How Are You Doing? (This Post Is A Time Capsule)

I was going through my drafts folder last week, and found this time capsule from almost three years ago, when I was just diving into the winter of my first year of teaching. I remember it being tough, but this was super interesting to read. I thought I'd share it with you, as a view to where my head was at the time.

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I am very lucky to work where I am as a first year teacher. I am the only first year teacher in the building, most of the teachers have been there for 5+ years, and most of the teachers have been teaching for 10+ years. Which is great. Though I am teaching 2+ different classes, I am lucky that for both there is another teacher teaching that same content and grade. So not only do I have someone to work with and follow on both of those content/grade journeys, having someone to work closely with helping me to feel supported and connected to other adults in my building. Even for my section of SEI Algebra, which is a course that I was not prepared to teach, my New Teacher Developer, administrators, and other SEI teachers were also open, communicative, and collaborative with me about their work, further helping me to understand and survive. I even had a content coach from my teaching program working with me on cycles of inquiry around my practice. I am very supported.

This post, is drafted in the first week of December 2017, fall of my first year of teaching, though I imagine I won't post it until later. Earlier today, someone asked me, "How are you doing?" And I want to say, "Great," because I have all these strong collaborative relationships supporting me. And I want to say, "Fine," because I'm still pretty stressed about everything on any given day. And I want to say, "I'm not doing great," because I'm teaching two different classes that I don't understand, I'm teaching classes that are twice as big as any that I've ever had, I'm teaching classes to students with whom I do not share a language and who I have been unable to connect with all year long.

On one hand, I want to say, "I'm a first year teacher, everything sucks," but that doesn't do anything besides normalize the idea that it's okay when things suck. And I suppose, it's alright to normalize the feeling that it's okay for things to suck, because I would feel awful if everyone else was walking around claiming that everything was great all the time. But also, we never want to just say, "things suck," without actually connecting it to things that we are doing and things that are happening to us. Because then, saying that things suck only sends the message that things suck. It doesn't create an action plan. What sucks? Why? What can you do about it?

But it is December of my first year of teaching, and everything sucks, and I have literally zero headspace, time, or life-force to dedicate to understanding why everything sucks. The number of emails I would have to send, people I would have to talk to, things that I would have to do, surveys I need to fill out, bills I need to pay, letters I need to write is so overwhelming that all I can do is just try and work my way through it all and just drop as few things as possible.

And on one hand I want to talk to someone about this all so that I can connect with someone and feel validated in my experience. Which might help? But then what are they going to say? "Yeah, it sucks. You just have to survive." Now I feel hopeless. "Here, you should try this..." Great--one more thing I have to do. "Just do less." So now I am stuck teaching classes that I haven't contributed to, and so do not understand. Or I haven't called this kid's parents, and they are drifting away from my class. Or I now have not talked to my administrators about this problem, and it will continue to get worse, or when it comes up in a meeting I will appear to have not done my due diligence and so no action will be taken, or worse, I will be disenfranchised from participating in, or advocating for, action.

It's all just so much, and so much of it is so hard. I'm just not sure what I need.

Student Perception Surveys

Have you ever watched video of yourself teaching? It's painful. Even on days where everything's goes well, it's a pretty humbling experience. You watch yourself miss opportunities, spend too much/little time on things, and as clear as you think you're being when you give directions, it's incredible how easy it is to be super confusing. Even hearing a recording of your own voice is the worst thing. And this is the person in front of your students every day!

In the name of reflection, growth, and professional development, understanding how your students perceive you as their teacher and leader is important. Trying to see yourself the way that your students see you, is a humbling experience, and it forces you to reflect and be constructively critical of yourself and your practice. One way that I try to do this in my practice is by giving Student Perception Surveys.

What Are Student Perception Surveys
As a graduate student, we were asked to give a student perception survey. The survey was designed by Tripod Education Partners, and was intended collect data on how students perceived their teacher, and how the teacher/class made them feel. Some example questions are:

• My classmates behave the way my teacher wants them to.
• This class does not keep my attention--I get bored.
• My teacher takes the time to summarize what we learn each day.
• In this class, we learn a lot almost every day.
• My teacher seems to know if something is bothering me.

Students then respond on a scale from "totally untrue" to "totally true." The survey has some great design features, and some mediocre ones as well, which is what you'd expect from a private education business thing. But the spirit behind the survey is what matters. Just like you would collect data on which of your students can identify the roots of a polynomial, and adjust your practice to suit, you can collect data on how you make your students feel--because it matters.

