December 10, 2024 • 54 mins
In this special end-of-semester wrap-up, Ashley and Dan reflect on the four major themes explored in this semester's podcast episodes: Planning, Creating Authentic Work Experiences, Collaborating, and Building Connections with Students. They share key insights from their conversations with instructional coaches, highlight strategies that resonated, and discuss practical applications for teachers and coaches alike.
Ashley reflects on what she's learned as a teacher, while Dan connects those lessons to coaching strategies that help teachers succeed. Whether you're a teacher looking to enhance your practice or a coach seeking ways to support your colleagues, this episode is packed with actionable takeaways.
Key Topics Covered:
- The power of intentional planning in saving time and improving teaching outcomes.
- Why authentic learning experiences engage students and how to incorporate them into your classroom.
- The role of collaboration in fostering deeper learning and teamwork skills.
- Strategies for building meaningful connections with students to improve engagement and achievement.
Resources Mentioned:
Quotable Moments:
- "Your schedule represents your values." — Daniel Rock
- "The person doing the talking is doing the learning." — Ashley Shaw
- "If you want students to do what you want them to do, you have to make those connections." — Ashley Shaw
Don’t Miss:
- Ashley's creative teaching tip: Wikipedia Roulette—a game to help students develop critical thinking and research skills.
- Dan’s advice for coaches: How to effectively support teachers in collaboration and planning.
Enjoy your break and get ready for more exciting episodes in 2025! 🎉
The Southern Regional Education Board is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works with states and schools to improve education at every level, from early childhood through doctoral education and the workforce.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and welcome to our special end of the semester
wrap up edition of the Class AppCoaching Podcast.
I am Ashley Shaw and I am herewith my co-host, Daniel Rock.
Hi, Dan.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey Ashley, how are you doing today?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I am pretty good.
It's the end of the semester.
We're about to go on a longbreak.
It's nice to be able to relax.
How about you?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Man, I know every teacher out there is just ready
to put this semester to bed andrefresh and get ready to get
back out there.
So I'm feeling all of myteacher friends who are just you
know I'm not going to saylimping to the end zone here,
but you know, maybe pushingthemselves to end strong.
(00:47):
So I feel everybody out therewith that.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Well, to end this semester strong, as you said,
and to help already get usthinking about next semester
because I know that's what weall want to do is immediately
start thinking about nextsemester I thought what we could
do today is kind of talk alittle bit about what we've
learned Together.
We have pulled four differentthemes that we saw across all
the episodes we did thissemester and we're going to talk
(01:16):
a little bit about them fromwhat I learned from the coaches
as a teacher that all ourteachers out there also
hopefully got from these, andthen Dan's going to talk a
little bit about what thecoaches can take away from those
themes.
That right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I've tried to pull coaching strategies from what
our friends have shared, butalso brought in some of the
things that I know would beeffective for a coach working
with teachers on these big ideasand themes.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, that's great because you get to talk about
what all our SREB coaches do anddo well, but we don't often get
to see all the great things youdo as a coach, so I'm looking
forward to hearing what you haveto add to the conversation.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Oh, I'm looking forward to sharing.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Well, I'm going to get us started with our first
theme.
One thing I noticed as I waslistening back through all the
episodes is how much planningwas emphasized.
I mean, we obviously DebbieRobertson had a whole episode on
planning and it was great, butthat wasn't all it was.
It wasn't just planning thelesson.
(02:26):
That's sometimes what I thinkof as planning.
It's like, of course, you planthe lesson, but you don't have
to plan every aspect of theclass.
Except for what I learned thissemester is the things that I
was struggling with.
It'd be do better if I actuallyput some planning in it.
And so I noticed that prettymuch every one of our coaches
that came in, no matter whatthey were talking about, were
(02:48):
like oh, you'll have to plan forthis or you should put some
planning in this.
Jason Adair came in and hetalked about asking great
questions and he said in there,if you want to ask great
questions, you actually have tosit down and plan it ahead,
actually have to sit down andplan it ahead I always think
about with teaching.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
When I was a teacher, I was throwing myself under the
bus.
I was doing the best job, Iknew how, but I would say a
majority of the questions Iasked in the classroom were off
the cuff.
I hadn't planned them.
I didn't plan my questions veryoften Now, whenever I'm
teaching a lesson or if I'mcoaching a teacher in the
planning process, we alwaysstrategically plan our questions
teacher in the planning process.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
We always strategically plan our questions
.
Then we had Don Kirkwood camein and talked about note-taking.
I always knew my studentsweren't great note-takers, but I
never thought about the factthat I needed to plan on things
they could do to take betternotes.
So that was really fascinatingto me.
We had that with classdiscussions.
Keisha King said hey, youactually have to plan.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
So to get them talking, what that takes is you
planning up front, likeanticipating this.
Whatever my problem is, I'mgoing to work that out myself
and anticipate the studentsolutions and misconceptions
they may have.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Even things like Rod Leonard talking about connecting
with the students.
Connecting, making connectionswith people seems like such a
natural human thing.
You don't have to plan for it,it just happens.
You just talk to somebody andyou make a connection or you
don't make a connection, but thething is with your students.
You actually need to plan itbecause you're not going to
(04:23):
connect with every studentstudents.
You actually need to plan itbecause you're not going to
connect with every student andyou actually have to think about
ways to make connections wheremaybe connections aren't easy to
make.
So anyway, just some things Inoticed from listening back
through our episodes what aboutyou?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
well, as I listened to the episodes, I really was
taken by how people areintentional about what they're
going to do, and you talk aboutplanning right, and if you plan
well, then everything you do hasa clear purpose.
One of the aspects of planningthat our teachers are going to
(04:58):
say is hard is time, and as acoach, one of your jobs is to be
a manipulator of time.
You've got this schedule ofclasses and you've got, you know
, teachers assigned to certaintimes and kids assigned to
certain times, and we sometimeslet that schedule drive our life
(05:21):
and make the decisions for us,and then what happens is
learning becomes a variablebased on time and planning.
You know I'll plan a littlehere and a little there, and
that changes because of the timethat's set in stone by our
schedule and in some level, thatyou know has to be that way.
(05:42):
Great coaches are those thatmake time a variable, who are
able to build time in to theschedule or to the semester or
the month, to actually do realplanning with teachers and
ensure that their planning timeis productive and ensure that
(06:06):
their planning time isproductive, yeah, and that to me
that's something.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
I'm really glad you said that, because that's
something that I was thinking ofas I was listening to these
episodes, because I do that alot, where I say I'm not going
to plan the questions out andthe note-taking process out and
the conversation out, I don'thave time to plan for that.
I plan to let them know.
That's good enough.
But I was realizing all thethings that I wasn't doing well
in my class.
I would have saved myself timeif I'd planned that out.
(06:34):
If I did some pre-planning itwould have saved me in the long
run because I think I wouldn'thave had to go back and repeat
myself so much.
I would have had more time todo actual different lessons and
get through things, becausehopefully the students would be
getting it more.
So, yeah, if coaches can helpus figure out how to do that,
(06:55):
because I do think it would savetime in the long run.
But still taking that initialtime to plan it out to get to
that point seems like a lot ofwork.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, it is, it can be.
I would also add that step oneis finding the time, and that's
about building a schedule foryou and your teachers that
prioritizes planning andcollaboration with you and your
teachers.
One person once said yourschedule represents your values.
(07:27):
So if your schedule is designedso that the teachers don't have
time to collaborate, to plan,to work with a coach, then that
just tells you what you value asa leader, and so that's
something that you can talk withleadership about.
And then the question becomeswell, okay, now let's say we
(07:47):
built time for planning.
We've heard a lot of greatideas, all those things you
described.
I want to just add somethingthat Debbie Robertson probably
she talked about and she and Ihave worked on, which is unit
planning.
So you were saying how it'sless if I plan up front.
Well, it's less work indelivery.
(08:08):
It actually saves you time whenyou're teaching because
everything's ready.
Yes.
And that's what great unitplanning is, and so I just want
to briefly share.
I know people are probablylistening, but we're going to
share these resources, right.
Yeah, I'll put them in the shownotes so you can click on a link
here.
What I'm showing you here is aconcept map that teachers use to
(08:33):
lay out their units.
We'll put this PDF in thepodcast link At the top is what
I really want to look at, whichis big ideas.
When teachers start with theirbig ideas, what do you want your
students to know a year fromnow, three years from now, what
are the most essential concepts?
And then you build learningexperiences and learning targets
(08:57):
and assignments from that.
Then you're able to be veryintentional about what you're
teaching.
So one thing I just encourageour listeners and coaches to
think about with your teachersis finding a strong unit
planning model.
Many of your curriculums haveunit plans and maybe that's what
(09:18):
the teachers are teaching.
Then that time spent walkingthrough the curriculum and
deciding which of theseassignments, instructional
strategies, informativeassessments we want to use and
which we don't want to usebecause they don't get to the
core ideas and big topics wewant to talk about.
(09:38):
So that's just something whenyou think about intentional
planning and you listen to thesepodcasts, thinking about how we
can build units around that.
So let's go to our second theme.
Our first theme was intentionalplanning.
Our next theme is somethingthat's, I think, just as
critical, which is understandingyour students, understanding
(10:01):
who they are, academically,emotionally, behaviorally.
So, ashley, can you tell us alittle bit about what you
learned about knowing yourstudents from our coaches at
SRIB this semester?
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I got was how important it is to connect with
my students and to understandthem in order to build
relationships with them, becausethen they're going to be better
learners because of it, andjust thinking of the fact that
each student learns in their ownway, they have their own
personalities, they have theirown academic, emotional and
behavioral needs, I thought it'ssomething that I think, if you
ask anybody, hey, are yourstudents different?
(10:58):
They're going to say yes, it'ssomething everybody technically
knows, but I don't think wealways at least for me as a
teacher think about howimportant it is to actually
build that into our planning, toactually think about it and
make a point to think of thosethings.
And so, as I was listening backthrough the episodes, there
were some episodes that werereally obvious that I was going
to talk about.
Shelly Gibson had a wholeepisode on encouraging our
students and she talked aboutthe importance of connecting
(11:21):
with them and make thoseconnections so that your
students will feel moreempowered, and Rod Leonard had a
full episode where he talkedabout how to connect with
students.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I know we teach standards and we we harpo growth
and mastery.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
But none of that.
