Mrvaudrey

Category: Coaching

  • Admin Report Card – December 2019

    “Be brave! Take a grand risk! Let your students grade you!”

    superhero woman flexing her bicep with a big smile and her cape hanging behind her

    Dozens of times, I’ve said those words in a workshop, a keynote, or a Google Slam, proclaiming the benefits of real, honest feedback from the students we serve.

    Each time I b as a teacher b gave the Teacher Report Card, I took the results with a grain of salt. Of course, Keyonna would give me low marks since she was kicked out of class the day before.

    As an Instructional Coach, the feedback was overwhelmingly glowing and positive, since I was the problem-solver who never had to stick around long enough to make a mistake or a tough decision. “Of course, Vaudrey is helpful and delightful!” the Coach Report Card said.

    Then I became a school administrator. I knew b in theory b that I would struggle at first, that there would be many hard lessons, and that I would likely make rookie mistakes that hurt the feelings of my staff.

    Reading their feedback on the first Admin Report Card was hard, probably because my ego had been padded with the Coach Report Card for the last five years. Wincing through the narratives, I found four themes, presented here with examples from my staff’s submissions.*

    Energetic

    Your energy and smile are such a treat!
    You energy has always been the best part of you. It is infectious and I appreciate that you seem to have it no matter what kind of day it has been.
    You have a positive attitude and seem to love being here.
    You check in with kind words and positivity.

    Too Nice

    Maybe you’re too nice to the kids sometimes? Sometimes they deserve a harsher consequence than they seem to get.
    Sometimes students who display poor behavior have been allowed to get away with it.
    You need to be tougher with discipline.

    Dismissive & Condescending

    You should really try to get to know us on a deeper level.
    You may hear what I tell you, but you don’t act upon it.
    Sometimes [you make me feel] as if I’m not even there.
    PLEASE make a real effort to not be so dismissive. We are all educated adults and deserve your respect.

    Good Listener

    You make me feel comfortable.
    Valued. Heard.
    You make me feel important.
    You’re readily available to talk.
    I’ve never felt like he feels he is better than any other person.

    Presenting all of my Report Card responses to the staff in a packet (and the other administrators’ responses, too) generated a lot of feelings on the staff. For our teachers, the most frustrating lines from the packets were “mean and bullshit.” This was in stark contrast to the constructive feedback that was kind, but accurate.

    During our chats the rest of the day, I sketched up…

    *ahem*

    The Feedback Matrix

    Quadrant I (blue region, kind and accurate) is the most helpful feedback. An example from back in my teacher days said, “You sometimes ignore me, even if I raise my hand. You always call on the same smart kids and I feel like I’m not needed.”

    Kind, but accurate. It gave me clear actions I could take to get improve in my profession (and I did).

    Loads of our staff were very supportive in shouting down the comments from Quadrant III (gray region, mean bullshit), saying, “Those people are just toxic, and you’re not likely to win their approval ever.”

    My hope is to move people from Quadrants II (green region, mean and accurate) and IV (pink region, kind and bullshit) into Quadrant I.

    If a staff filled out the Report Card with kind bullshit (“You’re doing great! Keep it up! You’ve got a hard job!”), then they could be encouraged to be more accurate. Seeing the Admin team acknowledge the areas for growth might encourage the staff to be more honest with us.

    Additionally, some people who were accurate and mean (“The office discipline is a waste of everyone’s time. I wish Vaudrey would do his job!”). Hopefully, they were encouraged to be more kind with their accurate feedback (once they saw all the meanness put together).

    Regardless, it was a helluva day.

    a man giving a deep sigh and slow exhale, his cheeks puffed out, holding a marker
    image: Health Essentials

    If you’re an administrator considering this, I offer three suggestions:

    1.) Read every line

    After sharing my results with the staff, a few teachers came up to dismiss specific lines in my feedback.
    “Vaudrey’s a racist? Really? That’s total bullshit.”

    My response was something like, “Thank you, but even if that person was trying to hurt my feelings, I’m looking for the grain of truth in every submission. It’s very likely that person knew that accusation would hurt the most, but I still reflected on it, looking for places to do better.”

    2.) Highlight the results

    The other assistant principal gave me this idea; highlighting results that hovered around a certain theme. I highlighted of my “Energetic and positive” comments with yellow, so I could see patterns and (in theory) figure out what percentage of the results.

    I think researchers call this “coding for Qualitative Analysis,” but I just called it “making sense and looking for themes.”

    If you choose to ask for feedback like this, it will be easy to dwell on the lines that hurt the most. First, go through your submissions (or spreadsheet) and highlight the happy ones. It’ll be easier to stomach the painful stuff if you remember that a lot of students/staff think you’re doing great.

    3.) Share your reflection

    When I was a teacher, I would ask students about the themes I saw in their responses. “Many of you said that I only call on the same few people. What are some ways that you think I could do a better job?” My students not only had loads of ideas that I had never considered (many from other teachers on campus), but also felt more comfortable in my class, knowing that I was willing to learn and grow alongside them.

