Kristen Anderson: Working together to overcome each of those barriers until we get to another one, that’s been a really exciting process.

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Introduction

Janet Pilcher: Hello, everyone. Welcome to today’s Accelerate Your Performance podcast, where we gather each week to share strategies for hardwiring excellence in education.

I’m your host, Janet Pilcher, and before we jump in, let me just take a moment to remind you about our annual K-12 Education Conference coming up in October. You can view the agenda and get registered at studenteducation.com/wrie. What’s right in education? I’d love to see you there.

Today, I’m excited to continue hearing about the improvement work at Hemet Unified School District. If you joined us last week, you’ll remember I met with Superintendent Dr. Christi Barrett, where we shared all about the improvement happenings from the district to the classroom. If you missed that episode, check out the show resources for a link to that listen. It is worth your while.

And today, I meet with two additional leaders from Hemet. First up is Kristin Anderson, Director of Instructional Development. She has 19 years of experience in education and believes all students are capable of growth. Like Dr. Barrett, she’s deeply connected to the improvement process.

I’ll also meet with Cheyenne Roberts, math teacher and a math coach recently promoted to a math teaching and learning specialist role. If you ask what her “why” is, she’ll say it’s that every student deserves the opportunity to receive a life-changing education. That’s certainly a theme in Hemet.

Let’s dive in.

Interview

Janet Pilcher: So it’s with great pleasure today that I welcome Kristin and Cheyenne to the show. So first of all, Kristin, I’ll welcome you. We’ll start with you today. So welcome to our show.

Kristen Anderson: Thank you so much for having me. Really excited to talk with you today.

Janet Pilcher: That’s great. And Cheyenne, we’re going to come to you, but I’ll go ahead and welcome you on to our show today. Looking forward to hearing your story.

Cheyenne Roberts: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Janet Pilcher: Absolutely. So Kristin, I had a chance to talk with your superintendent. I’ve had her on the podcast several times and just thoroughly enjoy the conversation with Dr. Barrett. As you all know, she’s been deeply committed to the continuous improvement work, especially over the last year. You’ve began working with your coach Tina, who I had an opportunity to work with years ago in Menomonee Falls. She’s fantastic. And you’ve been implementing the improvement practices.

So when you first began, Kristen, in leading classroom improvement, how did you start? And then what are you learning as you go deeper into the work?

Kristen Anderson: You know, learning a lot about improvement has been just a really exciting journey. At the very beginning of this process, I was definitely on board and ready to go in terms of wanting to improve outcomes for our students. Because we weren’t satisfied with the results that we were getting.

And as a district, we have amazing teachers and coaches and students. And so wanting to improve that is definitely the core.

But I will tell you, when we first began this process, it was a little cumbersome. We were mapping systems and we were getting to root causes and we were fish boning things. And all of these different tools that I was learning about, and they were really, really interesting tools. And we were implementing them alongside of a first-grade team. And so as we started mapping systems of this first grade team and how do they receive help and what do they do about this and that, although we learned a lot about our system, we were still struggling to really implement change that impacted our students.

And so when we made a shift as a district to really embracing the work of lightest tool wins. And when I had the opportunity to learn from Tina and just the different things from Studer, it became much more applicable at the classroom and student level. And so immediately we went from mapping systems to really just talking to those closest to the work and saying, “what is the barrier to student learning?”

And our teachers, they’ve got lots of barriers. They can tell you immediately what their barriers are. And so having a systematic framework to be able to say, “what are your barriers to student learning,” hearing what those are and working together to overcome each of those barriers. And so we had to really look at those barriers until we get to another one, that’s been a really exciting process.

Something that has been transformational for me is in that coaching process with a teacher and also with the principals that I support, one of the biggest questions that we ask is, “how do you know?” And so very frequently as educators, we’re naturally pretty reflective and we think that lesson didn’t go the way I wanted it. You know, maybe I’ll change this tomorrow or do that differently. But we’re not typically disciplined to be able to say, “how am I going to measure if this change is an improvement?”

