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Descriptions of effective teaching often depict an idealized form of "perfect" instruction. Yet, pursuing perfection in teaching, which depends on children's behavior, is ultimately futile. To be effective, lessons and educators need to operate with about 75% efficiency. The remaining 25% can be impactful, but expecting it in every lesson, every day, is unrealistic. Perfection in teaching may be unattainable, but progress is not. Whether you are aiming for the 75% effectiveness mark or striving for continuous improvement, this podcast will guide you in that endeavor.
[00:00:00]
Hello, everyone. This is Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, a podcast for teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, and anyone else who supports teachers in the classroom. This show's a proud member of the BE Podcast Network, shows that help you go beyond education. Find all our shows at bepodcastnetwork.
com. I'm Gene Tavernetti, the host for this podcast, and my goal for this episode, like all episodes, is that you laugh at least once. And that you leave with an actionable idea for better teaching. A quick reminder, we'll only be sharing stuff that works. No cliches, no buzzwords. My guest today is Amy Pento.
Currently, she's an instructional consultant, a former instructional specialist, and former longtime Spanish teacher from Liverpool, New York. Amy taught Spanish for 31 years at [00:01:00] Liverpool High School, Levels 1 through 5 AP. During that time, she was chosen the CNY Leadership for the Leadership Development Program, served as the World Language Department Chair, and mentored close to 100 students through the Seal of Biliteracy process.
She created and facilitated teacher book clubs, like Why Don't Students Like School? and The Writing Revolution. For the past three years, She was an instructional specialist for the Liverpool Central Schools, and in addition to working one on one with teachers, she aimed to bring the science of learning to staff and students.
She provided professional development on evidence informed topics, such as how to teach writing, how learning happens, classroom management, academic routines, robust vocabulary instruction, Rosenschein's Principles of Instruction, and Effective Practice and Study. She's presented on forgetting, learning, and study strategies to students.
She's curated research and [00:02:00] best practices for staff via Pedagogy Central, things better on her Google Classroom.
Amy, welcome to Better Teaching. Only stuff that works.
Thanks for having me.
Oh, I've been looking forward to this for quite a while.
Nice to meet you in person. Kind of. Okay.
Yeah. I never know what to say. This
I know.
kind of this kind of meeting. But one of the things that, you know, this show is about instructional coaching, and when we started talking and communicating about this, you said you don't want to be referred to as a coach, and that instead you asked your district to refer you as an instructional specialist.
Why is that?
Okay, well, the main reason is, I was at the high school. The high school had instructional coaches whatsoever. So, I knew the minute, if they introduced me as an instructional coach, my colleagues, who I had worked with for decades, would be like, get out of town, we don't need you, what are [00:03:00] what is this?
And, I think it would put people's noses out of joint. So, that was reason number one. Reason number two, the coaches that we have, K 8, are tied to a certain curricula. If that make, like, we use this math program, these are our math coaches, to help the K 8 teachers use that program better. Same thing with our ELA instruction.
That, I wasn't at the high school. I didn't have any interest in any program. I wanted to bring research and what I've learned from these people that I read and followed and studied, I wanted to bring that to the staff. Which is not a program at all, and I want people to use the knowledge that I share so that when it's time to pick programs, they can make better choices and look for stronger things than others.
So, because, [00:04:00] you know, because I'm at the high school and I wanted to help anybody, it could not be content. Based or program based. And I would say those are the two reasons.
They didn't fool them?
I did. I, yeah, I did. I would say that you know, that the only time I did things that you probably would consider coaching was either by administrative request.
with a teacher who's struggling or by a teacher request who said, who came to me on their own. There is no, you know, when I see more formal coaches, there's systems and there's practices, there's none of that. It was whack a mole. It would just be if something popped up. I was an additional resource for administration or
Okay. So I have to ask you this to follow up. You said not what I might think of as coaching. Could you explain what you
Okay, what I
of as [00:05:00] coaching? Okay.
