they created an illustrated, desk-ready handbook that leaders can use in five minutes to make better decisions on the same day.
We delve into what “contemporary” really means: understanding learners deeply, designing for the whole child, and fostering cultures where conversations matter more than binders. Michael and Steven share practical self-assessment tools that help teams identify their current state across vision, collaboration, data-informed decisions, and adaptability, then choose the next right move.
We explore leadership stances, ranging from the dreaded “snoopervisor” to the motivator who earns trust, provides purposeful feedback, and fosters capacity growth. Along the way, we tackle teaching current events without the landmines, scaffolding that lifts rather than limits, and the kind of personalized learning that actually prompts transfer.
If you’re a principal, coach, or teacher leader ready to move from static maps to living systems, this conversation offers clear language, actionable visuals, and guiding questions to bring your team along.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
00:00 - Meet the Authors and the Mission
03:00 - Why This Book, Why Now
06:30 - From Long Text to Visual Handbook
11:30 - Defining Contemporary Curriculum Leadership
16:00 - Agency, Transfer, and Personalized Learning
20:30 - Culture Over Products: Conversations First
24:00 - Favorite Hallmarks and Collaboration
28:30 - Written vs. Taught vs. Implemented Curriculum
32:00 - A Desk Reference for Quick Decisions
36:00 - Self‑Assessment: Vision, Data, Adaptability
41:30 - From Compliance to Growth after COVID
WEBVTT
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Welcome to SEL and EDU, the podcast where we explore how educators bring social emotional learning to life by sharing stories, strategies, and sparks of inspiration.
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I'm your host, Dr.
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Krista Lay, owner of Residence Education.
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Thank you for joining us.
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I'm Angela Kelly Rob, host of the Empowered Principal Podcast, a part of the Education Podcast Network just like the show you're listening to now.
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Shows on the network are individually owned, and opinions expressed may not reflect others.
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Find other education podcasts at edupodcastnetwork.com.
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Michael is the author of several books published by ASCD, Solution Tree, School Rubric, and Times 10 publications.
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Most recently, Contemporary Curriculum Design.
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For more information, visit the Digigodi Collaborative.
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Dr.
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Stephen Weber is a dedicated educator with over 25 years of leadership in various roles, including teacher, building administrator, district administrator, and adjunct professor.
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He has served as Associate Superintendent for Teaching and Learning, Executive Director for Curriculum and Instruction, and Director of Secondary Instruction.
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Additionally, we were served as a curriculum coordinator for social studies with both the Arkansas Department of Education and North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
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So welcome, Stephen and Michael, to SELEDU.
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How are you both doing tonight?
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Great, thank you.
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I'm excited to be able to talk about your book that you wrote because part of what Resonance Ed does is help educators with the written curriculum.
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And this whole book is focused on how the curriculum writers and leaders can really be moving into the contemporary times and rethinking the way that we write and think about how students are learning.
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So I'm curious, both of you being in very different areas with Steven from Arkansas and Michael in New York.
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Tell me how you met, first of all.
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We were both writing blogs for ASCD.
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They used to have a blogging platform, and Mike was an established author.
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I'd read a couple of his early books, and I started following his articles and he started following mine.
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He would comment on my articles.
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And back then, when you know somebody who's already an author comments on your articles, you think you're on to something.
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So that's how we first met.
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And then it eventually led to a face-to-face meeting.
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He drove to where I was living.
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We had a first meeting.
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We've been friends ever since, even though a lot of our conversations are by phone or virtual.
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And Steve, I don't want him to downplay his uh stuff in the past.
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He was so prolific.
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Uh, when I we started thinking about this project, we've always talked about writing together, and it seemed like a perfect marriage and a perfect time.
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It's actually been almost three years ago since we had our first conversation about it.
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Um it's taken a while to get here, but uh, what we created um was way different than what we proposed at the beginning.
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And it's just turned into something really cool.
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What motivated both of you to want to write this book now?
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Mike reached out to me and asked if I wanted to co-write.
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So he initiated the conversation.
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Like I said, after reading his books and things that he'd written over the years, I didn't have to think twice about writing.
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But the topics that we both shared in our own articles and previous writing were were similar.
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And we had a similar writing style, but he has different background than I do.
