Karten's Inclusion Conversations Podcast

KIC S1E6 How to Create a Culture of Collaboration in Your School Featuring Mona Tobia

• Toby Karten • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Karten's Inclusion Conversations S1E6 Featuring Mona Tobia
In the conversation between Toby and Mona, several themes emerged, including the significance of collaboration between teachers and administrators, the need for teachers to have sufficient time to plan and collaborate and the importance of giving teachers the autonomy to make decisions that meet their students' needs. Additionally, they discussed the importance of providing teachers with feedback and support, as well as taking care of themselves both physically and mentally. The conversation also touched on the challenges teachers face in providing inclusive education for all students but ultimately highlighted the commitment of many individuals to make inclusion a reality.

Websites mentioned in the podcast:

#TobyKarten #MonaTobia #Karten’sInclusionConversations #KIC #Inclusion #InclusiveConversations #ExpertInterviews #LearningFromExperts #KnowledgeSharing #ProfessionalDevelopment #ImpactfulConversations #LifelongLearning #InspiringExperts #DiversityandInclusion #EmpowermentThroughKnowledge #UDL #CEC #NCLD

For more information please visit https://inclusionworkshops.com/

Hi, Toby Karten here, Karten's Inclusion Conversations, and I have the privilege of speaking with Mona Tobia who is the Director of Curriculum and Instruction at Mattawan Aberdeen Regional School District. So I first off must say thank you, I welcome you to Inclusion Conversations that we're having. We knew each other for a little bit when I worked as an inclusion consultant and coach with your school district with co-teaching, but we haven't really connected for several years and I'm reaching back to people who I admired in the field and, Mona, you were one of them. So I told people, our listening audience, briefly a little bit about yourself. Could you share a little bit more so we have some background of your wealth of experience? Sure. Well, first of all, thank you, I was excited to have this opportunity to speak with you again. It has been a while and I was excited to see your name pop up in my emails. I have been in education now 29 years. I started as a high school English teacher and then I became an elementary computer teacher, math teacher. I have worked with students starting with kindergarten straight through high school because I actually then became an administrator in our four or five building as an assistant principal, an assistant principal in our middle school, director of curriculum and instruction, pre-K to five, director of special projects and programs, and then now most currently director of curriculum and instruction, six through 12. So I have done every little level there, most of them even teaching, working with students in math, English, I have done it all and I have loved it, each part is a different experience. I love working with the students, I love working with the teachers, I enjoyed working with curriculum and coaching and planning, professional development for teachers, and most importantly now, you know, working with our teachers, making sure that we can support them. The teachers are our frontline, they are with the kids, so our job as administrators is to support the teachers, to help them grow, to coach them, and that's why I'm here to talk to you about that. I love that, thank you. You sound like you have quite a busy load of roles and responsibilities that are with you, but I think that, I'm going to ask you a question, how do you take care of that person in the mirror? How do you take care of yourself as well with all those responsibilities? What recommendations would you have for our listeners to, you know, do your job well, but also take a breath and take care of that lady in the mirror? I actually am one of those people who's never had trouble doing that. I have to say, I love to read, and so I'm constantly reading new books, I finally decided that Audible and Kindle was getting very, very expensive and now I now have the Libby app and I use public library to download my articles, I have a plethora of activities, I raise dogs with the same eye, so I have activities with my dogs, I'm on my ninth puppy to go on to become a guide dog, and so that really is great, but it's, dogs bring pleasure, and in my capacity as a director of curriculum and instruction, I am able to bring my dogs into the classes with the kids and with the guidance counselors and the teachers, so that's great. We go to hospitals and do all kinds of things and it brings me a lot of pleasure, so yeah, I have things that are important to me, and most importantly, my friends and family, I make sure that there's time on the weekends, I talk to teachers about that too, which is interesting that you say that and you start with that question, because I can't tell you how often I've said to teachers at this point, I don't think they should be responding to emails on the weekend and they need to turn off at home and go check out and allow themselves the ability to recharge because they're better, they're better at what they do when they recharge, and so I do practice what I preach, it's important. Thank you. Once again, your passion for the profession and for your colleagues is just so evident, and speaking of colleagues, I know that you were a firm believer in collaboration, I have personally experienced that as well, and you seem to have done something wonderful with the 6 through 12 