Beyond Best Practices: Using Pedagogical Judgement to Navigate Uncertainty

Hey, welcome. Hey, so my name is Paul U and I'm one of the um organizers for the Math and Action Conference. So, welcome. It's so great that you're here. We hope you've so far enjoyed the coffee and cookies with the presentations. Um and we're super excited to have with us Dr. Dr. Brett Garner um with us speaking to us about this idea of um in terms of best practices, who is it best for? Um we're super excited. Uh Brett actually uh worked with our pre our speaker Dr. Lana Horn from I think 2019. So, and they're still doing collaborations and so uh so there's kind of a a pretty cool professional um connection. but as she brings her own research to share with us to impact her classroom. Um, in her spare time, she's kind of a puzzle book reading type of person. I think that if I can use the phrase professional nerd is how you describe what it says in my in my Twitter bio. So, there you go. Professional, which is wonderful. And um, in the same way that um, I like to spend time with my dogs at home, she loves to spend uh, time with her cats at home as well. So, uh, without further ado, I'd like to introduce to you Dr. for Brett Garner. Thank you for Thank you so much, Paul. Thank you for that lovely introduction. Um, so yes, I am uh Brett Garner. I'm at the University of Denver. Um, there's my contact info there. Uh, and today I want to talk about like going beyond best practices. So we can really use uh pedagogical judgment to navigate uncertainty because like things are weird right now and things have been weird for a minute and there's so much uncertainty in schools and in teaching and just in the world and like really thinking about how do we navigate that? Do you want to turn up your volume? Cool. No, it's still there. Oh, there we go. Yeah, cool. Got it. So, um just a like quick spell alert for this session. This is not a tips and tricks session. Um there are so many people telling teachers what to do right now. I do not need to add to the pile. Um so this is really about like my work is really about empowering teachers to make choices for themselves and to stay true to their pedagogical commitments. So just to tell you a little bit about where I'm coming from, I used to teach middle school math in Houston, Texas, Southwest Houston. Um and as a new teacher, I often felt like or I wondered to myself like are we doing it wrong? like why are we teaching math in a way that's not working for most people? It it occurred to me while I was uh when I was starting out teaching like it's totally okay for someone to go through school uh to go through K12 to go through college and come out the other end and say, you know, I'm just not a math person. That's a little weird, right? Like uh you can go to a restaurant with some friends and it's totally fine to be like hey can you like split the bill or like how much do you think I should tip? I'm just not a math person. I don't really do math. If you walked into the restaurant though and said hey can you like tell me what's on the menu? I'm not really a reading person. I just don't like read things. Like that would be really weird, right? But somehow it's okay to not be a math person. And to me that said that there's not something wrong with people. There's something wrong with the way that we're teaching if it's not helping students like recognize their own mathematical strengths and to really understand what they're doing. And so now I work as a math teacher educator uh and I've devoted my career to really understanding teacher learning and to thinking about how we can support teachers to do their best work. I work with uh elementary and secondary teachers. Um I teach like elementary math methods for pres-ervice teachers. I also teach classes for secondary students and I do research with a lot of secondary students or secondary inservice teachers. And really within all of this like again teacher learning is key. We as like an education field, we have a really long history of telling teachers to do new stuff. Whether it's the common core or like um u no child left behind style like accountability stuff or new math back in the 60s. Like we have a long history of telling teachers what to do. We don't have very many mechanisms for helping teachers think more deeply about what they're doing or helping them actually do that stuff. So I'm going to share um a bit from um a project called project sigma which stands for supporting instructional growth in mathematics and that's what's featured in that book there. Um but we also have a follow-up called project tow teaching amidst uncertainty. We named both of these in the before times. So we weren't expecting that like uh Greek letters would be we thought oh sigma and toao that's really cute like they're mathy and then like they're Greek letters and stuff. uh we didn't think about how those would become names for varants. So uh we hope that we just like keep cruising on the omocron stuff um and don't ever get to like sigma and towel later on in the alphabet, right? Um we also named the project uh teaching amidst uncertainty in the before times not realizing just how uncertain everything would become. And of course none of this work is just mine. uh I do this in collaboration with a lot of other really lovely uh researchers, scholars, teachers um who are featured here. So I want to start um by thinking about like what are some of the best practices for teaching secondary math, right? And uh maybe let's turn and talk uh to your neighbors like what are some of the things that come to mind when you hear best practices? Yeah, y'all have like the internal teacher timer of like that was like that was that was perfect. Um, all right. So, uh, I'd love for some folks to share out some of the things that they think about for best practices. What's some of the stuff that y'all were talking about? And Paul, feel