    At our staff meeting this week, several staff said they were impressed at our bravery and vulnerability, sharing our feedback with everybody, warts and all.

    Hopefully, we’ll look back on that time as a moment where the whole staff began to be more vulnerable with each other and grow together.

    ~Matt “Energetic, Kind, Condescending, Listener” Vaudrey

    *We were very clear with the staff that it was anonymous and they should let loose on us. To that end, I’ve respected their privacy here by paraphrasing and re-writing the themes. In past years on this site, I’ve published the results unedited, but that wouldn’t be fair to my staff for this year.

    UPDATE: 22 May 2021 – If you want to modify that Feedback Matrix, click here to make your own copy.

  • Other Stuff I Do

    For years, I had a classroom. It was Vaudrey’s Room, even when I wasn’t in it; the space was tied to me as the main person.

    Then I had a desk that was most-often unoccupied, as I traveled my district supporting teachers in their spaces.

    Now there’s an office with my name on it. That hasn’t happened before, and it’s taking some adjusting, but I like it.

    Running parallel to that progression is my side-hustle; consulting with teachers and districts across the country, sharing resources and ideas with them.

    The space is someone else’s class, or an auditorium, gym, Multi-Purpose Room, or board room, and I’m just a visitor.

    “Visitor” is a good description for these gigs. I’m sitting on the airport floor in Bozeman, Montana, after two days of working with every teacher in the rural district of Belgrade, MT.

    Since most of my day-job (Dean of Students at Lone Hill Middle School) deals with private stuff I can’t discuss here, this post will focus on a key moment from the last couple days spent 1000 miles away.

    Julie 1

    “Will this lecture have anything for us? We teach Reading.” Julie and her teammate had unfolded a cafeteria table in the back of the room instead of sitting near to the front, where I had laid out paper and markers.

    “Maybe!” I replied, ever the optimist and looking to make an ally right away. “What brings you here?”

    “Our principal sent us. We… (she looked back and forth) … didn’t really have a choice.”

    Big smile. “Well, I’m glad you’re here! We’re focusing mostly on math activities and practices to support them, and your voice is definitely welcome. Feel free to keep to yourself here and participate if you want.”

    Julie visibly relaxed, “Oh, thank God. We really don’t like math.”

    I stood with a sneaky smile, “Not yet, but we’re just getting started.”

    Julie was quickly won over by the Estimation tasks and discussion-based prompts of Would You Rather, Fraction Talks, and Which One Doesn’t Belong? I caught her setting aside her chapter books and jotting notes and ideas down on paper. Soon, she was chatting animatedly with her seatmates and venturing to other tables.

    It probably helped that I was explicit in my prompt to, “Stand when you hear the music and share with someone you haven’t yet spoken to.”

    As they packed up to leave, she handed me a sketch. “We think there’s a place for these in our class, too.”

    Soon, the morning was over and everyone packed up to leave. As usual, there were some follow-up questions about the book and my promise of lifetime tech-support. I managed to catch Julie before she left and coach her aside from her partner.

    “Julie! Lemme talk to you for a sec.”

    She looked cautious, but joined me on the side of the cafeteria, away from the earshot of her teammates.

    “Julie, you started the day declaring that you had nothing to offer, but you were an active participant today, and your insights were very helpful.
    I think… and you may not agree… I think you have a lot to offer the math classroom.”

    She rolled her eyes, “Yeah, okay. You’ve never seen me teach.”

    I made super-strong eye contact and lowered my voice. “Julie, I don’t mean to tout my resume here, but I’ve taught this stuff all over the country. Not all teachers are as brave as you, willing to take a risk where they don’t feel comfortable.”

    Her eyes went wide. “Uh-oh. You’re recruiting me, aren’t you?” She turned and pretended to walk away.

    “Yep! There’s a lot of promise for your math class, and to prove that I believe in you, here’s a copy of my book. Well done today.” I handed her the book and she paused.

    I wonder how many people have told her that she could be a “mathy” person.

    ~Matt “Youth Pastor” Vaudrey

    *Of course that’s not her real name.

  • Big Shifts, Little Trainings

    There’s a 100% chance that I’m paraphrasing this idea from someone, but it was a half-baked idea we discussed over lunch, and I’m expanding it here.

    <triumphant voice>

    The Biggest Challenge in Effective Professional Development

    When getting a group of Educators in the room for P.D. (Professional Development), there are three forces at play.

    1.) What the administrator or director thinks is necessary.
    2.) What the teacher thinks is necessary.
    3.) What the trainer or consultant thinks is necessary.

    In a dream sequence, the teachers and administrators both have a shared idea of the work, and they bring in an expert to help them make progress.

    three people pulling the same chain, which is attached to a weight

    Sometimes those three things are all pulling in different directions; I’ve definitely sat in trainings where I wanted practical classroom management strategies, the administrator wanted to raise math achievement, and the presenter had a litany of software tools to show me.

    three people holding chains, pulling in three different directions

    Not much progress was made.

