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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.
9 Claire Littell
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[00:00:00]
Hi, I'm Craig Randall. Welcome to another edition of 20 Minutes of Teaching Brilliance on the Road with Trust Based Observations. Today I have with me Claire Littell. I was at Claire's school in Ocala, Florida, I don't know, about a month ago, I think. And so, Claire, how about you introduce yourselves to the audience and tell them a little bit about yourselves, your career path, maybe why you got into teaching.
We'll start there.
Hi well, I'm just really honored to be on the podcast. So this is my sixth year teaching English literature at a Catholic high school here in Ocala. And my journey into education. I, I really had no idea what I was doing with my life. I was, I went straight into university. I actually started with an undecided and I was thinking about going into like Catholic [00:01:00] theology to be a religion teacher.
And I really didn't know what I was doing, so I signed up for a, a meeting with my religion professor, and I said, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know if I should be a religion teacher, and he said, well, why did you want to study this? I'm like, well, I just, I love theology, I love learning about God, and he said, well, do you really see yourself being a religion teacher?
And I said, I don't know what I see myself doing. And so he stopped and he said, Hmm, what do you really love doing? And I said, well, I've always loved books. And he looked at me and said, why don't you try the English and education degree instead and see if that's where you fit. So I switched and my first student teaching experience, I remember going home most of the days and crying. And so the fact that I'm a teacher here after like six years is, it just makes me laugh because I had such a hard time with it. I [00:02:00] had been in Catholic school my whole life and I was thrown into a a pretty low income public school where the kids were just, Just a little bit different than I was used to and then I ended up staying My student teacher wasn't the most helpful I mean, God bless her But she wasn't that helpful and then I did end up going back to the same school whenever they kind of throw you into real student teaching because that was mostly just observations, but if they changed me for a different teacher And then I ended up loving it.
And I think one of the reasons I loved it was because the students were so young and I think they were just so hungry for real, authentic friendship and mentorship. And like I said earlier, the school I started at was very low income I think like 80 percent of the students were on the free lunch, free breakfast program small town in Ohio but the kids were the [00:03:00] sweetest, the sweetest some of the kids were a little rough but by the time
it happens when
it happens.
they aren't met. It manifests itself sometimes.
Yes. Yes. And so, and I, I was so young. I really, I hadn't any idea about what these kids went home to. I just knew I had to show up for the student teaching. But but no, I, I think after that year, I really felt more comfortable being in the classroom because I had that relational aspect. Whereas, you know, My first semester observing the relational aspect wasn't as it wasn't as possible in that classroom mostly because I, I think I was just getting used to the whole public school experience which I hadn't been a part of, you know,
Well, and it sounds like also even the, the experience sounds a little bit different because it sounds like at that point you're mostly an observer. You're not the participant leading and working with the kids. So how, how do you [00:04:00] develop relationship and, and relationship is such a key piece. In teaching success and behavior management and you falling in love with the kids so you can help them, right?
And all that. And so you had that the second experience where the first experience didn't even really allow for that.
That's true. Yeah, I think that's true for sure. So, and I think our personalities, like looking back, I was in a, most of the classes I was in for observing we were in the lowest level classes. They were mostly boy athletes and that is the complete opposite of me. So I really had nothing to relate to them with.
I was like trying to make some puns about football and I just fell flat on my face for all of them. Like they asked me a couple of questions about football. I'm like, I. I have nothing to say about that. It's not my culture.
(ad here) And yet now you're at a high school that the sports are a big deal and you have football players [00:05:00] in your class too,
Oh yeah. Well, I make fun of myself all the time with them. I'm like, guys, you have to teach me about sports. Cause that was not my thing in high school. So they do, they take some time to talk to me about it.
But even then, like what they're, what you're saying is you're talking about relationships again, right? You're talking about building relationships by showing interest in them and by showing your own vulnerability and like we talked about on the, on the trust based observation form, under the relationships, we have teacher sharing of themselves or teacher sharing mistakes.
And in a way, it's not exactly sharing a mistake, but when I'm sharing of myself and my complete, lack of knowledge or understanding with anything and, and making yourself vulnerable and asking for help. And it's a means to an end, but it's also genuine, right? That, that pulls those students into your learning and you as a person, don't you think?
