School Stories: When a Soccer Ball Tells You More Than a Spreadsheet

In this episode of Data in Education, I was joined by the incredible Emma Dukhovny. With over 25 years in the New York City Department of Education, Emma is a seasoned English Language Learner (ELL) teacher, data specialist, and professional developer. As an immigrant and an English language learner herself, she brings a deeply personal and powerful perspective to the table. She's the brilliant mind behind the Teachers of ELLs Facebook group and is all about making data work smarter, not harder.

Learn more about Emma Dukhovny in her facebook group for teachers of ELLs: https://www.facebook.com/groups/124682274864590 

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Connect with Emma Dukhovny
Email: emma4teachersofells@gmail.com
X: Emma Dukhovny
Facebook: Emma Dukhovny (personal) and Teachers of ELLs (group Admin)
TikTok: Emma Dukhovny and Teachers_of_ELLs

Connect with Jessica 
Email: jess@data-informedimpact.com 
X: @informedimpact
Instagram: @informedimpact 
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/informedimpact 

Transcript

0:50

Welcome back to Data and Education. My guest today joins me in the belief that data isn't just about spreadsheets and bar graphs. It's about real human beings with personal stories. Today I'm joined by Emma Deney, an English language learner teacher, ELL, and the administrator for the Teachers of ELLs group on Facebook that I will be joining very soon because it sounds amazing. You can also catch her posting educational content on TikTok and Instagram, but overall, she's all about making data work smarter, not harder, so we can see the full picture and truly meet the needs of our diverse learners. Welcome, Emma. Thank you so much, Jessica. Thank you for having me in your program, in your podcast. Um, yeah, I am blessed. Thank you. Thank you, listeners, and thank you. Viewers, nice to meet you all. Yeah, yeah. I'm so excited to have you. So I gave a very brief overview of your, what you're doing right now, but I'd love a little bit more information about your background. Absolutely. Uh, I'm an old lady who swallowed the fly. Dunno why to swallow the fly. I've been a, uh, employee. I served in New York City Department of Education for over 25 years. Uh, I served some of the most challenging to teach students, the English language learners and supported teachers, families, and school communities in many different capacities. Some are data specialist, professional developer, testing coordinator, compliance, and title three program coordinator. You can go on and on and on and on. I've done it all, but my most favorite. Role is, and I think will always be, is that of a teacher of English language learners. I am an English language learner myself. I'm an immigrant child. My family had a very difficult, I must say it, challenging, um, story, challenging journey, um, becoming an American. And it was a dream. And it's here, it's in my heart, it's in my mind. It will never go away. That's why my passion and, uh, my, my passion is helping teachers grow their knowledge, skills, and pedagogy so they can become experts and master educators and co and they can help their students succeed in school and in life. Because that's what. I was fortunate enough to have amazing teachers, uh, who believed in me, who saw me for who I was, and they inspired me to be where I am right now. Um, so my goal is to support the teachers, to equip teachers with a toolbox of best practices and resources so they can support their English language learners and not only the English language learners, all students, and open the world of opportunities that these children deserve. So that's about me. Yeah. Um, and that's such an important job. I often think, uh, think about, uh, how terrifying it would be. Even as an adult to be in a space where you don't know, you can't, you have trouble communicating with the people around you and you feel like, you know, an outsider. And then to experience that as a child, like I just cannot imagine, um, the, the additional layers of like stress and just things to think about on a, on a regular basis. So, um, I appreciate the work that you're doing and like you said, it's not, it not only is a huge benefit to those students who are learning English, but also a huge benefit to, to all students to have those strategies. So, um, big props to you. That's amazing work. So, so appreciative of what you're doing. And so if we think about, um, your, your experience with data throughout all of this, I'd love to hear like when, how have you used data? Um, are you a fan? When did you become a fan? If you are, tell me your story about data. Of course, I have a personal story. Data, data, tomato, tomato, potato, potato. I should start asking people when they join on the podcast, is it data or is it data? I did that at, um, I had the, the virtual summit that I put on a couple times a year. And at the one in June, I, we did a competition where people could fill out a form, um, for all the presenters as to whether or not they said data or data. Well, I'm not a, I'm not a piece of data collected. Yep, exactly. Well, uh. As a young teacher, as a, as a teacher who just started out brand new out of college, by the way, they do not teach teachers how to gather data, how to collect data, how to interpret data, and what to