I think, this is what I think you
Okay. Okay.
A system within a district of providing a formalized support system for almost some, that I don't know, teachers and that there's cycles.
I hear people who I consider real instructional coach talk a lot about the coaching cycles, and I picture it systemic, that it is a built in offering, a given, so to speak, for a district. That's what I picture,
Well, it's interesting about that description and about you saying, you know, you weren't doing that. When I first became interested in coaching, in you, and what you had to say about the work that you had done. It was because it matched so much with what I thought about what coaching was, because one of the things that I think, one of the big reasons I think teachers are interested [00:06:00] in doing the coaching is because there are so many times we can have a You know, a teacher can be a really good teacher, and it might just be this tiny little thing that you know, it's just a comment, you know, that they hadn't thought about, you know, that, you know, maybe one of Rosenstein's principles, which I'm going to quiz you on later,
Oh gosh.
but it could just be a simple thing.
It doesn't have to be a big formalized thing. I think we made it way too big. So people don't want to get involved in that. And so they end up, we don't have an opportunity to work with them but,
yeah, mine is more, I wanted to kind of throw stuff out so they know that there's quality research out there and stuff that seems to be rising to the top, you know, and I always cited my sources and I, you know, I tried to be like, it wasn't just, Amy thinks this is a cute thing. That would make my skin crawl, like that'd be bad.
And it was more like, huh, this is interesting and [00:07:00] there's, here's why. Right. And then, with the coaching, you know, if a teacher was interested, it'd be like, Hey, you sent this thing out. How would I do that with this? That was very fun for me. You know, that was really, It was a fun challenge to be like, oh, I don't know let's figure it out.
so, so you weren't a content area coach, you were an instructional specialist working with folks did the people who came to you, were they outside of your content area? I don't know how many
I
have in a
we had, we have quite a few, we have a pretty large, I would say there's, I don't know 8, 10, 12, you know, I don't, I think I've only had one language teacher come to me on one day, that was it. It could be that I was too close,
Bye bye.
you know, you know, it could be that, Yeah, I don't know. I just think it, is it like kissing your sister?
Like, is it just like two, it's two, they were, we were together. There was also massive turnover through, due to retirements in my department, so the [00:08:00] new people didn't know me very well. Some came to my PD, but the one on one coaching, I had, one day, one teacher came and talked to me and it never, turned into anything more.
So
You know, you mentioned that, you know, that maybe you were too close. I think one of the, one of the drums that I'm beating lately, and I'm going to for a while, is the idea of relationships. And what you described was a paradox of being close and not wanting to work. And, you know, not, me not wanting to work with you.
You had close personal relationships. What I'm pushing now is, The idea of coaches have professional relationships with the teachers that, that are, you could also have a personal, but it's a, but it's a more of a professional relationship, more akin to how you feel about your doctor. You don't go to your doctor and that, you know, after one minute they might say, Oh, how was your vacation?
Then it's all business. So what [00:09:00] are you here for? What are you here for? so it's interesting that You know, you might be too close working on becoming an instructional specialist on the staff where you were a teacher, because that's always one of the things that I ask people.
So I'll ask you right now. Was that weird? We already talked about your department, but how was it working on your staff with all these folks that, that knew you already?
it was I would say it was weird in parts and I would guess I'd call it in the middle of the weirdness spectrum, so to speak. You know, again, I'd been, I'd never been in any other building. I knew nothing different. So I'm sure when people saw me in that role, there was probably a third that was like, I would never take one ounce of anything from her.