    Robert Kaplinsky notes (and cites some research) about how Teachers don’t often get the amount of P.D. they want/need, and it’s not a stretch to suggest that neither Teachers nor Admin are aware of that research (I definitely wasn’t).

    As a classroom teacher, I was often confident that I understood best what we needed. After all, we’re the ones in the classroom with our kids all the time.

    Sometimes the teachers and administrator are united in what they want, but the presenter…

    b+ might have some new research to share,
    b+might extend the idea past what the teachers and admin were expecting,
    b+or they might be all excited about a fresh idea and completely ignore the contract they signed with the school.

    You know… hypothetically.

    two people holding a chain, pulling against a person holding the other end of the chain.

    When I’m consulting with a district or speaking at an event, I’m most often the person on the right in the image above; trying to convince a room of people that they’ll like what I’m cooking, even though it’s not what they ordered.

    a pile of pasta with peas and parmesan.
    “Yeah, I know you ordered a bacon burger, but this is better for you in the long run and you’ll be glad to got it. Trust me; we’ve just met and I don’t know anything about you.”

    Here’s an example: earlier this month, I kicked off day two of #AddItUp in St. Louis, and my keynote focused on bravery and transparency in risk-taking.

    I gave lots of research backing up my idea, concrete examples of how to encourage risk-taking, and some free takeaways so teachers could start being braver.

    And.

    I bookended the teacher-stuff with a lot of hard topics for white folks to think about.

    b+Students of color are suspended and expelled more frequently than their white peers, beginning before Kindergarten.
    b+If we aren’t brave with stuff we don’t understand, we’ll never get better, and that includes interacting with race relations.
    b+We must model bravery for students and staff, and that means failing publicly because growth is important. Watch me as I do that exact thing.

    Consensus is hard, and it’s rare to get 100% agreement, even with a school site that serves the same population of students. If we wait until everyone is ready, we’ll be too late.

    Quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: "The time is always right to do what is right."

    And yeah, I lured my audience to the auditorium to discuss risk, then offered input on whiteness, a dish they didn’t order.

    It’s my hope that they will be more interested in the dish after seeing it. Maybe not today, but eventually.

    My role as a P.D. provider is to smush big-picture change (Equity, racism, special education) into accessible topics (bravery, Appetizers, Desmos). On conference applications, I don’t often mention those big-picture topics, but I sure as hell will mention them once y’all are in the room.*

    Equally important is a humility on my part; I must be open to the idea that I’m pulling hard on something that isn’t important, but I think it is.
    Gotta keep listening.

    That’d be a good sticker to put on a laptop.

    ~Matt “Keep Listening” Vaudrey

    P.S. If you have research or ideas about this kind of thing, I recommend you hop into this thread with author and education expert Ilana Horn, who has much more academic chops than I do about this (and about everything).

    *If you’re an administrator or conference-application reader, and the above post sounds like a bait-and-switch, ask yourself; how many workshops that explicitly mention the hard topics are you supporting?
    Most often, it’s zero, so that’s why I smush equity into a workshop on warm-up activities.

  • Seeds

    This morning, my friend-and-colleague Sarah and I spoke on the phone, exploring this tweet of hers:

    As you may have read earlier this week, I’m on the verge of something.

    The story of the last few years of my career is one ofB deciding what kind of impact I want to have on the field of capital-E-Education.

    In those few years, my impact has gone beyond the 150ish students in my classes and spread to other educators around the country. Twitter, this blog, and a book, theB impact I’ve had on Education is more than I thought it would be.

    But what about legacy?

    I got an email today from a teacher in Massachusetts with questions about one of my lessons that she ran in her class. Of course, I respond with excitement and support, answering her questions and prompting further learning. I’m not sure if we’ve ever met, but I’m happy to support here, even without any kind of relationship.

    What really gets me interested, however is growth over time.

    Sprout by AnastasiaW

     

    Sarah pointed out on the phone that our job in getting teachers to try something new and to grow is like spreading seed on a garden or a lawn. When we take fistful of seeds and try to spread them, some fall on rocks, some onto the path, and some onto the soil where they grow into plants. (We realized later that it was theB parable of the seeds from Matthew 13, but … like… from an Education standpoint.)

    I work in a school district, building relationships with teachers to encourage them to grow. Sarah works for a curriculum company, and she prepares teachers to grow into new instructional practices.

    Before a legacy, before the impact, there has to be a relationship. Someone has to till the soil, to water it, to pull the weeds, so that when the new idea comes, it has somewhere to grow.

    image: Monica

    That’s what I want to do. I’m happy to support teachers around the world with Barbie Bungee and Appetizers and Desmos and all the other fun things I know about… for an hour at a time. Or a day at a time. It’s fun to get teachers excited about stuff, especially when I’m one of the first to expose them to tools like WODB or Twitter. As Sarah texted to me later:

    When you have to wear the Consultant Hat, you can’t afford the time needed for the relationship you need (to create the change you want). As a school admin, you’d have the time to make the relationships.

