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On the road training schools in Trust-Based Observations trainings, we periodically see absolute teaching brilliance during our 20-minute observations. It dawned on us that we have an obligation to share this brilliance with all teachers so they can learn and grow from one another. Each episode is an interview with one of these teachers where we explore their strengths as they share their tips and tricks. Tips and tricks that definitely lead to improved teaching and learning.
Craig:
Welcome to 20 minutes of teaching brilliance on the road with Trust-Based Observations. Every week while training school leaders, Craig Randall, the developer of Trust-Based Observations, witnesses brilliant teaching during their 20 minute observations. Wanting to share that teaching brilliance with others, we talk shop with those teachers learning what they do that is so impactful. We hope you enjoy.
Craig:
Hi and welcome to another edition of 20 minutes of teaching brilliance on the road with trust based observations. I'm Craig Randall, the founder, I guess, developer of trust based observations. And today I have with me Laura Godard. Recently I was at John Cooper School in the Woodlands, Texas, a beautiful community and a beautiful school. And I was able to spend a fantastic week training the school leaders, but also a fantastic week seeing some really, really amazing teaching with me. Laura is a math teacher and I was watching her and it just, it was so engaging, so fun, so brilliant. She does building things in classrooms which we'll get into over the course of it. But Laura, will you please introduce yourself, maybe tell people what you teach, a little bit about your career arc and how you ended up where you're at?
Laura:
Sure. Thank you for having me. I live, as you said, in Texas. I teach upper school math. So I teach algebra two and trigonometry and also calculus. I love teaching them both. started off teaching as sort of a third career for me. That's what I say. I've been teaching for about 10 years. I started off out of college working in public health. So I worked in epidemiology, kind of a math background there, and then took a long time off to be at home with my kids. And through some homeschooling, got into teaching math, especially to my own daughter. And I loved it. And when she didn't need me anymore to teach her math, I thought, I just want to keep going with this. And so I got into teaching. I started teaching middle school and I enjoyed that for a time, but I eventually just wanted to teach a little bit more higher level math. And so that's how I got into high school math. And I've been at the John Cooper School for the last four years.
Craig:
That is such an interesting story. That's the first one I've heard. I've heard that, you the career you take it as a second career, but that's the first one I've heard from mom home to teaching math to like, oh my God, this is my calling. And now that my daughter doesn't need me anymore, I'm going to take a job. I love that. That'd be fantastic.
Laura:
Yeah. And actually, if I can say a little more about that, my daughter, she needed me. She was in a split class and she worked at kind of a advanced pace. And so the teacher said, I can teach two grades. at one time, but I can't do three grades, so can you help me out?" So I helped her out. And, you know, my daughter is pretty easy to teach her math. She loved math, you know. And after that, I did some volunteer work in the inner city in Houston with a student who very much struggled in math. And so I sort of had to remind myself, this is not going to be the same. And I actually loved it even more. I love my daughter, but I loved teaching, you know, those really struggling students even more. And that's what made me think I really want to get into this.
Craig:
That makes my heart literally have those little bubbly little feelings. That is so great. Right, because teaching somebody that gets it is, I mean, that's easy and you could say that's rewarding, but I got to help everybody. So you get that experience with that one-on-one and they're like, oh, this is even more fulfilling. Thanks for sharing that. I really, really appreciate it. Well, look, it was building thinking classrooms and I think... Like when we were talking a little bit beforehand and I always tell people, and you brought it up when you were talking beforehand, that over the four years now I've been in the road, I've only seen building thinking classrooms four or five times and you were surprised. Maybe I was a little surprised too, but I always just say when I see that compared to everything else I see, just, it feels like students are doing so much more learning and it's so much more active. and, uh, I'm going to maybe get in trouble saying this, but it feels higher level. And don't hate me out there, audience. But why don't we talk about building thinking classrooms and you and we were talking a little bit about before about like what you were doing before and then kind of how it got you to it. So let's just dig into that a little bit.
