K12

Tips for Supporting Teachers at Every Phase of Their Career

A webinar discussion on teacher support featuring Lynn M. Gangone, Machel Mills-Miles, Ann Stark, and Brent Raby

A panel of education experts and organization leaders provide revolutionary insight on the most effective strategies for teacher support and retention.

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Erin Grubbs:

All right. Good afternoon, everybody. We’re going to give everyone a couple seconds to get in. We know Zoom has a little bit of a delay, so we’ll give you all a second. If you have a minute and you want to drop in the chat where you’re from, and where you’re joining us, and your name, that would be great. Got a great session for you today. All right. Well, I’m going to let everybody keep logging in, but get started with some housekeeping. So, hello and welcome to our webinar today. We’re thrilled that you’re joining us and hope that you enjoy and can participate in our discussion and walk away prepared to support the teachers in your district. My name is Erin Grubbs, I’m head of marketing here at GoReact. For those of you not familiar with us and why this topic is so important to us, GoReact is a video feedback solution, that’s taken our 10 years of experience in helping higher ed institutions with skill development to now helping school districts support teacher growth with some of that same technology.

I’m happy to be joined with a panel of thought leaders and experts that will be introducing themselves in just a few minutes. But first, I’m going to run through a few points of housekeeping. Today’s event will last about an hour. That’ll hopefully include about 45 or 50 minutes of our panelists answering some pre-prepped questions and then some time at the end for Q&A from you. We are recording today’s presentation, so if you need to hop off before we finish or you want to share the recording with a colleague, we’ll be emailing you the recording tomorrow morning. We do want today’s presentation to be as interactive as possible, so throughout the presentation, please participate in the chat and prepare your questions.

To submit questions for our panelists, you can use that Q&A function that you should see, and we’ll answer as many questions in today’s session that we can. You’ll also see a chat function. You can use that to introduce yourself, tell us what district or organizations you’re from, if you haven’t already, and feel free to share links or resources that you want to share with the other attendees in that chat section as well. If you experience any technical difficulties, please use the chat to reach out. And without further ado, I’m going to hand it over to our panelists to introduce themselves. Michelle, why don’t you start us off?

Machel Mills-Miles:

Thanks, Erin. Well, good afternoon everyone. My name is Michelle Mills-Miles and I am vice president of standards implementation and outreach with Learning Forward. I live on the standards team and was a big part of the revisions of the 2022 Standards for Professional Learning. I am formerly a classroom teacher and instructional coach, director of professional learning systems at a state department, and have experience with micro-credentials, both for for-profit and not-for-profit, so real focus on competency-based professional learning. But I have a passion for professional learning and supporting teachers because I just realized what a great lever that is for improving the experiences of the students that come to us each and every day. So, I’m really honored to be here with you all today and looking forward to a great conversation.

Erin Grubbs:

Nice. Ann, do you want to go next?

Ann Stark:

Sure. Thank you Erin. Everyone, my name is Ann Stark. I am a classroom teacher on my 22nd year, loving my middle school kids and my job, I’m also a induction program mentor for the past 14 years. So, I have a passion for both teaching my students, but also ensuring that new teachers get the support that they need and learn the skills that they need to be effective classroom teachers and love their job as much as I do. So, I’m really excited to be here with you guys today and hope to be a good resource from the induction perspective. So, I look forward to our discussions.

Erin Grubbs:

Awesome. Thanks Anne. Lynn, how about you?

Lynn Gangone:

Hi everyone. Lynn Gangone, I’m the president and CEO of an organization called AACTE, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. We are turning 75 this year. We were founded in 1948 with the sole purpose of educating teachers for our public school systems throughout the country. We’ve expanded today and we represent all the disciplines of colleges of education around the country, so teachers, guidance counselors, superintendents, principals, you name it. We have folks who are working in K-12 classrooms in the policy arenas around the country doing accreditation, professional development. So, we span the whole gamut, if you will. AACTE has worked very closely with GoReact. Over the past several years, they’ve been a great strategic partner for us and many of our higher education institutions take advantage of what GoReact has to offer. And I’m just really pleased to be part of this panel today, speaking directly with K-12 educators. So, thank you all for your incredible service and amazing work that I know you’re doing around the country. And thanks to Erin and team at GoReact for the invitation to be here.

Erin Grubbs:

Thank you, Lynn. Thanks for joining us. All right, Brent, last but not least.

Brent Raby:

My name is Brent Raby. I am the assistant superintendent at a school district outside of Chicago called West Aurora School District 129. So, give you a little bit of background. Illinois is a really unique place. We have over 800 school districts in the state, so we’re actually one of the larger school districts, but we serve about just under 13,000 kids. We speak 67 different languages. My position is to oversee special education, curriculum instruction, professional learning, ESL, and instructional tech. And basically, it’s all the fun stuff that happens in education. That’s kind of how I say it. My counterpart does kind of the back of the house with finance, et cetera.

