Tribute to MY class of 2025

"In life, you don't have to have all the right answers if you are asking the right questions." 
- Salutatorian Katherine McKinley May 23, 2025

The class of 2025 is here, in their regalia, ready to head out into the world.  I know some schools still have a few weeks left, but Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of graduation season.  While they look forward, I can't help but look back.  As an 8th grade science teacher, I taught 54 of this year's graduating seniors during the hybrid year.  There is a bond that can only be created by that kind of stress.  Some were at home while others were in the room with me, although we were standing as far apart as a classroom space would allow, we were in it together. Masked and separated by plexiglass, but with a common goal and a common spirit. They had been home since March, so they were excited to see each other again and a little more nervous about what the year might look like than normal.  But my biggest memory of them was how game they were.  Because we were doing EVERYTHING in new ways, the most common words I said in the first month of the 2020-2021 school year were, "We're going to try it this way.  If it works, we'll keep doing it. If not, we'll try something else."  And they rolled with it, adapting like champs.  At the end of the year, just before they walked out the door, I said, "This year has been hard, but I want to thank you for not using the power you have to make it harder.  You guys made it fun."

While all 54 of the ones I taught are special, there are a few that stand out in my memory for different reasons that year, and I want to mention a few.

Collin - Collin is a hard worker, but he is also a goofball - a teacher's favorite combination.  Because his elderly grandmother was living with them, he spent the first six weeks of the school year joining my class from his bedroom.  At that time, he was the only one virtual in that particular period, so I could see him full screen.  Every time I looked at the screen, he was wearing a different hat.  He switched from sombrero to cowboy hat to propeller beanie as though it were totally normal.  At one point, I looked up to see that he had a yellow duck perched on top of his head.  Since I was the only one who could see him, this wasn't a show he was putting on for friends or an attempt to be disruptive.  It was purely for my entertainment and his.  He says he doesn't remember this, but I do. In a very stressful time, it was a lovely moment of joy.

Marley -  I heard so much during the pandemic about how masks prevented people from telling if you were smiling.  Marley proved this not to be true.  I'll set aside the fact that anyone who smiles only with their mouths is a psychopath (Try it; it's pretty much impossible). Being back in person outweighed any effect not seeing the lower part of the face had.  Kids communicate a lot of information in a number of subtle ways, and that had been lost during the virtual spring.  Online, I wasn't getting much nonverbal communication at all; in person, I was seeing body language and hearing sounds of confusion or affirmation.  Marley, in particular, smiled with every part of her being.  Her eyes sparkle; her voice is bright and genuine; her body language is open.  She gave this joy to everyone during the pandemic, and she has continued to do so in the four years since.  

Emily - Emily is an artist, and that's how she processes the world around her.  She draws pictures -  pictures of her pets, pictures of her thoughts, pictures of whatever she's looking at - she fills her sketchbook with lots and lots of pictures.  During the stress of the pandemic, she became a giver of  pictures.  I had a stuffed toy lemur named Gus in my classroom, and she drew a picture of him during class one day to gave to me after class.  One morning, as she was coming into the building, she asked me what my favorite animal was.  When she came to class that afternoon, she gave me a drawing of a panda sleeping on a tree branch.  It was stress relief for us both, and I still have those drawings at home.

Haolin - If you are a person who nods along during a presentation, class, or sermon, God bless you.  When presenting, it can be hard to know whether what I am saying is landing with listeners, and getting that bit of attentive feedback is useful.  Haolin is the world champion of nodding along.  He sat in the back of my classroom, in my right peripheral vision, nodding and saying, "Yeah, yeah.  Mmm hmm."  That little bit of affirmation was so encouraging, and while I have thanked him for it, I don't think he'll ever understand its true value for me.

Kate - The quote at the top of this post from Kate's salutatory address stood out because of what Kate's questions meant to me during the hybrid year.  She was in my 6th period class.  By that point in each day, teachers were exhausted - not just tired, but depleted of energy.  Yet, Kate continued to be curious.  She asked interesting questions.  She truly wanted to learn more about whatever topic we were covering and had questions about how it applied to things she saw in life. Each day, she reminded me that I was still teaching - not just surviving the year (or the day) but actually teaching students who wanted to learn.  I could never thank her enough for that, and I hope she continues to view learning that way throughout her life.

Class of 2025, I can only imagine what it would have been like if I had been teaching a different set of 8th graders during the most difficult year of all of our lives.  As hard as it was, your spirit made it worth every exhausting minute.  

Thank you.

Wait Time - The Secret Sauce of Thinking

My first observation as a teacher was done by my university advisor.  She had a lot of good thoughts and constructive criticism, but the best was about wait time.  Professor Klehm said, "You are not waiting long enough after you ask a question.  Count to three before you start looking for hands." 

