Mrvaudrey

Author: mrvaudrey

  • Building Trust: A Culture of Feedback and Vulnerability

    I’m typing this at the Palm Springs Convention Center during CMC-South, the California Mathematics Council conference. It’s been a highlight of my professional year every year of my career, and I’mbfranklybkinda surprised that math teachers are still taking value from my thoughts on subjects related to math education.

    Patricia Vandenberg and I worked remotely to prepare this 90-minute workshop, and since many folks were taking pictures and asking questions, I figure I ought to gather everything in a central location (besides this Twitter thread).

    The Problem – Why Give Feedback

    Ibve been running sound for about 20 years, and if youbve been in the room with a microphone before, the odds are pretty good that youbve heard feedback.B As a sound technician, therebs only bad feedback. If you hear a feedback loop, something is wrong.

    I spent lots of years teaching in schools like that, where I was out here doing my best, but I would only hear from the admin if there was a problem, and would assume things were fine when they never visited me.

    When staff feel empowered to give and receive feedback, they appreciate the culture of continuous improvement, and theybre less annoyed to get negative feedback.

    The only way to improve our practices is for someone else to offer feedback and for us to receive it and improve. It ain’t fun, it’s uncomfortable, but teachers and leaders can grow accustomed to that culture of continuous improvement.

    Anybody with a spouse or partner or roommate knows how it feels to get feedback that’s challenging and uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel good to fail. But every failure is an opportunity to reflect and grow, and the vulnerability it takes to receive feedback is what makes us better teachers and better spouses/partners/roommates.

    How and When

    When structuring feedback, there are four general steps that most people use (taken from Peter Foster here):

    For example:

    1.) Your students were seated for 53 minutes and you were speaking at the board for the first 30, including seven example problems.
    2.) While you know the most in the room about adding and subtracting integers, the students donbt always need you to figure stuff out.
    3.) Your studentsb behavior and noise level got worse and louder as the period went on, likely because they were getting tired of sitting and listening
    4.) Next lesson, break up your instruction time into pair-share, peer teaching, groups at the whiteboards, and also single out the students who are loud and off-task.

    This works for students, too: bYou divided both sides by negative 6, and you were probably expecting an integer answer. Are you sure that 712 divides into -6 evenly? Check with a calculator.b

    If those four steps are the what feedback looks like, then Jen Abrams has the how to structure feedback handled in her book.

    Her book (Having Hard Conversations) is a manual for people who struggle to tend to the emotions around a hard conversation. She also drops this line, which is too good not to share:

    As a White educator working in a mostly Black and brown school, I often use lines like this to focus on connecting actions and intentions.

    Another favorite of mine is to separate intent from impact. For example, bI recognize that wasnbt your intent to use language with a racist history, but the impact of your words made several students uncomfortable and their families called me about it.b

    As an Assistant Principal, I use a similar structure with students.

    I know you didnbt mean to threaten Hailey at lunch, but when you walked up to her with a group of friends and asked why she was talking crap about you, it definitely felt threatening to her and her friend.

    Promising Practice #1 – Feedback Form

    Both Patricia and I prefer the term “Promising Practices” to “best practices,” since students and schools change every year and “best” won’t be on top of the podium for very long.

    Early in my career, I worked at a charter school and my growth had plateued, since no admin or peer had the time to give me feedback. On the copy machine I found a Teacher Report Card and gave it to my students to offer anonymous feedback. Over the years, it grew more sophisticated, and both Patricia and I gave it to our students as teacher and as an Instructional Coach, and I now give it to my staff as an Admin.

    Promising Practice #2 – ObserveMe

    Teachers inviting people into their classrooms and naming the aspects of their practice they’d like feedback on. More on that can be found on Robert Kaplinksy’s website here.

    Promising Practice #3 – Ask for Feedback Directly

    Candra Loftis The principal at my kids’ elementary school is a rockstar. She came to us as a middle-school assistant principal, and I sat down with her to hear more about that process.

    She told me thatbthe first few months she was therebshe met with every staff member and had some variation of these two conversations:

    Mrs. Loftis modeled a vulnerability and a “flattening” of the power structure by asking for direct feedback from the staff that work for her. Who wouldn’t want to contribute to a school culture under a principal as awesome as that?

    Next Steps and Troubleshooting

    Both Patricia and I have attended CMC, heard great ideas, taken them back to the classroom on Monday and they… didn’t work the way we expected.

    We carved out time in the 90-minute workshop to discuss common problems with feedback and how to address them, then gave the attendees some time to plan for Monday.

    1.) Not getting enough feedback? Show people that you’re acting on the feedback you do get. People who didn’t offer their feedback the first time will be more likely to do so if they know you’re listening.

    2.) Not getting accurate feedback? Don’t take it personally. If you break all possible feedback into 4 quadrants, it might look like the diagram below, and only the feedback in quadrants I and II deserves your attention.