feel free to share stuff from the Zoom chat. Um, if there's stuff there, y'all were just talking, said so many things. Go here and then here. Wait, we're going to get the microphone uh for our Zoom friends. It's not going to it's not going to boomer anything. It's just so they can hear on Zoom better. Okay. So, um, we were kind of talking about two opposite ends of it. So we were talking about like formative assessments and scaffolding and realia. And then we were also talking about the importance of knowing students names, being able to pronounce some correctly, knowing students preferred pronouns and living situations and just stuff. Yeah. Like that. So that way kids are safe to do those struggles that they need to do to become better mathematicians. Totally. Yeah. There's like the content piece of it, there's also the human piece of it, too. Absolutely. Um, so I I just think that explaining being able to explain well is really important and understanding your content so well that you can explain it in multiple different ways depending and and being able to gauge how students where their misunderstandings are and being able to help them in in the moment. I don't know if that doesn't fit nicely as like one practice, but like Yeah, absolutely. Other thoughts. Uh, we talked about getting kids to actually do the thinking rather than just like being up in front of the class, doing wrote notes, all of that kind of stuff. Getting them to discover and actually be able to go through the steps and stuff like that. Totally. And one more. I love the yellow like trying to outweight time me. One more. All right. All right. I give I give. All right. So when we when we talk about or think about the language of best practice, there's also this like implicit issue where we have to think about like what do we mean by best? Like what kind of practice is best? How do we decide that? We know from research and from practice that like we need to give students time to think deeply about the math, right? If we want to give students rich tasks, we need to give them time to like really dig in to like figure stuff out for themselves. And that's going to take more time than uh giving a set of like procedures, you know, in an I do we do, you do style. But we also know that we can't give them too much time because if we give students too much time, then they'll either get really frustrated and start to give up. Um that like productive struggle shifts into an unproductive realm. Um or, you know, they just wander off into unmathematical terrain. And like who among us has not done that? Uh when you're supposed to be talking about one thing and then you start talking about something else, it's a totally normal thing. But if we give students too much time and they don't feel any sense of like urgency, then it's easy to shift and like to hang out in that unmathematical area. So we got to give them time but not too much time. And also we have to keep in mind like we got to cover all the curriculum, right? We got to keep up with the pacing guy, keep up with our colleagues um or the get ready for the test or whatever it is. There's still a lot of pressure to like move quickly through things and to make sure that we cover all the content. as another example. Um we uh wait oh yeah so we want to um let students engage in productive struggle um and really let kids like grapple with stuff and give them like rich things um to engage in. But we can't give them too much struggle uh because that's going to like we still have to give them some supports and scaffolds, but we also can't give them like too many supports and scaffolds that they proceduralize or so that we proceduralize everything. So there's got to be a sweet spot there between giving too much support and not enough support. And figuring that out is where a lot of the tension in teaching comes from. So ultimately teaching is complicated. There are some choices that are going to be always wrong, right? Like belittling kids, always wrong. Um, refusing to like use kids names or learn how to pronounce them correctly, always wrong. Um, but there are few choices that are going to be always right. knowing when do I move on, when do I wrap stuff up, um when do I give kids more time, when is that going to go into too much time, when do I like uh ex like help kids move forward and tell them, "Yes, that's right. Here's what you need to do next." When do I leave it more open-ended and let them discover it for themselves? All of those choices that teachers are making um depend on the context and the place that we're sitting in. I don't think that we can um boil it down to like a bunch of clickbait style like one weird trick. Oh, if you just do this like avoid this worst carb for teaching then like everything will be great. Um or you know if you just follow this like secret strategy uh you'll be an amazing teacher. Sometimes the best practice rhetoric tries to boil things down to like a listicle um that we can look at, you know, on Buzzfeed or whatever of just like, oh, well, here are the here are the 15 things that amazing teachers do and if you just just do them, uh it'll be great. I don't think that we can boil teaching down to a a set of discrete steps like well if you just do these 85 things or these five things or however many it is I don't think we can reduce teaching to like a set of best practices. Teaching requires professional and pedagogical judgment. It requires expertise in teaching. It requires that we be responsive to students and understand what they're thinking and help support their uh development as humans and as mathematicians. Another reason or like kind of the flip side of um that clickbait version of best practices is that there we get into this baggage of the binary. If we present some teaching practices as good, then other teaching practices are bad. And if you do the good things, then they will work well and you're a good