1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,000 Hi. 2 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:02,000 How's it going? 3 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:03,000 I have a question. 4 00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:04,000 What are you doing? 5 00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:06,000 I'm recording a podcast about Washington. 6 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:08,000 Hey, can I be in the podcast? 7 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:10,000 Yeah, what do you guys talk to me about? 8 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:11,000 What do you guys love about school? 9 00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:15,000 We love this school because the teachers do mini games with us 10 00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:17,000 when we do all our work and listen. 11 00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:20,000 What do you love about Washington? 12 00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:22,000 It's really fun here. 13 00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:24,000 And does math. 14 00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:25,000 What about you? 15 00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:26,000 What do you love about teachers in Washington? 16 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:28,000 That they're really nice to us and everything. 17 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:33,000 Makes you feel relaxed to know that someone has your back. 18 00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:36,000 I love about the kindness of the students, 19 00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:39,000 especially my principal and principal. 20 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:43,000 Everything was organized, especially my teachers. 21 00:00:43,000 --> 00:00:46,000 I care for them. 22 00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:54,000 These are just a few of the students I spoke with 23 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:56,000 from Washington Elementary. 24 00:00:56,000 --> 00:01:00,000 Part of the Madera Unified School District in Madera. 25 00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:02,000 Never heard of Madera? 26 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:05,000 Well, it's a city dead center in the state of California. 27 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:10,000 It's just outside of Fresno and about 60 miles from Yosemite National Park. 28 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:13,000 Population about 70,000. 29 00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:17,000 It's primarily in Agtown filled with migrant workers. 30 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:19,000 80% of which are Hispanic. 31 00:01:19,000 --> 00:01:22,000 I've spent time speaking with many families in the area 32 00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:25,000 and the majority of them told me similar stories 33 00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:29,000 of settling here with the dream of giving their kids a better life. 34 00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:33,000 And education is how they believe they can make that happen. 35 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:36,000 We've had that priority that kids have in education. 36 00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:38,000 Translation. 37 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:41,000 Our priority is our children having education. 38 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:47,000 And in Madera, the school district takes that responsibility very seriously. 39 00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:54,000 Welcome to Rising from the Margins. 40 00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:57,000 How the struggles and successes of California's poorest schools 41 00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:02,000 are writing a story that could be a model for the rest of our nation. 42 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:05,000 I'm your host, Byron Watkins. 43 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:08,000 In California, there are about 2,600 schools 44 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:14,000 whose student populations are made up of 85% or more low income students. 45 00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:19,000 There's a number of ways a child can be identified as low income. 46 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:24,000 But in general, it means the household qualifies for free and reduced school lunch, 47 00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:27,000 according to the federal income guidelines. 48 00:02:27,000 --> 00:02:31,000 And when a school has this large of a low income student population, 49 00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:35,000 it brings with it a myriad of additional challenges. 50 00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:39,000 Unique health, behavioral and nutritional issues, 51 00:02:39,000 --> 00:02:42,000 high numbers of students with English as a second language, 52 00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:46,000 and high numbers of parents with no high school diploma. 53 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:50,000 Many of the kids in these schools will be the first in their family to graduate. 54 00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:54,000 We will end what has become a race to the bottom in our schools. 55 00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:56,000 College and career readiness standards. 56 00:02:56,000 --> 00:02:59,000 Critical thinking, learn how to live out your full potential. 57 00:02:59,000 --> 00:03:03,000 We just have not committed to the underlying problem. 58 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:08,000 Then when you layer in overcrowded classrooms and outdated teaching materials, 59 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:12,000 what you find are teachers stretched to their literal limits, 60 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:18,000 just trying to do what they're passionate about, but getting bogged down in bloated systems and self-doubt. 61 00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:24,000 And all of this existed well before COVID dropped a bomb, right into the middle of it. 62 00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:31,000 So in this podcast, we're going to visit schools who serve a large low income student population, 63 00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:37,000 and who are taking innovative and novel approaches to questioning how education has traditionally been done. 64 00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:42,000 We'll explore how these schools are attempting to rewrite their future, 65 00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:47,000 how the challenges they face inside their fences ripple far beyond the communities they serve, 66 00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:55,000 and why the need to invest heavily in our schools is not just an option, but a necessity. 