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So I've worked more in classrooms with teachers.
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He's a consultant, he works more in a regional area with teachers, and our work has really been with teachers.
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We're talking 25 years for each of us of working with classroom teachers in curriculum design or face-to-face working with teachers in a coaching instructional strategies role.
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So our experiences with teachers inspired us, not just our reading of previous curriculum theory books, but our experiences with teachers.
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We wanted to do something different that's not already out there that people aren't used to seeing.
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Some of that is based on search around the brain and how the brain learns, both students and adults, or children and adults.
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You know, after working with so many teachers and working in so many schools over the years, we were starting to notice some patterns of, I don't want to say complacency, but just sameness from one year to the next.
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You've got kids that are coming in that are completely different, but you've got curriculum, you know, projects and opportunities that are the same from year to year.
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We thought there's a good place to grow here, not looking to fix something that's broken.
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I don't know if that it's broken, but it definitely has a foundation that can be built upon.
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And that's where the idea started.
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We started writing a narrative book, like words.
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I think at one point we had probably close to 20 or 25,000 words.
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And one of the publishers we were working with was unsure about uh the way this was unfolding and thought perhaps maybe an action guide might be more appropriate, something where we're telling little bits and pieces of things and sharing visuals, and then it just kind of morphed into nothing but visuals and small bits of information.
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What we realized through writing this book is the people that are coming into leadership positions, you know, they're younger, they're pressed for time.
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Uh, we have to honor the fact that they have families and they have lives beyond work.
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So to give them something that is the Reddit term is TLDR, too long didn't read.
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Give them something that is digestible, that is returnable, you can come back to it and it's actionable in the moment, was really the focal point.
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Uh the book morphed into what it is now.
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So you can get what you need as soon as you need it and not have to feel compelled to sit down and just absorb this huge text that sometimes is devoid of context or devoid of stories.
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That's one of my favorite parts about this.
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I got to have a sneak preview of it before it was published.
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And when I looked at it, just the visuals were so engaging.
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I wanted to keep reading and keep learning.
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And it was in small pieces where I could put some thought around it and not feel like, oh, I have to go to the next page.
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Like I could sit with the page for a while.
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You mentioned that we have different types of learners, different generations of students.
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How do you define contemporary curriculum leadership in today's society?
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I think that it is something that is inclusive of understanding your students, knowing their backgrounds, having personal relationships with them, knowing their interests, supporting them in their social and emotional constructs and what they need to be able to be good learners and not focusing solely on the content that has to be covered in a class.
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And we want to look at the whole child and the whole experience that a child is having in our K-12 programs, pre-K through college, even.
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A lot of this could be applied to collegiate courses as well.
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But understanding the world that they're living in is not the same world that we, you know, the people that are teaching them grew up in.
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And while we do want to impart wisdom, uh wisdom is not the same thing as, you know, just gifting them with knowledge like PES dispensers.
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You know, that was good for 1975 and 1982 and 1990, but it's 2025 and the class of 2035 and the class of 2040 are in our schools or on the verge of going into our schools.
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It's so important for us to care about their world, and that's where a lot of comes from because we know that we're walking into uh places where kids are disinterested.
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They don't have that compelled nature to learn, and that precipitates behavior problems or attendance issues.
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We didn't specifically mention chronic absenteeism in this book or really behavior, but when you've got something that you're doing that kids are interested in and they feel compelled to learn, I wrote in a different book about what I call a golden lasso moment, uh like Wonder Woman has her golden lasso, and when you're in it, you're compelled to tell the truth.
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I think about that in terms of children being compelled to uh learn.
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They learn when there is interest, and when they're interested, uh they learn deeply, and when they learn deeply, they perform.
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That that really is like my view of participating is contemporary actions to get kids interested and engaged.
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Uh, what do you think, Stephen?
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To build off of and add to what Mike just shared, we had fun describing a early in the book.
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There's a page titled What a Contemporary Curriculum Looks Like.
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And that was really the foundation of the book.
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We had to develop our own um definition before we could move forward.
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And so early in the book, to build onto what he shared, some additional items we addressed on that page were a contemporary curriculum supports learner agency, focuses on transfer.
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It's culturally relevant, it is personalized, and it's shared with many audiences.