     

    I want my day job in Education to focus on relationships first.

    More on that later.

     

    ~Matt “You sound frustrated; what’s up?” Vaudrey

    P.S.B Nanette Johnson’s talk on Legacy is also relevant here.

    ShadowCon 2018 – Nanette Johnson from Shadow Con on Vimeo.

     

     

  • Impact

    I have a job that I love.

    That’s not true for a lot of people, and it wasn’t true for me for many years. The business cards on my desk say Instructional Coach of Educational Technology, but when students ask, I just say, “I’m a teacher who helps other teachers.”

    There are 13 schools in my district, 10,000 students and hundreds of staff… and me. There are likely dozens of classrooms that I’ve never visited in my four years here. Sometimes, it feels like I was hired as a gardener, but I’m making trips back and forth with a tiny watering can.

    I need what this guy has.

    The list of things I love about my job is too long to post here, and the thing my job is lacking is easy to describe:

    Impact.

    Last school year, I visited 729 individual classrooms, all of which I logged in a spreadsheet and monitored with a chart to make sure I was visiting the large sites a fair amount.

    And there are dozens of teachers who love kids and who are pushing the ceiling on what “Excellent Teacher” means for 2018.

    And I only get to see them a few times a quarter.

    How do you choose who gets your time?

    That question was asked to me at least four times on Friday, when I presented at NCTM Seattle. Other instructional coaches would raise their eyebrows when I said “thirteen schools,” and the underlying question is the hardest one to answer:

    How do I serve my teachers fairly?

    Sure, I would love to spend all my time hanging out in the classrooms of those dozens of all-stars, fine-tuning their craft, doing research for them, and grooming them to present at conferences (which I do a bit already). But that leaves hundreds of other teachers without access to my time.

    Also b and this is the squirmy part b what about the several thousand students whose teachers don’t get the same service? It’s often the all-star teachers who call my department for support the most, and (as a friend told me once), “Why should the other kids suffer just because their teacher doesn’t wanna grow?”

    Fair question, though the wording makes my heart ache a bit.

    Anyway, I have a plan in place to rectifyB some of the issues here. More on that later.

     

     

    ~Matt “None of my teachers are lazy and all of them are all-stars” Vaudrey

  • Looming Obsolescence

    “This technology stuff is really… it’s quite a learning curve.”

     

    Sandra1 called our office with a few weird Chromebook occurrences, so Patrick and I went to her class. After 20 minutes of troubleshooting (as she guided her students in silent reading), she came over as we were packing up to leave.

    I smiled and asked, “What else can I do for you?”

    She put her hands on her hips and shook her head as she said the pink phrase at the top of this page. “LIke… these kids, they just don’t know how toB write anymore. Looka this.”

    She jogged across the class and grabbed a small composition book. She flipped through it as she trotted back, before opening it and saying, “See?”

    (Artist’s rendering)
    image: Wikimedia

    Patrick and I looked at the moderately legible sentences on a page. “And… this is lower than usual for your class?” I asked.

    “Oh,B way lower!” Sandra raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure if I want to refer half of these kids for OT2, but aB bunch of them just have such poor handwriting. I’ve seen a decline in penmanship in recent years, and this class is the worst so far.”

    “And penmanship is important to you?” I asked. In situations like this, I find that getting the other person to keep talking is always the best move. They will reveal more about their feelings, which is what happened here.

    “I mean… it’s a problem, because how will they perform without computers? Think of all those people in Florida with Hurricane Irma: they can’t type on a computer if the flood knocked out all the power! Kids these days can’t even write a letter!” Sandra seemed to notice that she was raising her voice, so she took a breath. “It’s just… they spend so much time on computers b and they have for years now b I don’t know if it’s the right thing. Like… what are they giving up to be good at typing? ThereB is such a thing as too much technology.”

    “I agree,” I said, as soon as she paused. “There isB definitely such a thing as too much technology. And, Sandra, it sounds like you’re asking the right questions and trying to prepare your students for 5th grade and for whatever comes next. Let’s talk again in a week or so and see how you’re doing. High five!”

    As Patrick and I drove back to the office, we discussed the conversation and realized a couple things:

    1.) Sandra is closer to the end of her career than to the beginning, and she’s scared that she’ll send poorly prepared students on to 5th grade b students that can’t write a letter or don’t have good penmanship. Sandra’s concern for her students has been b and still is b a noble one.

    2.) I travelled a lot this summer, and veteran teachers across the U.S. murmured to me some version of Sandra’s fear:

    The classroom is changing, and I don’t know if I can keep up.

