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Compass PD Podcast with Dr. Carrie Hepburn
Compass PD Podcast with Dr. Carrie Hepburn
Episode 54: Responsive Teaching for Real Results in the Secondary Classroom
In this episode of the Compass PD Podcast, Dr. Natalie Fallert and secondary ELA teacher Nicole Leachman discuss the importance of responsive teaching in the secondary classroom. They explore how tailoring instruction to meet students where they are can reignite passion in teaching, improve student outcomes, and help educators navigate the complexities of today’s educational challenges. Whether you’re a teacher, administrator, or district leader, this conversation will provide practical strategies and insights on implementing responsive teaching in your classroom.
Hello and welcome to the Compass PD podcast, where we dive into evidence-based practices and research-driven strategies that empower educators and leaders to make a lasting impact. I am Dr Natalie Fallard, your host, alongside Nicole Leachman, secondary educator rock star, and today we are exploring responsive teaching in secondary classrooms. This subject may sound foreign to some of you, but I promise by the end you will want to explore this idea. So, whether you're a teacher, administrator or district leader, our goal is to provide you with insights and tools that help you navigate the complexities of education and inspire student success.
Speaker 1:Let me start by introducing my guest, nicole Boyer Leachman, a secondary ELA teacher in a St Louis suburban school. I had the wonderful pleasure of having Nicole as a student teacher, so that's why I call her Boyer first, but I have witnessed her passion and content expertise firsthand. When I first met Nicole, she was Ms Boyer, but now she is Ms Leachman and has some pretty exciting things going on. Welcome, nicole, and you want to tell us a little bit about what you've been doing over the last, say, year and a half.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been kind of busy. I moved jobs and bought a house and got married and got a second master's degree and am expecting my first child here in the next, you know not very long period of time. So it's it's been really, really wild.
Speaker 1:That sounds like just packing it all into a very small amount of time, but you are right, exactly.
Speaker 1:You have done an amazing job with all of those transitions like huge transitions in your life, and I know that you will take on motherhood just as well, because you are, like I said, a rock star. Today, we are here to talk about responsive teaching in the secondary classroom. I personally feel that this topic is extremely relevant considering our current state of education. Yet it has taken a backseat to many other things. In 2022, the National Education Association reported that 55% of educators indicated they were ready to leave the profession. Gallup reported in 2020 that 36% of K-12 educators felt burned out, and then, by 2022, so just two years later that number jumped to 44%.
Speaker 1:Usa Today released a study in March of 2024 from Brown University that estimated there would be 55,000 vacant full-time teaching positions in the US. So I offer you all these statistics about teacher burnout and teachers leaving this profession, because people go into this profession to make a difference and for the love of learning and watching kids grow and blossom. But too many teachers are not able to experience that in the classroom today, and I truly believe that part of that is because they cannot or do not teach in a responsive manner. So today we want to explore what this is and how teaching in a responsive manner can help you find, rekindle and keep your passion and love for this profession. So, nicole, what are your thoughts on kind of what I said there, like why did you go into teaching?
Speaker 2:I think that probably most of us go into teaching because you want to help kids and you want to see them grow and you want to make you know as much of an impact as you can in their progression as an educated individual, as a learner, and so I can see where, if you don't feel that you're doing that well, that that would be really disheartening, because teaching it isn't an easy job. It's it's a lot of work and it's a lot of time and it's a lot of you know situations that really challenge you as as a thinker and a learner yourself. So if you're not getting that gratification, you're not seeing the gains, then I can see where it would be like really disheartening to want to continue into that.
Speaker 1:I know I used to tell people, especially new teachers I would say you do this for that aha moment and in the course of 180 days in a classroom, you might not get very many of those aha moments, but they are priceless and it it fuels you to get to that next level. But I do think that in education recently we're having fewer of those aha moments and or a lot of teachers are, and then we also have a lot of other stress and pressures that have been put on us and so that you know, our hope here today is to rekindle this ability to find your passion and to be able to have some more of those aha moments.
Speaker 2:I think. I think I remember when you were, when I was a student teacher, you telling me to like hold these as the the. This is why I teach moments and carry it through all the bad times.
Speaker 1:Yes, cause we say bad times. And so if you're a non-educator and you're listening to this, not really a bad bad right, but it's.
