Teach Wonder
Teach Wonder
Impacting The Education Ecosystem
Ashley O'Neil and Julie Cunningham, hosts of the Teach Wonder podcast, discuss the Educator Institute, a new project at Central Michigan University's Center for Excellence in STEM education. The Educator Institute began this summer when a group of educators and Center staff created a professional learning community who then developed an educator observation tool. This tool is intended to scaffold reflection on equitable classroom practices in STEM education. The tool will be piloted by members of the learning community, Center staff and pre-service teachers who work with children in the maker space at the Center. You are invited to join us on our journey this fall as we make meaning out of our experiences with the tool in our learning community.
Intro Music: David Biedenbender
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Okay, now we're recording. So welcome to teach wonder. Yes, welcome to teach wonder, a podcast hosted by
Ashley O'Neil:Ashley O'Neil and Julie Cunningham. Welcome back to teach wonder. So we've been doing this podcast for a while. We've hosted dozens of interviews heard from so many voices and perspectives. And if you're new here, we encourage you to go back through our library and listen to some of those fantastic conversations before we get into today's episode, a bit about us. This podcast is hosted by myself, Ashley O'Neil and Julie Cunningham. We're both staff at the Center for Excellence in STEM education. The center is a student, family and teacher focused space at Central Michigan University. We host after school programs, field trips, family events and summer camps for K 12 students. We also work with teachers, with teacher workshops in the summer and ongoing support for them during the school year. And we work with pre service teachers who are current CMU students. This podcast is a way for us to connect with educators and interested folks in a way that's not constrained by schedule or location. Basically, we're on demand and in your ears. This podcast is focused on teaching practices, challenges and topics that are at the intersection of our work with students, current teachers and pre service teachers. We're starting this semester with a conversation about our latest project, the educator Institute. We'll talk more about what it is, why we're doing it, and why we think it's relevant to you during this episode. But first, some quick context. We've always been invested in future teachers at CMU. Currently, that investment looks like our STEM education Scholar Program. These CMU students get access to the makerspace, the physical room in which we host most of our programs. They get time working with K 12 students, access to PD, an opportunity to attend a national conference, a financial gift to support their education and a community here at CMU, over the last few years, the center participated in an NSF grant that worked on intentional collaboration between the faculty who teach these future students, basically getting some shared language and practices to be discussed, modeled and practiced explicitly in the classes that these students have now supported in part by some strategic planning funds from the College of Education and Human Services, we're able to expand that investment in the STEM education scholars through the educator Institute. This means we're including current teachers in the conversation and the work to prepare these future teachers for the classroom. In this episode, we're going to give you all the details of this institute, and we're also going to explain how those themes and topics are going to be the basis of our podcast this semester. So if you're interested in curiosity, student agency, building respectful relationships, the challenges of doing this and the constraints of the classroom, as well as a deep dive into debriefing interactions with students for the intention of all of us learning together, you're in the right place. Without further ado, here's our conversation today.
Julie Cunningham:If we went to the educator Institute reflection, like, how much background do we want about why we're doing Institute the way we're doing
Ashley O'Neil:it? Yeah, I'd like to get that recording of us today, if possible.
Julie Cunningham:Yeah, but I mean, like, the the pre service teacher part comes out of that. I mean, that's a several year old like project that fed into the NSF grant with faculty. That's where the really, the pre service teacher part comes from. And then I think the in service teacher piece comes about because a there's got to be a way to mesh the two types of PD, the pre service and in service. B, if in service teachers don't play a role or understand what pre service teachers are learning, then it's hard for pre service teachers to practice what they're learning in service classroom, and then see, we've tried to get away at the center from any type of PD that isn't isolated. It's isolated. So, I mean, those are all of those are not really simple,
Ashley O'Neil:no. And I think, like the mechanics are interesting, and I think that overview is sufficient, right to say, we've, we've always had this ongoing work, it the educator piece started from the NSF grant. But I think the biggest, or the maybe more interesting thing for people to understand is that bigger, why? Which is that we see, right? Edge. Teaching is difficult. It is complicated, and we see that we're at this unique intersection where we have a bunch of students in this space in an informal way. So we can practice some of these. I hate the word undergirding, but these like support skills that are so important in a classroom that have nothing to do with a science lesson or an ELA lesson, but your science and your ELA lesson depend on those skills, so you can practice them here without the content layered on top of it, right? And we work with teachers, and we work with pre service teachers at a university, but we're out in school, so I think we're in this weird like we're in the middle of this Venn diagram where we work with all these populations, and as all of us are former classroom teachers, we see all of the skills that students can practice here, but if they don't know that, that's what they're practicing, if we're not explicit to say, you know that interaction that you did, this is how it serves you. See that move that you did. See the move I did. See how I didn't say anything in that moment. See how I waited. Like, without that explicit piece, the students could say, oh, this place was super fun. We had a great interaction. And then they go into their classroom, and they haven't embedded those practices intentionally into their own toolkit. So I think part of it is making sure that we're being really clear to say, like, that's a that's a good that's a teacher move. That's a tool like, see that you did that. Let's do that again and then. And then it becomes something they pull out of their pocket. Otherwise they're gonna say, Yeah, Sarah was a great teacher. We had a good time with her. She was super fun. We did Makey makeys, and that's what they remember, versus look at the way that Sarah seamlessly did that, and how she negotiated that and navigated this. And I could do that too, in that way,
Julie Cunningham:well, and we know that if we're not explicit, we're not people who are learning don't know how they can get to be expert at it, right? They only just see that someone is expert at the teacher move, but they don't know how to get there themselves if we don't make the decisions clear that allowed us to get there the decisions that we made in making the teacher move, if those aren't clear and explicit to someone learning they don't know.