But I’m really excited about being here because I think one of the things that have always driven me in my career and all the different positions that I’ve had is that we ask teachers to do really hard jobs and we have to build systems of structures and support to do those hard jobs. Everybody keeps on saying, “When you’re going to take something off the plate?” My answer is, “Never, but we’re going to try to make it as easy as possible or support you as you really try to meet the needs of a lot of diverse learners in ever-changing educational society.” So, again, I just really appreciate being here and I’m excited to learn from everyone else and excited for the conversation.

Erin Grubbs:

Nice, thank you, Brent. And I think that’s a great way to kind of lead into our first question, which I know is a little bit of a loaded one, but as you think about supporting teachers throughout their career, Michelle, what are some of the challenges that teachers are facing right now that we can help them with?

Machel Mills-Miles:

Well, as we heard Brent say about so many things on the teacher’s plate, there certainly is no shortage of challenges that teachers are facing today. I think we’re all aware of that, but just to name maybe top five, a few that rise at the top. I think, that teachers are still experiencing ramifications from the teacher shortages that we are seeing across the country. As of August 2022, 53% of schools were understaffed according to the US Department of Ed. I see a press release that they released, and that affects everyone.

So, we have teachers having to step in to not only handle their responsibilities, but to cover for areas in which that have not been staffed yet. And that certainly brings pressure and just the increase of responsibility, and that goes beyond classroom teachers, to include bus drivers, and emergency bus drivers, and school counselors, and cafeteria workers. Everyone in the school system feels that feels that burden. Mental health and emotional health of not only staff throughout the nation, but also students as well. So, again, you can imagine how that burden of shortages plays into increased anxiety and kind of increased stress level and how that impacts the life of a teacher both in and outside of classrooms.

So, that’s at a personal level, but then not to mention the mental health of the students that come to our classrooms. And so, that is a tremendous challenge, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, and that plays out in a number of ways to include behavior in a classroom, as well as student motivation and engagement. So, we have classroom teachers trying to deal with and support students who are experiencing trauma and other real challenges. Ensuring that teachers are using effective or effectively using high quality curriculum and instruction materials. So, we know that fortunately, we have greater access. We, being teachers, have greater access to high quality curriculum and instructional materials, but in many places the professional learning around how to use those materials are not quite there yet. So, that curriculum-based professional learning, we still have a long way to go with that. So, although we have these resources, there’s a challenge around really learning and being supported in how to use that.

And lastly, I’ll just add, I think, a tremendous challenge facing teachers is the political landscape and a lot of the division that we’re seeing, a lot of the policies that are making it confusing, and really scary, and unclear of what teachers can and cannot do, and cannot say, how they can and cannot relate to students, and are unclear of what we can put before students and what we can’t. And so, I think, that is another tremendous challenge that we’re seeing pretty much across the country. So, I’m eager to jump into the rest of the conversation of how we can support teachers through that because that is a heavy load and kind of a cloudy picture of the landscape. But I am very hopeful that this group has lots of great stories, and guidance, and advice of how we can support teachers through this really rocky period in our field.

Erin Grubbs:

Absolutely, and that definitely is a lot. But Anne or Brent, anything from your side that you’re hearing that you want to add into what Michelle had there, or she covered it pretty well?

Brent Raby:

I think she covered it pretty well. I think, the other thing that we’re really seeing with some of the challenges with just even some of our new teachers we’ve hired significant number this year is that they didn’t really have a authentic student teaching experience. So, some of the things that we’re seeing within the classroom, because a lot of their student teaching experience was virtual, especially in Illinois. So, they’re coming into the classroom the first time, so they’re almost getting us a real student teaching experience and their first year experience all in one breath. And we’re trying to find ways to support and try to get through some of those hurdles.

Erin Grubbs:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s a nice lead in to our next question for Lynn. Lynn, you obviously work with a lot of the teacher prep programs across the country. How can these teacher prep programs and school districts collaborate to ensure that the teachers are prepared when they enter the profession and feel confident doing so?

Lynn Gangone:

Yeah, just listening to just the opening and what Michelle was saying, we have seen… I just want to go on this a little bit before I move into some solutions. We obviously have seen significant drops in interest in education programs throughout all of our programs all throughout the country. So, it all starts with who is interested in becoming a teacher. And certainly, we are all working to grow that interest in teaching, despite the things that Michelle talked about. I’m an optimist as well, and so I keep talking about all the great things that happen. And part of our conversation today is talking about this kind of moment in time.

Brent talked about virtual learning in the pandemic and how now that’s a different entity that’s different than actually being in the classroom with the student. Although I’ve been in front of some of those simulations, Brent, and they’re a little scary sometimes with how realistic they can be. But we have these teachers coming in and the induction piece, the ways in which the higher education institution can partner with the school district, is absolutely critical. So, I’ve got a couple of examples that I can share with you. One is at Kennesaw State University, which is in Georgia, and I see we have a couple of people from Georgia in the house here in the chat. There is a program where Kennesaw partners with the Georgia SCA and looks at a support for special education teacher induction and retention. There’s no surprise to anyone on this call that our need for special education teachers is acute, as it is for ESL teachers, STEM teachers, we have kind of shortages within shortages.

