January 26, 2024 • 24 mins
In this episode of the oneSMFC podcast, Superintendent Ochoa is joined by two Teachers on Special Assignments for Literacy, Ms. Nicole Habeeb and Ms. Larissa Kenny, and the Director of Curriculum Instruction for Elementary Schools Pam Bartfield.
The three discuss our focus in early literacy at the San Mateo-Foster City School District, highlighting system changes, professional development, and an upcoming 1st Grade Literacy Summit by teachers, for teachers!
Interested in learning more? Check out our recent On the Road to Year 3 Annual Report!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Like.
No teacher wants to not doright by their student.
But now that we're learningthat maybe we weren't doing
right by them, what do we do now?
Because we didn't havesomething that students were
able to navigate themselves andown.
That.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yeah, they're embedded, and went like this and
like how this shock looked ontheir face like did I just do
that?
And I was like, yeah, you justrun that work, keep going.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
It's called a teaching practice for a reason,
and it's not just something youkind of quickly put in place and
then walk away.
It's something that you have tosupport and commit to, and you
know grow.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being
with us again today on the OneSMFC podcast.
This is a program that we puttogether here in the San Mateo
Foster City School District.
We do it actually to get intouch with our families and with
our community.
We want everybody who has astake in this school district to
know what's going on in ourschools.
My name is Diego Ochoa and I'mthe superintendent of the
(01:03):
district, and it's my honor tobe with three of my colleagues,
who I'm going to allow tointroduce themselves, starting
with our director of curriculum.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Hi everybody, Pam Bartfield, director of
curriculum instruction for ourelementary schools.
Yeah, why did I try to chopyour title in half?
You can, it's fine.
People know.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
This is your 14th appearance on the bottom.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
So you're an old player, you don't know.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
OK.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
My name is Nicole Habib and I'm the language and
literacy toset Bearsford.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Yay, such as if you haven't been to Bearsford, go to
Bearsford If you want some.
Yeah, exactly.
If you want some socialemotional support, just go for a
lovely walk up and down theplayground.
It's just an absolutelywonderful place and glad to have
you on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Thank you.
My name is Larissa Kenny.
I'm the language and literacytoset at Bayside Academy.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
So we're going to have some parents who listen to
this and say Tosa, Larissa, doyou want to explain what that is
?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
A toset is an acronym for teacher on special
assignments.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, and so basically Nicole and I I'm
sharing that same role at twodifferent sites.
We both specialize in languageand support literacy instruction
at our sites in the elementaryside.
So Bayside is also a middleschool, but I primarily focus on
(02:30):
working with the elementaryside.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
And I think you might , larissa.
You might have, let's say, 18elementary teachers at Bayside,
something like that.
So in a typical elementaryteacher's day they might have 22
, 23, 24 kids that they have allday long and they're on their
roster, they're takingattendance.
Your job is different, right?
You're not?
You don't have that roster ofkids who start the day with you
(02:56):
and end the day with you.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
No, I don't have my own like class roster.
Attendance roster yeah, I don'ttake attendance for a class of
kids that are with me all day.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I have kids who move in and out of working with me
across grade levels from K tothird grade.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yeah, pam, you're the director of curriculum and
instruction.
Why do that?
Why do we set up the system ofhaving experts like Nicole and
Larissa be, I guess, flexible inthat way to be able to work
with kids who might need moresupport?
Why do we do that?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
To move with the students.
Part of our strategy in havingthese language and literacy
toasters across our school sitesis to support teachers that
support students withintervention, tier one,
instruction, coaching, modeling,whatever the need is at the
school After we assess studentswhen we implement our program.
(03:53):
Students have different needs,and so the TOSA's role needs to
be flexible to be able toprovide that.
In some cases and I know Nicoleand Larissa they sometimes act
as a additional teacher at thatgrade level.
So during the literacy time,when we're focusing on our
structured literacy program,they might be working with a
group of students while anotherteacher is working with a
(04:15):
different group of students, sowe can meet the students where
they are.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
So, nicole, to use Beresford as an example, you
might have, let's say, 40 kidsin second grade and you have two
teachers teaching those 40 kids.
Are there times where you mighthave a group out of that 40?
And what might you do withthose kids?
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah, I mean.
So we're very grateful that wehave a lot of support, and I'll
kind of talk about who they areon campus.
But, we really are through thesupport of PAM and as a program
we're really looking at allstudents are our students.
Instead of like this is justthis classroom, or this is just
for this teacher, or this isjust this grade level.
We're really starting to lookat.
Every one of these students inour school belongs to all of us
(04:57):
and the responsibility of theirsuccess is a part of all of our
responsibility, whether we're akindergarten teacher or a fifth
grade, and so when we go into asecond grade classroom or grade
level and we have those 40students, we're really looking
at the data to help us drive howwe put these students into
groups.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
And so they may not all be second graders Right, and
you might have kids frommultiple teachers Exactly In a
group with you.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Right, and it takes a lot of trust.
