Better Teaching: Only Stuff That Works

[00:00:00] Welcome to Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, a podcast for teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, and anyone else who supports teachers in the classroom. This show is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network shows that help you go beyond education. Find all our shows@bepodcastnetwork.com. I Am Jean Taver Netti, the host for this podcast. And my goal for this episode, like all episodes, is that you laugh at least once and that you leave with an actionable idea for better teaching. A quick reminder, no cliches, no buzzwords. Only stuff that works

My guest today is Lynn Gaffney. Lynn is the Assistant Superintendent for Instruction at Watertown City School District, where she is dedicated to fostering exceptional learning environments for students by supporting teachers and principals, with a rich background as a Director of Programs and [00:01:00] Professional Development.

New York State Master Teacher, and High School Biology Teacher, Lynn continues to view herself as a teacher above all. Her work is centered on enhancing instruction as a cornerstone of school improvement. Lynn. Thank you for being on Better Teaching.

Hey, Jean. It's great to be with you here today.

Well, I wanted to chat with you for a while because your district is facing something not unique, and that is test scores that are not at a level where anybody is happy. And and the reason I wanted to talk to you in particular, because you and your district are doing some things that are a little bit different and I think part of that difference has to do with the fact that in a prior conversation, you made it clear to me you were not the assistant superintendent of instruction and curriculum.

You were the assistant superintendent for instruction. And so, having said [00:02:00] that so could you talk a little bit about you know, what you're doing in Watertown to improve test scores? And let's just start there.

Sure. So like, to me, test scores are just a symptom, right? So, they're, we're not, we do want to improve our test scores, but we know if our test scores are low that it's a symptom that maybe our students are lacking in proficiency in some subjects, and specifically we're looking at reading and math proficiency.

And we're also looking at our graduation rates. So, I would say the test scores are a focus, but it's a peripheral focus. Getting at the core of the problem that we need to increase reading and math proficiency across all of our grades. What we're doing is really focusing on the science of learning.

So, and that's how you and I got connected originally, and we're doing something, I think, a little different than other schools, but I think there's elements of it in it that you will hear and think maybe you've seen or heard that in other places. One of the people that's been really informative for us has been Jade Pierce studying her [00:03:00] book, which I grabbed, What Every Teacher Needs to Know, How to Embed Evidence Informed Teaching and Learning in Your School.

She has a beautiful section in there on how to study.

So we use that significantly in Watertown's journey to get where we are today but to give you an overview, we've had something called effective teaching that's very embedded in our culture for many years there are two people, Dave Perry and Jean Anastasia, and they wrote the effective teaching course, I believe, in the early nineties, It's a five day course on practical teaching strategies, and for very, a very long time in Watertown, almost every teacher took that course, and for whatever the reasons the last few years, we haven't been sending people so we have reinstituted the course.

All of our teachers, whether they're new or teachers that have been with us for a while for them to be able to go to that course. So we held the course at Watertown this summer with Jean and Dave, and then we also tap into our [00:04:00] local BOCES so we can keep sending teachers to that. And that's pretty foundational, and one of the things that I learned when I was reading Jade's book is that we want to make sure that whenever we're doing something with school chains, Change.

It fits into the context of your school. And for us, effective teaching is really foundational for our school. So although we did want to incorporate science of learning practices, we wanted to make sure it was in line with what everybody knew already and was doing already with effective teaching. And that's how we can.

that thought for a second, because here's what's interesting to me. You're doing something that might be considered new. By many people, because, and it's new because people aren't doing it yet. You just referred to people who'd been working in your district for a long time. So, so embedded in that course where their science of learning.

Was it new or were you reminding them or were you telling them, Hey, look, this is you're [00:05:00] doing a lot of this or you should be because you were all trained in it. How is that?

That's a great question. So if you go to you know, you look at the research where Jean and Dave have pulled from to create this course, it is cognitive science. So it's looking at the cognitive studies which as you know, are part of the science of learning. They form the basis of science of learning.

