Mrvaudrey

Category: Education

  • #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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Equity Goofus

    Therebs a scene in the movie The Sandlot where the main character finally plucked up the courage to get into the game. He borrows a glove and walks to the outfield, muttering to himself, “Don’t be a goofus. Don’t be a goofus.“

    Once the game begins, it becomes very clear he has no idea what hebs doing. As a boy between the ages of eight and 15, he should know more about baseball by now.

    But he doesnbt.

    image: Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

    The other players are initially shocked at his incompetence, but they forgive it and teach him, until he is as capable playing the game as they are. With some practice, he grew more comfortable and more capable in a context where failure was expected and corrected.

    image: smithsverdict.com

    Last week, I sent a thread of tweets into the Internet while muttering to myself, “Donbt be a goofus.” Since I’d rather be a clumsy advocate than a silent one,1 I chose to engage even though I was unsure of how to do it.

    The following day, I read the chapter in Dr. BrenC) Brownbs book about oversharing and using vulnerability as a crutch to gain sympathy.

    Oops. There’s a good chance I was doing that.

    Anyway, Marian Dingle immediately reached out via direct message on Twitter with equal parts encouragement, questions, and correction. We sent several hundred words back and forth before she finally said, “How about we just talk on the phone?”

    It’s worth noting here that Marian didn’t owe me anything; she extended her hand to offer support unprompted support, and she persisted to address any and all questions I had. It must be exhausting for people of color to constantly do that, and I so appreciate it. Give that woman a medal.

    She helped me wrangle some clarity on three big issues, all of which are lifelong journeys and could be full blog-posts in themselves.

    1. As a white person, I have the luxury of not dealing with issues of race on a day-to-day basis. It doesnbt define the safety of my children or me, so I can go days or weeks without even thinking about the inherent white supremacy of school systems.

    The main character in Sandlot wasn’t aware that he was missing out on something important until the neighbor pulled him out onto the field. I’m incredibly thankful for the people of color in my orbit who are pulling me onto the field, knowing that I’m pretty inexperienced.

    image: Hollywood Reporter

    2. The reflection happening in private direct messages or in isolated Twitter discussions is fine for white people, but it leaves people of color out of the healing process. Also, white folk tend to center themselves in the discussion (like I’m doing right now on my website, more on that later).

    Marian used a great illustration to describe this:

    Imagine we’re in a crowd of people and some are stepping on other’s feet. Eventually, they cry out, “Quit stepping on my feet! It hurts!” The foot-steppers could respond in a variety of ways that don’t actually address the hurt they’ve caused:

    What? I didn’t notice I was doing that. I’m not the kind of person who would step on feet. If you don’t like it, move your foot. The real villain is the people who designed such a narrow hallway! That’s why feet are getting stepped-on!

    The best response is, “I’m sorry. I’ll do better,” and address the hurt you’ve caused by stepping on feet.

    image: 20th Century Fox

    Twitter is great for this; BIPOC Educators are being very honest about how white folks can step up. Give these a read.

    I have no good reason why I haven’t been engaging in #ClearTheAir chat on Twitter, where my peers are addressing hard topics publicly. I’ve been telling myself that I don’t have time, but in reality, I just didn’t want to figure out how to jump in.

    Yeah. It feels just like that looks.
    image: popsugar

    3. The challenge for me is a white person is to de-center myself while “doing the work” (the work of addressing injustice, both personally and systemically) and being public about it. Holding those two values at the same time is tough.

    Too public, and I risk appearing performative.
    Not public enough, and I risk appearing complicit, like I have no issue with things-as-they-are.

    In my case, Marian pointed out in our phone call that I appear to care a lot about how I am perceived online and off. She’s right; I’m entering a season of interviewing for Admin jobs and there’s a 100% chance that the interview panel will find my blog or Twitter feed.

    So far, I have been airing on the side of quiet and inviting. My goal is not to showcase my woke-ness so people of color will award me the badge of bGood White Person.”

