KIC S4E5 "Better Together: The Co-Teaching Story" Featuring Amber Benson and Ruby Voss

Toby’s conversation centers on the power and purpose of effective co-teaching, highlighting how Amber Benson and Ruby Voss—an experienced math team from Southwest Virginia—have built a nearly decade-long partnership grounded in continuous growth, complementary strengths, and shared leadership. They describe co-teaching as an evolving craft, emphasizing that great educators “teach each year” rather than repeating the same year 30 times. The duo reflects on their active involvement in professional communities such as the Association for Middle Level Education and the Excellence in Co-Teaching Initiative, underscoring their belief that presenting and learning go hand in hand. They discuss how their distinct roles—curriculum development aligned with the Virginia Department of Education Standards of Learning and innovative instructional strategies with specially designed instruction—create a balanced, student-centered classroom. 

I'm Determined - The home of the Determined team, who develop resources and professional learning around inclusive instruction and co-teaching practices.

Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) – Referenced in relation to professional involvement, conference presentations, and ongoing growth in middle-level education.

Excellence in Co-Teaching Initiative – Mentioned in connection with their work and collaboration around effective co-teaching practices.

Virginia Department of Education – Referenced regarding curriculum alignment and the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOLs).

Captivate: Engaging and Empowering Students in a World of Digital Distractions

by Dr. Marc Isseks 

#TobyKarten  #Karten’sInclusionConversations #KIC #Inclusion #AmberBenson #RubyRoss #Benson&Ross #CoTeaching #TeachingEachYear #EducatorGrowth #TeacherCollaboration #InclusiveClassrooms #ProfessionalLearning #MiddleSchoolMatters #TeacherLeadership #InstructionalInnovation #StudentCenteredLearning #EducationPodcast #TeacherDevelopment #CollaborationInAction #StandardsBasedTeaching #GrowthMindsetInEducation

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

Transcript

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hi everybody welcome to KIC Karten's inclusion conversation and I am honored today not to speak with just one person but to speak with two people who are a co-teaching shall i call somewhat of a duet and they've been together for a good amount of time that's almost approaching a decade which is lovely and their names are Amber Benson and Ruby Voss otherwise better known as the Benson Voss team and they are located in southwest Virginia and they've been teaching math eight together and we were just having a conversation how they were telling me how they just got back from the middle school conference in indianapolis like the association for middle level education and they're very active in that and they're also very active in excellence in co-teaching initiative which they could share more about that too with demonstration and they've been doing that since 2020 and they've been doing the educator award they received that in 2022 and these people are worth noticing and listening to and learning from and all i could say is amber and ruby or benson voss team welcome to cartons inclusion conversations thank you thank you so much yeah and i have to tell everybody we're recording this it's actually on a Friday which i think speaks volume of their dedication after a long week work with middle school students teaching mathematics i think that everyone is noticing the great work you're doing individually and now collectively as the Benson Voss team so either one of you or both of you can hop in and answer my question what makes Benson Voss a great team well i have to tell you i don't think you're ever going to get an answer from just one of us because we do this thing where we like to talk for each other bounce back and forth right so we'll just share all the questions that's right i think the thing that makes us so good at what we do in a nutshell is that we are never done looking no not at all so a lot of what we do when we're at these conferences yes we present but we're also there to learn new things and to bring ideas back to our classroom and we're always learning through excellence and co-teaching as well absolutely absolutely and the thing is we have a friend his name is dr mark is six he wrote captivate is his book and he taught us something he said that you can either teach your first year for 30 years or you can teach each year and we firmly believe in teaching each year because every year things change the students change their experience and their exposure changes so we have to make sure that we're working toward their strengths and then trying to grow what it is they mean so every year is a little bit different yeah absolutely we also have very complementary strengths so i am like the curriculum i benson sorry i should say i am like the curriculum guru in rena county like for math eight i wrote all the curriculum uh with a couple other teachers uh made the pacing guides develop a common assessment so that's kind of like my thing like that's one thing i can bring to the table right she also works with virginia department of education that's true that's true on sols and then can you spell out sol yes oh ah yes standards of learning yes thank you we will the standards of learning and then i am the one who does the instructional strategies and the collaborative ideas and definitely we come up with a lot of our you know the specially designed