December 1, 2025 • 28 mins
In this episode, we discuss updates to our Educator Institute, a professional learning community focused on equitable teaching practices in STEM. We talk about the challenges we faced when testing our self-reflection tool as one for observation and how we shifted things. If you work with future teachers, or are trying to better your own practice, this episode is a one that talks about the intentional ways we have to self-reflection and pitfalls to avoid when observing others.
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Music by Viacheslav Starostin
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Episode Transcript
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Introduction (00:00):
Okay, now we're recording. So welcome to teach
(00:08):
wonder. Yes.Welcome to TeachWonder, a podcast hosted
byAshley O'Neil and JulieCunningham. Julie Okay,
Ashley O'Neil (00:24):
so let's start with context, doing some just
definitions. Because if youhaven't been listening to us all
season, we're going to be usingsome terms and phrases that we
want to make sure are clear toyou. So do you want to start by
just giving a quick overview ofthe educator Institute?
Julie Cunningham (00:43):
Sure. So the educator Institute we developed
as a professional learningcommunity, and that has been
very important to us, that weare a community and that we're
not somebody's not out in frontor at the top of the pile, like
giving other people information,right? Everybody has either
classroom expertise or studentexpertise or core teaching
(01:07):
practice expertise that theyhave the ability to share with
the community. And so the thegoal for the community is for
all of us to better understandequitable teaching practices,
specifically in stem so that wecan better support our pre
(01:30):
service teachers as they gothrough the program at CMU and
start to do classroomobservations And then pre
student teaching and studentteaching. And so that's the
whole premise of theprofessional learning community.
And so the things that we dotogether always have some sort
(01:52):
of an outcome or goal associatedwith supporting pre student
teachers as they go through theprogram. And of course, we focus
on STEM mostly because that'swhat we do at the Center for
Excellence in STEM education,
Ashley O'Neil (02:10):
if it's and the population, the education
scholars that we're working withprimarily are the students who
are in our space volunteeringwith kids. They have kind of a
cohort that they they're with usfor portion of their time. We
don't get a ton of truefreshmen. They tend to join us.
They're like, a semester or twoin to their degree, but they are
(02:35):
in their space, and becausethey're the pre service teachers
that we work with most directly,they're kind of the focus of
these conversations, and so abig part of what we are doing,
too, is having goodconversational crossover with
our classroom teachers aboutwhat skills translate like what
are they learning in an informaleducation space, in a field
(02:55):
trip? Because we know that's notthe same as being in a math
class, but what are the skillsthat they are doing here that
will serve them in the classroomin the future, which I think
does two things for us, right? Ithink that it helps us refine
how we focus conversations withstudents in field trips, and
what we're looking for from themhere and the opportunities that
we give them. And it helps itmake it more explicit for the
(03:18):
students. We've always just kindof said, like, you get practice
talking to kids, and that'sreally great. That's really
great, but to really drill downand say, Oh no, you also get
practice like negotiatingboundaries with students when
it's cleanup time or whatever.
Like, the more explicit we canbe with our pre service teachers
here, who for us are our STEMeducation scholars, the better
it serves them in the classroomto say, hey, that cleanup
(03:41):
routine that I did in themakerspace will also serve me
when it comes to like, mathcenters, etc,
Julie Cunningham (03:48):
right? And I think the other value added is
that because we're an informaleducation space in that we're
not assessing students, or we'renot holding students accountable
for curriculum in the ways thatregular classroom teachers are.
It allows the pre serviceteachers, the stem Ed scholars,
(04:10):
to see these things happen inmultiple spaces, and to
recognize that there can be someoverlap outside the classroom
with other learningopportunities, and that those
are not just disparate events,right? That we can practice
these things in multiple arenas.
And perhaps, as you said, thingsthat I learned as an informal
(04:32):
educator carry over into theclassroom, and there's no reason
that there can't be some backand forth. I think that is
definitely some added value. Theonly other thing I'll add about
the stem Ed scholars issometimes, at times, in the
program, it has lent itself moretowards being secondary
(04:53):
students, because they seethemselves as science and math
teachers. Current. We have anice variety of students who are
studying to be both secondarymath or science teachers and,
or, I guess not, and orelementary teachers, and that
they all see themselves as beingSTEM Educators, which is not
(05:16):
always where this program haslanded, and so in I don't know
that we have any students whoare studying to be special
education teachers right now,but also, at times, we have had
those students in the program aswell. So just because we say
STEM education scholars, I don'twant someone to think we're
(05:38):
talking about a specific type ofclassroom teacher or a specific
grade level.
Ashley O'Neil (05:46):
And interestingly enough, in our educator
Institute, we have that samegamut. We have preschool all the
way through secondary, which isfantastic. It's not a
tremendously large group ofpeople. And so we have, I think
we hit all of those areas. Wehit elementary we hit middle
school, we hit high school, andall the way down to preschool.
So that's a nice, diverse groupof people. Also to say we see
(06:08):
things in common in ourteaching. Yeah, you teach AP
calculus and I teach preschool,but these things are universal
in the language of education.
And I'm learning from yourpractice, you're learning from
mine, and so these studentscould learn from that too. I
think that's really interesting.
I agree.