    My goal is to talk about equity in a way that encourages further conversation face-to-face.

    I own a Black Lives Matter T-shirt, but I wonbt wear it to a job interview. Kicking in the door and forcing a difficult conversation will likely make things worse in any sensitive discussion.

    So for now, I’m speaking calmly about systemic oppression of BIPOC and unfair policing and inequitable discipline practices and ways to improve capital-e-Education for all students, because all of those are important to me. Once people are listening, then we can begin doing the hard work of changing hearts and minds, both in my fellow white people and in myself.

    If you’re reading this, you’re welcome to join me on the field. I’ll go first, even though I have no idea what I’m doing.

    Above: Happy children tearing down systemic racism in school systems
    image: imdb

    ~Matt “Awakening and Talking About It” Vaudrey

    UPDATE 28 March 2019: The day after this posted, Ijeoma Oluo dropped this masterpiece, which makes a strong case for the exact opposite approach of what I advocate in the last three paragraphs.

    Clearly, I still have much to learn and much to think about, but I’m leaving this post as it was. Like everything else on this site, it’s a cairn left on my journey, and I’m not going to sterilize it.

    image: Fedora Magazine. Literally.

    (…Dammit, I just re-centered on my white feelings again. Bye.)

    1. Bill describes it well here

  • Seat at the Table

    My favorite math lessons are the ones that end with more questions than they answered.

    Relatedly, my favorite conversations leave me more interested in learning, not satisfied with the learning Ibve done already.

    CMC has been the professional highlight of my year for the past few years, and this year was no exception.


    In her blog post,* Claire offers thanks to “Big names” in Math Education (her terms) for the encouragement and advocacy given in loud voices:

    Your work has gotten me through a difficult time professionally and I am so grateful.

    John and I will be the first to tell you that we haven’t sought notoriety within the Math Education community (and are both uncomfortable with it), so we regularly check to see that our compasses still point toward North, toward students first and always.

    But if taking a selfie, signing a book, and speaking encouragement into a microphone makes teachers stand a little taller, then it’s worth it.

    As Patricia mentions in her blog,* it’s time to start bringing more ideas to the table:

    I realized during this conference that there are so many talented teachers doing great things in their classrooms that make a big difference in the lives of their students. We need to hear from them too; their voices, their stories, their strategies so that we can all be better.

    Yeah. The comments section of this blog has been pushing on that for years.

    So that’s where I am. I want to use my medium amount of influence to make more seats at the table, to celebrate more ideas, and to pass the mic more often (even though I love the mic).

    Sunil wrote about the CMC workshop he attended, given by Chris Shore. Both parties are nudging people like me (white males with a microphone) to nudge b okay, push b the pace of education toward more students, eventually toward all.

    ~Matt “Change is a-comin’ ” Vaudrey

    *These two mention me, and Ibm sending yball there to read despite my discomfort with their praise. Thatbs how good they are.

  • Differentiation and Risk

    Hey, Ashley!

    Thanks for sharing those links, and I’m sorry it took so long for me to get around to reading them. I’m somewhere over Phoenix on my way to Detroit, so I have some down time. And Southwest Airlines internet is just fast enough to load those pages and write this back to you.

    a cartoon person scowls at the laptop screen.
    “No, it’s fine. I’m not in a hurry.”

    I’m so glad that b even sequestered on a remote island in the Pacific b you’re able to make time to develop yourself professionally. Those two articles pair very well together and tackle a tough issue in education. No doubt, you have some strong feelings on Differentiation after your years teaching on a military base in Guam.

    Yours is theB extremeB case, where students are several grade levels behind in basic skills, but are sitting next to students who’ve attended private school and are test-hungry. Even with less than 30 kids in a class, your scenario was destined to be a challenge that only the most-experienced and most-supported teachers should tackle.

    And you’re in Guam in a department by yourself.

    A person standing on a beach by themselves
    This is how I imagine your staff meetings look.