instruction as well love it love it and and it seems like you are a well-oiled machine from what i've been hearing and some of these awards you're receiving uh people are taking notice and i love what you said as well about the fact that you go to the conferences to present and you also learn that's the best if we ever as a profession say we have everything or even as an individual no matter what your profession i think as well if you ever say i know everything i need to know i don't think you're a knowledgeable person and what you said to vos is that you have a way of working that you capitalize on each other as well and it's like almost like that ping pong and and hitting it back to each other but getting that ball over the net and reaching all those different kids with their sdi and you're still smiling while you're doing it so absolutely and kudos to both of you for explaining what a professional is whether you have a co-teacher or not that constant learning and i'm sure that that goes on in the classroom and you model that absolutely we do love you love that and i mean go ahead i'm sorry no go go for it no i was just going to say the interesting about it is is we do have our distinctive strengths you know benson is definitely the curriculum expert she's math certified i'm math certified but i'm also special ed certified but my strength is on the special ed side the difference is though is that neither one of us takes those roles exclusively we both teach you know we're both in front of the classroom we can seamlessly move between us um giving instruction up front or explaining a topic and then having support in the classroom so even though we each have our strengths i think we're both strong in all of these areas it's just that we have our preferences there's no doubt about it benson loves the planning and loves the curriculum a boss does not boss loves coming up with the instructional strategies and you know i always say if you give me a junk drawer in 10 minutes i can come up with a way to teach somebody something it's funny that you say that because i do a people search in my presentations and i it's a it's like one of the things is find someone who doesn't have a junk drawer so someone found and they said i can't work with you you don't have a junk drawer that has clarified it by that i didn't have just a junk drawer the article a so so you you know you find your preferences your interests and i like what you said as well boss is that the fact that you have respect for that and that's that's key so you mentioned some things here and i think some of these were leading to some of the co-teaching jews don't and do betters kind of like the non-negotiables absolutely what have you two found to be maybe a non-negotiable so give a little backstory about when ruby and i met because i think that will go well with what we're what we're this is like how i met your mother by the way that's that screenwriter came out with a great book that i'll share the final with you it's wonderful in our lakes so prior to 2017 before ruby and i knew each other i had not really done any co-teaching it turns out i should have been but i hadn't really done any and i didn't really know what it was even about and ruby had been co-teaching her entire career yeah right pretty much yes and we both got the job at the school that we're at now at the same time but we didn't know each other correct so like in the summer of 2017 or whenever they did our interviews the spring whatever it was i got offered a job as a math teacher and ruby got offered a job as a special ed teacher and the principals who sat in our meetings or in our interviews thought oh let's put these two together and we had never met but we do have very different personalities they're um and we had very different experiences when it comes to co-teaching so the first time i met ruby was a little bit intimidating because ruby's a very outgoing person and outside of school i mean i get paid to talk all day but outside of school i'm not a very outgoing person right so it was a little jarring but we got put together and ruby really introduced me to these well it was two at the time it was two at the time she introduced me to these two things that we both had to have in order to have a successful co-teaching relationship which i needed because i had no idea how this was supposed to work but i'll let her tell you what those two things are well we we discovered that we needed these two eyes and then we eyes like eyes the letter and then we actually have ended up growing that some but the first i is invitation to be a successful co-teaching team you have to be willing to invite another professional into your space and for me i invite people all the time but people are often intimidated by me and i don't mean to be but it just happens because i'm just very like boisterous and i'm up here and i'm excited and i've always got an idea or two or three so you know that's the the invitation thing but i invite people in and amber is great about inviting me in as well the other thing is initiative to be part of a good or a great co-teaching team not good great you have to be willing to take the initiative to step up when you feel like you can handle something that perhaps you're not being invited to be a part of i have seen too many special education side co-teachers that take attendance and make hobbies and sit in the back and maybe teaching assistant yeah absolutely uh well i think it's an instructional assistant with a degree and that's not the way this works yes the general ed teacher is the curriculum expert i'm not gonna lie to you that's great just so happens