Right, because all of us careso deeply about the students
that are in our four walls ofour classroom.
But we are building the trustwithin each other so that we can
send some students over toanother classroom and then
earning their trust that theycan also send them to me.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
And it's true that in our profession you do feel a
little bit of that ownership,like when I was a teacher.
I would say my kids you knowlike and I think sometimes we
actually take that literallylike these are my students, my
students don't leave myclassroom without me.
We're setting up somepossibilities of kids being able
(05:56):
to go next door and be in agroup in Mrs Kenny's class or go
down the hall and be in MrsHabib's class, and the event
that we have coming up February8th is our first grade teachers
literacy summit that we'rehosting in San Mateo and Foster
City School District and in someways it's sort of similar to
what we just talked about, inthat we're inviting teachers Pam
(06:18):
, do you know the districts thatare gonna be represented who
are coming to visit us?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, so far we have, I think, 11 different districts
and teachers from thosedistricts and teachers from
those districts.
So we have Redwood City,hillsborough, hayward, palo Alto
, santa Cruz, monterey.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
San Bruno, san Bruno.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Pacifica.
Cabrillo a bunch of districts.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
And so these are folks that teach kids who live
in different cities, but they'recoming to our district to find
out what we're doing in ourfirst grade classrooms.
Nicole, when they get here,what are they gonna see?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
They're going to see, first and foremost, a lot of
passion.
I think there's every teacher,especially with PAF, our new
reading program that we're using.
Every teacher has made it theirown but also was really trying
to be lock and step with a lotof the language in the way that
we're facilitating the learning.
So I think that no matter whatschool site our guests are
coming to, they're gonna see alot of consistency, which is
(07:14):
important especially for ourstudents that are multilingual
or have different, you know,other factors that, no matter
where they go, there's gonna bea lot of consistency for those
students Right, and we'll see alot of passion in the lessons
and fun.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Yeah, it's a joy they're all looking online and
they're seeing these videos weput out just the other day.
Larissa, you're somewhat of astar in the community right now.
You got a video with a firstgrade teacher from Bayside, the
school that you're serving thisyear, and you know the
instruction that's happening inthat first grade classroom.
(07:48):
It's different than what wewould have seen five years ago.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthat difference?
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah.
So the first grade teacher thatI kind of was like, hey, let's
do this filming in yourclassroom.
She's a first year teacher,brand new to California.
She came here from anotherstate and it's her first year
teaching and I kind of told her,hey, we're gonna, just don't
worry, there'll be musicoverlaid, you don't have to talk
(08:15):
it's.
And then it turned intosomething different.
But she's amazing and I thinkthat actually it's interesting
to me because I never really hadthe conversation with her
before we started workingtogether, like what's your
background in literacy?
What did it look like?
Where you did your studentteaching and what was the
curriculum classes that you tookin college when you were
(08:37):
getting your credential?
And she definitely, like therewas evidence of her coming from
very much a balanced literacyinstruction background in her.
You know practicum and thingslike that.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
And that would have meant significantly less
instruction in phonics and thenphonemic awareness and things
like that.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, I mean teaching kids to read and using the
queuing system, which is justtalking to them about meaning,
structure, visual.
It doesn't make sense.
Look at the first sound.
And not really talking aboutdecoding and letter sounds and
and that's a big debate rightnow in education.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
I think Ed Soros published an article today about
Berkeley Unified School Dish.
They've had a hard time makingthe shift from balance literacy
to structured literacy and wemean that change two years ago.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
And I actually came from San Francisco Unified where
we were all balance.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
literacy and I was a literacy coach there for 10
years and how did?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
that.
So I was, but I was slowlymaking those shifts while I was
still there.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Actually, one of our teachers that we interviewed in
earlier today said the samething.
She actually she was after whatshe said.
Is it OK that I said that and Isaid, yeah, we like the
controversy.
So you were already starting tosee we need to do some.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
I had all these kids in front of me for so long and I
would watch them in theclassrooms and we'd be doing the
same instruction and we wouldbe looking at data and thinking
about what can we do differently.
And we weren't doing itdifferently enough.
We were making subtle changes,but we were doing the same
things over and over again andgetting the same results.
(10:19):
And so for me, with some of myother colleagues there, we
started to really look at otherways and we did foundations up
there some of us and so we werestarting to implement some of
those things.
And then, when I came here,well, we were still using LLI
(10:39):
and stuff.
As soon as we talked aboutmaking the shift and like, oh,
if you want to take theOrton-Gillingham training, which
is a structured literacy,training program.
I was like yes.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
And that was like my first week on the job.
Yeah, I was like 100%.
Did you know that story, Nicole?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
I did not.
No, no, it was my first week onthe job.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
When I came.
When you join the district as asuperintendent, you do a lot of
research and I was sort ofanticipating we would arrive at
some place where I would be in ameeting where we would say are
we going to stick with this, Arewe going to consider a change?
And it happened really fast.