do with the data and what kind of data teachers are not being taught in college. It's a big misfortune, I must say. Mm-hmm. On our brand new teachers, our, our new teachers workforce. I think this must be taught, uh, in colleges. Yeah. When I came into the school building, first day, I had a stack of documents and I was told, here's the data you need to analyze the data because in two days you're going to have your students coming. So plan with data in mind. That phrase planned with data in mind. And then there was another phrase, data-driven instruction. There was so much terminology thrown at me. Uh, I was not only confused, I was petrified. I was so scared. And I understand how our teachers feel because in our system right now, we shovel through so much different kinds of data. Yeah. It's overwhelming for teachers. There must be an easier way because we teach a burnout is a real thing. And my vision of a teacher is teachers are angels in disguise. We need to hold on to amazing teachers. We need to make teachers' lives easier, not harder. Yep. So when teachers hear the word data, data, data, they cringe. Yes. There's so much different kind of information that teachers have to collect, analyze, look at trends and patterns, and then come up with a plan of action. There is presented in so many ways, bar graphs, excel sheets, full of numbers, pie charts, endless tally marks. All these can be super overwhelming and scary. Yep. So the way they data is presented, it's very formal, right? It lacks personal or emotional connection, but teachers should not fear data. So hopefully today, you and I as experts, we could kind of ease our teachers' feelings about data and say. It's okay. It's okay. Data, data. Potato, potato, tomato, tomato. Just think about that. Data is just information from many different kinds of sources, and we are going to kind of open your mind to data and say it's, it's not difficult at all. Just yeah, we're going to teach you a few small but very practical tips, right? Yes. How to navigate through all this mountain, right? That it's on our shoulders. Yes. When, um, smartly, right. Work smart and not harder, right? Data can help teachers drive instruction. And not only instruction. Today, I want to touch base on that this point, very important point. Data-driven instruction, right? Because we want our children to be successful and provide valuable information about gaps. Areas of celebration and the next steps to make improvements, right? So what are we gonna do with data? What's the purpose? Like, what are, why are we doing this? So as a data expert, I always recommend to look at different kinds of sources of data. We are going to talk about a little, a little in a little bit about the triangulation of data. Yeah. Great. So that's all folks. Data, data, tomato, tomato, potato, potato. That's how I want you to think about it. So you have a smile on your face and you have positive feelings about this terminology and this and this. This word data. It's a big one. Yeah, definitely. When it's written in all capitals. Yes. You touched on three very important things. Um, and it, it's kind of like what, what all of my, my data consulting centers around is. Um, first that data culture, so not feeling overwhelmed given, given the, um, the making sure that you're, you're connecting the numbers to the stories of the, the students and the stories of the teachers even, and making sure that, you know, like, yes, we're data informed, but we're also people driven. Like this is, that's why we're in the roles that we're in. It is because we care about people. We care about these kids, you know? I agree with you. A thousand percent, yes. And then data literacy. Is all about, you know, trying to get that momentum and starting small instead of being overwhelmed by chaos and all of the numbers all over the place. Focusing on those tiny data cycles and making sure that, you know, again, we're starting very small. And then the third one that I, baby. Baby steps? Yes. Baby steps. I talk about data culture, data literacy, and then data visualization. And when we talk about data visualization, we're talking about presenting data in a way that helps bring clarity to the numbers. Instead of handing you a stack of papers or a spreadsheet or even a dashboard with a million graphs and charts over it. All over it, we're, we're focusing on the data that we need at that time, as opposed to, you know, I, I talk about it being, um, you know, just in case data versus just in time data. So if we're looking at just in time data, we're really focused on the data that is actionable in that moment. Just in case data means, oh, here's some data just in case. Here's some data just in case. Here's some data just in case. And that's what leads to that overwhelm, right? That's what leads to that chaos. Things are not connected. It's a disconnection, not connected. Teachers need simplicity. We need simplicity in our lives. Nobody wants yes, extra stress. Oh my goodness. On top of everything else, it's not clarity, simplicity, clarity and connection. Yes. Everybody else is aware of what they're doing, why they're doing it, and what, what does the purpose of it and, and, and what's the next step, right. Right, absolutely. And, and you touched on all of those points so beautifully. It's, um, you know, I used to work in purely data visualization and