She's awful. There's probably a third that are open and like, Oh, she's collegial. Well, this'll be a nice thing. And then there might be a third who either outwardly supported me or I think there [00:10:00] were, I learned by the end, there were a lot of lurkers, if I'm going to use that word, people who might have read and paid attention, but never quite paid attention.
reached out and joined me, so to speak. That happens on Twitter a lot, you know, that there's the people who participate and then the people who watch the conversations. Often the lurkers were TAs who would sometimes come to tell me that they were seeing improvements in some of the instruction. I didn't want to say improvement, they were seeing some of the strategies being taken up by staff who had never once.
reached out to me one on one. So that was all, that was kind of cool to go like, okay, all right it's kind of flooding the atmosphere with some of this information and some of it is sticking.
how did you flood the zone with information?
so I used as my inspiration.Basically, I use the word instructional specialist to do a research. I can't think of what they called [00:11:00] it. I'm forgetting
And it was and I sat there and I got the gig and then I was like, What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do every day? Okay, I've never not been in a classroom. So I Ended up basically rereading a ton of the things that I'd been reading already, I would, I'd take the books out again, and I'd start to look at it with a new set of eyes, so to speak, and I'd start to look for patterns, and then I would look at things to prioritize, like what, again, were the most common, the most important things, and then, you know, the principal asked to meet with me over the summer and, God bless him.
It could have been awful. Like, he didn't know what I knew. he could have clipped my wings and he didn't, and it was, I think, luck and faith kind of thrown in together, so to speak. But I did say, I said, can I have a meeting? Can I have a faculty meeting? And he gave me the September You know, faculty meeting, and it was an opportunity to try to reintroduce myself in this new way, [00:12:00] and I did an example thing, and it was a way to tell them, like, how to reach me, how to work with me, things I could do and then I started sending like a research summary out to the staff and in one email a day, and I tried to basically summarize it, link to it, and possibly other supporting things.
And then after about a couple weeks, people started to say, I'm saving all your emails, but it's getting overwhelming. Like, can we have it be at a place? And I, they said, would you set up a Google Classroom? And I was like, oh, duh. Like, you know, I was so used to that being for students.
right.
occurred to me.
So I did. And I call it Pedagogy Central. And I started to, anything I posted to the staff, I also then would put there as a place they could go to. I tried lots of things early on. I did what I called the Itty Bitty Book Club, where I got the first chapter of a book I had read. And asked the author if I could share that with the [00:13:00] staff for free.
Do I know if it led to anything? I don't know. I tried to get a vocab a robust vocabulary instruction thing going with tier two words. You know, a few teachers. Mostly not the core area, not the tier one instructors were interested. You know, it was hard to have this much interest and passion and zero power at all, you know.
I would meet with the administration every six to eight weeks to basically, I would summarize what I'd been doing, so, because I knew they wouldn't have any idea. So I'd like summarize who I'd met with, what I was doing, things I was sharing, and then I would use it as an opportunity I would say like, here's something I think you should consider, this might be a good idea, and I'd highlight the articles and make notes on it, because I know they're really busy, and I was like, I know you don't have time, and it's not meant to be insulting.
Like I go, it's not that I don't think you can read it, it's just that I think this would be really good for us, and I want to save you time. And then I offered PD I offered like, what I call like, mini [00:14:00] courses after school that some people came to, and it grew from there.
so were those for those optional, or was that part of
Those were optional. Optional, and then the next year, I would say, the next summer, I started to get tapped by administration for like new teacher orientation. I got pulled into that more formally, you know, and it makes sense. But, you know, to be fair they, we just don't have stuff like what I was trying to do.
And what I was trying to do is mimic what I think I see going on in the UK. And, you know, So I was kind of, what is it, flying the plane and building it at the same time, except that I, I knew what I wanted to share, I just had zero structure or systems, and that was more, I was confident in what I wanted to share, it was just I didn't know how to best do it.
So you mentioned that your principal, then, this is just a neutral statement, [00:15:00] really didn't know what to have you do. He didn't know what you're gonna do. So how did the posi, was there an instructional specialist before you?
No, it was with the COVID funds. The district had this extra stuff. So they called it a coach, you know, I can't remember what they, I don't know. I just, I smiled and I just said, I will never refer to myself as a coach ever. It was, it would say like on my door, it said coach, and then I'd cover it with something.