And so, this program, it’s the Georgia Department of Education, the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders, and they have a mentoring and induction program for new special education teachers across the state. And the partnership then between the institution and the state and the local school districts, part of this is always getting the right people at the table to make sure that you’ve got the movers and shakers with policy and with actually implementation, getting this work done it. There’s ongoing training for special education teachers once they enter the classroom and they’re mentored and supported while delivering high quality instruction and implementing evidence-based practices that meet the needs of students with disabilities.

Another example would be from the University of Central Florida. University of Central Florida does a ton of work. And one of the things I love about UCF is they also have a program that we have at AACT called the Home Scholarship Program. So, one of the things we haven’t talked about is that part of our challenge too is to not only address the shortage, but also who’s entering teaching, and making sure that we have teachers that reflect the diversity of the student body. And so, our homes program specifically focuses on scholars of color and future practitioners and scholars in teacher education, in elementary education, in early childhood education, and policy, et cetera. So, University of Central Florida has one of our top programs of that, but they work with the Orange County Public Schools and they offer a paid field experience to candidates as part of their teachers and residence program.

And one of the things we talked about before the webinar was the cost of how you prepare a teacher… If we want them to have a clinical practice, we have to figure out a way to support them financially because most students these days are working and preparing to be a teacher. And so, it’s complicated, but I think that part of it for us is making sure that we are doing whatever we can to facilitate those partnerships, particularly at the early stages of when someone enters into a school district.

Erin Grubbs:

That’s great. I’m going to take it over to Anne then who is going to talk a little bit about that and those induction programs that you mentioned. Anne, what does the onboarding and induction process look like for new teachers at your school and district?

Ann Stark:

Okay, so I’m in California, so I’m not sure if it’s the same for all states, but I can talk about how we do it. Teachers leave their university program, get hired with a preliminary teaching credential. At that point, they have five years to clear their credential. What they need to do to clear their credential is participate in a two-year induction program where they work one-on-one with a mentor who is in their same grade level, at least secondary versus primary, and in a like discipline to what they teach. They have 60 days upon being hired to enroll into an induction program. Now, some districts offer it or partner with induction programs. Where I’m at, we have a five district consortium. The program that I work for, we also take private schools and we take people out of consortium.

Some of the districts provide the financial backing for the teachers to participate in the program, some do not provide any financial support, and some do partial. So, it’s all part of their package that they get. And a lot of teachers in California, it’s one of their questions as they’re looking for jobs because we’re all looking for teachers is, “What does your district offer? Do you have an induction program and do you pay for that program?” So, it becomes a little bit competitive and it’s the leverage that some of the districts use.

The district that I work for, we cover 100%, and we are pretty much one of the few in our area that does that. So, that’s one of the things that we can do to recruit teachers to work in our district. But once they begin the induction program, they go through an orientation at the program office, they meet their mentor, they’re partnered up ,and they learn all about what their two-year induction experience will be like, and they get an opportunity to develop what we call an individual learning plan that they’ll work through over their two years and everything is specific to their classroom, their assignment, their students, their job. Nothing is done for induction specifically.

If it doesn’t meet their classroom needs, if it’s not genuine and authentic, it’s not worth doing is sort of how we feel about it. We want it to be very job embedded. And a lot of the teachers will sometimes in the beginning say, “Well, isn’t this just like my TPAs?” Or, “Isn’t this my university work?” And we tell them, “Well, you can’t make this stuff up that’s going to happen in these classrooms. You need to be prepared and supported. So, not really, this is real world. That’s all theoretical and now, you are in it.” So, we are there to provide them support and we try to give them as much information upfront in the onboarding process so that they are prepared for what’s coming, but we’re there all along the way for the two years.

Erin Grubbs:

That’s great. And I think you kind of touched on it, yeah, there’s this bridge from theory to practice, but then how do you support those teachers in overcoming that just as they’re entering the profession?

Ann Stark:

Absolutely. So, one of the reasons why I’ve been an induction mentor so long is because I so believe in the need for a one-on-one mentor that supports you. When I started 22 years ago, it was, “Here’s the keys to your classroom. Good luck.” And that’s scary. So, having the opportunity to work with new teachers and help them to build a reflective practice that is based on data analysis and looking at student engagement and classroom management, and providing just in time support, and giving the teachers the tools and the guidance that provides them the opportunity to grow across the teaching standards, and having an awareness of how to find solutions through guiding questions. Not so much telling them what to do, but being able to work with them and have them reflect on what’s happening and then look at possible solutions together and talk about how that would work in their classroom and for their situation and with their demographics of students, and parents, and all of those things is so valuable.