i'm math certified too but she is still the expert and i'll tell everybody that but i am the expert in coming up with strategies to make things understandable to all types of different kids with all types of different strengths and all types of different needs so that's where we blend our things together and we plan together beautifully now i don't write anything amber writes it all down thank god because i would go crazy because it's not my thing i can't stand still that long she can't so that's how we work but the third eye now so first there was invitation then there was you know initiative now there's integrity and what what we mean by integrity is you have to be honest about what you are comfortable doing what you want to happen what you believe is best for a student and you have to be honest about that and not go complain to somebody else because so many co-teaching teams that we've dealt with one or the other will say oh you know i my co-teacher oh my gosh and you know how do i do it and i'm like well you can't you got to be honest with each other and you just have to sit down and talk about it like two adults because amber and i have been blessed to have a great relationship and she is by far you know my best buddy and sometimes i feel like she's our daughter you're me and my husband love amber and her husband and sometimes it's like they're our kids and sometimes it's like they're our friends and we never know what the relationship is it's kind of odd but you have to be willing to have the hard talks and we still do that sometimes yeah you know and we do it in front of kids sometimes because we don't always agree on what exactly we're doing or how we're doing something we enjoy modeling that to our for our kids because unfortunately many of our kids nowadays i say that like i'm you know nowadays they have never watched two adults have a respectful back and forth conversation or disagreement they only know yelling and screaming and throwing things and that's not the way we need this generation to be taught we need them to understand that you can disagree and do so respectfully there does not need to be any name calling or put downs or anything like that or power struggles none of that you know there's never a time where somebody asks benson something and she gives them an answer and then they come ask me i'm going to give them the same answer they can't play oh they always do that they play you off each other i love that they dry usually we know what the other person has said or we can like look across the room at each other and kind of you know mind read a little bit we know each other so well that it would be almost impossible for one of us not to know what the other was saying like sneak up to you and ask and i'll be like uh what did ms i'll say correct you also work with adolescent population which yeah which in itself with or without an iep or you know yeah struggling student at all and and then some of the students and you also describe very real trauma that a lot of god witness and the two of you being that positive role model thank you for also putting across that strong message that when you co-teach you're not just teaching the subject of math absolutely and in order to learn that subject of math you have to be respectful of your audience and of course of each other and it seems like that's happening across the board with that the data everyone talks about these days you know how does keeping data guide some of your co-teaching decisions the poor informal so data pretty much guides everything that we do absolutely everything um there are both components right we're constantly gathering informal data and then we assess about on an actual classroom test about once every two weeks right so we can start with that so after our students take a test ruby and i rip the data to pieces right so we are going through every question not just like what topics did they do well on what topics did they do poorly on but by individual kids what were the answers that they chose the most that were wrong so we can try to figure out what the common misconceptions are absolutely and all of our tests in this class are spiraled so they're seeing stuff in november that they learned in august repetition love it yes absolutely we don't want to have to reteach everything in may before state testing god no that's not working so been there done that not fun yes no not at all so we are constantly spiraling and our assessments spiral so we will go through that and let's say we taught square roots in august and let's say on our next test our students do not do well on square roots correct then we are going to go back to that in small activities the following week so we might have a focus activity like a warm-up on square roots we do this thing outside of our classroom called data at the door that they do before they even come in that's my baby that data at the door love it right door it's like a pre-focus yes so we might have an activity out there where they just answer one quick question on squares and square roots then they'll come in and they'll do a warm-up on squares and square roots then on the next test that we take they're going to see there's going to be a very similar question about square roots so we can see if we have retaught or like shored up any gaps that they were having with that so data really is the basis for everything that we plan absolutely and it is the basis for some things that we don't plan correct so like today um we're teaching slope right now and our first class comes in everything goes fine they have the appropriate amount of struggle like you would expect from 13 