Julie Cunningham (06:26):
And just this is probably a tangent already
very early in this podcast, butone of the ways in which we saw
that play out from the summersProfessional Learning Community
is we did community agreement,or a community I guess it
doesn't really become agreementinitially, but a community
agreement for our professionallearning community, and that
(06:49):
resonated, and so we've comeback to it every single time we
were together as a learningcommunity. And that resonated so
much with the teachers preschoolthrough high school that I would
say almost all of them did thatthis fall in their classroom
with their students, and allowedtheir students to have ownership
over that and to do it in thestudents language. And it was,
(07:12):
it's very easy to imagine thatwith high school students, I
feel like, because that's mybackground, but it was really
fun to see it play out with eventhe preschool students right in
their language, they were verycapable of putting together a
community agreement and adheringto that agreement in their
classroom and then refining itas they saw things that didn't
(07:36):
work. So it's been fun to seesome of those things across the
different grade levels.
Ashley O'Neil (07:42):
Yes, and like, again, I just so we had our
group meet in the summer, andfor some of them, that was the
first time they'd met eachother. And then we have been in
every classroom, not maybe allof us staff at CMU, but one
classroom we haven't been toyet, yeah, okay, almost
everybody, and then they allcame back together for the
(08:03):
second meeting. And it wasinteresting to see how much
shared language, like they spokeso easily amongst each other,
and they were so reflectiveright away. It was cool to see
that some of the relationshipwork that we put in in the
summer had come to fruition, andthey had this shared context.
All of them talked about theircommunity agreements, and so it
(08:24):
gave them a lot to talk about aswell, which was nice. I
Julie Cunningham (08:28):
agree it was a very comfortable fall meeting
when it felt very communitybased, when we all came back
together. I agree that wasreally nice. Yeah.
Ashley O'Neil (08:39):
Okay, so where do you want to head next?
Julie Cunningham (08:41):
So one of the outcomes from the summer that I
think we have talked aboutpreviously on the podcast was
that as a community, wedeveloped a reflection tool,
knowing that scholars get creditfor their volunteer time working
with children in the makerspaceby reflecting on the event that
(09:03):
they attended. And they mostlyset, sometimes with our support,
their own goals for what theywant to get out of the events.
And then they reflect on whetheror not that event supported
their goal or didn't supporttheir goal, and what their
evidence is for that, and mostlythey do that informally on it
(09:23):
is. It doesn't really matterwhat the tool is, but currently
we're using Padlet, right? Sothey can put that in as a audio
document or a video document, orthey can type it up. So there's
lots of different options.
Nonetheless, that's how scholarsget credit for the event they
attended is through thereflection. And so it was a
natural in for us, for theprofessional learning community
(09:47):
of educators this summer, tosay, here's what we think the
scholars could and should bereflecting on, and or anyone
who's observing. I'm sorry,participating in an event with
children, right? And let's sortof flesh this out and see if the
this tool is valid forreflecting on for anyone
(10:15):
reflecting on their experienceworking with children. And so we
did that, moving from the summerinto fall, we asked the scholars
in here, the scholars that workwith us in our space, to take
two of their six events and usethe reflection tool so that it
didn't feel so cumbersome tochange everything on them
immediately. And we, theprofessional learning community
(10:39):
educators agreed to also trythat in their classroom. We
agreed to try it with any eventsthat we were the instructor of.
And we also agreed to go backinto each one of their
classrooms and use the tool. Andso that's kind of, I think, the
bridge from summer into fall,yep.
Ashley O'Neil (11:02):
And so we did that right. Thus the scholars
did it in a Google form so thatwe could see their responses
kind of laid out. And then Julieand I went into some classrooms.
Julie went into some classrooms,Corey went into some classrooms.
So there was a bit of acrossover. And we hit, I think,
everyone but one. And veryquickly, we realized that as an
(11:23):
observation tool, as areflection tool, we were getting
really great responses from thescholars, but as an observation
tool, it was a bit problematic.
Do you want to share a littlebit about sure
Julie Cunningham (11:35):
one of the questions, or several of the
questions really ask about theinteraction between the person
doing the instruction and thestudents, and for a person
observing from the outside, fora third party, I found myself
having to just make way too manyleaps, way too many assumptions,
(11:59):
or way too many judgments, ifyou want to call them, that,
about what was going on and nothaving the context of the
classroom or the teachers, whythe teacher was making the
decisions they were making, oreven like, was this a typical
student response or an atypicalstudent response? Right? There
was just way too much unknownknowledge in the reflection tool
(12:23):
for an observer to use it and itagain, it just felt like, if I
was to use that, I was justmaking, again, way too many
assumptions or judgments aboutwhat was going on. And so that
didn't feel like a valid tool asan observation tool, and we had
originally intended it to beboth the reflection tool and the
(12:44):
observation tool. It does seemto be getting really valid
results. By valid, I mean, likethe patterns seem legitimate for
the information we're gettingfrom the scholars, they seem to
be giving us good responses,thoughtful responses. And the
(13:08):
answers they're giving seem tofit well with the questions
we're asking and the type ofresponses we would expect,
Ashley O'Neil (13:16):
yeah, and to give you just like a maybe, to put it
into like, to give it somegravity, for example, we I can
use an example from here in themaker space, where I can think
about a situation when I wasteaching. And you may have
noticed me looking at a childwho was making a pretty
(13:37):
significant mess, and thenchoosing to not step in. And if
you were a casual observer,right? It would be really easy
to tell yourself a story andplace a lot of judgment on my
decision, the child's decisionthat looked non compliant, that
looks like they're kind ofpurposely destroying something,
etc, etc, etc, right? Then youlayer in the relationship I have
(13:57):
with that child, and yourecognize that there's a reason
why I'm making those decisions,but there's no way you could
notice that. And since we haveworked so hard on the educator
side and on the student side, Ithink if there was a single word
that we try to use as like aguiding principle, it would be
curiosity. Right? We want ourclassroom teachers to get
curious about students. We wantour students to get curious
(14:19):
about projects and their ownability. We want our undergrad
students, if they leave herewith nothing else, right, we
want to leave them with thiskind of innate curiosity for why
and to ask questions aboutthings without placing judgment
first and an observation toolthat forces you to make some
assumptions is kind of ripe withjudgment, right?
