When Sam first spoke to me in March 2023 about serving as a mentor in the to-be-created Resident Teacher Program, I had mixed feelings. I was excited at the thought of getting to participate in a new program and a bit flattered to be asked, but also concerned about my ability to serve as an effective mentor as I did not do any sort of academic or professional “teacher training”—no master’s in teaching, no certification. Further conversation with Sam helped me to recognize that this wasn’t an impediment to helping guide a new teacher, as I had many years of teaching experience (I would be mentoring in my fifteenth year at EPS). I also had some trepidation as this was a new program, and the idea of agreeing to do something that has never been done before is daunting. Perhaps the most significant concern of mine was how crucial it was that this was a successful experience, as this program directly impacts someone else’s career. If I were going to do this, I needed to feel confident that I could steer a resident teacher effectively and that I would be able to do it “right” (whatever that meant), and this created pressure.
What ultimately convinced me to step into this role was my belief that working with Karen would provide the support and scaffolding that I would need to be able to mentor my resident teacher. This belief arose out of prior experience: in the 2022-2023 school year Karen led a group of us through a year-long study of the book Onward, and it was really lovely. There was a sense of community created in the group and the way that Karen guided the process reflected her enthusiasm for doing this kind of work. I knew that in 2023-2024 Karen would be taking on similar responsibilities in her new role as Faculty Development Coordinator and would be a large force in shaping the resident teacher experience. The combination of the “vote of confidence” from Sam and my sense that working with Karen would be a collaborative experience encouraged me to agree to this role.
I hoped that I would be able to bring my perspective to this experience in a way that would help the development of the overall program (on top of directly helping my resident teacher). I think I have the reputation of someone who is, let’s say, not shy about asking questions or offering their opinion. Sam and Karen are very aware of these aspects of my personality, and the fact that I was still asked to serve in this role made me feel that it would be okay to raise concerns and ask questions throughout the process.
What follows is my reflection on this process, framed via the components of the PDP. As I approached each of these domains and categories, I thought primarily about how I taught these different components to Noah as well as what emerged for me through that process.
Relational Cultivation
When I think about what I enjoy most about my experience as a teacher at EPS, it always comes back to relationships. I’m not alone in this—any time people are asked about what they value here, the topic of “community” comes up immediately. This kind of community doesn’t happen by accident. It takes a lot of intentional work to welcome in new members and maintain this vibe. While I think this has in some ways gotten a bit more difficult as the school has grown, it’s still incredibly important to everyone’s experience here.
Collegial Dynamics
While I absolutely enjoy the community of students and families here, my connections with colleagues are far and away the most significant component of my experience. I feel fortunate to count many coworkers as friends and the conversations and laughs I have with them throughout the day are things that I look forward to. Working in an independent school can be a heavy lift and knowing that there are people I can lean on when things get tough makes a world of difference. To that end, I think that it’s crucial to help the resident teachers feel embraced by their colleagues and welcomed as full members of the community.
I didn’t know Noah prior to this experience although something I found amusing is that he joined (as a 9th grader) the cohort that were my 8th graders the first year I taught at EPS, so some of his friends were my students in the 2009-2010 school year. I knew he had a strong relationship with Adam Waltzer from their years of working together to coach ultimate, and I hoped that he felt positively about working with me. As the year progressed, I appreciated and valued the development of my relationship with him. In the fall trimester this still felt a bit tentative at times, in that most of our interactions were observations of my classes. He also spent a lot of time in other teachers’ classrooms, gaining a variety of perspectives. Through this time, I felt a bit like I was floundering and I wasn’t sure exactly what I was supposed to be doing to actively mentor Noah. This feeling shifted once Noah moved into an active teaching role. Suddenly there were specific things that needed to be done, our conversations had more focus, and I generally felt myself serving in that role of mentor in a way that matched my expectations. To my mind, this really strengthened our relationship.
In terms of how I helped Noah build community with colleagues, Noah had an advantage here through his prior time at EPS. As mentioned previously, he came to the RTP with a connection to Adam. The structure of the RTP also helped in this respect as it put Noah in other classrooms and got him interacting with other teachers. One thing I wonder, though, is if he had a chance to connect with those teachers outside of the observations. Getting time to check in about that classroom visit could have provided him with a chance to ask any questions but perhaps more importantly, to make strides in building relationships. Other colleagues stepped up intentionally to make connections with Noah. For example, Anne Duffy was interested in building a relationship with Noah so that he would feel comfortable coming to her if he had questions (particularly science-teaching-specific ones) when I was gone during my sabbatical. In hindsight, I did not spend as much time building the Noah-Anne relationship as I had hoped, so I’m not sure if she had much of an opportunity to serve in this role. Partway through the year Noah started eating lunch at the outside table where I am frequently joined by Malcolm, Sarah H., Krissy, Burton, Molly, and others, during MS lunch. I think the conversations that happened naturally during those times also helped him to feel more connected. I hadn’t explicitly set this up, as I didn’t want Noah to feel pressured to spend more time with me, but I was happy to have him join us.
