Welcome to season two of the Poggle Podcast. I'm Matt Tarca, producer of the Poggle Podcast for the Poggle Project.
Poggle stands for Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning, a student-centered approach that guides students in constructing their own understanding of content
and helps them develop important skills such as teamwork, communication, critical thinking, and problem solving.
The Poggle Podcast is an ongoing conversation from the Poggle Project that celebrates innovative educators both in and out of the classroom.
For our sixth episode this season, we will focus on the Observation Protocol for Teaching in Interactive Classrooms, also known as the OPTIC app.
OPTIC is an observational tool for the coaching and mentoring of learner-centered practitioners who use collaborative small groups,
experienced practitioners who obtain feedback on their facilitating, administrators to aid in the evaluation of faculty who participate in learner-centered collaborative teaching styles,
and the documentation of collaborative small group learning in a learner-centered classroom.
Today, co-host Wayne Pearson, who is a retired chemistry professor from the U.S. Naval Academy, will interview two Poggle practitioners behind the creation of the OPTIC app.
Yurik Haladay, a high school science educator for the Chicago Public Schools, has worked at Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center for the past 14 years.
And Shannon Wachowski, who is most recently with the Wyoming Department of Education,
where she supported Wyoming science teachers with science standards implementation and assessment.
Wayne, Yurik, and Shannon, thank you for being here today to discuss the importance of the strategic goal.
And Wayne, I will now pass the baton over to you.
Well, welcome again to another episode of the Poggle podcast. With us today, we have Shannon Wachowski and Yurik Haladay.
I'd like to give them a chance to introduce themselves. Shannon.
Hey, Wayne. I'm Shannon Wachowski. I've been with the Poggle Project, oh gosh, maybe 10 years off and on.
I taught high school science, mainly chemistry, physics and earth science for about 13 years and since then have dabbled in some other education related venues,
working at a university and for Department of Education. Great, Yurik. My name is Yurik Haladay.
I work in a high school called Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center. It's within the Chicago Public School system.
I teach chemistry and physics now, but I've taught other science classes, earth science, forensic science, biology, botany, and I've been teaching there for about 18 years.
All right, terrific. Well, today's episode is all about observation of the Poggle classroom and specifically about the tool that's been developed called OPTIC.
So I think the very first question for either one of you is what is OPTIC?
Well, OPTIC, first of all, stands for Observation Protocol for Teaching in Interactive Classrooms.
So while it is meant for the Poggle classroom, we really, our goal is that it can be used in any sort of active learning environment.
So it's basically a tool that you can use to collect evidence about what's going on in the classroom, looking at teacher actions and what's happening in the classroom to collect a little bit more data around what active learning looks like to make informed decisions for what you do in your class.
I would just add it's a tool that's used to observe the whole classroom, not individual learning teams. So there's opportunities to watch the facilitator and record any facilitator actions that are going on and then interactions that are occurring within the learning environment, either between the facilitator and learning teams or between learning teams and other learning teams.
Great clarification.
Yeah, great, great. So, so I guess, how was this tool developed?
Well, I'll take that one. I'll start because I've been on the OPTIC team longer than Shannon.
I'm not sure when we started, how long ago, four or five, six years ago, but it's been a while.
And what we did is we were in the working group, the classroom observation protocol working group, and we were tasked to develop some sort of observation tool that would fit for a Poggle style classroom.
And when I first got on the team, we looked at what classroom observation protocols were actually developed and out in the world being used.
And we quickly realized that none of those tools really fit into a Poggle classroom.
So with Poggle process oriented guided inquiry learning, we thought about how or think about how the instructor is guiding the inquiry so the learning can happen.
So then we wanted to look at what are the actions the facilitator is doing.
So we went out and just observed ourselves and other observed other Poggle practitioners and started taking notes on what a typical Poggle classroom looks like and what is the facilitator doing in that classroom.
And then we also decided to look at the interactions between the instructor and learning teams, between the instructor, the whole class, between individual learning teams or multiple learning teams communicating with each other.
And then we after that we started thinking about well how can we code these interactions and facilitator actions so then at the end there can be a visual and a discussion about what the Poggle classroom actually looks like.
I think I'll just add, you know, after you're in the main the initial team did all of this background and research and by the time I came on the tool was mainly had been developed, along with the start of a manual.
And so what we've worked on since then is kind of refining the tool and the different codes that look at the different actions that are happening.
