American Graduate; Teachers Teaching Teachers

Ready, let's go, I'm not, whoo, okay, professional learning communities really help me become a better teacher. For the first time, we have seen a significant growth. It makes our job easier and it provides constant feedback and constant reflection. So if there's something that I thought was fabulous and my instructional coach did not, we can talk about it and create a plan to make my teaching more effective for students. Every year we would see a few points of growth and this year we see double digit growth. I think we're rocking out this year. We're stepping out of the box, we're going into a new adventure that is, it's amazing. Two times two is four.

I can't hear you. We get to kind of pilot this program that really helps our kids at the end of the day. At the end of the day, it's all about our students. We embarked on a very ambitious charter and our charter was to support our ELL students to gain English proficiency but the kids that we were getting into our charter school were not proficient in either language, either English or Spanish. So our job was dually more intense than just moving them from one language to the other. Okay, one, two, three, all eyes on me. Thank you. I do one-on-one work with children who are seeming to fall through the cracks to try to help a teacher figure out, okay, what is really going on here and how can I help you?

So it makes the new word replay. I'll do work in a classroom where I model a specific skill, reading skill. I might talk to a small group of teachers about what's important right now with the developmental stage of their children or what's important to the State Department about communicating the standards and goals of the State Department. So it's really multifaceted and every day I'm doing something very different. Somebody to lean on, somebody to talk to, somebody to sound up ideas on, somebody to sometimes give you that little spark, somebody to just, oh, what about this? And it'll, it'll change your thinking. I would say that my instructional coach is an angel. She helps me when I don't see things because I'm so busy. She will help me point out an individual student or she'll use the data to say, oh, that really worked in your class or oh, that, that didn't.

Individualizing the classroom experience is so important. And when the teachers can say to me, you know what, I've worked with this child in these different settings and I'm not figuring out what they need. Can you work with them too? And the two of us put our heads together and go, aha, this is what the child needs. Then we can see success. We need to realize that teachers need a lot of support in all of the years that I've been a teacher. I think that this is the year that I've seen somebody come forward and say, you know what, this is a position that would certainly help teachers in all of the work that they have to do. Teachers need help. They do. They need, they need help. One, critical piece was identifying where students are. So you know, we can give a million tests, but if the teachers don't know how to use them, then it doesn't make any sense at all. And so we were finding ourselves in that cycle.

Ready, get set, go. So we lead a data driven classroom. Everything that we have is graphed, is organized and the kids know exactly where they are from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. And we sit down with our data, with our teachers and we say, okay, we're seeing a pattern here with this child and they're not responding to these different types of therapies, reading therapies or the classroom setting. What can we do to make a difference? I might say to the teacher, you've tried this, you've tried that. How is it working? Is it working? Is it not working? And if it isn't working, why didn't it work? And what can we do? What do you need me to help you find or what do you think you need so that we can make this successful experience for the student? If we wouldn't have put such a powerful team together and stepping outside the box, piloting this brand new program, I don't think we would have seen such tremendous gains

of what we've seen this year. As a matter of fact, our data is totally showing it, our students are outstanding, outperforming. And it personally gives me a lot of satisfaction in knowing that we are growing sets of ideas, we're growing processes, we're growing systems that in the end is going to make a school that is very complete and therefore will be able to address the educational needs of our kids. So with me, it's giving me a lot of that feeling like, yeah, we're getting there. I feel awesome about it. You know what? This year's team has really, really made a big difference. I am so blessed to have worked with such professional people that have so much expertise to share with our kids. I guarantee you that we are going to graduate more students. I guarantee you, but we have to get there and we're not there yet. We still have lots of students who are not proficient by the type, they're in third grade. So we need to keep working on it.

I feel that I'm a better teacher. We never stop learning. As educators, we're always the student also and you have to, so that you could be the best. We're the best. We're the best. Sorry. We hope we are. This program is part of American Graduate. Let's make it happen. A public media initiative made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.