None of those things occurwithout a significant
relationship with students.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Those were pretty obvious that that's what it's
going to talk about.
But I saw that theme popping upin other episodes as well that
maybe I wouldn't have thoughtabout it so much.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
So, for example, in Erin's episode she talked about
how to engage your studentsabout how to engage your
students, and one thing that'sreally interesting is that
student engagement really hasthree parts that sometimes we
overlook.
Student engagement is cognitive.
It's about the thinking rightStudent learning.
(12:16):
We have our lesson plans andour standards that we're
teaching students, but we haveto engage them cognitively.
The second part is behaviorallyright, and we think about how
they behave in the class, butalso in that lesson planning,
what are we wanting them to dowith the tasks that we give them
?
The third part, and this almostall the time we forget Students
(12:41):
feel certain ways about whatthey're learning and what
they're being asked to do andsometimes, ashley, the key to
student engagement is reallyengaging kids in those three
spaces.
What are you thinking, what areyou doing and how do you feel?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
You can't just think of them as academic things in
your class.
They're people and they haveemotional and behavioral needs
as well.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
I'm sorry, they're what.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Things.
I said things, robots, whatever.
They're not robots, they'repeople.
Okay, hold on, that's what I'msaying.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Let me write this down.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
The students are people.
The students are not robots,they're people.
That's the quote.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I have to remember that, because I may not think
they're robots Sometimes.
I think there's something elsethat I wouldn't say.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
It is sometimes very hard to remember them as like
wait teenagers and middle schoolkids and elementary students.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
They are humans, still they don't always act like
they're humans, but they're aspecial type of human.
They're a human in development,right Exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
They're not baked, but they do have these emotional
and behavioral needs thataffect the way that they are
picking up the information andhow engaged they are with it.
And if you don't think aboutthose things, it doesn't matter
that you planned your lesson'snot going to go that well.
So that's something I got as Ilistened back to these episodes.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
It's interesting what you're talking about.
I think something that a coachcan do to help their teachers is
really take on that data coachhat and think about what are
ways that I can collect data formy teachers.
Or show my teachers how tocollect data on academic for my
(14:25):
teachers, or show my teachershow to collect data on academic,
behavioral and different typesof, even emotional selves or
states.
So you know, obviously most ofour schools have diagnostic and
formative assessments built in,whether it's district
assessments or computerassessments that are out there
(14:47):
and I've seen so many teachersdo these assessments, get the
data and say, wow, my kids arelow.
And then they're like bam, it'sa lot of work for me.
And then they get back in itand teach what they were going
to teach anyway.
So, as a coach, helping themunderstand the students' needs
with that data and helping themcategorize what type of
(15:07):
instruction will be appropriatefor those different levels and
making sure that those arepresent in variety different
aspects of the lessons so notjust collecting the data,
academics, but that response tothe data is the part that I
think teachers could use a lotof help with.
Yes, I agree, I also thinkbehavioral-wise, emotional-wise,
(15:33):
there is a lot of work we cando to listen to students more.
There's something that we do atSREB we are part of different
improvement networks, usingimprovement science, and part of
improvement science is aboutknowing the pain points and of
(15:54):
the people you are trying toserve and really understanding
that.
We do what's called empathyinterviews, where you really
look at the student or theteacher, the person who's
experiencing the problem.
In this case, I would say it'sthe student who's experiencing
the problem of not learning, ofbeing bullied, of feeling
(16:16):
uncomfortable and talking tothem and trying to understand
the user experience.
Right, Do we really listen tostudents about what the user
experience of being in school islike and really try to get that
information from them?
I don't know that we do that alot.
Them, um, I don't know that wedo that a lot.
(16:42):
So that is one thing that Irecommend and that they
recommended a lot.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
It was just finding different ways just just to get
their voice heard and get letthem feel like what they think
matters and and actually it canmatter sometimes yeah and I want
to add to kind of what you said, something that that, again, as
I was listening to theseepisodes, I heard you saying
quite a few times as to whatworks for coaches.
This theme is understandingstudent needs, but I think we
(17:07):
could easily say understandingteacher needs as well, and I
know that's something that youtalked about in a couple of
episodes was the idea of thecoaches can't just come into the
classroom and say, okay,teacher, here's what you're
going to do.
Just like the teacher needs toconnect with the students, the
coach should work to connect alittle bit with the teachers is
(17:28):
that correct?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
yeah, and, and so you're modeling.
First of all, it's effectiveand second, you're modeling how
teachers can approach studentsby listening, by understanding
where they are, what their goalsare, what they want and
obviously having a clearexpectation of what quality
instruction looks like at ourschool, but molding how you
(17:51):
support them based on what theysay they need and what their
interests are them based on whatthey say they need and what
their interests are.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
And in the same way I just said, the coach should be
doing that for the teacher.
I think that model works forthe teachers as well, because I
know I can think of it that way.
If somebody came into myclassroom and just started
telling me, ok, this is what youneed to do, this, this, this,
this, this, I'm going to getfrustrated.
I would be like OK, I know whatI'm doing.
Like who are you?
But if I have somebody, come inand build that relationship and
(18:22):
explain to me this is why we'redoing this, this is why it
works, I'm going to be much morewilling to try those things
because I know that they have mybest interest in mind.
And I think that's the samething when I do that in my
classroom.
If I come in and I'm like okay,when you write your essay, you
need to do this, this and this.
And they're like why I want todo it my way.
But if I can show them that Iactually care about making them
(18:43):
better and do those connectionswith them and understand their
needs and work with them, I'mlike, okay, I'm not just telling
you what to do because I wantto be your boss.
I have like a power trip and Ijust want to boss you around.
I'm doing it because thesethings are actually going to
work and make it improve you andmake you better, and they're
going to be more willing to dothe work.
(19:03):
So I think it goes both ways.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
It does.
You know, just what you saidreally sparked something in my
mind, because when a coach or aprincipal or a fellow teacher
says to me, you need to do this,you need to do this, you need
to do this, you need to do this,based on being in my classroom,
all I'm hearing is you suck,you suck what you're doing is
(19:28):
wrong.
What you're doing is wrong.
You should quit.
You're in the wrong profession.
All your life choices weremistakes.
Discussion all your lifechoices were mistakes.
Whereas if they ask me what doyou want to learn?
What do you feel your strengthsare?
How can we build on?
Ooh yeah, you're really good atthat.
I've noticed you're really goodat that.
Maybe you could show otherpeople how to do that.
And then I wonder how we coulduse that to maybe even push a
(20:00):
little bit more this other areathat you would like to work on.
You know, but use that strengthin order to help with areas
that I say I know I can probably, you know, do a better job at.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
I agree.
I think that's really great.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
To help with students and teacher relationships.
One tool is thinking about howcan I collect feedback
intentionally about how thestudents are responding to my
lesson knowledge.
But the best feedback a teachercan get is not from their
administration, of their peers,but from their kids in an honest
but kind and productive way.
And Jim Knight recommends, youknow, metacognitive questions at
(20:48):
the end of lessons.
You know questions like whatpart of today's lesson did you
enjoy the most and why was thereanything today that made you
feel confused or frustrated?
What could help you understandit better?
So we're helping the kids bemetacognitive, we're honoring
their thoughts, feelings andexperience of the lesson and
(21:12):
we're getting feedback.
Um, and then there's another I Ijust have some Likert scale
questions here.
So at the end of your lessonfor the closing, instead of you
know, a three question quiz or a, I think I wonder I'm confused
by, but really having somebetter reflective questions, and
(21:35):
I think we're going to talklater about group work and
collaboration.
You know you can have questionslike I felt supported by my
classmates during group workStrongly agree, agree, you know,
neutral, disagree, yada, yada.
I had the opportunity to sharemy ideas and listen to others
during group work.
So by giving students voice inthe learning experience, you can
(21:55):
increase your connection to thestudents and your students'
ownership of the learning andbuild a community of learners,
and this is a tool to help.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
All right.
Well, thank you for the tool.
I think what we're hearing hereis, if you want people to do
what you want them to do, youhave to make those connections
and help them see why they'redoing it and help them reach
their goals and not just orderthem around.
That kind of leads us, I think,into our next point, because
the idea of helping them see whythey're doing something instead
(22:26):
of just telling them to do it,and helping them feel like what
they're doing is what they wantto be doing.
It goes to connecting withstudents, but it also goes to
this next theme of creatingauthentic learning experiences.
So, as we just mentioned,everybody wants to feel like
what they're doing is not justbusy work, it's not just
(22:47):
something that somebody'stelling them to do so they have
to do it.
People want to understand whythey're doing it, and the more
we, as teachers, can connect thethings that we're learning to
to authentic real worldexperiences whether it's work or
whether it's something they dooutside of class doesn't matter
what it is.
I don't think, as long as theycan see those connections, it's
(23:09):
not just because I told you to,it's because it actually helps
them in some.
Somebody once told me, nevercall, never say real world
situations, because isn'tclassroom the real world?
It's not like you step in thefake world when you walk in the
classroom, right?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
we're not.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
We're not living in a simulation exactly, but
authentic outside of theclassroom experiences.
It'll help them want to do thework more.
I'm not going to say studentsare going to want to do the work
, but be more willing to do thework.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It's like, let's say, you've got 30 kids in your
classroom.
Nothing you do is going to getall 30 kids riled and ready to
go 100%.
I love this.
I mean I could be wrong.
There could be some teachersout there who do that.
I want to meet them.
Most of the time you're workingpercentages right.
(24:01):
So the question is whatpractices are going to increase
the percentage of students whoare inherently motivated to do
the learning that we want themto do?
And what you're saying is youheard teachers say our coaches
say real I might say real worldauthentic experiences, right,
(24:22):
experiences that match whatthey're going to do in the work
world or in their adultpost-school world.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Right, we had quite a few of those, leslie E.
Obviously she did a whole oneon creating authentic work
experiences in the classroom.
So clearly she saw the need forthat and the idea of coming up
with these plans to showstudents, like she had the idea
(24:52):
of bringing in outside partnersto kind of say this is how I am
a baker and this is how I usewhat you're learning in my
bakery every day, so they cankind of see those.