    I blogged more about that four years ago here.

    3.) Not getting critical feedback? You’re too awesome and not taking enough risks with new ideas. If you’ve been in my workshop or read this blog before, you know that “Take a risk” is a persistent theme for me.

    Summary

    The students are looking to the teacher to model how to handle feedback. They want to see how adults respond when theybre wrong, how we fail, make mistakes, and get better. And the math class is a great place to practice iterating and improving.B

    For leaders, we can model that same risk-taking, that same vulnerable response to feedback. We can model a culture of continuous improvement, soliciting and acting on feedback.

    Works Cited

  • Parent Involvement 2023

    The theme of my Ignite talk this past November was “Cringe and Do Better,” and it’s the reason I leave old blog posts up on this dusty old website. Boldly-declared stances from 2009 are almost all obsolete, and some are straight-up embarassing, but just as we want students to iterate and improve on their thinking, so we should expect the same from adults.

    So let’s take my thoughts on Parent Involvement from 2023 and etch them in stone on the internet, an ebenezer that will someday be a marker on my journey toward better and more excellent school leadership.

    By Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, The Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers can Learn from Each Other

    It’s noteworthy that the book was first mentioned to me via a Twitter chat #ClearTheAir where teachers would focus on the impact of their biases and latent racism in order to become better and more equitable. (Link)

    Halfway in, however, I realized the book would help me more if I waited until I was a full-time school administrator, not just a temporary one. So I shelved it. Having finished it, there are 3 big takeaways for my practice this year and beyond.

    Takeaway #1

    I wasn’t trained for this.

    Right out of the gate in the Introduction, the author notes:

    And I knew that most [teachers] had not been adequately prepared in their professional training programs to build relationships with families as a central part of their work.

    That was consistent with my experience. I entered teaching in 2007 with one prior classroom lesson, no math classes taken since high school, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Youth Ministry and Adolescent Studies. While I was set up well to have appropriate and supportive relationships with students, I was woefully unprepared to set boundaries to govern those relationships with them. Additionally, my interactions with parents were plagued by fear and deference for a decade after I began.

    Here’s a quote from a blog post I wrote about that time:

    First-Year Vaudrey: Hellob& uhb& this is Mr. Vaudrey, Ibm calling to discussb& umb& Davidbs inappropriate jokes in class.

    Parent: Well, David is standing right here, and he says that you laughed when he made that inappropriate joke, so why are you calling me?

    My experience that first year were consistent with the next page in that introduction, where the author said:

    The Parent-Teacher Conference reflects a territorial warfare, a clash of cultures between the two primary arenas of acculturation in our society.

    and that “territorial” nature of the parent/school relationship is most present in my current role as school administrator. It wasn’t until I sat in this chair and made parent calls and had parent meetings that I felt what the author describes throughout the book:

    Takeaway #2

    Parents likely have strong feelings about middle school, holdover memories from when they were teenagers struggling with content, being bulled, or called to the admin office for discipline.

    As recently as this week, I have been learning that the how of my parent meetings is more important than the what we describe.

    To put it another way, my wife can tell youbearly in our marriagebhow frustrating our disagreements were. I would spend most of my energy defining the details of the disagreement, and making sure we were speaking in a level voice, not exaggerating, until she would finally throw her hands in the air and say, “Fine! It was a Tuesday, not a Wednesday! Can we just focus on the issue?!”

    I spent so much defining the playing field that I missed the game entirely. My principal and I met with a difficult parent, and he gave me the same feedback. “With a parent like that, you need to define what a win looks like, and it won’t be agreeing on what happened.“

    The author references that emotional connection multiple times throughout the book, noting that:

    [families] begin to feel the same way they felt when they were studentsbsmall and powerless.

    page 4

    To combat that feeling, I make a point to tell the family some version of this, “The sweet kid that you know from home? I know that kid, too! She’s not a bad kid, she’s a good kid. And good kids make bad choices every day. Our goal isn’t to punish kids, our goal is to help them make better choices.”

    Most of the time, they thank me for my attention.

    Most of the time.

    Takeaway #3

    Students need to be present and involved in the family conference andbby extensionbtheir own education.

    The author suggested having students present their own performance, grading themselves, sharing their own experience, and I think there’s a place for that. It isbunfortunatelybanother specific task that requires some expertise on the part of the teacher.

    • Which work do I select?
    • How do I structure the meeting so there’s a progression?
    • What if the student isn’t doing well?
    • How much trust do I place in the student to accurately represent themselves.

    With IEPs specifically, there’s a gap between what we’re discussing and the student’s ability to understand and contribute to the conversation. The best case-carriers I know will call on the students to share their strengths also.