As far as my own collegial dynamics were concerned, I was glad to be able to participate in the seminar series with the residents and mentors in the fall trimester. Not only did this help build the relationships with Noah and Diana, it was also great to participate in sessions led by other teachers, such as when Jamie presented on adolescent development and Adam Waltzer talked about designing lessons for the block period. Any time we get the chance to learn from colleagues is so rewarding, and participating in the seminar basically forced me to carve out time for this in a way that I wouldn’t have done if it had been optional.
The seminar also provided an opportunity to connect with Stephen and Elena, although I would say in hindsight we didn’t get to spend as much time talking about this new role of mentor as I would have liked. That’s as much on me as on the programmatic side of things–setting up meetings for the three of us would have been another thing on all our plates and logistically complicated. But I wonder if moving forward it might help to have a few more opportunities for mentor teachers to meet with one another (and perhaps Karen). For me personally that would have been especially helpful early in the process, as I sometimes felt like I didn’t know what I was doing and worried that I was somehow dropping the ball on supporting Noah. Being able to talk openly about that with the other mentors could have provided a space to address some of those concerns.
Community Membership and Support
Again, since the strength of EPS lies in its community, it was important to help Noah effectively work with EPS families. As far as needing guidance on how to communicate and collaborate with students and parents/guardians, again I think Noah had a distinct advantage both due to being an alumnus as well as having experience coaching EPS ultimate teams. I can envision that learning the community norms might feel more challenging to someone coming in from outside the space, and I think it would be interesting to hear more about Diana’s experience in this regard. One way I tried to provide Noah with this information was by cc’ing him on emails that I sent to students and/or parents. On occasion I would forget to do that, as it was a new habit, but I would then typically forward him the exchange. It was my intention that getting to read those kinds of messages repeatedly would help some of the phrasing and the framing fall into place for Noah, as well as providing him with essentially what could work as templates for his future communications.
Another resource that I provided to Noah related to feedback given to students on Canvas. I have a tab in the OneNote notebooks for each of my preps called “Assignment Comments” and then a page for any assignment where I have given feedback via a Canvas comment. I created these resources to help me remember the kinds of feedback I’ve given on assignments over the years as well as to keep reminders about grading, which allows me to be more consistent year-to-year and also means that I don’t have to allocate any brain space to remembering this. These allowed Noah to see the general way that I’ve framed feedback on assignments and he could then choose to use this information or build his own from an informed perspective.
For conversations, Noah attended all my start-of-year advisor conferences and served primarily as a note-taker (which was super helpful). This allowed him to meet advisees and families and to get a sense of how those conversations might go. I suspect this provided an interesting perspective on how different those conferences could be based on varied family dynamics. Similarly, he attended a portion of the classroom teacher conferences in October (I believe he chose about 15 to join). Noah intentionally chose conferences that we anticipated might have a range of tones, from students who were off to a strong start to those who were struggling a bit. He took some notes for himself during those conferences, and we checked in about them to discuss some of the topics and question that came up.
Comments provided an opportunity for Noah to observe another means of communication between school and family. This time, Noah got to put these skills into practice as he wrote comments for the Scientific Thinking 2 class that he took over at the start of winter trimester. We intentionally structured our comments to be similar across the sections but Noah brought his own voice into the ones that he wrote. He needed very little guidance from me in that respect–he was able to strike a warm and supportive tone for each student. The one small piece of feedback I gave was for one comment. I can’t remember the specific phrasing at this point, but Noah was writing to a student who hadn’t done well on a quiz and used some language that inferred a lack of understanding. I encouraged him to tweak his phrasing just a little and to say something along the lines of “You seemed to struggle on this quiz.” It was a subtle difference but to my mind it’s an important distinction to make between declaring what a student did vs. sharing a perspective on a student’s potential experience, as this allows some space for the fact that we, as teachers, may not fully know what is going on in a student’s life.
Curricular Design and Collaboration
Curriculum and Discipline Design
In thinking about my sabbatical, as well as the start of the spring trimester (when I was required to be on campus but was not responsible for teaching or advising duties), I wanted to utilize some of this time to tackle the sort of things that we never seem to have the time to do during a busy school year. Some of these developed as a result of mentoring Noah, while others felt more independent of the mentor role. Along those lines, writing this reflection took a fair portion of the start of the spring trimester. I also met with Jonathan Briggs to get some support in doing initial explorations of AI (something I’d been resisting up to this point). Eventually I would like to get to the point where I can use AI as a teaching tool in my classes (with further guidance from in-house experts like Alicia Hale). But before I can do that, I have to conduct my own explorations and gain an understanding of what types of things can be produced by those engines. I met with Caitlin and Verity to talk about citations in the Upper School and to see how my expectations for Marine Biology align with other disciplines as well as with what students have been taught prior to taking my class. Additionally, I have been exploring some online resources for potential science lessons and have been working through a large backlog of science teacher magazines to see if there are any activities I might want to try I the future.