And so as we’re learning this improvement framework as leaders and as coaches, we’re able to start really helping our teachers to be disciplined and saying, “What data are we going to collect to see if this change is an improvement? And beyond that, how are you going to involve your students and really getting their feedback about what’s working and what’s not working for them?”

Janet Pilcher: Yeah. And you know, as you’re talking, Kristen, you know, one of the things I find myself saying, you know, when people talk about engagement and people being bought in and motivated and engaged in what they do. That’s natural for teachers. I mean, the framework that you’re using and the conversations around the data, it seems so simple because that’s what, they know things. They want to do that. That is engagement, right? And that’s usually what I say.

It’s not really about some dust that you sprinkle down or, you know, some motivational theories that I speak. It really is just beginning to engage teachers and staff and conversations about the work that’s meaningful to them because they want to do a good job, you know.

Kristen Anderson: Absolutely. And when that work is meaningful and when we’re disciplined enough to be able to collect the data that shows success, that feeling of success is contagious. Building that efficacy in our teachers and in our teams and in our students. They want to do more.

And so what’s been really exciting from my perspective as I work with our coaches and with our principals is this has not been a heavy lift from the district perspective. Genuinely, for those who are willing to kind of step in and try it with us, our teachers have been just taking off. And as soon as they learn the framework, they’re ready to go, and they’re solving problems, and they’re getting good success ,or they’re failing quickly and trying something different.

And this has been a framework that our teachers have really embraced because it is so simple and they have the process to follow.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah. So speaking of that, you know, what are you seeing? What’s happening in the classroom with students? What are you witnessing?

Kristen Anderson: Well, so when we go into classrooms, one of the things that it’s really fun is to be able to talk to the teachers and they’re able to tell us immediately like, “here’s what I’m working on this year. But right now, our class is stuck here. So let me tell you about what we’re implementing and check out our data.” You can see it on the walls. You can see them tracking the data. You can see what’s going on.

So our teachers are able to really speak to their data, but even better, students will frequently pop up out of their seat and point to these charts and say, “did you see that? We were here and now we’re here.” And when we ask them, “well, how did you do that? How did you move from this point to that point?” Our students in a very student friendly way can articulate it and it’s authentic. It is not for my benefit. It’s not something they’re reading on the wall. It’s something that they’re living and breathing and doing every day. It’s very much a part of just the way that they act as a classroom.

So our students and our teachers are looking forward to getting that assessment data so that that way they can see what are we doing well and want to replicate and what are some things that we want to try differently to continually improve.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, that’s so good. And that’s the, again, that’s the motivating factor. And they want to, they want to see the data. It’s helpful to them. It’s looking at that improvement lens, not that accountability lens. Like we want to see how we’re doing and when we’re not doing that well, we want to know why and we ask those inquisitive questions and we’re curious about it and we dig deeper. So it’s such a good, you know, such a good engaged conversation.

So, Cheyenne, we’re going to go to you, you know, as a teacher in a classroom with students and you’re on an algebra team that you lead. Is that right?

Cheyenne Roberts: Yeah, so I was, I’m at the district office now as a teaching and learning specialist, but for the past few years I’ve been a lead algebra teacher at one of our high schools.

Janet Pilcher: Okay, you’ve moved from that classroom experience to that district office and leading that. So I’m going to kind of dig deeper into more of a content area of an area that you led and let’s talk about it a little bit.

So when you’re leading that team, your team noticed that many algebra students were failing. And at first you thought it was due to missing assignments. But when you made some changes, you didn’t really see any improvement. In fact, you may have seen things go down a little bit. So talk about what you did and, you know, how did you know and then how did you, what did you do with that?

Cheyenne Roberts: So, like you said, we noticed in our first semester that we had a really high percentage of them failing and we started to talk about like, well, why was it, and one of our teachers mentioned that she had a hard time even giving a grade for some students because they just weren’t producing enough work.