I'm not making a pitch for this particular Tripod Survey they made us give. Tripod doesn't know I'm writing this post about their survey (I hope they don't mind), and I won't post my survey or results because it's technically a private product that someone has to pay for. IDK, maybe you can convince your admin/district to sponsor your school or district. Or you can make your own, or maybe find a free one online. If you do, let me know because I'd love to see what kind of items you put on your survey.

Example of How It Can Help--A Personal Case Study
Last year, I taught two sections of Integrated Math 1 for 9th graders, and two sections of a Discrete Math elective for juniors. As I was looking at the data after the first survey, I was particularly surprised by student responses to the statement: "My teacher seems to know if something is bothering me." Fewer than 50% of students agreed with this statement. I was discouraged by this response, because I try to put a lot of work and thought into making sure that my students feel emotionally attended to, and it was something I thought I did well. After seeing this data, however, I tried to incorporate more check-in questions on my Do Nows asking students how they're doing.

I also modified one of my quick check-in routines that I use. At some point during a class, when I'm scanning the room, or students are taking a quiz, or working independently, any time I see a student who has their head down (in a "sad" way), or who looks worried about something, or if they're even just "spacing out," I try to check in with them non-verbally. I do this by making eye contact with them, and then giving them a thumbs up, sideways, and down, non-verbally asking them how they're doing. This gives them a chance to simply respond with the appropriate thumbs-up/sideways/down.

Before, I considered the check-in itself to be the primary means of attending to the student. Letting them know that I see them, and want to see if they're okay, especially if it looks like they're struggling. In an effort to be more attentive to students who might be struggling, now if a student gives me anything but a thumbs-up in return, I'll go kneel next to them and check in with them privately, asking what's up and if there's anything I can do to help.

After these two modifications, I saw a moderate improvement in teacher-favorable responses, up from 49% to 55%. This is still much lower than I was hoping for, and this area continued to be a weakness for me after the third administration of the survey. Nevertheless, in general, the survey directed me towards a blind-spot I had, which I appreciated, even as it continued to challenge me.

Logistics
Things I Have Done In The Past

• Give the survey multiple times over the course of the year. I typically give the survey three times, once each in November, February, and May. This give students some time at the beginning of the year to cultivate some feelings about me, and gives me some time after each survey to reflect and try to improve things.
• Divorce the survey from big tests/grades. It's super tempting to give the survey after a big test, or at the end of each quarter. But this might bias the data by drawing a connection between how some test just went, or what letter you sent home on a report card. And conversely, it also increases the temptation for teachers to tweak grades or routines in an effort to inflate their own survey results.
• Make it a normal day. Like I mentioned above, if you want the survey to be an accurate and honest assessment, you don't want to make a big speech beforehand, or do it the day after a field trip, or some other random day.
• Make sure students know the responses are anonymous. Data could be biased in either direction if students thought you could see who responded what. Also, especially if you have smaller groups of students, don't play the game where you look at the data and try to guess whose responses were whose.
• Offer the survey in native languages. My first year teaching, I had a section where almost the entire class had moved to the country in the past year. I wanted to assess their perceptions of me, not their language. So I made translations of the survey. Yes, this might have introduced new biases due to imperfect translations, but I figured it was worth it.

Things I Haven't Done (But Want To This Year)

• Give the survey with a team of teachers. Find a team of like-minded colleagues in your building, and form a working group. You can all give the survey to your students around the same time. Then you can reflect on the data and experience together. You don't have to share all your data with each other--it is pretty sensitive and personal data. But you can if you feel comfortable--it's an intense exercise in professional vulnerability. Especially if the results hit a sensitive nerve, like mine did in the personal case study I gave above. You can use the data as a starting point for discussing problems of practice, or brainstorming ways to respond to the data. You can also help each other stay accountable to the efforts you make to respond to the data.
• Share some of the results with the students. It would probably be overwhelming to share all of the data with your students, but maybe you can share an interesting or challenging cluster of data, and ask students what they think. If you're feeling really stuck on how to respond, this can help you to brainstorm ideas. It also messages to the students that you are actually attending to the data, and care about what they have to say. If you do this, make sure it comes from a position of you accepting responsibility for this, and seeking their support and input. It must not be about you blaming them or trying to justify why their responses were not favorable to you.

Using This Survey in Teacher Evaluations
I am one of the advisors for my school's student government. Every year, students share that they are frustrated that they have little to no input on teacher evaluations. They are certainly the people most proximal and most affected by the quality of the teacher. And they often cite the fact that student evaluations are common at the college level. I always see their point, and every year respond with how complicated and litigious the teacher evaluation process is. So from an administrative perspective, making student perception surveys a mandatory part of the teacher evaluation process is basically impossible, and definitely problematic.