As far as things that came directly out of the mentor role, one topic that emerged for me was gaining some perspective on the large number of assignments I have, particularly in Scientific Thinking 2. My thinking in having so many assignments is that students get a chance to practice skills, such as reading instructions. I don’t worry about taking points off somewhat severely for not following instructions on an assignment as I know they will have many more opportunities to practice this skill and the grade on one assignment will not tank their overall grade. This large number of assignments, though, means that there is a lot of grading to be done, and this is what stood out to me in starting to walk Noah through my practice. I think there is a tension between these two aspects, in that I believe that having a lot of assignments ultimately benefits the students, but I do have concern about the sustainability of having so much work to grade. I recently checked in with Jamie about this to get her perspective on the matter as a learning specialist. She shared that from what she has seen, I’m not an outlier in terms of the number of assignments I give to students, which was reassuring. I also asked her opinion if it would make sense to try to design a more generalized rubric that I could apply to more homework assignments as that might save some time in grading. Her feedback was that the more general a rubric becomes, the less useful it is to students. In light of this conversation with Jamie I think I will not push myself to reduce the number of assignments, but I will continue to think about ways that I might be able to grade them more quickly. I am fortunate that I am a fast grader in general, so this may be less of a concern than it appeared to me this year. I plan on keeping an eye on this balance in the next school year to decide if I need to consider this further.
Upon reflection, I didn’t really consider how to help Noah learn about the actual course content—I was much more focused on the teaching side of things. For much of what I teach in Marine Biology and ST2 I am comfortable and confident with the course material, which comes from a combination of subject matter expertise as well as many iterations teaching these courses. I had a blind spot here and it didn’t occur to me to provide resources to Noah beyond what’s already noted in the OneNote (where I often include links to articles or resources that have further information on a topic if I think I might want to revisit it). That being said, it was clear from the way he conducted classes once he took over certain sections that he was doing his own learning on these concepts—he would often bring in examples or details that were not things provided in my class resources. I suspect this experience could be highly variable depending on the particulars of course content and the resident’s education and experience, so it would probably be helpful to have some sort of structure around this for mentors to be sure that they’re providing their resident teachers with the necessary resources to feel confident as instructors. I think Noah was a self-starter in this regard and did this independently. I also think it’s helpful to clearly tell the residents that it’s okay not to have all the answers. I know this was something that I struggled with early in my teaching career—I felt that I “should” be able to answer absolutely any question a student might have, and I would spend hours preparing for each class only to inevitably have a student ask about something I hadn’t investigated. Normalizing the fact that you won’t always know the answer to every question, and that it’s okay to say that you don’t know and either ask a student to look it up or to circle back to the class later. In the early days of teaching that feels like a vulnerability, and it takes time to be more comfortable with this.
As far as the specifics of the curriculum are concerned, it was rewarding to hear from Noah that he saw various intentional threads throughout the year. I have been the only teacher of Scientific Thinking 2 for 13 years now, and I really appreciated having another set of eyes on the content and flow. I recognize that Noah may not necessarily have felt comfortable critiquing things given his role, so I don’t view it as a “pass” but I found it valuable. This is also what I experienced when Waltzer taught Marine Biology with me a few years ago–having another teacher’s perspective on the content was reassuring as I had been operating in a bit of a vacuum. It will be interesting to connect with Noah at some point to get his thoughts on the content he covered when the class was his own.
Program and Professional Development
As mentioned previously, being able to help shape this program and (hopefully) have a positive influence on the experience of future resident teachers and mentors was an important factor in my participation. Initially I hadn’t thought as much about what I might be able to learn through my role, particularly in the context of professional development. Upon reflection, though, I can see some instances of this.
Program seminars provided a way to learn more about aspects of teaching to which I hadn’t previously been exposed, having not come through a traditional teaching program. On the one hand, some aspects of it were intimidating as there were a lot of components that I have heard of but was not familiar with (such as UDL). What was rewarding about being a part of the seminar is it helped me to recognize that there were many of these facets of “good teaching” that I am already practicing, even if I didn’t know they met those criteria. I kept thinking about how great it would be if more members of the faculty were able to participate in these kinds of experiences. I understand the idea behind limiting the attendance at the RTP seminar series to carve out space particular to the mentors and residents, but I found myself wishing we could offer similar sessions to the faculty at large as these topics felt quite broadly applicable.