    So… you and I have both been in departments at public schools, so I think you’ll get my meaning here: EdWeek’s first editorial bB Differentiation Doesn’t WorkB b reads like the grumpy teacher in the department who’s complaining about “these kids.” Sure, her concerns are real and her experience is valuable and it’s fine to vent sometimes, but come on. Grump, grump, grump, then no suggestions for an alternative or improvement?

    Ugh. That’s draining.

    a PASS stamp

    The response from Carol Ann Tomlinson (who I thinkB I’ve seen present at some conference somewhere or I’ve read her book or something) resonates with me far more. Even the title bB Differentiation Does, in Fact, Work b was kindly redirecting negativity toward action, which I’ve done in my department meetings about a million times.

    And here’s my favorite part:

    For many reasons, students in lower-track classes don’t achieve as well as they do in heterogeneous settings. Those classes tend to be taught by newer or less engaged teachers. The quality of curriculum and instruction is less robust than in most heterogeneous settings. The intellectual climate in tracked classes is further damped by students who know they are siloed because adults consider them to be less able than many of their peersband they respond accordingly.

     

    Yep; that’sB exactly my experience teaching GATE, General, and Concepts classes. Notably, the years where I worked hardest on including all students were the years I taught Concepts; I knew that these students wereB already grouped in what Tomlinson calls a “pedagogy of poverty,” and if I wanted to change their situation, I first had to change their attitude about math class.

    Even the images for each article are perfect:

    left image: teacher seated at a desk, behind her reads "Now Serving Number 15". Right: students at desks, but with ladders connecting them. A dark-skinned student is climbing the ladder to a higher desk. Both images by Chris Wetzel

    Ashley, you’ve read my book, so you won’t be surprised by my interest in grabbing students’ attention and attitude with interesting, low-risk stuff first, then leveling up the rigor until we’re at (or close to) grade level. AndB that can only happen if your students like you and want to please you.

    The Math Intervention teacher at one of my schools had thisB exact concern yesterday, as we met to plan my class takeover on Tuesday. “The fourth grade teachers want me to teach the standards, not just basic skills.” Thankfully, she saw what Tomlinson believes:

    Second, a related but separate body of research indicates that teachers who believe firmly in the untapped capacity of each learner, and thus set out to demonstrate to students that by working hard and working smart they can achieve impressive goals, get far better results than teachers who believe some students are smart, others are not, and little can be done to change that. It’s difficult to grow brains and help students develop growth mindsets in remedial contexts.

    Oh, baby. The phrase “teachers who believe firmly in the untapped capacity of each learner” gets me so excited. I may have to jog around Midway Airport during my layover.

    Ashley, keep it up. It’s hard, but worth it.

    ~Matt “Brain-crush on Carol Ann” Vaudrey

     

  • To Airica

    To Airica Yanez of Moreno Valley USD:

    Someone asked recently about co-teaching models. I figured now was a good time to describe (publicly) the year of teaching when I grew the most, and I have you to thank for pushing me to grow as an educator.

    Maybe it was our social chemistry, maybe it was the life-stage of teaching for me as I was beginning to get comfortable with a few hundred lessons I’d taught. It was 2012, and I was leaving the GATE cluster (Gifted and Talented students who travel together, class to class) and joining the RSP cluster (students with IEPs who travel together, class to class). The Mullet Ratio was my first real jump into weird lessons that worked well, and I continued to try weird ways to get my students to understand math, to varying success. (Ugh. Like the Kool-Aid lesson for Percent Mixture problems.)

    You, Airica, did exactly what friends do; you started by just being friendly and helpful, asking how you could best support students with needs. In a school heavily populated with grumpy teachers who taught in silos, we quickly realized our camaraderie, and you began to ask me pointed questions:

    • How doB you think Myles did on that topic?
    • What would you do differently if Bayley (visual impairment) was here at school today?
    • Do you think it was helpful having me teach the second example problem?
    • What’s the point of students taking notes?