So it was easy for me to make the case about the science of learning by highlighting some of the strategies and practices from effective teaching that people were already doing, or at least had already learned about. You know how sometimes you sort of drift away from best practices, kind of putting them back into their clear sight and saying, Oh yeah, bell ringers, you know, doing a do now, that kind of thing.

Those are just really good, strong instructional practices that we learned in effective teaching, but they're also part of the science of learning.

So, because since that's the case, do you have people saying, and I say people, anybody on staffs from teachers, [00:06:00] administrators, district administrators saying well, yeah, we've been doing this for years. What's new?

Of course.

up?

Yeah.

so, and so, so, so if we could back up a little bit, because I think most of the people who listen to this podcast are familiar with the science of learning, but if you could expand a little bit about how you see that and how you've shared with your folks.

What that is.

Yeah, so I will back up a little. That's important. So what we did is we developed something called the Cyclone Six. So we're the Watertown Cyclones and we didn't want to overwhelm, right? And so we could have picked 30 instructional practices for our teachers to focus on, but we picked six. They are based in the science of learning.

They are also based in effective teaching. So we knew that our teachers would have a pretty high degree of comfort. with these six instructional practices, but we could do more training on them. Allow them to learn more about these practices, learn how to get better [00:07:00] at the practices through PLCs primarily, but we have other trainings as well, and really incorporate the practices fully into their instruction.

Do you want me to share with this iPhone 6, Arjeen? That might be

Yeah, that'd be great. That'd be

Okay. Let me grab them. Okay, so the first one is Classroom Climate or Feeling Tone, ensuring that students feel respected physically and emotionally and they're safe and valued. The second one is Opportunities to Respond, providing opportunities to respond to increase engagement and achievement.

The third is Retrieval Practice, so assisting students in accessing and applying skills and concepts that are stored for them. and long term memory. The fourth is strong start and close. So enabling students to reinforce essential concepts and skills and making sure that beginning and end of the lesson are really well used.

The fifth is learning objectives. So plan according to what students need to know and [00:08:00] be able to do as a result of instruction. And we really talk about backwards design a little bit there. And then gradual release. So moving students toward independence by Providing appropriate instruction. The I do, we do, you do model.

I'm smiling here on, you know, people can't see this, but I'm smiling again, going back to the idea that here you bring something new to the district. Science of learning evidence based practices as the assistant sup of instruction. So this is what we're going to do with instruction. And I listened to that Cyclone 6.

And I'm not hearing anything controversial. I'm not hearing anything that somebody would say, oh no, we don't want to ask the students questions. We don't want to check for understanding. So, so what is the response to this Or what's the response? Has there been any pushback from anybody on this or

No pushback. I think also it's my [00:09:00] approach and my team's approach is we don't look at Watertown or Watertown teachers as people that need to be fixed. They already have a really good base in what they're doing instructionally, so we just want to support and enhance what they're doing. And they like having their toolboxes filled up with additional tools for these things.

So, in general, they enjoy it. I have not heard any pushback.

so what you're telling me is that everything's going perfectly. Everybody's on board. There's no pushback.

I did not say that. I would say that you have different levels of people, right? And so, right now, we have our early adopters. These are the people that, before I was even in the district, they were going to all the PDs. They want to learn as much as they can. And then we've got another group of people.

People that are kind of coming over and thinking like, Oh, I want to dabble in this. This is something I can really use and know more about. And then we probably, you know, we have that other group of people that are using some of these things for whatever the reasons they haven't been able to [00:10:00] go to the PLCs, but they have gone to some of the whole district trainings that we've done.

We've had Zach here a few times, and so they're still using them. But they may not be as excited as that first group that I mentioned, those early adopters.

okay. There are, you know, there are some people who, you know, Consider they play a drinking game during this podcast, and anytime Zach's name is mentioned, they have to take a shot.

Oh, well, they better get their bottles ready then, because I think they're I refer to Zach a few times in here.

So what did Zach do for y'all?

He's done quite a bit with us. So he's worked with our instructional coaches, as have you. He has done science of learning, so that was kind of the big thing that he did. When did we have him come? Last school year. And really connecting the science of learning principles to classroom practice.