So she’s like, “even if I thought like, oh, I could replace the score because they showed mastery later,” it was there was wasn’t enough work being turned in. So we focused there first because we were in the first couple weeks of our second semester and already that was a trend that we were seeing. So we decided as a team, okay, what can we do to help them turn in their assignments.

So for about two or three weeks, we really were calling home for at least two parents a day for like those high need kids. We were printing out lists of missing assignments. We were giving work time in class for them to get help. And we were doing all of these things and every week on Thursdays, we would meet during our lunch and just track what percent of our assignments are missing and what’s our class average. And for like one or two weeks, it was going up and then we had a unit test and it all came back down. So we realized, okay, it’s not really about the assignments. It’s they’re not mastering the content. What can we do?

And we already have a curriculum, like scope and sequence that’s put out by the district. So there’s not really much we can do of like changing that, but we could figure out our teacher actions. Like what can we do better, just like our teacher behaviors. So we didn’t really know where to start because we had to pivot and we didn’t know where to go.

So basically, we just decided we’re just going to all observe each other. We took two of our prep periods in a week and we just observed each other. We made like glows and grows lists. We talked about things we noticed the students were talking about the students were doing. We gave some students surveys to our classes. And then I think one key thing we did to help us get insight is we interviewed students, but we didn’t interview our own. So if I was observing a teacher, I would interview kids who are failing in her class just because, you know, they might be able to be more honest with their feedback to me as an outsider versus, “oh, I have to tell you why I’m failing your class.”

And so we gathered all that data and we met again after about a week and we noticed some teachers were doing certain things that other ones were not as often doing. So like cold calling was a big one that we’re like, we can cold call and it will hold more students responsible for being active participants in the classroom. Transition times was a big one. We had some newer teachers on the teams and them not even noticing how much time they’re losing with transition times or proximity.

So we started just going into each other’s classrooms again with just a sticky note and a pencil and we would tally each time they cold called or each time or how long their transition time was. And we were just documenting those things on a spreadsheet. And each week when we would meet, we would talk about that and we would look at the grades. And so we started noticing like, small changes in their grades improvements in their grades as we were making these small, but meaningful and impactful changes to our own behaviors.

But then again, it kind of got stagnant. So we’re like, okay, we can only do so much cold calling. Right? And at that point, I brought it to the students. On a Monday, they came in and I just wrote “problem” up on the board. The problem is 33 percent of this class is failing. And then I also had like a bar chart, how many a’s we had b’s, c’s, d’s and f’s. And I basically just said, “you know, you’ve had teachers coming in and observing you. “That’s what we’re talking about. So I was kind of bringing them into the conversation that they weren’t a part of before.

And I asked them, like, “what do you guys think the problem is? Because I’m giving you work time. I’m doing all of these other things. So what else do I need to do to support you?

Or what do you guys need to do to help yourselves at this point? “And it was really nice because they did have an organic conversation about, “well, I don’t really take my notes because I don’t feel like I need to. I know they’re on Google Classroom later.” But then someone asked, “well, do you go get them from Google Classroom later?” “No. Of course not.”

So I’m like, “well, I already incentivize you to do these things by like, you let me use them on quizzes or exit tickets. So how else can I incentivize these things?” And we collaborated together as each class period I had. And they gave different steps that they were going to take to meet a goal that they also said.

So it was really nice because it wasn’t just like the teacher efficacy. It’s a collective teacher and student efficacy. And it really did make a difference in, I think, the students’ willingness to try just because they were, every Monday, we would talk about it. Hey, did our steps work last week? Did it improve? Do we need to adjust anything? Do we need to add anything? And I think them knowing I was taking their feedback and actually doing something with it helps that collective efficacy.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah. And so good. And back to if it’s adults that we’re doing that with and teachers and engaging in conversations, we know when we engage them and ask and observe and do something and act on it, it’s the same thing with students, right? I mean, it’s really just what you did was just really look at how do we make changes? But then how do we engage the students in the conversations about the data?