    Problems with the Book

    There are large blocks of text that are hugely classist, portraying the rich parents as “involved” and the poor parents as “scared and emotional.” While that’s worth discussing, the author didn’t explicitly describe the privilege inherent in free time and a positive relationship with school. Not all families are able to get involved in their kids’ education.

    That’s the reason I shut the book before finishing it.

    ~Matt “Take the good, leave the bad” Vaudrey

  • Bad Teacher

    Shuffling through some old journal entries, I found this one from 2012, my 5th year teacher and the first year that I felt like a veteran who was choosing to keep improving. I’m posting it herebuneditedbin hopes that someone finds it and can be encouraged. There’s plenty here I no longer believe, but the core remains an accurate struggle of mine.

    Ibve been a bad teacher before.

    Ibve yelled at the whole class for the misdeeds of a few students. Ibve asked the whole class for advice on how to be a better teacher, then shushed them when I didnbt like the answer.

    Ibve argued with one student while the whole class looks on. Ibve attempted to win an argument by getting louder and angrier. Ibve raised my voice higher and higher until Ibm screaming something inane like bIn this classroom, we only sharpen our pencils during the warm-up activity!b

    Ibve also made a student feel like garbage in front of the class. I have found myself weeping after the final bell for becoming the same bully that tormented a younger me. Ibve made fun of students. Childrenband Ibve ridiculed them, half my age.

    Ibve made hundreds of mistakes in my quest to become an educator, but the most glaring errors arenbt those that make principals bite their lower lip and parents furrow their brow. No the biggest mistakes are the ones where I do nothing.

    Jason turns around to distract the three students behind him during the lesson, and I do nothing.

    Destinee screams at Jamal, bNobodybs talking to you, idiot!b and I do nothing.

    Kira stands beside her desk, taking notes and I do nothing.

    James sits docile, not raising his hand or talking to his neighbor about the math, or even showing his whiteboard on the practice problems, and I do nothing.

    Deon pushes Michael and says, bN*gga, mind your own business!b and I do nothing.

    Josh leans back in his chair and yells, bUgh, this is boring!b and I do nothing.

    My pride wants to qualify that most of these one-liners are years old.

    My shame reminds me that half of them happened this week, and more.

    In short, the biggest indicator of a bad teacher is one that allows students to leave the class without gaining every possible fraction of knowledge. Ibm a bad teacher for allowing students to NOT play the factor game. Ibm a bad teacher for allowing students to ignore homework assignments while I quietly dock their grade.

    Ibm a bad teacher every time I permit something that I planned as necessary.

    I was a bad teacher today, and my observer called me on it. Shebs totally right, and she wants me to be my bestbwhich is why she doesnbt permit anything less than perfect.

    b&it still hurts, though.

  • A Workshop is a Sandwich

    In the midst of my day-job in education, I have been speaking at conferences and events for several years. When it goes well, somebody will say as they leave, bgreat session!b And there are plenty of ways I can respond to this.

    • Thanks!
    • Thanks! Where do you teach?
    • Thanks! What part of it was memorable to you? How will this idea change what you do in your classroom on Monday?

    That last one has made people uncomfortable, and thatbs why I want to talk about how we define a “good” professional development (commonly shortened to PD).

    What Makes a Workshop “Good?”

    I just closed out the NCTM conference in the company of several dozen strangers (led by Justin and Shelby) as we discussed the properties of a sandwich.

    The workshop focused on “sandwichy-ness” as a vehicle for students to use in formal language with vocabulary. The later versions of that structure use three criteria to discuss a sandwich: ingredients, structure, portability.

    Letbs use those exact three criteria to describe what makes a workshop or professional development “good.”

    1.) Ingredients

    I have given a few hundred workshops in my career and a few thousand lessons to kids in classrooms. Some of them had ingredients that were satisfying to the participants and many did not.

    If I use only one metric to describe a bgoodb workshop, it wouldnbt matter how I packaged it, and a webinar, a lecture, a book, a conversation with my admin, and an interactive training on the computer could all have the same possibility to be bgoodb.

    With one metric, it’s not serving the definition of “professional development.”

    2. Structure

    My favorite way to learn includes a break every 10 or 15 minutes of instruction. Then, I’m able to talk with my neighbor or walk around the room or do something with my new information.

    This criterion is more of a challenge, because the structure of professional development varies widely, as do the preferences for how people like to learn.

    I shared the stage with someone recently. They lectured for 45 minutes, reading from PowerPoint slides full of text and bullet points with no pictures. After they finished, I had people unpack student performance and flex their own experience in pairs and small groups as they walked around the room.

    Every person I asked (the next day) appreciated the lecture more than my interactive session, with my principal going so far to say, bWas yours better, or was it just a style preference?b

    Itbs a solid question, and I still donbt like it.