A group of teachers from MeadowHeights and Park reached out to
me and said we need to do this,we need training, and I said,
(11:22):
OK, that was actually the firstcanva I sent out to the whole
district.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
It's the most horrifying.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Any graphic designer would give it an F, a capital F
grade.
But we said no, let's send thisout.
100 teachers signed up.
100 teachers.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
On their own time.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Over summer.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
So I said we really have something here.
We, you know.
It was sort of like areflection of what you were
talking about and that feelingof I do this and I kind of get
the same result.
I do this and I still see thelack of growth.
What do you think has been thehardest part of implementing a
new curriculum?
Because we substituted thestress and the struggle of not
(12:06):
making the kind of progress thatwe had hoped with we're going
to do something completely new.
So, from your perspective,larissa, what has been the
hardest part of the shift thatwe made?
Speaker 2 (12:20):
I'm really lucky because at my side at Bayside
there was already acollaboration.
There was a lot ofcollaboration happening, like
with grade level partnerships,and so being part of that has
really helped facilitate kind of.
And also all the teachers atthe time did the OG training.
(12:45):
So that was they had buy-in too.
And I think one of the mostchallenging parts was we had a
teacher shift from an uppergrade down to second grade this
year and she's phenomenal atteaching benchmark.
She really is, but I think it'sbeen a hard shift for her.
But I will say that we werejust looking at data because we
(13:09):
had our most recent and so Ipulled data and was doing that
right before I came here and welooked at in first grade and
second grade.
The two teams met with me andwe looked at the data of that.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
We just collected and you saw some right.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And she was like I just have to talk about the
growth that these students havemade and she and I share the
most struggling years in thatgrade and second grade, and so
she was just, she was justbragging about it, and so I feel
like it just took that for herto really cause.
She was like this isn't reallythat, it's not the most dynamic
(13:44):
thing to teach.
I get that, but at the sametime, when you see-.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
It's methodical.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, so when you see that, to have her see that, I
was like, oh, now she's born,you got the passion in life.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
But the thing I always find interesting about
that comment around, it ismethodical.
But kids, any of our classrooms, they love it.
They love it because it ismethodical and it's routine and
they can actually lift the wordsoff the page, which I think
(14:18):
gets them the most excited.
Because I think for years and Iwas a teacher in the district
too and years ago, and I thinkwe always were looking at our
students and we did the best wecould with the way we were
taught to teach reading and wehad many students that just were
not learning how to read and wedidn't know what to do and we
just did like you said, laurasaid, did the same thing over
(14:39):
and over and it wasn't working.
And now we go in classrooms andwe see students going oh, I
could read that Right from thebeginning, like the first week
they're in the program or likethe first couple of weeks.
They learn three sounds, c, act, and they learn how to read,
cat, I mean.
So that's how it moves and thenit goes from there.
It's really exciting.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I have a little anecdote a kid that I was
assessing on the test for singleword reading and it was a
younger kid and they sat down toread the words and they blended
the word together and read itand went like this and how this
shock looked on their face likedid I just do that?
(15:22):
And I was like, yeah, you justread that word, keep going, you
know.
But it was just like one ofthose things that just touches
my heart because that kid maybedidn't think they were a reader
and they were gonna leave thatspace knowing that they were
reading.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Yeah, in our profession it's literally
watching the light bulb turn on.
Nicole, do you see the samething at your school?
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Definitely.
And going back to your questionabout what was sort of the
hardest thing and I think one ofthe hardest things for my
colleagues was releasing theguilt of no teacher in the
podcast sold a story.
She talks about it.
No teacher wants to not doright by their student.
But now that we're learningthat maybe we weren't doing
right by them, what did we donow?
And we all had to sit in thatspace for a little bit and kind
(16:06):
of reflect on what we werefeeling and then also knowing
that when we know about it we'regoing to do better.
And so that was one of thehardest kind of challenging
pieces of pushing through andthen moving on to now it's
moving to action.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Yeah, giving permission to move on from it.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Definitely and yeah, and so we're continuing to see
that, the growth, and I thinkthe other part is that we didn't
have before sort of theautonomy and then the
accountability piece for eachstudent to track on their own,
and PAF really allows studentsto visually see their growth, so
they'll be in a book calledPals, which is the second book
(16:40):
in the series and then they say,okay, when am I getting to
Dragons, which is the last book,and what they're really saying?
they're not really just tryingto collect them all like Pokemon
, but they're really saying like, when can I read that book?
I want access to it because nowI believe that I can get there,
and so I think that has been areally cool shift to see whereas
that challenge before was wedidn't have something that
students were able to navigatethemselves and own.
(17:03):
That pride.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
And you know we have this group of educators coming
to visit us.
Actually, many of our ownteachers, teachers from our
district that want to seeliteracy and action in other
schools, a lot of our principals.
Were you surprised by how manyprincipals signed up?
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Of course not.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
I was surprised.
I thought like I thought, oh,maybe we'll get one or two.