Observers and feedback givers, take note.  This is the kind of effective, practical, simple, and usable advice every first year teacher needs.  And the longer I taught, the more I recognized how right she was.  In fact, she probably should have told me to count to a higher number.  

Increasing wait time would improve all of our classrooms because wait time is think time.  

Imagine. You are sitting in a class or a meeting.  The leader asks a question.  Your ears hear it, but it takes a moment for it to be really heard by your brain.  Then, unless it is a question you get asked frequently and have a memorized response for, it takes a little time to consider what the answer might be.  How long do you think that process might take?  What if the meeting leader expected an answer from you in less than a second?  Or less than half of a second?  Stressful, right!?!

Well, here's the bad news.  

In data compiled from thousands of teacher observations, the average wait time between a K-12 teacher asking a question and then expecting students to answer, has been calculated to be 0.7s.  If that's the average, that means some teachers are waiting for less than half a second before expecting kids to have an answer.  Some were as low as 0.2 seconds!  Just for context, it took 0.155s for Usain Bolt to get out of the blocks after the starting gun was fired at the Rio Olympics.  So, some teachers are expecting Olympic sprinter thinking from middle schoolers.  

Then, they call on the first student to raise their hand, and thinking stops for the rest of the class.  The gap just keeps getting wider as the fastest thinker is the only one engaging in retrieval practice and those who need it most don't get the time to do it.

Why is this happening?  

Well, for one thing, many education preparation programs don't cover this type of practical classroom technique stuff.  There is a lot of high level philosophy talk about "your why." That's important, don't get me wrong, but how much time does it take you to find it?  There's a lot of Piaget and Maslow.  I guess, if that's your thing, there's nothing wrong with learning it, but I've never thought about either of those mend during an actual teaching day.  There's a lot of talk about "the direction education is heading" even though it never is because it keeps changing direction.  The stuff you need in the daily practice of education is given short time, if any at all.  I moved into a new school building with six science teachers, and not one of us had been taught how to store chemicals safely in the stock room, so you can be certain a small but practical and impactful detail, like wait time, wasn't ever mentioned.  So, teachers don't know.  That is one reason.

Another reason is a thing your brain does, known as "action bias."  If there is activity, your brain reasons that you must be making progress.  You have fallen victim to this if you have ever been sitting at a lengthy red light and made the decision to turn and take a much longer route to your destination rather than sit there for another 30 seconds.  Activity feels more productive, so when we are calling on students quickly, it feels like our classroom is more productive.

The "curse of expertise" may play a role here as well.  Since I know the material well, I could answer this question very quickly, so I assume my students can as well.  It's easy to forget that novices think differently than experts.  It will, of course, take more time for them to even understand the question than it will for a group of experts, much less the amount of time it takes to develop an answer.  That's at play with a lot of recent graduates (you just took a physics course way harder than the one you are teaching) and experienced teachers (your content is second nature to you at this point).  

For me, personally, it was discomfort with silence.  Most of us find more than a couple of seconds of silence awkward, especially when there are people looking at us.  So teachers tend to fill the silence with chatter.  Even when I was getting better with waiting for the kids answers, I was saying more stuff and filling their working memories.  I started keeping a water bottle on the cart next to me so I could take a drink while I was waiting for them to think because it was the only way to shut myself up.  Eventually, I learned to embrace the awkwardness, even taking pride in the fact that I could endure it longer than they could until someone finally answered.

The good news

That was the bad news.  The good news is that this extraordinarily easy to fix.  You literally just wait longer.  The advice given to me to count to three inside my head was good.  I would make it five, though, because most of us count faster than we think we do.  Grab a sip of water; tap five times on your leg, scan the room, whatever you need to do.  Let your students know that you aren't going to call on someone just because they are the first person to raise their hand and that you want them all to have a chance to process their thoughts; they get it and the slower processors appreciate it. 

What time is right?

What is the right amount of wait time?  There's not a clear answer on that.  It largely depends on the complexity of the question and the exposure your students have already had with the content.  If you have been sprinkling retrieval practice questions through out the chapter, and you are asking relatively simple questions on the day before the test, you will not need to wait as long as you would if you are asking a complex question on a new topic.  

What has been observed by researchers, if you want some guidance, is that in classrooms where 3-5 seconds wait time is practiced, there are more correct responses and more variety of responses.  The variety part interests me because some of those answers will be wrong (others will be a variation of right if the question is open), but they are answer that wouldn't even have been proposed with less than three seconds of wait time.  You can't fix misconceptions you don't know they have, so getting a wrong answer from a student is useful to you as a teacher because you have insight into their thinking. 

