Kimberly Moritz BlogPosts

Our Gowanda Blue Team for Thoughtful Classroom traveled to Randolph Central School today and joined our colleagues from Randolph and Ellicottville for a day of Teacher Rounds and Coaching. Three dynamic and courageous educators from Randolph taught wonderful lessons while about sixteen of us watched. The kids were, of course, fantastic, the lessons spot on, the teachers energetic, and the learning (at least for me) inspired.

After experiencing the three lessons, we “debriefed”. In small groups, we traveled to three stations where we wrote on huge chart paper about our observations and our suggestions. Imagine. Sixteen colleagues watch you teach and then talk about what they saw. Brave folks, huh?

That’s how we learn! From each other, talking about teaching. It’s how it should look—it’s how we should be talking. And we’re educators for crying out loud, the RCS teachers who taught today did a stellar job and we who watched made very positive observations followed by some straight forward suggestions. All very nice stuff. No judgment. As Susan Morris from Thoughtful Education said, “Most of us are internalizing while we’re observing. We’re not thinking about you so much as we’re thinking about our own practice, how we can incorporate what we see you doing.” (I’m paraphrasing here Susan–think I got it, more or less.)

The thing that struck me was the same thing that I was thinking about on our own two days of in-district training last week. As teachers, we’ve got no swagger. We never tout what we’re doing really well. Those teachers went right to the “suggestions” section of the de-brief, almost embarrassed to focus on the section that was more extensive, where we recorded all of our positive reflections on these dynamite lessons.

We’ve got to get beyond this if we’re going to have really meaningful discussions/debates about best practice. I’ve got to be able to say, “I rocked this lesson today! And here’s what I did and how it worked.” and we also have to be able to say to one another, “this tanked and here’s what I did and how it worked”, and then give meaningful feedback to one another.

This is a significant climate change, fostering a risk-free, non-competitive environment where we’re all working together toward the best possible teaching for our students instead of teaching quietly in isolation.

I’ll say it again, those teachers were fantastic today. Lauren, Shelly and Scap–making it work for kids. You rocked! Not perfect. Not better than anyone else. Not know-it-alls. Not brown nosers. Just fantastic teachers for their students. Just like every child deserves, in every class, every day. Let’s start to revel in our great practices and that will lead to better practices by everyone.

A public shout out to our dynamic GCS Blue Team–Andrea Geist, Lois Piscitelli, Kathryn Jordan, Kyle Steever, Kris Ruzycki–for your willingness to step out, take a risk, and learn more. Let’s start sharing it with everyone.

One hundred sixty one teachers and TA’s plus five administrators and one national presenter. Today was our first superintendent’s conference day on the Thoughtful Classroom strategies, tomorrow is the second. It’s my plan, I stuck my neck out to convince our administrative team and superintendent that this is where we need to go next. I negotiated the deal, researched and evaluated the plan, and set everything up.  

And today I watched. I worried about every learner. I tried to monitor. I felt frustrated that people might miss the point, fail to realize the application possibilities of the strategies modeled, or worse, think they already know everything so what have they got to learn? I wanted to overstate the obvious and point out that this is the ticket to the “motivation” and “engagement” they complain about. I wanted to stop the presenter and tell teachers how the strategies work, I wanted to construct meaning for them, I wanted to shout, “please pay attention and do this for our students!”

Instead I participated as a learner and I listened. I let them construct their own meaning, as adult learners. I realize that some will try the strategies next week, some will need more time to learn, some won’t do anything differently no matter what I offer. So I’ll build in more time for learning opportunities, for learning clubs, for coaching and for follow up. I’ll work with building administrators to make teachers more accountable for the teaching strategies that they do choose to use.

The real difference between professional development for adults and teaching students? Teachers will go back to their classrooms on Thursday and make their own decisions about what happens there. Unless we spend a significant amount of time as administrators talking about the initiatives, encouraging participation, offering additional support through learning clubs and coaching, looking for it on evaluative tools–who’s to say anything will change?

I sincerely hope that all of our work in school improvement this year leads to teachers becoming more and more skillful at the art and science of teaching. I hope that I’m not just influencing those who are already our best and brightest, our most avid learners, our most interested in improving. I’ll hope that through professional development, coaching, and accountability, we can significantly influence what happens in every classroom in G-Town, every day. Ultimately, it’s up to every teaching professional in our employ to get it right, even when the door is closed. I’m thankful for every teacher and TA who I know will make it happen.

For the past three weeks I’ve been teaching Spanish to our high school juniors and seniors. This may not seem like much to write home about (or in this case to blog about) until I tell you that it’s been nine years since I taught Spanish. I’ve been an administrator since the 99-00 school year and honestly didn’t think I’d be teaching Spanish again, well, ever. As these things usually go, our Spanish teacher went out on a medical leave and the principal had one heck of a time finding a certified sub to replace her. Once a certified sub was secured, we learned she couldn’t start until 10:00 every day. This is where I came in since that left first and third periods without a proper teacher. In the best interest of the students, it just made sense for me to rearrange my schedule and step in.

Doesn’t seem like the best use of our administrative staff? The need to step in and do the right thing for our students, when there was no one else, seemed more important to me than worrying about the judgmental response some would have about an assistant superintendent in the classroom for two periods per day over the course of about three weeks. Our business is educating students and sometimes that takes every member of the team working out of the normal “bracket”.

I have to say that I loved the time I spent with our students.

As a teacher, I was also reminded of how annoying it can be to have to stop and deal with a late pass or a phone call from the office–right when I’ve got things rolling and everyone on track. I kept a student from reporting to the office until the end of my class period and asked two students to wait to attend their band lessons until after I’d introduced the new material. Taking attendance at the beginning of a class period is NOT a good warm up activity, so I forgot to commit it to eSchool a couple of times. Honestly, with the interruptions that we have to instruction, we’ve got to be guarded about our class time. And someone please tell me why commiting every student’s grade to a progress report can’t be a one button click away? Typing each student’s average over again in the progress report tab of eSchool certainly seemed to be an unnecessary chore and one that allows for error when the average is one tab over and should just flow to the progress report.

Am I sounding like a teacher again? This past three weeks,  I was very much the teacher I was in the nineties, only I had some additional strategies to use that I’ve learned along the way as an administrator. The same thing that helped me succeed with students before came into play again. I showed them that I cared so much about their success that I was going to use every minute to our fullest advantage, I was going to give them my best, and I expected their best every day.

That’s honestly the secret to success as a teacher.  Show enthusiasm for the subject but more important, for the students. SEE every student. If someone starts to drift away, reign him in by saying, “You’re in the Bahamas, come back to me because I need for you to learn this!” Give enough wait time so that the same five kids don’t answer every time. Monitor. Adjust. 

 I saw it as my responsibility to plan well, to engage, to excite the students–every one of them. And on test day? I got their best because they knew it’s what I expected, what I saw in them, and what I tried to give back to them every day.

All of our district wide curriculum planning and staff development in instructional strategies doesn’t account for much if we don’t start with the premise that it’s our job as teachers to expect the best of our students, and more important, of ourselves. I’ve been hearing teachers complain that students aren’t motivated any more. That was not my experience, granted, with some really great kids in Spanish 4 & 5. But they were excellent for me, did all that I asked, and achieved success. We didn’t argue about cell phones, or missing assignments, or hoodies. We couldn’t because we were too busy getting down to the business of learning.