Laura: (4:53)
OK, I have always kind of started off following the I do we do you do sort of progression. And when it came to the you do part, rather than like a worksheet, I always tried to look for a scavenger hunt or a task, you know, card match, something a little bit more active and a bit more interactive. And my students liked that. And I noticed a few years ago that I would finish the direct instruction part of the lesson and I would be trying to give the students instructions like this is how the card sort works or start here or do this. And they weren't listening to me because they were like, doing the card sort already, like they just wanted to do it. And at first I sort of felt a little frustrated, like they're not listening to the instruction. And then I thought, well, wait a minute, they are just wanting to get to the work, like they want to do this. And I thought, what if I could harness that interest, that energy, that sort of excitement? And then the other thing is sometimes I'd look at the activities I'd chosen and some of the questions were very basic and very easy. And I thought to myself, they didn't just need the previous 20 minutes of instruction to do some of the activity. And so I kind of wanted to think, well, how could I rearrange things? And I'd heard of building thinking classrooms. So I think it was the summer. So thought, well, I'm to pick up this book and read it. And from the moment I opened it up, I thought, this is what I'm thinking of. This is what I'm thinking of. Yes, exactly. And I actually also thought of some veteran teachers that I knew. And I thought this is what they were doing. They didn't call it building thinking classrooms. Maybe they had read the book, but that's what these really fantastic teachers were doing. And so the next year I tried it and it was just a game changer from day one because the students were able to jump in and do the easy things and then kind of work at the more challenging things. And it really just flipped things around and it's worked really well for me.
Craig:
Just a couple of things that are so interesting are you're saying the teachers that were in essence doing it without without knowing they're doing it. that's I mean, when we do trust based observation and frequently we ask you what you were doing, people say, I don't know. I just do it. I mean, it's great, but it's even better when we do know what we're doing. It's interesting to I mean, as I listen to you talk about a couple of things is that early on it sounds like and maybe this comes from your career outside of education to start with. But you somehow intuitively knew already that doing workshop worksheets wasn't going to cut it, that there needed to be something more active and engaging in there. Do you want to touch on that piece just a little bit?
Laura:
I've always been big on group work because I feel like students talking to each other is so different than not talking. When you have to verbalize what you're thinking. it's difficult sometimes. So, I mean, that's the case anytime students are working together. And then I think when I've seen building thinking classrooms, when they're writing their work up where everybody can see it, sometimes, you know, a student will write something down and they think it's clear and maybe it is clear in their mind, but another student will look at it and say, well, I don't follow, you know, and so the student who wrote it down might have to change what they wrote or they'll have to verbalize it more. So, I've always felt like at least interactive group work that verbalizing your thinking cements things and helps students attend to precision and those sort of practices that we want.
Craig:
As opposed to just doing a problem and doing a problem and doing a problem and all that. so I think like as I'm listening to it, because sometimes people will have notions of group work that are accurate, are it's one kid doing all the work and a couple of kids doing a little on the one kid doing none. And that's not at all what building thinking classrooms is. So for those of the listeners in our audience that aren't really familiar with building thinking classrooms, you want to give a quick rundown of what it is so people can get a visualization of just what we're talking about. Probably shouldn't have started at first.
Laura:
Yeah. Well, you know, there's 14 practices for sort of enhancing math learning. And when I read the book, there's one, well, there are many chapters, but each practice is covered in one chapter. And when I read the first practice, thought, yes, I want to do that. And the second, yes. And the third, yes. And then by the fourth, I was starting to think, ooh, this is kind of a lot. And by the 14th, I was just like, well, I don't know about this, but thankfully the book itself encourages you to adopt the first three practices first, you to do this in chunks and to be honest, exactly. And to be honest, I've kind of adopted the first three sometimes, you know, for some portion of every lesson. And that has been enough of a game changer for me that that's kind of where I'm sitting with. in classrooms. So sometimes I think people who've read the book or heard about it, they're like, well, this is just too much and we're not going to revamp our entire program. But for me, it's been very successful to just take some of it and implement it where it makes sense and fits in with our school culture. But the three that I've done is the visible non-permanent surfaces. So my classroom has writable walls, which is super handy. And that allows me to have kids working up on all students in the class working up on the walls at the same time. that's one thing.