Speaker 1:It's, yes, I think any educator understands that. What that means Hopefully they do. But so our hope here today is that you walk away with a few things, and that is a clear understanding of what responsive teaching is, what it could look like in a secondary classroom, or what it does look like in a secondary classroom, how to implement it or begin this practice, and possible challenges that you might face. So let's get started by, first and foremost, clearly defining what responsive teaching is. So, when our founder, dr Carrie Hepburn, asked me to host this podcast, the first person who came to mind for me was Nicole. However, like when I reached out to her and I asked her I just texted her I was like, hey, will you join me on this? Her initial response was do you want to tell them what your?
Speaker 2:response was it was a maybe. What do you mean by that? Are we sure that I'm qualified to speak on that?
Speaker 1:So this totally made me crack up because she was my first go-to and her response was do I do this? And my response back to her was like yes, you totally do this, and too often we naturally do things in a classroom but we don't really know that it's an actual thing or we don't know the name of it, and so we just inherently do it because it's what's best for kids. I was not worried by her response, because I have seen her in action and I know that she does this on a regular basis. So what is responsive teaching?
Speaker 1:Responsive teaching is where a teacher adjusts their instruction to meet the needs of their students and essentially, you meet them where they are and not where you think they are or where they should be. You need to figure out where they are at this time, and I used to, like in my when I taught 10th grade it didn't matter Like I would have wanted them to come in ready to go reading at the 10th grade level, but it didn't happen all the time and I couldn't sit there and be mad or aggravated because they came to me less prepared than I wanted them to be. I had 180 days and I had to figure out how to get them where they were to, where they needed to be, or as close to that mark as possible by the end of the year, and so that's kind of where that that starts. And so, nicole, what are your kind of thoughts on? Like when I, when I broke down and gave you the definition of responsive teaching, I think you were like, oh yes, I do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think really responsive teaching, like you said, comes down to meeting kids where they are, and I think that you can figure that out in a variety of ways. I mean it might start with like pre-assessments, whether that's like a holistic pre-assessment that you give them at the beginning of the year or a pre-assessment that you give them at the beginning of a unit. It could be observational. So in I teach English, so with, with with English. Whenever they do writing, if I noticed that I'm consistently seeing the same self-aware of like oh, I struggle with X, y or Z, um, and so then you can go in and tailor your instruction to meet those needs.
Speaker 1:So I love that you. You know that whole idea of just talking with kids, because I know that one year, um, whenever I taught the research paper, part of my grading of it was I didn't grade the research paper. I talked to the kid. I was like, tell me what you researched, tell me what you're. And it was amazing that I had kids who turned in these full-blown essays and they couldn't talk to me about the topic that they had. And I was like, oh my goodness, that is very telling that somewhere we missed the ball.
Speaker 2:Yes, they had this written piece done, but they really didn't they didn't record the content at all.
Speaker 1:Right, like they weren't engaged in the material in any way, shape or form and couldn't just have a conversation, and so that was another thing. That kind of shifted for me was I need to be having regular conversations with kids about like put the book away, put the paper away, just talk to me about your topic, because if you can't talk to me about it, then and if you can talk to me about it I know where to take you, I know where to help you and how to help you, but if you can't, I also still now know how to help you, because I've seen the disconnect. Now that we kind of have this clear understanding of what responsive teaching is, we want to talk about the practical applications and possibly some strategies, some things that. What does this look like in a classroom? Or can you give some examples of how this experience is in your classroom, nicole?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So since you texted me and gave me a little bit more information about this, I've been thinking about different ways that I that I do this, you know, whether that's on a daily basis or a weekly basis or kind of large scale. So I think in the English classroom, one of the most clear examples that I can think of is with grammar I teach. I teach sophomores and seniors and I think that often I want to believe that my students will come to me with these internalized grammar rules because I know that they're getting them over and over and over again in middle school and even in elementary school and in early high school. But that is actually not always true and I think that probably most of us, when we read posts on Facebook, understand that most Americans maybe don't have the best internalized grammar.
Speaker 1:So anyway, that's beside the point don't have the best internalized grammar, so anyway, that's beside the point. I will interject and say that Nicole has beautiful vocabulary, language, grammar, all of those things Like she is amazing at it and so it's been a work in progress and I, looking back at my high school writing, I didn't have great grammar either.