67 00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:59,000 This is Rising from the Margins. 68 00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:04,000 Chapter 1 Washington Elementary in Madera, California 69 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:10,000 Oh wow, that's nice. Here, we're a 100 year old school. 70 00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:18,000 We just turned 100 last year, November, and we, everything is not centralized. 71 00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:22,000 That's school principal, Alberto Hernandez, or Beto for short. 72 00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:29,000 He joined Washington 10 years ago with the goal of transforming the school's culture, climate, and outcomes. 73 00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:33,000 Washington serves the poorest community in Madera. 74 00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:36,000 99% of its students are considered low income. 75 00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:42,000 66% of its students are emergent multilingual, also known as English learners, 76 00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:46,000 and every student is on the school lunch program. 77 00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:53,000 In over that 10 years, this traditionally underperforming school has gone through a radical transformational shift. 78 00:04:53,000 --> 00:04:58,000 To meet the needs of their students in new ways, Beto, along with the district, 79 00:04:58,000 --> 00:05:02,000 has sought out external support in order to create the change they needed. 80 00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:05,000 And it's been working. Here's Beto. 81 00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:08,000 It's not a surprise for me. 82 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:17,000 We had already been attempting to implement a lot of the best practices of the PBIS, culture and climate systems. 83 00:05:17,000 --> 00:05:22,000 PBIS stands for Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports. 84 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:29,000 It's a set of ideas and tools used in schools to improve students' behavior and shift the overall culture of the school. 85 00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:36,000 And now just having the CCE come in and really take it to another level of detail, 86 00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:41,000 take it to another level of understanding of the PLC process at work, 87 00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:45,000 has really opened your eyes like we wouldn't have expected. 88 00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:48,000 PLCs aren't new concepts. 89 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:53,000 As you may or may not know, it stands for Professional Learning Community. 90 00:05:53,000 --> 00:05:58,000 At its most simple, it's a team meeting between teachers at each grade level. 91 00:05:58,000 --> 00:06:05,000 It happens every so often and they'll review things like curriculum, rigor, assessment, schools, etc. etc. 92 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:10,000 Ask any school and they will probably tell you, oh yeah, we do PLCs. 93 00:06:10,000 --> 00:06:17,000 But here's the thing. There's not really a shared meaning among schools about what constitutes a PLC. 94 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:20,000 So everywhere you go, it's going to be different. 95 00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:23,000 And it will have different rigor and importance. 96 00:06:23,000 --> 00:06:26,000 At Washington, it's everything. 97 00:06:26,000 --> 00:06:34,000 The teachers that are here and that choose to work at our school know that it is one of the toughest schools to work in Modera. 98 00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:39,000 The traditional standard of practice for teachers is to operate from this mentality. 99 00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:43,000 My kids, my classroom, my lesson plans. 100 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:45,000 That's the way it's kind of always been. 101 00:06:45,000 --> 00:06:51,000 Teachers mostly operating in silos and very protective of their materials. 102 00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:58,000 It's so ingrained that to shed this way of thinking, the school typically needs additional support. 103 00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:08,000 And so for Beto and the teachers at Washington, they're being coached to handle PLCs and their teacher culture in a much more rigorous, collaborative way. 104 00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:16,000 If our kids don't feel that the teachers care and believe in their ability to learn at high levels, then we're never going to reach our goals. 105 00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:27,000 Teachers' egos are left at the door and ideas are shared for the betterment of not just one student or one classroom, but the entire grade level. 106 00:07:27,000 --> 00:07:36,000 It's changing the mentality of my kids, my classroom, to our kids, our classrooms. 107 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:39,000 And it doesn't stop there. 108 00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:55,000 We have put such an emphasis on bringing the right people on board so that we can create successful systems and culture and climate to be ready for intense work like the solution tree, PLC process or project. 109 00:07:55,000 --> 00:08:03,000 And that took us, right, it's our second year, so it's taken us, it took us five to seven years to turn it all around. 110 00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:14,000 How about a reflection point can be that we all need to, I know, can I borrow yours? 111 00:08:14,000 --> 00:08:22,000 We all need to be aligned with teaching the digit form because this is what they're supposed to be able to do. 112 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:27,000 I made my way into the Second Grade Teachers Collaborative Meeting, or PLC. 113 00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:32,000 All four second grade teachers were huddled around a table in an empty classroom. 