20 Minutes of Teaching Brilliance (On the Road with Trust-Based Observations)

8 Stefanie Guy
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[00:00:00] Hi, I'm Craig Randall. Welcome to another edition of 20 Minutes of Teaching Brilliance, On the Road with Trust Based Observations. Today I have with me Stephanie Guy. Stephanie is an elementary teacher in Boise, Idaho. We were out there training all the Catholic schools in Boise in September, and when I watched Stephanie, I think the number one thing that stood out is just her, she just oozes positivity in there, and her energy is just.

so positive and it's so encouraging and it just it moves you and stirs you as an observer and I know it did the same for the students. And so anyway, Stephanie, will you do me a favor and introduce yourself and maybe tell everyone about yourself about your journey and we'll take it from there.

Yes, thank you. My name is Stephanie Guy and I teach second grade at Sacred Heart Catholic School, and thank you again for this opportunity. My journey in education, this is my ninth year as an [00:01:00] educator, and I spent the past eight years teaching kindergarten in the Caldwell School District. This is my first year teaching second grade, and I am absolutely loving it.

So tell me, thank you, Stephanie. I appreciate that. I didn't know it was your first year, second grade. That makes it even more impressive to me. What, what were you teaching before that? Tell us about the rest of your journey in terms of that. And also about like your influences as well. I think that's really important.

We were having a little pre conversation about that.

Absolutely. Yeah. My journey started with a career in fashion. And so I started out at working my way up with Nordstrom. I started with their internship program and then working my way up as a department manager. And with learning, you know, the ins and outs of business, there's lots of strategies and tools that I've learned that I've also brought into the classroom.

So, it was a really great experience. Experience, especially coming from Nordstrom with the customer service background and always being about, you know, the people that you're serving. But I had a higher calling to teaching and education and I've always loved children. So, went [00:02:00] back and got my teaching degree and I spent my first four years in pre-K and then eight years in kindergarten and now my first year in second grade.

That is really, really interesting to hear you talk about your previous career. I think we've had, gosh, three interviewees, and this is only our sixth, seventh, eighth one, that this is their second career. And that you have to have had another career to be an excellent teacher, but it's a really high percentage of teachers that have.

And you're the first one that's really pointed out to me some of the things that you've learned in the business. So called business world that, that have influenced how you are in a teacher. And so you've talked about strategies and you also talked about customer service. Will you tell me a little bit more about that, that crossover?

Well at Nordstrom, the customer was always our number one to just go above and beyond, make sure their experience was amazing and you were doing everything you could to get them what they needed and maybe even what they didn't need, but you knew that they needed. And then [00:03:00] that crosses over into teaching.

Every day my why is the kids. I know my why. I feel my why. I have passion. I want to do my best for the kids. I feel like I know exactly what they need, and then in those teachable moments, I'm ready to serve maybe something I didn't know they needed, but now I know they need

So just all that, I mean, I, I certainly sense that that's part of your personality anyway, but. I mean, gosh, I've talked about companies that are known for customer service, like Nordstrom's is always at the very top of the list of that. And so that's so interesting. I especially love the part about even the things that they don't know what they need, right?

Where sometimes as a teacher, of course we know, and so helping them with that, that, that's brilliant. I love it. Let me ask you, so when we were talking before, you talked about working in a public school first, and you talked about some of your journey with visible learning and self assessment, and so do you want to talk about like your background with that and in terms of building who you are as a teacher too?

Yeah, absolutely. Yes. My [00:04:00] first eight years in education, our focus was learning all about visible learning and studying John Hattie's books. And that was just really instrumental in how I changed as an educator and of course, having the direct instruction, but also getting kids involved and having them take that ownership.

Knowing your standards, knowing exactly what the kids need to learn, and then having them get involved and co creating success criteria with them in every single thing that you're teaching and really giving ownership to the kids. (ad here)

You're saying so many things that I don't even know where to start. I guess I'll start by a little brag by saying that for those that don't know, John Hattie did endorse Trust Based Observations, which is a fantastic thing for me. And he actually described Trust Based Observations as demonstrating collective teacher efficacy in action, which is exactly what you're talking about.

Hearing you talk further about it though, I think you talked about like, co creating success [00:05:00] criteria with the kids. Why don't you talk a little bit more about that?

Yes. So, when we dive into our new learning the first thing I do is I break the standard onto a poster board,

In kid friendly language, of course.

Yes, in kid friendly language. And then it's blank. The rest of it's blank. And from then on out, the kids are coming up and we're breaking down the standard onto what would we need to do first to learn this?