Julie Cunningham (14:40):
And we often talk about too how nuanced
teaching is. I'm sure we've saidthis before in the podcast, but
how many of those like nondecisions, or what appear to be
non decisions are really veryconscious decisions by the
instructor to not engage in thatparticular conversation? In our
(15:00):
behavior, or whatever it is atthe time, right? But it's often
a very conscious decision, andeven though to the onlooker, it
appears like they're making nodecision at all. And so we would
never want to reinforce for prestudent teachers right to be
making judgments about what theydidn't see happen, or
assumptions about what theydidn't see happen. So we fairly
(15:22):
quickly. I mean, I was in twoclassrooms on one day, and I
very quickly realized and toldthose two teachers whose
classrooms I was in, like, thistool isn't working for this
purpose, right? And we talkedabout why, very informally with
the teachers that day. So thenwe let the teachers know that we
(15:42):
were going to kind of back offon coming into classrooms until
we'd sort of decided what to dowith the tool, because it really
wasn't fair to them. The premiseof, I mean, and it's a, it's a
gift to go in someone'sclassroom, right? Like they
don't. That's a, I'm a stranger,it's extra for them. It's going
(16:02):
to disrupt their class in someway, shape or form, right? It's
going to pull their studentsattention away from even if I'm
a mouse in the corner, I'm stillsomething new in the classroom.
So we sort of put pause on goinginto classrooms, and we asked
teachers still to use the tool.
The educators in theprofessional learning community
use the tool to think about itas a reflection tool. So there's
(16:25):
that. And then you and Corey andI met, and we said, okay, let's
pull out the observation piecesfrom this tool, right and and
let's separate them from thereflection, and let's think
about this as two tools, whichwe did, and that wasn't terribly
difficult to do, to pull thosepieces apart, but also what we
realized was we still had a toolthat could be used to judge the
(16:49):
teaching that one would see, andwe definitely do not ever Want
to be doing that ourselves toanother teacher, nor do we want
to set again pre serviceteachers up.
Ashley O'Neil (17:07):
Well, it ultimately isn't useful, right?
Like, let's say there even is anexample in which maybe you think
a teacher should be stepping in,or whatever, that ultimately is
not a productive line ofthinking. You know, I can think
of an example in here where wewatched a teacher, where, from
my perspective, and this istotally mine, right? Maybe I
would have been like, Hey, Iwonder why they're not choosing
(17:29):
to react right to thatsituation, because to me, it
seemed like something you shoulddefinitely step in on, right? It
is a more productive line ofquestioning to help our pre
service teachers go, why? Whymight they not be and to focus
again on what the student'sdoing. Like, what is that
student doing? How might Irespond? Why might they be
responding this way? What wouldhappen if I did this? What would
(17:51):
happen if I didn't? And to startgetting curious and thinking
about the student as the focalpoint, rather than like, it's
real easy to armchair expertsomething from the side, right?
So to keep the conversationproductive in their own head,
then starts to train them to bethinking of those questions when
they're teacher in their ownclassroom, which is ultimately
the point of this whole tool,right? Is to build for them a
(18:12):
vocabulary and a toolbox ofquestioning strategies that help
them be the best version of themthemselves in the classroom,
right?
Julie Cunningham (18:19):
So you're absolutely right. That is how we
that's the direction we went in.
We said, well, instead offocusing on the teacher, how
could we focus on a student orstudents in the classroom and
their engagement? So asking theobserver to find either student
engagement or lack of studentengagement to record how they're
(18:40):
defining that so. And I guess,just to take a step back, we
also recognize that oftentimesyou wouldn't have time to talk
to the educator before or afterusing the tool. So ideally, if
you get done with the tool andyou have a whole bunch of
questions, you could go back tothe educator and get your
(19:00):
questions answered, but thatisn't always what happens,
right? So focusing on studentand student engagement, and then
what do we how are we definingthat? What do we say we're we're
calling student engagement orlack of student engagement, so
that everybody's clear, and thenusing evidence to say this
(19:21):
student these are the indicatorsof student engagement. And then
here's what I expected aboutstudent engagement and how it
aligned with what I expected. Soalways going back to this
yourself and what yourexpectations are with the
(19:43):
student engagement. So in otherwords, leaving the teacher out
of it all the way through sothere would never be a judgment
made or an assessment made aboutthe teacher or their teaching
well.
Ashley O'Neil (19:57):
And that's kind of a gift like I remember. Even
back, and I'm going to put acontainer on this, but I
remember back to some of my ownreally beneficial undergrad
work, and it was this time wherewe thought about the things that
came before a noticeable event,right? So the things that came
before a student's grade, or thethings that came before a
(20:19):
student's behavior, and walkingback in time to look at the
steps that led them. There is areally helpful way to think
about how to move forward,right? Rather than just being
reactive to, oh my goodness,this child's doing this thing,
I'm going to do an emotionalreaction to get really
analytical and say, Okay, whatare the steps that led me here?
Because that's going to help dothe best, like, make a more
(20:43):
intentional choice for what, howto respond, or how to do, do
something next, right? So it'sinstead of being reactive,
you're being, like, reflectiveand then responsive. And I think
that again, yeah, it would belovely if they could have a
person, the person to talk to,to say, hey. Like, why did this
happen? Why not? But the veryexercise of developing those
(21:05):
questions is a really, it's animportant piece of becoming a
reflective practitioner, and soeven if those questions have to
go unanswered, I like the ideathat hopefully this is getting
them to ask more questions.