And as a teacher, when my students have that aha moment and they connect to something and grow, that same thing happens with the new teachers that I work with through the induction program. And it’s so valuable to be able to know I had a part in helping a teacher to connect to their profession in a way that they’re going to impact students for the next 30 plus years. Not very many of us are lucky enough to be able… I don’t know, maybe this isn’t a fair statement, but I feel like so blessed that every day I get to come to work and have the opportunity to impact people in a positive way that shapes who they are and who they become. And for me, I don’t take that lightly, that’s so important and so valuable.

And I want the new teachers that I work with through induction to know how crucial their role is and how important it is to engage and interact with their students in a way that promotes them to be good people, good citizens, good learners, and have a positive experience with school and love to come to school every day. And it takes the right teacher to do that. But I think all of us know that teaching is a tough gig, and unless you have all of the tools in your toolbox and a ton of support from all different areas, it can be really challenging. And for those of us lucky enough to get good support and come from institutes of higher learning that have valued support and administrators that provide valuable support, all of those things then make it the best job in the world.

Lynn Gangone:

Erin, I want to just sort of comment on Anne for a minute. She’s absolutely right. It’s so critical to get that experience as soon as possible and having an opportunity for a teacher candidate to get that experience, so that they’re not just walking in the way Brent described, is so critical. So, having the clinical experience, having that mentor teacher in preparation, not even waiting for induction. One of the things I failed to mention, I was talking about the University of Central Florida, and this kind of speaks to what Anne was saying, is that they actually bring teacher candidates in as paraprofessionals. So, it expands their field experience. Not only are they having a mentor-teacher experience in part of their work, but they’re also seeing all the different parts of what it means to be in the classroom, both from having a mentor teacher, as well as being that active paraprofessional.

And so, having that experience really increases the opportunity then for success from the moment that that candidate becomes that teacher. And one of the things that the University of Central Florida has seen because of this is they have increased their undergraduate enrollment in educator preparation by 400%, because they’re setting up students for success, and with that understanding. And then, the induction piece that Anne is so dedicated to, is also critical because even though they’ve had all those field experiences, there’s nothing like being that teacher. And I know there’s a couple questions in the Q&A about the program that you work with in California. So, having this seamless way that we interface between teacher preparation and then the actual experience of being in that K-12 classroom as a full teacher is absolutely critical. I’m not saying anything anyone doesn’t already know, but I really wanted to just speak to the emphasis that Ann was giving to the importance of all of that work.

Erin Grubbs:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, all of the prep programs that we talked to, the most key thing is really that practice and how they’re going to apply that theory to actually being in the classroom. And I think you both kind of touched on some key reasons why moving from the clinical experience to the induction programs are just so important, and working together is even more important. Brent, I’m sure you have some things to add, but would also love to hear, as you transition your teachers from those first couple years in the induction program to some of the career stages that they experience, what does that look like? How is it different from the induction program and how do you support them?

Brent Raby:

Yeah, that’s a really good question. And I think before I start talking about some of that, I think it’s really important for me to highlight that everything starts with the question of what type of instructional culture do we want to create within our classrooms? And to be quite honest, since I’ve been here over the line the last nine years, we can hire anywhere from 25 to a hundred different teachers a year. And so, they come from all these teaching programs, but they all don’t speak a common instructional language. And so, when you really think about it, I did a presentation a week and a half ago on this very question for an hour and 45 minutes, so you might have to cut me off, but it was called Invest In Your 85%. 85% of public education budgets go to salary. So, when you have turnover, when you have those types of things, when you have teachers that you have to cut loose because for whatever reason they don’t meet that culture, you really have to think about that and really think about how you’re going to support.

So, the first thing that we do, and I won’t go really in-depth around this, but we talk to our principals about what interview questions you’re going to actually ask and to, so we are recruiting the right people to bring into our system because if you don’t have people that match with that culture, they’re never going to find success regardless of the support structures that you put in. And our ultimate goal is to get people to stay because that is a huge investment. So the things that we’ve done is to support our teachers in doing the day-to-day thing. Yeah, absolutely, we have a two-year induction program. I have a full-time staff member that runs that program, who facilitates all the afterschool meetings and goes into classrooms, provide support, et cetera. But the other things that we do is that we run throughout the school year, we’ll run a fall, a spring, and a summer professional learning week.

And so, we’ll offer almost anywhere between 100 to 150 different sessions all internally facilitated. So, we run them like the week before school. People are starting to get back in that mindset. They’re already in setting up their classrooms. So, we get to introduce some of the new things that we’re going to do. We also provide support. Our staff can actually take 15 of those classes and turn them in for grad credit where they can move on the salary schedule, which is really nice, they’re extremely well attended, and it’s also a nice way to get some of our new teachers in to hear some of our language early on. And then, again, it’s kind of in those laws where people start to feel down. Those sessions are always a pick me up, so we put them strategically through the school year.