    A woman shrugs, as if to say, "Pff! I never thought about it before!"
    “Uh… I.. um…”

    I was thrilled. Prior to that school, I’d worked at a charter school in a vacuum, and any professional growth had to be home-cooked.* And suddenly, I have a fantastic meal served up, just like that? It was a delight.

    Around that time, our relationship shifted, and I became aware that you were just as qualified as me, plus you had loads of current research and best practices on pedagogy and learning. As the co-teacher in my classroom, you were (gasp) an additional teacher! What a huge benefit for those students and for me!

    We worked hard to have equal footing and equal authority. As Mrs. Jara from Fairfield, Connecticut said:

    He sees me as an equal. He doesn’t see me as a helper or a teacher’s aide. We have that healthy balance.

    And soon, you were more blunt with your assessment. “Hey, my kids got totally lost today, and you’ll need to do something differently tomorrow.”

    Leslie Knope earnestly thanking someone

    I wish, Airica, that I would have paid more attention to the research that was present online even then. You were an expert teacher; had I known I would soon be leaving the classroom to work as a coach, I would have experimented with more methods. There was a conference that I attended where someone mentioned the four methods of co-teaching. I came back super-jazzed, only to find that you’d be working on a different cluster next year and we couldn’t collaborate any more. Things went… okay, and I left the classroom in March of that year.

    I also wish we would have invited you to team planning; your knowledge on how to serve our most vulnerable population could have made the rest of the RSP cluster teachers better at our job. That was a missed opportunity on our part.

    Most of all, I wish I hadn’t used the term “your kids.”

    They were allB our kids.

    Airica, thanks for making me a better teacher.

     

    ~Matt “Vaudrey” Vaudrey

     

    *Cough… *chef analogy* cough…

  • Jack of All Trades, Master of One

     

    There’s not much for me to offer the field of Education.

    This isn’t a call for affirmation or compliments; I’m not looking for commentary below to list the things I do well.

    What I mean is this:

     

     

    The field of Education is vast and encompasses a lot of disparate b yet related b topics. At any education conference, one can find strands where colleagues will speak about:

    • Equity and Access
    • Educational Technology
    • Leadership
    • Effective Coaching
    • Classroom Management
    • Online/Blended Learning
    • STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
    • STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering,B Art, and Mathematics)
    • STREAM (Science, Technology, Reading,B Engineering,B Art, and Mathematics)
    • HAMSTER (Humanities,B Art, Mathematics…)*

    You get the idea; there’s a lot of sub-fields in which people are fixated, enthused, or even experts.

    In most of those fields, I’m a novice. And here’s the thing I realized twice today;

    Academic achievement b how well students perform on tests b holds very little appeal to me.

    First, after the Tech Committee meeting this morning, I was hanging out with a couple leadership-types talking about school setups. They were both emphatic that teacher microphone systems areB proven to raise student achievement.

     

    “Boys and girls, take out your pencils!”
    image:pixabay

     

    I remained mostly quiet, only pointing out that b even in the video we saw b the teacher used the microphone sparingly, only during the lecture. Most of the time, it was turned off as she meandered the class and talked to students.

    For me, I didn’t care about the studies, I didn’t like the way a teacher microphone made me feel. It separates my voice from the student voices, and it’s important to me that they feel free to share.

    Later, when I had gotten home and had time to look through the resources on a Twitter-stream from that morning, I found myself staring apathetically at the studies supporting a focus onB content expertise when naming teachers as “highly-trained.” I wasB even mumbling to myself:

    Okay, there’s research. Whatever; I still don’t like it.

    If you’re interested in super-wordy-and-thus-readable-online slides about highly effective teacher preparedness programs, here are copiously well-researched slides from Linda Darling-Hammond. That’s what got me thinking this morning, and not just because the study found that one-shot trainings didn’t improve teacher effectiveness.