    The video above scares the hell out of some teachers. At the very least, it makes us wonder, “Hmm…

    If students can use apps like this to find answers, what kind of problems should I be giving in class?”

    Twenty-five years ago, there were no Chromebooks, no iPads, no online math practice apps, and teachers like Sandra learned to teach well in a classroom where she had total control over students’ behavior and students’ access to information.

    Now only one of those is true, and all teachers must adjust to beingB one of several sources of information.

    image: Geograph.ie

    Veteran teachers like Sandra have built a castle of pedagogy and are now watching as odd-looking foundations for new towers are being poured in the classroom next door.

    image: Pixabay

    The excellent pedagogies of the future look only slightly similar to the practices of many teachers who were once deemed “excellent.” Teachers like Sandra who were proud of their castle are watching as more and more focus is being paid to the weird-looking building next door.

    image: Pixabay

    I’d feel some fear, too, if I were in that situation. My very identity, my castle that I’ve worked hard to construct, is waning in value. Why doesn’t the principal come into my room as often anymore? These workshops seem further and further out of reach. What is a “single sign-on?” We aren’t teaching cursive anymore?

    That fear of looming obsolescence must be addressed before Sandra will care about any app or program or device.

    ~Matt “Install a brewery in that castle, then everyone wins” Vaudrey

     

    UPDATE: 19 September 2017B We sat together in a training for the new English textbook, and she had this to say:

    I donbt like feeling incompetent and with this (points to the new ELA textbook), I feel like Ibm not b& Ibm just totally overwhelmed. Everybody else seems to be doing fine! Itbs like Ibm the only one whobs struggling. Ibm not the type of person who can just do the minimum and be like, bUgh. I did it.b
    *sigh* I want to do a good job. Everybody else has the skills to do this stuff and I’m just worried that I don’t have the skills to teach effectively…. that’s it! I’m worried I don’t have the skills to teach effectively.

    We ended with some positive self-talk and right-sizing (“Do you really think you’re theB only one in that room with questions? It seems like you’re just the only one brave enough to ask a question.”) but we have more work to do to alleviate the fear.

     

    1. Not her real name.b)
    2. Occupational Therapy – when a specialist works with a kid on physical skills, like fine motor for penmanship.b)

     

  • First Day of School 2016

    Teaching two periods of Integrated Math I while Claire Verti takesB maternity leave, these are my public letters to her, as part of a 12-week series. Hopefully, she starts a blog when she returns.

    Dear Claire,

    I’m sweaty. The air conditioning went out around lunch, so the temperature soared pastB 80B0 for sixth and seventh periods.

    My voice hurts. Leading a classroom based on discussion is stillB a lot of work.B It’s a lot of talkingB to do in the first day of school; even with only two periods, my teacher voice is a little horse.

    I’m busy. I’m wondering how I will be able to stay on top of the prep and still be out the door with time to play with my kids. That wasB kinda one of the conditions my wife laid out before we started this. It’s the same amount of prep for not much fudge.

    I’m a team player. I found out that our classroom is being used for fifth period, which is fine; it’s a great class and it shouldn’t sit empty half the day.B The bummer is that I only found this out when students began to line up at the door after fourth period. I had planned to use that time, instead I helpedB that teacher make a seating chart based on my desk arrangement, which you can see here.

    I’m annoyed. Adriana and I are still not listed as co-teachers for your class, which means we can’t take attendance or post grades. I think I just got an email from the IT guy. Hopefully there is some good news there.

    I’m giddy.

    I’m excited. Both classes took a survey on their math ability today. There were three or four students in each class that didn’t have a smart phone with them, which means (if I supplement with Chromebook and stuff) it should be encouraging when we try to do entry and exit checks later this year. The data from that math attitude survey will (hopefully) show growth when I re-survey them in late October.

    (I really hope it shows growth. I’m kinda presenting on that very thing at CMC-South the following week.)

    I’m pleased with myself. An enormousB freshman in seventh period was wrestling with the Open Middle problem, and he blurted, “This is harder than Pre-Calculus!” Now, there is no way heB could know that, but it felt good it just the same*.

    I’m feeling more and more confidentB in the classroom we’re constructing; itB shouldB be handed to you seamlessly in early November when you return. I’m figuring out ways to smoothly sample all students, use musical cues, and maintain a focus on the process of mathematics, not the result of the process.

    Andrea told me this weekend, “I am really glad you are not in the classroom full-time anymore. In the last two weeks, I’ve heardB you frustrated by a lot by things teachers can’t control. It’s one of many reasons I’m glad you’re a coach, where you have greater influence toB help kids learn.”
    She gets me.
    These next 12 weeks might shove me into in school administration credential yearsB soonerB than I expected.

    In all, you have 72 delightful students that should be trained well in the process of risk-taking, explaining their thinking, and working as a group.

    And a lot of them are white! My schools in MoVal and Pomona had a 6% white population; I am not accustomed to so many students named Madison or Jacob.