Julie Cunningham (21:20):
And we did test it with scholars at our
last PD event, with them,professional development event
with them, with video. So wepulled up some teacher video,
and we used the tool that way,and it seemed to work. They
didn't seem
Ashley O'Neil (21:39):
they had a lot to they had a lot of good
conversation, and I would sayalmost all of it right, was
focused on, why do you thinkthat happened? What I observed,
what might be a possible reason,what might happen next if? And I
think that is that's where wewanted it to go. So the fact
that the tool resulted in thatconversation is a good sign that
(22:01):
we're getting close tosomething.
Julie Cunningham (22:03):
And so the Professional Learning Community,
educators in service educatorsare working on using the
reflection tool this semesteryet in their classroom. So going
back to the original tool westarted with and providing some
very tangible examples andoutcomes for pre service
(22:27):
teachers to have to look at asreflection of from a classroom
teacher, right? And next, we'llshare the observation tool,
which is the one we were justtalking about where we focus on
student engagement, studentclassroom, student engagement.
And then we'll ask them to pilotthis tool as they observe
(22:52):
engagement or non engagement intheir classrooms, and get some
feedback from them so thatmoving forward in spring, we'll
look with them at the patternsof STEM Ed scholar responses and
see if they want to tweak eithertool, and then take their
responses and see if we need totweak either tool and have some
(23:14):
conversations surrounding that.
But we I think it is excitingthat we have pre service
teachers who are pre studentteaching using the tool. Pre
service teachers in the makerspace, so informal education
using the tool ourselves, usingthe tool, both for ourselves,
for our own self reflection andfor observation. And then the K
(23:39):
12 teachers who are in theprofessional learning community
using the tool. I think that, inand of itself, is a pretty
exciting dynamic
Ashley O'Neil (23:52):
we have. Also we're getting, like, a lot of
different settings, a lot ofdifferent grade levels, and then
a huge, a huge variance in levelof experience, right? We've got
our pre service teachers who arekind of just getting their feet
wet in the classroom for thefirst time, maybe teaching a
lesson once a week, just kind ofstarting there. And then we've
got teachers who have quite afew years of experience all
(24:12):
across the grade levels, and thefact that, like, we then have
the same question that we'reasking, right? Like, what
happened with the student? Youknow, how does your response fit
into these types of categories?
What happened next is reallygoing to create some like
through lines, and we're hopefulto see some patterns to say,
hey, when this was kind of theplan of the outcome, this tended
(24:33):
to be how students respondedwhen teachers thought about
this. The other thing that weare doing or that we're asking
in this tool is for teachers toconsider their own bias, and
that has not changed, to say,like, Did I come into this
interaction with an expectation,or did I make an assumption
based on cues or history orcontext, or, like, visuals,
(24:55):
whatever, right? And that'salways a. Helpful thing, and
we've had some reallyinteresting responses. We have
some teachers who have hadstudents for multiple years,
right? Or have family members,right from like, like, I had
their sibling, or I, you know,had their parent, whatever. And
so biases can come in lots offorms. But just to say, like,
you know, this child came with,like, a whole bunch of warnings
(25:18):
or contexts from the previousyears, and to be able to admit
that like, you know, I've hadthe same conversation with this
student every day this week, andso when this happened again on a
Friday, I'd already written inmy head how this was going to
go, when actually, this smallthing changed and it went
differently. So to be able toacknowledge that they bring a
whole history into the story. Isnever, is never a bad way to
(25:43):
start a reflection, right?
Julie Cunningham (25:49):
Yeah, yeah. So just to recap, really, we've
stuck with the equitablepractices theme, right? And the
curiosity theme. And I thinkthose two things have served us
well in terms of thinking aboutbuilding respectful
relationships, thinking abouthaving eliciting student
(26:11):
thinking and valuing studentthoughts and prior learning. So
we've had thinking about groupdynamics and group work. So I
think thinking about building acommunity in a classroom, all of
those things, and how they canlook and feel equitable, how
they will are equitable to thestudents in the classroom, and
(26:33):
then how we can value again,students, curiosity, those
through lines have helpedsupport, I think the tools and
the building of the tools andthe conversations, really, we've
had as a professional learningcommunity have also been very
respectful, but also, well, verythoughtful, very respectful, but
(26:58):
also, I think, veryenlightening, right? That, I
mean, not everybody teaches inthe same type of a setting. Not
everybody teaches in the sameeven type of community, right?
So I think the variety has been
Ashley O'Neil (27:16):
and it's delightful to get beyond the the
validation phase, and then,like, the, this is a really big
thing phase. So we can do a lotof, like, patting each other on
the back, and you're doing agreat job. All true, all real,
all important. And then we canget into, like, the this is a
really big thing. I find some ofthese things overwhelming. There
(27:37):
are aspects of education thatare outside of my control, and
it can be really easy to kind offocus on those and talk about
those, and all again, all valid,all important, all real. And
it's really cool to see thisgroup have that camaraderie
where they can make jokes likewe had a fair we had a moment
where we all talked aboutlamented six, seven in our own
way, and how it reached pre Kall through high school. And
(27:59):
also we're having really honest,productive conversations about
the things that they can controland the way that they're
developing professionally. And Ithink when you have a community
that can both relate to eachother and appreciate each other
and appreciate the hard workthat they're doing, and then
also have honest conversationsfor the sake of improvement, I
think that's a bit like amagical sweet spot that we
(28:22):
found.