114 00:08:32,000 --> 00:08:37,000 Each had their laptop open and a stack of recent tests they'd given on hand. 115 00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:44,000 A small sign was displayed between them that outlined their process for communicating and collaborating. 116 00:08:44,000 --> 00:08:52,000 They were collectively reviewing a math test they had all given to determine if they all agreed that all their students understood the assignment. 117 00:08:52,000 --> 00:08:57,000 One thing to note here is the way Washington's PLCs are structured. 118 00:08:57,000 --> 00:09:05,000 Each collaborative meeting is rooted in four essential questions. Question one, what is it we expect our students to learn? 119 00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:09,000 Two, how will we know when they've learned it? 120 00:09:09,000 --> 00:09:13,000 Three, how will we respond when some students do not learn? 121 00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:18,000 And four, how will we respond when some students already know it? 122 00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:27,000 Yes, my student understands how to draw it, but they're not understanding or at least not demonstrating that they can write digits. 123 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:30,000 What's cool is I really got to see a PLC in action. 124 00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:39,000 As they were in the process of discussing the results and assessing how they were grading the students' work for actual comprehension, something clicked for them. 125 00:09:39,000 --> 00:09:47,000 So I think that, you know, do you guys agree that we can go back and reteach like this? 126 00:09:47,000 --> 00:09:51,000 Yes, I agree. I mean, definitely. Because it's a lot of position. 127 00:09:51,000 --> 00:10:04,000 Ultimately, by comparing test scores across not just one classroom, but the entire collective second grade, these four teachers came to a meaningful conclusion that would better serve all of their students. 128 00:10:04,000 --> 00:10:11,000 And this process doesn't just benefit their students. It's also insightful for the teachers themselves. How so? 129 00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:15,000 Here's second grade teacher Veronica Solario-Paredes. 130 00:10:15,000 --> 00:10:30,000 It just helps me be more aligned with our expectations and our standards, just being more aligned, more organized, having a better roadmap of exactly what I have to do, better targets, being more organized. 131 00:10:30,000 --> 00:10:34,000 Here's another teacher, Maria Alameo, from the Collaborative Meeting. 132 00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:44,000 I love coming in and just knowing that if I'm unsure about something, I can ask my team, how do you feel about this? What do you think with this? 133 00:10:44,000 --> 00:10:53,000 What happened here? And yes, case in point, what we're doing right now, it's like, wait, I didn't think about that. So how are we going to evaluate this? 134 00:10:53,000 --> 00:11:01,000 And for me, this is my fourth year. And my first year was really difficult because we were not working together like we should have. 135 00:11:06,000 --> 00:11:09,000 We're taking a look behind the curtain a bit here. 136 00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:19,000 Because check out this stat. 73% of Americans are either completely or somewhat satisfied with the education received by their students. 137 00:11:19,000 --> 00:11:27,000 But we've learned here that most schools are nowhere even close to achieving these levels of collaboration and standardization among their teachers. 138 00:11:27,000 --> 00:11:29,000 But why is that? 139 00:11:29,000 --> 00:11:38,000 It comes down to the administration and the guiding coalition understanding the concept of your school being a professional learning community. 140 00:11:38,000 --> 00:11:49,000 Okay, so it sounds like a true professional learning community is a much larger concept that doesn't seem to be confined to any one grade level or school site or even district. 141 00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:56,000 It seems to reach far beyond just looking at how kids learn and fundamentally changes what it means to teach, 142 00:11:56,000 --> 00:12:08,000 administrate a school, and even how communities as a whole support education. And disrupting the traditional way of getting education done is not an easy concept to get buy in on. 143 00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:14,000 We bring the right people on board that can handle the workload, that have emotional intelligence. 144 00:12:14,000 --> 00:12:20,000 We teach them the skills they need to meet the needs of our kids, and we have strong systems in place at every tier. 145 00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:26,000 You know, all over the state we're seeing that growth is really stagnant but not at Washington. 146 00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:34,000 And I think that is a tribute to the whole PLC process, really diving into it and making it such a serious and professional endeavor. 147 00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:41,000 That's Todd Lyle, superintendent of Madeira Unified. He's been a champion for this approach to education for a while. 148 00:12:41,000 --> 00:12:49,000 Todd believes in it by any means necessary. And it's been one of the many successes for the Madeira Unified School District. 149 00:12:49,000 --> 00:13:01,000 We've learned from studying high performing countries and their educational systems that there isn't a single system on earth that succeeds beyond the skill level of their teachers. 150 00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:08,000 Okay, hold on. What are you saying there sounds important? Let's listen to that again. 151 00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:14,000 There isn't a single system on earth that succeeds beyond the skill level of their teachers. 152 00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:28,000 Okay, so if this is a fact, as a state and in our school districts, are we doing what is necessary to be sure our teachers have the support they need to continue learning after they get their credential? 153 00:13:28,000 --> 00:13:35,000 Or are they mostly left treading water, having to learn how to swim on their own? 154 00:13:35,000 --> 00:13:45,000 And the teachers at Washington are really trying to professionalize their own work. They're taking that really seriously because they see the need. 155 00:13:45,000 --> 00:13:51,000 And I don't think that we always see that in the U.S., right? When schools are doing well, they're well enough in a lot of cases. 156 00:13:51,000 --> 00:14:02,000 But the situation here is more dire than that. And I think the staff really feels like there is an amazing amount of student potential that's really latent. 157 00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:10,000 And all it needs is the opportunity to manifest. 