Treaty?
so. It also makes them proud of being able to teach your teacher something. So, yeah, I like being able to I like to see them stand a [00:06:00] little straighter saying I just taught my teacher something. So. That's that for me is priceless.
That's funny. That's funny. Well the other thing that I have heard you say is talking about sort of your career path is the importance of mentorship, and one from your advisor at school who pointed you on listened to Right. And then pointed you on a suggestive track by that, that got you into this. And then also sometimes with our, with your student teachers, right.
And then the mentor teachers that you had, one wasn't as strong. And that, I think for a lot of teachers that can make a lot of difference of where their path goes. When you have that first person that's super strong or you don't. And luckily you had a second one that, that really did provide that strength.
And it sounds like more of a model of, of what. Not that strong teaching can't manifest in a million different ways, but one strong model of what good teaching is as well.
Yeah. Yeah, I, I do find it. I just find it funny that I stuck with it. Because [00:07:00] it was such a hard experience for me and I do think the mentorship meant a lot where the first personality, the first teacher, we just didn't fit very well, but the second teacher, she was much more motherly with her students.
And I think that's, That's the type of personality that I'm attracted to as a student or as a teacher where it's the person is more empathetic and Really you can tell they truly care about each child
And I think that each child is such an important part of that too, right? Cause we've got, we're always going to have, it might vary how many, but we're going to have some that are more challenging and, and post COVID, we have more of that with behavior too. And, and so to find out like even for that student that's, That connection's not there right away.
How do I, how do I connect with that student so I can help them learn, so I can make a difference in their lives too, right?
Yes, yeah, it's [00:08:00] true
Well, let's jump into the day that I saw you teaching. As you know, the thing that I absolutely loved most about that day was on the Trust Based Observation form, we've got the Working Memory Cognitive Load section, which is really about And the Neuroscience, it says, Human brain can only take in so much information at a time, and if we don't stop and build in time to really purposefully reflect and process what we're working on or what we're supposed to be learning or what we're learning at that point in time, we can get overloaded, and then that learning kind of goes nowhere, and we actually now we talk about like a cup, and it's like if I've got a cup and I'm pouring water into the cup, If I don't stop, it overflows, right?
And so if we can purposefully as teachers be cognizant of where the load of our kids are, we like to throw generalizations about their load because every kid's a little bit different, and stop and build in time to really reflect on [00:09:00] what am I learning, what's really going on here, then I've, in essence, I've drunk knowledge, I suppose, maybe from the cup, but then also now I've gotten more room to be able to be able to To build in more knowledge as well and reinforce what we've just been doing.
And so the day that we were in your class, it was, it was literature and it was Shakespeare and you would the kids, you were reading together and by the way, the kids did a pretty good job of getting into character. I thought as they read too. And but then you would, and it's. We talked a little bit before the podcast about, you know, in some ways it's not a foreign language, but elements of it are a foreign language because it's English 400 years ago and it's evolved so greatly that, that you, you have to stop and reflect on what's really going on.
What's he really saying here? And we don't understand that. And so you built in those reflection and processing activities through, Time Pair Shares, Turn and Talks, whatever language you want to use. Do you want to talk about that and your process [00:10:00] with that and why you do that? Because I just think it's, I don't see it a lot when I'm on the road and I just think it's such a valuable, valuable tool for student learning.
yeah, so key word here was Shakespeare, so as you know, we could, when you read any book the kinds of questions that are the comprehension questions, the who, who's in the scene, what are they saying, what's happening, and then you have, as a literature teacher, the kind of the higher types of questions, where it's like, how does that affect the plot line?
How does this what is the conflict? Is it, you know, inner conflict, exterior conflict? Is it you know, how is this showing the major theme? What might the. author be asking. And so the comprehension questions are, you know, the baseline. Of course, we don't want to stay there because what's the point of that?
Then it just becomes kind of more of a history class. You know, it just, this is what happened. [00:11:00] But you want to go beyond that for analyzing for literature. But to go back to what text is it, if it's a Shakespeare text. That adds a whole new lever of a level of complexity because as you said, it's 400 years old.
And so one of the things I love to teach my students when we start with British literature is the history of the English language because I, I love history. I think it's amazing to learn about how different cultures interact with each other and then change so much from that interaction. So we actually start off.
