Couch Scholar
Professional Learning Experience

Potential Isn't Enough

CODA: Supporting Students.

You'll learn to see the obligations and pressures students carry, actively affirm their potential, adapt your support to their real lives without lowering your standards, treat families as partners, and respect the student's own decision. You'll leave with a support strategy for one student, or a clearer insight into what students carry.

CODA

What does a student need, beyond talent, to reach their potential, especially when their responsibilities pull them in another direction?

You'll be able to:

  • Recognize the obligations, pressures and guilt that shape a student's choices, especially those that don't show up at school.
  • Actively tell students what you see in them, and help them imagine a future they might not have considered, without imposing it.
  • Adapt support to a student's real life, flexing structures but not standards, and look for ways the student doesn't have to choose between family and future.
  • Treat a student's family, culture and obligations as strengths and partners, not obstacles, and locate barriers in systems rather than in families.
  • Support a student in making their own decision, including one you disagree with.

You'll leave with: A support strategy for one student, or a clearer insight into what students carry.

No need to have seen it first.

Begin the experience

You don't need to have seen the film. Choose "I haven't watched" to work from the premise and two short stories.

CODA

Choose whether to discuss the film or work from the premise and two short stories.

I haven't watched

The premise and two short stories.

You don't need to have seen the film. We'll work from the premise, two short stories from it, and hypotheticals clearly labeled as such.

Begin with I haven't watched

I've watched

All six approved moments are open.

We'll discuss approved moments from the film without quoting it.

Begin with I've watched

You can change stories while you are still in Observe. After that, your chosen story stays with you for the rest of the experience.

The question at the center

What does a student need, beyond talent, to reach their potential, especially when their responsibilities pull them in another direction?

Why it matters

Ruby Rossi, 17, is the only hearing person in her Deaf family. Before dawn, she works on her father's fishing boat; during the day, she goes to high school, where classmates tease her. Everywhere else, she interprets for her family. When she joins the school choir, the director, Mr. V, discovers she has a remarkable voice and offers to prepare her for an audition at Berklee College of Music. But her family's struggling business needs her more than ever. We treat the film as a case study in supporting students, and you don't need to have seen it.

The Learning Everywhere Framework™

Observe → Connect → Analyze → Apply → Reflect

  1. 1

    Observe: Two Worlds

  2. 2

    Connect: What Your Students Carry

  3. 3

    Analyze: Potential Meets Obligation

  4. 4

    Apply: My Support Strategy or My Insight

  5. 5

    Reflect: Both Sides

Potato, the Couch Scholar AI learning coach

Potato™, your learning coach

Potato is warm, funny and practical, and takes both standards and students' obligations seriously.

What you'll walk away with

  • Recognize the obligations, pressures and guilt that shape a student's choices, especially those that don't show up at school.
  • Actively tell students what you see in them, and help them imagine a future they might not have considered, without imposing it.
  • Adapt support to a student's real life, flexing structures but not standards, and look for ways the student doesn't have to choose between family and future.
  • Treat a student's family, culture and obligations as strengths and partners, not obstacles, and locate barriers in systems rather than in families.
  • Support a student in making their own decision, including one you disagree with.
Begin the experience