This has been another episode ofteach wonder, and we're really
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you can find more episodes andnever miss another one by
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podcasts, you
Okay, now we're recording. So welcome to teach
(00:08):
wonder. Yes.Welcome to TeachWonder, a podcast hosted
byAshley O'Neil and JulieCunningham. Julie Okay,
Ashley O'Neil (00:24):
so let's start with context, doing some just
definitions. Because if youhaven't been listening to us all
season, we're going to be usingsome terms and phrases that we
want to make sure are clear toyou. So do you want to start by
just giving a quick overview ofthe educator Institute?
Julie Cunningham (00:43):
Sure. So the educator Institute we developed
as a professional learningcommunity, and that has been
very important to us, that weare a community and that we're
not somebody's not out in frontor at the top of the pile, like
giving other people information,right? Everybody has either
classroom expertise or studentexpertise or core teaching
(01:07):
practice expertise that theyhave the ability to share with
the community. And so the thegoal for the community is for
all of us to better understandequitable teaching practices,
specifically in stem so that wecan better support our pre
(01:30):
service teachers as they gothrough the program at CMU and
start to do classroomobservations And then pre
student teaching and studentteaching. And so that's the
whole premise of theprofessional learning community.
And so the things that we dotogether always have some sort
(01:52):
of an outcome or goal associatedwith supporting pre student
teachers as they go through theprogram. And of course, we focus
on STEM mostly because that'swhat we do at the Center for
Excellence in STEM education,
Ashley O'Neil (02:10):
if it's and the population, the education
scholars that we're working withprimarily are the students who
are in our space volunteeringwith kids. They have kind of a
cohort that they they're with usfor portion of their time. We
don't get a ton of truefreshmen. They tend to join us.
They're like, a semester or twoin to their degree, but they are
(02:35):
in their space, and becausethey're the pre service teachers
that we work with most directly,they're kind of the focus of
these conversations, and so abig part of what we are doing,
too, is having goodconversational crossover with
our classroom teachers aboutwhat skills translate like what
are they learning in an informaleducation space, in a field
(02:55):
trip? Because we know that's notthe same as being in a math
class, but what are the skillsthat they are doing here that
will serve them in the classroomin the future, which I think
does two things for us, right? Ithink that it helps us refine
how we focus conversations withstudents in field trips, and
what we're looking for from themhere and the opportunities that
we give them. And it helps itmake it more explicit for the
(03:18):
students. We've always just kindof said, like, you get practice
talking to kids, and that'sreally great. That's really
great, but to really drill downand say, Oh no, you also get
practice like negotiatingboundaries with students when
it's cleanup time or whatever.
Like, the more explicit we canbe with our pre service teachers
here, who for us are our STEMeducation scholars, the better
it serves them in the classroomto say, hey, that cleanup
(03:41):
routine that I did in themakerspace will also serve me
when it comes to like, mathcenters, etc,
Julie Cunningham (03:48):
right? And I think the other value added is
that because we're an informaleducation space in that we're
not assessing students, or we'renot holding students accountable
for curriculum in the ways thatregular classroom teachers are.
It allows the pre serviceteachers, the stem Ed scholars,
(04:10):
to see these things happen inmultiple spaces, and to
recognize that there can be someoverlap outside the classroom
with other learningopportunities, and that those
are not just disparate events,right? That we can practice
these things in multiple arenas.
And perhaps, as you said, thingsthat I learned as an informal
(04:32):
educator carry over into theclassroom, and there's no reason
that there can't be some backand forth. I think that is
definitely some added value. Theonly other thing I'll add about
the stem Ed scholars issometimes, at times, in the
program, it has lent itself moretowards being secondary
(04:53):
students, because they seethemselves as science and math
teachers. Current. We have anice variety of students who are
studying to be both secondarymath or science teachers and,
or, I guess not, and orelementary teachers, and that
they all see themselves as beingSTEM Educators, which is not
(05:16):
always where this program haslanded, and so in I don't know
that we have any students whoare studying to be special
education teachers right now,but also, at times, we have had
those students in the program aswell. So just because we say
STEM education scholars, I don'twant someone to think we're
(05:38):
talking about a specific type ofclassroom teacher or a specific
grade level.
Ashley O'Neil (05:46):
And interestingly enough, in our educator
Institute, we have that samegamut. We have preschool all the
way through secondary, which isfantastic. It's not a
tremendously large group ofpeople. And so we have, I think
we hit all of those areas. Wehit elementary we hit middle
school, we hit high school, andall the way down to preschool.
So that's a nice, diverse groupof people. Also to say we see
(06:08):
things in common in ourteaching. Yeah, you teach AP
calculus and I teach preschool,but these things are universal
in the language of education.
And I'm learning from yourpractice, you're learning from
mine, and so these studentscould learn from that too. I
think that's really interesting.
I agree.
Julie Cunningham (06:26):
And just this is probably a tangent already
very early in this podcast, butone of the ways in which we saw
that play out from the summersProfessional Learning Community
is we did community agreement,or a community I guess it
doesn't really become agreementinitially, but a community
agreement for our professionallearning community, and that
(06:49):
resonated, and so we've comeback to it every single time we
were together as a learningcommunity. And that resonated so
much with the teachers preschoolthrough high school that I would
say almost all of them did thatthis fall in their classroom
with their students, and allowedtheir students to have ownership
over that and to do it in thestudents language. And it was,
(07:12):
it's very easy to imagine thatwith high school students, I
feel like, because that's mybackground, but it was really
fun to see it play out with eventhe preschool students right in
their language, they were verycapable of putting together a
community agreement and adheringto that agreement in their
classroom and then refining itas they saw things that didn't
(07:36):
work. So it's been fun to seesome of those things across the
different grade levels.