He's worked with our math teachers. He's done a couple different sessions with math specifically. This summer he did a full day training on learning objectives, which is [00:11:00] one of our cyclone six, and he did another on gradual release.

Okay, now, so you've got all this stuff going, science of learning. You didn't make it up, obviously, because you've had these people coming in for a long time. They never called it science of learning, I would be willing to bet. As I've read the materials, I don't see science of learning anywhere in there.

So you're doing this with them. The staff seems pretty much on board. Not everybody you there's always going to be some some. Some people who aren't going to jump on right away. When you started doing this, were there any districts that you looked at that you modeled this after?

Or did you just say, you know what, I'm looking at this stuff and this is the way to go.

I tried to do that, right? So, I always try to look to other districts. One of the things, this is a little bit of a bird walk, but I'll get back to your answer one of the things we do with our principals is we have Principals Academy, so we do a lot with instructional leadership, and we talk about instruction at its core, the fundamentals, [00:12:00] but also systems change.

The book that we're reading is Karen Chenoweth's book, It's Schools That Succeed. I don't know if you're familiar with that. But she's basically found these outlier schools that are outperforming their peers and she goes in and she'll study the schools and then she has certain characteristics that she'll pull out of there.

So it's a lesson that any of us in school leadership can, or district leadership for that matter, can use to improve schools. So we looked at those extensively. I think we're, we started doing this book last year and we're already. We're almost done with it. So we did look to the other schools to see characteristics.

You know, one characteristic I would say is they all had strong leadership. They all had a strong focus on instruction. They all had a strong focus on data. But the science of learning was not mentioned in this book at all. But that was also helpful to us that we had other schools that we could look at and say, okay, they're doing these things.

We're going to do those along with science of learning as part of our school improvement [00:13:00] efforts here. As far as schools themselves that were using science of learning, I really couldn't find any too many in the United States, and it might have been that I didn't know how to search them or wasn't able to find them.

I did find some in the UK, and that's how I came across Jade Pierce's book, and I found that to be really beneficial for us.

You know, it's interesting When I was doing trainings in explicit instruction and the first time I would meet with a principal or a district person who might be interested in, in hiring our consulting group, they'd ask, are there any schools that you can send us to that are doing what you've been doing?

And I said, no I can show you some teachers. I could show you some teachers, but but as a total school, as a whole organization, that's very difficult. And, you know, Again, piggybacking on what you said earlier, that your teachers already have a lot of skills. You know, I always felt successful as a coach, if I [00:14:00] was working with a good teacher and they changed one little thing.

that they saw was beneficial. So, it was kind of a trick question, you know, when I asked you, have you seen any schools doing this? Because if they tell you they're doing it, they're probably lying or they're exaggerating. And it's probably something you hear at a conference. Oh, look at what we're doing.

But I digress. I digress as well. So, so talking about, you know, this trying to get this whole organization to change and you've got your, you know, this this book that y'all are studying organizationally, did you have to initiate anything system wide or change any systems To get the science of learning off the ground,

Several, yes. We had to take a close look at the district to make sure that anything we were doing science of learning initiative wise aligned with our existing culture. I think I mentioned that before. We wanted to honor the work that had already been done in the district. And that's where effective teaching came in that I [00:15:00] mentioned.

We also needed to really take a close look at our instructional coaching program. And you've been intimately involved with this, and we've been really fortunate that, you know, they've read both your books. As of I, you've come and trained our coaches at least twice now and we hope to have you back again.

But we found, when I went to really look into our instructional coaching program as it existed. There wasn't really anything that clearly defined their roles or what they should be doing. And so we needed to write that down, memorialize it, and make sure everybody in the district was really clear on what that looked like.

We needed to give our principals and other administrators quite a bit of training on what is the science of learning what does that look like in terms of leadership, and then really looking at systems change within our buildings. I mentioned Karen Chenoweth's That was really helpful because the principals could read about how things were done in different schools.

