Grand Valley State describes Abby as a non-traditional student.  She already had a  degree in International Relations from the University of Michigan before she started attending my extension classes at the GVSU campus in Traverse City, Michigan.  Early-on my high school teacher radar was activated with Abby when she arrived at class one day somewhat bruised.  During my junior high and high school teaching career when a student appeared in my classroom with bruises the thought that there might be evidence of abuse at home was triggered.  Although I had female students in New York State who would show up the day after a field hockey game with deep purple bruises, it had been about 20 years since that experience so when Abby came to class with a few marks on her face and arms I had to ask her how she got them. She was a rugby player.  Problem, at least in my mind, solved.

Abby had a deep and well-constructed content background due to her U of M education for the application of that content to teaching strategies and methods and then on to lesson plans so in Abby’s case I adopted the Hippocratic Oath and promised myself I would “do not harm”.  I have always told my students to contact me when they were hired and soon after Abby’s graduation, she notified me that she had been hired in North Carolina.  I didn’t remember the details of that first job until I met with her in January of 2008 in Raleigh, North Carolina.  At that time, she was teaching at Needham Broughton High School.  Abby started her teaching career at a charter school in Durham, North Carolina.  The charter was losing teachers and apparently the school was in distress.  Abby was with students at that school from 8 AM until 4:30 or 5 because of staffing and transportation issues.  Facing an impossible teaching situation Abby pursued employment elsewhere and was hired at a Needham Broughton, a magnet school in Raleigh that offered an International Baccalaureate program. A teammate of Abby’s told me that one student graduated from Broughton with 47 hours of college credit. At the time of my visit her school population was 2100 students in a building designed for 1900.  I asked Abby how these 2100 students were able to enter the school population and she said entry was difficult.  There was no open enrollment.  Some students were from the regular public schools and some were from public magnets.  Apparently, the public “magnet” schools were not enthused with the competition that an I.B. program brought them.  Broughton featured an integrated curriculum that was team taught.  Her classroom featured 3 computers, a projector and a laptop.  Typical with many schools, even today, there was only a classroom set of textbooks.  Gone are the days when every student had her or his own copy. Some of that shortcoming has been alleviated with online versions of the text, but the ability of all students in accessing the online variety varies with their families’ resources at home and the availability of the Internet in some areas.  Even in the second round of my interviews in 2015, Erin DeRoo, an online teacher in Winston-Salem for the North Carolina Virtual High School Network, explained to me that one of her students had no accessibility at home for her coursework and had transportation problems in reaching the local library where she had computer and Internet access.

As with many teachers in my study Abby had the day’s agenda written on her board: notice of a due date for an upcoming assignment, a “warm up” exercise, a review of Henry VIII, reading questions concerning Elizabeth I, a PowerPoint discussion, a “Facebook” rendering of Henry VIII’s character and finally a review of the class that day.  While her students were working on their warm up activity Abby was checking their homework assignment.  Recently she changed her procedure in checking warm up work.  Previously she checked the work every two weeks but she switched to checking it daily.  She admitted that it was a better way to check the students’ understanding of the information presented and helped Abby with organization.  Less paperwork lost and a better idea of what her students really knew.

Abby was efficient in warning her students about the time left during their warm up activity, offering several warnings about the time remaining to finish the task.  Her students were quiet and engaged in the activity the whole time.

While the students were working and after Abby had quickly scanned their homework, she explained to me that her Honors classes had to read a book per quarter semester.  This quarter’s reading was Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks.  Along with the book, Abby explained that she used a reading guide, similar to the guide I used in my Capstone classes, a “question, answer, response” guide that provides in-depth questions over many levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.

As Abby launched into her lecture I was impressed with her construction and use of her notes for her students.  The text was concise and Abby employed many illustrations on the screen.  She carefully interwove prior knowledge into her discussion in order to activate the students’ long-term memory, all the while employing her engaging smile and good sense of humor.  Abby explained the note taking procedure she wanted her students to follow.  During the whole lecture Abby provided a solid background on her discussion of Elizabethan England and her students responded with good questions in furthering their knowledge. One way Abby fostered student engagement was through the use of the actual signatures of the historic figures.  In one instance Abby displayed an illustration of the globe in Elizabeth’s handwriting and the students were able to make a connection to the symbolism in the Byzantine Empire.  Many times during the discussion Abby complimented her students on their knowledge.

Abby queried her students throughout the discussion using questions displayed on the PowerPoint, questions on the interpretations of the illustrations she presented and questions on the students’ prior knowledge.  She reinforced the idea that she wanted her students to know the order of events and concepts and not for the students to get too wrapped up in the dates and events.

At this point in the class Abby turned to another activity.  She assigned a reading for about 8 minutes and a follow up activity which required the students to portray Elizabeth I as a musical instrument.  What instrument would portray Elizabeth and why this instrument?  The students had to incorporate five parts of an instrument and explain the importance of these parts and their meaning for Elizabethan symbolism.  This activity was modeled after a previous assignment of Abby’s which was very successful, having the students depict Martin Luther as a car.  At this point, Abby modeled the assignment by drawing a marimba on the board in order to show the symbolism in regard to Elizabeth. Abby explained that the marimba is made of rosewood, a wood that is strong and durable, much like Elizabeth’s reign. By this time in the class Abby already had two forms of formal student assessment and an informal form through her questions on the lecture.