158 00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:16,000 And so they don't want to be what stands in the way of the kids and their success, right? 159 00:14:16,000 --> 00:14:22,000 So they're really professionalizing their work. They're having a lot of courageous conversations group by group. 160 00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:30,000 The team leaders here in their PLCs are really well placed. They have a lot of credibility. They care deeply. 161 00:14:30,000 --> 00:14:34,000 They're doing everything that they know how to do and they're hungry to learn more. 162 00:14:34,000 --> 00:14:46,000 So Solution Tree has been kind of a godsend. I mean, they've shown up just in time with the school's culture being stable, the commitment to quality behavior, a commitment to professional ethics. 163 00:14:46,000 --> 00:14:52,000 And then here comes, you know, this incredible opportunity from CCEE. 164 00:14:52,000 --> 00:15:00,000 The opportunity Todd is referring to was sort of this supercharging to the workbedo in Washington's teachers had started. 165 00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:08,000 The teachers had built the heart. They were working hard to disrupt old ways of thinking. Yet they needed further structure and guidance. 166 00:15:08,000 --> 00:15:16,000 The school had a vision for its future, but due to limited funding and restrictions, the distance line was years away. 167 00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:26,000 That's where CCEE stepped into bridge the gap or supercharge the process, if you will. 168 00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:40,000 This is not popular or easy to admit for any principal, but I'll admit it. In the past, we were doing PLC light, meaning that you're implementing surface level concepts or strategies. 169 00:15:40,000 --> 00:15:54,000 And, you know, you can read all the books, you can go to all the conferences and now going through this, if you don't experience and immerse yourself in the work at this level, or like I said, go to a school that's doing it. 170 00:15:54,000 --> 00:16:00,000 And it's a model PLC school that's doing it right. And it's been verified to be a model PLC school. 171 00:16:00,000 --> 00:16:14,000 It's really hard to picture or imagine like you getting to where we're at right now on your own. It's also hard to admit that, you know, I couldn't have got here on my own, even as a more experienced principal. 172 00:16:14,000 --> 00:16:24,000 That's tough for someone like Beto to confess. He grew up in Madera, graduated from Madera High. He sees himself in his student population. 173 00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:37,000 He's smart and progressive in his approach. You probably won't find another principal as passionate about these kids. And yet, here he was, struggling to get his school and teachers where they needed to be. 174 00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:42,000 Now imagine how it must feel for a first year teacher at a challenging school. 175 00:16:42,000 --> 00:17:06,000 In the absence of being always present, principals trust that PLC work is actually happening step by step. What they don't realize often is, without some oversight, some guidance and some quality leadership, without touching this, are we adhering to the process so it becomes automatic, so it becomes ingrained? 176 00:17:06,000 --> 00:17:17,000 And typically the answer is it isn't. Not with staff turnover, not with the amount of fluctuation in the labor market. People are in and out. And we're really trying to stabilize that here in Madera Unified. 177 00:17:17,000 --> 00:17:25,000 But over the years, very few districts have stabilized it, right? So there's been so much movement in and out of the profession, so much movement between schools. 178 00:17:25,000 --> 00:17:32,000 And then we've created some of our own chaos by diving into dual language and creating a heritage language program here at Washington. 179 00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:44,000 Hold on. Todd said something you might not know. Dual language immersion is a classroom where both English and Spanish is taught at the same time, with the goal of creating bilingual students. 180 00:17:44,000 --> 00:17:50,000 But this also means teachers have to be bilingual as well, and this creates its own staffing challenges. 181 00:17:50,000 --> 00:18:06,000 And so what we really need to do is go back to a really professional gold standard of what a PLC process looks like so people find success and buy into it on a really deep level, and they really own this work. 182 00:18:06,000 --> 00:18:23,000 For me, it's just what I know about what PLC is. The planning, the collaborating, just bringing in data, unpacking standards, the constant trainings that we have to. 183 00:18:23,000 --> 00:18:31,000 So that's all I know because that's what I walked into. But when I explain it to my other teacher friends, they're like, oh my gosh, that's a lot. 184 00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:37,000 But for me, I'm just like, I'm used to it. It's just ongoing learning that we're doing. 185 00:18:37,000 --> 00:18:43,000 That's sixth grade teacher Daisy Miguel, who began her teaching career three years ago here at Washington. 186 00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:49,000 This way of teaching and standardization is all she's known. It does sound like more work, right? 187 00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:56,000 Constant collaboration, communication, and criticism from colleagues resulting in the necessity for self-reflection. 188 00:18:56,000 --> 00:19:03,000 That is a daunting idea, a real challenge for the ego. But here's more from Daisy. 189 00:19:03,000 --> 00:19:17,000 I think it really helps me just come into my workspace without any possibility of closing myself or limiting me to what I can learn or be willing to learn. 190 00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:28,000 I'm stepping into a space where it's just so natural that you want to keep learning or you want to reflect on what you did do and see how you can perfect that even more. 191 00:19:28,000 --> 00:19:32,000 And then there's fifth grade teacher Elizabeth Ramirez, who told me this. 192 00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:34,000 I feel like I have more energy. 193 00:19:34,000 --> 00:19:42,000 Wait just a second. More energy? More supposed work and yet more energy? 194 00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:52,000 What Elizabeth is really sharing is not that she has more energy, but actually that she's wasting less energy. 195 00:19:52,000 --> 00:19:55,000 Let's make a little analogy here. 196 00:19:55,000 --> 00:20:01,000 Pretend you have 100 BTUs of brain energy that you can burn in a day. 197 00:20:01,000 --> 00:20:06,000 Anything that you put thought to burns BTUs against your 100. 