Speaker 2:My point all this to say is that when I start looking at my students' writing whether it's a formative assignment or a summative assignment what I'm looking for is what are some errors that I'm seeing, um, whole scale, like what are some errors that the entire class is making? Um, but then also kind of targeting to kids of what are some individual errors that maybe a certain kid is like missing the ball that everybody else is getting. So, for example, one of my classes just turned in an essay in which they had to incorporate elements of an interview and as they were working on the rough drafts and I was looking at their rough drafts to get more information of where we're at I noticed that a large percentage of them were not punctuating dialogue properly. They weren't doing like the comma quote or that. So I did like a 10-minute at the beginning of the hour one Friday about how to punctuate dialogue and then I said okay, now go back to your essays and find where you haven't done it and fix it, and then stop making that error for the remainder of your paper, cause we were still in the drafting phase at that point.
Speaker 2:For a lot of them it was. It was a game changer. It fixed it. I haven't seen the issue since then, but it was like adding that practical application of something that they were working on in that moment. That here's how we can fix it. And it took 10 extra minutes of class time. It wasn't wasn't a big big thing at all, but still responsive. And and on a smaller scale, if I see like a kid who's making like an individual error, then maybe it's as easy as like going and talking to that kid during writing conferences and be like, hey, consistently, you are doing this wrong. Here's the right way to do it. Now we need to go through and look at your paper and fix all of it and really targeting their needs that way.
Speaker 1:So I like that.
Speaker 1:I think that a lot of times as secondary educators we run out of time or we're struggling with how do I fit it all in, and so we do the whole group lesson.
Speaker 1:We'll see a couple of kids doing a mistake and we'll just do a whole group lesson. But I love the fact that you also pull out that idea of having individual conferences with students, because another thing that you can think about as a teacher is that maybe a third of your class like, maybe a small, like there's some numbers, but not whole class pulling three or four kids together and saying, hey, let's do a really quick. I noticed you guys are all making the same mistake and let me teach all of you really fast how to fix this and then move on. Sometimes it is that individual conference and then, whenever you're, sometimes it is that individual conference and then whenever you're also seeing it a little bit more in a systemic way, where it's like, okay, lots of kids are making this error and the ones that probably aren't making it aren't putting quotes in their paper. They just haven't gotten there yet.
Speaker 1:I mean that could very well be Any other ways that you may have noticed how this looks in your classroom. Or I mean that could very well be Any other ways that you may have noticed how this looks in your classroom. Or I mean I know we talked a little bit about the writing piece but other ways that you've seen that you've had to kind of change or adapt your teaching styles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that another thing that I've noticed is that I don't think that my instruction stays the same not completely the same, at least from year to year. Um, because every year you get a different group of kids who has different needs. Um, and if you're doing the same thing year to year, either probably you're leaving kids behind that need more assistance or you're boring your kids to death because they already know that. For example, this year, um, last year in in one of the units I was teaching, it was related to like literary elements and I had a group of kids who were really really struggling, so struggling to identify like tone and theme and characterization and all these things that go into both reading and the writing aspects of teaching English, since they feed each other. So at the beginning of the year I did a lot of really targeted lessons like okay, well, this is what tone means, and then we'd look at text and analyze for tone, but it was like a lot more handholding. Same thing with theme and characterization, where this?
Speaker 2:This year, when I gave my students like a pre-assessment at the beginning of the year, what I noticed is that they had a really good grasp on it and they were really good at citing text evidence to support their analysis of all these literary elements on like the base level that I would expect of them.
Speaker 2:So there was no need for me to go back and reteach all these skills that they already had because, like, what's that going to do for them? It's just going to beat them on the head with something that they already know. So instead of that, you know, I might do like a five or 10 minute recap at the beginning of the hour, like a little mini lessons, like hey, just in case you forgot, or just to like as a reminder, this is what tone is, these are the things that you need to be looking for. But more of my instruction went into, like the analysis of mentor texts and taking that next step of like okay, it's like we have the tone, we have the theme, but like how does this impact us as readers? Or, looking at it through a different lens, of like okay, this writer is doing this, how can you emulate that style? Or how could you use that as a writer yourself?