What would be your next step? And then what does mastery look like? So what would the end look like? And then the kids are coming up and they're helping create those. And so they have that ownership. They have the buy in that it is their thinking. And so they really come to want to

So as that's, in the moment when that's actually happening, I think like if we could even get a picture for our listeners of just what that looks like. Are the kids, are you on the carpet? Are they in teams? Are they, is everybody contributing? Just the ones that talk the most? How does that [00:06:00] manifest?

Yeah we do usually start whole group at the carpet. And, for example, if the standard is writing a sentence you know, we would make it more kid friendly and make it a superstar sentence. So, I can write a superstar sentence. And then we really break it down. What do you have to do to write a sentence?

And we do the pair share. Let the kids kind of talk amongst themselves. And then we'll have the shout out. The share outs, where you can, I let the students either share what they shared with their partner, or they can share what their partner said, making sure everybody has an opportunity to speak.

And then with that, we usually come to, they, they know that they have to say their sentence out loud. So then we're going to, I'm going to call the students up to the board. They're going to draw a picture of what do they visualize when they say that. So they're drawing it. And then if they need help writing anything, I'll help them.

But most of the time they can do that, especially in second grade. And then you know, it comes down to, okay. Next step is I have to count the words on my finger. I need to know exactly what I'm going to write. And [00:07:00] then they're going to write it on the paper. And then that's where we kind of take another step of the checklist, which you got to see when you came into the class, where they were able to write their sentence and then check themselves, do a self assessment with, did they start with a capital?

Did they use finger spaces between their words? Do their letters touch the correct lines? And then if we were moving on to drawing a picture, does my picture match my words? And so it was great for them to not only co construct that, but then also have the success criteria on a checklist to make sure that they could go back and self assess.

And as they're doing that, if I'm remembering right, every kid had a whiteboard, a little mini whiteboard, and they were,

Yep, every kid had a whiteboard and every kid had a

every kid had a checklist and then every kid had a marker so they could write on their whiteboard. There's, so even in, just in that, there's so much to unpack and, and so one a learning target and we talk about the different areas of learning target and it, and it's like.

It's having one in kid [00:08:00] friendly language, and this is all research based. Unpacking it, so really, and then having it constantly displayed, and you're kind of doing all that at once because you've got it, but then the unpacking is then also creating the success criteria so that I know what success looks like, because if I have a sense of success, it's going to be a lot easier for me to actually get there.

And then the next,

and then one step further that we do is we'll as the class after they've gone and they've done the task, we will bring up their work and we will use their work as exemplars and decide, okay, what is, you know, a one, a two, a three, a four, which four is mastery. And. We get to that point by having the trust in our classroom and everybody feels safe to share and we all know that we're on this learning journey, learning journey together.

And it's okay if you had the exemplar that was only a one because we're going to help you get to the

Oh my gosh, you're giving me way too many things to think about. So, which is a really, really good [00:09:00] thing. So they're creating success criteria, but then even then through practice, they're, they're actually creating student exemplars and, and. Exemplars are not used enough. I'm out in the road so much and we don't use them enough, enough students actual work, but then it's not just the so called A work.

I don't want to get into the whole grading thing. It's, it's, it's the work that's the one or the two or the three. So we can see all the different examples of the student's work along the way. Like that's so important. And then what you're doing along with that, just continuing the learning targets thing before we dig into the other is of that, is your you're looking at their work, so you're, you're checking for understanding, but you're having the students self assess their own work, which is so, so powerful, and I want to dig into that more a little bit later, and you're giving them a chance to practice all at the same time.

It's like every element of what factors into students getting the learning that we want on Learning Targets is existing in, in that little lesson. And just. Like that much of a period of time.

Yes.

you also [00:10:00] talked about like direct instruction. Of course we have to do direct instruction. And you think on the, you know, on the the trust based observation on the form, we have that pyramid on the bottom, right?

And there's the, the seven ways that we help students learn. And it's, it's direct instruction or lecture. It's the use of audio visuals, which definitely rooms full of that too. There is modeling, which I'm sure there was, we haven't talked about that yet, but of course, along the way that happens.

There's reading, which in second grade, everything they're doing is reading. And then there's, there's pair team discussion, which you talked about that with the with the turn and talks. And, and then you, the, the practice by doing, learning by doing. And then even you had to come up to the classroom and show how they did it.

So teaching others, so every single element is in that along the way as well. And, and, but I, I really like how you talked about with the direct instruction pieces is that. That it's okay to have that, and it is, but that's receptive, so you spend as little bit of time as possible on that, and where was the majority of your time?