    3. Portability

    In education, the effectiveness of a training is often measured by how well it can be applied to the classroom quickly. Early in my career, every large PD event had a dozen workshops that touted b12 math games you can use on Monday!b

    While very few of the sessions that I saw this week translate exactly to my day job, I was able to take nuggets of truth from every one of them, and portability is a fair metric for the success of the workshop. “How well does the new information travel to other locations?”

    A Good Workshop is a Sandwich

    Earlier this week, I posed a similar question (related to the conference):

    It’s gotta be profoundly difficult to measure a “good” professional development. Every conference has their own feedback forms that range from excessive up to simplistic. Here’s the one NCTM used this week:

    Too simple. There are hundreds of workshops at this event, and we’re leading with qualitative data for each one?

    Conference workshops vary as much as sandwiches.

    I propose an alternate ranking system:

    We can infer from their measurements what is important to the organization. I would suggest adding some questions that are more nebulous, not less.

    Becausebjust as tens of thousands of math teachers have very different preferences in their sandwichbwe want very different kinds of professional development.

    ~Matt “My workshop is a calzone” Vaudrey

  • Promotion and Depression

    Have we met in real life?

    Ibm usually pretty positive, and holding a positive attitude for a whole-day workshop is energizing for me, not draining. Nearly every day of my five years of meeting with teachers, someone would say, bWow, youbve got a lot of energy!b and it was almost always genuine and never exhausting.

    Ibm in a place now where I can describe how my recent job changes happened so quickly, and since this blog will stay up for a while, itbs important to me that I put the pen to paper.

    March 2020

    The school system imploded. The district opted for bpositive credit only,b so studentsb grades couldnbt drop between March and June. Many students realized this and did nothing. I was Dean of Students at a Middle School of about 1000 students, and my temporary contract was set to end in June. The principal was regularly absent for cancer treatment, and the other AP (with whom, Ibm still friends) was distancing herself so I could be seen doing the job.

    So, for better or worse, I was running the majority of operations for the school.

    I want to be clear; the principal was doing his best, but his illness was limiting his capacity, and I donbt harbor any resentment. Cancer sucks.

    Twice during that period, I sought AP jobs within the district, assured by the leadership that I was well-positioned for the AP slot at my current school. After being encouraged by HR that I bshouldnbt change a thing for the interview,b I was disappointed to be turned down. It felt like dating someone for a while, then getting dumped suddenly. It’s the second most painful thing to ever happen to me at work.

    Of course, nobody deserves a job; my experience was slim and the DO wanted to change over the school leadership, which is their prerogative. Some colleagues confirmed that yes, the leadership is unlikely to update my reputation as “gregarious and silly instructional coach,” and wouldn’t promote me to leadership. It was time to go, but I had no emotional energy left in my disappointment tank.

    August 2020

    With my temp contract ended, I returned to the classroom. As one of the Math Intervention teachers, I split my time across two schools, serving eight 30-minute bMath Clubsb a day. My background using technology tools to lighten the workload made the job less painful than it was for many teachers, and teaching Elementary school students for the first time put some joy back into my days.

    It was just what I needed to heal after suspending my search for Admin jobs. My spouse heard me whine often about how, bIbm a straight, white man, so Ibm unaccustomed to disappointment. Most of the time, job interviews and applications go well for me, and my getting-denied-muscle is very weak.b Conversations with trusted colleagues were encouraging, pointing out that everyone is ill-equipped for sad feelings right now and what Ibm feeling is valid.

    In November, I was browsing the job postings for Math Teachers. I needed a change, and was willing to take a lateral move. The district near my house flew a position for Math Coach, and I applied on a whim. For three months, I heard nothing, and I continued to do an above-average job teaching remotely.

    January 2021

    After an IEP one Friday afternoon, I got an email from Fontana Unified, apologizing for the long wait (they had to hire a Director, then shuffle other positions, and finally got around to Math Coach), and asking for an interview.

    A week later, I had an offer. Two weeks after that, I was the newest Secondary Math Teacher-on-Assignment, where I wrote pacing guides, built assessments, and attended teacher meetings to support staff. Medium-intellectual demand and low-emotional demand was exactly what I needed at the time, and my bossbs boss scheduled meetings with each TOA individually to ask about our long-term goals and how FUSD can support us to reach them.

    The clear intent to “promote from within” was publicly declared, and I nearly started crying at my desk. Itbs pretty much the opposite situation from eight months prior, being encouraged toward promotion and denied. Ibve already been placed as Administrative Designee* at school sites to get experience and build relationships.

    My spouse pointed out this week, bItbs good for you to have this job, because you need to get your confidence back. Ibm already seeing it, and going on those gigs as keynote speaker is helping.b

    Depression

    In the midst of all that, there was a global pandemic, poorly managed by a President who gave little attention to people below his perceived station, and children were adversely affected. In April 2020, the entire country was tweeting about how teachers should make a million dollars a year because the job is so hard. The support did not turn into policy change or an increase in funding for teachers and staff, decrease class sizes, and provide advance mental health support that these developing minds will need very soon.