    We have four of each in our two classes.

    ~Matt “Another White Name” Vaudrey

    *I later found out, he’s a Junior, so… never mind.

  • Classroom Management

    After Fawn’s recent post about Jerks and some of the earnest frustration and heartache coming from the Classroom Chef book club on Voxer, I had a chat today with one of our administrators about some struggling teachers.

    These teachers have unruly classes that don’t cover the required content and regularly send students to the office for discipline issues.B Obviously, I won’t name those teachers or give any hints, but my chat with the Admin was meaningful, so I present portions of it here for your feedback.

     

    “If I had to boil it down to one thing,” Admin leaned back in her chair, “it’d be Classroom Management.”

    Having been in these teachers’ classes before, I cocked my head sideways and said, “Yeah… but that deficit looks different in each of these classrooms. I think–generally–effectively managed classes have three things.”

    High Expectations

    “Kids are smart,” I explain. Admin nods from her seat. “Kids will figure out exactly what the teachers expect them to do, and will rise (or fall) to meet the bar we set.”

    Admin exhales slowly, “Yeah, I’ve seen a few who truly don’t think their students can learn. It’s a real bummer.”

    Teachers who struggle with high expectations might say:

    “Ugh. It’s one of those years. I’ve got someB low kids this year.”
    “I don’t know what those <one year below> teachers are doing; these kids don’t knowB anything. They’reB so unprepared for <this grade>.”


    High Expectations     is first on my list; it’s theB entire reason we are teachers. Why on Earth would you sign up to help students expand their minds if theirB instructor believes they can’t?

    That sounds exhausting.

    Conversely, the best classes I’ve seen have teachers who are excited and energized by students’ ignorance. Huzzah!B these teachers cry,B I’ve found another place I can help my students!

    A class where the teacher expects miracles will likely garner a few.
    A class where the teacher expects “little monsters” will have dozens.

    Respect for Students

    “Why do you say it like that?” Admin asks me.

    “I taught in low-income, gang-affiliated neighborhoods and those students taught me quite a bit about authority and respect,” I said, closing her door. B “A common mantra among students was, ‘You gottaB give respect to get it.’ It was often just an excuse to be little turds to the teachers who treated them like… well… like little turds.”

    Admin laughed, “We have a few kids like that.”

    “But that same kid then comes to my class, puts forth effort, and speaks to me with eye contact in full sentences.” I paused, thinking about Eddie, who had his Mexican hometown tattooed on the back of his neck.

    I smiled, “And he only rarely asked stuff like, ‘Where the fuck is the Y= key on this thing?’ ”

    TI-83+

    Teachers who struggle with student respect might say:

    “*sigh* Well, I kicked Fernando out again. He’s just soB defiant.”
    “I had a parent conference for Erika from 3rd period on Tuesday. Surprise, surprise; her mom’s a hoochie, too.”

    Effective Use of Instructional Time

    “Omigod, yes,” Admin nodded fiercely. “There is so much wasted time in these classes.”

    “This is the big one,” I agreed. “A class where students go from task to task, bell to bell, is least likely to have those issues we talked about earlier. That doesn’t mean they’re wasting time doing boring work, the ‘effective use’ has to be based on high expectations and delivered with respect.”

    Admin leaned forward and pointed at my paper, where I’d sketched our conversation. “And all three of these go hand in hand. A really strong set of high expectations won’t be enough if there isn’t respect and good use of time.”

    I nodded, “Yep. Even a medium amount of all three is better than a bunch of one and none of the other two.

    Teachers who struggle with effective use of instructional time might say:

    “It’s so hard to get them motivated.”
    “Frank calls out, ‘Boring!’ right in the middle of class. What a little shit!”
    “They’re just so disrespectful.”

    Light to Drive Out Darkness

    Classroom Management is my favorite example of the duality of discipline; focus on decreasing negative behaviors doesn’t work. Focusing on increasing positive behaviors drives out the negative behaviors.

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    It’s easy to find stuff to hate when visiting classrooms or describing particular students. The challenge is finding what my psychologist sister calls the “positive opposite” and focusing on that, instead.

    When my 3-year-old daughter hits her brother, instead of saying, “Don’t hit!” we say “Use nice touches.”

    This morning’s podcast from Cult of Pedagogy had an excellent list of 10 Ways to Sabotage your Classroom Management, and #6 hints heavily at the focus above. It’s a clever twist that I’ve come to expect from Jennifer Gonzalez, the author.

    SabotageFullPin
    Click the image for a link.

    Your feedback is–as always–welcome.

    ~Matt “The Y= key is next to the WINDOW key, and watch your language, please.” Vaudrey

    P.S. Unfortunately, all of those quotes are from real teachers. Thankfully, I haven’t heard them in years, and thankfully, my professional circles now include several times as many awesome teachers as miserable ones.