In January, we run what we call the power of us. The first 90 minutes of it, all we do is recognize staff. We give awards for our best professional learners in the system who have taken advantage of a lot of our structures. We recognize our teachers that have been around for 25 years. We recognize our nationally board certified teachers. We recognize people that have really just kind of invested. We do Golden Apple Awards, et cetera. And then, we run 150 workshops just that day, all internally facilitated. We do not bring outside people in because again, it’s about building our culture in our language. So, they’re not hearing something like, “What does that mean?” And now, I have to translate this back to West Aurora. And then, this is where we’ve gotten a little bit more creative.

When I first got to West Aurora, nine years ago, we had a lot of people going out and getting grad classes from random colleges and universities that weren’t necessarily tied. And I got a lot of feedback, and this is coming from someone who has three masters and a doctorate. “I have a lot of money invested in my own education.” That was painful for me because I knew people weren’t necessarily always getting the same return or they were really taking hit or miss classes, so we’ve tried to take control of that. So, we’ve put in a micro-credentialing system here, which we call it West Aurora University. It’s all in-person, face-to-face, and here’s the beauty of it, it’s taught by our staff members. There’s 15 courses that have action learning built within it. It equates to about 36 hours of sea time and work, and we give people internal graduate credit. We call it graduate credit, I know college and universities don’t like that, but we give them internal credit that moves them on the salary schedule.

Now, think about that. It’s free, it’s controlled, they’re hearing the messages that we want them to hear, and they’re moving on the salary schedule, and those are non-transferable credits where they can’t take them to another or another school district because then they would start over on the salary schedule. So, it’s our investment in them saying, “Hey, we’ll do this for free, but we want you to stick around because we’re investing in you and we’re more than willing to pay you more money to keep going through that investment.” It’s one of our popular things. You can actually see some of the stickers on the wall behind me. And people, this is the crazy part. I go around at the beginning of the year and I recognize everyone that has earned a micro-credential and I give them a feather because we’re the Blackhawks and kind of fits the theme and all that good stuff.

People put them up in their classrooms. So then, when we do have teachers who are struggling around assessment or struggling around instructional practice, or technology integration, et cetera, they know who to ask because they know who has sat through some of those classes. So, it’s like this in internal marketing system too, where you’re not just asking the random teacher down the hall like, “Hey, how do I do this?” So, that’s been really popular. We keep expanding those year to year, so there’s always new offerings. We’ve had some people that have earned over 36 hours of just going through those programs. The other thing then, this is new this year, is that… Because like I said in the beginning of this is that we speak 60 some different languages within our system, and so, everybody has multilingual learner or multi-language learners in their classrooms, and we need to learn how to support that.

So, we actually took some of the federal money that we got through ESSER and we bought graduate credits to pay for people’s English as a second language certification. And so, we run internal cohorts of ESL certification, all taught by our teachers, all after school. We actually have a full-time facilitator who teaches the courses and then goes in and supports classroom practice when teachers have questions. So far, we have 120 people enrolled in those programs. So, we’ve gone from 150 people to almost 300 that are ESL certified, which has allowed us a lot of flexibility within the system.

The last thing we did, and I can talk about this a little bit more later, is that we regained institute time, like school improvement time, et cetera. Because I used to be a tech director, so the worst thing that I did is I put people in a computer lab and I taught them how to point and click through programs. We have built a competency-based badging system, which is self-paced online classes that tackle things like Google, Apple, Seesaw, Schoology, all these. There is no end to the number of programs that we weren’t learned in the system, and I don’t need to put people in it.

So, what we do is we create these self-paced programs where they go in, they submit that they’re competent using these programs, and then we pay them 150 bucks for getting it done, and that I’ve regained so much valuable learning time during the day because now, I don’t have to do that. I don’t ever have to show them how to navigate programs because we have a system to address that. We also do that for our paraprofessionals, our classified staff, et cetera. And here’s how I know it’s worked. When I got here nine years ago, our retention rate was in the low 80s, our retention rate now is in the high 90s. And we don’t have teacher shortage problems in our district because the word’s out like, you come to West Aurora, you don’t have to spend money to move on the salary schedule. We have a system to support. We have a really complex induction program, and then we have people all over this place that are either doing instructional coaching, resident training, et cetera.

So, sorry, that was an hour and 45 minute presentation into a very short amount of time. But those are some of the ways that we’re trying to be creative, like I said, to get people to do really complex jobs and to feel like they have somewhere to turn when they get frustrated, or they don’t understand, or they simply can’t ask questions.

Erin Grubbs:

No, I love that. I think that full focus of investing in their growth and helping them is such a key piece right now that so many districts are looking for ideas for. So, appreciate your short condensed version of that and would love to hear the longer version. But Michelle, I think this next question leads into that. There are a lot of teachers that as we look at the retention and the shortage focus that want to kind of grow in their career and don’t necessarily know where they want to go if that’s a leadership role or continue in their career, but what does the type of support look like for those that want to move into a leadership role and how do we address that?