We have like 13 principals thatwant to go and see first grade
instruction at other schools andyou know I speak to principals.
They're proud of everythingthat's happening at their
schools but it's sort of ittells you how inquisitive they
are about what might behappening at another school and
(17:40):
just seeing it across town orseeing it at you know these
principals are friends with eachother.
I'm gonna go to my friend'sschool and see what's happening
there and we have people fromall over the peninsula coming to
visit Nicole.
What's your the thing that youhope they walk away from after
they spend the day with us?
Speaker 1 (17:58):
I hope they walk away from our school feeling that
they're in community with usthat no matter kind of what
district they're coming from.
We all have the same goal ofwanting to make sure that every
student that comes through oureducation system has
accessibility and is successful.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Building that connection.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Exactly so, building that connection and knowing that
and I'm really hopeful thatwe'll continue to have
relationships with all of thesedistricts, that we can continue
to learn together.
I think collaboration is wheregrowth happens.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Yeah, Larissa, how about you?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
I think, Pick something else.
Nicole picked a good one, butthere's more out there.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
When I think about it .
I think about it's called ateaching practice for a reason
right.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
There's never a.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
I'm done, I'm done.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
You know, like there's always more there's
other shifts to make.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Many people would say that mine was almost like a
teaching perfection, but thatwas.
I left that up to other peopleas far as the overall analysis
went, but I just you know.
I still felt like you said, itwas a practice.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah, and I think, Pam, it was last week when we
were meeting that like it wasthis idea that we're not in this
implementation phase wherewe're like, oh, we got this,
it's like we got it on lockdown.
We're kind of in the middle offiguring it out.
There's still kinks that we'reironing out, there's still
learning we're doing and I thinkwe'll probably always be doing.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
And don't you think the visit from all these
colleagues of ours is going toactually help us in that process
?
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Absolutely.
I think it addresses thevulnerability right.
The piece of letting peopleinto our space takes
vulnerability and bravery, andso we appreciate all those
teachers that are opening theirclassrooms in a few weeks, but I
think that that vulnerabilityallows us to continue to grow
too, because we're releasingthat judgment like feeling like,
oh, my colleagues coming in towatch me, but instead they're
(19:49):
like they're coming in tocollaborate with me, and I think
that that vulnerability isgoing to, it's working in our
favor.
Brené Brown would agree.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Yeah, totally Pam.
What's something you hopepeople leave?
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Our tagline is learning from each other.
So I was thinking about thepeople leave with a sense of I
can try this too, or I had anopportunity to share what we're
doing.
I think that we're in thebeginning of our journey.
I love telling our story.
I can't wait to tell our storyevery year for the next however
(20:23):
many years, because I know we'llcontinue to grow and I want
people to walk away with a senseof that.
It's not just something youkind of quickly put in place and
then walk away.
It's something that you have tosupport and commit to and you
know grow.
And you only do it with teacherleaders whether you're a
(20:44):
teacher leader from theclassroom or a teacher leader of
the TOSA and with the rightsystem in place.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
A couple of days ago we invited partners from both of
our cities and from the countyto come and visit three schools
Borrell, leed and Audubon and wehad the Chief of Police of
Foster City, two Foster Citycouncil members, multiple San
Mateo either, directors ofdepartments, the mayor, the
(21:10):
butcher, the baker, thecandlestick maker they were all
here CEOs of nonprofits, some ofour students we have a group
called Empowering Student Voicessome of our teenagers.
They went and visited schoolsand we went into a second year
teachers classroom at Audubonand this teacher we had visited
the year before, ironicallyteaching math at the same time.
(21:32):
Right, we saw this teacher inher first year teaching math and
we went back and saw her in hersecond year teaching math,
which made me actually think theprincipal's kind of mean to
take the superintendent to afirst year teacher's class.
That's messed up.
But we saw this teacher and I'mactually upset with myself that
I didn't video record what Isaw.
(21:53):
So this teacher is standing inthe front of the room and she
has multiple fraction-based mathequations on the board and
she's asking the kids who canexplain to me what you think
about these two math equationsand how you might solve for them
and this group of 28 or sofifth grade students.
(22:17):
They start answering and eachstudent that gives a response,
she writes their name on theboard and she explains.
She visually explains what theysaid.
She had seven differentresponses from kids for one math
problem and how comfortable shewas, how in command she was.
(22:37):
And Miranda, our math tosa, wasthere and you know she and I had
an offline conversation.
She said she's just blossomedand I think that's happening in
our primary classes too with alot of our teachers and it leads
us to being able to host a mathteachers conference in May that
(23:01):
we're planning.
We're basing it after theliteracy summit and what I
really hope happens.
What I hope people take awayfrom here is they go back to
their district and say we shouldinvite everybody to come and
see how we do counseling.
We should invite everybody tocome and see how we do science,
(23:21):
how we do enrollment, because wehave to learn from each other.
That's the spirit of this.