Before we even dive into Shakespeare, what the history of the English literature is, or language is, because that will help the students understand why the writing is so different than what they're used to. I usually will get a student ask, I'll usually have a student ask, did they really speak this way back then? I'll say, yes, they did. Some students, you know, of course, Shakespeare [00:12:00] wrote in very poetic language, so I'll explain that to you. there's sometimes whenever Shakespeare has his poetry but whenever it's just a little banter back and forth scenes like with the comedic relief that he adds in yeah they, they really did speak this way.
So, since that, since the language is so different having those many questions all throughout the lesson is essential because it's, The best comparison I have is imagine you're not very good at math and then they put you into a calculus when you really should be in algebra. It's, you're going to be completely lost and have no idea what's going on.
And so that's why I try to stop. I mean, I remember I, you showed me the The, the form that my principal showed me about how, how often I would stop to ask questions and I never realized that I stopped so often for these students. I knew maybe we'd have like, we'd read a couple pages of Shakespeare and then [00:13:00] class time would be over, you know, the 40 minutes done.
And I'd be like, man, that was not enough time for all that I wanted to do. But I think the reason I stopped so much is because it's. It really is. I, I teach it like it's a foreign language, because otherwise they get a little lost.
Well, in the end, it's for understanding at its core, right? If you don't stop and you were to keep going, especially with that, it'd be like walking into Spanish 4, I guess, taking your world language analogy and expecting to understand it. Whereas if I stop, in your case with the Shakespeare, I think we were stopping every maybe two to five minutes,
Yeah.
and then doing a, you know, turn and talk with a question or each person got that you had a specific question lined up for what whatever was going on in that scene sometimes it would be a a more basic understanding question but then it would often follow up with a more in depth question like there was a lot of humor and puns and and and like that that place even in Shakespeare as we were talking about that and if you don't stop then what happens[00:14:00]
It's completely lost on them, especially for the puns. It's, that kind of adds another level of complexity because if it, if there's a pun and everything is based off the wordplay and they don't understand the words, they won't understand the wordplay. But it can be kind of tough explaining the pun to them because once you have to explain a joke, it's no longer funny.
So poor Shakespeare, he's rolling over in his grave with me trying to explain his puns. He's like, no, don't do that.
But as you're doing that too, so we're talking about not only the, the understanding of, of the puns and the language, but just the deeper understanding of the language and if, and if you didn't stop you, I mean, you would, in essence, really what you would sound like if you kept reading or even have the kept kids kept reading without stopping is, is in the Charlie Brown that the teacher in Charlie Brown, you know that Wah wa wa because it, it's, it, it, they just be that glass side kind of a thing.
If you don't build those really purposefully into the practice.
[00:15:00] yes, yes. And I'm sure the teachers know when you see your students get a little bit, you know, misty eyed and kind of stare off into the distance, you know, okay, let me stop. Let me make sure this one student knows where we're at. And if you have like a class of 17 to 27, you know, you have to stop more often than not and try and pull in those particular kids.
Somehow pull them in, like pull them back, get them on
and ideally, right, that the glass, like in our worst case scenario, I guess, as teachers is if we see glassy eyed, we stop and build in a reflection processing activity. But in our best case scenario, we just know ahead of time they're going to get glassy eyed here or they're going to get to the cognitive load here.
And so I'm going to purposely build it and not on the fly decide it. And that's what was so great about yours, Claire, is it wasn't. I mean, you talk about the glassy eyed, but that's not what your plan was. Your plan was, no, we need to stop. It was very, very purposeful. And that's, that's super, super valuable.
[00:16:00] So, we did talk about puns a little bit and, and your own sense of humor with bad, you're almost like a bad dad joke person with the puns in there. Do you want to talk about that a little bit in terms of relationship with the kids and joking? And.
Oh, sorry.
No, go ahead.
So I've always loved puns. I remember even being like a little kid and one of my first friends was Carson and I remember looking at his name like, his name has two words in it. That is so cool. So I've always loved words. But whenever I went to like college, I, I remember reading throughout.
Reading some of Shakespeare and loving the puns that he would do, or we'd read even just the funny stories like, Oh, Oscar Wilde, like, all of his stories are just so comedic, so I've always loved that about literature, where you can, you can joke inside, like, the characters, they can joke with each other, but I think the reason why I put a lot of puns in my own class is I just think it's funny.