Ashley O'Neil:And so this idea that being a teacher is really at its very like most elemental, it's a making a million decisions in a day, right about a ton of different things that have impact the learning of of the students in your classroom. And so we think about it that way, this educator Institute is really about us working with current practicing teachers to think about what those decisions look like, and come up with a way to reflect on those meaningfully and consistently with language that makes sense, and then sharing that with our pre service teachers to say, hey, practicing teachers see these things as crossover skills. Here, here are some ways you could reflect on them and think about interactions that you've had and decisions that you've made, or you've watched other people make, and what the consequences or impacts were of those decisions. And
Julie Cunningham:then additionally, we've layered on that those decisions should be made in with a equity, equity lens, right in an equitable way, and so making sure that everybody that participates in the educator Institute has the same definition of equity, or a similar definition of equity, and is committed to using language and practices that promote equity in a classroom, which
Ashley O'Neil:is really where, like a rubber meets the road in a classroom, right? If you have a student who's you jive with organically, right, you get along really well. Their sense of humor matches yours. They kind of are self sufficient in lots of ways, right? That is a student which you may naturally be inclined to make decisions that work for both of you, right, that are mutually beneficial. But if you have a student who isn't similar to you in some way, or whose underlying motivations aren't as clear to you, right or as a sometimes their responses may challenge you in some way, shape or form. That is the space where your own lack of understanding or your own work in some of these places, will come through, and then you're kind of perpetuating some of these imbalance structures that we see in classrooms that aren't beneficial for anybody. So it's very true. One of my questions for you, and we can both talk about it, but one of the things that we're doing, and you brought this up earlier, is we don't do these kind of isolated one off PDS anymore. We kind of have an ongoing community. Some of these folks have been with us for years in different ways, but they've been with us for years, and I think we're committed to this kind of learning community together. We don't try to structure things so like you are disseminating information as some sort of authority, or I am, or whatever, but we're definitely in this learning community. And. That word has or that phrase has meaning in schools. But to you, what does a learning community mean to you? Because we've made this like we're doing this, and we make an effort to do it. So what does it mean to you? And why is it so
Julie Cunningham:important? Oh, I I think one of the reasons it's important is because we all come to the table with knowledge and expertise. My current knowledge is not being a classroom teacher, right? It's been a number of years since I've been not that I haven't worked in education this whole time I have, but that I've actually been a classroom teacher. And so if I'm not willing to defer to those who are in the classroom as the experts with their own students, then I have no business being in a professional development workshop, right? I mean, and so just to acknowledge that we all bring things to the table and that all of our backgrounds matter and that all of our expertise matters, I think that's one of the basic premises to the professional learning community, and I find it much less of a like guessing game about what everybody's needs are, or like me trying to say, well, here's what I think teachers are going to need From this that seems ridiculous. Like, who am I to say? Here's what I think somebody's gonna need from this series of workshops, right? I mean, I think it does allow me a space to say here, here are the strengths that I bring to the table, and so we don't just show up and not have an agenda at all, but on the other hand, we leave plenty of time for everybody's voice, and we leave plenty of time for flexibility in the schedule, and we leave plenty of time for outcomes that are shared and that everybody can use after they walk away from the workshop. So I think that's the value to a professional learning community. I also find it to be really refreshing, because it's it's tough to be the expected disseminator of information to a group of your peers, right? It's a different, definitely a different scenario that you're walking into to sort of be expected to, like, show up and be on the stage for two or three days and to have all the information, which is really kind of a ridiculous premise anyway,