198 00:20:06,000 --> 00:20:15,000 That could mean things like worrying or confusion or self-doubt, anger, assuming, fighting or stress. 199 00:20:15,000 --> 00:20:25,000 All of these would burn up valuable energy you need to feel whole and make it through your day and hopefully to still have energy to be with your family when you get home. 200 00:20:25,000 --> 00:20:31,000 More and more, it's being said that burnout is not working too hard or too much, 201 00:20:31,000 --> 00:20:38,000 but feeling that the work you are doing is pointless or isn't leading to anything meaningful. 202 00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:44,000 So when it becomes clear how much confusion and isolation is traditionally present among teachers, 203 00:20:44,000 --> 00:20:49,000 it's not hard to see why they're burning out at such an alarming rate. 204 00:20:49,000 --> 00:20:56,000 So what this supposed more work is actually doing is eliminating that confusion and isolation. 205 00:20:56,000 --> 00:21:03,000 It's clearing up spaces where teachers spend a lot of time wasting those valuable BTUs. 206 00:21:03,000 --> 00:21:12,000 And it's making them a stronger team, which means less misunderstandings and more collaborative support among colleagues. 207 00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:19,000 All of this has measurable results and deeper meaning that can stave off that destroyer of momentum. 208 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:21,000 Burnout. 209 00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:27,000 Here's Elizabeth. She's in her second year with Washington doing PLC intensive work. 210 00:21:27,000 --> 00:21:30,000 Even when I go home, I feel I have more time. 211 00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:34,000 Now I'm not trying to see what I'm going to teach. 212 00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:44,000 Now I'm trying to find how to maybe make it more engaging, how to take my students to a different level, the ones who are now understanding it. 213 00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:53,000 I feel like it just changed my whole mindset of what it is to plan and be prepared. 214 00:21:53,000 --> 00:21:58,000 Now it's not like, oh, I have to plan. It's like, oh, yeah, we're planning. 215 00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:04,000 Like, I know what I'm doing and now I have like clear expectations of what I'm going to do. 216 00:22:04,000 --> 00:22:10,000 I know where I'm going with my sequence of my lessons. 217 00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:12,000 Sounds great, right? 218 00:22:12,000 --> 00:22:16,000 This seems like the approach all schools should be taking for their teachers. 219 00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:20,000 But the unfortunate part is that quite frankly, they're not. 220 00:22:20,000 --> 00:22:22,000 And why is that? 221 00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:31,000 Well, if we take a step back here, there's a missing component of this that may be worth noting. 222 00:22:31,000 --> 00:22:35,000 And that is... 223 00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:42,000 We don't have in education a really powerful sense of what it means to be a professional, but we've been educated. 224 00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:44,000 We have tons of college units. 225 00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:48,000 We have really brilliant people that work in education across the district. 226 00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:59,000 But typically because we rely on publishers to create content that we later mislabel as curriculum and we utilize teachers' editions, 227 00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:09,000 we have created kind of a learned helplessness around reacting in real time and really taking on a level of responsibility in our own classrooms. 228 00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:12,000 And we can improve with the times. 229 00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:16,000 Obviously, science and history are ever-evolving. 230 00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:20,000 We like to imagine that the book is static and that history is static. 231 00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:24,000 And somehow when we get into education, we imagine that it's all done. 232 00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:31,000 And we're dealing with a static framework of curriculum and content instead of something that's dynamic. 233 00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:37,000 Here's fifth grade teacher Elizabeth Ramirez again. 234 00:23:37,000 --> 00:23:45,000 Last year was maybe one of my hardest years, but it was maybe one of my best years, if that makes sense. 235 00:23:45,000 --> 00:23:58,000 I just learned so much by being able to just focus on a standard and unpacking it and really seeing like, what is our end goal? 236 00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:06,000 What do I want my students to learn and being able to integrate that into my actual lessons instead of the old way that I used to see it, 237 00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:11,000 like you get your teacher book in front to back. 238 00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:18,000 It's just a whole different experience and I feel more prepared when I go and I teach my lessons. 239 00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:23,000 This new experience, as she puts it, seems to have a profound effect on the staff. 240 00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:27,000 But what about the students? Are they noticing the shift? 241 00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:32,000 So I asked sixth grade teacher Daisy to share some of her insights. 242 00:24:32,000 --> 00:24:35,000 We've seen just so many benefits from it. 243 00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:39,000 Like, just last week we had a CFA. 244 00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:42,000 A CFA is a common formative assessment. 245 00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:51,000 We had it on Friday. After school we just met just to see, okay, let's look over our constructed responses and see how we're going to grade them, how are we going to score them. 246 00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:54,000 So we were just there just talking, we were laughing, joking. 247 00:24:54,000 --> 00:25:03,000 It didn't really even feel too much like work and then we were talking about, well, most of my kids miss this question and we see like a whole bunch of red and we're like, oh my gosh, like embarrassed. 248 00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:09,000 And like just thinking like, well, what did I do wrong? And then another teacher said, well, most of my kids miss this one. 249 00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:14,000 So then just within like five, ten minutes, we're already teaching each other. 