creating systems, and what I learned was that those, the, the dashboards, the systems, they, those spreadsheets, they don't mean anything unless it's connected to real people. And unless you have a reason to be going through those data cycles, so Very well said. Um. And so if we're talking about, I know you mentioned, uh, um, we do have questions, um, for the, for the viewers slash listeners. I do. I prepare some questions. Sometimes I stick to'em, sometimes I get way off base. You love questions? We love questions. But you hinted at, at different, um, data sources. So I wanna, I wanna touch on triangulation because that's something that is so incredibly important and um, something that we talk a lot about in education, but it's not something that I think I've talked about on this podcast. So I'd love to hear about, um, your experience with how triangulation helps, what that means for school leaders, what that means for teachers, and how that helps look at your, um, your whole child or your whole school. Absolutely. So the word triangulation is not a new term. Sometimes when teachers hear you need to triangulate data, they really don't know what it means. Mm-hmm. As a data expert, I always recommend to look at various sources of information and provide valuable information about gaps, as I mentioned. Right. We need to know what is it that our students are not doing well. Right. Right. Because that is going to be our problem of practice, right. We will need to make improvements to it. We also get information, but areas of celebration. Right? Yay. Our children did this, and the next steps, as we mentioned, to make improvements. So I always recommend to look at many different kinds of sources, right? The word triangulate, I'm going to explain it in a super easy way, right? So that no one gets. Uh, gets overwhelmed. Triangulation is another podcast for us, right? It's like a black hole. Yes. But in super simple terms. In super simple terms, right? It means that when we look at several sources of data, right, from various assessments, for example, hard data and observations, formative assessments, we are able to go deeper and look at how this information is interconnected and related, right? We want to see a big picture. So that's why it's always effective to have these data-driven conversations with, with people, with your team, right? Yeah. With, with other. Experts. Experts in different areas, in different fields, which we also are going to discuss later, right? If you wish. Or would you like me to speak about it right now? So I, yeah, go ahead. Go for it. For, for the triangulating data, I just want to, I'm a visual learner, right? I would like to see things. So I am going to give you a simple example of triangulating data, right? Like I'm going to lean on my notes. Yeah. For example, we look at, we look at our information, we sit down and say, alright, so reading, we need to improve reading with this specific focus group of students, right? Yep. We'll look at our chart and see, oh, mama, city, green, green, green, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, right? Mm-hmm. And we color coded person. Then we say, so what am I going to do with, with, with this information? I have my red flags. Some of my students, right, are not performing as much as they can, right? They're not reaching their capacity. We are going to have these children as a focus group right now, for example, reading, right? We have in New York, we have ACA data, we have spelling inventory, we have map assessments, we have i-Ready assessments, if whatever schools have used it in the past, we have, uh, formative assessments. We also have a state ELA exam, and we do as teachers item skill analysis to see which of which questions and which, um, standards our students have not mastered or mastered. So you, we take all of these important reading assessments, right? Because they all. Measure different things, right? And we are making a connection. If you want your students to be excellent readers, what is required? They need to learn how to read. Remember how in early grades we teach children to read, right? And then in, in higher grades, children read to learn, right? So that's across the grades. It doesn't matter, especially when you have kids who are struggling and with, when you have children who just come to your school fresh from another country, they don't speak lang the language. Or maybe they do speak and understand a little bit. We need to assess them, right? And we need to figure out what exactly, we need to pinpoint what is exactly happening with these children where. Are they right now? Because we will need to meet their needs. Where are they right now? So these assessments, this data is going to open this big picture for us, right? We take this connections and then we analyze it. We look at what is it showing. Then we look at, um, what are the root causes, right? Why is this happening? What is up to us? Because certain things are not up to us as much as we want to because we teach as teachers, we wear so many hats, right? We are caregivers, we are class mothers. We give love, we support, and we protect our children. There's so many things that are happening, right with us. So. Some things are not within our control. We need to look at what is within our control, and if something is not within our control, maybe we could reach out