Thinking about how this role helped me develop as a mentor, I see it as a progression. Initially I found it really difficult to be observed every day–it felt like a real weight on me and I put pressure on myself to deliver a “perfect” product while simultaneously feeling a bit of imposter syndrome–who am I to be in this role of “mentor”? Eventually this reached a point where I acclimated to having Noah in the room. I think it just wasn’t possible for my nervous system to stay in that heightened sense of agitation forever so I was able to accept Noah’s presence as part of the new normal. I frequently checked in with Noah at the end of class to follow-up on anything that “popped” in that class period, as well as to share more about why I did something a particular way. In the early weeks of the fall, this felt a bit stilted and awkward for me as I was not used to being observed and I found myself feeling a little vulnerable and defensive. This was entirely something that came from me–Noah didn’t contribute to this in any way. But as the year progressed, these observations and follow-up questions began to feel more comfortable.
Connected to this, and something that may be more particular to my specific teaching assignment, is that I have sometimes found it challenging to relinquish control. I have always been the primary teacher of my classes and have had very few opportunities to collaborate with other teachers on a day-to-day basis, so it was a bit difficult to entrust aspects of the class to someone else, especially when I was still teaching one or more sections. But I also knew that it was important for Noah to have greater ownership prior to taking over the classes completely. To that end, Noah took on the tasks of managing the Canvas page (posting assignments and pre-notes) as well as creating the bellringers for ST2. He started being responsible for these components shortly after adding the second section of ST2 in the winter trimester. While I would double-check those pieces, I made an intentional effort not to make any changes that I knew were more about style or habit than about anything necessary to the class. In other words, if the instructions were missing a step, I would tweak those (and tell Noah), but if I didn’t love a meme that he had chosen to share, I would (almost always) avoid switching it out for another one.
The sabbatical associated with the role of the mentor teacher represented another form of professional development. My sabbatical, particularly my travel to Australia, provided me with a chance to step away and refresh myself. I wasn’t as productive in my off campus non-travel weeks as I might have hoped, as I felt like there were always things pulling me away. This is one reason that I would recommend to anyone serving as a mentor in the future that some part of their sabbatical involve going away from home. I designed my trip to give me a chance to see as many animals in the wild as possible, and to see some parts of the country that I hadn’t visited previously. Since I didn’t want to drive in Australia, I chose experiences that allowed me to avoid this, ranging from day trips to a 6-day bus-based tour as well as a liveaboard on the Great Barrier Reef. I also wanted to find some opportunities to stretch myself through these experiences, and the snorkel and scuba diving excursions provided this. I had more experiences than I can easily sum up here, and in fact I decided to keep a journal to help me hang on to some of the details that I knew would fade over time. I visited national parks and outlying islands of Tasmania (seeing wombats, pademelons, wallabies, kangaroos and more), had breakfast with an EPS alum in Melbourne, and saw quokkas on Rottnest Island off the coast of Perth. On the tour from Perth to Exmouth I saw the sunrise in Kalbarri National Park, visited the shell beach at the World Heritage Area of Shark Bay and saw wild dolphins at Monkey Mia. I snorkeled with a giant manta ray and with whale sharks on the Ningaloo Reef. I saw wild platypus, flying foxes and several species of possum in the Atherton Tablelands outside of Queensland. In my dives on the Great Barrier Reef I saw a wide variety of reef species including sea turtles, sharks, and more fishes than I can easily name. The night dive was a unique experience that, while I’m glad I did it, I’m not eager to repeat it. My last tour experience before heading home provided me a chance to see saltwater crocodiles and a wild cassowary.
One unexpected result of this experience was the realization that the tour I did along Western Australia had the potential to be a very cool EBC trip for students. I have traditionally been hesitant to step up as a trip leader, but this feels like a circumstance where I would be willing to do so, as I can visualize the different components of the trip and feel confident that students would enjoy the different experiences. I’m not sure that anything will come of it, but I have mentioned this to David and to Paul. As a broader takeaway, it was thrilling to get such diversity of wildlife. I found myself “nerding out” repeatedly over the different animals and marveling at the adaptations they had to the different landscapes (and seascapes) in which they existed. While there are likely to be some specific curricular tie-ins, for me the excitement and enthusiasm were the most valuable pieces. I was reminded once again how fascinating and dynamic the natural world is, and I will continue to work hard to convey that excitement to my students.
Pedagogical Practice
Just about every component connected to pedagogical practice started with being observed by Noah. In the fall trimester he observed many of my classes. He also spent time observing other teachers, which obviously provided him with other styles and perspectives, but since this is my reflection, I won’t try to infer what he gained from other teachers.