i like the way you said that the appropriate struggle do you mean when you utter the words not everyone gets it the first time correct no way correct so we get through the first class with an appropriate amount of struggle and it's productive struggle it is right because that's how you are we get through the second class same thing we've got the kids who are already got it the kids who need a little more work everything's going fine we get to our last class of the day because we're very lucky we're on a block schedule so we have three 90 minute classes and we did not plan for this but our very informal data told us our kids had no clue what was going on the whole class not one wasn't the whole class so we had to very quickly use that informal data to completely change what we were doing that block right and go back to plotting points and go back to exactly what slope meant and that wasn't in the plans but we had to use the data we were getting right then to inform our decision to make a decision and change what we were doing so immediately i i mean i i looked at amber but we didn't talk i immediately got everybody up and then brought them to the strategy table and had them you know stand around it on the sides and you know where they could see where nobody was at the top of the graph so they wouldn't be confused and we literally went back to plotting points and i had every single kid take a turn then we went through and we did counting slope and i ended up with three that ended up staying with me that continued to struggle and then i gave them even more support and gave them more strategies and techniques for remembering how to do it because that's what we needed at the time so we are very proactive when it comes to taking data and using it the other thing going back to data at the door we came up with data at the door because we needed to know interestingly enough you're whether or not our kids could plot points it was now we had talked about it we decided you know do we do an entire class on plotting points well maybe if they need it but if they don't why wouldn't we do just a 10 minute review and then move on to the next step so we came up with data at the door using a checkerboard from cracker barrel cracker barrel thank you amber and some velcro and some owls that we had that amber had left over bulletin board decorations right decorations and we wrote points on them we wrote you know points on them and then literally stood at the door and i'd hand an owl to a kid and they plot it and then i'd take it off and say great job if they did it right and then the next one would come up i'd hand them another owl they plot it and i would take it off and say great job take this owl to miss benson which meant they didn't do it correctly so then they go to miss benson and miss benson can quickly give them a lesson on how to plot that point or how to plot points now the interesting thing is is if we went through class and 90 of our kids could plot points then we're doing a 10 minute review and then i'm going to pull or amber's going to pull the kids that need the extra work and we're going to quickly do a lesson for them while the other kids are practicing then we can move on to that next step maybe counting slope for the rest of that block now if the next class comes in and nobody let's say 90 does not know how to plot those points then we know to go ahead and do a longer session on reteaching that skill because the data told us what was going on that's how we use data at the door it's to tell us to give us formative assessments or formative information that we make decisions about which can result in things changing from from the daily plans um but i mean that's how you that's the difference between teaching to your plans and teaching to your students needs you know and that's what we do and that's how we use data at the door and yeah i love data at the door it makes me really happy that and my strategy table are my favorite things they are both of ours don't don't let me take it away from you but they're mine and i read these babies they are my babies so i i love that and i always did that like strategy table and someone would say to me and i went to what's on the strategy i don't know what are you teaching that's what's going to be on the strategy table what do you need i mean you never know you never know what you're going to need a graphic organizer a pencil grip whatever you need absolutely no you know down to i mean we're solving multi-step inequalities with combining like terms and and distribution but yet we've got a little gadget in our strategy table that you can put blocks in and it'll tell you what the less what the greater than the less than look at because you can get all the way to the point where you're solving these fairly complicated inequalities and still not know which is which is greater than and which is less than yep and for god's sakes don't talk to me about alligators because i get all kinds of upset about that so anyway that's how it works so we have all kinds of things anything that will engage our kids and give them a key to in understanding something that's what we do yeah but it sounds like you also have different models of cars there that you're driving and co-teaching methods you're not just giving them the key you're making sure they're safe in that car and you even allow them to have a choice in terms of engagement and that evidence-based practice that you might have heard a little bit at that conference you're out was probably universal design for learning absolutely action and expression and representation and engagement and i have on my website 18 