to other people for support, right?'cause yes, you never work alone. You are never alone. We are never alone. It's always, we are always a team, right? We're always partnering up. Yeah, collaborating. So you have the data, you already identified the root causes, and now you need to make specific steps to make improvements. Right? Now, what are we going to do with this? Fi find findings right now. Who is going to do what, right? Mm-hmm. That's why when you are triangulating data and you are looking at data never alone, but with a group of people who are experts in their own fields. Yes. For example. An IEP teacher, an EELL teacher, an admin, absolutely. School admin, or maybe several, right? Assistant principals, deans. Some people say, do not include gym teachers and class teachers. I say, absolutely include them. Right? Because there was a moment in my life when, uh, we looked at a specific group of children, right? And we needed to make improvements when we got to the last column in our, in our template, right? Like, next steps, what are we going to stop doing because it's not working. What are we going to start doing because that will be our next steps and what are we going to continue doing? Because it shows positive results, right? Right. We discussed many different things. Reading, phonics, special education form, uh, formal education, that was lack of formal education. The, the, the, the family was illiterate, were so many different things. Another problem was that our children are not reading. So if you are not reading, you are not practicing your, your reading skills. I mean, if you want to get better at cooking, you need to start making mistakes with those pancakes. Right. Safety learning. I don't, I don't wanna cook, but if I have to make pancakes to get there, I guess I'll, so, so we are noticing as educators, we are noticing that especially after COVID Right? Especially after our children were forced and we were forced to, yeah. Um, direct our attention to the, to the screen, right? Yep. Children stop using. Genuine authentic text to have experience with the words and turning pages and making little notes on the margins and really leaning back on text and, uh, just enjoying the reading. Enjoying literature, right? Children are not reading, so if they're not reading, and also where do you have space? Enough adequate space, right time in our flow of the day in our curriculum for children to read, to practice their reading skills, right? Yeah. As a teacher, we always ask these questions. So when do you want my children to practice? I have to do, uh, you know, jump, run, run, run. Curriculum is so fast. Let's go. Let's go. Whoa. So we will, we could discuss. Best practices to tackle this issue at another time. Because there is a will, there is a way. There is a will, there is a way. Right? So, and then I said, oh my God, what, what? What did I just observe? Write my informal, informal, informative observations as a teacher I was making, because I love my kids. I want my kids to be successful. I want them to be happy. So I am interested genuinely in their lives. And when I was doing another kind of assessment, right? Another kind of data was a survey. I was surveying my students likes and dislikes, preferences. Mm-hmm. As well as there was another survey for the families, because I needed to know everything. Whole child. Right. As teachers, we need to learn. Right? Yeah. Are my students. Learn about your whole child. And then I saw this three boys, because that's another piece of data, your demographics, right? Yep. Culture, language, boys, girls, Hispanic, the, uh, nationality, uh, many. Listen, I speak five languages, right? I have five, five languages in my family. So I'm not a monolingual, I'm not a bilingual. I'm multilingual. MLL, right? And we have children like this. Yeah, we have children. So I had a group of children, a group of boys, uh, in fourth grade. And, uh, we tried many different things to help them. And then I said. I saw these children having so much fun and trying to articulate themselves and, and speak with other children at gym when they were playing soccer, because in their country, soccer is a favorite sport. Right. Don't feel at home. Yeah. Teacher. I went to the gym teacher an amazing, a friend of mine, all of my teachers are my friends. I love them. They're angels in disguise. Mm-hmm. They make a difference in children's lives. I went to him and I said, what are your observations on these students? Right? Because in reading they're silent in writing. Nada. Mm-hmm. In math, eh? Right, right. And then he said they love soccer. They take the lead, they teach other children. And I said, hooray, Eureka. Maybe if soccer is a topic of interest, we can create a little library for these children to start reading books about famous soccer players, maybe, uh, famous players, soccer players from their country. And then, uh, we went further and we created a success criteria for writing. Right. And my success criteria, our success for our success criteria included two most famous saka players. You know who they are, right? This, I, uh, come on. Who are the two most famous saka players? Christian, Christian. Ronaldo. Ronaldo. Yes. Right. So my a success criteria for top right, if you want to be Ronaldo, you need to do this, this, you need to know how to do this, this, and this. If you want to be messy with kind of like, uh, three points, two points, one point, right? Kind of like Right. 