And then my guess to Cheyenne is that they probably when they got into that rhythm and they understood they’re going to be part of that, that they just automatically begin to take more ownership in their learning in general would be my guess, right?

Cheyenne Roberts: Yeah. I really did see a change at the end of that second semester with the students.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah. So good. So, you know, thinking of the looking at the California State tests, can you tell me about what you’re seeing based on that test and the results? Because at the end of the day, that’s what we’re striving for. And we don’t want to teach to the test, but help us manage that problem, so to speak.

Cheyenne Roberts: So one thing we noticed, it was the 22-23 school year when we got our S-BAC scores, they had dropped. We were at, I think it was 13 percent proficiency, so that’s like at or above standards for math. And obviously we were horrified. What is going on? What do we need to change, right?

And it’s really hard when you have the S-BAC because you don’t have access to see, like, what questions do they get wrong? Who’s getting them right and who’s getting them wrong? It’s really broad in general data that you’re getting. So the only real data that we had as teachers was we were giving the ICA, which is basically like a practice S-BAC for our ninth and tenth graders. And the only thing we were able to see was the task at the end that we were hand scoring. And so we’re like, “well, this is the only data we have. Let’s go on this.”

We know that they might be able to compute an answer, but they’re not able to justify it or use some math logic in their reasonings for why they’re getting this answer. So let’s start there. And we collaborated as a department. What can we do to improve this? And we just said they needed more practice. They’re not used to having to write in math specifically. It’s like a whole other language for them, you know?

And so we started figuring out what can we do so we pulled some tasks that have been released. And we just gave those and we came together and it was ninth through twelfth grade. We all came together. We all took it. We all graded them together. And we just started to notice, you know, the more we were practicing, the more they’re justifying their answers. And so maybe one teacher had really strong answers. Well, how did you teach your students? Well, I gave them sentence frames or I guided them through a graphic organizer.

So like, OK, those are strategies we can use to build our own skill set as teachers. And so after we did all of that, we haven’t got the exact results. But our preliminary scores have came back and we went up 5%. So 13 to 18%.

Janet Pilcher: Yes, that’s great. That’s a big move. I mean, that’s, that’s big. Yeah, yeah, just I mean, such good reflective practice, really connected and gauge. Also, as a team, you’re building teaching teams of, you know, just people trying to work together and—

Cheyenne Roberts: I was so blessed to be a part of the team that wanted to take on that work.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, so, so important. And the magic that we can do with each other and kids is, you know, it’s just phenomenal. So I’ll close with a question with you and then Chris and I’ll come back and close with just a reflective question with you as well today.

But, Cheyenne, you know, as you, you know, as you think about the work that you’re doing and think about the work that other teachers are doing, what qualities do you think an improvement focused teacher needs to have to help their students succeed?

Cheyenne Roberts: Yeah, I really thought about this question. I think the first thing that a teacher needs to have is the growth mindset and the ability to be a reflective educator. So being able to say, like, at the end of each day, what went well and what didn’t go well and how am I going to change that for next time? Knowing I don’t have to be stagnant. I can change things even if they used to work. I can change or I can pivot myself to be what my students need today. I think that’s the first thing is just that belief in yourself to do that.

I think the next thing for me is all about data. Everything has to be proven. So if you feel something, which a lot of time educators, you get like that gut feeling like, I know my students need this. I know my students best and this is what they need. OK, how do you know? Like, how why are we going on that gut feeling? Because if I was going on my gut feeling, I’d be calling home every day for those kids with missing assignments and working hard to not receive back what I should out of that effort.

You know, being flexible is another one. So when your data comes back saying it didn’t work, are you able to be flexible and be resilient to that and say, OK, yeah, I was defeated because I put so much work in. I’m going to let myself feel  that defeat for five minutes and then I’m going to go back and back to the drawing board. What can I do?