We've added details to the manual, and we're currently working on the development of some asynchronous training and an app, so that we can move from a pencil paper or pencil tool, where you might go into a classroom with a clipboard to now you can have it on your
phone or tablet and and record the codes and get that data sent right to you.
And we're also looking to collect some data so we can publish the tool itself, and then have some validation to support the codes and its use.
Okay, so let's let's talk a little bit about the process itself what actually goes on when a practitioner is using the the optic tool.
Well there's first the pre observation conference, where the observer discusses with the instructor who is going to be observed what they're going to see during that day.
Then when the observation occurs.
There's the observer. And when class starts every two minutes, they're filling out a code form, either on an app or on paper, and they're reporting interactions in the classroom.
For example, is the instructor talking to the whole class are they speaking to an individual learning team are individual learning teams talking with each other, our students interacting with each other.
So, we're looking the observers looking for what types of interactions are occurring.
Then, during that same two minute segment, the observer is watching the instructors the facilitators actions, what they are doing, are they preparing for the learning activity, are they moving throughout the whole classroom observing, are they just observing from
a statically standing from one point, do they make an intervention because they've identified that a some misconception is being developed during the construction of knowledge is there a reporting out where students are reporting out the knowledge they've constructed.
Is there classroom management, you know, is that a, you know, an action that facilitator had to take. So then every two minutes, they're checking off boxes, observing the actions or the interactions that are occurring during those two minute seconds.
And then we also try and track the activity type, are they actually doing a local activity. Are they doing some classroom learning activity that isn't necessarily a local activity like a thing pair share or peer tutoring, or are the students even possibly
doing individual work or the instructor just asked the student to solve, you know, problem that's written on board.
Great sounds like a really really great tool for for a formative assessment of the POGO classroom. Would you say that that is its primary goal.
I think it's, it's, there's multiple uses for the tool I think one very valuable valuable tool is for the new POGO practitioner, someone can go to a three day summer workshop, and then they have to teach a class, and they don't have the practice.
So there's a learning curve to that using the optic tool with an experienced observer who understands the POGO process.
They can then use the codes and the tool, the optic tool itself to give the new instructor a visual about how they're actually interacting with their students and the actions they're taking.
So I've used it with student teachers and they found it to be a very useful tool to learn how to POGO better, and I would like to, I would add POGO better quicker.
Then we don't have a whole lot of use for information about how an administrator could use this tool we think it would work really well for classroom observations for an evaluation.
And then the administrator can see what's going on in the classroom and then say oh yeah this is a cooperative collaborative learning environment where the students are constructing their own knowledge.
And then we want to also use it for we think another use of the tool could be just to improve your own practice.
Maybe I've developed a bad habit because I was in remote learning for a year and a half, and now someone can observe me and say oh you're not, you know, like there's maybe you want to do more, I don't know, give the students opportunities to report out one, possibly.
And maybe I wouldn't notice that because in the moment when I'm instructing my classroom, I'm not always thinking about everything I'm doing, trying to manage and instruct, so it has the use for just improving any practitioners POGO practice.
I see. Excellent.
What else do you think.
I think you hit on our, our big goals which really is to, you know, if you want to make change in your classroom especially going back to what you said about that, you know, inner personal growth piece which I think as educators were all looking to do.
This provides a format to be able to do that in a structured way versus having maybe someone come in and just offer their opinion about how your instruction might be going.
This tool can really help support collection around certain aspects of active learning that we think are really important. So one for the administrator to help educate them on what active learning, you know really entails one to support a new practitioner,
and so in that and then you know also for that personal growth piece, we really feel like this would be a valuable tool maybe in a professional learning community, or something like that where you've created a culture in your space where you can share problems
of practice with others, you know with other instructors and use this as a way to to support one another and that growth.
We also acknowledge that some folks might not have that type of community within their school. And so we're also looking for ways where someone could film themselves, and then use our working group as a resource to then use the tool to code their video
and provide them with that feedback, or you can even film yourself and then code yourself later so lots of options but we would really want it to be used you know educationally to help improve instruction, more than anything else more than a summative assessment
tool I would say, but it could still be used for that.
So the way they have the optic tool is non judgmental. All it does is record what's happening in the classroom. And then the instructor in the experience for the Pogo observer can then decide, you know, should more of this be done or less of that.
So it really is a team with the facilitator and the person who's using the tool, and it certainly sounds like the person using the tool needs to be an experienced practitioner who is familiar with the Pogo classroom and also familiar with the tool.