and something you were talking with younger grades as well, but specifically that common planning time to have a chance to talk to each other, are there some tidbits or recommendations that you have out there that you've discovered as you are implementing your collaborative planning times for your staff? Sure. I'm going to hold off because that's a little different because middle school, we have block scheduling and we have set teams and they work together and they have a nice chunk of time every day. High school is really my focus this year, and it's a commitment on the admin team, both at the building level and at central office level, to commit to making sure that our teachers have that ability to plan together if they're co-teaching. At high school, we have teachers who can work together for one 40-minute block and the rest of their schedules don't match, they just don't, and so we had to work really hard to make sure that we would pull teachers off of their duty twice a week. So if they are working together with another teacher, they have two common planning periods in addition to the regular planning, it does not take away the regular planning period. Wow, additional, additional. Let's say I co-teach with you and I co-teach with another teacher, I get my five planning periods a week plus two additional with you and two additional with the other person I teach with. It's some tricky scheduling, but again, it's the commitment of the admin team to see that we have that. Teachers can't walk in blindly, you know, it used to be I co-teach with so-and-so, they share their plans via internet, via the website, the genesis, whatever they're using, I look at it and then I go in. Yes, for some it works, but it's certainly not ideal. We want more for our students and we want more for our teachers to have that ability. So, so scheduling the common planning time was really first and foremost, and then we can meet with teachers to discuss how do you use it? What do you do with that? What does it mean? Yeah, well, how does that feedback sound? What have you found that might be helpful? Some teachers who are willing to learn and then some who say, I know what I'm doing, I'm going to close my door. Do you find that that's less the case these days? So I have to say that our teachers were skeptical. They were, they really were because they've been promised so much so many times before that they have to be a little gun shy. You know, you say you're going to do this, but really are you going to? What's going to happen? What's it going to look like? And what we did was we started with department meetings in the beginning of the year, rather than saying to teachers if you teach social studies or math or science, if you are in a co-teaching environment, come to the co-teaching. And we brought all those teachers together and we talked to them about what works for them. What have you been doing? Have you worked with this person before? How do you use your co-teaching? What models do you use? And we went through and had lots of dialogues. We had three meetings with them just to talk about what co-teaching looks like and how it's working for them. And then we talked about how they would use common planning. We gave them some sort of self-reflection score sheet on how well that you're doing, how well you're talking. We used that. And I think that that's one of my inclusion principles is to talk about that reflection and to know and grow. And it's OK not to know something. And that goes for the students, but not OK to stay that way. And the support, it sounds like you're giving them that open forum to discuss the variables before they're thrown into the fire. Not exactly that way. But when it heats up in a classroom, I know myself being a classroom teacher and coach as well, that sometimes we have these wonderful ideas and then we walk into the classroom and it's like, I didn't know. So what you're saying, Lona, is that you're helping them know ahead of time. Is that kind of a part of it or giving them the strategies from loading? Is that the plan? That's the plan. And also the plan is to look at each other because I can only say so much. I think our teachers are really skilled. And one group can say, we've tried this. It didn't work for us, but this is what it did or this is another. And the more the teachers are interacting with each other and sharing ideas, the better they'll all be, the stronger they'll all be. And so so they grow from within. And I think that's important. I think the teachers appreciate being heard and having a chance to be heard and to discuss and share. So often they're spoken to, they're lectured at, they're told what works. Here we're giving them an opportunity to share and to grow and to ask questions. And I think that has been very, very well received. Thank you. I can underscore what you just said. That is just the key to the best part of that is listening, listening to each other. I don't have all the answers. You don't have all the answers, but together we'll come out with a plan. And whether it's special ed or gen ed or any fields, whether whether you're working in an office or anything you do, there are going to be challenges. But the strategies and the solutions together that we mentality, and I love what you said as well about the admin. You're setting up that structure, but you're also letting the teachers put the puzzle pieces together using the students as the data. So you're not saying go co-teach and, you know, feedback. Feedback's hard. Feedback's hard. So I know I've worked with some people and