    UPDATE 9 JUNE 2016: David Butler shares the new-teacher perspective on those three items, with some honest frustration and helplessness.

    These are all great points, but I think there are some (possibly a whole group of) teachers who they miss. When I was a teacher, I really really struggled with classroom management and Ibd say my big three issues were (based on your list):

    High Expectations of Myself
    Looking back, I did not have high expectations of my own ability to help all the students learn, or to help them manage their behaviour when they needed help to do so. It quickly became a vicious circle as the less success I had with classroom management I had, the less I expected myself to be able to do it.

    Respect for Myself
    I didnbt give myself the permission to change the classroom environment for my own teaching purposes. I didnbt respect myself enough to ask the students to stop or do other activities. I didnbt trust that the things I was choosing to do were necessarily the right things to do. When I did feel passionate about something that didnbt match with other teachersb way of doing things, I didnbt have the confidence to do it anyway. I didnbt respect myself enough to ask for help from other teachers or my superiors (partly because in my first school I learned no-one was willing to give me help). Without this respect for my own place in the classroom, how could the students respect me?

    Skills to make effective use of time
    I didnbt have a good feel for how much time an activity might take or how engaged students might be with it. I didnbt have a big enough repertoire of different activities to fall back on if my first choice fell through. And I didnbt have a list of routines I could fall into to help me and the students know what to do next. Often I felt over pressured to make my own resources rather than find out what existing resources were there or ask others to use theirs. (It didnbt help that at my first school I was explicitly told there were no resources and that I did have to make them myself.)

    If someone had told me to have higher expectations of my students, respect them and make more effective use of instructional time, I would have thought internally, bYes but how? I have to be in there tomorrow and I donbt know how.b What I needed was guidance in the day-to-day and a friend to help me learn, which for some teachers in some schools is not the easiest thing to find.

  • How Different Are Classrooms?

    This gem ambled across my Twitter feed this morning.

    Oh, baby. What a great question.

    How different are classrooms?

    There are nearly 500 classrooms I can visit on the clock. I’ve probably set foot in half of them, and I regularly hit the same 100, because as the onlyB EdTech Coach serving 13 K-12 schools, I go where I’m called.

    Three things are observable whether my jaunt in a classroom is 30 minutes or 30 seconds:

    Noise
    Productivity
    Mood

    Regardless of age, demographic, or ability, those three things let me infer something about the class.

    Noise

    class

    The door closes behind me and the class is noisy, yet calm. The talk I hear as I weave between student desks is littered with vocab terms mixed in withB casual language.

    “Yeah, but what about … theorem … mad at Mrs. Frizzle … Prussian independence … monksB built them to trade … article after the subject… no idea why… centered on the page … son las diecinueve de diciembre… the fuzzy part on the line.”

    Noise in an effective class is fine; it rarely rises above a hum when focused on the material. Seasoned teachers can tell when it gets too loud, and it’s usually due to one group that isn’t focused.

    Rather than yelling over the din, “Hey, I need you all to bring the noise level down!”, seasonedB teachers mosey over to Francisco’s group and just stand there.

    Conversation drops off asB all students silently stare at their desks. Maria picks up her pencil as the teacher asks, “Whatcha guys talkin’ about? Sounds fun.”

    ashamed-girl

    The girls avoid eye contact and Francisco grins, “We’re talking about how the verb in the sentence is jumping and we’re thinking about how to make a new sentence.”

    “Sounds great! Carry on,” and the teacher leaves.

     

    I’ve watched fantastic Kindergarten teachers herd a whole room of 5-year-olds to the carpet and read through a book, unbothered by their noise along the way.

    Teacher: On Monday, he ate one apple, but he was still hungry…
    Students: I don’t like apples. I had an apple for lunch yesterday!
    Teacher: On Tuesday, he ate through two oranges, but he was still hungry. Marco, keep your hands to yourself.
    Students: My gramma has an orange tree in her yard. My favorite car is orange. I’m wearing orange socks today.
    Teacher: On Wednesday…

    Noise is not the enemy, which leads me to number two.

    This class is very quiet.
    This class is very quiet.

    Productivity

    There are loud classes that are hard at work and there are silent classes bored out of their skulls and doing nothing.

    I walked through four classes this morning.

    1. Silent, diligently working on a computer assessment
    2. Loud chattering about a Twitter war between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton
    3. Light chatter, grading a sample student’s performance task in pairs*
    4. Cacophonous covers of Justin Bieber in “Modern Music” class

    Four very different noise levels, all with students focused on the task at hand, productive.

    Those four classes differed greatly in the Mood, though.

    Mood

    For the classes above, the mood was palpable in each case.

    1. Entered silently in a single-file.
    2. Tumbled in, got right to their seats, and took out their notebooks.
    3. Stumbled through the door, stopped at their friend’s desk to say hello, and ruffled the hair of their crush on the way to their seats.
    4. Digging out their song lyrics and iPods before they even entered the bandroom.