And I, by the end, when my job, I, every year, because it was COVID funds, it had to be renewed every year. Eventually I saw it said Instructional Specialist on it and I thought, ah, use the word enough it becomes finally the thing people would say, you know, so,
just laughing because how many positions have been created over the years with special funds, and they never seem to be used for the intended [00:16:00] purposes. And so, I mean, God bless you for being, you know, to have the foresight the wisdom to be able to say, this is, I think, what, you know.
this was my shot. Like I had to shoot my shot.
yeah, because I think one of the reasons thatinstructional coaches or instructional specialists haven't been able to be as effective as they could be is because Even though we've had coaches for, well, when I started in 2006 as an instructional coach, it wasn't called an instructional coach.
We just supported teachers. We did training, and then we supported teachers in what we trained them to do. And so even though that's nearly 20 years, There really hasn't, haven't been a generation of coaches becoming administrators. Well, let me back up successful coaches becoming administrators because so many times they see it as a stepping stone, you know, to becoming administration, [00:17:00] but you did it for three years.
You probably know something now, but that first year.
Yes.
And so that's why that's my theory that we just don't have enough institutional knowledge moving up the chain to administration and then even past site administration into district administration because they don't know about it and they don't know what's possible.
That's it. That's where I think that's where I'm with you. What I would say is that we Never, ever talk about instruction. You know, you throw around the term, I'm in charge of, you know, I'm the administrator in charge of curriculum and instruction. Instruction is an afterthought. Nobody has it on their front burner.
It's it I remember having completely separate conversations with very different administrators during my first year, chit, impromptu, and things that were said were things like Well, the teaching here, you [00:18:00] know, it's really solid. And I just said, like, it's not, you know, it's not in the sense of, like, there's so much that we don't, nobody knew what retrieval was.
Nobody knew about spacing. No one knew about interleaving. You know, or dual coding. No one knew. Rosenshine, nothing, ever, nothing. It was, anything with instruction was either tech, or like a cute thing. It was alwaysthe end. there wasn't a lot of why. to do this.
It was like, cool, I saw this thing, and it seems cool or good. You know, I don't mean, I don't mean to be flippant when I say cool. And it looked, and it went, and it worked, so let's do it. But that's where that you know, the, you can have the best of intentions, but if you don't understand the underlying reason, you might make tweaks that undo the reason you do.
Here's my first year. It is the fall, late fall, early winter. [00:19:00] And I did a thing to the, for the staff on retrieval practice. It was maybe the October or November faculty meeting. And I had a teacher walk by my class, my little office, and goes, Amy, I tried that retrieval, I did retrieval with my class.
And I was like, you know, so I was like the one I was like, so excited, you know, he's like, you're kidding me. She goes, yeah, but you know, they couldn't do it. So without their notes and stuff. So we just use their notes. Thanks. And I said
just like, Well, that's not retrieval. But what I would have said is, sure, the first couple times it might be really hard.
So maybe the first time you try, you say, they did a grid thing, you know, that I got from Kate Jones, you know, so I, you know, I was like, maybe you say, first time around, let's try to get three of these things on this grid, and then you work on it. And then you could say, next time, let's try to get five things on the grid.
Like, I would have continued the conversation, but it was so, Like the high and low of that three minute conversation of like, Oh, they tried it and they thought they [00:20:00] did retrieval, but they clearly do not understand that retrieval means you're pulling it out of your head. You're not pulling it up off of something else,
Yeah, it is, you know, that high and the low, and just the fact that whatever you did, Amy, to inspire them to try it, should inspire them to try it. Invite you back to let's go see that, you know, that, you know, I couldn't tell you everything I knew about it Miss Smith, but so let's go back and take it.
Let's go back and take a look
But the other option is it didn't work, Amy. And what you're selling is not good. And so that, you know, there's the, and that's the thing is it's like people need just because teachers are like, anyone's a learner. It doesn't matter if you're 15 or you're 45, it's you, they need to see it. Over and over again and to get the nuance and the depth and like I would [00:21:00] learn when I would go back and reread books that I would have said I read.