it's always like, you'll think this is silly. I won't tell people what to do. I'll say, I invite you to look at this resource. So what eggshells sometimes do administrators or coaches or supervisors or even teachers talking to each other? What eggshells do we have to be aware of in education? Oh, gosh, everything. It all is so expensive these days. Yes, I don't want to be there knowing everything. So for instance, if I go in and observe and I see it, one student is maybe not doing anything. There could be an agreement. I don't know what's going on. And that that child could have had a heart. You know, the teachers know more. So I think having the conversations before you're leaping and making assumptions are really, really important. When I work with these teachers, one of the things that we did this year is we did co-observations where there were two administrators going and watching the team together. And here's where we're working on eggshells. We wanted the teachers to know this is to provide feedback. This is to help them. So it was going to be announced. They were going to choose which class if there was flexibility. They were going to choose the time. We were going to work on that together. It wasn't designed to, we're going to walk in and catch up to teaching. It was, you're going to come and plan. You're going to plan a lesson on something that you really feel comfortable with. And we're going to come in and we're going to observe. I'll observe the gen ed teacher. Somebody will observe the special ed teacher. But that's, we wanted them to know we're going to offer them the feedback. So walking on the eggshells was to say they pick, they tell us when. And we had a pre-observation conference where we talked about it. What are we going to see? What would you like us to be looking for? Where would you like more support? We kind of put it back in their hands. I have to say for the teachers we saw, we started with seeing our non-tenured, at least one of the teachers was non-tenured. And the teachers were really so happy to have those conversations together to talk about what they're planning and to talk about their students and answer the question, you know, that we asked that, you know, what does it look like? Or if we ask the teachers, who's our teacher? What would we ask our students? Who is your teacher? What would their answer be? And it was interesting because some of the teachers, the parents would say, well, they've seen me. Or they'd say both of us, one of the kids would be confused or they wouldn't know. And we would have conversations about that. So just the dialogue before the observation was really enlightening. One set said, hey, I'm a special ed teacher. I usually do LLD. I do self-contained classes. They needed somebody to come in. This is a chemistry class. They don't know chemistry. That's really important because if I had just gone in, talk about walking on eggshells, and I'm looking and the teacher doesn't necessarily know the chemistry. This is her very first time. But it was a really, you know, pretty interesting to see. The teachers felt comfortable being able to share before the observation the things that were important to them that they wanted us to know. This is our first year working together. Or we've been working together for five years. We know each other's backwards and forwards and knowing that was important. And then co-teaching, what you brought out is so much about the relationships with each other and how you view each other. And, you know, that's a tricky one, especially in the high school, middle school, when the content gets more advanced and the expectations are that both co-teachers know the content. But scheduling is sometimes a nightmare. I know particularly I work with one teacher, she was expected to help someone teach German and she never spoke Sprechen die Deutsch 9. And I'm sure I killed that sentence. But I said, well, how are you learning it? What do you find helpful? I mean, what you just said is just so much attuned to what special ed is about, that strength paradigm. What are you good at? The person who didn't speak German, she was great at organization. She worked with stations before she was able to give the teacher idea and what co-teaching models look like. Whereas the person who was teaching and the gen ed teacher didn't know the special ed background. Is it best if both are dual certified? Of course, you know, but do we live in 100 percent where everything is perfect all the time? You take me to that utopia because it doesn't exist, I think, in education or in any field, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting because I'm picturing like social studies teachers where the teachers who have content schedules say, I need to get through. I need to get through. I need to get through. And the special ed teachers are saying you're going too fast. They're not getting anything. Let's slow down. Let's cut the content. Let's find what's most important. So even if you don't know the background of the social studies, the special ed teacher is able to say, let's limit it. Let's cut it. Less is more because they're going to walk away with some knowledge as opposed to you covering everything and then taking notes. They're getting nothing. And so to have that open, honest conversation, to have a relationship where the teachers can talk about them. And it's not just the delivery of instruction. It's also planning. What are we going to what's the content? How are we going to wheel down the content? So they get what's most important. When I talk to the