Craig:
And just real quick before you go on, and for those that don't have writable walls, definitely it's easy to post those little like three foot by three foot or two foot by three foot. whiteboards all over the room so they, the little groups or teams, maybe the Morakki description can do the same thing without the writable walls. Okay, keep going.
Laura:
And in fact, not all of my walls are writable. So I have a couple of those, you know, peel off whiteboards. So you can get creative. Then putting students in random groups every day. And that one to me, at first I was like, Oh, I don't know about that because you know, my, kids, you know, they're generally well behaved. like work with who they like to work with. You know, so wasn't so sure about that. But when I read sort of the some of the rationale behind it, I thought, yes, I see the need for it. And the one that sort of struck me is suggested students work in the same groups. They fall into the same role. And I saw that. I had to describe the student who will kind of sit back and not say much, or maybe you'll have the student who will always use the restroom, or the student who kind of monopolizes the conversation. And when I thought about it, I thought, yes, I do see that. And so the big advantage of putting kids in random groups is it sort of mixes that up. And I have seen kids who would be the shy one kind of step up and take a lead. I've just seen people step into different roles. which has been very good. And then also from a social and emotional point of view, I think it's been really great to have different students showcase what they can do with students who are not necessarily in their normal social group. think that's been a very powerful thing in the classroom. And then the third thing is just rethinking the tasks that you give to students. that's what sort of motivated all this is how can I change the task from now copy what we just did together? to discovering things on your own, working on really challenging problems. So those are the three that I've kind of incorporated.
Craig:
And so, correct me if I'm wrong, I know this is part of what you do, but just from, I've been trained in it, but I've seen it enough now that there's also tend to be roles within your group. So like the same person's not doing everything every time. for listeners out there, like I might be the recorder this time, but next time I'm the lead at the next time versus I'm the... So each time through it's also designed to also minimize that person dominating.
Laura:
Yes. Yes. I've done that to some extent. I do kind of enforce the rule of one marker per group. that, you know, sometimes all the kids want to grab a marker and they want to divide up the work and you do this and I do that and you do this. And I certainly have stepped in and said it's one marker per group. Occasionally, if I've had someone who I call the marker hog and the person who's dominating, I sometimes will step in and say, you know what, Craig, you're going to have the marker and somebody else is going to do the talking. So you will write down what somebody else says. And that can be a big help in redistributing the role. But I've found that as the students have gotten used to it, they have learned how to interact in groups and how to...
Craig:
They've almost self-learned to adaptables that change and everything. Wow, that's pretty...
Laura:
Especially with those quieter kids feeling more empowered to step up and say, well, this is what
Craig:
I think. you know... being in a small group of three, like they're generally designed for, it's way easier for a quieter kid to feel comfortable to speak up. And by design, sometimes you have to because you're the one that has to do that. One of things I think I hear you say that I think is really interesting for people that worry about autonomy and like being absolutely using absolute fidelity to a process is what I'm hearing you say is, look, I can mix and match. Yes, it's designed to maybe have a role switch every time. But we over time have built in enough of just relationships with kids working in and they all done it enough that it sort of self does it. And then now I just jump in when I have to. And I think that's good for for people to listen to and hear that. And so look. I think one of the things that people might be wondering and gosh, if I were to stereotype math teachers, I would say they tend to be the most traditional. We lecture, we, I do, we do, you do, I do a problem, we do a problem, but then it's, I do another problem and then we do another problem and I do another problem. And now the last eight minutes, let's do odds one, two, 33 and the rest of you don't do this homework.
Laura:
And everybody skipped the word problem.