I don't want you to misread this as an endorsement of a glacial classroom pace. Brisk pacing is a good thing.  Too much idle time is how teachers lose control of their classrooms.  I am only address the time between questions and responses here, not the rest of your lesson.

I know we are at the end of the year here. You may only have a few days or a couple of weeks left, so you might just experiment with this while reviewing for exams.  But keep it in mind when the school year starts next year.  While you are going over your classroom procedures, explain that you value their thinking time and then practice waiting.  The benefits outweigh the awekwardness.

Teacher Appreciation Week

It has been almost one year since I stepped out of full time classroom teaching.  That's a hard thought for me because there have been times in my life when I thought of teacher as my identity (thankfully, God knocked that out of me about ten years ago, or I couldn't do what I'm doing now). But I still interact with my teachers as I sub and speak at education conference, not to mention most of my friends are teachers.  

So, this week, I want to give a big shout out to the people who persevere, pouring their hearts, minds, and energy into the work of training up the next generation.  Here goes:

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Teachers, your task is difficult.  It may, in fact, be impossible.  You walk into a classroom every day, expected to equip, challenge, and inspire every student, regardless of background, home support, past educational experience, or interest level in your subject.  You may or may not have the support of your administration when it comes to classroom disruptions.  You likely don’t have the budget you need to properly carry out the things you would like to do, so you employ your creative skills to work around lack of supplies. As with all of the other issues in our society, education has become polarized along political lines, and you are in the middle, just trying to do your job. 

And you do it. You do it well. You do it because you know kids need you to do it.

Every day, you equip your students with the information they need to be good decision-makers.  This

is no small task, especially in an ever changing technological, political, and social landscape.

You fight the people who say they never use algebra because you know that they use the thought

processes of algebra daily. You overcome the fact that someone's mom didn't like the Scarlet Letter

or thinks teaching poetry is dumb because you know that the analytical skills that accompany analysis

of complex texts are important for the developing mind. You insist on the proper ending to chemical

formulas because getting it right can literally be the difference between life and death. You make them

memorize even though it isn't fun because you know the act of memorizing strengthens their brains,

no matter what some TikTok influencer says.  The mere act of equipping them is Herculean, and

it is the most basic level of your job.  

American teachers, you are also meant to challenge students at all levels of the ability spectrum (I

understand this might be different in other places).  In the same classroom, you have a child with

profound learning disabilities and those with intelligence higher than your own and the full spectrum

of academic levels in between.  You have students who may have had a bad experience with science

or math in the past and enter your classroom skittish while others suggest lab experiments to you

because they spend their free time reading about them online.  You know differentiation isn't really

possible, but you try. You ask ALL of them to perform better than they believe they are able to at things

they don’t think they are good at.  You are supposed to be fun and joyful and engaging while you

demand more from a child than the child (and sometimes their parents) think you should be asking for

because you know meeting challenges is good for the soul.

The best of you inspire, asking your students to look beyond the grade, the curriculum, and the tests to

see what they can do with their education. You have a student who “doesn’t like art” on the first day

they enter your classroom who will tell stories someday about the teacher who made them care about

the what the Dada movement was trying to accomplish or have an emotional reaction in a museum. 

Some may go into medicine because you taught them anatomy, but most will simply be enriched by

having a better understanding of their own body.  You build up students into people with a broader

view of the world than they would have if you hadn’t been their teacher. 

And that is just the academic part of your job; I have not included all of the social counseling, emotional

baggage, and safety concerns you keep in balance.  You know which students shouldn’t be put in a group

together and who needs a friend to sit with at lunch.  You are the frontline of reporting abuse and the

shoulder to cry on for many students and colleagues.  You make hundreds of decisions per day, often

without time to reflect on them thoroughly. 

Now, you know why you are so tired on Friday afternoons.

This teacher appreciation week, I hope you got some of the love an gratitude you deserve.

Steplab Instructional Coaching Intensive - Raw Notes

  These will be raw notes taken in real time and undergoing very little editing.  They will be words from the speaker blended with my own thoughts as I process what is being said.  While I will try to note the difference, I can't promise that will always happen.  Don't hold a speaker responsible for anything I put here.  

Steplab is an international platform for professional development.  This is the first intensive in the United States.  

The goal for today is for every participant to leave more competent, confident, and motivated to be a high quality instructional coach.

Giving other adults feedback is awkward and must be learned.  

What is instructional coaching?  A cycle of observation and feedback

How does one start?

Connect and clarify conversation - Helps to build the coaching relationship and clarify the process, a foundation need to help the coached person feel comfortable and open.  Without a good foundation, things are unstable.  