I just, I couldn't believe how rewarding it was to go back and read, you know, you know, Why Don't Students Like School Again? With the lens of like, for somebody else, I'd be like, Oh, I forget about, like, I forgot about this chapter. I forgot this was such a good thing. And. Why wouldn't that be true for the adults?
You know, so having more systemic ways would be better. And it felt like I had to kind of, I was throwing all sorts of things out, hoping some would stick, you know, it'd be not in a perfect world. It would have been a bit more systemic, but,
well, I think, you know, going back to my, one of my big metaphors and working with teachers is teacher may want to Let's use the metaphor of getting in shape, losing weight, whatever.
Or I'm
And I've got this great program, we can talk about macronutrients, and we can talk about, you know, all of these things.
[00:22:00] First step, I just want to get them to the gym. That's all. I'm just trying to get them to the gym. And that's what you described to me. I did retrieval practice, I, and I didn't lose any weight at all. And so,
right. I still can't fit in my bathing suit, you know, on after one day. So
And so one of the things I learned that I started saying to teachers is that, you know what, you're exactly where you should be because that's what everybody does,
yes.
and so, so it's knowing what the end is. And knowing if we stay with it, you could do with it. And, you know, I'd love to help you because now that you've done that, I could take you to the next level.
So, so, that's great. Let's see, you were talking about your administration. So, so you worked with the administration.
Yeah, quite a bit.
And so, we're as instructional specialists, because you worked with the administration a lot, did teachers see you as administration?
I'm sure a third saw me as betraying. I'm sure a third [00:23:00] didn't think twice about it. You know, I worked with them, but in the sense of, this was the, you know, basically post COVID. It was, the last year I taught was the year we went back hybrid masked, you know, and then I left. So. You know, what I was doing was, I was trying to be like
a sounding board for them. And with
Or admin, admin or teachers?
sorry, admin, I would try to, like, I would say the biggest issue my first year as the instructional specialist, all the students came back to school then. And we were all masked for the first several months of the school year and at some point the mask mandate started to go away.
The behavior was horrific. I sent my own children through my high school and never thought twice about it. I was never scared a day. That year was, I was scared in the halls and I thought if this is the way it had been, I don't think [00:24:00] I would have let my children come here. My heart was broken. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
I couldn't believe it. So, and, you know, we had a big admin turnover. And so they weren't asking me to work with them. I was barging into us a little bit, and I would just say, Hey, it's, I haven't seen you in about six weeks, can we talk? And I would say things like, what I tried to do is I wanted to help them pick the biggest bang for their buck with where they should put their attention.
And not try to, you know, throwing everything out there and exhausting them. So, you know, I'll never forget the day I asked for a meeting with the head to the two head principals and I just said, you know, we need a phone policy, it's never going to get better until we have a phone policy, and I think I have some ideas on how to do that, and God bless them, they said yes, and then they went to the district admins, and at first they were like, no, you're nuts, you're never gonna, [00:25:00] and they did it, and it was like, the principal the next year, there was a little bit of turnover, and he started to survey the staff, And in the fall, they asked the staff, what's going well, what's not, and any comments you want to make.
What's not is the phones, was number one in behavior, and the halls. By the end of the year, I'd cry, whatever, like, and I remember the principal called me and he goes, Amy, I have the results of the spring, you know, the late May or early June. I cried like a baby. And it was like, what? I'm gonna cry right now, it's two years later!
And he goes, like, goes, the number one complaint were the phones and he goes, here's the spring one. What's going well? And it was the phones. And they go, and what's not working? And the number one response was, nothing. And I, nothing not working. Like, meaning, basically things are so much better. And I couldn't believe it.
And I was, There's been, like, having been there, there's, it's weird to be then the, like, most [00:26:00] senior person on the staff because you're looking around for people who remember, and I finally found somebody else who'd been there, like, 28 years, and I go, Did you ever think this staff would ever say nothing is wrong?