Craig:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so. I think there can be an adjustment to being the sage on the stage and worrying like, but they don't see these problems. Are they going to know how to do it versus what you're doing? So do you want to address that? Because I think it's really important.
Laura:
I like to sort of structure tests where students are, you know, kind of looking at something, looking at a pattern, discovering, thinking. And I try to build in, you know, So for example, know, students might go to the walls for the first 15 minutes of the class and there'll be some tasks, you know, up on the wall what they should do, you know, and it might start off easy and then kind of progress and say, well, what if this, what if that? And I just try to add just enough tasks to be a little bit more than the fastest group might need so that every group can keep working and keep pushing.
Craig:
That's important.
Laura:
Yeah. And then sometimes, you know, occasionally I'll have a group that you know, just kind of whips through things. And then I sometimes will have them be a resource for other groups. That's another thing that I, you know, the kids had to get used to because sometimes they were well and truly stuck, all of them in the group, and they would say to me, what should we do? And one of the things I would say is, well, why don't you go over and send someone over to ask group two, what's going on? And at first, the kids were really surprised. They were like, we can do that. You know, it's almost like they felt that would be cheating. But I've kind of, call it like decriminalized thought. And that has turned the emphasis from like, what are the rules to, well, how could I learn from my peers? And I've learned that kids love to teach their peers. So the one who gets asked, like they delight in saying, okay, I got this, I got this, you know, and let me show you. And that, you know, that always warms my heart when I hear it.
Craig:
And even within each group. They have to teach each other and they're all sort of rotating teaching each other too. And look, the highest form of retention of learning is teaching others. So that's also one of the things that my favorite things about it being built into it. But something that you said that I think is is really fascinating and I hadn't really thought about before is the sense that really on a greater life skills lesson, what you're really teaching them is when I don't know something, it's OK to be vulnerable. and seek help from someone else. And when we're out in a real world work situation, if I my vanity or that I don't know get in the way, we're not going to be as successful. And really, you're modeling through that how to get help and seek help in a positive way that's empowering for you and the person that you're getting help from.
Laura:
Right. Yeah, it really... Like I said, warms my heart when I see them teaching each other. And sometimes I actually even structure the activities to be like that. So I've taken lessons sometimes and divided up. Like we had a unit or a lesson on complex numbers, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing. And so in the groups, I had one group working on adding and subtracting, one on multiplying, one on dividing, something like that. And then what I did is I had a spy, one person from each group of three go to the next group. and learn, you you had to teach the person who came to visit your skill. And then the groups caught up and person one, you know, taught the people who from their previous group taught them. So it was just a rotation of I'm going to learn this from and then I'm going to teach it. I'm going to learn it. I'm going to teach it. And the kids love that, you know, so much more than they love to sit in their desks while I stand in front and tell them.
Craig:
This is cooperative learning too at the same time. And again, it's teaching others all built in. So I think sometimes though people might be listening to this and going, well, what the heck am I supposed to do as a teacher? but you're still, I mean, you're still checking for understanding constantly. And when it's appropriate, you're doing feedback. You want them to find it on their own. So there's doing it. So it might take a different avenue than before. So do you maybe want to touch on that? Because I think it's a really important element for teachers to hear about.
Laura:
Well, I'm certainly very busy while all of this is going on. I'm constantly rotating around the groups. And one of the things I love when I'm rotating around is I feel like I can give them instruction when they actually want it. So if they're working on something and they've run into a problem, you know, and it's not working, I can say to them, well, look, you know, when you square a negative number, you know, it's always going to be, and they say positive, you know, so I can kind of lead them through what is the difficulty they're having. And they're really interested in hearing the solution to their problem at that moment. Whereas again, if I'm standing up in front, you know, maybe they're listening, but maybe they're not interested in, you know, why squaring a negative number with parentheses or without parentheses gives you a different, a different answer. So I'm looking as I'm walking around, I'm looking for where is it that they are experiencing difficulties and need help? Or what question could I ask them that would just clarify and help them come to the right answer? Sometimes I catch little, just minor notation errors and sometimes I'll say, on that interval notation, should there be a bracket there or parentheses? And it's something they know, but they've forgotten or overlooked it. so again, I catch them in the right moment where they're receptive to the message that I have to share with them.