teacher. And if you don't, they don't work well. Or if you don't do them all, then you're a bad teacher. And we get into this like binary good versus bad perspective. But in reality, teaching practices aren't wholly good or bad. And teachers aren't either. So many teachers that I know, myself included, are perfectionists. Right? You want to try to get everything right. And I don't know about y'all, but I can remember like at the end of the day, I can remember every time that like, oh, I should have followed up on that thing a student said or I should have maybe I should have responded differently there or that was such a negative piece of feedback on my like teaching evaluations or like student survey. Like I can tell you every negative thing that a student has said like on a teaching evaluation. I don't all like you know three of them at a time. I don't remember the other 20 or 25 like positive things as well. Right? As like perfectionists, it's very easy to lean into this baggage of the binary and to like worry that we're not being good enough. But teachers are not wholly good or bad, right? Teaching practices are not wholly good or bad. It's a lot more nuanced than that. And so I want to uh contrast this binary view of good teaching that has a very evaluative stance with uh a more expansive view of good teaching which uh is more of an interpretive stance. So on the binary side we might think about like some teaching practices are good and others are bad. But in reality we can take a more interpretive stance and ask like what is this good for? Who is this good for? What goals does this practice support? what goals does it not support? And you might have a goal of letting students um figure stuff out for themselves. You might also have a goal of preparing them for the test at the end of the year. And those are two goal and like so you got to cover all the content, but you also got to give them time to figure it out. And you have to balance those. Every practice is going to support some things and not others. And you have to choose what is it that you think is most important. Um to break this down a little bit further, the a binary view of good teaching would say that well good teaching can be broken down into specific uh practices, curriculum and activity that will inevitably support student learning. But actually research suggests that some things are generally good and like generally productive for student learning. But teachers have to exercise that professional judgment to listen, adapt and uh respond um to their students to know who are the like children in the room, who who are the people that you're working with and what do they need. Binary view of teaching would also say that like good teaching is the result of an individual teacher skill and knowledge that everything depends on like what you know. An expansive view of good teaching would say that good teaching is relational that it is uh a mix of teachers skills, knowledge and expertise uh but also their responsiveness to students who may be more or less willing to like come along with you. We all know that like um you can have uh some really great classes that just like jive like that constellation of students and like you and the content like the time all of it it's just like really good and the vibes are right. Um, but then for me it was like usually fourth period like right after lunch, right? Where like the vibes are off. Like something's not right. Like the combo of personalities and or maybe time of day and like just like whatever is going on, whatever happened at lunch, like things are just not jelling. And so it's not like uh you can just take a good teacher and put them anywhere and they will make continue to be a good teacher. It depends on the context that they're working in and who they're working with. Who are the students? How are you cultivating um an environment and like a classroom community with them? Cool. Uh the binary view of teaching would also say that uh good teachers always have good lessons. Uh that everything goes right. The flip side of that is that if you have a bad lesson, then you're therefore a bad teacher. Right? But lessons are interactional uh and teachers are designing their experiences based on what they know about their students and the classroom dynamics and the content and the settings and all that. Um to like and and thinking about what they want students to understand, but we cannot do it alone. Like you have it's always in interaction with students. And so if something doesn't go great, that's not all on you as like a human. It's a complex set of things and situations that that have happened. Okay. So now what I want to tell you a story of uh one teacher from our study uh who really illustrates um some of these principles and ideas. Uh and so our student name for this teacher is Lette McLaclin. And I'm going to talk to you about um a story of her learning in our project. So if we were to ask like what is a good teacher, Lzette would check off basically every box. She's an experienced teacher at a school that we call FMA High School. Um she's got 10 to 15 years of experience. She's just a really thoughtful and caring human and she has excellent relationships with her students. They joke together, they do math together, they have like a really good time and ultimately it's a really happy classroom space. like there's always this um uh buzz of mathematical thinking because she has a strong commitment to letting students figure stuff out. She's uh she's like a real um she really resists telling students like, "Yes, that's right. Here's what to do next." She wants students to figure things out for themselves, to justify things for themselves, um and to learn and collaborate together. So, in a typical class with Lette, she's got students working together on small groups on rich tasks. It's a lot of group work uh during her lessons. And Lette's quietly