One thing we're working on district wide right now that we didn't have in place is an MTSS system. So we've hired [00:16:00] somebody Dr. Amy Gerhartz, who is wonderful and she's overseeing the implementation of MTSS. So that'll take us a few years to get it fully in place, but we're on our path with that.

We instituted PLCs, so we did have PLCs in different places around the district, but I'm not sure it was being used as a PLC was originally intended, so we tried to go back to really looking at PLCs as a mechanism of refining teaching practice. That's

I'm sorry. Sorry to interrupt you. But if you had said to me, our PLCs were working perfectly, I would take out full page ads in newspapers because I've never seen a school. I've never seen anybody say, boy, our PLCs are just like DeForest said, you know, this is, no, I'm so, so I'm sorry,

No, that's it's true though, right? Like, so I think PLCs has been, like, used in so many different ways, that term, and for the last several decades, I don't know that it means the same thing to say to [00:17:00] everybody. For us, you know, I do five week PLCs with the teachers, and we pick, we'll work on right now we're doing an Opportunities to Respond PLC, that's number two on the Cyclone VI, and so we get very granular in the PLCs.

You know, we look at the theory of course, and why the research is important, but we get very granular on how you're going to use Opportunities to Respond in your classes. Like their homework for the first week was to count how many times. in two of your classes. You're using it. And what are you using?

And what are you seeing with your students when you're using them? And then we're looking for those pain points where maybe there's low engagement in the class, where we can add more opportunities to respond moving forward, and we're developing our toolkit with that. Last week, we were looking at Anita Archer and choral response as a way to increase opportunities to respond, and they hadn't seen that, you know.

Great. You can't see me now, but I'm putting my arms up and down like Anita does when she does her explicit oral response. What else did we do? I guess the other piece is communication. And [00:18:00] so, I think you were actually here when I did one of my communications. I had the K4 teachers in the auditorium and we were talking about some of the changes that we needed to make programmatically.

And, you know, we first kind of unveiled that we were doing this Cyclone VI. But after you left the next month, we did whole district PDs on, and they were only an hour long on the Cyclone VI, just letting everybody know what this meant. You know, what was each one of the Cyclone VI? How could they look in the classrooms?

And just talking about what we were going to be doing moving forward. And making sure everybody knew this was a long term initiative that, you know, next year we weren't going to change to just project based learning or some other initiative, you know, although there's great places for that within our district as well.

But we were just going to stay very narrow in our focus on these Cyclone VI for the next several years.

So I want to compliment you on that granular level. Because again, going back to what [00:19:00] those Cyclone VI were, Bastard, You know, strong ending, all of those things, again, they're very non controversial, and my experience has been teachers, you know, will shake their head, well, I'm doing that, I'm doing that, I'm doing that, and so they need to recognize, you know, it can't be somebody telling them, you know, to get, because they just need to recognize, and they also need to know that you already think they're a good teacher.

This is just going to help you, and this is just going to help your students. So, so that's over the course of my work over the last 20 years, that has been the most important thing to let teachers see, like this is what it looks like. And it may be just tweaking a little bit. You know, I was, okay.

Everybody get ready to take a shot. I'm going to talk about Zach for a second. You know, Zach was talking about him getting coached by one of the DI people and one of the. pieces of feedback that he got from the coach [00:20:00] is that when you ask a question, don't call somebody's name first. And it's just a habit.

It's just a habit that, you know, but once teachers understand, you know, with regards to why it's so important, and they understand retrieval practice, and it's an equity issue, if you don't allow everybody to retrieve, you're denying those kids a chance to learn they're willing to give it a shot. You know, and it's not that big a deal and most of it and that's a one of the things that I tell teachers if they're in that habit, you know, I'll tell them, you know, know, there's nothing fatal, nothing final when you do this, you know, so if I said Lynn, what do you think?

And all you need to say is like, wait a second, not just Lynn. I want everybody to think about this and you've achieved your purpose. So. I've always said that maybe if you're about 75 percent effective, you know, kids are going to learn. You don't have to be perfect. Because you're doing that [00:21:00] opportunity to respond, you're getting the formative assessment.

