It doesn't fit into words. It's something that's going to change your teaching practice
as a whole. You have to come knowing that you're going to be challenged and you have
to come with an open mind. You're going to leave here a different person.
Five districts in the Grand Rapids area are here for five days of learning.
Leading Educators is an organization that really truly believes in teachers.
We believe that teachers are the most dedicated, passionate people and they have so much to
give. What we need to do is unlock that potential. As Leading Educators, we work with schools
and systems to both lift up the knowledge and practice of their teachers and empower
teachers so they can create transformative change in their schools.
This week at Leading Educators Institute, we are going to take teachers on a journey.
So, on day one, we started with equity. I think it's important to start the week with
equity work. Understanding where we're all coming from and our different experiences.
The same is going to be with our students. They're going to be coming from a diverse
range of backgrounds. We have to understand what's happening within us so that we can
better support our students. We put our feet in our children's shoe. Education must be
equitable for all. It really challenged everyone in the room to examine themselves and examine
their own biases. I think I learned I have a lot more biases and judgments than I thought
and I'm bringing those maybe into the classroom that I didn't know I was. Privilege gets transformed
when space is created for honest conversations and I think that that's what we've been able
to do here this week. And then we jumped right into so how do we get this done? For two full
days what it means to teach at the highest levels for math and literacy and how we prepare
our students to meet the most rigorous standards. In the math content session we were able to
look at how we would help teachers figure out where their strengths and weaknesses are
with the content so that they don't pass the gaps along to their students. This morning
in the ELA session I think it was really eye-opening in terms of making us rethink the way that
we teach literacy. Things that I thought I knew that I didn't know. That was one of
the big pieces was the importance of vocabulary and content knowledge and background knowledge
in order for our students to learn and read and understand text better. So we're really
getting deep learning on how to incorporate curriculum and text and putting it all together
to create real learning. Literature, complex text, scaffolding all of those elements. Seeing
them all together was really eye-opening because it finally all kind of started to click. I
absolutely think that we learned something to take back to the classroom immediately.
We look at the right data. We look at something. What do you do if the text isn't complex?
So it's like standard grade instruction maybe it is. And then we moved into cycles of professional
learning. And how a team goes into that plan of learning and learning together. Having
that knowledge of rigorous content, how do we apply that in our work? How to analyze
student work in order to really understand what students are getting from our instruction.
By also analyzing teacher practice and putting all those pieces together really will help
them to know how to move learning forward in their buildings. Okay so you think it's
just an overall thing that they read with text? Yeah. One thing I do love about what's
going on here is that everything that we do is rooted in data, rooted in research and
so it's not just, hey I have this idea that worked in my classroom. It's ideas that's
worked across thousands of classrooms and thousands of different students. That made
everything clearer. Then finally thinking about adult learners. We're all trained as
educators on how to teach students but there's no class in college that teaches you how
to teach adults and how to support adult learning. How do we as teachers and educators
really work together as adult learners to read differently? Too often we spend all this
time teaching teachers how to teach and we don't always look at whether or not our teachers
really know the content and not just know the content but know how to teach the content.
I feel very privileged to work with five districts in the Grand Rapids area and just looking around
the room seeing all those districts intermingling and having discussions around those subjects
was really impactful and I think is building on top of a foundation of friendship and teamwork
and atmosphere that we're in this thing together. What gets me going in the morning is a community
that I serve. It's a four square mile block in southwest Grand Rapids but it is a community
that cares deeply about each other because we know that what we're doing every day is
really shaping the future for a lot of kids. I think that there's a lot of work to do but
they're giving us the tools needed to do it but I feel that we're doing the work here
necessary to lead people back at home. This has been the most transformational experience
I've ever been a part of and I've been a part of many educational initiatives. I want every
child to experience what I've experienced. I'm a first generation college graduate.
Growth is hard. Growth is messy but growth is also really necessary if we are going to
eradicate the achievement gap because I mean let's face it what we've been doing isn't
working so we have to constantly keep growing and learning the more we grow I firmly believe
is connected to eradicating the opportunity gap. Sometimes being in a classroom where
you're the only adult you feel alone we have to be willing to work together and have hard
conversations and learn together in order to reach that student achievement. Every single
student can succeed and now I actually feel like I have the tools to go back and say to
a teacher I never want to hear you say a student is not going to learn because they all can.
If we give them the right tools coming together working as a team we can get every single
student where they need to be. We've had an amazing week I've just been so grateful
at all of the learning that I've done and all of the learning that I see everyone around
me doing to really move in the right direction for students. It will blow your mind to spend
a week here. I have an aha moment every minute. Come learn with us we'd love to have you.