Regardless, I voluntarily share my survey data, and my reflections on it, with my administrator as a part of my annual professional evaluation. It makes for a great artifact, I gotta say. But, I also trust my administrator to look at the data holistically, in context, and with an eye for me trying to be reflective. I trust that my administrator will not use the data to penalize me for the areas in which I need to grow. I know that not all teachers are privileged to have this kind of evaluator. Share the data with those who you feel safe doing so.

It would be inappropriate for an administrator to evaluate a teacher, or for teachers to evaluate each other, based solely on the raw data from this kind of survey. All this data exists in a context from which it can/should not be extricated. As such, it would also be inappropriate to use this data to compare teachers with each other, even those with the same students. The degree to which an administrator attempts to do this, is the degree to which they incentivize a teacher to game the survey, and is the same degree to which they erase the value of the survey as a professional exercise.

Indeed, it is very common for teachers to avoid these kinds of surveys for evaluative purposes, because they are concerned that the surveys end up as more of a "popularity" or "likability" assessment, which are not necessarily meaningful assessments of the quality of a teacher. It is impossible to avoid this bias, true. Nevertheless, I claim that students are much better at divorcing their student experience from their personal experience than we give them credit for. So we can feel comfortable giving this kind of data some real professional credence.

Regardless, and this is more of a personal opinion that not all teachers have to hold, I DO think that it is important for teachers to have a modicum of accessibility, likability, and collegiality. Despite the popular belief that students like "easy" teachers, I do think that students also find it easy to "like" the teacher that teaches them respectfully and well. Kids WANT to learn. Kids WANT to work hard. And kinds appreciate teachers who help them to do that.

Long story short, yes, a student perception survey will be biased in some way by whether or not students "like" you. No, that does not invalidate the professional utility of the data. Yes, it does complicate it. And if you want to invite this data into your professional evaluation, that's your professional prerogative to do so, recognizing that the evaluative focus should be on your reflection on the data, and your response to it, instead of raw performance.


If you end up putting together a working group at your school to develop or use some kind of student perception survey, let me know! I'd love to hear how it goes, what your assessment looks like, and how you or your team reflect on, and respond to the data.

UPDATE (6/9/2020): I actually ended up forming a teacher working group based on these surveys. It was a ton of fun. Maybe one day I'll be able to reflect on our work, archiving it for posterity and the #MTBoS. If you're thinking of doing this and interested in accessing the experience of someone who has done it before, DM me or tweet at me @bearstmichael. I'd love to talk about it!

The 1st Year Teacher Advice I Received

I just completed my first year of teaching. It was intense. This post is for the first-year teacher. I want to share with you all the most important pieces of advice I got going into my first year, both as a way of sharing them, but also as a way of reflecting on their own importance in my practice.

• "Everything is going to be fine." -Sarah Langer, math coach, right before my final teaching assessment in grad school
• This was a proficiency-based assessment. You teach your lesson, get feedback, and then if you don't demonstrate proficiency on all the rubric items, you have to do it again, this time focusing on all the rubric items you didn't get the first time. Many people needed 2-3 attempts. In an attempt to assuage my anxieties about the assessment, Sarah reassured me: "It's going to be fine. You'll do it, and maybe you won't pass everything. But it'll be fine. And you'll get to try again, and eventually you'll get it. But everything is going to be fine." (Side note, this was one of the many experiences I've had as a teacher/student that have led be to believe strongly in proficiency-based grading). Sarah was so calm, and it calmed me. And her words inspired a confidence in me--she knows what she's doing, I trust her, and if she says it's going to be fine, then it must be fine! In that quick moment, Sarah instilled in me the kind of unshakeable certainty that things will, eventually, be fine, and this has been a steady compass throughout a tumultuous first year.
• "Get to good enough." - Julie Sloan (@julie63328227), Director of the BTR Early Career Teaching Network.
• During my student teaching year I had two sections of Algebra II--one prep. Additionally, I had already accepted the idea that I am committing pretty much every waking minute of residency year to my teaching. Given that context, I would find myself staying up late, spending pretty much every waking minute building, tweaking, and planning for the lesson the next day. Work expanded to fill available time (Parkinson's Law), and did so with diminishing returns. I felt these diminishing returns and was frustrated by them. I tried to express myself using math, and  created a graph to share with my coach, in order to communicate what I felt to be the quality of my work over time (image below, link to calculator here). I felt the most frustrated in that "flat zone" between 3-6 hours. These are the "beating my head against the wall" hours that usually add little to the quality of the lesson.