[00:17:00] Even if the students don't think it's funny, that's whenever I especially thinks it's funny because they don't think it's funny.
When they're groaning at you, like, Ms. Mattel.
yes. Or even if they're completely quiet, like, you know, usually you have like one kid just laugh at me. I'm like, this is perfect. This is all I need. And then I keep, I always joke with my students.
I need a little drum set. I think that'd be fun. Or braid.
I think you even, if I'm not, if I'm not mistaken, Claire, if I went back and looked at the form, I think after one of your bad puns Sorry, but after one of your bad puns, I think you literally did the ba bump bump bump. I think you literally made that noise when I was in there.
Mm hmm.
you're even, you're, so even when you're doing that, you're sort of making fun of yourself, which
Oh, yeah.
again, that's building relationship with the kids, and it's showing your own vulnerability as well.
Let's jump back to the, to the Shakespearean, and so one of the things that we were talking about before, before we went on the air was It's just about how Shakespeare and the way it's taught has just [00:18:00] transformed so much from not only when I was in school a million years ago, but you're just a six, seven year teacher and, and that now we have literal the side by side translations in the book.
It's really two versions of the same play right next to each other with basically if it was spoken in today's English versus the original English. The other, not just the SparkNotes. And, and do you want to talk about that? And maybe you talked a little bit about the SparkNotes then versus that, and maybe share some on of your thoughts on that as well.
Yes, so, I'm a big fan of reading the original as much as possible. I know we, as English teachers, you can find a lot of resources for the abridged, for even just doing excerpts of novels. I'm, I'm like a little bit more traditional where I like having the authentic, real novel in every student's hands.
Even if it is 400 years old, I think that's extremely valuable because then you can teach context, you can teach history [00:19:00] and I, it's kind of like, none of us take a priceless painting and then make it into like a, I don't know a modern art piece where it's all just the colors on the page, like you don't, you can't appreciate the modern art if you only look, or the original art if you only have the modern art version of it.
So, so I like to read the original. I do think that there's absolutely a place for the abridged or for the translation because as we spoke about before, like before the podcast, a lot of our students aren't a lot of students aren't interested in literature. They, they go to school for their sports or they go to school for, you know, just because they have to.
And it's, I, unfortunately it's rare nowadays to have students grow up with a love of reading and there's a lot of factors for that. And so with those students that struggle with reading or don't love reading. How do you get them, how do you get them to, how do you get them hooked into the [00:20:00] story?
And if you're having them go home and read a really, a really tough book, like if they're in the lower level class, and I expect them to go home and read Shakespeare, I, I, I don't think that, it'd be kind of ignorant of me to assume that they would, first of all, open their book but also ignorant of me for, For me to think they would understand it. And so, I, I like the translations because what I can do is I can say, okay, I'm assigning some reading, but I want you to take this translation and I want you to read it either after you listen to it or. before you listen to it. And the reason why is that way they understand what's happening ahead of time or what after they listen to it, what's happened after reading it.
That way they kind of clear up all confusions. And then when we get back into the class, We can open up the original Shakespeare, read the art that you can see with the pictures that he's painting. You can hear [00:21:00] the, the poetry, how he rhymes you know, the pentameter and all that. Because there's an art in literature that if you only read the summaries or you only read the translation, you'll never be able to experience.
So that's what I do.
(ad here) Yeah, and that's, and we, I mean, it's 400 years old and people are still performing the plays and everything. So talking about the art, that's there. And, and, and also I think as you talked about it, you talked about like one of the important factors is, is pulling a student in who might not otherwise be engaged and having that translation allows that to happen.
And, and I think one of the things you said that is, so there's an understanding, so there's meaning behind it. And one of the other things that we talked about is. Like you didn't become, I mean, you have a love of literature. That's really obvious. And so you want to spread that love of literature, but that you're not going to affect all your kids to get them all to develop a love of literature.
That's not realistic for those that you can, that's great, but you want to affect all of your students somehow, [00:22:00] some way, and so one of the things that you also mentioned to me is just that literature is a tool for meaning and thought for life. And for my own choices and for my own mistakes and what's going on out there.
And so do you mind touching on, on that and how you use literature with your kids to, to impact them on thinking about life? What do you want to call it? Values or, or just whatever language you want to use.