circulating um checking in with students kind of like eavesdropping to like listen in on like all right, what's group two thinking about? Uh no, they'll figure it out. Like, all right, what's group four thinking about? Oh, I need to like jump in here and and clarify something. So, she'll occasionally intervene. when she does intervene with students, um she often gives scaffolds to help students uh figure stuff out for themselves to find the answer themselves. Again, maintaining that really strong commitment to not telling students what to do. And like I said, there's this like just happy buzz. Like the kids are happy. They like working together. Lzette, like it's just a good a good class environment. That's like a really special thing when like everything's jelling and like the vibes are right, you know? Um, so it feels really good in Lette's class, but what happens when the class changes when we add a lot more students? So, in the first year of our study, Lisette had about 25 kids in the class uh for AP calculus. The second year, her class was packed with 41 children on the roster. Only 40 desks in the room, right? Because Okay. Um but uh so she has students collaborating in small groups but now there are 11 groups and not six. So that is almost twice as many groups of kids. And so instead of like quietly circulating and like listening in to what kids are doing, um Lette is constantly intervening with groups. Every time she finishes with one group, another group is trying to get her attention and ask another question. And she's not stressed about it. she's just like on the move the whole time. Um, and so like with more students, there's just less of her to go around. She instead of like getting to visit every group for like three or four minutes uh and then make it around like a couple times, um, she's having students wait like 15 20 minutes just to get her attention. And they're still trying to work. Um, they're they're like still trying to figure it out. But the happy buzz of mathematical thinking now has this like darker undertone of like frustration simmering uh as students are waiting for her to uh to come help them and help them get unstuck. Lzelle was doing the same best practices, right? She's still doing group work. She's still monitoring and like um helping students out. Still trying to give the same like uh just right Goldilock scaffolds. she's still doing the same stuff that she was trying before. It's just not fitting as well in this new context uh because there are too many children on her roster. And so that's where pedagogical judgment comes in as like a way as a different view of teaching to support that more expansive understanding of what good teaching looks like. Lette uh felt after we were talking with her about like what was going on in her class and and showing her that um students were having to wait a really long time. Lette felt like a really bad teacher. And she she said that she's like, "I've done a bad job. I'm a bad teacher. I feel terrible about this. My kids are like really frustrated with me and I can't help them all." And so, um, we turned to pedagogical judgment to help her think about ways that she could bring her actions, like what she was doing in the classroom, more in line with her sense of, uh, commitments and responsibilities to her students. So, pedagogical judgment has three parts. There's the actions, the reasoning, and responsibility. Pedagogical actions, that's all the stuff that teachers do, right? like we give tests, uh we plan lessons, we respond to students. Like we're doing the stuff in the moment, deciding like, okay, let's take a few more minutes to like keep talking together. Let's bring it back for a whole class discussion. Like we're making those choices, those uh deciding those things in the moment. Then there's the reasoning piece, like the why we're doing it. Uh we might be like thinking about preparation for future classes like in pre-calc getting ready for calculus in calculus getting ready for college. We might be thinking about like our ideas for good teaching like I know that good teaching involves um helping students productively struggle through rich tasks. Then we might be doing stuff because of administrative requirements because um my uh the department chair or the principal or whoever needs this number of grades in the grade book every week uh or we all decided we're giving a uh the same assessment at the end of the week or whatever it is like we've got these institutional administrative obligations um that we're being held accountable to. And then there's the pedagogical responsibility. These are the core commitments uh that teachers hold about like what they care about as teachers and that what kinds of obligations they have to hold themselves accountable to. Some of this is um like about ethics and safety that like we have you know ethical uh requirements as teachers. We have to keep children safe in the room. Totally. Um we might also be concerned for justice and like what's what's right like a moral sense of what's right. There's also logistics stuff uh like what can we do with the furniture that we have and like the number of desks in the room uh or what sorts of like how do we pass out materials and like what's logistically appropriate and there's the legal compliance part of it too like there are all of these different things that teachers are being held accountable to all of these different responsibilities that we carry around each day and so um I want to think through like just as a mod experiment. Um, one example of pedagogical judgment. So, let's say that we want to arrange students in groups. We're going to like put the desks groups three or four or whatever. Um, why might you do that? And what kinds of responsibilities or commitments does that reflect? I want you to turn and talk amongst yourselves. Why would you do group work? All right, let's bring uh the