Machel Mills-Miles:

Yeah, Erin, and I’ll just get us started and invite others, my co-panelists to jump in. I first just want to acknowledge Brent and you all in West Aurora, all the things that you’re doing just really speaks to the power of professional learning. You highlighted its impact on teacher retention and didn’t even get to yet, in this short time, the impact that it has on students and the implications of the culture and just the positive outcomes I’m sure, are rippling through the district. So, congratulations there. And so, regarding teacher leadership, Erin, I first need to acknowledge that what it means to be a teacher leader really varies from system to system to system to system.

And so, I want to acknowledge that and just say that I’ll speak from the perspective of a teacher leader who is involved in leadership decisions and decisions about instruction and professional learning. This role may go in to support others, their peers in lesson planning and collaborating in a variety of ways, may have a role in designing or even leading PLCs, all the way to being synonymous with coaching. And so, again, depending on the region of the country, the type of system, the tier level that these coaches are working in, there’s just a variety of different ways that plays out.

So, with that in mind though, teacher leaders definitely I think, need all the supports that they’ve continued to get throughout the career. However, because the lens does turn a bit toward supporting adults, there are I think the strategies of shadowing other teacher leaders come into place. I think that experience is critical because we like to think that a strong teacher is able to just transfer some of those skills into teacher leadership or coaching, but the connections aren’t always as obvious as they might seem.

So, really talking to someone who is in the role of teacher leader I think, is critical for those who are looking to step into that role. Learning the nuances of the job, we certainly, for example, being adept and competent with SEL is critical for a teacher interacting with a student. It’s equally critical for a teacher leader who is talking to supporting, providing feedback and coaching their peers and their peers. However, because it’s at an adult level, then there are elements of that conversation, elements of giving and receiving feedback to another adult is a really a kind of specialized skill that you just don’t get from being a classroom teacher. So, engaging in conversations about those elements is a support that is critical to anyone looking to step into the role of teacher leadership. So, shadowing those conversations, access to resources, every teacher we want to be using research, et cetera.

However, because it’s so important that a teacher leader be credible and be viewed as credible in the eyes of their peers, that knowledge of current and ongoing research becomes even more important. So, we definitely want to take in the research and implement it in our practice as classroom teachers, but in the role of teacher leaders, I’m now curating this research, I’m processing it for myself and disseminating it. And that again, is a slightly different skill. So, I need to be able to more quickly know where to go, how am I going to access this? Where do I stay current on these issues? That’s another nuance of teacher leadership that I think requires intentional support.

And I think, lastly, and I touched on this before, but just again, I can’t underestimate the importance of really understanding how to give to give and receive feedback. So, I think, it’s important to sit and be coached in a way, to have models, to be on the receiving end of receiving constructive feedback and really understanding how it feels to be in the seat of a coachee or the seat of a mentee really, I think, goes a long way in terms of deepening the empathy. So, that when a person becomes a teacher leader, they understand what it feels like to be on that receiving end, I think, is going to really impact the success and increase the chances of a teacher being offered the opportunity to become a teacher leader. So, I invite my peers to add to anything that I may have left out.

Lynn Gangone:

I don’t know if I would add, but I have a question. A lot of times we seem to bifurcate a lot in education. And so, when you’re talking about the teacher leader, to me, it’s so important. It’s such a critical role and that teacher leader have that respect inside the school and have that working relationship with… I always found it interesting that educational leadership as though teachers aren’t leaders. And so, I guess, a question would be, how do you find the work of the teacher leader in relation to what’s more traditionally defined as the leadership in a school? How does that work to then empower that teacher and give them agency in their responsibilities? I hope I’m being clear. I just think there’s always this gap that exists. There’s the teachers over here and the educational leaders over here, and what you’re talking about is really that bridge.

Erin Grubbs:

Yeah. Brent or Anne, you guys seem like you would have some experience in that.

Brent Raby:

I would just say that one of the things that we really try to do is break down those walls. And so, what you’ll see in any kind of the professional learning environments that we have, we have a mixture of what we’d call administrators and our teachers sitting in the same classroom, and it could be an administrator or a teacher leading the sessions. And a lot of times when we do facilitate all the different sessions that we have, we try to pair up a building principal, or an assistant principal, or one of our curriculum coordinators with a classroom teacher to make sure that the message is being sent, that this isn’t just something that’s being done to you, this is something that we really believe in here.

And that’s kind of goes back to where I started, is that that’s a cultural thing that you have to build, that leadership is not about titles, it’s really about… And what we talk about a lot here is about sharing your passion. And that the more we encourage people to share their passion and they get comfortable with that, and the more that they learn within our system, the more they feel like they can contribute because they are speaking that language. And so, we try to open all those doors.