teachers about specifically the science where the one woman said, you know, I don't have the science background. But when it comes time to reviewing the homework, maybe she could take the lead because when the kids are having struggles and she might not be able to answer their questions. So the general chemistry teacher, the one walking around, she could be answering those questions. The woman who's in the front of them could be the special ed teacher, just kind of reviewing the answers and taking the lead there because if she was walking around and they had a specific questions of something they did wrong, she might not be able to be the one to address it. So just changing up that role and the teachers wrote the needs and oh, my God, we had never considered that before. Love it. Love it. And sometimes just less on the page, even less cluttered, more visuals, those little things. I had to teach physics. Usburn. I'm stating myself a little here. Those visual dictionaries. Those were the ones I threw on. Now we have so many tech tools that offer that or links to other information. And that partnership is not easy. But the conversations that you mentioned are the ones that will strengthen wherever anyone thinks they might have that educational Achilles heel. Turn that and capitalize it into a strength for each other as we listen. And the other thing that I think you'll agree with respect, we don't have to agree or have dinner on every Saturday evening together and socialize. But we do need to respect each other as a professional, regardless of the year's experience. And regardless, if we don't agree with a certain way to deliver a unit or things like that, what are your thoughts about how to promote more respect sometimes with colleagues in each other? Because without that, you couldn't have had successful experiences at the high school level, which you did. Yeah, of course. When I think about the co-teachings pairs, and it's almost like an arrangement, we have learned through our observations, through our conversations, there are better matches. And the kids, sometimes you have to step back and say, we can't change personalities. We can't change who they are. And so making the right arranged marriage is really important. Again, it goes back to the scheduling, but we see teams that are working great. They really are perfect. We want to keep them together. We want to make sure that they're great. We have invited teachers in to observe others, and they've been receptive to that as well. But the respect is modeling. You know, we show it. So when we went into the pre-observation conferences or post-observation conferences, there were two administrators and we're modeling, listening to each other and going back and forth of what did you see? What questions do you know? It's not one person running the show. We're sharing the stage. We're sharing the time. And we have different roles. And we've kind of discussed it beforehand. We kind of discussed how we're going to handle the situation. And we model that for the teachers. And we respect the teachers. And I think that's important too. We really, again, go back to listening to what they say because they're working really hard. They're planning. They're grading. They're dealing with the kids' personalities and parent personalities and each other's personalities. And the admin team, there's so much going on. Family, students, yes. Yeah, we can't judge or think we know. Sometimes it's better to ask questions and listen and be respectful. And people have good days and bad days and think about how you would want somebody to react if you made a mistake. Would you want them to jump down your throat? Would you want them to be more understanding? We use the term grace. There's been a lot of conversations about showing each other grace. And I think that's important. I love that. And that's something our students, gen ed, special ed, all grade levels need in our society without getting too philosophical is that respect, respect for themselves and respect for others, diversity. And that diversity doesn't only have to do with socioeconomic, ethnicity, gender. That diversity has to do with difference of opinion. And I love what you just shared. And sometimes, you know, going back to our conversation, co-teachers have a difference of opinion. And I think sometimes I don't know if you I think you would agree sometimes that difference of opinion makes programs so much stronger. Absolutely. Absolutely. You need to have insight into things that could be different or better. And that's the only way to grow. If you simply stay the course and everyone agrees with you and you never see anything differently, you don't grow. No. And that's that's called autocracy. And that goes nowhere in a classroom for students with needs. But here's something else. This is an interesting question. And it might be my last question I'm going to ask you. And I am now making you Emperor Tobia of inclusion, education of our country. So you have that wand in your hand, even through our online podcast that we're doing here. Emperor Tobia, what would be some of the recommendations that you would set forth in our country to ensure that inclusion grows and has students on the right page with us supporting them? Emperor Tobia, what do you think about that? Yeah, I'll give you the official crown later. But yes, so I think there are multiple things that need to be handled. I like the idea of planning and asking teachers who really want to work together, can work together. I like what you said previously, that all of our