Even if nothing was wrong, like, you would, you should use that, right, as an opportunity.
Yeah.
And I couldn't believe it, you know, and so it started with the phone thing and then, you know, so what I was able to do is I was able to use my institutional memory, which most of the admin did not have from that building, my knowledge about learning and like, and I would sit and I would notice things like the halls, why the halls were, you know, miserable.
So I came up with a suggestion about bathroom passes. And it sounds crazy, but I just said, here's why the system will never work. When you make teachers do something that is only a tiny bit naughty, but it's going to take a lot of teacher time to deal with, That's a, [00:27:00] that's not a good return on their investment.
They have too much other stuff to do. I said, so we've got to make it easy for teachers to do what you want them to do because those small naughty things add up and can ruin a building. It can create this mojo of the building not working. So I was able to talk about, you know, Instruction in the sense of like behavior as well, like we can't let kids be wandering the building, the term internal truancy and they listened, you know, and then they, and then the part that I wasn't good at was, how do I create a whole system in a school, like top down, and that's what they are good at.
So like I, I was able to say like, this is going to pay off big time, and don't worry about doing this other thing till you get the building has to be under control first. And then they created this system. And I just remember it like over the summer, I would get pictures. of things they'd ordered and they'd come into the office and I would, they'd go, it's here, [00:28:00] you know, and it would be this lanyard system or it would be the phone caddies or it would be the, I said there's no signage in the building at all, it's really rude, you know, and so principals order these beautiful signs and like they took the suggestions, you know, not saying they took every suggestion, but then they made it happen.
You know, and that's the stuff that I didn't have experience with. Like, how do you order stuff? I don't know. What's the budget? I don't know. I like, that's the stuff that would have paralyzed me. So I think it was like, I don't know if you're old enough to know what Wonder Twin Powers activate means, but there were these superheroes where you had like one group and another and when they were together, like the magic could happen.
So I felt like I could bring them some ideas that I felt really solid about and then they ran with it.
Amy, I just have to interrupt you. First of all, how sweet of you to question how old I am to remember things. But I wanted to bring a couple things together that you talked about with regard to being, you know, working with the administration. And I think one thing that [00:29:00] Two things very important for instructional coaches, instructional specialists, whatever they are, think about is that their position with the administration is not based on their title.
It's based on who they are. They respect you. You may have been an instructional specialist, but when you went in to talk to them, you were coming in with teacher concerns. You were coming in with things that would make the school better.
yeah.
And tied to that is this idea of anything that you tell an instructional specialist or an instructional coach that a teacher says is confidential.
Well, look what would have happened if you would have had, if you would have went by that rule. All these things that you would have told the administration that made the school better, wouldn't have happened. So, so I was talking to a friend of mine, Linda Rine, and she's using the term transparency. Say I, you know, [00:30:00] when a teacher tells me I'm going to the administration to share this, you know, because that's, I don't have the authority.
I don't have the authority to do this, but I got some juice and we could we could try to, we could try to get it done. So I think the way you described you're working with the administration, I think was for whatever you call yourself
Right. It was never, what was cool is it was never top down. They never told me what, ever, told me what to send out, ever. And that's where I'm like, God bless them. Cause I could have been sending out crazy stuff. You know what I mean? Like, and I don't really think that's a great system. Like, I think it, like,
No, it's not a great, it's not a
because you had someone with a lot of experience teaching, you had someone who was into, you know, learning about how learning happens.
You also had somebody at the end of her career that was not looking to use this as a stepping stone. So I really wanted to give back to the district. Like, I wanted to make it better. Because I knew I had to [00:31:00] leave soon and it was this like no, it can't stay this mass, this can't be how people live their, this can't be, this is so bad.
So, and we had a brand new team of admins who everybody was loving and it was like, this is the time to strike. But it's, you can't, like, that's a big risk.
I wanna make a point, I wanna put an exclamation point on a couple things. You said you talked quite a bit right now describing how the things that you just saw that made things better, that made the staff think, no, we're do this is, we're right on. We're do, we're doing a good job.