Classroom Culture
As is the case with so many aspects of teaching at EPS, classroom culture comes back to the importance of relationships. Kids need to feel secure in order to be able to learn. Ideally, I seek to build a classroom where students can generally anticipate what will happen in class each day, where they know what’s expected of them, and where they feel okay taking risks. I want students to feel challenged, but to also know that there is support for them as well as accountability. For that accountability piece, Noah and I spent time discussing the rubric that I use for 7th graders’ weekly responsible action grade, and I explained the sort of things I’m looking for as well as how I track that information for each student, showing the spreadsheet and explaining the various shorthand notations I use for the most common situations that might pop up.
Krissy talks me up as being quite strict and demanding to the kids in ST1 so many of them start the year expecting me to be some sort of fire-breathing ogre, which is pretty amusing. I’ve had several students remark that I was “not as mean” as they had expected. I try to help them feel a sense of connection by finding those little moments to laugh and chat with students, and to let them see my sense of humor and silliness (while still maintaining those expectations). My hope was that Noah would see my modeling of that tone and use that as a leaping-off point as he considered what he wanted his classroom to be.
There was a particular day early in the fall where one section just didn’t go well–students were side-talking and distracted and generally not on task, and I was pretty frustrated with them at the end of the period. While I did not outright scold them, I’m pretty sure that it was obvious that I was not pleased with how the class went. After the students left, I immediately acknowledged to Noah that it was a bit of a mess. I was somewhat embarrassed by how flustered I got, although when I can have grace for myself, I can recognize that it may have been helpful for Noah to see that even a “veteran” teacher can experience challenges and frustrations. The next time that class met I started by acknowledging that they could probably tell that I had been frustrated last time, and asked the students for their suggestions for what we could do as a class in those moments when I need to gather everyone’s attention. They had a few different suggestions and we ultimately decided to try the “If you can hear me, clap once” approach. We had several opportunities to put this into practice that same class period, and the students did a fair job of quieting down and responding. I hope that this modeled for Noah a way to come back after a rough class and to collaborate with the students vs. cracking down on things–in essence, an attempt to be the warm demander, not the dictator.
Another time that stood out to me was when students were working in small groups on an assignment. A student called me over with a question about something in the instructions. I first asked them to explain how they were interpreting the information and we discovered that they did in fact understand what to do—I think they just needed some reassurance that they were interpreting things correctly. Noah remarked after the fact that he would not have thought of starting with asking the student about their understanding but that his tendency would have been to jump right in to answering the question. This led to a great conversation about the tension between these impulses for a teacher. To me, this connects to How to Raise an Adult, the book many members of the faculty read several years ago. A point that Julie Lythcott-Haims makes in that book is that it will always be easier to just do the thing yourself for a child (tying their shoe, cutting their steak, etc.), but that it’s critical for their development that they get the chance to do things for themselves to build their confidence. Although it’s more of a parenting book, this principle feels very relevant in the classroom as well, so I try to empower students to figure things out on their own (when appropriate).
In observing and giving feedback to Noah, I was impressed right from the start with how perceptive he was in terms of what was going on for different students each class period. Noah quickly keyed in on kids who were distracted or seemed confused. When he took ownership of sections of ST2 those details were noted in his responsible action feedback. He used the comments on those assignments in Canvas to offer positive feedback or make requests for different choices, even when he did not dock points. It was great that he captured so much detail there and offered it in a way that gave students a chance to think about it and (perhaps) make different choices in future classes before they saw any sort of grade impact. In those kinds of instances, I felt that my role as a mentor was to notice this and give him positive feedback for those pieces, rather than try to “teach” him anything—he already had that skill set, so it was important to celebrate those strengths. I gave him this positive feedback in several ways. One was just saying something when I noticed it (for example, right after a class period had ended, I would make a point of commenting on that). I also worked to capture those details when I observed Noah’s classes. Having that information in my observation notes allowed me to offer these compliments in the skills progression feedback that I wrote for each three-week segment of the winter trimester.
There was one class period right after Noah added the second section of ST2 where the students were a bit loud and unruly. One student was pretty defiant when Noah called them out on some behavior, and the volume in the room was generally pretty high. After the class was over, Noah remarked that it had been a disaster. As we talked more about it, I was able to help him see that while it wasn’t necessarily a model class, the reality is that most of the students were on task for most of the period. So while there were some challenges here and there, generally speaking, the work got done. We also talked about the student who had been defiant and strategized next steps to help repair that relationship (which had been positive prior to this interaction). Noah checked in with Monica Cowdery, that student’s Guided Study Hall teacher and found out that the defiance was actually something fairly common for the student, so although it hadn’t really happened before in ST2, it wasn’t unheard of, and I think this was reassuring to Noah that it wasn’t entirely on him. Noah and Monica came up with a plan moving forward for what Noah could do if such a situation were to happen again. In the next class period, things went well and that student was generally on task. It’s my hope that connecting with another member of the community felt helpful to Noah and reminded him that there are many resources that can help—he doesn’t have to figure things out entirely on his own.