Speaker 1:So I like that you you know, just kind of recapping what you said there is that you don't rinse and repeat or recycle your lessons year after year, that you really look at your students sitting in front of you and say, okay, do they need the lessons that I taught last year or do they need something different? And with the new students that you have this year, I just think that it's amazing for them because they got to be pushed a little bit more, which is probably challenging them, which allows them to be a little bit more engaged and they're not bored in classroom in the classroom, because you noticed where they were and met them in that spot, instead of where you were comfortable. I know that you're comfortable doing anything, but instead of being like, well, this is what I did last year and I'm comfortable doing that, you changed and adapted to your students.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I try to do that as much as possible, and that's not to say that like I don't reuse lessons from year to year if I can, but I don't go in with the mindset that I'm going to just do exactly the same thing that I I did last year. Um, because I might, I might not, I might not need to.
Speaker 2:Um, one other thing I thought, too, is about like, being responsive to the world, because our world is completely changing, and so, like, how can we adapt what we're doing to like I don't know, prepare kids for the 21st century? So, like AI, that's a that's a huge challenge that we have, so we can ignore it, or we could try to figure out how to teach kids to use it like appropriately and productively and I don't necessarily have all the answers for that, but that's definitely something that I've been thinking about as well of of how can I be responsive to those changes.
Speaker 1:We just recently did a podcast on AI and talking about I also took a master's course that I don't know what that is, but, like, I do know what it is but I don't know how to explain it either way. It was on AI and it's just interesting how you can use it as a tool to help you, but we don't want it to replace us. And so, teaching kids, how do you use this? Like, I have twin boys who are 10th graders and unfortunately, nicole moved schools before she could teach them. I'm not very happy about it, but they, you know, they use GPT and I was like you can use this to enhance your writing or to use as brainstorming to make your, you know, to get started, but you don't want to use it to replace your writing.
Speaker 1:Being able to teach that and explaining that to kids, I think is important. Or use it for feedback yes, so that is, we could. We could have lots of conversations on AI and how you could use it in a classroom. So let's kind of shift into our third topic, which is looking at the challenges and possible some, maybe some solutions or even just those challenges that teachers face when they are trying to be responsive. So, nicole, like what is one thing that you think about as a challenge or an obstacle to being a responsive teacher?
Speaker 2:Sure, I think the challenge to being a responsive teacher is the same challenge that we have with a lot of things in education, and that we don't have enough time.
Speaker 2:We don't feel like there's a there's a finite amount of time and there's a million things that you have to get finished in that amount of time, whether you're you're talking about the standards, or you're talking about curriculum, or you're talking about school sanctioned things that you have to do, about school sanctioned things that you have to do.
Speaker 2:And there's this pressure of am I going to have the time to do everything that I need to do? And so I think a lot of the times, our first impulse is like well, we just have to soldier on Like we got to go, we got to push through, versus taking the time to figure out what kids really need and then adapt our instruction. And maybe that means adding in extra lessons that you don't feel like you have the time for. I don't know. I guess maybe it's like the equivalent of going like wide versus going deep in content In some cases, that you got to check all the boxes, or you feel like you have to check all the boxes, but I think that you really have to like, do the self-reflection of like okay, like what is most important to me, and then what small changes can I make to still be like, respectful of that finite amount of time but then still be responsive to the things that my students really need to be successful?
Speaker 1:I. This is something that I know about you and we both taught together in the same school district. At one point we are stuck. We have to meet the standards right, like we. Every district in any state has to follow certain standards because at least at you know in high school they're taking these end of course exam tests or whatever that you're being judged and held accountable for. We sometimes get stuck in that pattern, but we were both very fortunate in a district where we could stray a little bit and that they gave us that leeway, I guess to, and they trusted yeah, they trusted that we were not cutting corners, but we knew where our kids were and we went there.
Speaker 1:But you recently moved districts and now you're in a, in a larger district and in a larger school, and so now you have this, this bigger PLC network in a sense, where it's like, hey, we're supposed to, this is what we're doing. It's not that we want to people to go rogue, but there is that that kind of finding that balance of when I shut the door in my classroom, I am still teaching the standards, I am still being compliant with the direction that we're going, but I might have to skew a little bit because my kids aren't there yet. I also think about, like, the zone of proximal development. And if my kid is in this zone and I give them material that's way up here, because that's what the district says I should do, or that's what the state says I should do, I'm teaching above them, they're not getting anything, so it's like just throwing stuff and it not sticking. And if I'm below them, then I'm not pushing them either, and so it is important for us to find where their zone of developmental development is, in that learning progress for those standards that we are expected to teach.