We have first year teachers present and we have 30-year teachers present, we have myself present, and then I’ll presented before with classroom teachers, and I make sure that the message is being heard from different ways and that we really do highlight, but we never put such a spotlight to say, “This is exactly what a teacher leader is in our district.” Because that can take a lot of different forms. And sometimes, when you put a teacher leader and you put in this classification, and saying it’s a department chair, or a grade level leader, et cetera, then you lose so much other opportunity to really hear voice. And so, we try to keep it as vague as possible, and it’s just really about sharing your passion and your expertise.

Machel Mills-Miles:

I love that, Brent. And Lynn, really appreciate the question in general and would just like to point out that in learning forward standards for professional learning, one of the 11 standards is a leadership standard. And when we go out and help educate the field on particularly, the newest version of those standards, we really try to be very, very clear that this leadership standard is for every educator. Although traditionally, when we see leadership, we think of school administrators, and department chairs, and things like you’ve just described, Brent. But we consider every educator a leader and every educator has a responsibility to lead i.e. share their passion. So, that is when we talk to audiences, you can see that for many, that does require a mindset shift for educators to see themselves as leaders and to see themselves as advocates for the profession, the field, and professional learning from our stance in particular. But I absolutely just again, appreciate the question and think that being the optimist in me is hoping that more of us are moving toward that collective responsibility, collective and collaborative leadership throughout the field.

Ann Stark:

If I can just-

Erin Grubbs:

Oh, I like-

Ann Stark:

Oh, I’m sorry, Erin.

Erin Grubbs:

Oh no, go ahead Anne. You’re good.

Ann Stark:

I appreciate and love all of the things that you guys were saying. And I could just add to what Michelle was saying about educational leaders here on our district. We include every level of district employee, our noon aides, our custodial staff, our paraprofessionals, because we all are so interdependent on each other, and leaders emerge at every level from the district superintendent all the way down to our part-time, subs, everything, because we all need each other and everyone’s voice matters, and they are so welcoming and interested in hearing what everyone has to say. And really, everyone contributes to the success of our district. So, not just educational leaders as far as teachers go, but everyone, it definitely takes a community to have a successful district. So, I wanted to just make sure I added that point.

Erin Grubbs:

Yeah, absolutely. We had a webinar a couple of weeks ago with tech leaders that were talking about a similar thing, like the professional learning and the leadership comes back to the full school district staff and not just the teachers or the tech leaders. It all kind of comes together. So, that’s great. All right, I think I have one more final question for Brent before we go to the Q&A. So, if anybody does have any more questions, feel free to drop those in the Q&A and we’ll take a look at them. But Brent, for you, I know you’re using some different technology and software, but how does that software and technology really help you support the teachers with some of the challenges and pieces that we’ve talked about today?

Brent Raby:

Yeah, and I think we’ve mentioned it before, one of the things that I didn’t talk about through all of our professional learning structures is that the concept of reflection and that if you’re not reflecting, you’re just kind of keep moving through. So, we’re going to keep making the same mistakes. And it is interesting how somebody can have… So, I instruct a lesson and I can have one perspective of it, but the students can have a completely different perspective or, et cetera. So, one of the things that we’ve done is we’ve actually set up learning labs and quite a few of our different districts, and they’re actually recording studios. So, we put mics in the ceiling, we put multiple cameras in and the teachers can walk in and they press a button, and outside the door it says recording on, and they put their class in there and they teach.

And so, I think that is one of the most powerful things. That video gets uploaded into a different software and it actually gets categorized and you can search that library by keyword. And it actually takes the audio recordings. So, it does a lot of cool things in the background. And we’ve actually built a lot of content where we can actually show people to say like, “Hey, when we talk about vocabulary instruction, this is what we really want to see or we can take some examples that maybe not the best and we can really reflect. We have a ton of swivel cameras within our system, all of our microcredentials part of that action learning is that they do record themselves and they do reflect.” It was super intimidating for our staff early on because a lot of people don’t like the sound of their own voice, and they absolutely don’t like the sound of their own voice when they’re teaching.

And it’s such a personalized thing that they close their door and it is their classroom, their domain, and they really do feel like they’re in control of that. But when you start breaking down those walls and you start inviting other people in to also help them reflect, it really kind of builds that learning community together because people are seeing things that they haven’t before. So, I would say probably one of the most powerful things that we’ve done in use of technology is that ability to record and set up areas and situations where it’s not overwhelming for staff to record. Because a lot of times they’re like, “I don’t want to use my phone,” or “The phone didn’t work. The volume didn’t work,” or “I didn’t hear what that table was saying.”

So, we’ve invested heavily in a lot of audio video equipment to make it really easy. So, if you’re in these classes or we’re asking you to reflect, there’s easy ways to do that. And because it auto generates emails for you and things like that, that they can quickly open it up and they can find the sections that they want. It is still private until they open some of those doors. But I would say that’s probably one of the most powerful things that we did since we’ve seen a major change when we started integrating the reflection pieces from what we were doing before.