Ashley O'Neil:yeah. And I also think that, I mean, we feel, I feel really strongly I agree with everything you said. And I think I feel really strongly that learning is an active process, not a passive one. And so any of that, like disseminating of information, is not really us practicing what we believe is really learning and transformation of thinking, right? And so the only way for everyone in the room to be active is if everyone's strengths are brought to the table. And it is, it is more of a conversation or more of a group effort, versus us giving you a PowerPoint and you taking notes on like, the bulleted list of like tenants that we're really excited about, we'd rather talk about them. CO create that list, maybe disagree on them, experience things together. Yeah, what is your hope? Like? We just started this. So this formally started, I mean, like Julie has said, it's been in progress. There was a prior Grant was with faculty that included pre service teachers, and trying to think about the people who are teaching pre service teachers at this university. How are we doing that with some sort of like consistency and shared language? And now we're thinking about current teachers, but it officially launched this summer with us meeting with those teachers. We met three times. Now we all have, kind of our plans for the school year, and we have times and ways that we're meeting again during the school year and kind of working on this together. But what is your future hope? What could this look like?
Julie Cunningham:Well, I think that so. One of the premises of the educator Institute is that we work. We have worked for a number of years with in service teachers, and we have worked for a number of years with pre service teachers, but it's almost like unless we contrive a way for them to meet. It's really been two parallel situations. So the idea behind the educator Institute is that initially, right now, the work that the in service teachers did this summer will inform one of the tools that the pre service teachers use to reflect on their time in the MakerSpace. So that's sort of like the first crossover. Now the pre service teachers might not really understand the value. You of that at this point, they haven't met the in service teachers, and they'll be asked to sort of pilot a new tool, which will rely on us making clear to them why that's a value. So that will be this fall. But then eventually, I'd like to get to a point where we have pre service teachers being mentored by in service teachers, and maybe not exactly one on one, because sometimes logistics are very difficult between classes and classrooms and between travel time and already. Pre service teachers do have times in which they need to be out in classrooms, observing, but some sort of a more direct mentorship between the pre service teachers and the in service teachers, and then eventually relationships built between them. So if they're both working towards the same goals or the same outcome, the same types of information and the same types of classroom instruction, then those would be perfect classrooms for our pre service teachers to make observations in to pre student teaching to student Teaching. There should be some common language, some common expectations between them, and as much crossover as we can get between the two programs. Yeah, that sounds
Ashley O'Neil:ambitious and exciting, right? Idealistic? Yes, yes. But I think that if that's what we're moving toward, and we make a lot of our decisions with that in mind, even if we get a fraction of that this year and it comes down the road, that'd be pretty exciting. Is there anything else you wanted to share and say as we move forward into this? I don't,
Julie Cunningham:I don't think so. I mean, I think that I was really pleased with our work this summer, I think we had a great professional learning community. People really showed up and did the work and were vulnerable and took feedback and had discussions and perhaps even minor disagreements at times and walked away. All of us better teachers because of it. And additionally, we came out of this summer with a tool that pre service teachers will be able to use as they work with children this fall. And so they're going to pilot that tool as well as the in service teachers and us as facilitators. So I think that's a pretty exciting outcome and a great shared experience.
Ashley O'Neil:And we are also going to pilot that tool in our own way, and we're going to bring you all along for the ride. So the rest of this fall season will be us digging into the themes and tenants of the tool that was brought up. And I know we say tool, and you're like, what are we talking about? But we're really thinking about some reflection questions and some intentional ways for us to look at our classroom when it's happening, and then us to think about our classroom after the fact, and eventually, us to think about as we're planning in our classroom also. So we'll break down those different tenants, some of them we've talked about on the podcast before, some of them will be new. And then we are also going to do our own work of observing ourselves and each other in this space and then bringing you real examples and deconstructing some teaching moments and interactions with students, and breaking down some of our own decisions and what we did, what we would do differently, or why that worked in the way that it did. So we're excited for this fall season. The format will look just a little bit different as we're following this tool, but we hope that we'll all do a lot of learning together as we go. This has been another episode of teach wonder. Thank you for listening. If you're interested in learning more about the center. You can check us out on social media or find our website. The links are available in our bio, or search for the Center for Excellence in STEM education. You.