Speaker 1:I think that's where I the encouragement I would love to give a teacher is that you want to do what's best for kids and so if you can, if you can teach within that zone, you're going to start seeing a lot more of those aha moments. I don't know if I have advice, for like we were just, we always just did it, like I just inherently knew that this is what was best for kids and that I wasn't hurting them. And so how have you made that adjustment in your new district?
Speaker 2:It's getting a better understanding of the curriculum within that PLC or whatever, and figuring out, you know like, still still doing what the PLCs do, still doing the things that we need to do, but finding those ways to supplement as best I can for those kids that need it.
Speaker 1:So I love that you say that, because if you were to ask me what one of the obstacles or challenges are for this is I think that a lot of secondary teachers lack some of the intervention knowledge and skills. And that's because we're content experts, we come in and we can tell you about Shakespeare and we can tell you about these literature pieces. But you ask me like I did my dissertation with a group of struggling readers and you, if you ask me, like, how do I help this kid who is reading on a third grade level? I don't know how to teach reading, like that's not my thing, and so how do we intervene? And I I talk a lot about, like um, you said something about, you know, teaching theme.
Speaker 1:A lot of times we'll just, at the secondary level, say, go find the theme, and we don't necessarily know how to break it down and teach kids how to find the theme, because those are, we think that they're a little bit more elementary, less like lessons, and so that is another obstacle that I think that secondary teachers struggle with is how do I find those supplemental lessons, how do I break that down so that they can do that? And there are a lot of great resources out there that will help teachers do that, but then our four secondary educators. But I think to me that's another obstacle that kind of gets in the way is that I know my curriculum, I know what I'm supposed to teach every day, but if I have to supplement, where do I get that information?
Speaker 2:Well, and how do you supplement kids who are, from what you know, bringing up your your low readers class kids that are significantly far behind? If it's a, if it's a small gap, I think that that's often not something that we have to research on how to bridge.
Speaker 1:but whenever you're mentioning like didn't you have some students in that class that were like elementary level, I had one kid who was at a first grade level, um, and then I most of them were fourth and fifth grade, which I have a whole theory on why they're fourth and fifth grade, but why most? If you're in high school, you either have like kids on grade level or they're fourth, fifth grade, like it's. You don't. You don't have very many in the middle and I have this theory on why, but that's too long of a theory for yeah, for not this podcast.
Speaker 1:But if I kind of go back and recap, what we've been talking about today is that looking at what is responsive teaching, and it's really about meeting your kids where they are, and you can do that through observations, you can do that through formative assessments, to do that through conferencing or having conversations with your students. What that can look like. I know we talked focus mostly on what it looks like in an English classroom, but you might notice in a social studies classroom that, or in a science classroom that kids are really struggling with the text or with graphs or something along those lines, with graphs or something along those lines, and you might have to teach a lesson on what that looks like. How do you read a history textbook? How do you read a science textbook? Or why is it important to pay attention to graphs?
Speaker 2:Content area literacy.
Speaker 1:Yes, then we kind of talked about some of those obstacles that can get in your way, and a lot of it is that time, but if you really want to find your passion and be able to see these aha moments, this is something that is worth investing your time in. Too is digging in so that you can help your kids and they can become independent learners, versus you doing all of that work for them. So I hope these insights help you navigate your educational journey more clearly and confidently. Please feel free to share your thoughts or experiences. I'd love to hear from you and, if you found today's episode valuable, consider sharing it with a colleague who might benefit from this message.
Speaker 1:Next week, dr Stephanie Brenner and Dr Stephanie Evans will dive into dyscalculia, which is the math version of dyslexia, since October is Dyslexia Awareness Month, so be sure to tune in to learn about what this looks like in math. Thank you for joining us on the Compass PD podcast. Remember, at Compass PD, we believe that every educator has the power to inspire, change and transform student learning. Stay focused, stay inspired and keep making a difference. Thank you so much, nicole. I am super excited that you were able to join me on this podcast and I cannot wait to see that healthy baby that you're not finding out what it is. Thanks for having me, it was fun.