4, 3, 2. Yeah. So kids, the kids were, uh, owning their learning. They came up with their own success criteria. They came up with their own target targeted vocabulary. It was so much fun. Children were empowered, right? Yeah. We went deeper. We did not look only at that little box that says Reading scores, phonics right, or comprehension or vocabulary building. We went deeper and we opened this whoa. Learning experience. Oh my goodness. We gave them laptops. They had, they created PowerPoints about famous soccer players reading and writing. They had show and tell because they brought their soccer balls and they had the little, um, um, pictures of their, uh, flags from their country. And it was, but went, it went deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And these children were able to improve their oral language skills, build academic and social vocabulary, targeted words. They started having friends, they started being happy. They were smiling. They loved school. Make a difference. So data makes difference and people who are involved in this conversations make a difference because we all look at. Different information from our lens. I look at it as an English language learner specialist, right. Teacher. Right? Yep. Somebody else looks at it as a special education teacher because special ed teachers are fantastic with their best practices. Mm-hmm. Um, the gym teacher looked at this data from, from his or her perspective, right? Yeah. Oh my goodness. The power is in teams teamwork. Yes. Makes the dream work. Teamwork makes the dream work. That's my favorite saying. You just hit on so many good points. Um, and I was trying to keep a list in my brain to, to help summarize, but um, first you talked about having multiple data sources so that you can really pinpoint that root cause, which is so important. Like yes, you may see that they're, um, they're struggling with a specific subject on the state assessment, and then maybe on the diagnostic you see, oh, it's actually coming from the specific domain. So is it phonics, is it comprehension? What is it? And then you bring in all of that, uh, additional data about who they are as a human being, and you can really nail down what that root cause is and what kind of action steps might come from that. And there, and the, one of the things that I talk about so often is the power of collaboration and the power of getting people together to talk about data because you're so right. And the fact that. Um, having different perspectives when it comes to looking at that data is so important. You may think, oh, it's different perspective. Yes. Different perspective, different lens. Yes. Absolutely. Allowed us to go deeper and dive deeper into this data. Right. Because we don't want to look at information superficially. Yeah. If we really want to make a difference, we need to look at the whole child. Yes. We need to interview the family. We need to, uh, create opportunities for the children and the families to be a part of educational process because there's so much information they could bring to us. And we are always partners in learning, right? It takes a village to raise a child. We can never do it by ourselves alone. Yeah, yeah. Making sure that we're, we're focusing on that connection, whether it's the connection to our families, to our communities, the connection amongst each other, and that collaboration. Um, there's, there's so much that goes into education and into teaching a student because we are talking about little humans. Like they're all completely different. It, we, we don't have a formula. There's no, no magic pill that we have for teaching students. So, um, making sure that we're, we're taking that, uh, into account and bringing in all those different perspectives and people with all those different lenses is such a huge benefit to making sure that we're, we're truly supporting that whole child. So, so, well said. Um, there is a story that, um, that you had mentioned before about the seasoned teacher, and I wanna make sure that we get this story in here because I, I think that it's a, it's a great example of someone who, um, who is a great teacher and still a little bit hesitant when it comes to data. Yeah. It's a personal story. Uh, when I go to support teachers, I love building relationships because, uh, absolutely when you make a connection and they can trust you, we can trust each other. Uh, everyone is vested and everything becomes a shared value, right? A shared value. I have made a connection. With an amazing group of teachers. Um, and every time I would go to work with them and support them, we would always, uh, start talking about families and little challenges, and also a lot about, uh, a lot of celebrations that things that we have planned are working, right? Mm-hmm. Kind of like system of monitoring. And, uh, I noticed I'm a very perceptive person and, um, I noticed, I noticed that she wasn't smiling. I noticed that there was, uh, pain in her and, uh, she was kind of crying and, uh, uh, I, we went outside, we sat down. I said, is everything okay? I can't recognize you. Teachers need to be happy to be pre, to be, to, to raise and grow happy children. What is, what's the saying? Happy wife. Happy life. Happy teacher. Happy students. There you