Craig:
Which is before, you're giving an, or if it's one kid at a time or whatever, like what are the other kids doing? They're just tuning out or whatever, but now they're all working in their little teams, but at the same time, as you're working away around the six, seven, eight groups you're working with, it's like what I need now. And so basically the relevance for it. raises immensely. in some ways you could say what you're doing with checks for understanding and feedback has way more immediate value for learning and jumping to that next step.
Laura:
Yeah, I feel like it's really leveraged.
Craig:
Do and then as I'm listening to you talk about the feedback, really, it's interesting. Every single thing that I heard you say was in the form of a question. And I'm really into descriptive progress feedback and the three ways we can do it. basic where we're giving them the answer to get them back on track. The little instructional piece where I'm maybe reteaching a little something or giving them get them there. Or the coaching, which is the using questions to get them to get the answer on their own, which always end up having the greatest relevance. And not that they don't have value, but do you think that's changed at all with you with going to the building thinking classrooms in your... with each group as they need it. Do you think the coaching part has actually increased maybe versus feedback before you used to do it or not? I have no idea, but that question just pops into my head.
Laura:
Yeah, I feel like it hasn't changed the amount I did it because I'm thinking before, you know, if students were sitting at their desk working on something, I was still, you know, rotating around checking in on students, that sort of thing. But it's more the, you know, I come up to students and say, do you have any questions? No. You know, which made me feel like, I'm so available. But now I feel like I'm so available when they actually have a meaningful question that they want answered because they're actually doing something that they they need that missing piece.
Craig:
And you hear it. You know what's going on in the conversation.
Laura:
Exactly. Yeah. So I feel it's it's not so much a change in me. It's a change in them of them asking timely, important questions that they want to know the answer to.
Craig:
It makes them seek. meaningful support in the moment they need it way more than they would do on their own. Exactly. How powerful is that?
Laura:
That is. And if I get your one thing that I did notice, I noticed in terms of homework or work that was done outside of class, the first year that my teaching partner and I did this, at the end of the year, we noticed that students were coming to us less for homework help and they were going to each other, which we absolutely loved. And I could overhear them, you know, be in my office and I could hear them in the hallway and I could hear some kids saying, I don't know how to do such and such. And somebody else would jump in and say, I know how to do it. I'll show you. And that was a marked change in behavior. And I just loved seeing that and hearing it.
Craig:
And again, what is that getting back to teaching others? You can so much teaching others. Therefore, what they're learning is sticking and resonating with so much deeper. and with so much more understanding because when I can teach you how to do it, then I really understand it.
Laura:
Mm For sure. Yeah.
Craig:
That's pretty powerful. So one of the things like when I'm in your class there, when I was in your class is that like because of the format of building things in classrooms and almost I know this is a bit of an exaggeration because there's so much that goes into it, but there's almost like. behavior management almost becomes a non-issue and it's not quite that simple. will you talk about that?
Laura:
Yeah, I feel like when the kids are up in their groups, there's sort of like no place to hide. And I don't mean that like in a threatening sort of way, but even their work is written on the wall. So everyone can see what they write, which is a big difference if you consider even students working like together but at their desks, I can't really see what's on your paper. So there's a lot more accountability. And if someone is off task, it's pretty obvious because they're standing there, you know, I've caught kids not facing the wall when the work is on the wall, you know. So it's harder to hide off task behavior, but I just have found that like I started my whole motivation for doing this is that kids actually were eager to do the math work. I think they would rather try it on their own probably than listen to me for a long time. So I don't, yeah, they're eager to get into their task when they do it. And of course I try to give them engaging tasks to do, which is a big tenant of building thinking classrooms. And the task is not just here's 20 factoring problems, please factor. It's a lot of explaining what if this, here's one that's a little different. So it's an engaging task that kind of captures their attention. I do think there's some art to knowing how much time to give them to do a task because we all kind of get tired. And so that's something I sort of monitor is, all right, I think we've gotten what we can out of this task. And so now let's come back together. yeah, people stay on task a lot more, but it's a matter of just kind of reading the room and seeing when it's time to move on.