And that was never your emphasis. You saw that the teacher saw it, but what you were really into, what you really wanted for the teachers was the instructional component. Getting better with instruction and I just wanted to be sure that the listeners are on track. Yes, you do.
You do these other things. And, but the most important thing is the instructional piece, which you spent [00:32:00] most of your time doing. And again to paraphrase, you went to the administration with it and now it's your job, go do it. That's your, that, that's your job. That's not my
because part of what it was is. What I wanted to share is the stuff you can focus on when you're not just trying to survive. And that year was such a dark year that there, it didn't matter because it was awful. And so I was just like, I want to, I'll be sending this out and stuff, but nothing's gonna, you know, unless a teacher happens to have a perfect classroom where things are a little bit better, it's too chaotic right now, people are too, it's just awful that I was, it was just like, you gotta do that first then my stuff can start to stick better, you know, as well.
All right. Well, you were able to have, you did had a longer run than many instructional specialists, coaches. You have a proud moment other than the one you shared about the TA coming and telling you that[00:33:00]
Oh, that, you know, those were nice moments. I would say You know, seeing the teacher surveys that I knew I was part of that. I didn't, I told the principal, I said, do not tell anybody. you know, that I made some suggestions. Because what I didn't want is I didn't want them to get stained with any, if there's people on staff who either didn't like me or was worried about, Oh, is she an admin in disguise?
I didn't want, I just, I was like, I just want to show you this would work better than this. So seeing those surveys were pretty cool. Was nice little individual notes from teachers, you know, when I'd get, like, I tried it, and then they'd send about, one teacher, for example, tried stuff this summer in a summer school, and he sent me the student comments.
We're done digitally and like I got choked up. It was because they, the students were able to cite specific [00:34:00] things that he and I had worked on. I would say those are the feel good moments. And I would say my proud proudest moments are probably. I did a, I got the, my last year in admin pulled me to work on K2 writing and I created a over 2, 000 pages of basically a writing companion for the Amplify CKLA, ELA knowledge building where I took the writing revolution strategies and applied it to that content and it was a bear I was pretty miserable doing it, if that, I don't know if that makes sense, but I, my husband just said, every night you're on the couch and I had one of those booklets next to me and I was just constantly, you know, creating material so getting that done.
It's very, it's an important work, and I'm proud of that. And then this one I'm proud of but I'm a little jealous like the district has this guiding [00:35:00] coalition, and a subcommittee was on high leverage practices. And they put me on that subcommittee, duh, you know, and we decided to prioritize for this coming school year retrieval, basically a spaced retrieval combining.
So it sounds like it's only one thing, but it's really two things at once. And, you know, my contract, the job ended with the federal funds on June 30th, and then the summer. You know, I went in for three days to work with the committee members who will go on, and it was to hand over all the, it was basically to open my brain.
And get them as up to par, up to speed as, as much as possible and you know, I heard from a colleague saying, Oh, we had our first meeting of the school year and it, we're doing this and this and I just am like, Oh, you know, like, so it feels like I maybe gave a push, you know, that initial push, but I have to say I'm, I [00:36:00] feel a little like sad that I, I don't, I'm not going to be there, you know, to see the next steps.
Yeah.
It's part of, you know, it's part of the cycle of life and part of the professional life, but I, you know, I just feel like a lot of things were put into motion and then, you know, the clock chimed. I'm Cinderella, you know what I mean? Like the, you know, the clock chimed midnight and I'm back in, you know, in my rags and sitting at home and,
I guess so. So, tell us about what you offer your consultancy. What is it that you're offering schools now?
so basically I sat down and was like, what do I know a lot about? You know? So, What I'm offering is, a lot of people only know me as, she's the writing lady, the writing revolution lady but I always start my PD on writing, and I always, like, I always sit there and I go, I know you're here for writing, but I need you to bear with me, and sometimes it's for 15 minutes, or for, depending how long the thing is, how much time I have in total, I go, but I need you to bear with me, because you're going to think [00:37:00] I've missed the mark.