• This past year, I was teaching two sections each of Algebra I and Geometry, with one of them a Sheltered English Immersion class of first and second year language learners, for a total of ~2.75 preps. Out of necessity, I couldn't spend 6 hours a night lesson planning for one lesson. Granted, I usually ended up spending 1-2 hours for each prep, which added up to not much less than 6 hours, but I was getting better at finding that inflection point in my planning time, when the returns started to diminish. Importantly, I also got better at letting go once I got there. This is where the advice, "Get to good enough," really helped me. Julie's simple clear advice helped me to identify and respect my own "good enough for now" (which I guess is somewhere around 2, on the "Quality of lesson" axis, lol). Which brings me to my second piece of advice...
• "You are enough." (Another one from Julie Sloan, and a mantra of the ECTN)
• Teaching is really hard. No matter how you do it, especially if you are an early career teacher, managing and understanding ~100 other children every day is nothing short of demanding. It is the ultimate "high ceiling" task--you can always get better, you can always do more, you can always find somewhere else you can push barriers and grow. I think that is one of the things that we love about our profession--I know I do. There's something reassuring about knowing that 30+ year teachers are still pushing, advancing, and puzzling their way through things every day (albeit with much more skill, clarity, and understanding). It's a "glass is 10% full" kind of thing. Yes, it's equivalent to say 90% empty, but that is a taxing perspective! It requires a certain kind of calmness to recognize and observe the things you can't yet do, or won't do out of self-preservation. I could have spent more hours getting my lessons to a "3," but not all year long, and certainly not all throughout my (hopefully long) career as a professional--it would be unsustainable.
• It's not that my students didn't deserve better than a "2." Would it have been better if all of my lessons were better planned and executed? Yes. Would they have learned more and become stronger mathematicians? Probably, yes. But we have to start somewhere--and the bottom is a very good place to start. I started out at 0/10 on the Teacher Quality Scale and if I want to get to 10/10, by the Intermediate Value Theorem, I have to work my way through the levels at some point or another. For a while I am going to be a 1/10, then I am going to be a 2/10, and so on. (This is of course assuming that teacher development is a continuous function, which I believe it is.) And wherever you are in your development, you need to be comfortable and confident that no matter where you are--you are worthy, and your work is worthy. We have to be patient with our own development. You are, essentially, an investment--you need time and input for optimal returns.
• "You are an investment." - Not totally sure where this came from. Thank you to whoever shared it!
• The education of teachers incurs costs. The most obvious cost is the one taken on by students when developing teachers do their student teaching. Any time a less experienced teacher is leading the class, it probably won't go as well as if a more experienced teacher was leading. If that wasn't true, then we wouldn't value teacher experience. The other big cost is incurred by the mentor teacher, who has to take huge amounts of time and energy away from teaching (already very demanding) and instead guide someone else. That's not to say there aren't benefits for the students and other adults, but in that first year, the costs are many. And we certainly can't send out teachers without this kind of mentoring and front-of-class experience. But as the process of educating teachers goes on through the years, eventually you start to earn back some of those costs. All the best teachers today started somewhere low, and are now teaching students a lot, leading within their schools, and advancing the profession as a whole. 
• The time where you will need to remind yourself of this the most is probably in team meetings. The facilitator will be at the front of the room, and they'll reference Blooms, or LAB Clusters, or some school-specific routine that everyone else has been doing for years, and you'll have no idea what they are talking about. Maybe you don't want to ask, because it seems like everyone else already knows. But they've been doing this longer than you! And if you don't ask, you'll never know! And it's probably important stuff, or it wouldn't have come up. You are a professional and you deserve to know things. And the other teachers understand. My mentor teacher and I would always have some kind of notepad at meetings where I would scrawl quick notes and questions mid-meeting, and he would answer back. I have found that the other teachers in buildings, even the ones that don't get paid to mentor and coach me, are pretty patient with first year teachers and willing to teach. I mean...teaching is LITERALLY their profession--they're used to it! Every time the people around you answer your questions they are investing in you. They are contributing to your development because they believe in you! They know that you are going to pay it forward to hundreds of children over the years. You are worthy of investment!
• "Do less [your first year]." - Sarah Langer
• Maybe you have been a go-getter all throughout college and grad school. Maybe you are changing careers and were a shark in your previous job. Awesome, that's going to be a great instinct that will push you to develop and push yourself throughout your whole life...starting after Year 1. I felt pretty well prepared by my teacher education program (BTR), but I was still pretty surprised and consumed by all the big teaching things (planning, prepping, teaching, grading, etc.) and all the little teaching things (IEP meetings, calling home, PD, helping that one kid study for that one test, etc.). But taking on a regular teaching load, without the embellishments, is certain to give you more than enough to work on. I always thought of it like carrying a really big load of laundry to the laundry room. It's going to be too much, slow-moving, you're going to drop a sock here or there, and when you bend down to pick it up you'll drop another sock--or even two. The last thing you need is to get weighed down by more extracurriculars. There is one, incredibly important exception, however...
• "Going out for drinks with colleagues is important." Joey Kelly (@joeykelly89), my mentor teacher
• I'm pretty sure he was joking then, but I definitely agree with the principle he was trying to communicate. As a resident, we were out of the building on Fridays for our own classes. This brought us all together, and made it easy for us to sit down afterwards, have some delicious adult beverages*, and decompress and vent with each other. There was a bar down the street from where we took classes that made an important "second space." Importantly this second space was beyond the jurisdiction or purview of admin and students. This second space was a safe space for us to share our frustrations, needs, and joys, many of which are perhaps unprofessional but fundamentally human. In this space, we bonded, came to understand each other and connect with one another. The sense of community and belonging that we developed here was instrumental to our mental health and well-being, and helped us through a decidedly difficult residency year.
• Participating in a second space with your colleagues is a powerful way of creating community with your fellow teachers, in a way that "just teaching with them" doesn't quite do. Personally, it wasn't until spring of this first year that I started to go out for Friday drinks with my colleagues. As soon as I started to participate, I wished that I had done so from the very beginning. Seeing your colleagues in a second space will help you to understand the human beneath the professional. This is not only great for building professional trust and understanding, but also just general human community. Teaching can be pretty isolating--you could very well go an entire day without seeing another adult. It's important to find and connect with the adults in your building. And drinks on a Friday afternoon are great for that.
• Rest of the quote: "Going out for drinks with colleagues is important. It should probably be an item on the BTR Essentials of Teaching rubric, that you have to pass in order to graduate--'Can have a beer with a colleague without making an ass of yourself.'"