250 00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:16,000 Like, well, this is how I did it. 251 00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:18,000 Well, Monday we're coming back and we're reteaching. 252 00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:24,000 And so then yesterday exactly the way that Maria taught me is how I showed my students. 253 00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:32,000 And then it wasn't even a full hour of math and giving an exit ticket at the end ended up showing that 29 of my students 254 00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:37,000 ended up meeting that criteria and we're completely okay with that standard now. 255 00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:46,000 And it's just crazy how even another teacher's support, which is like five to ten minutes, just completely changed in less than an hour in my classroom. 256 00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:53,000 It's just amazing to see how those little moments can just really benefit our kids in the long run. 257 00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:58,000 And Elizabeth echoed a similar sentiment about the shared meaning of true PLC work. 258 00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:08,000 And it's not seen as a competition. It's seen as what are your strengths and how you could help me to improve what I need to in my classroom. 259 00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:17,000 In essence, working together in true collaborative form and seeing each other, not as separate, but as a whole, one collective unit, 260 00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:25,000 striving for excellence of not just your class, but your entire grade level, has such a profound and lasting effect. 261 00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:29,000 There's so many other things teachers are asked to do. 262 00:26:29,000 --> 00:26:37,000 There are so many curveballs thrown at them, you know, all day long, whether it's from the kids or whether it's from me or the district office or who knows. 263 00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:43,000 There are so many things that they have to deal with in real time that things get murky fast. 264 00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:49,000 Things get lost quickly. Corners get cut out of a need for expediency. There's so much time in a day, right? 265 00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:58,000 And there's a lot of work that has really got to be done to do it properly, to dive in deep. When teachers walk away, having worked through collaboratively 266 00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:07,000 with a sense of efficacy and responsibility in a PLC meeting, they walk out with a level of confidence that is empowering and they need it. 267 00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:12,000 And it brings them a sense of clarity amongst one another. 268 00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:18,000 Clarity. That's a word that kept coming to me as I spoke to the teachers at Washington. 269 00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:23,000 They had clarity about what was being asked of them, what they were supposed to do. 270 00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:28,000 They weren't wasting energy trying to figure out what to teach or how to teach it. 271 00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:34,000 I'm not seeing it as a, it's just another thing to do. I'm actually doing something with it. 272 00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:45,000 Like imagine how much more our students would grow and more students would do if we would all have that mentality as we're all in it for the single. 273 00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:55,000 The rigor of the PLC process at Washington had focused them so much that they were now doing what I imagine every teacher hopes teaching really is. 274 00:27:55,000 --> 00:28:01,000 Building strong relationships with kids and helping them achieve self-actualization. 275 00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:06,000 Helping them truly believe in themselves and who they can become. 276 00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:13,000 This sense of shared responsibility that comes out of those meetings and answering those questions, I think changes the entire nature of the work 277 00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:18,000 as they go engage it alone and in real time and take on the curveballs of their classroom. 278 00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:24,000 The things that are going to happen in their classroom are innumerable in their variables. 279 00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:29,000 Anything can happen with little kids in the classroom. Sometimes they're really funny and sometimes they're not funny at all. 280 00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:34,000 But teachers have to always have the ability to go back to that clarity that they had in their meeting 281 00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:39,000 and to try to refocus and achieve what they said they were going to for the sake of the team. 282 00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:44,000 When that gets lost, it becomes PLC light. When that gets lost, corners get cut. 283 00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:49,000 When that gets lost, quality control begins to spin out of control. 284 00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:56,000 And the teachers feel that and once they feel what the real success is like around the level of clarity that they come out of together, 285 00:28:56,000 --> 00:29:02,000 that sense of being together in this, they want it and they want more of it. 286 00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:06,000 When you hear that, it sounds very normal, healthy even. 287 00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:10,000 You might even have said, yeah, well, that's how it should be. 288 00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:18,000 But we should acknowledge here the intense amount of internal work that one would have to do to not let their ego get in the way of this work. 289 00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:26,000 The complicated skill of understanding and admitting when we're wrong or need help to do our jobs can be uncomfortable and difficult. 290 00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:28,000 It can be violent even. 291 00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:35,000 It's a lot of reflection on data and what we're learning, what we see in the classroom, like checks for understanding. 