go. Happy teachers. Happy students. Happy families. Yes. And productive. Effective, successful academically, socially, emotionally. So I needed, I needed her mind to be happy. I needed her to come to the session with an open mind and an open heart, and it wasn't there yet. So I needed to do my magic. And she said, Emma, I know I can trust you. Something happened, and we're talking about a seasoned teacher. We're talking about the teacher who has been in the system for many, many years, but it could happen to anyone. So I said, what's going on? She said, you know, uh, I received a negative review. Uh, and my students, because their reading scores were very low, I did not expect that she said, and, uh, I said, well, let's look, let's look at your data. Let's, let's take a look. So when we look deeply into what really stands behind the numbers, and we realized that the majority of her students were newcomer, English language learners who needed oral language development and foundational literacy skills such as phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, simple things, visuals, labeling. And I said, well, it's not only the numbers, it's what's behind the numbers, right? What is, what, what, there are people behind the numbers. There are real. Children behind the, and you also, you are a real person. So what we discussed, right, as educators and and data specialists, we need to have cultural awareness, right, and cultural competency when it comes to looking at data because one size does not fit all. Yep. You receive this data, do not look at it as all. No, right? One size does not fit all. You need to really understand what is happening with these children and these children's lives, socially, emotionally, academically, and outside when they're at home real lives, real life experiences. So. As a, as educators and as data specialists, right? We need to have this skills, we need to have this awareness. We need to have this competency, this knowledge base before looking at numbers. The lives and futures of these children are in our hands, and we as educators can either make them or we can break them. So learning how to understand data is, and what to do with it is not a choice, right? It's an expectation. It's a responsibility. So my, my pledge right to the, to this teacher, I said, I'm taking you by your hand. Everything is going to be okay. Let's have a conversation. We need to communicate, right? And we all sat down, we discussed, and we just, we just made. Next steps. Right? We needed an action, how to shift things around, how to make improvements. This teacher, all she needed is a refresher course on best practices ELL practices. She needed support. She was there alone doing it. Right. So we connected her with English language learners, specialists in the district and the ELL department in the school building who are amazing. They're the wealth, have wealth of information. They all worked together. Mm-hmm. We even shifted the schedule. Right. And we had the teachers of ELs, E-N-L-E-L-L teachers come into the classroom. Right. To push into the classroom so they could collaborate, collaborative team teaching, and they planned together. They created tools, resources, they differentiated curriculum together to meet the needs of these children. And wow, the end result was the teacher was empowered, right? Mm-hmm. That's building capacity. So we built capacity. She knew what she was doing. She wasn't scared and she wasn't lowly and she wasn't overwhelmed anymore. And it was continuous. It wasn't just one time deal, it was ongoing. And then we also started taking data across the building and we also realized that she was not the only one. There were many other teachers who were in the same situation. That's why the we, we as. Uh, administrators as specialists, academic support specialists, right. Uh, we, we look at many different kinds of data and we really sit down and we, we make sense of it. Yeah. So that's my story. It was a positive story and, uh, it, it had a positive outcome and that's what's most important. Everyone was the winners. Yes. The children were the winners. The teacher was, and the teachers and the mentality. Right. There was a shift of mentality in the building. We just lifted it up one step higher. Yeah. And what you guys did was. Yeah, you really, really tapped into that data literacy. And so like, I like to chunk it into, to like three different sections. And of course it turns into cycles. But, um, one, understanding the data, and it sounds like she understood what the data was saying, but the next step is to ask the right questions. You understand? And then you ask, you try to figure out what's going on here because those numbers by themselves don't mean anything. You have to take into account the additional context. And I think so often as like administrators or even like at the district level, a lot of times we try to present numbers as if they tell the whole story. And then when teachers butt up against it, we get defensive and we say, no, but this is what the numbers say. Instead of just saying, you're right. What else do we need to know? Tell me, tell me everything that's not shown in these numbers. Because there is so much information that we don't have when we're looking at just the numbers. So being able to ask those questions and then being able to act on it, act on them, coming