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So those are just a few of the things that we write about in the book.
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And each of the Hallmark practices begins with launching the work and guiding questions.
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So it's not a script to follow, it's not the Fisher and Weber show, do it our way.
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It's definitely built on curriculum research, and it's also built on our observations with teachers and teacher leaders and curriculum design teams.
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So we feel like the guiding questions are open-ended to where your team can pick page 45, and if that's what you need for Monday afternoon's PD, then go with page 45.
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You don't have to use the whole book.
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We've already heard from some teachers in Arkansas who are doing that.
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They're going back to school, and teachers and admin teams are using a section of the book or a page in the book because it resonates with where they are to start this new school year.
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That is exactly what we should be offering as teachers for our students.
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The sense of agency, of ownership.
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What do you need?
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And there's a quote in the book that I love who owns the learning here?
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And in your case with the book, the readers are still owning the learning because, like you said, it's not the Stephen and Michael show, but you're offering them pathways that they can choose when they need it.
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And it's deep pathways, it's not shallow to take them from point A to point Z.
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You wrote, we're not necessarily looking for a curriculum product, as much as we are promoting curricular conversations.
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And Mike, you're smiling here.
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That's the gist.
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That's the most important thing.
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The culture around what we do is more important than the products we produce.
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If you don't have that culture and you don't have that conversation, you cannot make any gains.
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We've talked for years about fours around silos for learning and teachers who go in and shut their door and don't share anything.
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You know, those are places where learning dies.
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I think about the joy of learning, and I think about the joy of the experience.
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And that comes from sharing good ideas.
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And if you write those ideas down, fantastic.
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If you don't, but you've discussed them, then you started the onboarding process for making changes for kids that are going to make a huge difference in their attention, in their learning, in their performance.
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Like it's, I just I see it as a big cog.
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And you can't turn that wheel if you actually, I think we use cogs in the book as one of the design parts.
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But you can't turn that wheel without the conversation.
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Otherwise, everything stays rusty and stagnant.
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When you think about this extensive book, what parts were your favorites to write where you were like, yes, let's get in it.
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It was meaningful to your heart, or you had deep personal experience in that process.
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Or maybe it was this is a part I want to learn more about.
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And I'm excited to dig in.
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Hallmark Practice Six was my favorite part of the book.
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It is titled Develop the Qualities of Curriculum Leadership.
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And in this chapter, we address the role of teachers in designing for learner agency.
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My favorite part was Hallmark V, the curriculum design chapter.
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All the different things that I do whenever I go into a school and work with teachers, the science of reading is really big right now, but I wanted people to focus on the science of learning and like internally, what happens biologically when someone is learning.
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And then obviously all of the pieces and parts that go into building a curriculum.
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And I would also like to say Hallmarks one, two, three, four, and six are places that were not necessarily completely in my wheelhouse when we started this project.
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Like when I write books, I write them because I'm extending my own learning.
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And this is how I flesh things out and learn to be a better consultant, a better teacher, a better learner.
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In fact, and Steven had so much fodder for the leadership parts of this.
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And then with the doing all the illustrations, I feel like this is something that has pushed me more as can I say artist?
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Because I feel like we've painted and we've created something that is different than just a regular book.
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We've created this work of art around the work that we do.
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And I felt pushed and compelled to learn throughout the entire process.
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Even though I have my own favorite, my own favorites in my wheelhouse.
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And the other five hallmarks were Stephen's wheelhouse that we got to flesh out together.
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And that's probably another one of my favorite parts is the level of collaboration that happened here and the amount of just shared learning that went back and forth through multiple phone calls, hours on Zoom, analysis of Google ideas that demanded hours of conversation.
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That's why it took three years.
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You know, it ended up in a really good spot.
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You touched on something really important when you think about the curriculum process in general, is that I often think of it as you have a written curriculum, like what is on paper.
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I was one of two 11th grade US history teachers, and we had a three-page document about what we were supposed to teach.
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But how detailed we went into that, the way that we did that, how we assessed it, what we spent time on was very different.
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And so after a while, as I started learning, this is not right for kids.
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We don't need to teach the exact same way because we have different students in front of us, but we should be providing some consistency.