It's down in that active learning piece too. Do [00:11:00] you want to talk about that?

Yes. Yeah. So I always start with the direct instruction to make sure that they learn the skill that we're going to be focusing on. And then I let them go back to their tables. But before we go back to their teams to work, we always go over what does a learner look like? So learner disposition.

So that's something that we've taken time. to talk about in our classroom. So we talk about ownership. What does ownership look like? Well, you got to take charge of your learning and you know, it's my work, my job. That's what we say. And then we talk about engaged. What does an engaged learner look like?

And I think you saw this. We always say, we see it, we say it, we use our body language. And that goes back to reading and math and writing and science. Everything. What does an engaged learner look like? And just having them have that sense of what a learner looks like. We've talked about, too, like, what does a teacher look like?

What do I come into the classroom and look like? And how do I present myself? And that [00:12:00] was a good conversation to have so that they know, you know, I take what I do. really serious and I want to be the best I can be every day. And so they come and they want to be an engaged learner. So we have engaged ownership, personal best is another learner disposition and we say we want to do our best.

And so with teaching those learner dispositions, that's brought another level level to how they want to perform and Also goes back to success, that they've seen what success looks like and they know what kind of a learner it takes to

And, and everything you're saying, you're not just telling them that. You're, you're, everything you phrase was in the form of a question, and so the kids are helping you unpack that. Of course, you can guide that along the way, because that's part of our job is to do that. But. But that's what's happening along the way.

And, and really when we're talking about those, what are we really talking? We're talking about teacher student rapport and relationship, which includes high expectations, right? But you're also talking about classroom management. You're setting up [00:13:00] what a learner looks like, what classroom management is.

When we were talking beforehand, we were actually going over the form from when we observed you, and we had 13 different areas marked for student behavior management. And we only have six boxes. We had to actually add seven boxes over the course of the 20 minutes we observed because you were there. And, and, So let's let's just maybe you, I mean, you, you unpacked a lot of them, but let's even like, look, I've got, you, you had strong transitions, clear expectations, reminders, engagement, like with the routines and those sing songs that you had, your planning is so important, pacing was like boom, boom, boom, you had interventions, choices, you, you had, you know, You were really, really good at like when you wanted to get their attention to a whisper, which is super powerful.

You had nonverbal interventions, proximity control. You had great appropriate music playing to the type of learning they were doing. You had responsive teaching. So if you remember, there was a student that we were in there [00:14:00] and they were having a tough morning and it was, there was something with their jacket.

I can't remember all the details about it, but it was. It was interfering with the learning. Maybe it was over her head or something. Do you want to maybe talk a bit about classroom student behavior management?

yeah, I always try and read the room of the class and the students and keep an eye on what's going on. And at that moment, the kids were working in teams and pairs, so I had the opportunity to go over and check in with her. And she wasn't liking the way her jacket felt. So I just kindly said, you know, would you like some help?

Are there and then she was able to say that she would like to take it off And then after that moment, I was able to say do you need to use your breathing tool? Do you need to it seemed like she was having a little bit of a moment where she needed to calm down So we were able to use some of our toolbox tools That she was able to recognize she needed and calm her down and then give her some encouragement that it's okay, take a [00:15:00] breath and then let's get back on to our

And I think as we, as we talk about something like that, like, all our kids are coming from different households and, and there could be trauma of the morning, trauma just from a life. Difficult to live, but no matter what our best plans are, they're not going to go the way we want most of the time for a myriad of reasons, and how we respond in the moment and the toolbox that we have, And we're able to employ is really, really going to make a big difference in whether things go forward constructively for that class or whether they don't go constructively.

And even as you're talking about that, like it was really quiet and it was respecting that student's dignity. And so it wasn't even really in front of the other kids. It was happening around the other kids, but I'm not even sure the other kids even noticed it because it was so tactfully done as you did that.

So I think that was one part, but I think even another part that factors into that for me. Clearly, the expectations and routines that you talked about in terms of a learner and all that, those, [00:16:00] and those routines, those don't happen overnight. You have to work on those, and work on those, and work on those.

Like, those are all factored into the kids just doing their work while that happened. Otherwise, it could go sideways. Mate, could you unpack just a little bit more of that? All of that,

Yeah and also, I mean, one of the main focuses of my classroom every year is relationships. And so, right when you came in to watch our lesson, we had just finished up Community Circle. And so that's just one piece of our morning that we start with where we come together, we do greetings, we do share outs.

We do community building. And so having that strong foundation of relationships gives the opportunity for when there is an issue that arises. I'm able to help right away. That kid trusts me, I trust them, and the other students in the class have learned that they are tolerant of anyone and everyone.