conversation back together. So, what are some of the reasons that you might uh put students in groups and like what kind of commitment does that reflect? I have some ideas, but I want to hear from y'all first. Yeah. Can we It's okay. to collaborate. More about that. Yeah. Well, to collaborate and um because other students sometimes they model practices that you want or behave learning behaviors that um they'll pick up on from another student versus a teacher that you could be talking about a lot and totally. So, yeah. What kinds of like responsibilities or commitments does that reflect? Um I don't want to put you on the spot. Like if other folks have ideas they can Yeah. So I joined the group behind me um to discuss and I'm the person who will always volunteer myself to speak out loud in a room. So, I'm just going to transmit some of the ideas that we were discussing. Um, having a commitment to learning and math literacy over a commitment to the right answer and replicating the right process every time gives a rich environment for students to explore together being wrong in a safe setting. Um, and oftentimes paying attention to what parts of the process they might lack clarity around and just do one step of the process wrong. Like seeing that process in action and how that was a discussion among their group is more valuable for understanding where students learning is um and how to better clarify the process than just checking that they can replicate the correct algorithm um that you have told them how to do already. Uh so that does robs them the opportunity of discovering together and using their math literacy skills to develop the process. Um and I also heard um that this also reflects a commitment to students success in the workplace after um that there are work workplaces are more focused on collaborative work these days. Um and so moving students into groups helps them develop that soft skill of group work. Um, and it also kind of sets up your room for a more collaborative process already if you want to turn it into stations afterwards. Um, you've already set the groundwork. Yeah. So, collaboration it supports like uh workplace like college and career readiness, being able to work together, student having students learn from one another and like valuing that sort of collaborative classroom community. Uh some of the collaborative classrooms that I've been in, I've heard students say, "Uh, oh, I know everybody in my math class, but this is the only class all day where I actually know everybody's name cuz they have to work together and they work in different groups most days." And so like they literally know everybody's name and they have this like tight community, but uh when they go over to like science or social studies uh down the hall, they're sitting next to like some strangers basically that they've been in high school with. I can share from the online group. There is a theme from a number of participants about the idea of discussion, chatting and discourse uh for the purposes of gaining confidence in their understanding um you know situations where they can learn um from other people. Um, one participant said that when students have to explain something, it forces them to think differently about the material and in turn they learn it more deeply. And then related to that um in terms of the commitments and responsibility um it shows that you value their thoughts on the topic at hand. Um and another uh participant um in terms of commitments is this idea of giving students a voice and a commitment to that. Totally. So, I'm sorry if this like derails the point you want to make with this, but it probably will. This conversation about pedagogical responsibility and the obligations that teachers need to address in the actions they take. We we kind of talked about like so what are students obligations and responsibilities? And you made a great point about how when students step into working in groups for them when they're in the classroom like they probably perceive an obligation to learn mathematics and to show what they know which is partly why you hear a lot when people talk about having done group work. It's like, oh, I was in this group and, you know, I was like having to carry everybody along with me and I was so frustrated that my grade was also dependent on what they were doing, which reflects their commitment, right? Um, the obligation that they're beholden to rather than I think you said like what if students understood that their obligation is to learn to collaborate, not just learn mathematics, but literally like the collaboration is the goal. could that help I think serve the the teacher and the goals that teacher has and what they're trying to do. So I it's like a misalignment sometimes between a teacher's pedagogical responsibility and the students obligations responsibilities. Absolutely. And when we think about like how do we communicate what we're doing and why we have to like bring students along with us, right? Uh and so how do we tell them? Do we tell them, okay, I need everyone to like have this uh like worksheet filled out or like this set of responses filled out and this is what you have to turn in. And that might be sending the message that the purpose of group work is to get answers and to get right answers that we all share. Um that's very different from learning to collaborate. It's like we have to think about those messages that we're sending as well. Are there other like reasonings or responsibilities about like putting students in groups that y'all would like to share? I'll just add the one responsibility of the collaboration and group work referencing a little bit um paraphrasing what you mentioned before about students thinking they're not math people. Um just that responsibility of saying what does it mean to be a math person? Does it mean that you know the right answer on this and this and this and you do it