    The mood of a class is the toughest to quantify, but the easiest to notice.

    Teachers who had militant, Draconian mentors early in their career might have a mood that is subdued and frightened.

    Teachers with youth-ministry training might attempt to be “the nice teacher,” and get their ass kicked for the whole first year.

    But teachers who value student voiceB tend to be unbothered by noise.

    The Lesson

    Here is where many teacher preparation programs fall short. Pre-service observations focus on “noise level” and “students on-task,” but the third category directly informs the other two, and a focus on the classroom mood naturally leads the teacher to discover how much noise they prefer.

    And students will work hard in a room where they feel safe.

    ~Matt “The Nice Teacher…Usually” Vaudrey

     

    *Yes, grading a sample performance task. So they know how performance tasks are graded, so they know how to score highly on the performance tasks during the SBAC test. It was a real bummer.

  • The Bottom Ten and Learning

    Today is the first day of school for Bonita Unified School District. Last week, I puttered around classrooms and chatted up new and returning teachers, aligned SmartBoards, planned out musical cues, and suggested desk placement.

    All of which is great, most of which was helpful, and none of which was stressful.

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    This is year two inB my role as Educational Technology Coach, and it’s the first first-day-of-school in my career where I’ve slept soundly last night and not had an anxious, runny poop this morning.

    In the classroom, the first week before students arrive is my favorite week of the year. The desks are clean, the rows are straight, nothing smells like sweat or feet or Flamin’ Hot Chee-tohs. Nobody’s gotten detention or dumped or an A-minus when they really wanted an A.

    In a classroom without students, only potential exists.

    Every teacher–the weekend before school begins–is an idealist. The class, before filling with bodies, is full of hope.

    For seven years, I preppedB my room in a frenzy, often putting in 10 or 12-hour days to get it just right.

    Unpaid, by the way.

    Without fail, some student with no respect for my hard work would tag “Kiki flexxxxin” on one of my posters.B My carefully-constructed classroomB crumbled to dust within weeks.

    But that first week? No tears; only dreams.

    Dreams that every student will learn. Dreams that no students will exclaim they hate me as they flip overB chairs. Dreams that none will scrawl “asshole” in pencil on my door.

    Anyway, that’s not even what I wanted to write about.

    The Bottom Ten

    During my first year as tech coach, I sought to make disciples at each of my 13 school sites. By building into the Top Ten Percent of tech-hero teachers–those who would still innovate without me–I’d pump motivation through the “sprinklers” at each site who would spread the word about how helpful and approachable I am.

    That kind of happened. Many teachers I never met know who I am.

    This year, as my office is full of dreams and potential, I’m shooting for the Bottom Ten Percent.

    At our kick-off event, the Bonita Educational Technology Adventure (BETA), I gave a workshop for the Tech-Hesitant. It went pretty well, answering questions, tackling real-classroom situations, and addressing the things that are scary.

    One of these teachers chatted with me later that week to ask about how to use Google Classroom, but then lock student work after it’s done until the test.

    After attempting to dissuade her, I promised to ask Twitter about it. As I expected, none were interested in even trying to find an old-school solution.

    Which brings me to why and how I’m shooting for the Bottom Ten this year.

    Learning

    This article came across my desk today, and I wasted no time in sending it out:

    While my business card says, “EdTech Coach,” I’m actually more interested in learning. And not just for students.

    During my workshop, I pushed back when I heard Tech-hesitant teachers use phrases like these:

    “It’s probably easy for you, you’re so young.”
    “Well, I’m not a digital native, so…”
    “There’s just not enough time to learn ______.”

    When someone drops one ofB theseB dismissive excuses to continue hiding from challenge, I have a dozen responses, but the one I chose for the BETA event was this:

    bodybuilder2

    “When I go to the weight room, I see people in there that are enormous. They have shoulder muscles and neck muscles and … theirB muscles have muscles. They’re huge.

    I can tell that they’ve been to the gym before. They didn’t get those muscles without spending time specifically working on them.

    Bodybuilder4

    Technology is no different. Years ago, I was clumsy with technology, didn’t type well, and had difficulty navigating the internet. But I kept spending time in the gym, and my tech muscles grew.

    You–the tech-hesitant teachers–you can also grow your tech muscle. Just keep putting in the time, even when you’re feeling weak.”

    ~Matt “Finger-Muscles” Vaudrey

    bodybuilder3

    P.S. I’m content to refer to this group as “The Bottom Ten” for several reasons:

    1.) They’ve admitted their low status to me, “I’m probably the least techy person at my school.”
    2.) Those that cling tightly to what’s comfortable are those who can transform their classroom the most with fresh ideas.
    3.) SeventyB of them attended my workshop, that’s the bottom fifteen percent of our district, and they were willingB to self-identify.
    4.) Growth can happen anywhere. If they believe that they were in the Bottom Ten and could become the Top Fifty, they’ll be interested in improving.