Ashley O'Neil (07:42):
Yes, and like, again, I just so we had our
group meet in the summer, andfor some of them, that was the
first time they'd met eachother. And then we have been in
every classroom, not maybe allof us staff at CMU, but one
classroom we haven't been toyet, yeah, okay, almost
everybody, and then they allcame back together for the
(08:03):
second meeting. And it wasinteresting to see how much
shared language, like they spokeso easily amongst each other,
and they were so reflectiveright away. It was cool to see
that some of the relationshipwork that we put in in the
summer had come to fruition, andthey had this shared context.
All of them talked about theircommunity agreements, and so it
(08:24):
gave them a lot to talk about aswell, which was nice. I
Julie Cunningham (08:28):
agree it was a very comfortable fall meeting
when it felt very communitybased, when we all came back
together. I agree that wasreally nice. Yeah.
Ashley O'Neil (08:39):
Okay, so where do you want to head next?
Julie Cunningham (08:41):
So one of the outcomes from the summer that I
think we have talked aboutpreviously on the podcast was
that as a community, wedeveloped a reflection tool,
knowing that scholars get creditfor their volunteer time working
with children in the makerspaceby reflecting on the event that
(09:03):
they attended. And they mostlyset, sometimes with our support,
their own goals for what theywant to get out of the events.
And then they reflect on whetheror not that event supported
their goal or didn't supporttheir goal, and what their
evidence is for that, and mostlythey do that informally on it
(09:23):
is. It doesn't really matterwhat the tool is, but currently
we're using Padlet, right? Sothey can put that in as a audio
document or a video document, orthey can type it up. So there's
lots of different options.
Nonetheless, that's how scholarsget credit for the event they
attended is through thereflection. And so it was a
natural in for us, for theprofessional learning community
(09:47):
of educators this summer, tosay, here's what we think the
scholars could and should bereflecting on, and or anyone
who's observing. I'm sorry,participating in an event with
children, right? And let's sortof flesh this out and see if the
this tool is valid forreflecting on for anyone
(10:15):
reflecting on their experienceworking with children. And so we
did that, moving from the summerinto fall, we asked the scholars
in here, the scholars that workwith us in our space, to take
two of their six events and usethe reflection tool so that it
didn't feel so cumbersome tochange everything on them
immediately. And we, theprofessional learning community
(10:39):
educators agreed to also trythat in their classroom. We
agreed to try it with any eventsthat we were the instructor of.
And we also agreed to go backinto each one of their
classrooms and use the tool. Andso that's kind of, I think, the
bridge from summer into fall,yep.
Ashley O'Neil (11:02):
And so we did that right. Thus the scholars
did it in a Google form so thatwe could see their responses
kind of laid out. And then Julieand I went into some classrooms.
Julie went into some classrooms,Corey went into some classrooms.
So there was a bit of acrossover. And we hit, I think,
everyone but one. And veryquickly, we realized that as an
(11:23):
observation tool, as areflection tool, we were getting
really great responses from thescholars, but as an observation
tool, it was a bit problematic.
Do you want to share a littlebit about sure
Julie Cunningham (11:35):
one of the questions, or several of the
questions really ask about theinteraction between the person
doing the instruction and thestudents, and for a person
observing from the outside, fora third party, I found myself
having to just make way too manyleaps, way too many assumptions,
(11:59):
or way too many judgments, ifyou want to call them, that,
about what was going on and nothaving the context of the
classroom or the teachers, whythe teacher was making the
decisions they were making, oreven like, was this a typical
student response or an atypicalstudent response? Right? There
was just way too much unknownknowledge in the reflection tool
(12:23):
for an observer to use it and itagain, it just felt like, if I
was to use that, I was justmaking, again, way too many
assumptions or judgments aboutwhat was going on. And so that
didn't feel like a valid tool asan observation tool, and we had
originally intended it to beboth the reflection tool and the
(12:44):
observation tool. It does seemto be getting really valid
results. By valid, I mean, likethe patterns seem legitimate for
the information we're gettingfrom the scholars, they seem to
be giving us good responses,thoughtful responses. And the
(13:08):
answers they're giving seem tofit well with the questions
we're asking and the type ofresponses we would expect,
Ashley O'Neil (13:16):
yeah, and to give you just like a maybe, to put it
into like, to give it somegravity, for example, we I can
use an example from here in themaker space, where I can think
about a situation when I wasteaching. And you may have
noticed me looking at a childwho was making a pretty
(13:37):
significant mess, and thenchoosing to not step in. And if
you were a casual observer,right? It would be really easy
to tell yourself a story andplace a lot of judgment on my
decision, the child's decisionthat looked non compliant, that
looks like they're kind ofpurposely destroying something,
etc, etc, etc, right? Then youlayer in the relationship I have
(13:57):
with that child, and yourecognize that there's a reason
why I'm making those decisions,but there's no way you could
notice that. And since we haveworked so hard on the educator
side and on the student side, Ithink if there was a single word
that we try to use as like aguiding principle, it would be
curiosity. Right? We want ourclassroom teachers to get
curious about students. We wantour students to get curious
(14:19):
about projects and their ownability. We want our undergrad
students, if they leave herewith nothing else, right, we
want to leave them with thiskind of innate curiosity for why
and to ask questions aboutthings without placing judgment
first and an observation toolthat forces you to make some
assumptions is kind of ripe withjudgment, right?