efficiently or does a math person mean I engage in math um like a a rich math task whatever it is in front of me and I don't know what to do but I bet that we can make some progress on it and if it's not right yet we'll get there and that's what being a math person is. Um, everyone can do that, right? Everyone can be a math person. Um, by choosing collaborative tasks, you allow people to be math if you teach them that that's what it means, right? Um, yeah. So, just that responsibility of not just the content, but the reframing of what what does a math person look like. Yeah, absolutely. And definitely fall in like the latter category there. Um, that's what I want to see in my classroom certainly. So, um I have a few examples just to like highlight some of the differences that come out. Um one reason like y'all mentioned um that we might put students in groups is so students can collaborate because and that might reflect a sense that like collaboration is key for mathematical sense making and they are going to learn math more deeply when they're working together than they would independently. Another version might be that um I want students to help each other. I don't really care if they're like uh collaborating so much as like um they can ask each other questions to complete their independent work, right? That's a different use of group work. And that might free up your time as a teacher to like support struggling students or to um organize stuff for the next period or like whatever else you need to do um during the day. You might also decide to put students in groups because that just makes it easier to move around the room because like you can kind of collect students together and then you can like uh get around more easily or you can pass out materials by like giving you know a box to each group or a folder to each group or whatever and that just makes the logistics uh of the class run smoother and you can spend time more time on instruction and less time on like passing stuff out. Certainly there are other ways to like deal with that too. putting kids in groups is not the only way, but like that might be the reasoning and like the justification for why to put students in groups. And I highlight those three specifically um because any action can have a lot of different reasonings uh a lot of different rational and a lot of different commitments. At the same time, we might have um some responsibilities and commitments uh that are conflicting. So we might say like well putting kids together will make it easier to do the logistics in the room but also uh this collection of students like there are a lot of big personalities and they're not driving together and so we need to like I can't have them all in groups because they're not at a point where they're ready to really collaborate with one another. So maybe like uh we'll do pairs first and then move on to bigger groups. Um there so there might be different responsibilities that are conflicting here. Maybe you're in a space like in a classroom space or like under CO protocols or something where you have to put kids uh in rows and like spread them out or like uh organize them in a particular way because that's just how the furniture fits. Um I know some classrooms that have like desks bolted to the ground which I think is terrible. Um but like there you can't move stuff. Um, so there's a different commitment, a different responsibility to like uh the institutional constraints that might conflict with your desire to put kids in groups. And so as teachers, we are constantly having to balance these different and often competing responsibilities. And so now I want to turn to think about you all. What are your core commitments? What are your pedagogical responsibilities? And then I'm going to ask you like what are the actions that you do that may or may not support those core commitments and pedagogical responsibilities. I want you to start with this first question right now. We'll turn and talk together. When your group feels ready, go ahead and think about the next question, too. I would love for some folks to share out what kinds of things you were just talking about. What are some of the core commitments uh that you want to enact as a teacher and how might you do that? Go for it. So for me, our discussion was more like how do I figure out what I'm supposed to be committed to and what I'm supposed to be working on because in our school we've done a big shift to PBIS and I know we're kind of behind the times and a lot of that stuff, but and just what does PBIS stand for? Um, positive behavioral intervention strategies. Did I get that right? like supports. Okay. Um, close enough. But it's like so much focus from our administration as far as like are you handing out golden tickets or are you um using your flowchart and are you doing the right interventions and it's like when do I have time to worry about whether or not I taught the material I'm supposed to be covering. So, it's like as a teacher like what are my commitments? Um, am I supposed to committing uh to what my administrators are focusing on? Should I be committing to what I feel responsible to be committing to in that particular class? I don't know. It's a a struggle this year at least for me. Yeah. Do other folks have thoughts on that? Like how do you sort that out? because you are not alone in that. So, one of the things I talked about was that most of my core commitments aren't even really math related. My core commitments are like helping my students to survive in the world. Um, so if they learn math, great. If I teach them math, awesome. But it's more like getting those social skills and like the area that I live in, the demographic is changing significantly. So giving morals, helping them learn their points of view and their own selfworth and stuff is more of one of my main goals with my kids and that kind of stuff. So like shifting my mindset