    It hit me hard. As I mentioned at the opener, I default to smiling, and my well of positivity is deep.

    About September 2020, I realized the well ain’t bottomless.

    My district and healthcare provider both offered mental health supports, everything from self-care to meditation. Being acutely self-aware made it quick to isolate what could help me feel better.

    Me: So,I should work out once a week and not drink on weekdays and sleep an adequate amount, and that will improve my headspace.
    Therapist: Yeah, man. You already knew that, so do it.

    And now I’m back in-person, tackling school-based challenges with other people, around kids, and doing all the above things. My job is great, and my team is great, and things are looking up.

    ~Matt “It’s been a long 500 days” Vaudrey

    *Itbs basically a sub for the Principal, charged with keeping the ship sailing.

  • #PostCovidChart

    A reporter from Mashable reached out with some questions about my tweet from last week. One of her questions is a whole body of work by itself, so I’m adding more thoughts that wouldn’t fit in her article [link to come].

    4.) Ibd love to hear more about your entire lower left quadrant. How did the pandemic change school in a way you want it to maintain? Why donbt you think itbs likely to happen?

    There are plenty of exceptionally social students for whom pandemic ruined their experience of school this year. Loads of high school students fall into this category, as does my second-grade daughter.

    Additionally, there are loads of students who have flourished with the absence of the distracting (and sometimes overwhelming) classroom environment, like my Kindergarten son. Hebs plowed through several years worth of math instruction, but he will likely struggle for the remainder of this year to adjust to the structure of a classroom environment and the expectations that come with it. Today, he was upset because they played Simon Says for too long, and when he’s at home, he can quit stuff whenever he wants.

    For both of those groups of students, we teachers have had to adjust our academic expectations and ask questions webve been able to avoid for years.

    • Whatbs the minimum amount for a student to show mastery of a topic?
    • How do we know if theybve mastered the topic, and what do we do if they donbt?
    • Whatbs the purpose of high-stakes assessments, and are there other ways to get the same information?
    • Is there a pattern for which students are doing well and which ones are struggling with remote learning?

    For teachers like me, the social dynamic and the academic one are inseparable, and webre hustling, finding ways to adequately and accurately teach students whose learning environment might be distracting, unreliable, or otherwise inequitable.

    The kids in my house have won the Privilege Bingo; we have plenty of art supplies, books, reliable Internet, quiet places to work, and two parents who work reasonable hours and can be involved in the kidsb schooling, so my family is going to be fine. The other students will be disproportionately affected by a this year, where schools were unable to serve them.

    And all these students will be in the same classes as my kids next year, so how do teachers adjust our expectations to include everybody, while providing extra for the students that need it?

    It’s going to take more than a snazzy app to create fair conditions as classes return to school buildings.

    There are plenty of education companies chomping at the bit to cash in on blearning lossb, which many educators (including me) consider to be a fallacy.

    No students blostb anything in the last year, but we will need to provide accommodations for every student, even kids like mine who logged in every day and did the work.

    I haven’t really suggested any solutions here, because a windfall of Education funding is unlikely to drop from the sky. If the state superintendent called me up, I’d suggest smaller class sizes, more adults in classes, and two free meals for every child, K-12 before we get to classroom culture training, hiring full-time implicit bias and racism instructors, and moving the start time later in the day for High School students.

    Since that phone call is unlikely to happen, I need to be ready for my local schools readjusting the funding that we have to make do.

    And here’s the tough pill for some middle-class, white families to swallow:

    As a parent, I must be prepared for our neighborhood school to allocate resources toward groups of students who donbt/didnbt have the resources at home that my kids do. Dr. Tyrone C. Howard defined equity as bgiving more to students who have historically gotten less,b and privileged families like me need to be enthusiastically in favor of these measures, since webre all living in the same world.

    Inequity anywhere is a threat to equity everywhere.

    ~Matt “Willing to sacrifice a little, because my kids are going to be fine” Vaudrey

  • Teacher Report Card – Ms. Taormina

    The following is a guest post from Brittany Taormina, who gave the Teacher Report Card to her students during 2021 distance learning. She tweeted me about it, and her grand risk deserves some celebration. Check it out below!

    8:10am the morning bell rings, students slowly begin making their way down the 4th grade hallway into our classroom. The routine each and every morning is the same, day after day. Students read the board and follow the instructions to get their morning going.

    Untilb&

    They walked into the room on the day they got to, bgrade the teacher,b the whispers, the murmurs were happening all around the room.
    bWe get to grade the teacher for once! Wait, what?! We get to give the teacher grades?! YES!b They were beyond excited and got right to work.

    I was shocked at how serious these fourth graders took filling out this google form. In all honesty, I wasnbt expecting them to take it very seriously, but they surprised me! The information that I was able to gather was amazing.