Julie Cunningham (14:40):
And we often talk about too how nuanced
teaching is. I'm sure we've saidthis before in the podcast, but
how many of those like nondecisions, or what appear to be
non decisions are really veryconscious decisions by the
instructor to not engage in thatparticular conversation? In our
(15:00):
behavior, or whatever it is atthe time, right? But it's often
a very conscious decision, andeven though to the onlooker, it
appears like they're making nodecision at all. And so we would
never want to reinforce for prestudent teachers right to be
making judgments about what theydidn't see happen, or
assumptions about what theydidn't see happen. So we fairly
(15:22):
quickly. I mean, I was in twoclassrooms on one day, and I
very quickly realized and toldthose two teachers whose
classrooms I was in, like, thistool isn't working for this
purpose, right? And we talkedabout why, very informally with
the teachers that day. So thenwe let the teachers know that we
(15:42):
were going to kind of back offon coming into classrooms until
we'd sort of decided what to dowith the tool, because it really
wasn't fair to them. The premiseof, I mean, and it's a, it's a
gift to go in someone'sclassroom, right? Like they
don't. That's a, I'm a stranger,it's extra for them. It's going
(16:02):
to disrupt their class in someway, shape or form, right? It's
going to pull their studentsattention away from even if I'm
a mouse in the corner, I'm stillsomething new in the classroom.
So we sort of put pause on goinginto classrooms, and we asked
teachers still to use the tool.
The educators in theprofessional learning community
use the tool to think about itas a reflection tool. So there's
(16:25):
that. And then you and Corey andI met, and we said, okay, let's
pull out the observation piecesfrom this tool, right and and
let's separate them from thereflection, and let's think
about this as two tools, whichwe did, and that wasn't terribly
difficult to do, to pull thosepieces apart, but also what we
realized was we still had a toolthat could be used to judge the
(16:49):
teaching that one would see, andwe definitely do not ever Want
to be doing that ourselves toanother teacher, nor do we want
to set again pre serviceteachers up.
Ashley O'Neil (17:07):
Well, it ultimately isn't useful, right?
Like, let's say there even is anexample in which maybe you think
a teacher should be stepping in,or whatever, that ultimately is
not a productive line ofthinking. You know, I can think
of an example in here where wewatched a teacher, where, from
my perspective, and this istotally mine, right? Maybe I
would have been like, Hey, Iwonder why they're not choosing
(17:29):
to react right to thatsituation, because to me, it
seemed like something you shoulddefinitely step in on, right? It
is a more productive line ofquestioning to help our pre
service teachers go, why? Whymight they not be and to focus
again on what the student'sdoing. Like, what is that
student doing? How might Irespond? Why might they be
responding this way? What wouldhappen if I did this? What would
(17:51):
happen if I didn't? And to startgetting curious and thinking
about the student as the focalpoint, rather than like, it's
real easy to armchair expertsomething from the side, right?
So to keep the conversationproductive in their own head,
then starts to train them to bethinking of those questions when
they're teacher in their ownclassroom, which is ultimately
the point of this whole tool,right? Is to build for them a
(18:12):
vocabulary and a toolbox ofquestioning strategies that help
them be the best version of themthemselves in the classroom,
right?
Julie Cunningham (18:19):
So you're absolutely right. That is how we
that's the direction we went in.
We said, well, instead offocusing on the teacher, how
could we focus on a student orstudents in the classroom and
their engagement? So asking theobserver to find either student
engagement or lack of studentengagement to record how they're
(18:40):
defining that so. And I guess,just to take a step back, we
also recognize that oftentimesyou wouldn't have time to talk
to the educator before or afterusing the tool. So ideally, if
you get done with the tool andyou have a whole bunch of
questions, you could go back tothe educator and get your
(19:00):
questions answered, but thatisn't always what happens,
right? So focusing on studentand student engagement, and then
what do we how are we definingthat? What do we say we're we're
calling student engagement orlack of student engagement, so
that everybody's clear, and thenusing evidence to say this
(19:21):
student these are the indicatorsof student engagement. And then
here's what I expected aboutstudent engagement and how it
aligned with what I expected. Soalways going back to this
yourself and what yourexpectations are with the
(19:43):
student engagement. So in otherwords, leaving the teacher out
of it all the way through sothere would never be a judgment
made or an assessment made aboutthe teacher or their teaching
well.
Ashley O'Neil (19:57):
And that's kind of a gift like I remember. Even
back, and I'm going to put acontainer on this, but I
remember back to some of my ownreally beneficial undergrad
work, and it was this time wherewe thought about the things that
came before a noticeable event,right? So the things that came
before a student's grade, or thethings that came before a
(20:19):
student's behavior, and walkingback in time to look at the
steps that led them. There is areally helpful way to think
about how to move forward,right? Rather than just being
reactive to, oh my goodness,this child's doing this thing,
I'm going to do an emotionalreaction to get really
analytical and say, Okay, whatare the steps that led me here?
Because that's going to help dothe best, like, make a more
(20:43):
intentional choice for what, howto respond, or how to do, do
something next, right? So it'sinstead of being reactive,
you're being, like, reflectiveand then responsive. And I think
that again, yeah, it would belovely if they could have a
person, the person to talk to,to say, hey. Like, why did this
happen? Why not? But the veryexercise of developing those
(21:05):
questions is a really, it's animportant piece of becoming a
reflective practitioner, and soeven if those questions have to
go unanswered, I like the ideathat hopefully this is getting
them to ask more questions.