The positions that the two ofyou put your heart and soul into
every day with our teachers andour kids is about learning from
each other.
The theme for the district isteaching and learning for the
year, and I'm excited forFebruary to get here, so much
(23:44):
more ahead, and thank you bothfor being on the one SMFC
podcast.
You.
Like.
No teacher wants to not doright by their student.
But now that we're learningthat maybe we weren't doing
right by them, what do we do now?
Because we didn't havesomething that students were
able to navigate themselves andown.
That.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yeah, they're embedded, and went like this and
like how this shock looked ontheir face like did I just do
that?
And I was like, yeah, you justrun that work, keep going.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
It's called a teaching practice for a reason,
and it's not just something youkind of quickly put in place and
then walk away.
It's something that you have tosupport and commit to, and you
know grow.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being
with us again today on the OneSMFC podcast.
This is a program that we puttogether here in the San Mateo
Foster City School District.
We do it actually to get intouch with our families and with
our community.
We want everybody who has astake in this school district to
know what's going on in ourschools.
My name is Diego Ochoa and I'mthe superintendent of the
(01:03):
district, and it's my honor tobe with three of my colleagues,
who I'm going to allow tointroduce themselves, starting
with our director of curriculum.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Hi everybody, Pam Bartfield, director of
curriculum instruction for ourelementary schools.
Yeah, why did I try to chopyour title in half?
You can, it's fine.
People know.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
This is your 14th appearance on the bottom.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
So you're an old player, you don't know.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
OK.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
My name is Nicole Habib and I'm the language and
literacy toset Bearsford.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Yay, such as if you haven't been to Bearsford, go to
Bearsford If you want some.
Yeah, exactly.
If you want some socialemotional support, just go for a
lovely walk up and down theplayground.
It's just an absolutelywonderful place and glad to have
you on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Thank you.
My name is Larissa Kenny.
I'm the language and literacytoset at Bayside Academy.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
So we're going to have some parents who listen to
this and say Tosa, Larissa, doyou want to explain what that is
?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
A toset is an acronym for teacher on special
assignments.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, and so basically Nicole and I I'm
sharing that same role at twodifferent sites.
We both specialize in languageand support literacy instruction
at our sites in the elementaryside.
So Bayside is also a middleschool, but I primarily focus on
(02:30):
working with the elementaryside.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
And I think you might , larissa.
You might have, let's say, 18elementary teachers at Bayside,
something like that.
So in a typical elementaryteacher's day they might have 22
, 23, 24 kids that they have allday long and they're on their
roster, they're takingattendance.
Your job is different, right?
You're not?
You don't have that roster ofkids who start the day with you
(02:56):
and end the day with you.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
No, I don't have my own like class roster.
Attendance roster yeah, I don'ttake attendance for a class of
kids that are with me all day.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I have kids who move in and out of working with me
across grade levels from K tothird grade.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yeah, pam, you're the director of curriculum and
instruction.
Why do that?
Why do we set up the system ofhaving experts like Nicole and
Larissa be, I guess, flexible inthat way to be able to work
with kids who might need moresupport?
Why do we do that?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
To move with the students.
Part of our strategy in havingthese language and literacy
toasters across our school sitesis to support teachers that
support students withintervention, tier one,
instruction, coaching, modeling,whatever the need is at the
school After we assess studentswhen we implement our program.
(03:53):
Students have different needs,and so the TOSA's role needs to
be flexible to be able toprovide that.
In some cases and I know Nicoleand Larissa they sometimes act
as a additional teacher at thatgrade level.
So during the literacy time,when we're focusing on our
structured literacy program,they might be working with a
group of students while anotherteacher is working with a
(04:15):
different group of students, sowe can meet the students where
they are.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
So, nicole, to use Beresford as an example, you
might have, let's say, 40 kidsin second grade and you have two
teachers teaching those 40 kids.
Are there times where you mighthave a group out of that 40?
And what might you do withthose kids?
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah, I mean.
So we're very grateful that wehave a lot of support, and I'll
kind of talk about who they areon campus.
But, we really are through thesupport of PAM and as a program
we're really looking at allstudents are our students.
Instead of like this is justthis classroom, or this is just
for this teacher, or this isjust this grade level.
We're really starting to lookat.
Every one of these students inour school belongs to all of us
(04:57):
and the responsibility of theirsuccess is a part of all of our
responsibility, whether we're akindergarten teacher or a fifth
grade, and so when we go into asecond grade classroom or grade
level and we have those 40students, we're really looking
at the data to help us drive howwe put these students into
groups.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
And so they may not all be second graders Right, and
you might have kids frommultiple teachers Exactly In a
group with you.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Right, and it takes a lot of trust.
Right, because all of us careso deeply about the students
that are in our four walls ofour classroom.
But we are building the trustwithin each other so that we can
send some students over toanother classroom and then
earning their trust that theycan also send them to me.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
And it's true that in our profession you do feel a
little bit of that ownership,like when I was a teacher.