inclusion principles and when you were just describing what was going on there it just brought to mind about five to eight of them of the you're the mathematician you know what percentage a little less good percent wait what'd we miss no i think wait a minute wait a minute you might have hit everyone people see they get intimidated they're not meant for all 18 to happen in 20 minutes you know well and it's funny you bring that up because we have a lot of visitors that come in because we have been part of the excellence and co-teaching initiative for the virginia department of education since 2020 so part of our responsibility to that is being an official demonstration site for co-teaching for virginia so many teachers administrators you name it they come to watch us teach they're in the reno Valley or southwest virginia or right they come to see us here so anyway because of that we talk to a lot of people and we've also been involved in doing a lot of like instructional videos for high leverage practices and things like that and amber always tells them what do you tell them amber tell them this is an overwhelming amount of things that you've seen today or that we've told you about today don't go home and try to do all of these things pick one right so if you like data at the door do data at the door yeah don't try to do all the things that we do because we've been together for nine years and we've had a long time to get to this right and then when amber walks away i say but if you want to try two or three that's fine and i love it right yeah but when you were describing things you were using here you know which ones do you think came to mind when you were doing it oh we established prior knowledge i mean we plan at the door that's their exit card and that informs your small grouping and you know it's not just we're all together all heads facing forward those days long gone oh yeah step-by-step approach we believe in explicit instruction we believe in it and not we don't use it well we do we use it as a specially designed instruction for kids that need that that's going to you know be focusing on one of their goals or needs but we also use explicit explicit direction or explicit instruction for our entire classroom and they gain incidental benefit by that so it's just plain good teaching and ruby that's such a great point to bring across and to hammer in a little bit here that it's not just small grouping all the time and it's not whole class and it's student driven with the two of you co-piloting and giving the keys to the kids to express their knowledge beyond memorization because your subject matter is tough and especially the middle school and they go on to the higher level math and and high school and and whatnot they if they don't have if they have that shaky foundation so it sounded like also how about incorporating sensory elements i was looking at that one right now and i was thinking about yesterday when we had first introduce our students to slope and even if they are really good at counting the slope they'll get positive and negative mixed up so as soon as we finished the first set of notes we had everybody up out of their seats and they were making the different types of slope with their hands so they would hold them out parallel to the floor for zero and then they would hold their right arm up and their left arm down for positive slopes and i was looking at that and i was like oh we were literally just doing that yes we do we do that a lot and i mean we have a great time and also even one of our favorite lessons i think that we ever did was when we did the the sand and the kitty litter and the yellow water yes oh you have to tell us what was that it sounds so exciting right the math standards changed in virginia recently and last year was the first year that we taught the new standards fully and one of the standards is that the students don't just understand the relationship but like discover the relationship absolutely between the volume of a cone and the volume of a cylinder and then also a rectangular prism and a pyramid but they have to discover how those two things are related and of course that will help them make more sense of the formulas later so we got some plastic cones and cylinders correct that are like same size base and height whatever and we filled buckets with whatever random supplies we could find so i had a container of play sand that had been in my car for like three months and and i had a bag of crystal kitty litter that my cat didn't like and of course we have water because we got a sink in the room right we filled up buckets some with sand some with this kitty litter that the kids had no idea it was kitty litter until we told them we didn't hide it from them they just didn't know it wasn't used and then we filled up some buckets with water and they filled the cone with whatever the substance was and poured it into the cylinder to see how many cones would fit into the cylinder so that they could discover how these formulas were related which was a fantastic lesson but we did make one slight error yes we did we always learn some things ruby's favorite color is yellow it is and ruby was busy that morning so when i was setting up all the buckets for the stations i thought i'm gonna dye the water ruby's favorite color because she's gonna love it no you didn't i did you know school kids stop it i tried the water yellow but i wasn't thinking about it until the first group of kids walked in and then we offered them like you get to choose do you want the sand the kitty litter or the water and they were like that looks like pee so yeah okay so for the