292 00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:38,000 Before data was just like, oh, you have to give an assessment. 293 00:29:38,000 --> 00:29:42,000 It was like, I have to give an assessment because I have to give an assessment. 294 00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:52,000 Now I actually like can't wait to give an assessment to kind of look at that data and see, oh, here's where we're struggling. 295 00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:55,000 And here's where we need to move forward. 296 00:29:55,000 --> 00:30:02,000 And in our team, it's amazing to be able to be transparent with the data because then we're seeing it as our students. 297 00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:14,000 And we could see which students are struggling and group those students by the skills that they need to work on instead of one teacher trying to juggle everything on their own. 298 00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:20,000 The data is a key component that became clear throughout each and every conversation I had at Washington. 299 00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:31,000 But it's the way that you perceive that data, how you interpret it, how you absorb it and take ownership of it, which was even more revealing in Elizabeth Ramirez's fifth grade class. 300 00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:36,000 Because the students were also excited about getting their hands on the data. 301 00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:42,000 My students, I feel like being able to actually share with them the data too and give them a visual. 302 00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:46,000 And we share with them, like this is where we're at as a whole level. 303 00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:48,000 And this is our goal. 304 00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:57,000 And just a couple of weeks ago, we had our first very post and pre and we showed them and there's their excitement of seeing that growth. 305 00:30:57,000 --> 00:31:02,000 And I feel it doesn't only give me a visual of our angle and what we need, but also the students, 306 00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:07,000 then understanding like why we have learning targets, why we have our ICANN statements, 307 00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:11,000 and they're able to kind of be in charge of their learning. 308 00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:15,000 And some of them will say, I can't do this yet. 309 00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:18,000 So then I'm like, it's fine because we're not there yet. 310 00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:22,000 So it's helping them to be accountable for their learning. 311 00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:27,000 On one hand, what is happening at Washington might seem daunting. 312 00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:31,000 Perhaps it's too much of a change for us from the way we've always done things. 313 00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:36,000 The process of implementing this in our schools is complex and multifaceted. 314 00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:42,000 The teachers, school, administration, district, and the state have to be on the same page, 315 00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:48,000 open to a new process and willing to truly see themselves as part of a whole. 316 00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:55,000 And yet, on the other hand, it's also fairly straightforward with an obvious approach to education 317 00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:59,000 and a clear process for continued learning and personal growth among teachers 318 00:31:59,000 --> 00:32:06,000 that is creating not only clarity for the teachers, but also actual results that can be seen in the data. 319 00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:09,000 Here's Beto, Washington's principal once again. 320 00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:15,000 Now, going through this experience, it's not PLC-lighted anyway 321 00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:22,000 because when you have an administrator coach come in who's led a school to be a model PLC, 322 00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:26,000 who's currently a principal, right, like Mr. Matt Devann, 323 00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:31,000 who's our PLC administrator coach, comes two days a month, right? 324 00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:38,000 So he's come so far for a year and a month, two days, spent two full days a month with us 325 00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:43,000 coaching us on this work and really coaching us on the leadership aspect of the work. 326 00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:47,000 When you have that support from someone who's lived it 327 00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:50,000 and helped other schools and districts do that around the country, 328 00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:53,000 that outside support is a game changer. 329 00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:01,000 So let's zoom out for a moment and take a look at the numbers. 330 00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:05,000 What has the work that Washington's done in its culture 331 00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:09,000 and this intensive PLC support meant for their state assessments? 332 00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:13,000 So these numbers are for similar schools in the state of California 333 00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:21,000 who have 98% or more low-income students, which is roughly 300 schools. 334 00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:29,000 In 2015, only 15% of Washington's students met or exceeded the standard in ELA testing, 335 00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:34,000 which is the English Language Arts and Literacy State Test given to students. 336 00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:40,000 Then in 2023, Washington recorded their highest results ever in the school's history, 337 00:33:40,000 --> 00:33:47,000 doubling 2015 with 30% of students meeting or exceeding standard English Language Arts and Literacy. 338 00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:53,000 This ranks them fifth across the state in ELA, across those 300 schools. 339 00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:55,000 And then here's a big one. 340 00:33:55,000 --> 00:34:02,000 In 2023, their sixth grade students had 43% of students who met or exceeded the standard in ELA, 341 00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:06,000 ranking them number two, also their highest ever. 342 00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:10,000 And remember, this is coming out of the learning loss due to COVID. 