I would say my kids you knowlike and I think sometimes we
actually take that literallylike these are my students, my
students don't leave myclassroom without me.
We're setting up somepossibilities of kids being able
(05:56):
to go next door and be in agroup in Mrs Kenny's class or go
down the hall and be in MrsHabib's class, and the event
that we have coming up February8th is our first grade teachers
literacy summit that we'rehosting in San Mateo and Foster
City School District and in someways it's sort of similar to
what we just talked about, inthat we're inviting teachers Pam
(06:18):
, do you know the districts thatare gonna be represented who
are coming to visit us?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, so far we have, I think, 11 different districts
and teachers from thosedistricts and teachers from
those districts.
So we have Redwood City,hillsborough, hayward, palo Alto
, santa Cruz, monterey.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
San Bruno, san Bruno.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Pacifica.
Cabrillo a bunch of districts.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
And so these are folks that teach kids who live
in different cities, but they'recoming to our district to find
out what we're doing in ourfirst grade classrooms.
Nicole, when they get here,what are they gonna see?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
They're going to see, first and foremost, a lot of
passion.
I think there's every teacher,especially with PAF, our new
reading program that we're using.
Every teacher has made it theirown but also was really trying
to be lock and step with a lotof the language in the way that
we're facilitating the learning.
So I think that no matter whatschool site our guests are
coming to, they're gonna see alot of consistency, which is
(07:14):
important especially for ourstudents that are multilingual
or have different, you know,other factors that, no matter
where they go, there's gonna bea lot of consistency for those
students Right, and we'll see alot of passion in the lessons
and fun.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Yeah, it's a joy they're all looking online and
they're seeing these videos weput out just the other day.
Larissa, you're somewhat of astar in the community right now.
You got a video with a firstgrade teacher from Bayside, the
school that you're serving thisyear, and you know the
instruction that's happening inthat first grade classroom.
(07:48):
It's different than what wewould have seen five years ago.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthat difference?
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah.
So the first grade teacher thatI kind of was like, hey, let's
do this filming in yourclassroom.
She's a first year teacher,brand new to California.
She came here from anotherstate and it's her first year
teaching and I kind of told her,hey, we're gonna, just don't
worry, there'll be musicoverlaid, you don't have to talk
(08:15):
it's.
And then it turned intosomething different.
But she's amazing and I thinkthat actually it's interesting
to me because I never really hadthe conversation with her
before we started workingtogether, like what's your
background in literacy?
What did it look like?
Where you did your studentteaching and what was the
curriculum classes that you tookin college when you were
(08:37):
getting your credential?
And she definitely, like therewas evidence of her coming from
very much a balanced literacyinstruction background in her.
You know practicum and thingslike that.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
And that would have meant significantly less
instruction in phonics and thenphonemic awareness and things
like that.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, I mean teaching kids to read and using the
queuing system, which is justtalking to them about meaning,
structure, visual.
It doesn't make sense.
Look at the first sound.
And not really talking aboutdecoding and letter sounds and
and that's a big debate rightnow in education.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
I think Ed Soros published an article today about
Berkeley Unified School Dish.
They've had a hard time makingthe shift from balance literacy
to structured literacy and wemean that change two years ago.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
And I actually came from San Francisco Unified where
we were all balance.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
literacy and I was a literacy coach there for 10
years and how did?
Speaker 2 (09:36):
that.
So I was, but I was slowlymaking those shifts while I was
still there.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Actually, one of our teachers that we interviewed in
earlier today said the samething.
She actually she was after whatshe said.
Is it OK that I said that and Isaid, yeah, we like the
controversy.
So you were already starting tosee we need to do some.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
I had all these kids in front of me for so long and I
would watch them in theclassrooms and we'd be doing the
same instruction and we wouldbe looking at data and thinking
about what can we do differently.
And we weren't doing itdifferently enough.
We were making subtle changes,but we were doing the same
things over and over again andgetting the same results.
(10:19):
And so for me, with some of myother colleagues there, we
started to really look at otherways and we did foundations up
there some of us and so we werestarting to implement some of
those things.
And then, when I came here,well, we were still using LLI
(10:39):
and stuff.
As soon as we talked aboutmaking the shift and like, oh,
if you want to take theOrton-Gillingham training, which
is a structured literacy,training program.
I was like yes.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
And that was like my first week on the job.
Yeah, I was like 100%.
Did you know that story, Nicole?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
I did not.
No, no, it was my first week onthe job.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
When I came.
When you join the district as asuperintendent, you do a lot of
research and I was sort ofanticipating we would arrive at
some place where I would be in ameeting where we would say are
we going to stick with this, Arewe going to consider a change?
And it happened really fast.
A group of teachers from MeadowHeights and Park reached out to
me and said we need to do this,we need training, and I said,
(11:22):
OK, that was actually the firstcanva I sent out to the whole
district.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
It's the most horrifying.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Any graphic designer would give it an F, a capital F
grade.
But we said no, let's send thisout.