Julie Cunningham (21:20):
And we did test it with scholars at our
last PD event, with them,professional development event
with them, with video. So wepulled up some teacher video,
and we used the tool that way,and it seemed to work. They
didn't seem
Ashley O'Neil (21:39):
they had a lot to they had a lot of good
conversation, and I would sayalmost all of it right, was
focused on, why do you thinkthat happened? What I observed,
what might be a possible reason,what might happen next if? And I
think that is that's where wewanted it to go. So the fact
that the tool resulted in thatconversation is a good sign that
(22:01):
we're getting close tosomething.
Julie Cunningham (22:03):
And so the Professional Learning Community,
educators in service educatorsare working on using the
reflection tool this semesteryet in their classroom. So going
back to the original tool westarted with and providing some
very tangible examples andoutcomes for pre service
(22:27):
teachers to have to look at asreflection of from a classroom
teacher, right? And next, we'llshare the observation tool,
which is the one we were justtalking about where we focus on
student engagement, studentclassroom, student engagement.
And then we'll ask them to pilotthis tool as they observe
(22:52):
engagement or non engagement intheir classrooms, and get some
feedback from them so thatmoving forward in spring, we'll
look with them at the patternsof STEM Ed scholar responses and
see if they want to tweak eithertool, and then take their
responses and see if we need totweak either tool and have some
(23:14):
conversations surrounding that.
But we I think it is excitingthat we have pre service
teachers who are pre studentteaching using the tool. Pre
service teachers in the makerspace, so informal education
using the tool ourselves, usingthe tool, both for ourselves,
for our own self reflection andfor observation. And then the K
(23:39):
12 teachers who are in theprofessional learning community
using the tool. I think that, inand of itself, is a pretty
exciting dynamic
Ashley O'Neil (23:52):
we have. Also we're getting, like, a lot of
different settings, a lot ofdifferent grade levels, and then
a huge, a huge variance in levelof experience, right? We've got
our pre service teachers who arekind of just getting their feet
wet in the classroom for thefirst time, maybe teaching a
lesson once a week, just kind ofstarting there. And then we've
got teachers who have quite afew years of experience all
(24:12):
across the grade levels, and thefact that, like, we then have
the same question that we'reasking, right? Like, what
happened with the student? Youknow, how does your response fit
into these types of categories?
What happened next is reallygoing to create some like
through lines, and we're hopefulto see some patterns to say,
hey, when this was kind of theplan of the outcome, this tended
(24:33):
to be how students respondedwhen teachers thought about
this. The other thing that weare doing or that we're asking
in this tool is for teachers toconsider their own bias, and
that has not changed, to say,like, Did I come into this
interaction with an expectation,or did I make an assumption
based on cues or history orcontext, or, like, visuals,
(24:55):
whatever, right? And that'salways a. Helpful thing, and
we've had some reallyinteresting responses. We have
some teachers who have hadstudents for multiple years,
right? Or have family members,right from like, like, I had
their sibling, or I, you know,had their parent, whatever. And
so biases can come in lots offorms. But just to say, like,
you know, this child came with,like, a whole bunch of warnings
(25:18):
or contexts from the previousyears, and to be able to admit
that like, you know, I've hadthe same conversation with this
student every day this week, andso when this happened again on a
Friday, I'd already written inmy head how this was going to
go, when actually, this smallthing changed and it went
differently. So to be able toacknowledge that they bring a
whole history into the story. Isnever, is never a bad way to
(25:43):
start a reflection, right?
Julie Cunningham (25:49):
Yeah, yeah. So just to recap, really, we've
stuck with the equitablepractices theme, right? And the
curiosity theme. And I thinkthose two things have served us
well in terms of thinking aboutbuilding respectful
relationships, thinking abouthaving eliciting student
(26:11):
thinking and valuing studentthoughts and prior learning. So
we've had thinking about groupdynamics and group work. So I
think thinking about building acommunity in a classroom, all of
those things, and how they canlook and feel equitable, how
they will are equitable to thestudents in the classroom, and
(26:33):
then how we can value again,students, curiosity, those
through lines have helpedsupport, I think the tools and
the building of the tools andthe conversations, really, we've
had as a professional learningcommunity have also been very
respectful, but also, well, verythoughtful, very respectful, but
(26:58):
also, I think, veryenlightening, right? That, I
mean, not everybody teaches inthe same type of a setting. Not
everybody teaches in the sameeven type of community, right?
So I think the variety has been
Ashley O'Neil (27:16):
and it's delightful to get beyond the the
validation phase, and then,like, the, this is a really big
thing phase. So we can do a lotof, like, patting each other on
the back, and you're doing agreat job. All true, all real,
all important. And then we canget into, like, the this is a
really big thing. I find some ofthese things overwhelming. There
(27:37):
are aspects of education thatare outside of my control, and
it can be really easy to kind offocus on those and talk about
those, and all again, all valid,all important, all real. And
it's really cool to see thisgroup have that camaraderie
where they can make jokes likewe had a fair we had a moment
where we all talked aboutlamented six, seven in our own
way, and how it reached pre Kall through high school. And
(27:59):
also we're having really honest,productive conversations about
the things that they can controland the way that they're
developing professionally. And Ithink when you have a community
that can both relate to eachother and appreciate each other
and appreciate the hard workthat they're doing, and then
also have honest conversationsfor the sake of improvement, I
think that's a bit like amagical sweet spot that we
(28:22):
found.
This has been another episode ofteach wonder, and we're really
glad you're here. If you likethis episode and are new to us,
you can find more episodes andnever miss another one by
following our show. Teachwonder. Wherever you get your
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