So that brings me back to the next question. How do you get trained to use the tool.
So, currently we've got the manual and access to the paper version of the tool posted on the Pogo website.
So that's, I guess our current informal training.
We have presented workshops at a few of the end caps to train some practitioners that when we're looking into some other avenues maybe potentially through a three day workshop or some other places.
We're also working on an asynchronous training that would be located on the website where you could, you know, go through it at your own pace to get familiar with all of the codes and do some practice and things like that.
Eric, anything I missed on that one.
No, we presented at a couple a few Pogo national meetings.
We're also we've also presented at in Sela, which is the National Science Leadership Education Leadership Association, and I know that they have expressed some interest also so we're really hoping to, you know, branch out
and educate some other organizations as well.
I want to add on to something Shannon said earlier about improving practice. I look at teaching as two aspects there's the science of teaching where you're practicing constructive is when you're getting the students to work together and cooperative collaborative
learning environments then these, then there's the art of teaching. And there's many ways to pull a Pogo classroom can be organized and run and be successful where students can successfully construct knowledge and and achieve academic success.
And this tool just allows the instructor to see how their classroom is running and how they're, they're implementing their practice, and then they can decide if they want to make changes to that.
And then once they observe other classrooms. If, if there's multiple persons in an institution that are pogoing for no better word, they can build off of each other's experiences and efforts in the classroom and learn each other's art to then create a better
classroom overall for everyone in the entire institution.
We're talking about optic today, which is an observation tool. I'll ask you both how does this fit into the strategic plan, because that's the theme for this particular season.
So, optic is seated within goal for, which is to gather and analyze data to provide comprehensive assessment of student learning and of public learning environments. So, you know, especially to your point about being able to, you know that the tool is non judgmental it just collects
data, and then it's really how the educator, and those that the educators working with decide how to use that data.
But specifically this could be a way to inform the general public more about what active learning and specifically Poggle can do for students in the classroom.
So really looking at collecting that data to have a more informed picture, rather than just anecdotal, which is some of what's out there now.
And one thing that could that can be captured using the tool is how much, how much time you're spending in a certain action in the classroom.
And maybe a teacher is interacting with one or two learning teams, but there's seven learning teams in the classroom. The tool would capture that event, and then the instructor could make an informed decision that I have to move around the classroom or I should spend
more than three minutes at any one individual learning team because I have to spread my time out equally throughout the whole classroom.
So, this sounds like it's been a pretty substantial project over the years so who are some of the people that have been involved with Optic.
Other members on our team who have been working really hard and contributing a lot, Gina Fry, Matt Ward, Jamie Schneider, those have been Shannon and I are currently on the team.
But in the past, Andy Brissette was on the team for a while, Chris Lansky, Susan Shadle. So there's, there have been enough over the years, five, six, seven years, I don't know how long we've been working on this.
But we spent a lot of time working on this tool we've been working really hard, getting it ready. We've watched lots and lots of classroom videos, we've had many many many discussions about what codes we should make and what codes we should remove or improve.
So it's been a collaborative efforts between many POGO practitioners. And it's nice that Rick has given us a lot of space. He just knows we're getting stuff done so we just kind of set goals and try and meet those goals.
And we've been successful, I'd say.
This sounds like an incredible tool that any practitioner would find valuable in the POGO classroom. I want to thank you both for being here and discussing Optic with us.
And I would encourage anybody who's interested to go to the website to pull up the tool, take a look at it.
If you feel that you need training, you certainly reach out, find out a way to get get that training and encourage you to use this tool to to improve your classroom teaching.
Absolutely. And I, I think you know, we're always available to help support in any way that we can. So don't feel like you're using this tool on your own if there's some way that you know our team can help support your professional learning like that's what this is all about.
Great. Thank you for inviting us.
And thank you for helping us disseminate some information about the Optic team and the tool we've the Optic tool we've created.
That's great. This has been fantastic. So, thanks for everybody out there who's listening and I just want to remind you that we are on Episode six of the podcast.
There are more to come so keep looking out for for further episodes.
Thanks a lot, folks. Thank you. Thank you.
If you would like to make a donation so we can keep providing podcasts, low cost workshops and classroom materials, please visit www.pogle.org backslash donate intro natural music of our podcast is produced by Poggle practitioner, Wayne Pearson.
Please join us next time when we discuss the fifth goal of Poggle strategic plan titled networking and strategic collaboration.
Until then, enjoy your week.