    I learned spots in which I need to continue to grow as a teacher, I learned that my kids donbt think I have bad breath (phew!), and I learned spots in which my kids think I am doing very well.

    One huge takeaway I had was from the written responses the students filled out. So many of them wrote about our special little activities we do that have nothing to do with the curriculum but so much to do with our classroom community.

    Which leads me to a whole another tangent.

    Classroom community is one of my biggest focuses, year after year. I want each and every student in my room to feel welcome. I received responses like, bMy teacher makes me feel like I belongb, bMy teacher makes me feel like a million bucks!b, and bMy teacher makes me feel good and ready to learn and excited to go to school and I never experienced that beforeb. These are all statements written by 4th graders; who knew they had such big feelings and such awareness of how an adult can make them feel?

    This was eye opening to me. Needless to say, my kiddos feel loved and that made my heart happy.

    Now for the growthb& we all have to continue to grow. No one is ever the bperfectb teacher. I learned that sometimes my kids feel like I donbt use clear language to explain a lesson (awesome information). I need to work on explaining things in a way that all of my learners can understand.

    Had I not taken this risk and given this teacher report card a shot, I would have never learned this about myself.

    The teacher report card was definitely a scary thing to post in my google classroom for my kids to fill out, it was completely out of my comfort zone and something I wasnbt sure if I was ready to see the results of.

    Why? I’m not sure.

    I know I do my job and I love each and everyone of my kids, but you just never know how honest and harsh a kid’s criticism might be. But I took a risk, I was brave, and the kids continued to talk about that teacher report card all day long because they felt like they had a say and a true voice in our classroom.

    This was a first for me this yearb& but definitely not a last! Thank you Mr. Vaudrey for inspiring me to be brave, take a risk, and continue to grow myself as an educator for the better of my students.

    ~Brittany

    Picture of Brittany, smiling and giving a thumbs-up
    Follow @btaorminad10 on Twitter

    If you’re interested in giving the Teacher Report Card to your class, see the tweet below!

    (Admin and Instructional Coaches, there are links for y’all there, too.)

  • My Favorites, December 2020

    Listen, there’s a lot to hate about Education right now. I’m less effective on video-conference than I am in real-life, most of the tools that make me effective depend on in-person teaching, there’s no end in sight for distance-learning.

    But this blog has always been about sharing my process (for better or worse) and hoping that y’all feel some solidarity, encouragement, or relief knowing that you’re not the only one.

    So here are a few of my favorite ways to try and make Math Club meaningful, split up by grade level.

    Secondary folks, read along anyway. Our teammates in K-5 have much to teach us.

    Kinder

    Yeah, I have a 25 minute Math Club for 5 and 6-year-olds, once per week. It’s a hot mess of shouting, stuffed animals, and enthusiasm, and I was three weeks into it before the other Kinder teachers said, “Wait, you’re not using the Mute All button? The hell’s wrong with you?”

    Each week, we do a combination of writing numbers, saying numbers, and showing numbers on our fingers. I’ll usually go through a few of these sections, changing up which slides I do each week. This week, I had them responding on whiteboards (which required notifying parents days in advance, “Make sure your student has whiteboard, marker, and eraser for Thursday’s Math Club.”)

    First Grade

    The first grade teachers wisely told me, “We aren’t thinking of them as first graders, we are thinking of them as third trimester kindergarteners, since they missed that critical instruction when we shut down on March 13th.”

    To that end, my groups of first graders are equal parts delightful, loud, emphatic, and motivated. After teaching secondary for so long, I had forgotten that students begin attending school with a love of learning, even though many of them were squished into submission by the time they walked through my classroom door in the 8th grade.

    I have some feelings about the culture of compliance in K-12 education, if you couldn’t tell.

    More on that later.1

    First graders, like kindergartners, are super interested in showing me their dogs, stuffed animals, and injuries, but they are able to write full equations on a whiteboard and show it to me. My favorite game with them is “Mystery Dice,” where I roll two dice, cover one, and tell them the sum. Elementary teachers will recognize this as a “missing addend” problem, but it’s way more fun this way.2

    Mystery Dice! My finger covering a die, then a plus sign and a die with a 2 = 5.

    Second Grade

    Currently, the most delightful groups that I see are second graders. Maybe it’s because I have a second grader in my own house, who rolls her eyes, giggles, and is able to argue a point, but all three of those things working together make this group especially endearing.

    I had never heard of bFact Familiesb before teaching K-5, but I see how itbs a helpful concept that all Math Teachers should know about.  In my group, I roll two dice and ask the second graders to show me two different addition problems with those dice.

    4+6=10, 6+4=10, 10-6=4, and 10-4=6

    This week, Ibve also been asking for two subtraction equations using the same three numbers. So there are four equations in one fact family3.