100 teachers signed up.
100 teachers.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
On their own time.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Over summer.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
So I said we really have something here.
We, you know.
It was sort of like areflection of what you were
talking about and that feelingof I do this and I kind of get
the same result.
I do this and I still see thelack of growth.
What do you think has been thehardest part of implementing a
new curriculum?
Because we substituted thestress and the struggle of not
(12:06):
making the kind of progress thatwe had hoped with we're going
to do something completely new.
So, from your perspective,larissa, what has been the
hardest part of the shift thatwe made?
Speaker 2 (12:20):
I'm really lucky because at my side at Bayside
there was already acollaboration.
There was a lot ofcollaboration happening, like
with grade level partnerships,and so being part of that has
really helped facilitate kind of.
And also all the teachers atthe time did the OG training.
(12:45):
So that was they had buy-in too.
And I think one of the mostchallenging parts was we had a
teacher shift from an uppergrade down to second grade this
year and she's phenomenal atteaching benchmark.
She really is, but I think it'sbeen a hard shift for her.
But I will say that we werejust looking at data because we
(13:09):
had our most recent and so Ipulled data and was doing that
right before I came here and welooked at in first grade and
second grade.
The two teams met with me andwe looked at the data of that.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
We just collected and you saw some right.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And she was like I just have to talk about the
growth that these students havemade and she and I share the
most struggling years in thatgrade and second grade, and so
she was just, she was justbragging about it, and so I feel
like it just took that for herto really cause.
She was like this isn't reallythat, it's not the most dynamic
(13:44):
thing to teach.
I get that, but at the sametime, when you see-.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
It's methodical.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, so when you see that, to have her see that, I
was like, oh, now she's born,you got the passion in life.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
But the thing I always find interesting about
that comment around, it ismethodical.
But kids, any of our classrooms, they love it.
They love it because it ismethodical and it's routine and
they can actually lift the wordsoff the page, which I think
(14:18):
gets them the most excited.
Because I think for years and Iwas a teacher in the district
too and years ago, and I thinkwe always were looking at our
students and we did the best wecould with the way we were
taught to teach reading and wehad many students that just were
not learning how to read and wedidn't know what to do and we
just did like you said, laurasaid, did the same thing over
(14:39):
and over and it wasn't working.
And now we go in classrooms andwe see students going oh, I
could read that Right from thebeginning, like the first week
they're in the program or likethe first couple of weeks.
They learn three sounds, c, act, and they learn how to read,
cat, I mean.
So that's how it moves and thenit goes from there.
It's really exciting.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I have a little anecdote a kid that I was
assessing on the test for singleword reading and it was a
younger kid and they sat down toread the words and they blended
the word together and read itand went like this and how this
shock looked on their face likedid I just do that?
(15:22):
And I was like, yeah, you justread that word, keep going, you
know.
But it was just like one ofthose things that just touches
my heart because that kid maybedidn't think they were a reader
and they were gonna leave thatspace knowing that they were
reading.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Yeah, in our profession it's literally
watching the light bulb turn on.
Nicole, do you see the samething at your school?
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Definitely.
And going back to your questionabout what was sort of the
hardest thing and I think one ofthe hardest things for my
colleagues was releasing theguilt of no teacher in the
podcast sold a story.
She talks about it.
No teacher wants to not doright by their student.
But now that we're learningthat maybe we weren't doing
right by them, what did we donow?
And we all had to sit in thatspace for a little bit and kind
(16:06):
of reflect on what we werefeeling and then also knowing
that when we know about it we'regoing to do better.
And so that was one of thehardest kind of challenging
pieces of pushing through andthen moving on to now it's
moving to action.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Yeah, giving permission to move on from it.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Definitely and yeah, and so we're continuing to see
that, the growth, and I thinkthe other part is that we didn't
have before sort of theautonomy and then the
accountability piece for eachstudent to track on their own,
and PAF really allows studentsto visually see their growth, so
they'll be in a book calledPals, which is the second book
(16:40):
in the series and then they say,okay, when am I getting to
Dragons, which is the last book,and what they're really saying?
they're not really just tryingto collect them all like Pokemon
, but they're really saying like, when can I read that book?
I want access to it because nowI believe that I can get there,
and so I think that has been areally cool shift to see whereas
that challenge before was wedidn't have something that
students were able to navigatethemselves and own.
(17:03):
That pride.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
And you know we have this group of educators coming
to visit us.
Actually, many of our ownteachers, teachers from our
district that want to seeliteracy and action in other
schools, a lot of our principals.
Were you surprised by how manyprincipals signed up?
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Of course not.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
I was surprised.
I thought like I thought, oh,maybe we'll get one or two.
We have like 13 principals thatwant to go and see first grade
instruction at other schools andyou know I speak to principals.
They're proud of everythingthat's happening at their
schools but it's sort of ittells you how inquisitive they
are about what might behappening at another school and
(17:40):
just seeing it across town orseeing it at you know these
principals are friends with eachother.