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So if kids move from one class to another, or what if they were going on to the next level, some sort of framework, but we were all over the place thinking about what is written and then what people do with that, and seeing that as the art and the science of education and of teaching and learning.
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Has that resonated while you were doing this work?
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I said certainly.
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There's a section at the end of the book with a GPS, an old-fashioned GPS logo or photo, and we talk about how a GPS is similar to the work of a curriculum design team.
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Another thing that comes to mind is early on, we describe uh what does a contemporary curriculum leader do?
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And one thing that motivated me is all the first-year principals I've worked with, all the first-year central office people, like a director of English or a director of math.
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It's very difficult to go from the classroom into leading adult learning if you don't have curriculum background.
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A lot of grad schools will have maybe one class, if that, on curriculum design.
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So we've taken our work with principals and teachers, and we applied it to not only the written and the taught curriculum, but the implemented curriculum.
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And what questions should you ask while you were implementing your curriculum?
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And you should definitely ask the teachers because they're the implementers.
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I see this book as something that people will want to keep alongside them as they're reviewing and wanting to extend and deepen their curriculum.
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Just like you said, it is a process that is a back and forth.
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And Stephen, to your point, I have a master's in curriculum and instruction, and I was not prepared for the role that I took.
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I was just an instructional coach working with grades six through 12.
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But needing to be in the work is what helped me get better.
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And I'm still learning.
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And I learned so much from this book and those questions that you put in.
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If I'm writing a written curriculum for a district, I want them to have the copy of this book as they're working on translating what that means for them in their context and with their students.
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We tried to make something that was actionable.
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And I love the fact that, like you said, it should live on a desk.
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And where do books normally live?
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They live on a shelf.
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And this is not a shelf book.
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This is a desk reference.
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I've written for a while, and so we did reference some of the things that I've done in the past, but we also referenced uh Alan Gladhorn and Zaretta Hammond and Hargraves and Hattie and you know all the people that we've worked with over the years, and we have synthesized that into uh these big six major actions for curriculum leadership.
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I think it does make it useful to have just to sit on a desk.
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Well, you go to the doctor now, you know, the doctor's gonna look something up or maybe have a desk reference uh like that because there is a singular thing that they need to solve in a quick moment.
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And that's exactly what we would like to happen with this book.
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It leads to quick decisions because you've got quick explanations.
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And visuals really contribute to because you've given some self-assessment pieces, those are my favorite parts.
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That's the connector.
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It gives people a visual of where to go next based on where they're at.
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And so dunk these and make small steps that add up and have significant uh contributions.
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And you've mentioned that there are teachers and leaders in Arkansas who are using this.
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Have you heard which particular practices or which activities or questions are really resonating with them?
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Early in the book, there are some visuals.
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That really was one of the very first things that we wrote.
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It was our version of the qualities of curriculum leadership against a rubric from neglecting a practice through embarking on the process to advancing the practice.
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And we boiled it down to four distinct areas uh vision and expertise, collaboration and communication, data-informed decision making, and adaptability, with adaptability probably being the most important for a contemporary leader.
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And that is one of the places where the self-assessment really begins.
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You look at where you're working right now, or maybe you look at this with a team and you determine where you are and where you want to go, which is what a rubric is designed to do.
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A rubric is not a scoring guide.
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A rubric is designed for improvement.
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And that's what this is designed to do, knowing that there are probably very few places that are in a neglecting or a complying mode, and that people have varying degrees of things.
00:19:29.839 --> 00:19:37.200
This would be the holistic version of things, but just giving you something to look to for continuous improvement.
00:19:37.279 --> 00:19:40.240
That's one of the topics that always comes up in leadership meetings.
00:19:40.400 --> 00:19:42.720
How are we improving what we've done in the past?
00:19:42.880 --> 00:19:53.359
We just gave a few bullet points here and asked people to self-assess and look at where they were going and think about situating their perspective so that they can have the biggest impact.
00:19:53.519 --> 00:19:56.720
That's pretty much like how the entire book works.
00:19:56.880 --> 00:19:58.720
Like, where can you have the biggest impact?
00:19:58.799 --> 00:20:07.119
Where can you get the biggest bang for your buck doing these self-assessment and having real internal analysis about where you really are?