The last bit of class involved a video clip from the Discovery Channel. The video was portrayed through Elizabeth’s point of view and showed her father being lifted unto a horse because he was too heavy and his legs hurt too much for him to mount the horse on his own. Abby attempted to gain a personal connection with her students by representing Henry’s physical problems as a human and not just an historical figure in a textbook.

Between her first and second hour classes Abby told me about a homeless student in her next class.  She was trying to find support for that student and she was worried that the student would drop out as the student continued to fail because he or she could not make it to school on a regular basis.  A quick check on the Internet returned an article from 2015 that showed there were over 2,700 homeless students in the Wake County School District. (http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article47067030.html) My own experience with Grand Rapids Public Schools showed that there is a constant movement of homeless students throughout the city’s school district as families try to cope with the challenges of finding housing. Given the student population Abby commented that the whole spectrum of students allowed for a rich diversity in students’ “takes” (perspective and opinions) on the ideas and concepts which Abby presented in class.

Abby’s classroom management model was very positive. She reminded the students of their responsibilities and treated them as adults, admitting that her first and second hour classes were very good classes.  An example of an urban school’s lack of resources and the challenges both the teachers and the students face was evidenced in Abby’s new book assignment for this quarter. The book assigned was A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch.  Abby told the students that there was no excuse for not getting the book.  They had enough warning and they had to procure the book on their own.

As with the previous class Abby checked the class homework while the students were busy with their daily warm up activity.  Then the class reviewed the warm up.  Abby chose to use a predictive teaching strategy in the review.  She provided the information necessary for the students drawing conclusions and the students did a good job with her prompts and they appeared to have good background information.  Abby explained to me later that the students brought in information from outside the class from books they read, facts from the “Jeopardy” tv show and from other segments of pop culture.  As Abby’s discussion delved deeper into the English Constitutional Monarchy and an explanation of how Elizabeth I used potential marriages or relationships as a political tool, it became obvious that Abby went far beyond the basic knowledge that the textbook provided and she used that information for creating a constant connection to deeper knowledge and concepts. Student engagement was evidenced by their many questions throughout her lecture.

Abby was a good storyteller.  She used a discussion of Braveheart, a movie very familiar to the students in her class in discussing the physical punishments meted out in this period of English law.   She also brought in images of coinage, such as Elizabeth’s image and the defeat of the Spanish Armada and she made a comparison between coins from the reign of Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire.  Coins are a common item that most students could relate to in thinking about history and their lives.

At this point in the discussion, which revolved around the War of the Roses, Abby produced an image of rugby, and a rose on an English player’s jersey.  This image helped to personalize the lesson since her students knew Abby was a rugby player.  At this point she ended the PowerPoint lecture and the classroom atmosphere was such that the students wanted more.  She had successfully set the stage of the “Elizabeth as an instrument” activity and the students dove right into their work.

Throughout the day Abby’s instructions for the various activities in her 90-minute class periods were clear and easily followed. There was no wasted time (except for the bane of all teachers’ existence, a fire drill) and the students engaged in every facet of her lessons.  At one point between classes Abby commented that she didn’t know if she could ever find a way to fill a 90-minute class period before she actually started her career and now she wished her classes were longer.

Contrary to her first teaching job in the Raleigh area at the charter school, Abby said she had a great supply of texts and materials for her students.  She said she was aware that there had been a 100% staff turnover after she left the charter school and she was so glad she was at Broughton now.  Abby had two or three formal evaluations so far this grading period and all of her evaluations went well.  She explained that her mentor offered guidance and advice all of the time and Abby was very appreciative.  She also explained that mentoring was a paid duty, not just assigned.  During the day Abby’s department chair stopped by and shared some background information on the school. She was also highly complimentary towards Abby’s teaching ability.

After her second block class Abby had a half hour lunch period and another 90 minutes for a preparation period.  She mentioned that her 4th Hour class was her most challenging group of students in terms of behavior and focus, but not near as bad as last year was at the charter school.  The fire drill occurred during her 4th Block class so she lost about 5 to 10 minutes explaining the procedure for the drill, then the school emptied of its 2100 students, with a short wait outside for the “all clear” signal, the walk back into the classroom and the inevitable several minutes of time settling the class down.  Given all of that her 4th block class went along smoothly.  The questions and answers might not have been as numerable or deep and because the students were a little less mature in their actions. Abby did not allow the students to partner for one activity, but the same material and concepts were successfully presented and discussed.  Abby used the same mixture of lecture and questions, but her delivery was somewhat quicker, potentially because her students did not engage as thoroughly as her first two classes did.  The students were engaged by Abby’s storytelling ability. They made the same connections with the images Abby presented.  The class was a little bit “chatty” but over all they had the same answers and were engaged in the lesson and its activities.

Interview, 2008

Defining Success

In the interview that followed her school day Abby zeroed in on the factors that led to her success in her first two years of teaching.  She was fortunate to have a good coordinating teacher and said that teacher-assisting was the most helpful part of her preparation for teaching.  She appreciated and gained from sharing teaching ideas and sample lessons from other students in her seminar class as well as the insight gained from her every day contact with her classroom teacher; to see how to plan out a day and how to set up a lesson.  At this point in her career, two years in, she thought she was on the right track and admitted she was still learning a lot.

One of her greatest feedbacks on her teaching were her students’ comments, especially ones such as, “I used to hate history until this class” and parents coming up to her and saying, “my student had always struggled with history and they hate history and now they love history.  These comments helped Abby as she realized that she was making mistakes “all the time”, but with positive student feedback and “the tools to figure out how to be a better teacher” she would be successful eventually. (Bielski, video transcript, p.1, 2008)

One of the projects that all GVSU students are assigned is a teaching portfolio.  Many students find this task burdensome, given that the last year of their education at GVSU is constantly filled with classes and practice teaching.  After two years in the classroom, I asked Abby if she thought the portfolio was a useful exercise and tool.  She responded, “It was incredibly helpful because we could do it on any topic that interested us in history and so I did it on something that I was really enthusiastic about and I took my time and I use it, well, I will be using it when I teach the Russian Revolution because that’s what I did my portfolio on and I ended up creating all types of resources, a Power Point, guided notes, activities…a whole unit planned out before I even started teaching, and I used that in my interview with this school” (Bielski, video transcript, p.1, 2008)

I next asked Abby about her judgment of GVSU’s practice on having two teaching placements.  As stated earlier in an earlier chapter, many universities have only one placement of one semester and other universities have one placement for a whole year.  Abby commented, “I thought it was cool to see two different teachers, two very different approaches to teaching from when I did my (teacher assisting) and when I did my (student) teaching (Bielski, video transcript, p. 1, 2008)

Content

Abby’s content background was out of the norm compared to many GVSU grads in that she had a previous undergrad degree in International Relations from the University of Michigan.  At first she did not see the usefulness of taking more content classes at GVSU because she believed her ‘content bases’ were covered by her previous degree.  She almost resented being forced to take a course about Alexander the Great (Bielski, field notes, p.8, 2008).  Her attitude had since changed. “I did get to take one content area class on Alexander the Great, which I found extremely useful.  Some of the primary sources we read in that class…I loved that class…I use it in my class today and I never took a course on Ancient Greece or Macedonia or Alexander (at the U of M) so I use that specific content when I teach World History.  …I wish there were more content area courses (in the content major)” (Bielski, video transcript, p. 1) Her complaint was based on a feeling that she would have benefitted from more practical information that she would incorporate into her teaching versus teaching theory.  When asked whether there were still gaps in her content background Abby readily admitted there was, especially in Asian history.  At that point in her coursework she was preparing a unit on Japan and she said she was needed to fill that gap in her knowledge base.

Part of the content discussion for many teachers is the usefulness of primary sources in their classrooms.  Given the homogenized approach of many textbooks, teachers search out ways of engaging their students in reading, but a dry textbook does the opposite.  Abby’s experience was that the students enjoyed reading the original sources, especially if the source was not “particularly arcane and cryptic” (Bielski, video transcript, p.1, 2008).

I returned the topic of the usefulness of courses during her time at GVSU.  Abby reinforced the idea that she found theory-based classes not as useful in her career as she did courses that helped design various teaching activities (methods and strategies), how to differentiate students’ instruction and various approaches to learning.  She wished there was more help with preparing future teachers for organizing their work. She also admitted that she needed more ideas on creating transitions between the various parts of her daily lesson plans.

Pearls of Wisdom, 2008

Abby’s first “pearl” was for teachers to be on the constant look-out for good teaching ideas.  She wished she had kept more of the lesson plan ideas from her fellow classmates at GVSU, even if the idea did not appear to have any relation to what she thought she would be teaching in the future.  Abby did say that her “Intro to Teaching” course (ED 200 during her time at GVSU) had been very useful.  The instructor gave her a good idea about the basics of teaching, provided some lesson activities and some practice teaching within the class.  He also introduced her to Harry Wong’s book, The First Days of School, especially his advice about planning and being organized (Abby, video transcript, p. 5-6, 2008).

Field Notes from Oct 2015

When I was next in contact with Abby, I found that she had left North Carolina for Rome, Italy.  I was arranging my second visit to her classroom and she responded that I may need more travel money since she was now teaching in the American School in Rome.  She told me that she found the job through a web search and life was good.  She was teaching history and traveling around Europe coaching athletic teams for the school.  Later I found out that she met her future husband there.  By the time I was ready to schedule my visit in October of 2015 she had moved once more, to New Canaan, Connecticut and St. Luke’s School, a private school in a wealthy community.  This was an interesting journey…inner city Raleigh to Rome to New Canaan; from a failing charter school to a public magnet I.B. school to a place for Americans to send their children in an overseas environment to a somewhat exclusive, $40,000 dollar a year private school. Abby told me that the school started in the 1920s as a kind of alternative/at-risk school.  Parents bought the school in the 1970s when it was in financial trouble and turned it into a non-profit.  Included in the school’s mission was a strong service-learning component with especial focus on working with the homeless population (probably not many homeless people in New Canaan proper, but likely a larger population in Stamford) and concern for environmental issues.  The school had close to a twenty-six million dollar endowment which Abby described as “comfortable, but not great”.  In the fall of 2015, the school had around 500 students enrolled which Abby said was close to the physical capacity of the school.  The school’s name “St. Luke’s” was more based on the gospel of St. Luke than a being affiliated with a specific religious domination and it was being run as an secular institution.  She said there was an atmosphere around the school that the teachers and staff worked for the parents, a somewhat different situation from public education, but maybe not far removed from the American School in Rome.  She found out about St. Luke’s from one of the teachers at school in Rome.  Abby had also completed her Master’s in International Relations at Norwich University using a hybrid instruction format.

Abby was still teaching in a block schedule, but the blocks varied from day to day, from 45 minutes to 90 minutes.  She taught Ancient Civilizations all day long.  She had the duty of being the Dean of Students for the Freshmen class.   The work as Dean consumed about three of her planning periods per week.  Abby reflected back to her 9 months at the charter school when she first moved to Raleigh in saying that her experience there helped her establish her classroom management techniques.  Chaos will sometimes do that for teachers, or they fail.  Her classroom was well equipped at St. Luke’s.  An online textbook with the certainty that her students would have access at home.  Mac Airbooks for all her students, a short-throw projector and the ability to take her students on some interesting field trips.

In her first hour class for the day with 11 students she taught about Ur and the Epic of Gilgamesh.  Abby’s already established storytelling ability was finely honed by now.  She carefully injected references to past lessons and information in order to reinforce important concepts for the unit.  She still had the same engaging smile and upbeat way of engaging her students.  Diverging away from the monumental task that most public school teachers face when trying to tackle the numerous state standards that most states have established, Abby was able to spend an entire class period just on how the students would interpret the Standard of Ur.  No public school teacher or state curriculum I know of would have the time to spend on students interpreting a single artifact.  Abby set aside about 7 to 10 minutes of time for the students to independently interpret sections of the Standard and then the students immediately launched into a discussion on their interpretations of the artifact.  Abby circulated around the room listening in on the group discussions and viewing what information the students were typing into their Google Documents.  Abby set a good pace for her class and had excellent time management. The students were making good comments and asking each other good questions about their suppositions.  During this time the students were getting up from their desks and circling parts of the projected Standard on the white board.

At this point Abby announced that there would be an impromptu presentation from each group.  She brought back to the students’ attention a previous vocabulary phrase, “hierarchical scaling” and with that prompt a student keyed in on the size of the Standard.  What followed were multiple deductions about the appearance of the box; some representations of the social hierarchy of Ur, the downcast eyes of slaves, the head covers.  Abby then pursued the deeper significance of the artifact presented by the students versus their remarks on the surface interpretations. In that pursuit Abby followed the Socratic method of teaching in that she interspersed her lecture with questions.  All through the class Abby displayed a deep content knowledge about Ur and was passionate in her presentation and questioning.

The next segment of Abby’s day was “Advisory”, a sort of homeroom period.  This chunk of time was shorter than 45 minutes and was organized as gender specific advisories.  There were seven girls in Abby’s class.  This advisory period was focused on generating questions for the author of “Spare Parts” who was coming to visit the school.  This book was a community read for St. Luke’s.  Abby referenced the school’s honor code by reinforcing the idea that the questions should be phrased respectfully.  In producing the questions Abby used the “Think, Pair, Share” method of teaching and the strategy worked wonderfully.

Later Abby told me that while most students live in New Canaan, 10% of the student body were attending based on 100% scholarships and came mostly from Stamford. Some of the questions the students created were: What did the author learn when writing the story?  Did the author’s appreciation for the kids’ situation change while writing the book?  Why did he write it?  Where did the information come from?  Was the author in the same situation or writing from a similar experience?  Was there backlash to the book from the government?  Did the author have experience in interviewing people?  Why did he choose to write about immigration?  Was he trying to help solve the immigration problem in the United States today?  When the groups were finished generating questions it was quite easy for Abby to get students to volunteer to share their group’s work.  Abby explained later that advisors stay with the same group of students for the entire four years.  The teachers act as advocates for the students and help them through problems they encounter in their time at St. Luke’s.

Abby’s second class for the day was a double period, 90 minutes.  At this point Abby told me that in addition to the Mac Air, each student was also provided with an iPad.  In conjunction with teaching Ancient Civilizations Abby explained that the school fully funds summer learning trips for the teachers, given the fact that the teachers justify the importance of the trip to their teaching.  Last summer St. Luke’s paid all the expenses for Abby to travel to Iran and study Iranian/Persian/Sumerian art and history.  Based partly on her research, upon her return she worked with the Information Technology person at her school to design and implement a kind of “Super Mario” grid-based game based on the Epic of Gilgamesh.

For this period’s warmup activity Abby had her students work on a documents-based question centering on Leonard Woolley. Throughout the day the students had no problem manipulating any of the technology that they used.  Despite the wide-ranging use of tech in the school Abby said that the faculty still had some sense that a lecture hall atmosphere was necessary preparation for college.  In the process of reviewing the warmup activity Abby asked questions that provided foundational knowledge for later “detective work” on the Standard of Ur.  Throughout this class of 90 minutes Abby limited herself to lecture segments of about 4 minutes.  She acknowledged to me that good storytellers may be great lecturers but she structures her classes in a more student-centered way.  In all her classes she gave out positive comments for answers and responses to questions.

In an aside during the class Abby commented that part of her success in teaching was good organization, although she admitted she still has problems budgeting time.  At this point she was planning for her wedding and she knew that she would need to fold in “family” time versus a single person’s focus.  At the time of my visit Abby’s daily goal was to have all of her work completed by 7 PM.  She had a 45-minute commute.  She hoped to have that preparation time down to 5 PM by the time she was married, not just for time with her future husband, but also if they decided to raise a family.

Class for this period the students worked for 10 minutes in groups picking out “entities” on the Standard of Ur on the three different “registers” and then explaining the significance of those sections of the artifact.  When directed the students immediately engaged in their “detective” work.  Conversations within the groups were well-developed, with the groups circling different “entities” on the class whiteboard as they continued their individual group discussions.  In the discussion that followed the group work Abby continually reinforced important vocabulary words and often prodded the students to deeper explanations with the phrase “expand on that”.  Within this discussion Abby included information based on her trip last summer to Persepolis and made comparisons between relief art on animal legs on chairs to some of the thrones in medieval Europe. In that way she was providing a connection to the students’ future study.

Abby explained later that she had great autonomy in the planning of her curriculum.  For Ancient Civilizations she deals with a world-wide time scale from ancient times to about 600 A.C.E. She was currently working on a way to bridge the gap in her course and the next course in World History that begins its study at 1300 A.C.E.

During my day at St. Luke’s I was invited to be a participant in a first-ever activity for the Freshman class.  The freshman were responsible for student-led conferences and I was asked if it was all right for me to be one of the interviewers.  St. Luke’s set aside two hours in the afternoon for the process.  The students were provided with a template for their presentations making the process less onerous.  The focus for the presentations was on the students’ transition to Upper School and included topics such as study habits, an example of behavior or academic work, how the student might improve, a story about upholding the honor code, a story about a community goal for learning, a chance to raise any concerns that the students might want to share and a chance for the interviewer to ask questions. These conferences were framed around the ideas of Professor Carol Dweck from Stamford University who championed the educational philosophy of “growth mindset”.  Students were to be assessed on a combination of their academic, social, emotional and moral development.  So much for “high stakes” testing, although I imagine the student SAT or ACT scores still mattered to the parents.

When the interviewing process started three freshman boys sat down at the table across from me.  They each had about 20 minutes to explain who they were and their thoughts about their transition to Upper School.  All three were well-dressed, treating the process similar to a job interview.  They were polite and well-spoken with few cues given that they were first semester high school freshmen.  Each of them knew there were high expectations at the school and they realized they were going to have to work harder than they did in Lower School.  There was some mention of the necessity to correct weaknesses in their grades and study habits, but mostly I was impressed with the maturity of their presentations and the air of confidence they exuded.  They were not smug nor cocky; just young men with a certain positive attitude about where life was taking them.

As the day ended Abby told me how happy she was at the school. She was well paid and had great opportunities to expand her personal learning.  She felt like she had a good amount of autonomy involving her curriculum.  Abby felt that she was much more confident in her “people skills” and her public/personal speaking skills in this tenth year of her career.

Interview 2015

Defining Success

The first question I asked her, and all the subjects in this study, was how she defined success in teaching, with the follow-up question of whether or not she thought GVSU prepared her for success.  Abby’s immediate reply was that her success was based on whether or not her students were interested in the content she presented.  “When they are starting to ask questions that go beyond the text that demonstrate real independent thought and not repeating things they heard in class or repeating things from the textbook and when they find history interesting.  When they say, ‘Oh, that makes sense now’.  That is a successful moment in my mind.” (Bielski, video transcript, p.1, 2015).  She considered success existed when students took something they learned and applied that knowledge in different contexts and situations.  “When we put up a piece of work that they have never seen before and they use those techniques that we did in a previous class to apply to this new piece of art and it makes sense to them, that’s a pretty cool thing” (Bielski, video transcript, p. 1, 2015).

Abby gave other examples beside using artwork, like she did in this day’s classes, to get her students interested in history: the video game the students developed about the story of Gilgamesh; a 3D printer project where the students created models of Roman temples and the many other ways she incorporates technology into her history lessons. “We do all kinds of creative things that get them thinking differently about history and thinking about history beyond just memorization of facts and dates and things like that which very few people find interesting and certainly not high school kids” (Bielski, transcript, p.2, 2015).

The discussion now turned to GVSU’s part in Abby’s success.  She pointed to the Capstone class I taught where I emphasized and modeled the importance of organization.  She admitted that she knew some teachers who were not terribly organized and still did a good job teaching, but she said she could not operate that way.  She pointed out the small logistical things, passing back work on time, having a clear plan for the day and keep her grade book organized, that keep worry out of her mind and allowed her to focus on content and creativity.  She said organizational ability was imbued in her through all her education classes at GVSU.

Challenges

Next Abby reflected on her first teaching position at the charter school in Raleigh: the high teacher turnover; very little support or involvement by the parents and if there was involvement it was confrontational and negative.  The school populations of inner-city Raleigh and Durham were typical of many urban areas of the United States, with many students living in poverty.  The teaching salary made it impossible for a beginning teacher to survive.  Abby needed a second job as a bartender in order to support herself and it was obvious that she still had difficulty making ends meet.  She did not blame the students for the conditions or for their behavior.  The problems they brought from home caused the problems at school.  She said she started to win the students over by using games and competitions and she has continued using those methods in creating excitement for learning in her classroom today. She felt that by the end of her time at the charter school her students were excited about learning but the situation was impossible.

Broughton High School in Raleigh brought different challenges.  In this case the challenges were adhering to the state standards, and the formation and implementation of “Professional Learning Communities.”  In Abby’s words, those items added to the “time suck,” time that would normally be spent working on lesson plans and preparing to teach the content.  Added to those burdens faced by teachers in many states was the building of a ‘dossier’ for each student that was used as a recourse if the student did not pass the state test and a way for the student to still receive credit for the course.  Abby described the dossier as “way too much bureaucracy” on top of the already large class sizes.  Her standard 9th grade World History class had 35-36 students, making the classes hard to control and hard to engage.  On a more personal side, the teachers at Broughton had not received a raise in 10 years, and, “in fact, their pay had decreased so they were making less when I left than when they started” (Bielski, video transcript, p.3, 2015).

Abby faced different challenges at the American School in Rome, Italy.  She described the teachers’ union there as the biggest problem for her.  In her estimation the union was so powerful that it negatively impacted the administration’s ability to provide support and feedback on lessons to the teachers.  On top of that, international school administrators were usually only in their positions for a short time (two years) and viewed their time at these schools as “vacation stints” (Bielski, video transcript, p.3, 2015).  For about 60% of the teachers the stay overseas was about the same.  There was a two-year tax break that applied both to Italy and the U.S. so if you taught there you did not pay taxes to either country.  After two years this group of teachers moved to a new country where they enjoyed the same tax break.  The end result was a constant flow of new teachers around Europe, which definitely impacted the stability of the school and the relationships between teachers, students, parents and administration.  Abby admitted that “it’s a pretty good gig, but I mean, in terms of the long-term health and stability of the school and consistency and coherency of the curriculum, it’s a killer”.  While there was great autonomy in the classroom there was very little oversight and no one cared.  While that kind of control opened the door to creativity, due to the transitional nature of the school it could lead to teachers taking advantage of the system (Bielski, video transcript, p.4, 2015).  Added to those challenges was the press by parents for Advanced Placement courses.  Those course credits are applicable to U.S. college credit and college admissions so there was pressure from the parents for their children to perform well on these tests, even though there was little to no pressure from the school to turn out high scores or any positive recognition if the students performed well.  The parents were unhappy with the school but there was no alternative school that offered A.P. coursework and no other school that offered U.S. style athletics, especially important if the parents wanted their children to have an American high school experience overseas (Bielski, video transcript, p.5, 2015).

St. Luke’s presented a different more positive set of circumstances for Abby.  While she was not prepared for the amount of affluence in the community and some uneasiness in the parent-teacher dynamic, she was pleased (ecstatic?) about the internal atmosphere of the school. She received tremendous support from her chair, the Upper School principal and the Head of School.  She received permission in her short time at the school (two years) to create new courses and the opportunity for her trip to Iran.

Dealing With Stress

A focus of this study is the high degree of turnover in teachers in the first few years of their profession.  One of the factors is how teachers successfully deal with the stresses of teaching and besides the stresses Abby had already mentioned she reinforced one of the factors that teachers in my original doctoral research stated was their biggest challenge: time.  Abby was dedicated to teaching, but she also coached, which often means long hours of practice and late evenings with travel to and from games.  She was Dean of Students for the Freshman class, and was an advisor for her set of students in her Advisory class.  Abby said she was “quarterbacking” the time challenge and so far, her best solution was being more efficient in her use of time, at the detriment of losing “chat” time with her colleagues.  While she acknowledged that those “chats” usually involved academics, she told me she got more work done with planning lessons by working by herself.  Like many teachers she has begun isolating herself at lunch time and eating lunch at her desk, instead of socializing with her colleagues in the teachers’ lounge or lunchroom.  When she was teaching in Rome she would often work until 9 or 10 in the evening but realized the adverse effect on her social life.  “All I (was) doing (was) getting up working and I (was) working all day and I (was) getting home and …working again at night and then doing the same thing the next day.  It’s hard to live like that (Bielski, video transcript, p.7, 2015).  Not only was Abby’s work regimen not good for her social life, but that kind of work concentration is a probable factor in early burnout amongst young teachers.

I deem her involvement in these activities “normal” for most teachers and yet most teachers will tell you that they are in the profession to teach their content and not to sponsor afterschool activities, which, many times, they are paid far less for their time and effort.  I recognized a definite change in atmosphere from New York State to Kansas.  At no point in the four years at Southern Cayuga was I addressed as “coach” by a parent or even an administrator.  They were paying me to teach the children of the school.  Immediately when I arrived in Kansas, even though I wanted to coach football and baseball, my main focus was my content and helping my students learn about the history, geography and government of their country and the world.  Yet, soon after arriving I heard “Coach” so many times that I had to remind administrators, teachers and parents that my primary function was “teacher” and I was paid far less for teaching athletic skills.  I will counter some of my attitude by saying that my classroom did not stop at the walls of my room.  I taught content in asides on the practice fields and hopefully helped build character and sportsmanship, essentials in good citizenship.

Professional Development

Abby was one of the few teachers in this study who reinforced pursuing a Master’s degree in the content area.  Several of my former students related to me that the easiest path to an advanced degree, potential employment as an administrator and more pay whether or not they went into administration, was a degree in “Educational Leadership” or some other variation.  Those former students told me that there were bits of information they took away from these classes that they applied to their teaching, but none of them told me that the coursework totally altered the way they taught or what they taught.

Motivation

Next I asked Abby about her motivation to do the best job for the students under her care.   She was very open that her primary motivation was her love of history, not the typical response, “I love kids”.  She knew she did not want to be a “researcher” and she did not think that a Ph.D. was an option for her.  She did admit that her view has changed somewhat.

“Now that I’m in a classroom with a group of kids we laugh every day.  I laugh at my own jokes. They might not, but the kids were an added benefit.  It just so happens that working with kids is awesome too.  But when I get up every day, at least in the beginning (of her career), it was because I wanted to learn more about history and I wanted to share that with other people. I want them to view history in the same way I do.  So, the kids were kind of secondary to that motivation when I first started teaching and obviously working with kids every day keeps you young and keeps you energetic and it makes me laugh every day…  It’s fun.  It’s a lot of fun. ‘My kid loves history now’ (parent comment) and the recognition I think, if I’m going to be honest, makes me want to do even better.  You know when I got that little note from my principal yesterday; I was going into another fourteen-hour day like we have.  I was here until 10 o’clock last night and I was kind of grumpy about it and I got to my desk and there’s that note and my little bottle of wine.  She notices what I do and she appreciates it and it makes me want to do better.  It makes me want to do better in the classroom. (Bielski, video transcript, p.8, 2015).

Helping them see history the way I see history and a lot of them are open to it and they do, even if it’s only for 80 minutes a day or even if it’s only for 45 minutes a day they are historians and making them into historians for that time and helping them transform themselves and their perception of themselves as historians, and some of them can talk intelligently about the “Standard of Ur” is awesome.  And I can’t tell you how many times that they’ve gotten back from a trip…these kids go all around the world…  “Miss Bielski, I was just in the Etruscan Museum in Rome and I saw these piece” and I say, “Oh, my god, we just talked about this in class!” and they get excited about it and they send me postcards when they travel and say, “Look, this is what we talked about in class” and that’s pretty cool, especially with all the distractions and everything vying for their time right now. (Bielski, video transcript, p.9, 2015)

Methods and Strategies

I wanted to know if Abby had changed the way she taught since we last talked in her classroom in North Carolina.  As much as she was a good storyteller, she said that she chunks her lectures into about four-minute segments and then stops to play a game or have group work or do some other kind of exercise. She did say that with plans for a new addition to her school, she suggested the school incorporate a college type lecture hall into the plans, but she doesn’t see the structure of the room dictating a complete adherence to lecture style teaching. She definitely saw the way she used the Socratic method as leading to students who are more capable of expressing their point of view and making positive contributions to any kind of discussion, not just historical ones.  She thought her own difficulty in expressing herself in meetings with her peers was the fact that she experienced the more traditional model of teaching history through straight lecture and she was not shown a good model for provoking open questioning and presenting one’s own opinion (Bielski, video transcript, p.10, 2015).

The way she uses technology in her teaching as changed over time. She had developed, with some help from the I.T. person, the Gilgamesh game.  How she used technology in communicating with parents had changed. She now used data in her discussions with parents to explain why she taught the way she did with the explanation, “…if I can’t explain to a parent why I’m doing a warm up every day then maybe I shouldn’t be doing that (Bielski, video transcript, p.11, 2015).

Abby also admitted she was using the course textbook more than she did in the charter school or at Broughton. The text she had used was the standard high school textbook and she implied that it was not well written and she hated it.  She did use the A.P. textbook, but since the A.P. courses are fairly regimented and the final exams tied to the text there was not much of an option there for her.  Her current world history textbook is more on the level of a college level text and it challenged her students. The supplemental materials were better constructed than the other textbooks she has used and by using those materials she was able to cut down on her preparation time.  She still created her own assessments, but she no longer categorically rejected ready-made materials (Bielski, video transcript, p.11, 2015).