343 00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:12,000 And finally, get this one. 344 00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:20,000 2017, they suspended 31 students and for the 2022-23 school year, they had zero. 345 00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:22,000 So Washington is moving up. 346 00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:24,000 They're on their way. 347 00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:27,000 The work they are doing to become a full model PLC school 348 00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:31,000 still has a few more years of hard work to make it fully sustainable, 349 00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:39,000 which is why funding from CCEE is so vital to make sure that supercharging continues 350 00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:42,000 and that they can complete the work. 351 00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:48,000 I've just grown so much from when I first started in the classroom 352 00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:53,000 and I reflect back to how easier it would have been if I would have had this. 353 00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:57,000 And I have questioned, like, why aren't we doing it like this? 354 00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:00,000 Why aren't all schools doing like that? 355 00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:05,000 And I've had, I've heard other teachers say, well, it's totally different. 356 00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:09,000 Like, it's, it's, you're doing more and it's not. 357 00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:14,000 Like, if you really learn the process and you're, you really understand it, 358 00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:18,000 it's so much easier than what I was doing before. 359 00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:22,000 Schools that deal with the types of challenges that Washington faces 360 00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:28,000 traditionally have high teacher turnover, especially among first year teachers. 361 00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:33,000 It can be a very challenging undertaking that leaves teachers looking for less stressful schools. 362 00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:39,000 But given what we're learning here and the excitement, clarity, and professional growth 363 00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:42,000 we're seeing among Washington's teachers, 364 00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:46,000 maybe this intensive PLC work can reverse that trend, 365 00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:51,000 creating a place where teachers want to stay, maybe build their careers. 366 00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:56,000 Everything we're building right now is going to be sustainable whether I'm here or not 367 00:35:56,000 --> 00:36:01,000 and whether we have turnover or not, which is one of the biggest challenges any school has 368 00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:04,000 is when you have administrator turnover, teacher turnover, 369 00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:09,000 sustaining best practices of the PLC process is difficult. 370 00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:16,000 So you're implementing the process with fidelity and ingrained in the culture of the school 371 00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:22,000 but are written down and are articulated in a way that a new administrator 372 00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:27,000 or any teacher can come in and understand them and carry them out with coaching and support 373 00:36:27,000 --> 00:36:35,000 then this project and this intense support will help the school sustain growth and achievement over the years. 374 00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:38,000 That's our goal, is to become a model PLC. 375 00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:44,000 It seems safe to say that Washington's approach to collaboration and standardization 376 00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:50,000 into the idea of a true learning community where the whole school marches to the same beat 377 00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:59,000 will have an overarching positive impact on this community and everyone that it serves, long into the future. 378 00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:02,000 There's a ton of integrity here, there's a ton of responsibility 379 00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:08,000 and they own every aspect of the success or struggle of these kids 380 00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:12,000 and they make no apologies and they make no excuses. 381 00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:17,000 And I think that's what we're looking for in American education generally, but you find it here. 382 00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:22,000 And it's an unlikely place to look, it might be an unlikely place to find it 383 00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:27,000 but anybody who wants to see what it looks like, they can come to Washington. 384 00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:32,000 Thank you for listening. 385 00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:40,000 This series was brought to you by CCEE, the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence 386 00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:46,000 whose mission is to help transform public education so that every student is left inspired 387 00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:50,000 and prepared to thrive as their best self in the world. 388 00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:57,000 If you would like to learn more about CCEE, log on to ccee-ca.org. 389 00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:00,000 Additional support was provided by Parsek Education. 390 00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:04,000 It was produced in Fresno, California at Winsong Productions. 391 00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:10,000 And then stay tuned for the next episode where we take a look at a district with a rich history, 392 00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:14,000 a complex reality and amazing potential. 393 00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:16,000 Inglewood, California.