     

    Instead of reading math manuals, pedagogy treatises, and doctoral research on the most effective ways to teach [some topic], I’ve leaned into what I do best, which is building a class culture where teachers enjoy teaching and students enjoy learning, and vice versa.

     

    image: starmanseries

     

    Now, to be clear, I still seek to learn more about topics outside my immediate interest, and I greatly respect people like the aforementioned Stanford professor who has published a dozen books and over 300 articles in pursuit of effective practices.

    What I mean is…

    You’ve heard the phrase “Jack of all trades,” referring to someone who knows a little about a bunch. Some etymologists think the phrase continues:

    Jack of all trades,
    master of none,
    though oftentimes better
    than master of one.

    We can’t be fluent in everything.
    We can’t return from a conference and implement everything we learned.
    We can’t earn a Master’s or Doctoral degree and apply every bit of research we’ve read or studied.

    There aren’t enough hours in the day to be an expert in everything.

    So I chose to focus my efforts, not on academic achievement, but on building motivated learners.

    “Vaudrey… you’re aware that yourB job is to teach, right?”

    Yes. And I think I have been.

    Students will almostB definitelyB forget how to factor a trinomial, graph a linear expression, or add fractions with unlike denominators. I know this because my wife (who was an obnoxiously excellent student in school) has no idea how to do any of those things.

    And has forgotten a lot of her times tables.

    But my wife is interested in finding more efficient ways to solve problems, down to learn new skills, and perseveres when her life gets hard.B Those are the skills she uses as an adult, andB those are the skills that I want my students to practice in class.

    Have I sacrificed academic achievement to build better citizens? Probably.

    And I care deeply about training the next generation of citizens to be confident, motivated problem-solvers and risk-takers. My strongest muscle is classroom culture, so I’m blogging, speaking, and interested mostly in that.

     

     

    But that other stuff at the top of this page is important, too.

    ~Matt “the HAMSTER” Vaudrey*

     

    *Joke stolen from Cathy Seeley

  • Aminals

    If you follow my escapades on Twitter, you know that I have a 4.9-year-old daughter named Pickle. (Seen here, age 2.7)

    If you follow our escapades closely, you know that we love to play Tiny Polka Dot, Chess, and iPad games. Pickle is especially talkative and, from a young age, narrates her life with annoying regularity and precision.

    Today, in fact, she declared b no less than nine times b that she is a little scared to try ice skating but wants to try it anyway and can we go this week?

    It’s been above 105B0 all week.

    (That’s 40B0 Celsius).

    For one with such an astounding vocabulary, she still pronounces her tiny paintings as “aminals” every time. She hasn’t correctly said, “animals” even once in herB entire life.

    Now, if you’re a parent, you know that this is developmentally appropriate and she’s still doing fine. She knows her letters, a few sight words, and her numbers to 40 and can count by tens to 100.

    Unrelated, she has a math teacher father.

    If you aren’t a parent b many of our family and friends are non-parents b you may feel compelled to correct her and say, “No, honey. It’s AN-ih-mals.”

    And I would tell you to hush.

    Related story: in the classroom, I recently let some third graders add 32 in a row 25 times.

    This is the mathematical equivalent of letting my daughter say, “Aminals.”B It’s… effective, I suppose, but there’s a far better way, one that’s more accepted and more efficient.

    Here’s why I didn’t correct nine-year-old Anthony or my 4.9-year-old daughter (a phrase my mom told me years ago):

    Just be supportive; let the rest of the world tell them, “no.”

    My daughter won’t graduate high school still referring to the “aminal” kingdom in her science class, just like Anthony will learn about multiplication next year, and he might even think about Krispy Kreme Me, where multiplication would have beenB so much faster than the method that he used.

    Eventually, the rest of the world will let them know a more effective way.

    As the teacher in both those scenarios, I can choose if I want to be supportive or corrective. That choice is present in every interaction, and if you follow the ongoingB Pickle and Daddy chess tournament, you’ll see which side I take.

    ~Matt “Interesting, can you say more about that?” Vaudrey