Yeah, so, I, you know, all of us can kind of look around in our world and kind of say like, oh, a lot is changing. We don't have a lot of the, the values. A lot of students grow up in broken families or you know, if you're a teacher, you see a lot of students making very bad life choices that kind of break your heart.
And you're like, you are going down the wrong path there, sir or young lady. And so as a teacher, You know, it's, it's ministry. This is ministry helping students to find themselves, to [00:23:00] love themselves, to love each other and that's such a challenge nowadays.
And Claire, can I just jump in and can I just jump in real quick and just knowing that our audience is, you know, as people from public schools and Catholic schools, you don't make ministry strictly in just a religious sense, but in a making a difference in the lives of sense. I just want to throw that out there for all our
yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, it, I mean, of course, like, if you're, if you're religious, there is a religious component to that, but. No, I mean, ministry and just being able to help just being able to help. So if a student's having a hard day, you can kind of be there for them. And we know a lot of students come in with the worst, terrible days that only the teacher and the admin would know about.
But going back to the question of how can I do that in a religion, or in a, not a religion, in a English classroom, With the stories, we see so many characters that make, you know, that make bad life choices. Right now we're reading The Great Gatsby, [00:24:00] and I love that book. I think it's absolute, like, it is very beautifully written.
Um, but the characters don't make the best life choices, and so I love being able to talk about that with my students because some of these life choices, I, you know, we overhear things. Students don't think that we can hear, but we overhear the conversations and it's, they're so young, you know, these only, they're only 16 years old and they're making choices that'll, that'll affect them so greatly.
So I like to stop class and I like to talk about what these characters are doing, and then I, I stopped class and I say, how do you think it's going to affect them in the future? How do you think that's affecting their husband, their wife, their child? Are they thinking about their child when they're making these choices?
And I like to ask these questions because I think especially nowadays, people are so distracted and we don't stop enough to reflect on what kind of a person [00:25:00] am I being. I think all of us are kind of, we grow up with this idea like, oh no, a benefit of the doubt for myself. But we have to kind of stop and think.
Am I really, am I really thinking about myself and my choices in a way that understands how I'm affecting other people, or what kind of person am I being? And so, I think in our, in a, in my class, we ask a lot of, like, morality questions about what the characters are doing, but always, like, with the bigger question of how can I help this student be the best version of themselves?
How can I inspire them even in a roundabout way by talking about these characters, how can I inspire them to make choices for themselves when they graduate in two months or in a couple years, to make choices that will lead them, will lead them on a very happy life where they have authentic, loving [00:26:00] relationships.
Good friendships, a good spouse who honors them. Because at the end of the day, when you're a teacher, it's, you want them to be happy. You want them to be healthy. You want them to be proud of themselves and proud of the life that they create in the future. Mm-Hmm.
And, and I think as, as you do that, thanks, Claire, I appreciate that. And I think as you do that, though, it's, you know, one of the areas on the form is the questioning and you're really, you're, you're full of questions that with what you're talking about, you're asking the kids to analyze. and you're asking them to analyze that character.
You're asking them to evaluate their choices and even then I think some of what you're doing is you're asking them, like, we, you know, we have that Bloom's Taxonomy that revised version and so it's synthesized on it. You're also asking them to put it into the context of their own life for their questions in terms of the way you're asking and it's, it's, it's hard.
Which also shows the value of those higher order thinking questions as well. Because it is for my own life and for that, and I mean, love of literature is great, but love of [00:27:00] myself and the choices that I make is also super great, and your use of questions at that level is really strong as well.
Yeah.
Claire, thank you so, so much for being on today.
I know that sometimes when people listen, they might want to reach out to our podcast guests and be able to ask them questions further about their practice that might be able to help them. So, would you mind sharing a contact information in case anybody wants to reach out? Spell
Well, my email's pretty simple. It's just claire dot lettel at gmail, so,
LaTel, please.
Littellas, L I T T E L L.
So Claire, C L A I R E dot Littell, L I T E L L at gmail. com.
Double T.
Oh, oh, double T C, I had it wrong too. I can't even read and I have it right in front of
kind of a,
T E L L. Okay, thank you. Claire, thanks so much for being on. I really, really [00:28:00] appreciate it and hopefully I'll be back in Ocala in the next year or so and get to see you again.
Yes, and I just want to encourage all my teacher friends out there. Stay strong. You can do it.
Thanks Claire, take care.
Bye.