of if you learn the math, I'm so proud of you. You did great, but also you went through four years of COVID basically. We need to learn how to adjust to the real world and all that kind of stuff. Absolutely. Yeah. I I think the online comments kind of reflect the the sentiment as well. There there were ideas like a commitment to getting to know your students personally. um a commitment to help them develop the skills to gain confidence um in their skills um taking students from where they are at and getting them as far as possible and and really kind of this emphasis on this affective part of teaching that I think some of you have been sharing about um and kind of related to that in terms of then some of the responsibilities um is trying to make the students feel like the classroom is a safe place to make mistakes um and some and some conflict with that would the with the students who aren't willing to try, right, to work with. Um, and and there seems to be this theme of a reluctance for the students to use the opportunities when presented by the teachers that is also kind of creating this tension. For sure. Other thoughts? I think a piece that is challenging for me is the conflict sometimes between what I feel like my core commitments are to my students and to my content. Um, but then also what I feel like my core commitments are as a colleague in a department. Um, I teach in a department that is very traditional. Um, and it's my first year. I I it's not my first year teaching, but I taught at the elementary level and now I am teaching at a middle school and I teach in a department that's very traditional and it's direct instruction and it's we can sit down in August and make a calendar of what our homework assignments are going to be for the entire year before we've met any of our learners for this year and and I don't judge that because that works for them. But then when when that is like the environment that you're teaching in, you know, to what extent do you close your door and rock the boat because you have a commitment to your students too? to what extent do you um you know not want to go too rogue from your colleagues that it you know fosters I don't know like discord or whatever with your colleagues or fosters discord within like the parent community of my kid has you know one of my kids has this teacher and one of my kids has this teacher and um and what those experiences are like differently. Um I I think that we just ask a lot of our teachers right to like navigate all of that. Good luck. Good luck having core commitments to your students and to your content area and to your district standards and to your teaching teammates. And I don't know, it's challenging. I like that question. And there aren't right answers to any of these things. Like there's no one right answer. I can't tell you like yes, follow PBIS, like do that positive behavior stuff. And like that's that's the ticket. That's the thing that you need to do. I don't know your context. I don't know your students. I don't know your school. I don't know you as like a human and a teacher, right? I can't tell you. Um, yeah, like uh change the assignments throughout the year to respond to your students learning needs. Um, and don't follow the pacing guide that like your colleagues have spent time and energy putting together, right? I can't tell you to make those choices. And honestly, I don't think you need me to, right? That's not my place. Um, but it's up to you as the teacher to figure out like what do you care about? What is most important and how can you stay true to that given all of the that teachers have to deal with on the daily, right? Every I tell my uh my pres-ervice teachers this all the time, like every institution has its Every institution has this and it's about figuring out like what is the that you are willing to put up with and what is the that you can navigate that you know uh versus like what do you just have to let go and like not even bother with how much do you want to rock the boat? How much do you want to follow the institutional um demands and like do you think that's right to follow those demands? If you don't and if there are like severe consequences, then maybe that's not a good like severe consequences for not following through, then maybe maybe that's not a great place to be. Um but maybe there's room to kind of get around it a little bit or you know fudge those requirements like and um one of the schools where I taught dress code was a big thing and like you know tucking in your shirt and having your ID on a lanyard and whatever. I don't I don't actually care if students have their shirts tucked in. Like that does not matter to me. Uh and I don't really care if they have their ID on their on their neck on a lanyard or if it's like in their pocket or their backpack or whatever. But that was a thing that uh the administrators at my school were really harping on. I didn't agree with it. And so I just like didn't enforce it. If I saw an administrator in the hall and I was in the hallway, I'd be like, "Hey, can you can you tuck in your shirt?" But once I walked into my class say I I don't really care. It doesn't matter. And that was like a sort of discretionary space that I found in my own classroom. When there are bigger institutional like constraints that are being put on you that you may or may not agree with, you have to figure out like how far can you go, where can you like push back? Uh and what do you actually want to follow through with? What can you put up with? Um, I wanna No, we are like just about out of time, but like are there any other like questions or comments as we're as the session wraps up? Other things you want to leave us with? Teaching is not easy. It is complicated. And like you're not going crazy if uh if you feel like you're being pulled in 15 different directions. Uh there's a a Sketchies uh announcement, but that's it. Thank you.