    Okay, letbs pick up the pace a bit.

    Third Grade

    Not gonna lie, itbs been really fun to make the bridge from repeated addition to multiplication with this group. Now, theybre connecting arrays and multiplication to division, bIf I divide the 24 dots into 4 columns, how many rows will that make?b 

    Remember your first few years teaching a new content? When youbre thinking, bI betcha therebs a faster/easier/more effective way to teach this, but this is the best Ibve got for now.b? Thatbs how I feel about this unit, and Ibm certain that more effective strategies will emerge organically when I have students around my kidney table instead of on a Zoom call.

    Mystery Dice! My finger covering one die, then a multiplication symbol and a 12 showing on a second die (equal to 48)

    Fourth Grade

    Voted Most Likely To Contribute to Mr. Vaudreybs Classroom Culture by a jury of their peers, these kiddos have made it most clear the need for interpersonal relationship (which has been lacking during quarantine). I have kids in my house that are beginning to show effects of social isolation, and the 4th graders in Math Club bring so much social energy that we end up covering more content, not less. 

    If youbve got some students that are engines, donbt waste your time pumping the brakes, hitch a trailer behind them and steer.

    Long Division *sigh* is important or whatever, but I am struggling to get motivated. Partly because I know calculators exist, so the steps all feel like b&

    Like making your own whipped cream with heavy syrup and half-and-half. I mean, you could do it, and youbd feel really accomplished afterward b& but why?

    Ever seen a chef finish that and be like, “WOW WHAT A GOOD USE OF MY TIME.”

    Photo by axel grollemund from Pexels

    Fourth grade is also the spot where the gaps emerge most clearly for students whobve slipped through the cracks. When I had an eleventh-grader who couldnbt multiply 9s, I handed them a calculator and we kept solving problems about volume. When a fourth-grader canbt add within 20b& like, itbs my job to fix that gap. 

    Remotely.

    In a small group.

    When theybre actively avoiding this learning gap becoming public.

    Fifth Grade

    Itbs tempting to think of these kiddos like Middle-Schoolers (because I love Middle School so damn much), but theybre not. Sure, theybre seeing exponents and expressions for the first time, but theybre also ten years old.

    The most helpful part about fifth graders is their comfort with the technology. They can change tabs, navigate through portals, and manipulate Google Apps comfortably, since theybve been doing it for at least three years.

    b-b-b-b-b- Would teach again.

    Plenty of secondary teachers are frustrated with a system that deposits jaded students on our doorstep. When confronted with pressure to suddenly make up for ten years of learning gaps, I know I’ve been guilty of passing judgment on “last year’s teachers.” My perspective has been broadening this year, and it’s been great to peek behind the curtain into the elementary school, trying to keep students’ love and interest in math.

    I hope they keep it forever.

    ~Matt bNo, Ibm not TikTok famous, but Ibm glad your mom liked it.b Vaudrey

    1“Wait… Vaudrey, weren’t you just applying to Admin jobs a few months ago?” Yep! After that one-year contract as temporary Dean of Students, I’ve been interested in Leadership, but I’m not in hurry to get there. Also, Elementary school is adorable, and I’m learning something new every day.

    2This is a strategy from Kim Sutton of Creative Mathematics.

    3 I could see Fact Families being helpful for understanding equations. If x+y=13, then 13=x+y and y-13= -x and so on.

  • First Day of Distance Learning

    When I was in college, I was a voracious and brave eater. I would boast to my friends, “Ice cream, sushi, pizza; even when they’re bad, it’s still better than no ice cream, sushi, or pizza.”

    I was 19 and narrow-minded about a lot, not just gas-station sushi.

    a plucky, 19-year-old Matt and his equally plucky 19-year-old girlfriend

    Now I’m pushing 40 and willing to spend double the money to have excellent ice cream, sushi, or pizza. The truth I’ve found in the last half of my life is this:

    The worst version of something is not better than none of it.

    The Worst Version of School

    Teammates in Bonita USD, friends on Twitter and elsewhere, and I have spent a long time prepping to teach online. I’ve sent probably dozens of tweets about relationships first and making students feel less stressed online.

    Hell, taking a brave risk was my theme at two webinars I gave this summer.

    But here’s the thing.

    We’re all thinking it.

    This… just… sucks.*

    Getting ready for the first day of school and driving to a nearly-empty campus to sit in front of a screen and teach in an empty classroom?

    That sounds like purgatory designed to torture teachers like me. A school with no kids in it? School where the relationships are minimized and everything is delivered through a Chromebook and an 11-inch screen?

    Ugh.

    My 2nd-grader has to navigate between her Zoom window and Chrome quickly enough to track with her teacher. She’s a strong reader and a great communicator. She has two parents who value education and can be present during school. She has her own device from school, a quiet place to work, and reliable internet, and she is overwhelmed and frustrated daily. Today it was, “I hate distance learning and I wanna be back in school!”

    a boy with his head in his hands, pencil and notebook on the table.

