Run The ECET2 Convening

“It’s like planning a wedding!” “It’s like having a baby!” It is and it isn’t.

“It” was planning and executing the plan of running an ECET2 Regional Convening.  Along with four other talented, dedicated, and otherworldly educators, I was lucky enough to be involved with a project that was almost 10 months in the making.

This weekend, over 120 educators and partners from across the state made an early Saturday morning trip into the Microsoft space in Cambridge, eager to share with, and learn from, other driven members of their profession.  And for the first time in my career, I was not there to take part in the sessions.  I was the Event Manager, in charge of all game-day operations.

I’m not going to describe the events of the day.  Maureen Devlin, probably the most essential member of our planning committee, is probably typing up a much better summary as we speak.  I’m not even going to try and compete.  Instead, I’m going to give a little different perspective on how transformational this whole experience has been, and it’s my hope that others will take on the same challenge.

The journey begins in the summer of 2015, when I was selected to be a part of the Teacher Advisory Cabinet, created by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.  This in and of itself was a leap for me, but I felt like I needed to leave the comfort of my own district, and see what’s out there.  I’m currently pursuing a doctorate to move into educator prep, and I felt that in order to be effective in that field, I needed to know what else teachers should be prepared for as a profession, not just in the classroom.  Through the Cabinet, I was selected to go to the ECET2 (Elevation and Celebration of Effective Teaching and Teachers) National Convening in San Diego, CA. I was honored, and terrified.

When I told my wife I was going, her first question to me was, “What are you going to do?  You don’t talk to anyone!”  And she was right, I don’t.  I don’t like small talk.  I hate parties.  I can’t network.  This may be a problem.  But something about that weekend didn’t just take me out of my comfort zone, it shoved me out and slammed the door.  It was the greatest experience of my professional life, and I was hooked.  I wanted more.  And one of those opportunities for more was to host a regional convening.

I could not have done this, at all, without the amazing educators who made up the planning committee with me.  They were amazing, and no one will ever fully appreciate what went on in the meetings, video conferences, and emails that took place over eight months.  And, despite all that, it was still a whole new level of discomfort yesterday.  I had a nice suit on, put on my best welcoming smile, and tried to do everything I could to bring the best possible experience to those people in the room, because I knew they deserved it.  Even if they didn’t fully know what was supposed to happen, I wanted them all to feel like it was worth their time and effort to come and be with their like-minded colleagues, and go back to their schools and their students with new focus and a sense of purpose.

Of course, as a planner, you see the faults.  Technology issues popped up too often for my liking, but teachers are understanding creatures, and our guests were very patient and accommodating.  We had welcomed some teachers to a Friday night reception, and then a Saturday night post-reception, and I talked to the same teachers both nights to get a sense of their expectations, and if they had been met.  We got largely positive feedback, which was nice to hear, but naturally I’m waiting for the results of the survey to see what they *really* thought.

I’m certain that I’ll have to do this again in my career.  I already know it won’t be as rewarding as this first one, simply because of the amazing people I was working with, and the mission behind the work.  My ultimate satisfaction would be if a handful of people liked our results so much, that they applied for their own grant and moved the work forward, like we did after San Diego.

More than anything else, I feel stretched out as an educator now.  I have this experience under my belt, and my comfort zone is that much bigger.  More challenges await - not only for myself, but the talented and driven group who planned it.  Audrey Jackson, Lisa Simon, Sean Brooks, and the irreplaceable Maureen Devlin are worthy of the highest praise.  It is my sincere hope that we can work on something else in the future.

But now, I need to sleep.

How To Not Be Afraid of Data - and Make It a Valuable Teaching Tool

(originally appeared in The Huffington Post on October 3, 2016)

After a district-wide- and a school faculty meeting, while most teachers in our building were bustling to set up their classrooms for the next day, six math teachers stared at me as I attempted to explain that the overwhelmingly intimidating Excel spreadsheet before them was really no big deal, and that they could use it in their planning and teaching.  As a staff, we have been discussing data usage in theory, but this was our first attempt at putting it into practice.  That is an entirely different feeling.

The look on my colleagues’ faces was not unique.  There are too many instances when the very idea of using data at the classroom level causes teachers anxiety and uneasiness.  And yet, data usage is invaluable to measuring student progress.  It helps bring to the forefront ways that we can help students on a more individual level.  My classroom may have two students who are currently getting a C, but they have distinctly different areas that need improvement.  Jacob is struggling with percent equations, while Kay is attempting to master integer rules with the division of fractions.  As a teacher, tracking data on the individual standard level – not simply relying on overall grades – allows me to have a sharper focus and know exactly where the extra help is needed.

Which is why I believe that those of us who are comfortable with data should do all we can to demystify the process for all educators.  We need to present it in such a way that it is not only considered a valuable tool, but that using it becomes a moral imperative because of the ultimate benefit to student learning and growth.

Here are a few steps that can help even the most data-averse educators get the hang of it:

Ease in.  Start with the careful construction of the data culture in your schools.  Much like a good educator does with students, scaffolding may be the best course.  If you intend to have full implementation over the course of a school year, you’re asking for failure.  Rather, there needs to be a well-planned and deliberate process for teachers to take it a piece of at a time.  That starts with constructing a system for every teacher to use that does not reach the administrative level, and has no evaluative component.

Allow each teacher to decide what data they want to collect, how often, and what they want to do with it.  Give them a year of collecting data that matters to them, and seeing that no judgment comes from it.  In our school, we built a system where teachers were only responsible for entering the unit when a question was asked, the date it was asked, and a “1” or “0” to indicate if the student had met the standard on that assessment.  This helped us gauge student progress at the individual standard level and provide more relevant interventions to struggling students.

Find the Geeks.  Creating individualized data collection systems can be time-consuming, and certainly cannot be expected of all teachers to do on their own.  However, each school will have (hopefully at least) one person who either has the knowledge, or is willing to be trained to create and maintain a system.  When school ended last June, all I knew about Excel was how to spell it and put things in alphabetical order.  Over the summer, I paired with a colleague and trained with a consultant at Greybeard Educators to learn Excel.  In a week I felt like Mr. Robot.  We were able to create grade- and teacher-specific data collection systems, tailored to each of our teachers’ preferences.  The systems were a hit because they measured what the teacher wanted to measure, not what they felt they had to report.

It’s Not Really About Data, Anyway.  That’s the hidden secret behind data collection – it has very little to do with the data.  The system we built will track student performance on Common Core Math Standards.  Once we built it, we had to decide what data to enter.  This meant that, in order to gather the evidence necessary to back our claims of assessment mastery, we needed to better understand the standards.  This led to enriching conversations.  Soon, “data collection” was just a backdrop to our conversations about how to better teach our students.  “Data collection” also became about having better conversations with students – Jacob and Kay have now been empowered to assess themselves, by being made aware of their specific areas of opportunity.  They are no longer relegated to feel an overwhelming sense of having to improve everything they do in math.  They can identify their strengths and know where to focus their efforts for improvement.

                There are so many benefits to data collection and analysis that it will soon become a must for educators are to be well-versed in its usage.  That’s why the introduction to data usage is so crucial.  Building a school culture that is unafraid of self-reflection is very powerful.  If you can organically foster trust and confidence among the staff when it comes to data, you have the potential to do wonderful things with and for your students.