whole day we asked kids if they wanted sand kitty litter or pee water yes and they all wanted the water it's like they're strange they all wanted the yellow water but it was a great visual and kinesthetic lesson it was crazy how well they got it yeah because it's memorable it's so it was memorable it was memorable all right there was water everywhere but anyway it was fun we had a great time so that's one of our ruby what you just said i think that that hits it right it was fun it was you and just even you relating the story you reliving that moment i know you were imagining the kids faces because yes the way you described it i could almost be there in the scene with you and it seems that you bring a joie de vivre you know into the classroom and you allow the students to just gobble up math in a way that they don't even realize how much they are learning and a lot of the kids with special needs you know attention issue right executive functioning organization social skills aside from missing prior knowledge some of them might have a math difference as well absolutely eating difference or just different ways that they are having an ability to show their interest their strength their motivation and then here they walk into this class with yellow water yes no i'm sorry but it's just it's funny it's funny to realize that you're real and that you have a relationship that you're modeling you have a relationship with learning too and amber maybe you know but together you do and that oh yeah shared in many of your stories which i loved hearing was you a lot of the co-teaching do's don't do betters that we wrote in that book wendy and myself and it just seems to be on automatic pile when you well it's kind of like together are me by myself i'm smart and amber by herself she is smart but together we are brilliant i didn't mess with the two of you together if i was an adolescent learning math no but you know i that's what i tell the kids too you're all smart but together we're brilliant we've got to do this together but it's interesting though that we do have a co-teaching story that we want to share with you that involves a student that we absolutely love and i'm going to let amber tell you some no names confidence no no okay just amber i say her name yes yes so when ruby and i were sitting and trying to think of stories or something that we could share that would really explain like how the relationships that we have with our students and their families and their other teachers what story could we tell that really like demonstrated that right um so i i'm sure there are dozens but the one that sticks out we had a boy three years ago yes three years ago now he's a junior now i feel like i need to give him a fake name so that i don't accidentally say the real name ethan there you go ethan ethan is not his real name but it's his name now okay sam blinks to anyone anyone's hearing just coincidental right it's coincidental of course so ethan was in obviously our collaborative math a class and had not historically been successful at math no nor had he had a desire to be successful in math no not but we were familiar with his family yes so we had taught an older brother who was very different than him and i we knew of his even older brother but we didn't teach him right so a family of three boys a wonderful mother a wonderful father and in walks kid number three oh he is oh he's amazing he is an amazing human being we just had to do a lot of communication with all of these very important people in his life so we spent a lot of time talking to his parents we had to spend a lot of time talking to his teachers and our admin before we really felt like we understood this kid but of course we did a lot of talking to the kid right why did he not like math why did he not feel successful in math what had happened in sixth and seventh grade we're not going before that but what had happened in sixth and seventh grade that made him feel like he wasn't good at math what could we do to help him do better in math this year and sometimes his suggestions were not the best like don't make me do this work yeah that was like that we can't do that but he was also a pretty self-aware kid absolutely and he could really once he got to know us and felt comfortable with us he could communicate what he thought was going to work best for him right and i think that he he was also on my caseload so he was on my you know you have a whole nother perspective outside of that right absolutely but he he really it's amazing how much student agency he developed over the year that we had him because we wanted to hear his thoughts we wanted to understand you allowed him a forum and would go back to one of your eyes you invited him he invited him to share and it's interesting because we have some quotes on we have a double room we have a double classroom we're very spoiled we just we don't even we're not even going to go talk about that but we have two large classrooms and they're connected by double doors so we have a lot of space to work and that's how we managed if you were doing the co-teaching parallel lessons you could have a separate handy yeah we could do it but i mean we've got you name it we've got it one day we have well let me go back we have quotes on that on one of the walls in our extra room our activity room maybe that's what we should call it you know but he one day we said something i don't remember which one of it was but we said do you remember yeah we said oh this is easy yeah which i probably said a million times as a teacher but no one had ever responded to that exactly and he sat up and he said no it's not easy to