    For most of my career as a teacher, I’ve felt like master and commander of all that happens within my four walls.

    If a kid needs water or food, go to my snack drawer.
    Squirrelly and needing a break? Take these Post-its down to Ms. Allizadeh’s class.
    You’re pissed because your friend is being mean? Come eat lunch in here; you don’t have to sit with them today and maybe we try again tomorrow.

    I can’t do anything to help most of the barriers facing students while they learn remotely. If the kids in my homebwho have won privilege bingo and are well-prepared to be successfulbare struggling, how in the world can I reach the kids who don’t have all these resources?

    As the master and commander of my four walls, I’m feeling ownership and responsibility for this, the worst version of school.

    But Marian said it well:

    You did not conspire to create these conditions. None of us did. While I know that you are busy looking for the right answer to your moral dilemmas, and the right platform and right tools, none exist. And that is not your fault.

    Marian Dingle (link)

    As we begin to scramble and do the best for our kids, it’s important that we remember:

    Chinabwhere COVID-19 originatedbhas been back in school since May.
    Italybthe European nation with the highest infection rate in Marchbis back to school next month.
    The countries who are still remote-learning are broadcasting educational content via TV and radio, hosting Ed/Tech resources for free on government sites, and enforcing mask mandates in public places (source).

    As a teacher, I find myself slipping into self-blame while attempting to structure the best digital environment I can. By taking responsibility for distance learning, I’m discretely inheriting the blame for the worst version of school.

    Let’s remind ourselves:

    With leadership that recognized the COVID-19 threat early and attempted to prevent the spread, this would be very different.

    So I’m pointing my frustrating toward DC, not toward myself.

    ~Matt “making Adobe Spark graphics to control my frustration” Vaudrey

    *NOTE: This idea does not discount the hard work that teachers like John are doing to make distance learning as meaningful as possible. I can’t wait to see how y’all do when you’re allowed to fully flex your muscles back in a brick-and-mortar classroom.

  • Vaudrey for Hire!

    Hello, interview panel member!

    Thank you for indulging my request to visit my website for more information.

    I’ll be direct and brief, since I don’t love bragging, but I recognize the need for you to know more about me before inviting me to an interview (and assuming you’ve seen my resume and seen this thread already).

    Reflection & Growth

    This website has blog posts going back to 2007 (thirteen full years of teaching and learning, as of this writing). A constant theme throughout every post is my desire to get a little bit better every day.

    As a teacher, I solicited feedback on lessons I was planning, joining with teammates I met on Twitter and at conferences to improve my craft and my classroom. I also offered my students a chance to grade me anonymously with the Teacher Report Card.

    Since then, I’ve designed the Coach Report Card (which I delivered quarterly to the 1,000 staff I supported) and the Administrator Report Card, which I blogged about here. Additionally, I’ve traveled the country, speaking to educators about taking grand risks and trying new things (a theme of my book with John Stevens).

    Cover of Classroom Chef by Matt Vaudrey and John Stevens

    Technology & Learning

    In 2012, my principal asked if I would pilot a 1:1 iPad program at our middle school. That began my process of applying technology (when necessary) to help students learn, and it led to spending five years as Instructional Coach of Educational Technology for 10,000 students across 13 schools.

    While an extensive knowledge of apps and websites isn’t the only the thing that can innovate school systems, it certainly came in handy on Back-To-School Night this year:

    Those technology chops have been put to the test as COVID-19 forced our 39 teaching staff at Lone Hill Middle School to teach remotely for two months. I designed and implemented a system for parents to quickly and equitably provide their children access to their teachers and their instruction. Not all of our families have internet access, so each teacher places two weeks’ worth of learning onto one slide and includes “low-tech work.”

    Relationships

    Trust is built on consistent, reliable communication, and my friends and colleagues will tell you: it’s vital to me that I stand by my word.

    For the thousands of people who have seen my workshops or read my book, they know my promise of “Lifetime Tech Support” holds me accountable to any claims I make, online or off.

    When I taught in a neighborhood with gang activity, some students from the local gang told me, “You gotta give respect to get it.”

    This year (my first in School Administration), I have listened and learned and paused and gotten much better at waiting for more information before I spring into action. Since those relationships with parents, students, and staff are important to me, I take the time to listen.

    I listened when the students, parents, and staff were disappointed that we weren’t able to host the 8th grade promotion. So I coordinated with a production company for a video promotion and planned and executed a Drive-Through Promotion for the 8th graders this year.

    And sometimes, it’s just fun to be silly. That builds relationships, too.

    Thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing more about your school, and finding my place in it.

    ~Matt “Assistant Principal” Vaudrey