And they know that. If a student asks them for help, if another classmate [00:17:00] asks them for help, they would help them. But if they're not getting asked for help, they're going to continue working on their learning. So they also know we have that respect in our class and we've kind of gone through the teachable moments of when would you kind of need to go tell your friend you can help them or if the teacher is helping then say, see that they're okay just to keep learning.

and all of that factors in. If you don't do that, it'll go sideways. So let's jump back to like the lesson and when they were on the carpet and, and the specifics of what we were doing then. And, and do you remember the singsongy kind of things you do? I don't really know how to describe it in terms of that, but other than that, but I want to talk about that.

The actual. Teaching on the carpet, and it's learning by doing at the same time, it's not just direct instruction. But, I'd like you to unpack some of that, because I think that ties into the visible learning, and I think that's really powerful for our learners to hear some of what you do, and the impact of that.

And then, even let's, afterwards, let's dig into the whole self assessment piece as well, [00:18:00] because I think that's really important as well.

Yeah, absolutely. So off the bat, when I start a lesson, I really try and have the students leading the learning. And so, when you came in that day, it was the very beginning of the school year. I think it was the third week. And so one of our students

Sorry, I'm just going to jump in and just say, I didn't even think about that. Like the way those kids are responding when all that other stuff is going on, we were just talking about when it's only like you've built those things that quickly in three weeks. I just want to go like, wow. Hey,

Thank you. Yeah, I was very impressed with this, all these learners. But the student that was teaching the class then was going over all their letter names, letter sounds, digraphs, blends vowel teams that we had learned at that time. And so, when she was teaching the class, I had the opportunity to go around and do check ins or do little interventions with the students.

And so, that's Ideally, how I start any lesson is giving the students the opportunity to lead skills that we know, [00:19:00] and then I take over, do a direct instruction of a new skill, and then they go out, perform a task, and then I can intervene with students that need more help, or press kids higher that need help.

Acceleration at that time. But we do love a lot of songs. The song that I think you heard that day was about rhyming words. So we would just say you know, something like cat and hat. And I would say, do they rhyme? And they would say or we would say, how do you know? I know because they both have the same ending sounds.

And so just making the learning really fun for the students engages everyone. And songs are just a wonderful way to learn. And so we just have a lot of songs and have a lot of fun. (ad h ere)

you're giving me so many other things to think about. So that, I mean, it's, I think one of the most important things I just heard you say is we want to make learning fun. And engagement is fun. [00:20:00] And there's so many things that go into that planning, probably at the top of the list to make it fun, but obviously you've tapped into something and maybe being a pre K teacher factored into all this with the singing, but when you're doing that over and over repetitively in a really fun age, and at that kids, the kids, at that age, the kids love that singing.

And so you develop these little routines of really. Grammar, spelling writing rules just in the form of song that the kids obviously they know them because they were singing it again only three weeks in but there's so much power in making that because you could say that and have them, you know, repeat it almost like you would in a world language type class but like how boring for the kids but the way you've chosen to do it with that is such a so much more impactful and fun for the kids.

Yes. And then the kids, now that we're further in the year, they're starting to make up songs for our learning. And so it got to that level where now they're taking it over, so it's, it's even more

[00:21:00] creating along the way and so I'd love that you as you were talking about it You're talking about one the students are teaching others. You've got somebody at the front You must have some way that that rotates and you're making sure that when a kid who might not be as strong It's a lesson that they can do and all that as well with the teaching others Do you maybe want to touch on that for a second?

Yeah. Yes. So we have a student teacher of the week and everybody does get an opportunity to do that. And that just gives a lot of opportunity for me as a teacher to teach the class. If you ever need help, you can stop and say, class, I need some help. And students will raise their hand if they're willing to help.

And that provides an opportunity for teamwork, collaboration. And. First of all, of course, we've built that trust and safety in our room that it's always okay to ask for help and we are better together. We all help each other out. We all have strengths and so it's okay if you don't know how to do something.

We are here for you. We are [00:22:00] right by you to

So when you've got that teaching others obviously of the student at the front, but you're even you're even going beyond that You're saying teaching others whenever whenever it's potentially needed. And so when you're, when you're talking about that, and which I love, it's, we're all a unit and we're all supporting each other.

And as a sports person, of course, I love that cause team is so important, but do you, do you group heterogeneously or homogeneously so that you've got people at each table or is it not that any ways more right or wrong, or do you just have it open and people know that, Hey, somebody needs help or how does that work for you?