Differentiated Instruction and Assessment
This category is one where it doesn’t feel that I directly taught Noah much of this information. I think some of this came through more passively as the class unfolded and Noah observed different student activities and assignments. We did talk about accommodations and Learning Support, and the importance of making sure that all Guided Study Hall teachers are in the loop whenever there is communication about one of their students. Noah saw the accommodations link included in the quiz assignments on Canvas and I asked Cassidy to add Noah to any of those meeting requests for separate testing so that he could understand how that information was communicated between Learning Support and the teacher.
Something that I shared with Noah as we looked at the “big picture” of Scientific Thinking 2 is that the major assessments throughout the year represent different types of work, and this is done intentionally. While I want to provide students with the chance to develop study skills for quizzes, I don’t want these to be the only means of summative assessment. To that end, I include write-ups and presentations, as well as two projects where students have the choice of adding artistic elements to their work (the Cell Analogy and Flower Discovery projects). It is my hope that students find success in at least one of these methods of showing their knowledge, as one of my primary goals in teaching middle school science is to have science feel accessible to every student. I believe Noah’s plan for the spring was to once again have varied assessments, including a write-up, quiz, and group presentation.
Connected to another indicator in this category, one way in which I build in opportunities for different students to contribute is the system I use for homework review. Students know it is an expectation that they try to share answers at least once (although ideally more than that) when we go over the “Section Review” homeworks (which are a recurring type of assignment). I have a system where I keep track of who has raised their hands as well as who has already had a chance to answer a question. It takes a little extra time to do things this way, but it helps make sure that there is space for students to contribute. One of the first teaching opportunities for Noah in the fall was to lead students through one of these reviews (after having observed my doing it multiple times as a general approach, as well as my review for that particular content earlier in the same day). He remarked after the fact that he hadn’t realized how hard it would be to do so, and that there were so many moving pieces involved. By virtue of having done it so many times, I had a flow that he initially found daunting. This experience also helped him realize that he wanted to reorganize the document that he used to keep track of what we refer to as “responsible action” each week (tardiness, preparedness, engagement, etc.). He set up a spreadsheet organized by seating chart (a brilliant idea) and added a few more fields to help him note the different factors he was looking for each time.
This category also feels a little more challenging in terms of giving specific feedback to Noah. I think this stems from the fact that the content that Noah has been teaching has been my curriculum, and many of these indicators seem to connect more to the planning and creation of assignments. Noah likely had more opportunities to practice these indicators this spring trimester, when he had the freedom to utilize whatever lessons he wanted, whether that was pulling from different options in my files or creating new ones of his own. I presume he did more of the former than the latter, especially as this is part of the overall programmatic design for the residents—they’re not expected to be building new curriculum in their courses. This also felt like a good area for Noah to get feedback from Karen and other observers this spring. In our conversations shortly before the start of my sabbatical I encouraged Noah to lean into his ownership of the classes and to feel empowered to make his own choices for curriculum and grading, and to not feel beholden to what I did previously.
I did get a chance to talk to Noah about an ST2 class that I observed in the first week of the spring trimester. Noah presented a PowerPoint on the immune system and the students had quite a few questions, to the point where Noah wasn’t able to finish the PowerPoint by the end of the period. After class we chatted about this. I was able to offer some validation that the content was challenging for the students and their questions showed that they were engaged and really thinking about the information at hand. I also affirmed that it was okay to not know the answers to every single question they asked, and shared that there were one or two that I didn’t know either. We talked about some ways he might gain back some of the lost time in the next period, namely by shortening a debrief that he would be doing on a different assignment.
Pedagogical Effectiveness
It’s interesting because as I look at the indicators in this category, it feels like there is a bit of a disconnect between those and the name. In some ways this category feels more like it focuses on the flow of the class, so that’s how I am going to frame this part of the reflection. I would say that this is an area that I modeled for Noah rather than having explicit conversations about it. For my approach, having a predictable flow benefits students as they know what to expect each time they walk into class. To that end, I post pre-notes for each week and write the agenda on the board every day. When students enter the room there is a “bellringer” slide projected that includes information about what materials they need for that day’s class as well as some specific instructions for whatever they need to do to get ready for class. Sometimes that might be picking up and reading a handout, whereas other times it could involve opening an assignment and getting ready to review it. After the bellringer, we look at one or two memes that have been sent in by 7th graders. The idea here is to inject a little levity and build community by laughing (or groaning) together. Something that I’m thinking about for next year emerged after subbing class for Wink one day this winter. He has assigned roles for students and they start the class. I love the idea of incorporating this to some extent and need to think a little more about what that might look like in ST2—maybe students report on attendance and select/share the memes?