Being a first year teacher is difficult. It will be challenging, and confusing, and definitely interesting. I am excited that you are joining us and can't wait to hear about your experiences!

Thanks,

Bear St. Michael

*Your second space doesn't have to be a bar, but ours happens to be, likely due to the great American traditions of capitalism and alcoholism.

Year 1 (almost) in the Books--Hello #MTBoS!

My name is Bear St. Michael, and I am less than one week away from completing my first year as a teacher. I have snooped through the MTBoS for the last couple years and have tweeted here and there (@bearstmichael). I think I am finally ready to jump out there and try blogging as well.

WHY BLOG?
I have found writing to be a helpful means of reflection, like a journal. With this blog I hope to share with you my conjectures, thoughts, and experiences as a teacher. By engaging with other teachers on this platform, my goal is to reflect on specific lessons, routines, math topics, educational research, and whatever else comes up in this whirlwind of a profession. Right now, I have ~30 post outlines in my drafts folder, because I have been using it as a running journal of sorts, to help me keep track of the myriad of interesting things that have come up in this first year. A summer project of mine is to work my way through the drafts, and hopefully reflect on my year as a whole. So expect a bunch of random blog posts and I work my way through the drafts folder.

WHO AM I?
I am 24.955 years old, and I just completed my first year of teaching at a public high school in Boston. I taught Geometry, Algebra 1, and Algebra 1 for English Language Learners, all for the first time. Before that I was in the Boston Teacher Residency, teaching Algebra II, and helping out in a Precalculus and Discrete Math class. Before BTR I was in college, studying math, urban education, and Italian language. Since graduating, I have used two of those three topics a lot in my profession.

I have been extremely privileged in the "teacher family" that has helped to raise and develop me. My mentor teacher last year was an MTBoS stalwart Joey Kelly, of Play With Your Math fame (@joeykelly89 and blog). My two closest colleagues at school this year were Nicole Hansen (@nleehansen and blog) and Grace Evans (@grace_h_evans). Working so closely with these experienced teachers has taught me so much. I do believe that professional collaboration is really difficult, but when it is with such thoughtful and hard-working teachers as these, people become better teachers...and better people! I know that I have.

DISCLAIMER
So often we tell our students to take risks, and be open to making mistakes, because in doing so they will learn the most. I tell that to students because I believe that it is true, generally. I think that the same thing should be true for teachers and their own development. So I will try to be as open and honest as possible in my reflections here. Many of my ideas and questions will come from the fact that I still (and always will) have so much to learn, and if I don't ask any questions, there's no hope that I'll learn very much at all! I will definitely make mistakes, and possibly (hopefully?) change opinions as time goes on. I ask only for your patience and honesty as I work through them here.