Speaker 6 (25:05):
So when it's possible .
Community partners are a waythat we can put the bow on a
learning experience and I wantto be very clear.
I do not think that everythinghas to involve an outside person
coming in.
However, when you do studentsperk up, it is.
(25:29):
It used to drive me crazy.
As an engineer, I knew what mykids needed to do.
An engineer, I knew what mykids needed to do, needed to
study, but I was teacher, I wasMrs Eves, I wasn't engineer, mrs
Eves.
When I would bring in anengineer to work with the
students, talk to the students,share their experience with the
(25:49):
students, the students perked up.
They listened more to thatexpert coming in because it was
something different, it wassomething novel, they could you
know it.
Just it rang truer for them, itrang more authentic because it
was somebody coming in from theoutside community.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
And then we had Marty Shedier came in and he talked
about a common teacher thingthat probably every teacher
listening right now is used.
He talked about think commonteacher thing that probably
every teacher listening rightnow has used.
He talked about think, pair,share, but he changed it to be a
simulated workplace environment.
So it wasn't just the same old,same old that they do every day
, like, ok, now I have to dothis thing where my teachers may
(26:31):
have me talk to the personsitting next to me about this
topic I don't care about.
He helped them to see how theywould be doing those exact same
things in a workplace, no matterwhat they ended up working in.
Speaker 7 (26:42):
Regardless of whatever I was doing in the Navy
with math and science, whichwere my strengths and my degree
was in I had to write.
I was listening, I wascommunicating, I was, you know,
technical drawings and followingprocedures and reviewing safety
.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
So I felt that bringing that into the classroom
might leverage students intomaybe taking a harder look at
the math vocabulary, and one ofthe things she talked about was
if you want students to get thewords and you want them to be
able to understand the words anduse them more than just a
(27:20):
memorization tool for the test,then show them the real world
context, show how those wordsconnect to things that they know
and understand already.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
You know the age old question of why are we doing
this?
Right, we're using quadraticequations and polynomials, or
analyzing a poem Like when am Igoing to have to analyze Robert
Frost's walking, you know, in awoods, walking in the snow.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
I forget what the name of the poem is I do that
every day, that's like my wholejob.
Yes, robert Frost.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Every day you are Robert Frost, my family.
Every night, before we eatdinner, we take out a Frost poem
and read through it and do afull explication.
And when I interviewed for myjob at SREB, they asked me to
explicate an Emily Dickinsonpoem.
No, they did not.
So the question as a teacher islike why am I doing this Right?
(28:18):
Is it because I just was toldto do it?
Is it because it's in mycurriculum and it's the only
reason?
These are almost obstaclessometimes.
The curriculum it doesn'talways connect to the big
picture of how this skill isapplicable in life.
So as a teacher, you might wantto actually connect to some of
(28:43):
my CTE teachers and think aboutwith them what academic skills
are needed in your engineeringclass.
How do students do math in yourrepair class?
In your nursing right, theyobviously use science, but they
also have to write certainreports and there's a certain
(29:06):
technical writing involved.
As a coach of teachers or aleader facilitating
conversations among sort of yourcareer tech aligned teachers if
you're in high school, or wecall them specials or electives,
maybe in middle school andlooking at how we can infuse
academics into CTE classes andhow we can infuse CTE sometimes
(29:31):
and some of those experiencesinto the other classes.
One thing that I want to shareis the Association for Career
and Technical Education hasrecommendations for middle
school for all students, notjust career tech students, and
there's six of them, but I wantto share three very briefly
(29:51):
because I think they get to whatour coaches were saying is
important.
One thing they say is toincorporate career-related
project-based learning inclassrooms.
So if I'm an English teacher,how can I have students do a
project that has them connectwith something that a English
(30:14):
major would do?
You know whether that'sjournalism, being a writer,
being a novelist, being a lot ofEnglish majors become lawyers,
something that requiresextensive reading and writing in
a career and projects that arelike that in a career and
projects that are like that.
Another recommendation they havewhich I think is important and
(30:34):
gets to this idea ofincorporating authentic learning
is employability skills.
Like that's something thatteachers should know about.
Right, what are the skills thatemployers say they need?
And if a student graduates fromyour high school or leaves your
middle school, can you say withconfidence that you have
(30:55):
systematically and purposefullybuilt those skills into your
curriculum across everyclassroom?
Speaker 1 (31:02):
My master's thesis was on how to teach the soft
skills employees actually want.
There you go In an Englishclass.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
In an English class, so they should call you is what
I'm hearing.
If they want to learn moreabout this, or just, you can
just send them your thesis andthat'll solve most of their
problems.
Can you give us a big, just onejuicy recommendation from that,
from that, you're on the spothere.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Okay, let's see.
Well, it's easy for englishteachers, I think, on this one,
because a lot of the soft skillsthat employers want are like
communication, verbal andwritten uh, teamwork.
It's things that you're alreadydoing in your classes anyway,
so it's kind of a cheat a littlebit, but one of the things that
I talked about was just helpingthem see connections.
So basically, the way I didthis is I watched a bunch of
(31:54):
students do research projectsand this protocol thing that
they did where they knew theywere being watched, and they
basically had to do a think outloud process where they said
everything they're thinking.
And one common thing that I sawstudents doing was they thought
things had to be very literal.
So, for example, I don't want tocall the student on the spot,
(32:15):
I'm not saying their name oranything but one of the students
in this project was doing aresearch paper for his English
class on how the Lakers couldcreate I'm going to make up the
teams because I don't rememberbut how the Lakers could create
a dream team.
That was their topic and theyfound an article on how the
(32:35):
Golden State Warriors hadcreated the dream team and they
said in their Think Out Loudprocess well, I know that seemed
like it was going to be good,but I know I can't use it
because it's not about theLakers.
So I was like, ok, so studentsthink literally like if your
source has to be the exact thingyou're looking for, that was
the critical thinking, like okay, so how can I look at things
(32:55):
like that and help them make theconnections that things can fit
together?
You have to be creative abouthow you fit them together, and
so I started doing this game inmy class when we were learning
research.
It's called Wikipedia roulette.
Okay.
Where I give them two words thatseem like they would not be
related at all and they start onthe first words Wikipedia page
(33:18):
and they have to get to thesecond words Wikipedia page
without going back.
They have to click links in thearticle to get to the second
word and the group they're ingroups for this, the group that
gets there the fastest wins likea little prize or whatever.
It's a game we play in classand the idea is they really have
to sit there and think how canI connect word A to word B?
(33:39):
It might be like insane clownposse to Walmart, but the idea
of it was that I did look atlike where are they?
What soft skills should you belearning in an English class?
And where are they not?
Where are they struggling withthose issues by watching the
research process and then tryingto figure out ways to build in
(34:01):
those things into my class.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
That's something that I've heard a lot of teachers
say.
Kids are struggling more andmore with.
Yes Is sort of giving up veryquickly when things aren't
immediate and obvious.
I just want to move to the next, my last authentic learning
experience point from my friendsat the Association for Career
and Technical Education, whichis interacting with business and
(34:25):
community leaders related toyour content.
Business and community leadersrelated to your content.
You'd be so surprised howpowerful it is.
If I'm teaching poetry, bring ina poet right.
If I'm teaching history, tobring in a lawyer who has to
look at precedents and useprecedents to you know, argue a
(34:50):
case and how history isimportant to the law.
If I'm teaching science,obviously there's a million, a
lot of scientists out theredoctors.
So when you bring in peoplefrom the field, what you can do
is have them share what they doand how they use the content.
(35:11):
But then that next layer isbeing able to give feedback to
students on their work.
So when you design projects andhave them do something that's
aligned to career areas from apoet, right on your poetry or a
scientist, about your experimentand how you're drawing
(35:33):
conclusions and using variablesthat adds a deep level and can
really build excitement in theclassroom.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
And as an example of that, I have a friend who runs a
nonprofit that basically hegoes into jails and teaches
creative writing, and so I hadhim come to my class Field trip.
Well, yeah, not going on a fieldtrip but he came into the class
(36:01):
and he came in with a shortstory that one of the prisoners
had written.
He gave me that ahead of timeand I gave them that was their
homework and they were supposedto just come in prepared with
some questions to ask him.
That might have been the firsttime, and maybe the only time,
that every single student in theclass it was a small class, but
every single student in theclass was prepared, they had
(36:23):
questions, they were interested.
They came in not because Iasked them to prepare questions,
they didn't care that Iassigned them to ask questions.
They came in prepared becausethey had questions, they wanted
to know and seeing them whenthey had to write a short story
for their next assignment,thinking about how much that
meant to prisoners to be able toexpress themselves and to be
able to communicate things thatmaybe they've never been given
(36:45):
an opportunity to create or toexpress man, those students are
interested.
Giving an opportunity to createor to express man, those
students are interested.
So from personal experience Ican say I mean I guess it might
depend on who the guests did,but having a guest come in
really changes things a lot.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
So let's get to our last theme.
One thing that we've heard ourSREB colleagues talk about is
collaborative learning how theycan use students' collaborative
experiences and createcollaborative experiences in the
classroom to help studentslearn.
(37:23):
What have you heard about thatfrom your discussions with them?
Speaker 1 (37:29):
I thought it was amazing how many of the coaches,
no matter what they weretalking about, brought in the
importance of teamwork, ofworking with other students in
the class to hear otherstudents' ideas.
I know, when we talked aboutthings like creating
think-pair-share but making it aworkplace experience, it
(37:52):
required teamwork.
It required, obviously, that'sthe pair part and the share part
of think-pair-share anyway, butit needed those students to
work in groups to understandthat they're going to be part of
a team one day.
They're not going to.
No matter what you do, even ifyou're like a solitary author
that works at home, at somepoint you're going to have to
work with your editor.
You know you're going to haveto be able to have those
(38:14):
teamwork skills Speaking of theskills employers want.
So we also had, obviously, inKeisha's episode on creating
great classroom discussions.
To have a great discussion,it's not just one person talking
.
To have a great discussion,it's not just one person talking
.
A few different teachers talkedabout the fact that the person
(38:34):
doing the talking is doing thelearning, and so it's important
to have the students talking toeach other and helping each
other figure out what the lessonis, as opposed to me, the
teacher, just being at the frontof the classroom lecturing and
I'm the one learning and they'renot.