teachers have training in special education, not just our Gen Ed. And whether or not they're teaching special ed kids, it's just best practice. Let's face it, every good instructional strategy and technique from special ed can be used with Gen Ed students as well as special ed students. Kudos. Thank you for stating that again. Yes. Yeah. If we have teachers who are trained with those special bag of tricks and special ed strategies to understand different learners, that would be really first and foremost. Not even inclusion, that's just good teaching. Ongoing professional development, constant training. We can't just say the course. So constant training, reflection. I would keep the co-planning, the teachers working with parents that they choose. I think those are the biggest things. Those are key ones, the planning part of it. And you know, when you said the planning and the other parts, I was already making the web with different graphic organizers. What does planning look like? Who's planning? What time are we going to do it? Is it going to be synchronous, asynchronous? There's so many options that we have that we could use. And I think together we are all emperors of inclusion. And I think that you have very nicely passed that torch on to your teams that you work with. And I think that any decision that you make within the field is going to continue that L thing called learning. And you are a firm believer. You have a wealth of knowledge with your experience that I think that teachers need to say what they feel they could take out of what we give them in our feedback and make it theirs. And I feel nothing better when I coach a teacher and I give an idea for something and they might say, oh, I like what you said, but I'm going to do sprinkles and cherries, fly baby fly, make it yours. But we set the stage for that. Mona, would you kind of like elaborate on that or feel that you could or agree or disagree? I can picture it having those conversations where you're bouncing ideas off each other. That's how we get better. Just thinking about the co-teachers when one teacher standing up and explaining something and the kids are looking, the other teacher steps in and explains it totally differently, uses a different, you know, they help each other. They support one another. So when you watch that happen, it's pretty incredible. You know, the kids grow and I don't know, the teachers are the same way when they are sitting and listening to ideas and willing to try something new or spark an idea or say, gosh, I watched that. It didn't work. I'm going to do it differently for my next class. I'm going to change it up. Even if they're teaching the same subject, I sat through eight lessons of the French Revolution and they weren't identical. The kids weren't identical. The co-teachers were, but the kids weren't and they didn't rubber stamp it. Right. And that is so important to recognize that you're teaching to students. You're teaching to these children. You're not teaching content. You're teaching children. And so that's the important part in recognizing that and in the needs of your students. I love that. And you're teaching. What's that, Mona? Great teachers do that. They know that they see that. And we've been blast. We have really great teachers in our district. Yes. And that's the thing, though, that getting to great. And there's always a little bit better. There's always another topping. There is always something else to learn. And what you mentioned, I'm just recapping for our listeners, was a lot about learning to learn, professional development, ongoing. It's not the drive by. It's having people as a resource. It's making yourself a resource with the co-teachers learning from each other as a team. And then even through their disciplines and realizing I don't have all the answers. But what do you think? And then having that dialogue, as you mentioned, back and forth to get it to the point that I think this is right for this student, for this class. But maybe we'll have to change it. It sounds complicated, but Mona, I think you'll agree with me. I know how I feel about education, and I'm connecting with so many people on this podcast who share that passion. And I thank you for having that passion. I thank you for coming on to Cartons Inclusion Conversations and sharing your passion with other learners in the field, because, you know, that's we know life is all about learning, whether we're in the classroom. But one day that classroom called life and we're planning and prepping for that. And I know I'm not demeaning other professions, but I think would you agree with me that teaching is a wonderful choice? If you had to go back in time and pick your profession again, I don't think I would make any different choices. How about you? I would not change a thing. I've been blessed. It's been a wonderful, wonderful career for me. Yeah. Wouldn't change anything. Mona, thank you for choosing teaching and education as your career. And thank you for your impact. I'll paraphrase Jackie Robinson when he said a life is not important except for the impact it has on other lives. You've impacted so many. Thank you for everything you do, Mona. Thank you for sharing all your expertise with our learners. You're a consummate learner, a consummate professional. Thank you, Mona Tobia, so very much. Thanks, Toby. Thanks for inviting me to participate. No, they never really knew the kid with a different point of view. Copyright MMXXIII Karten's Inclusive Conversations. Thank you for listening. Check out other episodes on all major platforms.