We're going to start a little bit about how learning happens. And we're going to do that because I think by the end, what I would be sad at the end of this is if you went home and said yeah I went to this thing and I learned some neat, she gave me a few cute things or she gave me a couple of neat things to do.
I want. The people who attend the writing to understand why I think the writing revolution is such an incredible source and it's because of explicit writing instruction and what it does for learning and how it can become the, you can use it with retrieval, you can use it with spacing, how you can use writing to force yourself to think hard about what you are trying to learn.
And. I want them to know that thinking hard is a requirement in the working memory and not overloading and by using a few strategies of the writing revolution, the kids can familiarize themselves with a because but so format, and so they get a chance to think hard [00:38:00] without overloading. They're limited working memory and I want them to see the role of attention and all of it in the process.
And I, and again I think at the end there's a bigger payoff and so far no one's like thrown me out and like gone after me with pitchforks for doing that. And often it is. It is the learning part that sticks with people longer, that there's like, I often, my very first thing I tend to do is show Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve.
And then I, to introduce what spaced practice is. And then I go, well, let's talk a little bit more of how learning happens. And then I do that, you know, the model of the, you know, the input and then the working memory and the long term memory. And I basically preface it as my teacher, Ed, like I got none of this.
None of this. I have an undergraduate degree, I have a master's degree, and I have my administrative degree. Zero minutes were spent on how students learn. And I feel a little bit of rage about [00:39:00] it. That's where I, that's my anger. You know, I started my career being mad at the kids, because I was like, what's wrong with the kids?
And then I realized and then I said it must be their parents. And then I was like then I was mad at my colleagues and I was like, well, clearly it's, and like every day, you know, every 10 years I'd come up with, then I was mad at the admins, you know, it's easy to be mad at the admins, right?
And now where I am, I don't know if I'll end up somewhere else, but right now I'm mad at the schools of education and teacher preparation. It is unconscionable. You'll see me, I often will tweet like, educational malpractice! Educational malpractice! I am. Wanting to bring to the attention and I want to use a little bit of shame, you know, I want to I want there to be like you should be embarrassed that like every six months I pull up the four local universities to look at their courses for teachers.
And I get enraged every time.
Oh, yeah. Well, Amy you and I have a lot in common with respect [00:40:00] to our beliefs and where we think we could go. And it's always exciting when you do a, you know, some professional development. You work with somebody and they asked the question, why didn't we learn this? You know, you should go to the university.
her hand and she goes how many times when you present about forgetting does do people and do the teachers have seen that before? And I go, my, if they have, they've never said it. You know, and you could just, and I think it's what I hear from elementary teachers about the science of reading is that there's this like mix of shame and anger and frustration of like, Oh my God, what was I asking them to do?
I was doing what they told me to do. I was making, I was telling kids, teachers to have them guess and cover the word. The idea that we taught kids how to read by covering a word is crazy. And so I, what I want as teachers, what I hope I did is I hope. I used to see it as, in other words, an hourglass of my career, you know, and then I was like, if I can get [00:41:00] enough info in enough of my colleagues heads, that when I'm gone, it'll be easier for them to be like, eh, that's not a good initiative, or that's not a good series, or we should not be doing it, that they then can pick it up and carry it on and keep driving the district in the right direction.
Great
listeners, if you want to learn more about Amy and have her come to your district, I will get her contact information and be sure to put it in the show notes here, Amy, it has been an absolute joy, just like I knew it would be.
to talk to you.
All right. Bye bye.
Bye bye.
If you are enjoying these podcasts, please give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, and you can find me on Twitter, x at G Tabernetti, and on my website, tesscg. com, that's T E S S C G dot com, where you'll get information about how to order my books, teach fast, focused, adaptable, structured teaching, [00:42:00] and maximizing the impact of coaching cycles.
Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon