0:00 Hello and thank you for listening to the teaching math teaching podcast. The teaching math teaching podcast is sponsored by the Association of mathematics teacher educators. The hosts are Eva fan hyzer. Me dusty Jones, and Joel Amidon. Today we're talking with Jackie morasca. Jackie is a stem instructional coach in the Skokie Morton Grove School District near Chicago. We're talking with her for a number of reasons. But specifically, we want to hear about her experiences as an instructional coach. Welcome, Jackie, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Hi, there. Thanks for having me. This is my first year as a instructional coach and a K through eight district. However, my journey here has been probably unique, as I started off as a middle school math teacher for a few years. And then I taught high school for four years in Islamic school outside of Chicago. And after that I took off from full time teaching for about 14 years. And in that time, I discovered teaching adult learners. And I taught math for teachers at a local community college. And the trajectory of my career then changed. I got my doctorate and decided I want to teach future teachers or in service teachers for the rest of my career. And so for the last 11 years, most recently, as an assistant professor of mathematics at a small liberal arts college, I've been in higher ed, teaching pre service teachers K through 12. Mathematics. Last year, interesting opportunity came by my came my way, and I decided to jump on and it was a perfect fit. So I've just finished my first year as a stem instructional coach, that's great. If you did get some advice, what's the best advice that you got when you started in this new role? 12 months ago, two things come to mind. First of all, right before I interviewed the best advice I got was to seek out those who are experts in coaching and read as much as I can. My favorite three was, were Elena Aguilar, his work, Jim Knights. And now as you read a Hammond completely changed, how I looked at coaching and how I'm going to, you know, prepare for my role. And the second piece of advice, which you hear from, for example, one of the other podcasts is the best advices. There's nothing more important than building relationships. Same thing as teaching. Relationships are key. So before you can do some good work and being instructional coach, building relationships and trust with your teachers that you're going to be partnered with, is really the best advice I got. You mentioned that you read three authors for advice, I was wondering if you could like, just tell us one main thing you got from each of them? Sure, from Elena Aguilar. Her best advice is really about the effect of peace, and building relationships is it is a key component of coaching. So that's really threaded throughout our work as an instructional coach. The best advice for from Jim Knight, I'd say there are two pieces, first of all, is you have to show the teacher what their current reality is through data collection. So we can't go into a classroom and say, I noticed this in this it has to come from the teacher. And the best way to do so is to collect data that they think is the best, and present that to the teacher and help them be reflective. And the second part of the Jim Knight piece is, it's not our role as a coach to come in as an expert and say, Oh, I think you should do this thing. This would transform your teaching. Instead, we ask questions, see where the teachers that need them where they are, and present, let's say three different techniques, things they can do in their classroom, and they choose. So that's another that's the second thing I got from Jim Knight. It's not about being expert. It's about presenting some ideas and having the teacher take ownership and say, Hey, this is great. I'm going to try this and Lynn will collect data and see how it looks how it feels on the classroom environment has improved. The third person is Retta Hammond, I'm reading her brain research book. And I was fortunate enough with a very supportive district to have training from Jim Knight this year, as well as from serrata, Hammond, and Retta Hammonds all about cultural responsive teaching. And I'd say my biggest takeaway among probably 100 things from zoraida Hammonds work is talking about culture through the lens of student learning. And the best analogy is a tree that she has in her book. And the leaves of the tree represent the surface culture. And the roots of the tree represent the culture that is used by each and every student in how they think about mathematics, how they learn mathematics. So it's not about the dress and the food. It's really about how you internalize learning and how we use those as assets in our classroom. So 5:00 really fascinating things to have conversations with your district and your teachers about Pat. So cool. Thank you. So Jackie, what advice would you give someone who was starting out as an instructional coach, I think the best advice other than the building relationships piece, and especially from someone like myself, who's who's just come off of 11 years in higher ed and being a professor and being in a position where you give grades to people, and you're helping folks who are just starting doing lesson plans, coaching is a whole different ballgame and that you are the partner for that teacher. And it's not our job to come in and just give advice, it's our job to help the teachers reflect and bring those research based strategies to life for them. Because they don't necessarily have time to be reading research articles and seeing what's trending and what's working, what's effective. And it's our job to say, Hey, how about this? Which of these three things would you like to try? And let's go with it. All right, Jackie. So thinking about coming in from higher ed and thinking about the, you know, someone that's in a like, so like myself, like in a professor role, right? How would you want someone in my role to interact with you someone in your role, all for this common good of teaching math teachers? That's a good question. Right now, our district is partnering with some local universities who are also working with our teachers in a very similar role. And we have a great partnership as a coaching team, because there are six coaches for our 150 teachers in our three buildings. And for example, we are working with to science, we have a partnership with a university, and they are providing a couple folks who are doing professional development and supporting our teachers and science curriculum. And what has worked wonderfully is that we view each other as partners, so there's never any weirdness. And when they have individual meetings with teachers that it doesn't, like, intersects our roles very well. So I'd say the best thing to to capture that notion is that when we do have outside University folks who are helping with, let's say, job, embedded PD, all of us on the same page and have those discussions and say, hey, how can we support each other? So we always attend the PD. And then when we have our individual coaching sessions, we know exactly what they're working on and how we can further support and between, you know, the monthly PDS. So, yes, collaboration is key, basically, with any folks that are coming into to support the teachers. Yeah. Because you don't want to be doing things that are counterproductive to each other. Right. You know, you want to be all moving forward in the same direction. Right. Right. Right. So it's been a wonderful experience so far. Excellent. Thank you. So Jackie, can you describe a good day in your profession? And to make it specific, maybe? Can you talk about a specific day that has been good as an instructional coach, what's really interesting is, in the past, when someone says, what do you do, and if I say, a professor, they say, Great, they know, they can picture it. And if I say, I'm an instructional coach, really, no one has an idea what that is. And the fascinating thing is, literally every day is different. So I was thinking about what would make a great day and a typical day, that would be phenomenal, would be a day that I have different things going on in different buildings. So for example, on one particular day, I co taught fluency and counting forward and backwards in a kindergarten class. 8:34 I was also an eighth grade classroom doing, observing, and they were doing transformations. A few days later, I was in a fourth grade classroom, and they were doing fractions on a giant number line that stretched across the room. So a typical Good day would have a combination of teacher meetings. So a good day would be either co planning with a teacher diving into the mathematics of pedagogy and the student misconceptions, kind of talking about how they're going to do it. Or that teacher meeting might look like, oh, they've just taught, I observed it. We're looking at some data and the teachers reflecting and saying, Oh, I didn't realize I did that, or, wow, that part really good. I want to do that sort of thing was doing discourse again. So having those one on one teacher meetings is a really good part of my day. And a second thing that's a really good typical part of the day is planning for coaching. So just like we plan for teaching, we plan for coaching. And in my world, there are two of us that are discipline specific. There are two stem coaches. So we sit down and brainstorm for an hour of what kind of resources we can bring to the table. Super fun, super productive, talking about the mathematics and how we can best support our teachers. The third and last part, that would make a super good day because now I don't have my own classroom anymore. I don't have my own students. I do miss that a bit, but being able to be effective 10:00 classrooms, especially the little ones, I'm, I'm a licensed teacher six through 12. So I've never had my own K through five class. But this position, even though I've done a lot of observations and research and elementary math, this position allows me to be in the class with the little kiddos. And right before the covid outbreak happened, I was doing weekly number talks with another second grade teacher. And that just makes my day just being in the room. And having these really neat number talks with the second graders. I'm on a, you know, high all day after those types of things. Yeah, that's really fun working with those little kids. Yeah, their energy is pure, I guess their excitement is real. So it sounds like you've got these different things, these different facets of, of your work. And a good day is when you get to engage fully in all of them, whether it's working with students, or working one on one with teachers, and even working with your colleagues and planning and collaborating. That's really good. I'd like to have days like that where I am able to do different things that I like to do. That's really cool. You had mentioned when you were working and collaborating with the other stem coach from your district, you would kind of think and brainstorm what kind of resources can you bring? I guess I want to specifically think about like online resources. So what are where do you go to find resources online? Or what are some recommendations you can make to us? It's funny, the first thing I thought of when I thought of online resources was, especially during this crazy times we're in right now. Yeah, is I usually email one of my colleagues and say, what's the best task you have for this, so people come first. They're not where I go next is usually the professional organizations. I love nctm illuminations, and I love if I'm going to be doing some professional development, like they're perfect. They're PTA toolkits, the principles to action toolkits, if I'm planning some PD for adults, for students, I Next go to and helping teachers find resources. I go to our curriculums and the best curriculums, I know out there for tasks that I can readily find online. We're at great minds Eureka. District, so I'll go there first, but I love a luster of mathematics and learnzillion stuff. And then if I'm looking for some good tasks, my all time favorites, no particular order, are you cubed, Mars, open, middle, what doesn't belong three act tasks? And of course, Desmos. I'm writing all of these down. 12:40 Great. You had mentioned some professional organizations like nctm, can you give us a little bit of flavor about some of the professional organizations that you've been involved in? And how they've shaped you as a teacher? Yes, definitely. Currently, I'm the past president, on the board of directors for the Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics. And I'm also on the first year of my three year term on a committee of nctm, called mark, which stands for the membership and affiliate relations committee, and I serve as liaison between five states, including Illinois and nctm. I'm also a member of amtv, ncsm, and a medic. And seriously, I cannot speak more strongly about being a part of these organizations. And I would not be the teacher I am today. Without having been a part of this from day one of my teaching career when my middle school principal said here, you're going to go to this conference, I said, What's this and he says, this is an Illinois math teacher conference, you need to go and the day that I went to that I was hooked. And every time I go to a conference with like minded people, and I network with other people who are just as passionate about mathematics as I am, I think these are my people. And without having that network of educators to collaborate with and, and talk with and commiserate with right when when time gets gets tough. I, you know, who knows, I think a lot of people would leave the profession. And it really has shaped me as a teacher. And this is where I get my my best ideas. And it's really, I can't speak highly enough of being a part of a professional organization so that you're not just in your classroom. And you're not just in your district, but you find out what's going on outside of your classroom and district and you're no longer feeling like you're in a silo and being a part of that professional community is the best thing that any teacher can do. So as a professor, I was forced my pre service teachers to go to at least caught one conference a year and I'm happy to say that I continue seeing them coming to conferences and staying active even when they're now first second third year teachers and I'm no longer forcing them. I'm like yes, I hope somebody 15:00 Some folks and they find it as fruitful as I do. So an AMT is one of them what your job looks like right now, interesting that you asked that because I have never been as busy as I am right now in my current position. In a normal day before I part of my day would be right behind my desk planning and then visiting different teachers in different buildings. Now, there's a lot of behind the scenes, curriculum work. But for the first two, three weeks of our quarantine, the coaches took on a lot of the electronic platform, getting teachers prepared to teach online. So it looks a lot different now, I think we could never have guessed what it would look like. But I have, like today, I think I have six zoom meetings with different teachers, colleagues, and so forth, answering questions, supporting their work, finding online resources, and finding ways to engage the children in these very tough time. So it's a very interesting world. And it's a lot of behind the scenes, planning and supporting teachers. Probably busier than I was before. It's all good. We're recording this in the middle of May. How many more weeks Do you have of school? Are the students have school? I know some teachers are counting down, but I'm just like going along day by day, what do we have? We have one, two full weeks of school and the rest of this week. Okay, so my daughter has been counting too. And she told me yesterday 18 days? Uh huh. 16:42 We're right now looking ahead. Now, what does it look like next year. So the teachers are redoing their curriculum map so that over the summer, the stem team could start looking into how to help those teachers develop tools to fill in the gaps next year. So with an eye towards next year at this point, but keeping those kiddos engaged is the challenge right now and sticking to the curriculum, but being creative. And still, we have not lost hope, because we still have a bunch of kiddos online every day, that love and need their teachers. Yes, see that math content and need to stay engaged. I'm just glad that you're sharing your expertise and your passion for professional organizations, hearing some of that there's lots of nodding going on. And in my little office here of thing about the passion and what professional organizations have done for me. So I mean, if one thing if one message is shared in this podcast is that there is so much well, relationships, right? You talk about the relationships, and the professional organizations as facilitators of relationships and to see, especially during these times, like I mean, where am I going to I'm going to my professional organizations and leaning on them. And yes, I have colleagues in my local spaces, but a lot of us are on in those professional relationships too, with or with those organizations as well. So that we can all we've got different layers that we can use to get through this. And we're not just sitting there in a room by ourselves trying to figure out the world when we can do it together. And that's a good point that has been brought up in other podcasts in that there is not a large community for math coaches. Yet, there are pockets that we had that we can find at home and ncsm and our own state math organizations. And there are state and national coaching organizations, but they're not necessarily math specific. So more and more there are, I think opportunities to engage just math coaches with our unique needs. And there's still a need to find places where math coaches can gather and chat and and share resources. So Jackie, what do you like to do for fun when you're not doing math, I am a dancer. So my main source of fun and only source of exercise is taking dance lessons, which I've reverted to virtual direct dance lessons right now. But most often I take ballet, but I am also a ballroom dancer, and I've done tap and sometimes I take musical theater, I do perform from time to time and drag my kids in my my mom and dad even though I'm older 19:18 purposes, and in a normal summer I love to spend my summers falling my son who's 17 plays travel baseball, I'm not sure if that's going to happen this summer at all. And following my daughter around the Midwest as she plays snare drum in a drum corps out of DCI drum corps International. So my normal summer is is no longer normal, but that's what I do for fun with the family. So the good thing about being a math coach in a school district is that I'm on a teacher contract. So I do get to still wear my math Ed researcher hat. So for fun, I do like to be on committees in my organizations and I still keep up recently. 20:00 And right now I'm on a four year project studying the conceptualization of MKT in early college mathematics and developmental mathematics or mathematical knowledge of teaching. Cool, which is fun. Well, thanks so much for talking with us, Jackie. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks for having me. This is great. Thanks again for listening to the teaching math teaching podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast, and we hope that you're able to implement something that you just heard and take an opportunity to interact with other math teacher educators. Hello, listeners of the tg math teaching podcast we have some big news. Are you ready? The teaching math teaching podcast is starting a summer book club. What better way to grow as teachers, math teachers and to engage in professional learning together and we would love for you to join us. In June we're going to be reading rough draft math revising to learn by Amanda Jansen. In July, we are reading high school mathematics lessons to explore, understand and respond to social injustice by Robert berry bazel Conway, Brian Lawler john Staley and colleagues. The plan for the book club is to read the book throughout the month and host weekly interactions on Twitter and Instagram around the chapters for the week. At the end of each month, we will have a podcast that discusses what we learned from the book and how we can apply what we learned to improving how we teach math teachers. We also might be joined by some authors. In short, we're excited we hope you are as well. Follow us on social media, teach math teach on Twitter and at teaching math teaching on Instagram to stay up to date on how to participate in the teaching math teaching summer book club. Thanks again. As always, for listening to the teaching math teaching podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast follow us on Instagram and Twitter. And we hope that you're able to implement something that you hear in the podcast and take an opportunity like this summer book club to interact with other math teacher educators.