One indicator in this section connects to having students use technological tools effectively. I showed Noah that the primary way I have done this in ST2 is to situate myself at the back of the classroom so that I can see students’ screens. When we’re transitioning to working on the computer I will also often say something along the lines of, “If you’ve got something open on your computer that might be a distraction, now would be a good time to close it” and this seems to help some kids. Another part of what I consider to be responsible tech use is to have computers with enough charge that they don’t need to be plugged in. In the past, whenever a student had to charge they had to move to the lab portion of the classroom as there were no places to charge in that half of the classroom. That’s a little easier now that there are cords above the desks, but it’s still distracting to have cords hanging down from the ceiling, so students are expected to not need to plug in. I don’t make a big deal about this, but students lose points from their weekly responsible action grade if they need to charge their computer during the period. Noah has also held students in his sections responsible in the same way.
The most immediate feedback connected to this domain came up with Noah’s pace and timing. Starting back in the fall, we looked for opportunities for him to present certain portions of the content so that he could get practice leading the students. What tended to be the case nearly every time was that he went through material much faster than I did. In the moment, it was easy to address, as I was able to utilize that extra time when I stepped back up as the teacher, but it was helpful for Noah to see the differences in pacing and the various factors that could influence this. One angle was definitely his (understandable) desire to just get through everything—this made him less likely to expand on topics or offer more examples during a homework review. That aspect shifted over the course of the year, and Noah became more comfortable expanding on topics (making it apparent to me that he’d spent time preparing beyond the scope of the assignment particulars).
The other factor, which is harder to control, is the difference between sections. The three sections of ST2 this year had very different tones, to a greater extent than I’ve had recently. One of them had fairly academically strong students, but they seem to display a low level of innate curiosity—they asked very few questions and seemed to be generally more interested in just finishing the work. The section that had the students that struggled the most academically was also a section that asked a lot of questions. Their curiosity, combined with the challenges around comprehension for some students, meant that it took longer to get through any discussion or review. This challenged Noah to find a way to strike a balance between acknowledging and honoring those questions while also moving forward at the planned pace. And in fact, this challenge is the reason that I often have a little cushion built in at the end of the period, where the last item on the agenda might say something like, “(If time permits) Work time.” I try to always have something specific and science-related for students to work on if we finish the planned content and activities with some time to spare. This could include time to get started on a homework assignment, or there are videos and books that they are encouraged to access. And of course, the hunt for science-related memes to share is another way for students to spend a few minutes. These kinds of challenges speak to the necessity as a teacher of being adaptable and flexible. This is something that becomes easier with more experience, but it’s a good reminder that part of the mentoring process needs to consider ways to help the resident teachers with this, as it will inevitably arise if they are teaching multiple sections of a course. I wonder if it would make sense to highlight it more specifically as part of the seminar series, perhaps connected to the use of the block period?
Professional Practice
I remember when I was doing the PDP several years ago that I found this domain one of the easier ones to discuss, particularly as it relates to the systems that I have in place to keep track of everything. However, these can feel more challenging to teach as they are so individualized. To that end, I think it was great that Karen put together a session where we were able to discuss some of these systems explicitly with our resident teachers, and she also pulled in examples of systems from teachers who were not serving as mentors this year. While the reality is that people have to figure out their own systems, sometimes having a few options to try is a great place to start.
Professionalism and Executive Functioning
For myself, I think that my organizational structures have been extremely helpful in allowing me to mentor Noah this year. I have calendars on paper where I’ve mapped the trimester out that Noah was able to use as he planned his spring classes. My OneNote is probably the most useful part of my practice in terms of having information available to Noah. Each prep has its own notebook that has information laid out by trimester and by week, including pre-notes for each day as well as all teacher notes. These exist for every time the class has been taught, so it’s possible for someone to look back and find specific information for every trimester of ST2 or Marine Bio. I make sure to update those notebooks at the end of each term so that I have current information about the last iteration of the class. By giving Noah access to these notebooks, he was able to see those details and notes and could apply those as he built his classes this spring.
For assignments that students complete on paper, including quizzes, I have physical binders for each class with answer keys, grading guidelines, and sometimes sample feedback. I keep track on quizzes what the high and low scores were, as well as the class average, and this helps me decide how much they should be adjusted for future iterations. I also scan rubrics for MAs and keep those in my files so that I can look back at these to guide my grading of the next iteration and see not only how those were graded in the past but also the kinds of feedback I provided. I have given these binders over to Noah to use this spring. Also, as mentioned previously, assignments that are digitally submitted and graded have a feedback repository available in the OneNote. These systems allow me to retain this information in an easy-to-access format, and being able to share these resources with Noah provided him with a huge amount of information that he could access without needing to ask me directly.