I

Yeah we do groups that are, There's a different level learner at every table. But the beautiful thing is that students have those relationships where they have come to know what each other is really good at. And so they during our time we're, I say to the students, and we've made a poster that says what do you do for help?

We go over, first I [00:23:00] use a strategy, then I use a resource. And if those strategies and resources that we've learned pertaining to that learning intention weren't able to help them, then they move on to, I ask three friends. And so going and having that strategy that we've learned to ask three friends, that usually gets them to the opportunity of where they will find somebody that can help them.

But then after that, we say, if the three friends couldn't help you, then you can ask your teacher, of course. But kind of giving them those outlets of friends, because we do learn beautifully from each other. And you might learn something new that you didn't know because you did reach out to

and one, like you said, everyone, they know each other's strengths, so everyone's going to get a chance to be a teacher of others, which is, you know, great on the esteem level, of course, as well, right? It's through achievement and the ability to help each other. But even beyond that, I think in terms of, of the, It's like you're one person in a group of 20 some students, right?

And so [00:24:00] I can't get to everybody right away. And so when you create the opportunities for teaching others very purposefully built into this is our system. This is our routine. Students, instead of. getting something wrong for 15, 20 minutes until you might be able to get your way all the way around the room, they're corrected right away, right?

And so that does so much to speed learning what we don't practice wrong for as long, right? It's not a good thing, but it's so important. Let's talk about the self assessment piece. and like when I'm on the road, we talk about there's three ways that that formative assessment checks for understanding whatever language you want to use happen and it's one it's teachers checking right peer to peer and students looking at their own work and obviously the peer to peer and student aren't always but oftentimes there's rubrics accompanying those or success criteria accompanying those and when I'm on the road there's absolutely nothing wrong with teacher assessment of student work it's [00:25:00] it's super valuable but I just don't see as much as I want to peer to peer and student self assessment.

And there's just so much power when I'm looking at your work to influence my own work, or when I'm looking at my own work with specific criteria to then make corrections. And so, And you talk about that piece as well,

Yeah. That makes me think of feedback and

which the second part of assessment is feedback, right?

feedback. So as a class, we've talked a lot about feedback and how to give feedback

Because you have to teach them how, you can't just expect them to

Yes, so we've talked about, we give positive feedback. So what is positive feedback look like? It tells them what they need to do.

So if they made a mistake or an error, you're going to tell them the step that they need to do or the thing that they need to add. We're not going to say, you did that wrong. Talk about anything negative. We're just going to give them the positive words. So we've coached that [00:26:00] since day one. And that's just taken our classroom community to another level of It's really positive and they know it's okay to make errors and mistakes.

That's how we learn. And we have a little chant that we say, it's okay to make mistakes. That's how we learn. And then we talk about, you know, now the neurons in our brain are growing. That's great. This is how we learn. Even going into like talking about the learning pit by Paul Bloomberg and how you have to go into the learning pit to learn something new and you have that productive struggle and what that productive struggle looks like.

And showing them we're going to have strategies and resources to get to that new learning. And that's, that's amazing. That's what we want.

And I think what you're doing is you're unpacking it in such a clear way for the students to know that one, that's normal and that's okay, and to end up in a pit, but how, what are the strategies that we need? Like, because if we just do it without talking about it, then they're going to stay down [00:27:00] there, right?

And they're not going to find their way out, you're giving your one, you're saying it's normal. And two, now here's the tools to get out of there as well. And then the same applies to, I'm assuming, for that, like the self assessment, because the students were self assessing when they were in there as well.

Yes. Yeah, and I model making mistakes often. So, so that they can see, Oh, Mrs. Guy makes mistakes too. This is, this is okay. This is how we do it. But yeah, with the self assessment, just making sure they know what does that look like. And having those little checklists for the various subjects.

and again, and then we just make corrections. It's not bad, but now we learned, right? That, that's part of it as well.

Yeah, and many times we find the students going right up to the success criteria and checking as their self assessment. Okay, you know, I am on step two, so this is my next step. And then they can go back and do that always self assessing. What does it look like to get to the [00:28:00] mastery of that skill?

Stephanie, thank you so, so much for your time today. I am so, so grateful. Sometimes listeners might want to reach out to some of our teachers that we interview so they can learn more directly from them. So, would you be willing to share on, on air with us here your email, personal or professional, whatever you prefer, in case anybody has any questions and wants to reach out?

absolutely. I am S Sky, SG as in George, u y@sacredheartboise.com.

Sguy, S G U Y, at SacredHeartBoysU. com. Stephanie, thanks so much. It's been great having you on the podcast.

Thank you so much. Okay. Bye.