• Connect:  Ask some questions that get deeper than the surface level (motivations, goals, strengths, hopes for the classroom).
• Clarify:  Explain the rationale and process, deal with questions and concerns of the coached individual (observations, scripting, rehearsals, video, feedback)
• Close: Model vulnerability as you talk through the relationship with the coached.  "We are going to figure some things out together.  I'm going to learn from you."

Science of Instructional coaching

Typical "after school PD" runs a wide spectrum of effectiveness.  Rarely, it might bring about immediate and sustained transformation. Often, it is interesting but doesn't effective immediate change.  Most of the time, teachers are thinking about what else they could be doing with that time.

There is no correlation between years on the job and expertise, but there is correlation between effective professional development over time and expertise.

People who are satisfied with their jobs feel three things on a regular basis - Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose. - Drive by Daniel Pink. Helping teachers learn how to do their jobs better will build all three of these.  

PD is often ineffective because:  Teaching is one of the most cognitively demanding jobs that exists, so trying to keep in mind something you want to improve on while doing it is insane.  We develop habits quickly as mental shortcuts, so breaking them is hard.  Whole group sessions have statistically insignificant impact.  Quality instructional coaching shows 2 months gain per year for the students of the teacher who was coached.  (A bad instructional coach is no better than a bad whole group PD.)

Effective PD must 

• Build knowledge (manage cognitive load, revisit prior learning)
• Motivate  staff (setting goals, info from credible source, provide affirmation and reinforcement)
• Develop teaching techniques (instruction social support, modeling, feedback, rehearsal)
• Embed practice (provide prompts and cues, action plans, encouragement and self monitoring, context specific repetition)

If any are missing, it will fall flat.

Three models of coaching were shown and critiqued.  

1.  Gather Evidence:  In the Gathering Evidence phase, you cannot say things like "you gave too many examples."  Give facts about what you observed and lead them to the conclusion themselves.  Notes should be what the teacher and the students are saying, doing, writing, or displaying (time stamps and head counts can be helpful).  Take pictures.

How do you know if a coachee is read to move on from a step?

The right effect is achieved 

• at the right moment for the right reason 
• with the criteria met 
• and has become habitual (at least partly)

If a coachee hasn't achieved their step:

• acknowledge progress and any parts of the criteria that were completed.
• highlight that "students need time to become accustomed to the routine.
• include a consolidating step as a sub-goal

2. Review Progress: Praise and Prompt:

• Praise needs to be specific to the thing they are working on, not generalized to the whole lesson.
• Prompt them to reflect on what success looks like.  It should be a moment of celebration.  Name what part was successful and say, "What do you think the impact was?"
• Quality praise is precise (praise one thing with evidence), linked to the prior step, and includes a prompt to reflect on their success (helps to build insight and form habits)

3. Diagnose

• Always keep the goal in mind and focus the coaching on that thing.  The step is secondary to the goal.
• Form multiple hypotheses about the learning problem.  Don't just coach your favorite technique.
• Search for pivotal evidence that will support your hypothesis and allow coachee to find the conclusion.
• Identify a teach goal to address one problem and suggest a step to help achieve the teach goal.
• Tackle in small steps.
• Pull it all together.

4. Agree on Step - This is the easiest step to do wrong.  And it is the part where the coached individual is most likely to get defensive.

• Decide together - Don't say, "the step I have chosen for you is . . ."  
  
• Ask questions like, "How successful do you think this was?"
• Offer evidence (picture of student behavior or work) if you need to.
• If the teacher is already self-aware, you may not need to provide more.  You can just agree with them.  It is only if the teacher needs leading that you need to give more.  Once agreement has been reached, move on; don't beat a dead horse.

Awareness (Tell me about... I noticed... ) + Agreed Insights (What impact did...?) + Step Plan ( How could we...?) = Successful Change

5.  Modeling - Showing the coachee an exemplar on either video or live yourself will help them to understand what you mean more than just explaining it to them will.

Four steps to effective modeling

Script it ahead of time.

Check against criteria - Are you helping them to implement the step without adding other things in?

Representation - Show a video or model it yourself.

Deconstruction - Explain what it means as you go.  Did you notice when she did this?  What impact did that have?  What did you notice?  Why do you think that happened?

6.  Planning and Rehearsal - Teaching looks easy, but it is so complex that some aspects need to be rehearsed in the same way all performance based professions rehearse.  It helps the teacher establish habits in cognitively non-demanding spaces before going into the messy world of the classroom.  This helps reduce demands on working memory.

• How can you implement this change into an upcoming lesson?
• Script it first.  What do you need to say and do?
• Let's improve the script.  It may take a few iterations to match the success criteria.
• Conduct multiple rounds of rehearsal.
• Feedback between rounds