Evaluation

Teacher assessment was our next topic.  Abby told me that there was no evaluation process in the charter school in Durham.  The school was in “survival mode” and just to have a  body in the classroom was good.  Things changed when she started at Broughton.  There the evaluation system relied on the teacher-mentor, that person’s guidance and teacher growth.  In Abby’s particular case she met with her mentor more times than required and she implied that those extra meetings were a good thing.  The process did not end with that person, however.  Her department chair and principal read the reports from the mentor.  The assistant principal also observed her classes periodically.  Abby only remembered one formal evaluation per year in her three years there.  The sparsity of formal visits resulted in a lack of formal feedback from the upper administration.  She did not disparage the administration for that situation in that the school was very large and probably lacked the number of administrators necessary for multiple formal observations.  Her best informal feedback came from a colleague with ten years’ experience at the school and fifteen years’ experience teaching.  Although the informal feedback did not impact her employment status, it did help to improve her teaching.  The American School in Rome returned Abby to a situation much like the charter school.  She did have one evaluation per year, a “check the boxes” assessment and that was about it.  I encountered a similar “check the boxes” routine for most of my years in Kansas and it was not until the very end of my time there that the process became somewhat more formalized with more possibilities for feedback from administrators.  My Kansas experience was very much different from what happened in New York where observations were frequent in my four years there and the evaluation instrument was lengthy and detailed.  Abby’s described the experience and process at St. Luke’s:

Here, we have a very systematic program for evaluation called the “Faculty Growth and Renewal Program”.  So, we essentially set goals for ourselves and we have one goal for each role we fill at the school so I have a goal for varsity coach.  I have a goal for being a dean.  I have a goal being a 9th grade World History teacher.  Your “FGR” partner, which is one of the admin team, so I’m really lucky because my partner is the Head of Upper School, Liz, helps you set these goals and then when she comes to observe, she comes maybe three times a semester, helps keep you on track in terms of attaining those goals and she sits through your lessons and watches the lesson with the lens of the goal you had in mind and then really sits down with you and crunches the lesson chunk by chunk, so “Here you did this. This is keeping in line with your goal. When you transition from this activity to this activity one thing you might consider is doing this instead” so it’s very tangible feedback that you can implement the very next lesson.  Supposedly, although I’m not 100% sure on this, your ability to meet these goals helps determine the raise and salary package you negotiate for the next year (Bielski, video transcript, p.12, 2015).

Abby explained that both the Raleigh public school and the American School in Rome had standard salary schedules, with steps.  At St. Luke’s Abby individually negotiated her salary.  She considered that process fair and non-punitive.  No checklists and much good feedback.  She commented that her current situation was the best of the four schools she had experienced but she also reflected positively on all her experience, citing specific items that have helped her become a better teacher: better at classroom management because of her time at the chaotic charter school; better at classroom management due to her large classroom populations at Broughton. In all her experiences with evaluations Abby echoed the sentiments of several teachers in this study that the conversations after the formal or informal observations have best served to improve her teaching (Bielski, video transcript, p.14, 2015).

Abby was in a small minority in this study when it came to graduate work, in that she chose, as a few others did, to concentrate her post graduate work on the content she taught.  She sought the challenge of a difficult master’s program as a way to “reinvigorate her need for rigor” in her academic life.  Abby also was more positive about her professional development opportunities than many people were in this study.  While others viewed their PD opportunities as having little value or even a waste of time, with her experiences presenting at AP conferences in Europe and her trip to Iran funded by her current school she saw great utility in her PD opportunities outside of her graduate work (Bielski, video transcript, p.15, 2015).

Pearls of Wisdom, 2015

Abby’s first “pearl” was importance of establishing a routine in classes. Whether it is called a “bell ringer” or a “warm up” activity or anything else, establishing a routine for students helps creating a positive environment for learning without the hassle of constantly reminding the students that they need to focus on their learning.  She was a definite proponent of multiple strategies, methods and activities on a daily basis.  In this way the students stay “engaged, focused and interested” while at the same time having the routine and structure necessary to keep the students on task.  Abby also reinforced the importance of quickly grading and returning student work.  She said the quick turnaround in student work promotes a teacher’s legitimacy.  This last remark was reinforced by a student in the mock interview practice I participated in at the end of the day.  One of the freshman related that all his classes but one had multiple assignments, in which presumably, he received feedback quite quickly.  He thought the multiple examples of formative assessment helped him understand where he was in the class and helped him stay organized (Bielski, video transcript, p. 16, 2015). The last “pearl” Abby described was her additional duties, like Dean of Freshmen, volleyball coach, Model United Nations advisor.  She said that these duties and responsibilities took time away from her teaching, but they also allowed for some balance in her life; a way to connect to her students outside of the classroom (Bielski, video transcript, p.17, 2015).