The challenge of prioritizing tasks and getting things done in a timely manner is a harder thing to teach. My own system is to leave emails in my inbox until they have been dealt with and to use a long to-do list that I keep in a physical notebook. In this area, Noah faced a challenge by getting sick just as he was slated to take over a second section of Scientific Thinking 2. The combination of having more grading as well as being sick caused him to fall slightly behind. I was a little concerned about things at that point but luckily Noah was able to get caught up fairly swiftly. I think that he may have found this to be one of the greatest challenges when moving into the full-time teaching and advising role. The jump from 18 to 36 students was significant for grading and having not only more ST2 students but the second prep of Marine Bio was a big adjustment. I spoke with him a bit about this on the PDD just before the start of spring trimester, and in essence tried to encourage him to have grace with himself as it would probably feel pretty tough initially. I said that he’d need to think about which assignments need close grading and detailed feedback (e.g., drafts of Marine Bio papers) and which ones could be graded a little more swiftly (small ST2 homeworks). He was also able to think about this side of things when planning out his calendars, as he looked ahead to see that when he was grading Marine Bio literature reviews, it would be an easier stretch in Scientific Thinking 2 as he would primarily be taking notes while Sam Foote led the Sex Ed unit.
Assessment Practice
Once he took over a section of Scientific Thinking 2 in November, Noah and I began to spend a lot of time together grading assignments side by side. He first practiced grading Section Reviews, as these have an established rubric and are relatively straightforward. The way we handled this, which allowed Noah to do this on his own time, is that the assignment was muted, Noah would grade it and if he had questions for me he would put them in the comment on the assignment. I could then take a look and affirm his initial idea (which is what happened in most cases) or occasionally offer a different perspective. Then we would delete our conversation before unmuting the grade and feedback for the students. For quizzes, we would meet and go through the questions together. I had an answer key prepared with some information about expected answers and partial credit, but sitting together allowed us to talk through some of the more complicated incorrect responses, as there are always more of these than can be anticipated with an answer key.
I’ve talked a bit elsewhere about considering certain aspects of my classes, including the number of assignments as well as the type of feedback so I won’t repeat that here. But one specific area that has emerged as something in further need of refining connects to my quiz practices. I’ve been making adjustments to these over the past few years in conversation with Jamie, intentionally switching the focus to preparation and reflection. For example, I now have a separate part of the quiz with questions about preparation, and these count toward the actual quiz grade. As part of my practice, I have also offered the opportunity for quiz corrections to all students (and required for students scoring below 70%). Historically I have required meetings for students who are required to do quiz corrections and strongly recommended them for students who are considering correcting their quizzes. However, this has resulted in situations where I have more than half of the class scheduling meetings with me to discuss their quizzes, and this is frankly unsustainable. Midway through this year we have pivoted to trying another approach, where Noah and I had “drop-in” times during one of each study hall period and students could come by and ask whatever questions they wanted about their quizzes. These were generally quite poorly attended, but it’s a little hard to parse as they weren’t offered for every quiz.
Based on a recent meeting with Jamie, I’ve got some new ideas I am planning on implementing next year connected to quizzes. These range from changes to the review sheets to the quizzes themselves, as well as putting in some restrictions on quiz corrections. I’m looking forward to trying these out, and think they are a good representation of the fact that as a teacher, you’re never “done.” There are always assignments to revise and things to learn that can positively impact your practice.
Conclusion/Takeaways
It’s been so rewarding over the course of this year to see Noah growing into his role as a teacher here at EPS. I can see him using many of the aspects of teaching that I modeled for him and making them his own. In the first few weeks of the spring trimester, he had one or two small questions for me, but it was fantastic to see his ownership of the classes and his increased confidence at making his own decisions. It did feel a bit strange to be here and not be meeting frequently with him, but the reality is that meant that things were going well and that the overall program and my role as mentor had gone as intended. I know he had a strong support network here to help him while I was away for my sabbatical and that “my” classes were in good hands.
Overall, I appreciated getting to participate in the first iteration of the Resident Teacher Program. I found it rewarding to be able to talk with Karen about various structural components of the program and to ask the (many) questions I had, whether those focused on small details or bigger-picture components. It felt like there was a true give-and-take, and that my input could make a difference and help people in this role in the future. I haven’t always found this to be the case when I’ve made these kinds of efforts in the past, so I was nervous about that prior to participating. Being able to help in this way is something that I enjoyed, and it’s a way I was able to use my privilege, that is to say, my longevity here, which allowed me to feel more comfortable in raising issues and asking questions.