up with some kind of plan, because having that plan helps you connect your actions to the impact you're seeing that what you're doing is having an impact on the numbers. Absolutely. And that's where you get that momentum. Absolutely. That's, that's what makes you keep going. And it's a cycle. We are monitoring, monitoring, we're going back to it. It's not a one time deal. As we said, it's a cycle. Right. We come back to it, we come back to it. We, we look at things. What's working, what's not working, what are we gonna do about it, and how are we gonna do about it? And who's gonna do what? Yeah. And then we, we come back again, it's cycles. Cycles. Yep. Before big, like we have, um, beginning of the school year, we, we have BOY, right? Beginning of year. Middle of the year, end of the year, like three major stops, but we have more stops, right? Absolutely. Every month, every three months, two months, we reassess where is reassess our students consistently, right? Yeah. And then we ask the same questions. Where are they now? Where they, where do they need to be and how are they going to get there? Right? But the children need to be asking themselves these questions too. Yes. Yes. That's a big part of it too. And I would love to, I'm gonna have to have you come back another time because it's so funny. I can always tell how interested I am in the conversation by how close I get to the screen. Like I see my face getting bigger and bigger, like, oh my God. Tell me more. Um, okay, we'll go ahead and wrap up for today. Today and then, uh, you are definitely gonna have to come back eventually because we'd love that, have a lot more to talk about. Um, but for now I'd love to kind of, that the listeners know, we talked a little bit about your Facebook group, but um, and I'll make sure that I put that in the show notes. How else can listeners get ahold of you if they're not on Facebook? Surely, absolutely. And I would love that because we are building a community. Absolutely. Right? It's not about me guys. It's not about me. Believe me, I'm a genuine person. Here I am. I'm a real, um, I'm, I'm a real person. Right? Same. Uh, it is. We're all just real people. That's why I connected with you so quickly. Jessica. I'm so, I have a new friend. Oh, amazing. Yes. New partner in life. Super amazing. Yes. To reach me is very easy. Join us on Facebook or TikTok or Instagram. The name of the group is super Easy. Teachers of Else, or you could find me, I am at the covney. Send me a friend request. I think that my friend requests are over limit, but find me, or, um, you could look at my educational content that I am, uh, recording. I try to record as much as possible. Um, if I know what your interests are, what your challenges are, um, what is it that you want me to. Look deep, deeper into, and, and help you with, shoot me an email and say, Emma, look, here's the situation. I do not judge, judge free zone. That's what's so special about our group, right? Or our community. Yes. There's no judgment judge free, right? Everyone is, is a human being. We are here to learn. We are here to support each other. Shoot me an email, Emma four, number four, teachers of el@gmail.com. Emma at Emma, four teachers of el@gmail.com or find me on Facebook, Emma the ney. Join our group, teachers of ELs and join us on TikTok as a fan, right? Join you Have a new fan. I'll be, I'll be your fan. You'll be my fan. Um, and you know, as you mentioned before we started recording, um, I am, you, you already invited me to to New York, so I'm on my way. I'll be there tomorrow. Casa, please come over. Uh, I will welcome you with my open arms, uh, you know, always welcome as a part of my family, right? Yes. And you'll show me where all the good food is, right? That's the most important thing. I am a great cook. You, you will not be disappointed. Maybe we'll make something together, right? God, right? I have been cooking a little bit more. I do know how to make pancakes at least. So we got that far. That's perfect. That's perfect by the way. Uh, teachers oftentimes ask me how do I create a positive class environment and, and how do I manage behaviors? Food is your answer. Food is your answer. Yes. Make, that's how to win over. For sure. Make cultural multicultural feast in your class or maybe in even in your school. Think bigger. Don't think smaller. Right? You are the change agent. Invite families, invite everyone. Celebrate diversity. Celebrate absolutely individualism. Absolutely celebrate uniqueness. That's what unites us, right? We are not we, we are so much more the same rather than not, right? We have so many, so many similarities between us. Yeah. Make this one big table with filled with different kinds of food. Come together, break bread together. Laugh, enjoy, connect, build relationships. My stomach is growling. I am waiting for your New York. I'm waiting for your New York. I'll be there soon. Alright. Thank you so much, Emma. This has been such a great conversation. I, I love hearing all of your stories and, and really being able to pinpoint, you know, those, those spots where we're seeing the data culture and the data literacy and the data visualization. Just beautiful. I love everything you said, so thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for everything you do. I look forward to meeting you again sometime soon. Thank you. Yes, absolutely.