00:20:08.400 --> 00:20:12.319
One of the things that you mentioned, Mike, was about the neglecting and complying.
00:20:12.480 --> 00:20:17.200
And I think in my heart of hearts, like we don't choose to be there.
00:20:17.680 --> 00:20:20.720
It happens because of something else.
00:20:21.039 --> 00:20:34.079
And some of the schools that I've been working with, they had in 17, 18, 19 all of these plans for you know who what content area or grade level was up, because they were going to really start digging in.
00:20:34.160 --> 00:20:38.000
And then COVID hit, and that turned everybody's world upside down.
00:20:38.160 --> 00:20:43.359
It was from what I had heard from teachers, because I wasn't in the classroom at the time, but it was survival mode.
00:20:43.440 --> 00:20:53.200
So in a lot of ways, the curriculum piece got put off to the side to address a lot of the trauma that everybody was experiencing.
00:20:53.519 --> 00:21:02.079
And then your talk of the eras and generations of students happened so quickly now that it's caught up with us.
00:21:02.240 --> 00:21:04.000
I think this is a perfect time.
00:21:04.240 --> 00:21:10.000
And not to have any shame or blame with, you know what, maybe this is where we're at right now, but we don't need to stay here.
00:21:10.240 --> 00:21:14.160
And here's a guide that can help us to figure out that next step.
00:21:15.599 --> 00:21:21.839
There's definitely like underlying metaphors of red is a stop zone, yellow is a caution zone, green is the go zone.
00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:26.319
That happens several times throughout the book, but it's really not even the go zone.
00:21:26.400 --> 00:21:28.000
It's the grow zone.
00:21:28.319 --> 00:21:31.359
And you know, we want people to grow from where they are.
00:21:31.519 --> 00:21:34.240
Now, I've talked about this with you, and I've talked about it with Stephen before.
00:21:34.319 --> 00:21:40.480
We don't ever want to go in and say, oh, you're doing this wrong or this is broken, and we're here to fix it, because that's not what we do.
00:21:40.799 --> 00:21:43.599
What we do is help shape conversations.
00:21:43.759 --> 00:21:53.039
That's really the gist of it, and shape them in ways that promote self-improvement, not just improvement because Mike and Stephen said it looks like a good idea.
00:21:53.279 --> 00:21:55.119
We want people to find this for themselves.
00:21:55.200 --> 00:22:01.279
That's part of the self-direction, this reliance, and the agentic learning that is a theme throughout this book.
00:22:01.599 --> 00:22:03.519
You have to make those choices.
00:22:03.680 --> 00:22:12.720
You have to decide that it's worth it to you, and then it matters to you, and it matters to the students that you teach and the people that you work with, then you have to make those decisions.
00:22:12.960 --> 00:22:15.519
The same is true, hopefully, for my 12-year-old.
00:22:15.599 --> 00:22:19.920
Um, when she unloads the dishwasher by herself without being told.
00:22:20.079 --> 00:22:24.240
Um, she's made an improvement for the family, and it was self-directed.
00:22:24.319 --> 00:22:25.839
And I love when it happens.
00:22:26.160 --> 00:22:32.720
Mike, there's a section in there about leadership and specifically one about supervise.
00:22:32.960 --> 00:22:38.079
I'd love to hear from both of you your thoughts around that chart.
00:22:38.240 --> 00:22:44.319
It talks about this a way of looking at agency and trust and effective curriculum leadership.
00:22:44.400 --> 00:22:48.319
And you have a sympathizer, motivator, manager, and snoopervisor.
00:22:48.559 --> 00:22:50.160
Tell me more about that.
00:22:50.720 --> 00:22:54.240
There are a lot of district leaders who fall into the snoopervisor role.
00:22:54.319 --> 00:22:59.200
They're going out there for compliance or they sneak in the back door so teachers don't see them coming.
00:22:59.440 --> 00:23:06.720
And there's so many different ways that you can hurt relationships with teachers if your sole goal is to catch them doing something wrong.
00:23:07.119 --> 00:23:08.559
So it's just like our students.
00:23:08.799 --> 00:23:11.200
We want to go from a strength based with our teachers.
00:23:11.359 --> 00:23:14.160
What are their strengths and how can we help them build on those strengths?
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