And I think the last one is just the ability to or the desire to be a lifelong educator or lifelong learner. And that’s all about collaborating with your peers and learning from each other. I really think that the desire to be that way is important.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah. As you’re talking too, Cheyenne, you know, I think what’s so important about the work that you all are doing, I mean, first of all, it’s having a great impact on students. But the other piece is you’re just doing the work. And sometimes I mean, maybe we’ve, we’ve taken some things that are complex and simplifying, Kristen, which you said at the beginning, I think is really important.

How do we simplify? And then we just do some things, right? And we try it and we give people the opportunity to try and do that. And it’s the rational part of doing the work. And then they start feeling what they’re doing. That’s the energy, right? That comes with it. Does that make sense?

Cheyenne Roberts: Yeah, I think one of you said it, but the contagiousness of it. So once you get that win, you want to keep feeling that win. You know, that that just we made a goal. Like we did it. Let’s do it again.

Janet Pilcher: And it’s part of human nature of what we want to do, whether we’re kids in a classroom or we’re adults, you know, learning and helping and coaching and teaching. Such such important work.

So, Kristen, as I come back to you for a closing the day, you know, I’m going to ask more of as a leader and educator and the work that you’re doing now, you know, how has this changed you? What does it mean to you? You know, what’s important? What’s, what’s been important to you in the way that you who you are today with this work versus maybe where you were five years ago, let’s say?

Kristen Anderson: Yeah, you know, I think something that I’m so grateful for our superintendent is that she has really helped develop a culture of curiosity and growth orientation. And so because of that, Dr. Barrett has given us as leaders the ability to really challenge the status quo. And in my support role, I work a lot with our school site coaches and something that has really been a shift for me is really challenging our traditional method of coaching. And as coaches coming to school sites to really kind of be an expert to coaches as practitioners.

So we shifted our practice from centralized coaching. And we’ve been very fortunate that we now have improvement coaches at every single school site. And those improvement coaches actually teach, too. And so that gives them the ability, like Cheyenne mentioned, she is a practitioner of this work. She can talk about what this looks like and feels like in her classroom with her students. And not only does that give her credibility with her colleagues, but that also helps to sharpen her skills as a coach as well.

And so just thinking about how we are doing the work differently is really exciting in the position that I’m in, because we have that freedom to be able to say, “how can we approach this from a different angle so that way it really impacts our whole system?” So having that ability to have coaches as practitioners and just having that culture of growth and curiosity for new results are two things that have really helped to shape my own leadership and how I support the people that I work with.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, so good. And you do have a wonderful superintendent who provides that support and encouragement to be able to be that reflective practitioner and to push. You know, the other part about Dr. Barrett is, you know, she has high expectations and results and pushes strong, right to that. So it’s really about being able to push and build a little bit of discomfort in that push, but also providing that support structure in a way we can build the flexibility and adaptability like you all do to achieve results.

If we could just take this today and replicate it across the country everywhere with teachers and instructional and improvement coaches. I mean, can you imagine the power and the difference that would be made?

So I am deeply appreciative of the work that you’re doing, because you’re setting a model for what we all need to do in order to help our students be the best that they can be and for the families to feel very proud of being part of a school district like yours. Thank you so much.

Kristen Anderson: Thank you for the opportunity to just share the work that we’ve been doing. And again, we’re we are still learning and growing, and we’re so excited about what’s on the horizon as we continue to implement these improvement practices and train more and more of our teachers and really just continue to expand throughout our whole system. Thank you all.

Conclusion

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Janet Pilcher: Strong leadership and organizational alignment have been the backbone of improvement at Hemet. And I’m glad you got to hear more about it today. As a former Algebra 1 teacher, I certainly relate to Cheyenne’s story about needing to help her students achieve better outcomes and gathering the data to implement that change. And we know sometimes the first thing we try isn’t always the solution. So being flexible and reflective, like she said, are the keys to growth. That’s great advice for all of us.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of Accelerate Your Performance. I look forward to connecting with you next time as we continue to focus on the Nine Principles Framework so that we can be our best at work. Have a great week, everyone.