So preach it to the choir here.

Oh, I love hearing that.

So one of the things that you talked about you know, you're not doing it all at once. You have a timeline. So what is your timeline for implementing? Implementing this.

Three to five years.

And what year are you in right now?

We're ish in the second year. So we started last winter with some of this, but we're in our first full year.

Okay. And on schedule, you feel like you're

Yeah, I feel like we're on schedule. I unfortunately for me, I have a lot of other duties that pull me away from this work, which I absolutely love and think is. key to school improvement. So I can't do as much professional development as I would like. But fortunately for me, I have these amazing instructional coaches that are able to do the PD in their buildings.

So one of the pieces that really, I think, helps [00:22:00] us get some traction is that each one of the coaches in their buildings They're the instructional hub of professional development, and so even if somebody can't come to a district wide PLC with me, they're most likely going to be able to attend to something in the building or get involved with the coaches in that building for a coaching cycle, that kind of thing.

So I'm going to give you one more compliment, and I think if it's not in the book that you're reading, it should be. And

The one I wanted to compliment you on was being present during all the trainings. Because it's so important that teachers know that everybody knows the story. You know, because it's so easy for somebody to say, well, I don't do that because such and such.

And if you don't know the story, If you don't know the research, if you don't know the reasons why you're doing it as an administrator, it's very difficult to say, Oh, sure [00:23:00] you are. Let me tell you why it's a good idea. Because you're sold. You know, you go to all those trainings and you're sold.

But having said that, I want to ask you a question about something that always comes up. And that is and you're in, And I don't know about the teachers unions, but that's always something that comes up. Was there any issue with what you were doing with the teacher unions? Has there been?

And I don't know if you just

at all.

Not at all.

I'm gonna tell you 100 percent not at all. So one of the things we have a very good relationship with our teachers union and the teachers union president and I met when I first started. So keep in mind, I've only been here in this district for a year and a half. And one of the things he said to me is, you know, somehow the district has gotten away from sending our teachers to effective teaching.

He's like, I don't know why. He's like, but it's really something we're missing. And of course you have already heard me gush about effective teaching and how [00:24:00] wonderful that five day course is. So, I was able to get that put back into our professional development plan and the teachers are going now. So that's how we started our and there has been nothing but support from them.

in the union.

Okay. I'm going to put some of these statements together that you made. All right. You have been in the district how long? A year and a half, you said?

A year and a half. I was in this district a few years back as a principal for a few years. So I did, I do know the district and graduated from this district. So I do have a history with the district.

so you came into your position a year and a half ago, and when did this initiative start? The, with

It started about a month in,

Okay,

about a month into me

The reason that I wanted to make that point is that so many people go into a [00:25:00] position and I'm saying this humbly, I'm saying this humbly because I wish I was as good administrator as you are when I was an administrator, but I think, well, you know what, we have to wait, you know, let's go look around.

Let's go. Let's go see, you know, let's talk to every teacher. Let's, you know, and you went in there and you jumped in. Said this is this is what we're doing, . And how much groundwork did you need to lay? Obviously you need to you know, so, so going back to your discussions with you know, you just mentioned a very fortuitous discussion with the union president.

So what were your discussions with principals and superintendent and getting everybody. Did everybody agree we needed to do this or how did that work?

Everybody agreed something needed to be done. No one really had an idea of like how we should proceed. And I kind of had the idea like ish, right? I had the beginnings. One of [00:26:00] the things that helped me is I started a month after our new superintendent and he is phenomenal. He is. He's very supportive about school improvement, focusing on instruction helping me making sure I can run the PDs when I need to run them, or like last week, for instance, I was in the schools the entire week because we had the reading league here.

And they were doing building visits, and I wanted to be in the classrooms and in the debriefs with the teachers when the reading league was here. So I have a tremendous amount of support from him and the other assistant supers that, you know, sometimes I'm just M. I. A. up in the office because I'm in the buildings doing things.

From the principal level, one of the things that came to me, I think, when I first, I might have been there a week or two, when you start in a district, a lot of times people will sort of line up at your door to tell you some of the problems that are in the district, and those are really important conversations.