Erin Grubbs:

And I would add to that, I mean, I think Michelle mentioned it a little bit, but even using technology to help with the feedback and getting used to taking the feedback and learning from it and using, it’s a nice tool to kind of couple with the reflection piece. Anne or Lynn, any technologies that you’re seeing that have been helpful?

Lynn Gangone:

Well, I just wanted to jump in and say, probably the comfort level with that comes as we increase in higher ed, right? The use of observation, the use of video, so setting up the expectation for that teacher candidate that this kind of feedback loop is absolutely essential to their students’ wellbeing and learning, to their learning. And so, the more I think higher ed has been able to embrace some of this educational technology and preparation, then when they walk into that school district, when they walk into that classroom, the idea of being videotaped and observed is not as foreign as it might be if they haven’t had that exposure previously. That’s the only thing I was thinking of. I was listening to Brent and thinking about all the great things that they’re doing in his district and just thinking, “Boy, the more we can get preparation aligned there, the better.”

Ann Stark:

I can add to that from an induction mentor standpoint, that the technology that we use with GoReact is teachers are videotaped teaching their lessons similar to how Brent mentioned, but then we sit down with our mentee and watch it together and we can kind of pause it spots and talk about what do you see? And it’s really eyeopening for our new teacher candidates to be able to look at the video of their lesson and say things like, “I didn’t even realize that all the kids were talking during my instruction. I was so focused on my instruction, I didn’t hear them.” And when they watch the video, it’s very obvious that no one was listening sometimes for new teachers. So, that’s things that without having that video evidence is really difficult to recreate in a conversation with them to the point where they get it. So, I think, we talked earlier about those aha moments and having the video recording really creates some opportunities for those. And then, an opportunity to reflect, and grow and, come up with new strategies on how to help them improve.

Erin Grubbs:

That’s great. Thank you for sharing that, Anne. So we did have a couple questions come in. I know we’re just about at time, so we’ll try to get through a couple. Anne, this first one is actually for you. You spoke a lot about how you handle your induction program. Are the teachers getting paid during that two-year induction program and what happens if they don’t complete the program with the five years that you have allocated?

Ann Stark:

Okay. So, here in California, absolutely. They don’t even start an induction program until they have been hired on as the teacher of record within a district. And then, through their two-year induction program, they get paid based on whatever level they’re at, the salary schedule, year one, master’s degree, or whatever that might look like. And if they don’t complete their two-year induction program within their five years, say maybe, they took a break, had a baby, whatever that might be, they can ask the state for an extension. And based on circumstances, I think they can get a one-year extension. So, there are some options, but the goal is to have your credential cleared within the first five years.

Erin Grubbs:

That’s great. And Brent mentioned his awesome retention rate. What does the retention rate for those look like that come into your induction programs?

Ann Stark:

So we just completed some data on this just a few weeks ago, so I have some accurate information on that. Based on a survey that was conducted within the five years of exiting our induction program, 98% of our candidates were still employed after five years.

Erin Grubbs:

That’s awesome.

Ann Stark:

Yeah, I think that the induction program is such a valuable tool for new teachers.

Erin Grubbs:

Yeah, absolutely. And then I think I have one other question, and maybe we’ll start with Brent on this one, but you talked a lot about the culture at your district, and obviously, you guys have put a lot of work into that. What do you think are some tips for districts that might not be where you are and how to develop that culture of collaboration and really putting the teacher’s growth first?

Brent Raby:

Yeah, I think, for us, what kind of changed some of our mindset is that we did a baseline of our whole district. We actually worked with a group who asked us a really simple question, kind of like, “What’s your identity? What is your instructional identity?” And then we walked all of our buildings in hundreds and hundreds of classrooms to actually see if that identity was translating. So many times you see districts with really nice vision statements and mission statements that are great in theory, but how closely are their systems and structures supported? I think that has really changed some of our culture here, is that we’ve forced ourselves to have that conversation about it. If this is what we want in the classroom, do our professional learning community support that? Do our attendance policy support that? Do our professional learning structures support that? And are they all aligned?

Because back to what I said in the beginning is that people feel like the plate’s full when it’s not organized and it feels like you’re just eating random stuff. But when you really make it coordinated and make it feel like a meal, that it is easier for people to kind of see like, “Oh, this makes sense. I can see how these things are connected.” We still acknowledge that they’re really hard, but at least people can see why we’re doing things. And that is really kind of how we’ve leveraged our professional learning system. That’s the structure that we started with first to make sure that it was connected to our identity and our vision. And once we tackled that, because then we got people kind of understanding intent, then we started tackling some of the other systems and structures.

Erin Grubbs:

Thank you. I think that is a great closing thought for us. So, with that, I want to thank all of our panelists today for this awesome presentation and just lots of great tips that you can take with you, key information and takeaways. And I want to thank all of our attendees for joining us and making such an interactive presentation. We hope to see you on a future GoReact webinar and have a great rest of your week. Bye, guys.