me it may be easy to you but it's not easy to me so we made a rule right then and there oh that we stuck by to this day three years later we will never say something's easy because it may not be for somebody and we're not going to put them in a place to feel like they should get it you know so we we just won't do it anymore but we learned so much from him and then for a kid that absolutely hated school did not want to go to high school i mean he he did and he's been very successful and i set him up with some people from radford university and james madison university and a program in the state that's called i'm determined and it's a program for students i've heard of it i love it we'll put that in our links to share with people thank you absolutely absolutely and also well i'll go back to that but i get very just my medicine is gone so i'm all over the place right now i'm really excited and then i get excited you know but we sent him to this week-long camp we recommended him for it he and his parents went together and it was awesome well then lo and behold amber and i get an email from a an assistant superintendent of virginia schools okay like virginia department of education she's an assistant superintendent she's way up there right and says i met one of your students we're like oh no and we're like oh boy what happened and she told us who it was and she said i was so amazed by him that i offered him a place on our student state board and we were like what the kid who wouldn't even stay in class the kid who hated math the kid who just i mean yeah kudos to him a kudos to the two of you for creating that comfortable and right his classroom that allowed him to be who he was to grow to who he needed to be without compliance but internalization and that was the product of so many people getting together he felt comfortable in our room but it also took his parents it also took administration maybe being a little bit flexible with us yes it also took talking to his other teachers and making sure that they understood what was going on right and then it the ripple effects from there were amazing but it took everybody right absolutely and he still comes to visit us all the time here even though he's not supposed to because he's at the high school he's not supposed to come to middle school but he manages to sneak in well i wonder why ladies i wonder why right that ripple effect that you created paraphrase uh jackie robinson when he was talking about people making a difference in other people's lives and that's what you do that to have that impact other people's lives in such a positive way is amazing and i think you've also impacted each other and spurred each other on to absolutely to do even more than you just seem like you would probably like teaching from the womb you know love teaching it just oozes out and being a teacher and educator and loving kids myself it's just easy to spot that in other people as well and i thank you both for just being professional and taking the time to speak with me and to share your insights with our audience and benson voss amber ruby and i love how you said Benson Voss just for the simple reason it's alphabetical yes that's how we like things you know it's we're not English teachers but we like oh so you could you could still read even though you teach math good to know imagine that i love it i love it do you have any closing things that you would like to say or before we sign well i you know i think that one of the big things that we do together is that the first when we start a new school year every school year the first three days is dedicated wholly to team building to building those personal relationships to working with our kids to getting them up and moving so that they understand that it's going to be a very active learning experience but this year we were really very cognizant to teach them all of our routines we showed them what we wanted them to look like and what we wanted them to sound like so that nothing was a surprise to them we even taught them how to rotate in stations and we did fun things like putting the puzzles together but we taught them how to rotate in stations so that when we did it in our classroom they knew exactly what to do and what we expected so that goes back to prior knowledge but you're setting the stage for success pre-planned yeah so those personal relationships and taking that time to really get to know the kids and giving them that time to know us really makes a huge difference in how things go and we've heard people say to us you know i don't have time for that I've got too much to teach and we always say you don't have time not to do it because when you take that three days up front to teach the procedures to gain that communication between you and the students to build those personal relationships then later in the year everything runs so much more smoothly yes both of you i think just demonstrate being professionals and how collaboration and what it looks like and how you just enjoy your profession but at the same time the students are are blooming and it's almost time to gobble ladies so i wish you a very happy thanksgiving and i know we'll connect again soon great great we would love you thank you so much for having us yes we've had it i mean this has been wonderful he can feel the stairs and hear the words unspoken not so unaware of a world that thinks he's broken and who never even knew a kid with a different point of view no they never really knew a kid with a different point of view copyright 2025 Karten's inclusion conversations thank you for listening check out other episodes on all major platforms you