You learn a lot from them, and one of the reoccurring themes that I heard from both [00:27:00] principals and teachers was that our K 4 reading program was not sufficiently preparing students so they could read proficiently. And so that was kind of my inroads to make some changes, so we invited the Reading League and some teachers and principals to do an audit on our curriculum, and we found exactly what the teachers were saying is that we were lacking certain pieces there, specifically in the word recognition side of things the phonics.

and phonemic awareness side of things. So that allowed me to say, Oh, you know, you've identified a problem. Let's look at correcting this and start getting the reading league in for trainings. And so I look at science of learning as kind of this like overarching umbrella. And then more science of reading and science of math would fit underneath that.

So it was a pretty easy sell for people because it was something they had already identified and they wanted.

So, you're the assistant super of instruction and then so you had the [00:28:00] reading league come in and you identified some weaknesses. You, I know you've had Amanda Vander Hayden come in to talk about some math issues.

we haven't had Dr. Vander Hayden come in specifically. I'm a groupie of hers though, and I don't know if they're, if we need another shot in the bottle like we do with Zach, but I had been researching Trying to figure out what to do with our math situation is very similar to what I described in our reading situation.

We weren't giving our kids enough practice. We were doing a lot of conceptual understanding and not enough practice. So I went and heard her speak and at one of the research eds, it was in Toronto in May, and I'd already been researching spring math for months at that point. I got to speak to her a little bit and then the district did decide to move forward with spring math as a.

Tier 1. 5 class wide intervention model for math.

5. As you're working on the [00:29:00] MTSS, you need to make it just a little bit more complicated.

add another, yeah, so when we hired our MTSS person this past summer, I'm like, we have an extra layer in the STEM, but she's great with that.

So you have, again, getting back to organizationally. So you had the people teachers, administration say, we have this issue in reading. We have this issue in math. And part of the answer was different curriculum. How do you, how are you, I'm not saying that there's a, an issue or there's any friction or anything, but how do you marry those two?

Curriculum and Instruction when you each have your own separate

Well, I am in charge of curriculum, even though that's not in my title. So I don't know if I make it

oh okay, that,

to love you and I have talked so much about instruction and we both love it, right. And so I just love that instruction is my title. I just love the simplicity of that. But I do need to oversee curriculum.

okay, [00:30:00] that makes it a lot

it was, yes, a lot easier. And so our Looking at our K 4 reading, we asked the Reading League for recommendations, and we also had some internal capacity where teachers were sort of, they were figuring out that we were lacking that word recognition piece, so they were using some programs that were already working well, and I was able to go and observe some teachers that had done these little pilots with something called UFLY, University of Florida, and it works beautifully, so that's what we ended up adopting for the district, and we're actually using It's a K 2 program, but because our students haven't had those pieces of instruction ever, we're using it as a K 4 program right now.

Okay, so everything that you've talked about makes so much sense. I mean, it just, of course, we're going to do this. We're going to use the most effective practices. And so as you implemented this, anything surprised you Good or bad as you're moving forward in this?

You know, I struggled with that question. You gave [00:31:00] me that question ahead of time, and I haven't had a lot of surprises, right? There's pieces where people are kind of working through the details of it. I like the idea of being loose but tight, especially when you're first, I think I got that from Dylan Willem, but the idea that we don't have every little tiny detail worked out, and sometimes teachers really like to have every detail worked out ahead of time.

So that can be frustrating, but I expected that. Here's the thing I tend to see the best in people, and that's usually what I get. It's not perfect, I don't want you to think that we have, you know, this Nirvana thing going on at Watertown, but the teachers are trying really hard, and they're working toward making improvements for their students, and they're really proud of their work.

So if you were gonna give advice to someone in the same situation as you were, which is only nearly every school district in the country that at, not that it's about test scores, but that's how we, you know, have some [00:32:00] sort of, of measure what advice would you give them if they were going to go with the science of learning as a way to improve instruction and therefore test scores.