I'm gonna go to my friend'sschool and see what's happening
there and we have people fromall over the peninsula coming to
visit Nicole.
What's your the thing that youhope they walk away from after
they spend the day with us?
Speaker 1 (17:58):
I hope they walk away from our school feeling that
they're in community with usthat no matter kind of what
district they're coming from.
We all have the same goal ofwanting to make sure that every
student that comes through oureducation system has
accessibility and is successful.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Building that connection.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Exactly so, building that connection and knowing that
and I'm really hopeful thatwe'll continue to have
relationships with all of thesedistricts, that we can continue
to learn together.
I think collaboration is wheregrowth happens.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Yeah, Larissa, how about you?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
I think, Pick something else.
Nicole picked a good one, butthere's more out there.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
When I think about it .
I think about it's called ateaching practice for a reason
right.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
There's never a.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
I'm done, I'm done.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
You know, like there's always more there's
other shifts to make.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Many people would say that mine was almost like a
teaching perfection, but thatwas.
I left that up to other peopleas far as the overall analysis
went, but I just you know.
I still felt like you said, itwas a practice.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah, and I think, Pam, it was last week when we
were meeting that like it wasthis idea that we're not in this
implementation phase wherewe're like, oh, we got this,
it's like we got it on lockdown.
We're kind of in the middle offiguring it out.
There's still kinks that we'reironing out, there's still
learning we're doing and I thinkwe'll probably always be doing.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
And don't you think the visit from all these
colleagues of ours is going toactually help us in that process
?
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Absolutely.
I think it addresses thevulnerability right.
The piece of letting peopleinto our space takes
vulnerability and bravery, andso we appreciate all those
teachers that are opening theirclassrooms in a few weeks, but I
think that that vulnerabilityallows us to continue to grow
too, because we're releasingthat judgment like feeling like,
oh, my colleagues coming in towatch me, but instead they're
(19:49):
like they're coming in tocollaborate with me, and I think
that that vulnerability isgoing to, it's working in our
favor.
Brené Brown would agree.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Yeah, totally Pam.
What's something you hopepeople leave?
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Our tagline is learning from each other.
So I was thinking about thepeople leave with a sense of I
can try this too, or I had anopportunity to share what we're
doing.
I think that we're in thebeginning of our journey.
I love telling our story.
I can't wait to tell our storyevery year for the next however
(20:23):
many years, because I know we'llcontinue to grow and I want
people to walk away with a senseof that.
It's not just something youkind of quickly put in place and
then walk away.
It's something that you have tosupport and commit to and you
know grow.
And you only do it with teacherleaders whether you're a
(20:44):
teacher leader from theclassroom or a teacher leader of
the TOSA and with the rightsystem in place.
Speaker 4 (20:49):
A couple of days ago we invited partners from both of
our cities and from the countyto come and visit three schools
Borrell, leed and Audubon and wehad the Chief of Police of
Foster City, two Foster Citycouncil members, multiple San
Mateo either, directors ofdepartments, the mayor, the
(21:10):
butcher, the baker, thecandlestick maker they were all
here CEOs of nonprofits, some ofour students we have a group
called Empowering Student Voicessome of our teenagers.
They went and visited schoolsand we went into a second year
teachers classroom at Audubonand this teacher we had visited
the year before, ironicallyteaching math at the same time.
(21:32):
Right, we saw this teacher inher first year teaching math and
we went back and saw her in hersecond year teaching math,
which made me actually think theprincipal's kind of mean to
take the superintendent to afirst year teacher's class.
That's messed up.
But we saw this teacher and I'mactually upset with myself that
I didn't video record what Isaw.
(21:53):
So this teacher is standing inthe front of the room and she
has multiple fraction-based mathequations on the board and
she's asking the kids who canexplain to me what you think
about these two math equationsand how you might solve for them
and this group of 28 or sofifth grade students.
(22:17):
They start answering and eachstudent that gives a response,
she writes their name on theboard and she explains.
She visually explains what theysaid.
She had seven differentresponses from kids for one math
problem and how comfortable shewas, how in command she was.
(22:37):
And Miranda, our math tosa, wasthere and you know she and I had
an offline conversation.
She said she's just blossomedand I think that's happening in
our primary classes too with alot of our teachers and it leads
us to being able to host a mathteachers conference in May that
(23:01):
we're planning.
We're basing it after theliteracy summit and what I
really hope happens.
What I hope people take awayfrom here is they go back to
their district and say we shouldinvite everybody to come and
see how we do counseling.
We should invite everybody tocome and see how we do science,
(23:21):
how we do enrollment, because wehave to learn from each other.
That's the spirit of this.
The positions that the two ofyou put your heart and soul into
every day with our teachers andour kids is about learning from
each other.
The theme for the district isteaching and learning for the
year, and I'm excited forFebruary to get here, so much
(23:44):
more ahead, and thank you bothfor being on the one SMFC
podcast.
You.
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