Craig:
At the same time. I'm used to hearing you say, indirectly you're saying, engagement. mean, just when we got problems and three of us are doing that. And we also learn better socially when we're interacting. So that's all really built into the process as we do it.
Laura:
I also have a couple of tricks I like to use. I put them in random groups, visually random groups, most days. But once in a while I'll say, you know what, it's Friday. Why don't you just pick your own groups of three? And by doing that once in while, the kids love it. I use an online kind of generator to put the kids in groups of three. And if I have, you know, sometimes just the way it does it, if I have 16 kids, it'll do five groups of three and one person by themselves. And so I'll just say to that person, oh, Craig, it's your lucky day. You can pick to work with whoever you want. And so by throwing a few things like that and it, you know,
Craig:
The kids stuff.
Laura:
Yeah, exactly. It's like, that's my lucky day. I can work with my best friend. So that helps as well.
Craig:
I love it. That's a great little expert tip. Laura, oh my gosh, we didn't get it in halfway through all the things that I wanted to talk about, but I do want to before we wrap up, like we were there and training trust-based observations. And so I'm just wondering, like, what are your thoughts on it and whether you want to talk about it compared to whatever before, but I'm just curious what you think of this process.
Laura:
I enjoyed it very much. was a little nervous at the time. was a large group. Right. But yeah, the debrief was so great. One of the things I loved is it started off with saying, these are the things we heard you say and hearing my own words repeated to me was very encouraging because I want to do certain things in the classroom. And I heard in the feedback I got that I was doing some of those things. So that was super encouraging and made me think, okay, what else could I be doing? Like, how could I be improving? And that was something that I liked in the past. I've had sort of, you know, an observation at the beginning of the year that was, you know, fairly short. And the feedback I got was, wow, everything was great. And then-
Craig:
That's great, very general. okay.
Laura:
Exactly. And so I almost felt like, oh, maybe it was like, okay, check, maybe we don't need to worry about this classroom too much, which on the one hand is great. I don't want to cause anybody worry, but I want to improve. And the whole trust-based observation made me want to hear feedback on how I could improve. And that's not always something we want because you it can be sort of scary. And so think the the foundation that was laid in terms of the feedback, the positive feedback I got made me want some I wouldn't call it negative feedback, but made me want feedback for how I could improve. So I'm looking forward to the next observation.
Craig:
Which and we talked a little bit about this before. Just think about like I'm looking forward to an obvious teachers. Are you hearing that looking forward to an observation? That's the difference. Laura, listen, I'm so grateful for our conversation today. There might be listeners out there that are interested in learning about what you've been doing with building thinking classmates or maybe some of your other expert tips along the way. Would you mind sharing your professional email address in case anybody has any questions?
Laura:
Sure. Yeah, it's lgodard, l-g-o-d-a-r-d at johncooper.org.
Craig:
Super. Thanks so much, Laura. That's really helpful. I appreciate that. And that will be in the show notes for anybody interested in that. Laura, thank you so much for a great, great visit this afternoon. I really appreciate it and learned even more. So thank you.
Laura:
Thank you so much for having me.
Craig:
Thank you for listening to 20 minutes of teaching brilliance. If the show resonated with you, you can help other teachers by liking, sharing, and subscribing. More importantly, if you don't like the way you're being evaluated, don't like being nitpicked and scored, then check out Trust-Based Observations at TrustBased.com, where we know the path to growth is through safe spaces for risk-taking. Tell your principal about it and change your school's observations to a model of trust and support, and join the thousands of teachers who now experience the joy of observations the way they're meant to be done.