That's a great question. I would say, Essentially, anybody in my position should try to become very knowledgeable on the science of learning and the cognitive studies and all of these things that weren't really attainable for us to get easily even 10 years ago but now are just, they're so accessible.

So I would say that because if you don't have a core set of knowledge on those things in your position then it's going to be very difficult for you to convince others to Follow you.

Anything, anything else, anything that, that I should have asked you about the journey that you've had in this district and where do you expect to go that you would like to share with folks?

Looking to see. I think one thing that was [00:33:00] really important and you and I have talked about this, I think, before is that idea of change fatigue. You have a name for people being obsessed with anything new in education, and I can't remember what it is.

Neomania. I

Neomania. Okay, well, that idea of neomania and change fatigue I think is really real for teachers.

You know, me, I was in the classroom for a very long time and we went through trend after trend and the next shiny object that was coming along. And so, you know, really making sure you're communicating to your teachers that you're not doing this, like, sexy new thing. I always say to them, school improvement is not sexy.

That you're in, in, you're making change that, that is going to last for the long haul, and it's these incremental small things that really add up for school improvement. It's not this one big shiny thing that's going to change it.

Is there I just thought of this at this moment, so. If you ask them to give up anything, that's always in the literature. You know, if you're going to ask them to do something, we need to [00:34:00] ask them to, you know, they should be able to give up something. But if you ask them to give up or allowed them permission to give up

Yeah well they wanted to give up some of the things, so that was really great. We talked about de implementation as well. One of the things that we gave up in the K 4 buildings was stamina reading. It was time consuming and it really doesn't have any research behind it, so it wasn't, you know, meeting our goals anyway.

and they were happy. Let's.

they're happy. There, there's some other things that came with it that we have to work through. When we gave that up, we kind of gave up something else that they're not happy about losing, so we have to work through that. I'm listening to them, but that was a big one that we gave up.

Lynn has a question for Gene
---

Okay, great. Well, Lynn, do you have any questions for me?

Yes, I do have a question for you. I admire you greatly and I so appreciate the support that you've offered our district. So my question for you today is, if you were me, what would you do right now?[00:35:00]

Well, you mentioned some of the things, I don't think it'd be doing any, adding anything, but just reinforcing reinforcing and emphasizing the importance of it. For example if a, like I said before, when we would work with a district, we wanted An administrator in the training the entire time, like you said, to know what's going on.

And if there was ever a question from a teacher during the training, we would direct it to the administrator because there were usually the questions were usually things that there was some practice that was going on. That was contrary to what you're now asking them to do. And so, That needs to be answered.

that's a legitimate question. Like you said, most of the, most of that line at the door that you had we're talking about legitimate issues. So, I would just piggyback on what you said, the importance of everybody knowing instruction, [00:36:00] so that when there is a question You know, they can answer that question in the same manner that you would answer it based on the research, so that it's not an opinion.

No, we're doing this because there's a lot of evidence. There's a lot of evidence there for that. that would be, you know, what I would have to say about that, you know, and the other thing with regard to the administrators side administrators, coaches knowing. about instruction. I used to tell my teachers, gosh, if I'm the best teacher on this site, we're in trouble. You know, you don't have to be the best teacher, but you have to know.

It's like being you know, a coach, a hitting coach for Aaron Judge. You know, Horsey's better than you, but guess what? You know, I can still help him be better. So that's, that would be my response.

Those are great. Thank you.

Lind, it was a joy. I'm glad we finally made this happen, and I think administrators are going to get a [00:37:00] lot out of this. Anybody hoping to, not anybody hoping, everybody is hoping, and, but beyond hope, you know, what are some things that we can do in our district, in our school to implement

Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works. You're the perfect guest, Lynn. Thank you so much, and we'll talk to you soon.

Thanks, Jean.

If you are enjoying these podcasts, please give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, and you can find me on Twitter, x at G Tabernetti, and on my website, tesscg. com, that's T E S C G dot com, where you'll get information about how to order my books, teach fast, focused, adaptable, structured teaching, and maximizing the impact of coaching cycles.

Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon [00:38:00]