One really fascinating one to methat I never in a million years
was expecting in the lesson wasin Don's episode on note-taking
(38:57):
.
Note-taking is a solitaryactivity, so I thought, and then
he was like okay, have themwrite their notes down, then
explain their notes to somebodyelse and then take notes on the
notes that the students gavethem, so they're reinforcing
what they're learning andkeeping it going.
That is a teamwork activity andnote-taking that I never would
(39:18):
have thought of.
Speaker 8 (39:19):
What I've really encouraged and what has been
powerful is note-taking betweenstudents.
So a lot of times if I havethem read an article, I want
them, you know, maybe underlinethe critical information, the
key ideas, and then I have themtake that, they put it into
their notes, they elaborate onit, and then I'll do like an
(39:40):
inner outer circle, but I hadthem take their notes and share
their notes with the personacross from them, and then that
person across from them wastaking notes on the notes that
they were sharing with them andthe goal is is just to go deeper
into that content that we'representing now, and then after a
minute I have one of the lines,rotate one down, and then they
(40:03):
share again and they rotate one.
So, like five minutes, not onlyare they building confidence in
the notes that they took, butthey're also validating and
getting the feedback and really,I would say, refining those
ideas.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
So, no matter what aspect of the class it is, it
seemed like if I wanted mystudents to kind of do better in
a certain area, having themwork together to come up with it
is a big part of that, and thatis something, when I was doing
my master's that came up.
A lot was the idea that if youput students in a group and
(40:46):
maybe they don't all get everyaspect of the assignment, of the
project that they're working on, whatever that is but one of
them knows this part and one ofthem knows that part and one of
them knows this part, andtogether they can figure it out.
But also, as they're figuringit out, they're teaching each
other, and so that's a big partof why teamwork works.
What about you?
Speaker 2 (41:06):
I think a lot of that comes down to the science of
learning and the fact that weare social by nature yes, and
the fact that we learn throughsocializing right.
That's how kids learn how totalk is by hearing other people
(41:27):
talk, and then we learn to havea conversation, and through
those conversations we'relearning about the world.
And as we explain something,we're not just delivering
information like in an email.
We're actually learning thatinformation by sharing it Right,
and that's the best way tolearn something, is to teach it
(41:50):
Right, and that's, you know, thebest way to learn something is
to teach it.
So I think what a lot of ourcoaches were hitting on was when
we create opportunities forstudents to work together.
It's not just about saving timeand you do this job and I do
that job, so we have this finalproduct, but it's not about the
product as much as the processand the process of talking,
(42:13):
listening, sharing ideas,building on each other, and that
, like you said, is also a softskill.
So you're hitting a lot ofdomains by building
opportunities for collaborationand discussion.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
And not to try to get out of my work, but I want to
try to get out of my work.
Having a group project meansfewer papers.
If I have five groups writesomething as opposed to 26
essays, it saves me a littletime too.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
As long as everyone participated and did you know
what they were supposed to.
Oh right, right.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
I'm sure none of the groups in your class have one
student doing all the work forall the others, or I have when I
do group projects, like morethan just an in-class assignment
, when I have them do majorgroup projects, part of the
grade is they grade each otheranonymously.
They don't know I mean I knowthat's not not anonymous to me
but they don't know which oftheir partners are giving them
(43:08):
the grade.
They just know every one oftheir group mates gives them a
grade and then I average thosetogether and that's part of
their grade.
So they have to actuallyparticipate or their group mates
are going to give them a badgrade.
And when they don't know whattheir class, I'll tell you they
will give fair grades.
They're not going to let eventheir friends, they don't let it
get away with anything becausethey know their friends not
(43:29):
going to know it was them thatgraded them.
I will say, when I did that onetime I learned I have to put
some parameters on it.
I think that you're not beingfair.
I can, like I can not countyours in to their grade, because
I did one time have a studentand they have to explain why
they gave that grade.
They have to write like alittle paragraph saying why they
gave their roommate that grade.
(43:51):
And I had this one student thatsaid, well, she did most of the
work, but she kind of annoyedme so I'm giving her an F, like
that's what they?
Speaker 2 (43:59):
that's so like Sounds fair to me.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
I had to discount that one.
I learned that I have to writethat in.
If your rationale doesn't makesense or I, you know it's like
something way away from whateverybody else in the group gave
them, I have the right toeliminate yours.
But I think that does reallyhelp me actually get good groups
, because it's not just melooking at them, it's their
(44:23):
partners deciding how good of apartner they were, and that's
really helped me.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Let's think about collaboration from a teacher's
perspective.
As a coach, teaching is anisolating experience.
You're in there with those 25to 30 kids and you're by
yourself, or you have acollaborative teacher and it's
up to you to deliver that lessonand there's nobody coming to
help you.
It's like survivor Survivor.
A lot of teachers actually, Ithink, don't like collaborating.
(44:52):
I think a lot of teachers justwant to be sort of solo and I
got this and I don't need helpor want help.
And I also believe that a lotof principals or leaders
sometimes feel that if they putteachers in a room together,
that's a PLC, a professionallearning community, and that's
(45:17):
not necessarily the case.
If you are a coach or a schoolleader, you almost have to teach
your teachers how tocollaborate.
In some cases not all casesSometimes you walk into a
situation with ahigh-functioning team cases not
all cases.
Sometimes you walk into asituation with a high
functioning team but you have tobe prepared for a team where
(45:39):
does her own thing.
Bob thinks the kids can't learnand planning is a waste of time
and Mr Johnson, you know, justwants to do sports and you're
like let's PLC and plan a unitor look at data and they're not
having it and they stare at youlike how long do we have to be
here?
Or they find excuses to leave.
That's going to happen as acoach and you're going to have
(46:00):
those experiences.
So, having some preparation forthat through protocols and
norms, having a team setexpectations for themselves
because they'll do the exactsame thing that the kids will do
, right, one person will makeall the lesson plans and send it
out, or everybody will just,you know, go to Teachers, pay
(46:23):
Teachers and buy that and emailit to everyone else.
Maybe they'll split the bill.
I don't know.
If you don't have clearprotocols and expectations for
your teachers during thosecollaborations, it's not
necessarily just going to happenautomatically the way that we
want it to.
And also, starting with why.
Why do I feel as a coach or asa leader, it's worthwhile for
(46:48):
you to look at this datatogether, because sometimes you
only have one teacher percontent area, so it doesn't make
sense for them to collaborateon units, but they might see
data and can collaborate onresponses to that data and
sharing strategies based on whatthe data shows.
(47:11):
I'd say the most powerful typeof collaboration with teachers
is when they make choices aboutstudents' assignment to classes
during the school year.
So you are an expert at poetryand I'm an expert at nonfiction.
So we see the kids who have thelow scores in poetry during
(47:35):
this time period they go to youand the kids who have the lowest
scores in nonfiction go to me.
And that's a type of teachercollaboration and using
formative assessment that hasthe biggest impact is really
driving your instructionalchoices as a team, based on what
the student data shows.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
And that reminds me of in Debbie Robertson's
planning episode.
We talked about differentsubjects, collaborating to
create some issue, some conceptthat can go across multiple
classes.
Speaker 9 (48:11):
I know my students would sometimes.
Sometimes they would say, hey,like we did this in science.
Yeah, you did, because this isa usable skill, you know, and
this is a life skill that'sgoing to apply in multiple
situations and multiplescenarios.
So anytime students see theconnection, multiple scenarios,
so anytime students see theconnection, that piques their
(48:31):
interest as well, because thenit kind of creates this need to
know.
Oh, I need to pay attention tothis because I want to know this
, because this is going to helpme and support me in other areas
.
So it's not just an isolated,that's a math thing and that a
science topic and that's an ALAtopic.
No, these things all supportthe whole student.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
The example I remember we used then was we
talked about a time that mysister in real life lost her dog
and we had to make all theseposters for it.
And so I in my class came inand had students not for my
sister's dog, I didn't make themdo the work for me, but it gave
(49:16):
me this idea that they came inand they made lost dog flyers
for class and we talked abouthow to get your message out
there with as few words aspossible, because obviously on a
flyer you don't want adissertation, nobody's going to
read it but you still have togive enough information that
they know what they're lookingfor and what they're going to
(49:37):
get if they do it all that.
So I mentioned that and shetalked about how in an economics
class they might talk aboutwhat are the cost benefits of
creating the posters and how doyou determine the reward and
what would be.
You know what are the odds ofsomebody finding the dog and
things like that.
That's statistics.
(49:57):
So a math class could talkabout it from statistics.
But how you could have the samething like the lost dog, maybe a
more heartwarming topic acrossall the subjects, but something
like that where you can learnabout it from different angles,
so that you're really kind ofgoing back to authenticness.
You feel it throughout all yourclasses and you see how the
classes relate to each other.
But we talked in that one abouthow to do that.
(50:19):
You need that math teacher andthe science teacher and the
English teacher collaborating tocome up with the problem and
their angles on that problem,and so it doesn't have to be, I
don't think, english teachersworking together, even though
obviously English teachers canwork together too but it's also
all the subjects in the gradeworking together.
It's working with the gradesbelow you and above you, so it's
(50:41):
not just me working with other,whatever grade I'm teaching
10th grade English teachersworking with all the 10th grade
teachers.
It's working with the 9th gradeteachers of the 11th grade
teachers.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
To be a STEM certified school in Georgia, you
have to have collaborationamong all the teachers on
project based learning andthat's what you know sort of the
standard for high level STEMcertification.
The standard for high levelSTEM certification, you know
where every teacher is part ofthe theme that all students are
(51:18):
working towards.
So one school, they did space,so all the different projects
were about space.
They had different aspects andthey collaborated on how they
could teach certain projectsabout space together.
And that's high level learningand that's how kids become
excited about school.
(51:39):
That's when you have lessattendance problems, this
unified place where everybody'sworking together to create
really exciting experiences.
One of the level ofinstructional practice that
research shows is somethingcalled teacher efficacy right,
(52:00):
where teachers basically believethat what they do impacts
learning more than anything else.
Right, which is actually notthat common.
A lot of teachers believe thatit's about this, it's about the
family life and it's about somany factors, which are factors.
(52:22):
But if you believe that whatyou do actually can impact the
learning, everybody workstogether towards that goal and
that's a huge.
That's what the highestfunctioning schools do, I think
that sounds great.
That's my TED Talk.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
Well, I think we've covered these four themes pretty
well.
I hope, if you are back inschool again, that you had a
great break, and if you have not, if you're listening to this
right when we released it andyou haven't started your break I
hope it's an amazing break.
We at SREB are also going to beclosed starting on December
(52:57):
13th, so we will also not bereleasing any new episodes
during that time, but we'regoing to go enjoy our break and
we will be back in 2025 with newepisodes.
Ben, as always, it's been greattalking to you.
Speaker 2 (53:12):
Looking forward to a great 2025.
All right, bye.
Hello and welcome to our special end of the semester
wrap up edition of the Class AppCoaching Podcast.
I am Ashley Shaw and I am herewith my co-host, Daniel Rock.
Hi, Dan.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey Ashley, how are you doing today?
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I am pretty good.
It's the end of the semester.
We're about to go on a longbreak.
It's nice to be able to relax.
How about you?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Man, I know every teacher out there is just ready
to put this semester to bed andrefresh and get ready to get
back out there.
So I'm feeling all of myteacher friends who are just you
know I'm not going to saylimping to the end zone here,
but you know, maybe pushingthemselves to end strong.
(00:47):
So I feel everybody out therewith that.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Well, to end this semester strong, as you said,
and to help already get usthinking about next semester
because I know that's what weall want to do is immediately
start thinking about nextsemester I thought what we could
do today is kind of talk alittle bit about what we've
learned Together.
We have pulled four differentthemes that we saw across all
the episodes we did thissemester and we're going to talk
(01:16):
a little bit about them fromwhat I learned from the coaches
as a teacher that all ourteachers out there also
hopefully got from these, andthen Dan's going to talk a
little bit about what thecoaches can take away from those
themes.
That right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I've tried to pull coaching strategies from what
our friends have shared, butalso brought in some of the
things that I know would beeffective for a coach working
with teachers on these big ideasand themes.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, that's great because you get to talk about
what all our SREB coaches do anddo well, but we don't often get
to see all the great things youdo as a coach, so I'm looking
forward to hearing what you haveto add to the conversation.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Oh, I'm looking forward to sharing.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Well, I'm going to get us started with our first
theme.
One thing I noticed as I waslistening back through all the
episodes is how much planningwas emphasized.
I mean, we obviously DebbieRobertson had a whole episode on
planning and it was great, butthat wasn't all it was.
It wasn't just planning thelesson.
(02:26):
That's sometimes what I thinkof as planning.
It's like, of course, you planthe lesson, but you don't have
to plan every aspect of theclass.
Except for what I learned thissemester is the things that I
was struggling with.
It'd be do better if I actuallyput some planning in it.
And so I noticed that prettymuch every one of our coaches
that came in, no matter whatthey were talking about, were
(02:48):
like oh, you'll have to plan forthis or you should put some
planning in this.
Jason Adair came in and hetalked about asking great
questions and he said in there,if you want to ask great
questions, you actually have tosit down and plan it ahead,
actually have to sit down andplan it ahead I always think
about with teaching.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
When I was a teacher, I was throwing myself under the
bus.
I was doing the best job, Iknew how, but I would say a
majority of the questions Iasked in the classroom were off
the cuff.
I hadn't planned them.
I didn't plan my questions veryoften Now, whenever I'm
teaching a lesson or if I'mcoaching a teacher in the
planning process, we alwaysstrategically plan our questions
teacher in the planning process.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
We always strategically plan our questions
.
Then we had Don Kirkwood camein and talked about note-taking.
I always knew my studentsweren't great note-takers, but I
never thought about the factthat I needed to plan on things
they could do to take betternotes.
So that was really fascinatingto me.
We had that with classdiscussions.
Keisha King said hey, youactually have to plan.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
So to get them talking, what that takes is you
planning up front, likeanticipating this.
Whatever my problem is, I'mgoing to work that out myself
and anticipate the studentsolutions and misconceptions
they may have.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Even things like Rod Leonard talking about connecting
with the students.
Connecting, making connectionswith people seems like such a
natural human thing.
You don't have to plan for it,it just happens.
You just talk to somebody andyou make a connection or you
don't make a connection, but thething is with your students.
You actually need to plan itbecause you're not going to
(04:23):
connect with every studentstudents.
You actually need to plan itbecause you're not going to
connect with every student andyou actually have to think about
ways to make connections wheremaybe connections aren't easy to
make.
So anyway, just some things Inoticed from listening back
through our episodes what aboutyou?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
well, as I listened to the episodes, I really was
taken by how people areintentional about what they're
going to do, and you talk aboutplanning right, and if you plan
well, then everything you do hasa clear purpose.
One of the aspects of planningthat our teachers are going to
(04:58):
say is hard is time, and as acoach, one of your jobs is to be
a manipulator of time.
You've got this schedule ofclasses and you've got, you know
, teachers assigned to certaintimes and kids assigned to
certain times, and we sometimeslet that schedule drive our life
(05:21):
and make the decisions for us,and then what happens is
learning becomes a variablebased on time and planning.
You know I'll plan a littlehere and a little there, and
that changes because of the timethat's set in stone by our
schedule and in some level, thatyou know has to be that way.
(05:42):
Great coaches are those thatmake time a variable, who are
able to build time in to theschedule or to the semester or
the month, to actually do realplanning with teachers and
ensure that their planning timeis productive and ensure that
(06:06):
their planning time isproductive, yeah, and that to me
that's something.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
I'm really glad you said that, because that's
something that I was thinking ofas I was listening to these
episodes, because I do that alot, where I say I'm not going
to plan the questions out andthe note-taking process out and
the conversation out, I don'thave time to plan for that.
I plan to let them know.
That's good enough.
But I was realizing all thethings that I wasn't doing well
in my class.
I would have saved myself timeif I'd planned that out.
(06:34):
If I did some pre-planning itwould have saved me in the long
run because I think I wouldn'thave had to go back and repeat
myself so much.
I would have had more time todo actual different lessons and
get through things, becausehopefully the students would be
getting it more.
So, yeah, if coaches can helpus figure out how to do that,
(06:55):
because I do think it would savetime in the long run.
But still taking that initialtime to plan it out to get to
that point seems like a lot ofwork.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, it is, it can be.
I would also add that step oneis finding the time, and that's
about building a schedule foryou and your teachers that
prioritizes planning andcollaboration with you and your
teachers.
One person once said yourschedule represents your values.
(07:27):
So if your schedule is designedso that the teachers don't have
time to collaborate, to plan,to work with a coach, then that
just tells you what you value asa leader, and so that's
something that you can talk withleadership about.
And then the question becomeswell, okay, now let's say we
(07:47):
built time for planning.
We've heard a lot of greatideas, all those things you
described.
I want to just add somethingthat Debbie Robertson probably
she talked about and she and Ihave worked on, which is unit
planning.
So you were saying how it'sless if I plan up front.
Well, it's less work indelivery.
(08:08):
It actually saves you time whenyou're teaching because
everything's ready.
Yes.
And that's what great unitplanning is, and so I just want
to briefly share.
I know people are probablylistening, but we're going to
share these resources, right.
Yeah, I'll put them in the shownotes so you can click on a link
here.
What I'm showing you here is aconcept map that teachers use to
(08:33):
lay out their units.
We'll put this PDF in thepodcast link At the top is what
I really want to look at, whichis big ideas.
When teachers start with theirbig ideas, what do you want your
students to know a year fromnow, three years from now, what
are the most essential concepts?
And then you build learningexperiences and learning targets
(08:57):
and assignments from that.
Then you're able to be veryintentional about what you're
teaching.
So one thing I just encourageour listeners and coaches to
think about with your teachersis finding a strong unit
planning model.
Many of your curriculums haveunit plans and maybe that's what
(09:18):
the teachers are teaching.
Then that time spent walkingthrough the curriculum and
deciding which of theseassignments, instructional
strategies, informativeassessments we want to use and
which we don't want to usebecause they don't get to the
core ideas and big topics wewant to talk about.
(09:38):
So that's just something whenyou think about intentional
planning and you listen to thesepodcasts, thinking about how we
can build units around that.
So let's go to our second theme.
Our first theme was intentionalplanning.
Our next theme is somethingthat's, I think, just as
critical, which is understandingyour students, understanding
(10:01):
who they are, academically,emotionally, behaviorally.
So, ashley, can you tell us alittle bit about what you
learned about knowing yourstudents from our coaches at
SRIB this semester?
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I got was how important it is to connect with
my students and to understandthem in order to build
relationships with them, becausethen they're going to be better
learners because of it, andjust thinking of the fact that
each student learns in their ownway, they have their own
personalities, they have theirown academic, emotional and
behavioral needs, I thought it'ssomething that I think, if you
ask anybody, hey, are yourstudents different?
(10:58):
They're going to say yes, it'ssomething everybody technically
knows, but I don't think wealways at least for me as a
teacher think about howimportant it is to actually
build that into our planning, toactually think about it and
make a point to think of thosethings.
And so, as I was listening backthrough the episodes, there
were some episodes that werereally obvious that I was going
to talk about.
Shelly Gibson had a wholeepisode on encouraging our
students and she talked aboutthe importance of connecting
(11:21):
with them and make thoseconnections so that your
students will feel moreempowered, and Rod Leonard had a
full episode where he talkedabout how to connect with
students.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I know we teach standards and we we harpo growth
and mastery.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
But none of that.
None of those things occurwithout a significant
relationship with students.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Those were pretty obvious that that's what it's
going to talk about.
But I saw that theme popping upin other episodes as well that
maybe I wouldn't have thoughtabout it so much.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
So, for example, in Erin's episode she talked about
how to engage your studentsabout how to engage your
students, and one thing that'sreally interesting is that
student engagement really hasthree parts that sometimes we
overlook.
Student engagement is cognitive.
It's about the thinking rightStudent learning.
(12:16):
We have our lesson plans andour standards that we're
teaching students, but we haveto engage them cognitively.
The second part is behaviorallyright, and we think about how
they behave in the class, butalso in that lesson planning,
what are we wanting them to dowith the tasks that we give them
?
The third part, and this almostall the time we forget Students
(12:41):
feel certain ways about whatthey're learning and what
they're being asked to do andsometimes, ashley, the key to
student engagement is reallyengaging kids in those three
spaces.
What are you thinking, what areyou doing and how do you feel?
Speaker 1 (12:57):
You can't just think of them as academic things in
your class.
They're people and they haveemotional and behavioral needs
as well.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
I'm sorry, they're what.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Things.
I said things, robots, whatever.
They're not robots, they'repeople.
Okay, hold on, that's what I'msaying.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Let me write this down.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
The students are people.
The students are not robots,they're people.
That's the quote.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I have to remember that, because I may not think
they're robots Sometimes.
I think there's something elsethat I wouldn't say.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
It is sometimes very hard to remember them as like
wait teenagers and middle schoolkids and elementary students.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
They are humans, still they don't always act like
they're humans, but they're aspecial type of human.
They're a human in development,right Exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
They're not baked, but they do have these emotional
and behavioral needs thataffect the way that they are
picking up the information andhow engaged they are with it.
And if you don't think aboutthose things, it doesn't matter
that you planned your lesson'snot going to go that well.
So that's something I got as Ilistened back to these episodes.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
It's interesting what you're talking about.
I think something that a coachcan do to help their teachers is
really take on that data coachhat and think about what are
ways that I can collect data formy teachers.
Or show my teachers how tocollect data on academic for my
(14:25):
teachers, or show my teachershow to collect data on academic,
behavioral and different typesof, even emotional selves or
states.
So you know, obviously most ofour schools have diagnostic and
formative assessments built in,whether it's district
assessments or computerassessments that are out there
(14:47):
and I've seen so many teachersdo these assessments, get the
data and say, wow, my kids arelow.
And then they're like bam, it'sa lot of work for me.
And then they get back in itand teach what they were going
to teach anyway.
So, as a coach, helping themunderstand the students' needs
with that data and helping themcategorize what type of
(15:07):
instruction will be appropriatefor those different levels and
making sure that those arepresent in variety different
aspects of the lessons so notjust collecting the data,
academics, but that response tothe data is the part that I
think teachers could use a lotof help with.
Yes, I agree, I also thinkbehavioral-wise, emotional-wise,
(15:33):
there is a lot of work we cando to listen to students more.
There's something that we do atSREB we are part of different
improvement networks, usingimprovement science, and part of
improvement science is aboutknowing the pain points and of
(15:54):
the people you are trying toserve and really understanding
that.
We do what's called empathyinterviews, where you really
look at the student or theteacher, the person who's
experiencing the problem.
In this case, I would say it'sthe student who's experiencing
the problem of not learning, ofbeing bullied, of feeling
(16:16):
uncomfortable and talking tothem and trying to understand
the user experience.
Right, Do we really listen tostudents about what the user
experience of being in school islike and really try to get that
information from them?
I don't know that we do that alot.
Them, um, I don't know that wedo that a lot.
(16:42):
So that is one thing that Irecommend and that they
recommended a lot.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
It was just finding different ways just just to get
their voice heard and get letthem feel like what they think
matters and and actually it canmatter sometimes yeah and I want
to add to kind of what you said, something that that, again, as
I was listening to theseepisodes, I heard you saying
quite a few times as to whatworks for coaches.
This theme is understandingstudent needs, but I think we
(17:07):
could easily say understandingteacher needs as well, and I
know that's something that youtalked about in a couple of
episodes was the idea of thecoaches can't just come into the
classroom and say, okay,teacher, here's what you're
going to do.
Just like the teacher needs toconnect with the students, the
coach should work to connect alittle bit with the teachers is
(17:28):
that correct?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
yeah, and, and so you're modeling.
First of all, it's effectiveand second, you're modeling how
teachers can approach studentsby listening, by understanding
where they are, what their goalsare, what they want and
obviously having a clearexpectation of what quality
instruction looks like at ourschool, but molding how you
(17:51):
support them based on what theysay they need and what their
interests are them based on whatthey say they need and what
their interests are.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
And in the same way I just said, the coach should be
doing that for the teacher.
I think that model works forthe teachers as well, because I
know I can think of it that way.
If somebody came into myclassroom and just started
telling me, ok, this is what youneed to do, this, this, this,
this, this, I'm going to getfrustrated.
I would be like OK, I know whatI'm doing.
Like who are you?
But if I have somebody, come inand build that relationship and
(18:22):
explain to me this is why we'redoing this, this is why it
works, I'm going to be much morewilling to try those things
because I know that they have mybest interest in mind.
And I think that's the samething when I do that in my
classroom.
If I come in and I'm like okay,when you write your essay, you
need to do this, this and this.
And they're like why I want todo it my way.
But if I can show them that Iactually care about making them
(18:43):
better and do those connectionswith them and understand their
needs and work with them, I'mlike, okay, I'm not just telling
you what to do because I wantto be your boss.
I have like a power trip and Ijust want to boss you around.
I'm doing it because thesethings are actually going to
work and make it improve you andmake you better, and they're
going to be more willing to dothe work.
(19:03):
So I think it goes both ways.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
It does.
You know, just what you saidreally sparked something in my
mind, because when a coach or aprincipal or a fellow teacher
says to me, you need to do this,you need to do this, you need
to do this, you need to do this,based on being in my classroom,
all I'm hearing is you suck,you suck what you're doing is
(19:28):
wrong.
What you're doing is wrong.
You should quit.
You're in the wrong profession.
All your life choices weremistakes.
Discussion all your lifechoices were mistakes.
Whereas if they ask me what doyou want to learn?
What do you feel your strengthsare?
How can we build on?
Ooh yeah, you're really good atthat.
I've noticed you're really goodat that.
Maybe you could show otherpeople how to do that.
And then I wonder how we coulduse that to maybe even push a
(20:00):
little bit more this other areathat you would like to work on.
You know, but use that strengthin order to help with areas
that I say I know I can probably, you know, do a better job at.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
I agree.
I think that's really great.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
To help with students and teacher relationships.
One tool is thinking about howcan I collect feedback
intentionally about how thestudents are responding to my
lesson knowledge.
But the best feedback a teachercan get is not from their
administration, of their peers,but from their kids in an honest
but kind and productive way.
And Jim Knight recommends, youknow, metacognitive questions at
(20:48):
the end of lessons.
You know questions like whatpart of today's lesson did you
enjoy the most and why was thereanything today that made you
feel confused or frustrated?
What could help you understandit better?
So we're helping the kids bemetacognitive, we're honoring
their thoughts, feelings andexperience of the lesson and
(21:12):
we're getting feedback.
Um, and then there's another I Ijust have some Likert scale
questions here.
So at the end of your lessonfor the closing, instead of you
know, a three question quiz or a, I think I wonder I'm confused
by, but really having somebetter reflective questions, and
(21:35):
I think we're going to talklater about group work and
collaboration.
You know you can have questionslike I felt supported by my
classmates during group workStrongly agree, agree, you know,
neutral, disagree, yada, yada.
I had the opportunity to sharemy ideas and listen to others
during group work.
So by giving students voice inthe learning experience, you can
(21:55):
increase your connection to thestudents and your students'
ownership of the learning andbuild a community of learners,
and this is a tool to help.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
All right.
Well, thank you for the tool.
I think what we're hearing hereis, if you want people to do
what you want them to do, youhave to make those connections
and help them see why they'redoing it and help them reach
their goals and not just orderthem around.
That kind of leads us, I think,into our next point, because
the idea of helping them see whythey're doing something instead
(22:26):
of just telling them to do it,and helping them feel like what
they're doing is what they wantto be doing.
It goes to connecting withstudents, but it also goes to
this next theme of creatingauthentic learning experiences.
So, as we just mentioned,everybody wants to feel like
what they're doing is not justbusy work, it's not just
(22:47):
something that somebody'stelling them to do so they have
to do it.
People want to understand whythey're doing it, and the more
we, as teachers, can connect thethings that we're learning to
to authentic real worldexperiences whether it's work or
whether it's something they dooutside of class doesn't matter
what it is.
I don't think, as long as theycan see those connections, it's
(23:09):
not just because I told you to,it's because it actually helps
them in some.
Somebody once told me, nevercall, never say real world
situations, because isn'tclassroom the real world?
It's not like you step in thefake world when you walk in the
classroom, right?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
we're not.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
We're not living in a simulation exactly, but
authentic outside of theclassroom experiences.
It'll help them want to do thework more.
I'm not going to say studentsare going to want to do the work
, but be more willing to do thework.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It's like, let's say, you've got 30 kids in your
classroom.
Nothing you do is going to getall 30 kids riled and ready to
go 100%.
I love this.
I mean I could be wrong.
There could be some teachersout there who do that.
I want to meet them.
Most of the time you're workingpercentages right.
(24:01):
So the question is whatpractices are going to increase
the percentage of students whoare inherently motivated to do
the learning that we want themto do?
And what you're saying is youheard teachers say our coaches
say real I might say real worldauthentic experiences, right,
(24:22):
experiences that match whatthey're going to do in the work
world or in their adultpost-school world.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Right, we had quite a few of those, leslie E.
Obviously she did a whole oneon creating authentic work
experiences in the classroom.
So clearly she saw the need forthat and the idea of coming up
with these plans to showstudents, like she had the idea
(24:52):
of bringing in outside partnersto kind of say this is how I am
a baker and this is how I usewhat you're learning in my
bakery every day, so they cankind of see those.
Speaker 6 (25:05):
So when it's possible .
Community partners are a waythat we can put the bow on a
learning experience and I wantto be very clear.
I do not think that everythinghas to involve an outside person
coming in.
However, when you do studentsperk up, it is.
(25:29):
It used to drive me crazy.
As an engineer, I knew what mykids needed to do.
An engineer, I knew what mykids needed to do, needed to
study, but I was teacher, I wasMrs Eves, I wasn't engineer, mrs
Eves.
When I would bring in anengineer to work with the
students, talk to the students,share their experience with the
(25:49):
students, the students perked up.
They listened more to thatexpert coming in because it was
something different, it wassomething novel, they could you
know it.
Just it rang truer for them, itrang more authentic because it
was somebody coming in from theoutside community.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
And then we had Marty Shedier came in and he talked
about a common teacher thingthat probably every teacher
listening right now is used.
He talked about think commonteacher thing that probably
every teacher listening rightnow has used.
He talked about think, pair,share, but he changed it to be a
simulated workplace environment.
So it wasn't just the same old,same old that they do every day
, like, ok, now I have to dothis thing where my teachers may
(26:31):
have me talk to the personsitting next to me about this
topic I don't care about.
He helped them to see how theywould be doing those exact same
things in a workplace, no matterwhat they ended up working in.
Speaker 7 (26:42):
Regardless of whatever I was doing in the Navy
with math and science, whichwere my strengths and my degree
was in I had to write.
I was listening, I wascommunicating, I was, you know,
technical drawings and followingprocedures and reviewing safety
.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
So I felt that bringing that into the classroom
might leverage students intomaybe taking a harder look at
the math vocabulary, and one ofthe things she talked about was
if you want students to get thewords and you want them to be
able to understand the words anduse them more than just a
(27:20):
memorization tool for the test,then show them the real world
context, show how those wordsconnect to things that they know
and understand already.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
You know the age old question of why are we doing
this?
Right, we're using quadraticequations and polynomials, or
analyzing a poem Like when am Igoing to have to analyze Robert
Frost's walking, you know, in awoods, walking in the snow.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
I forget what the name of the poem is I do that
every day, that's like my wholejob.
Yes, robert Frost.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Every day you are Robert Frost, my family.
Every night, before we eatdinner, we take out a Frost poem
and read through it and do afull explication.
And when I interviewed for myjob at SREB, they asked me to
explicate an Emily Dickinsonpoem.
No, they did not.
So the question as a teacher islike why am I doing this Right?
(28:18):
Is it because I just was toldto do it?
Is it because it's in mycurriculum and it's the only
reason?
These are almost obstaclessometimes.
The curriculum it doesn'talways connect to the big
picture of how this skill isapplicable in life.
So as a teacher, you might wantto actually connect to some of
(28:43):
my CTE teachers and think aboutwith them what academic skills
are needed in your engineeringclass.
How do students do math in yourrepair class?
In your nursing right, theyobviously use science, but they
also have to write certainreports and there's a certain
(29:06):
technical writing involved.
As a coach of teachers or aleader facilitating
conversations among sort of yourcareer tech aligned teachers if
you're in high school, or wecall them specials or electives,
maybe in middle school andlooking at how we can infuse
academics into CTE classes andhow we can infuse CTE sometimes
(29:31):
and some of those experiencesinto the other classes.
One thing that I want to shareis the Association for Career
and Technical Education hasrecommendations for middle
school for all students, notjust career tech students, and
there's six of them, but I wantto share three very briefly
(29:51):
because I think they get to whatour coaches were saying is
important.
One thing they say is toincorporate career-related
project-based learning inclassrooms.
So if I'm an English teacher,how can I have students do a
project that has them connectwith something that a English
(30:14):
major would do?
You know whether that'sjournalism, being a writer,
being a novelist, being a lot ofEnglish majors become lawyers,
something that requiresextensive reading and writing in
a career and projects that arelike that in a career and
projects that are like that.
Another recommendation they havewhich I think is important and
(30:34):
gets to this idea ofincorporating authentic learning
is employability skills.
Like that's something thatteachers should know about.
Right, what are the skills thatemployers say they need?
And if a student graduates fromyour high school or leaves your
middle school, can you say withconfidence that you have
(30:55):
systematically and purposefullybuilt those skills into your
curriculum across everyclassroom?
Speaker 1 (31:02):
My master's thesis was on how to teach the soft
skills employees actually want.
There you go In an Englishclass.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
In an English class, so they should call you is what
I'm hearing.
If they want to learn moreabout this, or just, you can
just send them your thesis andthat'll solve most of their
problems.
Can you give us a big, just onejuicy recommendation from that,
from that, you're on the spothere.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Okay, let's see.
Well, it's easy for englishteachers, I think, on this one,
because a lot of the soft skillsthat employers want are like
communication, verbal andwritten uh, teamwork.
It's things that you're alreadydoing in your classes anyway,
so it's kind of a cheat a littlebit, but one of the things that
I talked about was just helpingthem see connections.
So basically, the way I didthis is I watched a bunch of
(31:54):
students do research projectsand this protocol thing that
they did where they knew theywere being watched, and they
basically had to do a think outloud process where they said
everything they're thinking.
And one common thing that I sawstudents doing was they thought
things had to be very literal.
So, for example, I don't want tocall the student on the spot,
(32:15):
I'm not saying their name oranything but one of the students
in this project was doing aresearch paper for his English
class on how the Lakers couldcreate I'm going to make up the
teams because I don't rememberbut how the Lakers could create
a dream team.
That was their topic and theyfound an article on how the
(32:35):
Golden State Warriors hadcreated the dream team and they
said in their Think Out Loudprocess well, I know that seemed
like it was going to be good,but I know I can't use it
because it's not about theLakers.
So I was like, ok, so studentsthink literally like if your
source has to be the exact thingyou're looking for, that was
the critical thinking, like okay, so how can I look at things
(32:55):
like that and help them make theconnections that things can fit
together?
You have to be creative abouthow you fit them together, and
so I started doing this game inmy class when we were learning
research.
It's called Wikipedia roulette.
Okay.
Where I give them two words thatseem like they would not be
related at all and they start onthe first words Wikipedia page
(33:18):
and they have to get to thesecond words Wikipedia page
without going back.
They have to click links in thearticle to get to the second
word and the group they're ingroups for this, the group that
gets there the fastest wins likea little prize or whatever.
It's a game we play in classand the idea is they really have
to sit there and think how canI connect word A to word B?
(33:39):
It might be like insane clownposse to Walmart, but the idea
of it was that I did look atlike where are they?
What soft skills should you belearning in an English class?
And where are they not?
Where are they struggling withthose issues by watching the
research process and then tryingto figure out ways to build in
(34:01):
those things into my class.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
That's something that I've heard a lot of teachers
say.
Kids are struggling more andmore with.
Yes Is sort of giving up veryquickly when things aren't
immediate and obvious.
I just want to move to the next, my last authentic learning
experience point from my friendsat the Association for Career
and Technical Education, whichis interacting with business and
(34:25):
community leaders related toyour content.
Business and community leadersrelated to your content.
You'd be so surprised howpowerful it is.
If I'm teaching poetry, bring ina poet right.
If I'm teaching history, tobring in a lawyer who has to
look at precedents and useprecedents to you know, argue a
(34:50):
case and how history isimportant to the law.
If I'm teaching science,obviously there's a million, a
lot of scientists out theredoctors.
So when you bring in peoplefrom the field, what you can do
is have them share what they doand how they use the content.
(35:11):
But then that next layer isbeing able to give feedback to
students on their work.
So when you design projects andhave them do something that's
aligned to career areas from apoet, right on your poetry or a
scientist, about your experimentand how you're drawing
(35:33):
conclusions and using variablesthat adds a deep level and can
really build excitement in theclassroom.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
And as an example of that, I have a friend who runs a
nonprofit that basically hegoes into jails and teaches
creative writing, and so I hadhim come to my class Field trip.
Well, yeah, not going on a fieldtrip but he came into the class
(36:01):
and he came in with a shortstory that one of the prisoners
had written.
He gave me that ahead of timeand I gave them that was their
homework and they were supposedto just come in prepared with
some questions to ask him.
That might have been the firsttime, and maybe the only time,
that every single student in theclass it was a small class, but
every single student in theclass was prepared, they had
(36:23):
questions, they were interested.
They came in not because Iasked them to prepare questions,
they didn't care that Iassigned them to ask questions.
They came in prepared becausethey had questions, they wanted
to know and seeing them whenthey had to write a short story
for their next assignment,thinking about how much that
meant to prisoners to be able toexpress themselves and to be
able to communicate things thatmaybe they've never been given
(36:45):
an opportunity to create or toexpress man, those students are
interested.
Giving an opportunity to createor to express man, those
students are interested.
So from personal experience Ican say I mean I guess it might
depend on who the guests did,but having a guest come in
really changes things a lot.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
So let's get to our last theme.
One thing that we've heard ourSREB colleagues talk about is
collaborative learning how theycan use students' collaborative
experiences and createcollaborative experiences in the
classroom to help studentslearn.
(37:23):
What have you heard about thatfrom your discussions with them?
Speaker 1 (37:29):
I thought it was amazing how many of the coaches,
no matter what they weretalking about, brought in the
importance of teamwork, ofworking with other students in
the class to hear otherstudents' ideas.
I know, when we talked aboutthings like creating
think-pair-share but making it aworkplace experience, it
(37:52):
required teamwork.
It required, obviously, that'sthe pair part and the share part
of think-pair-share anyway, butit needed those students to
work in groups to understandthat they're going to be part of
a team one day.
They're not going to.
No matter what you do, even ifyou're like a solitary author
that works at home, at somepoint you're going to have to
work with your editor.
You know you're going to haveto be able to have those
(38:14):
teamwork skills Speaking of theskills employers want.
So we also had, obviously, inKeisha's episode on creating
great classroom discussions.
To have a great discussion,it's not just one person talking
.
To have a great discussion,it's not just one person talking
.
A few different teachers talkedabout the fact that the person
(38:34):
doing the talking is doing thelearning, and so it's important
to have the students talking toeach other and helping each
other figure out what the lessonis, as opposed to me, the
teacher, just being at the frontof the classroom lecturing and
I'm the one learning and they'renot.
One really fascinating one to methat I never in a million years
was expecting in the lesson wasin Don's episode on note-taking
(38:57):
.
Note-taking is a solitaryactivity, so I thought, and then
he was like okay, have themwrite their notes down, then
explain their notes to somebodyelse and then take notes on the
notes that the students gavethem, so they're reinforcing
what they're learning andkeeping it going.
That is a teamwork activity andnote-taking that I never would
(39:18):
have thought of.
Speaker 8 (39:19):
What I've really encouraged and what has been
powerful is note-taking betweenstudents.
So a lot of times if I havethem read an article, I want
them, you know, maybe underlinethe critical information, the
key ideas, and then I have themtake that, they put it into
their notes, they elaborate onit, and then I'll do like an
(39:40):
inner outer circle, but I hadthem take their notes and share
their notes with the personacross from them, and then that
person across from them wastaking notes on the notes that
they were sharing with them andthe goal is is just to go deeper
into that content that we'representing now, and then after a
minute I have one of the lines,rotate one down, and then they
(40:03):
share again and they rotate one.
So, like five minutes, not onlyare they building confidence in
the notes that they took, butthey're also validating and
getting the feedback and really,I would say, refining those
ideas.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
So, no matter what aspect of the class it is, it
seemed like if I wanted mystudents to kind of do better in
a certain area, having themwork together to come up with it
is a big part of that, and thatis something, when I was doing
my master's that came up.
A lot was the idea that if youput students in a group and
(40:46):
maybe they don't all get everyaspect of the assignment, of the
project that they're working on, whatever that is but one of
them knows this part and one ofthem knows that part and one of
them knows this part, andtogether they can figure it out.
But also, as they're figuringit out, they're teaching each
other, and so that's a big partof why teamwork works.
What about you?
Speaker 2 (41:06):
I think a lot of that comes down to the science of
learning and the fact that weare social by nature yes, and
the fact that we learn throughsocializing right.
That's how kids learn how totalk is by hearing other people
(41:27):
talk, and then we learn to havea conversation, and through
those conversations we'relearning about the world.
And as we explain something,we're not just delivering
information like in an email.
We're actually learning thatinformation by sharing it Right,
and that's the best way tolearn something, is to teach it
(41:50):
Right, and that's, you know, thebest way to learn something is
to teach it.
So I think what a lot of ourcoaches were hitting on was when
we create opportunities forstudents to work together.
It's not just about saving timeand you do this job and I do
that job, so we have this finalproduct, but it's not about the
product as much as the processand the process of talking,
(42:13):
listening, sharing ideas,building on each other, and that
, like you said, is also a softskill.
So you're hitting a lot ofdomains by building
opportunities for collaborationand discussion.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
And not to try to get out of my work, but I want to
try to get out of my work.
Having a group project meansfewer papers.
If I have five groups writesomething as opposed to 26
essays, it saves me a littletime too.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
As long as everyone participated and did you know
what they were supposed to.
Oh right, right.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
I'm sure none of the groups in your class have one
student doing all the work forall the others, or I have when I
do group projects, like morethan just an in-class assignment
, when I have them do majorgroup projects, part of the
grade is they grade each otheranonymously.
They don't know I mean I knowthat's not not anonymous to me
but they don't know which oftheir partners are giving them
(43:08):
the grade.
They just know every one oftheir group mates gives them a
grade and then I average thosetogether and that's part of
their grade.
So they have to actuallyparticipate or their group mates
are going to give them a badgrade.
And when they don't know whattheir class, I'll tell you they
will give fair grades.
They're not going to let eventheir friends, they don't let it
get away with anything becausethey know their friends not
(43:29):
going to know it was them thatgraded them.
I will say, when I did that onetime I learned I have to put
some parameters on it.
I think that you're not beingfair.
I can, like I can not countyours in to their grade, because
I did one time have a studentand they have to explain why
they gave that grade.
They have to write like alittle paragraph saying why they
gave their roommate that grade.
(43:51):
And I had this one student thatsaid, well, she did most of the
work, but she kind of annoyedme so I'm giving her an F, like
that's what they?
Speaker 2 (43:59):
that's so like Sounds fair to me.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
I had to discount that one.
I learned that I have to writethat in.
If your rationale doesn't makesense or I, you know it's like
something way away from whateverybody else in the group gave
them, I have the right toeliminate yours.
But I think that does reallyhelp me actually get good groups
, because it's not just melooking at them, it's their
(44:23):
partners deciding how good of apartner they were, and that's
really helped me.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Let's think about collaboration from a teacher's
perspective.
As a coach, teaching is anisolating experience.
You're in there with those 25to 30 kids and you're by
yourself, or you have acollaborative teacher and it's
up to you to deliver that lessonand there's nobody coming to
help you.
It's like survivor Survivor.
A lot of teachers actually, Ithink, don't like collaborating.
(44:52):
I think a lot of teachers justwant to be sort of solo and I
got this and I don't need helpor want help.
And I also believe that a lotof principals or leaders
sometimes feel that if they putteachers in a room together,
that's a PLC, a professionallearning community, and that's
(45:17):
not necessarily the case.
If you are a coach or a schoolleader, you almost have to teach
your teachers how tocollaborate.
In some cases not all casesSometimes you walk into a
situation with ahigh-functioning team cases not
all cases.
Sometimes you walk into asituation with a high
functioning team but you have tobe prepared for a team where
(45:39):
does her own thing.
Bob thinks the kids can't learnand planning is a waste of time
and Mr Johnson, you know, justwants to do sports and you're
like let's PLC and plan a unitor look at data and they're not
having it and they stare at youlike how long do we have to be
here?
Or they find excuses to leave.
That's going to happen as acoach and you're going to have
(46:00):
those experiences.
So, having some preparation forthat through protocols and
norms, having a team setexpectations for themselves
because they'll do the exactsame thing that the kids will do
, right, one person will makeall the lesson plans and send it
out, or everybody will just,you know, go to Teachers, pay
(46:23):
Teachers and buy that and emailit to everyone else.
Maybe they'll split the bill.
I don't know.
If you don't have clearprotocols and expectations for
your teachers during thosecollaborations, it's not
necessarily just going to happenautomatically the way that we
want it to.
And also, starting with why.
Why do I feel as a coach or asa leader, it's worthwhile for
(46:48):
you to look at this datatogether, because sometimes you
only have one teacher percontent area, so it doesn't make
sense for them to collaborateon units, but they might see
data and can collaborate onresponses to that data and
sharing strategies based on whatthe data shows.
(47:11):
I'd say the most powerful typeof collaboration with teachers
is when they make choices aboutstudents' assignment to classes
during the school year.
So you are an expert at poetryand I'm an expert at nonfiction.
So we see the kids who have thelow scores in poetry during
(47:35):
this time period they go to youand the kids who have the lowest
scores in nonfiction go to me.
And that's a type of teachercollaboration and using
formative assessment that hasthe biggest impact is really
driving your instructionalchoices as a team, based on what
the student data shows.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
And that reminds me of in Debbie Robertson's
planning episode.
We talked about differentsubjects, collaborating to
create some issue, some conceptthat can go across multiple
classes.
Speaker 9 (48:11):
I know my students would sometimes.
Sometimes they would say, hey,like we did this in science.
Yeah, you did, because this isa usable skill, you know, and
this is a life skill that'sgoing to apply in multiple
situations and multiplescenarios.
So anytime students see theconnection, multiple scenarios,
so anytime students see theconnection, that piques their
(48:31):
interest as well, because thenit kind of creates this need to
know.
Oh, I need to pay attention tothis because I want to know this
, because this is going to helpme and support me in other areas
.
So it's not just an isolated,that's a math thing and that a
science topic and that's an ALAtopic.
No, these things all supportthe whole student.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
The example I remember we used then was we
talked about a time that mysister in real life lost her dog
and we had to make all theseposters for it.
And so I in my class came inand had students not for my
sister's dog, I didn't make themdo the work for me, but it gave
(49:16):
me this idea that they came inand they made lost dog flyers
for class and we talked abouthow to get your message out
there with as few words aspossible, because obviously on a
flyer you don't want adissertation, nobody's going to
read it but you still have togive enough information that
they know what they're lookingfor and what they're going to
(49:37):
get if they do it all that.
So I mentioned that and shetalked about how in an economics
class they might talk aboutwhat are the cost benefits of
creating the posters and how doyou determine the reward and
what would be.
You know what are the odds ofsomebody finding the dog and
things like that.
That's statistics.
(49:57):
So a math class could talkabout it from statistics.
But how you could have the samething like the lost dog, maybe a
more heartwarming topic acrossall the subjects, but something
like that where you can learnabout it from different angles,
so that you're really kind ofgoing back to authenticness.
You feel it throughout all yourclasses and you see how the
classes relate to each other.
But we talked in that one abouthow to do that.
(50:19):
You need that math teacher andthe science teacher and the
English teacher collaborating tocome up with the problem and
their angles on that problem,and so it doesn't have to be, I
don't think, english teachersworking together, even though
obviously English teachers canwork together too but it's also
all the subjects in the gradeworking together.
It's working with the gradesbelow you and above you, so it's
(50:41):
not just me working with other,whatever grade I'm teaching
10th grade English teachersworking with all the 10th grade
teachers.
It's working with the 9th gradeteachers of the 11th grade
teachers.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
To be a STEM certified school in Georgia, you
have to have collaborationamong all the teachers on
project based learning andthat's what you know sort of the
standard for high level STEMcertification.
The standard for high levelSTEM certification, you know
where every teacher is part ofthe theme that all students are
(51:18):
working towards.
So one school, they did space,so all the different projects
were about space.
They had different aspects andthey collaborated on how they
could teach certain projectsabout space together.
And that's high level learningand that's how kids become
excited about school.
(51:39):
That's when you have lessattendance problems, this
unified place where everybody'sworking together to create
really exciting experiences.
One of the level ofinstructional practice that
research shows is somethingcalled teacher efficacy right,
(52:00):
where teachers basically believethat what they do impacts
learning more than anything else.
Right, which is actually notthat common.
A lot of teachers believe thatit's about this, it's about the
family life and it's about somany factors, which are factors.
(52:22):
But if you believe that whatyou do actually can impact the
learning, everybody workstogether towards that goal and
that's a huge.
That's what the highestfunctioning schools do, I think
that sounds great.
That's my TED Talk.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
Well, I think we've covered these four themes pretty
well.
I hope, if you are back inschool again, that you had a
great break, and if you have not, if you're listening to this
right when we released it andyou haven't started your break I
hope it's an amazing break.
We at SREB are also going to beclosed starting on December
(52:57):
13th, so we will also not bereleasing any new episodes
during that time, but we'regoing to go enjoy our break and
we will be back in 2025 with newepisodes.
Ben, as always, it's been greattalking to you.
Speaker 2 (53:12):
Looking forward to a great 2025.
All right, bye.
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