18 Kim Harrison Kocsis
Zeeland East High School, Zeeland, MI., Oakland Intermediate School District, Clarkston, MI.
When I caught up with Kim Harrison Kocsis in the fall of 2015, she was in her fifth job, a victim of multiple layoffs. Kim described her experience with layoffs in these words: “ … at the time, when you’re laid off from a teaching job and you don’t know what’s next, that’s a challenge and that’s stressful and then, like I said, I jumped from district to district every summer so always starting brand new, back at the bottom of the pay scale…all of those things were tough. The lowest on the seniority list.” (transcript, Kim Harrison Kocsis, Oct 2, 2015, p. 5). Kim exhibits what I think is a hallmark trait of many good teachers: perseverance. Despite all those setbacks she is still invested in her career, her students and in 2015 the teachers she was supporting in Oakland County, Michigan.
In February 2008 when I first spent a day in her classroom Kim was in the fourth year of her career. She had two preps: 10th grade Civics and an Advanced Placement Government class. Kim was the first teacher in Zeeland to teach AP Government and aside from the curriculum and text that was provided by the College Board, Kim had to design this course from scratch. Kim was also the advisor for “Youth in Government,” a YMCA program (http://www.myig.org/, accessed July 3, 2017).
Kim started her first period Civics class with a quiz based on previously taught material, a common practice by teachers: find out what the students remember and then use that information to reinforce and remediate the students’ knowledge and skills. To make connections to previously learned material she reviewed separation of powers and checks and balances by showing a video clip from the television show Schoolhouse Rock called 3 Ring Circus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEPd98CbbMk, accessed July 3, 2017). Then she launched into a slide show while lecturing and asking questions concerning the operation of checks and balances in government. The questions she asked were both on the upper and lower scale of Bloom’s taxonomy, so Kim was using the students’ memory of the information as well as having them analyze and evaluate what they were learning and applying that knowledge and those skills to their lives.
Kim used a Venn diagram in helping the students visualize the impact of national, state and concurrent powers. She mentioned later that this diagram was actually part of another teacher’s slide show and that her department was “fantastic” about sharing teaching resources. I can vouch for the professionalism of their Social Studies teachers. Through a “Teaching American History” grant I was able to work with many of her colleagues in a series of six summer workshops in the early 2000s, plus several of my students were placed with Zeeland teachers for the students’
teacher-assisting semesters.
Kim used a constructivist approach in her students’ learning. She gave the students a list of examples in describing the different types of government powers and asked the students to use the examples in taking their notes that best fit their way of thinking. Next Kim used an activity designed for application of the knowledge the students gained. The activity involved writing a song or a poem. The students had to have a title, explain four principles and give an example of one of the principles.
After providing the writing assignment Kim immediately moved into group work, offered statements of support and answered any questions the students might have. She repeated the same method in the other Civics classes she taught that day. She was consistent and thorough in her approach to her classes.
Later in the day Kim told me that she had three different daily/yearly schedules in the four years of her career. She had taught Civics, Economics, United States history and AP Government. While Kim was certified for all these areas, common sense and good teacher management would seem to dictate that continually changing a teacher’s assignment would not lead to success in the classroom. How can a person note their successes and failures and improve upon their teaching if not given the opportunity to implement changes in future courses? Unfortunately, Kim is not the only person in this study who faced the challenge of continual shifting teaching assignments.
In all four of Kim’s Civics classes she displayed excellent classroom management skills. Later she explained to me that her first few years in the classroom were a challenge because she was not far removed from her high school years and she admitted that creating the atmosphere where she was the teacher and they were her students was difficult at first. By her fourth year it was obvious to me that she had classroom management well in hand. She did not raise her voice, a characteristic in many teachers with questionable classroom management, but, rather she used clear directions, a full agenda for the day, clear rubrics, constant engagement and, in one class, her silence in maintaining a positive learning environment.
A challenge that Kim could not so easily manage was the diversity in her school district. She had students from Sudan, Eriteria, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, plus several other countries and yet at that time in 2008, there was only one ELL/ESL para for both Zeeland High Schools. I confirmed this information when I talked to the para-teacher.
During the day Kim mentioned several times that she was tired (exhausted in my words) from everything she does. Besides the challenge of designing a new curriculum for her AP class and advising the Youth in Government (YIG) students, she also planned a fund-raiser with the YIG students. In 2007 Kim and her students created “Dancing with the Teachers”, a take-off from “Dancing with the Stars”. The event raised $1500 based on $5 ticket sales. This year, 2008, Kim was planning to dance.
Every teacher faces a dilemma when it comes to grading; assessing student learning and growth and evaluating her/his teaching. One of the participants said she spent three hours per night grading her first two years of teaching. Kim said she had a similar experience, but lately she has been using more informal means in evaluating student learning and her teaching. Most of the teachers in this study were concerned about balance in their professional and personal lives: how to do the best job teaching and taking time out for themselves and their families?
The last hour class for Kim that day was her Advanced Placement Government class. Kim asked me if I would talk to her class about my 1996 primary campaign for the one of the United States’ Senate seats in Kansas. What I thought would be about a twenty-minute talk ended taking up most of the hour due to many good student questions. Much later I learned from a colleague at GVSU that one of her nieces was a student in Kim’s Government class, and, in part, due to my presentation that day, that student decided to go into a career in government, after her undergrad work at Harvard. My talk that day included a heavy dose of the influence and necessity of money in political campaigns, but I ended with an upbeat message about citizen participation. It was gratifying to hear that this young lady chose to enter government service, inspire of the negative aspects of my talk.
Interview, 2008
Defining Success, 2008
Kim’s primary definition for success in the classroom was the ability to relate to her students. “You can know your content and you can know all the teaching methods in the world, but if you don’t have a common respect between you and your students, they don’t respect you as an adult that is imposing wisdom[1] upon them…they don’t care what you know. They want to know that you like them and that you care about them and until you get that relationship, that rapport with them…and it’s not that everyone has to be your best friend…you have to be respected by them.” (Kocsis, video interview, Feb 21, 2008, p. 1.)
With that atmosphere of trust and respect established Kim built upon her idea of a positive learning environment through daily preparation of her lessons. She wanted her students to walk out of her class knowing that they learned things and what her objectives were for the day. She admitted that it might take several days to make some concepts clear to her students, but through common assessments tied to state benchmarks Kim had a good idea that her students were learning what was required.
Flexibility was next on Kim’s list of teacher success in the classroom. She learned in her first four years that what she had planned beginning the day might go off-track by the end of the first hour, even with careful planning and she also recognized that different classes throughout the day might require different approaches to student learning. This flexibility in her approach did not immediately develop her first year in the classroom and she admitted that she was still learning. When I interviewed Kim in the fall of 2015 I noted that she was still cognizant of the importance of flexibility in teaching.
All the participants in this study said that although many types of classroom management techniques were discussed in their time in college classes and in their teacher-assisting and student teaching semesters, it was not until they had their own classroom that they really started to develop their management styles. In Kim’s words: “…but until you’re in the classroom and you have a kid stand up and swear at you or stomp out of the room because they’re mad…you don’t know how to handle that until it happens.” (Kocsis, video interview, Feb 2008, p. 3) Kim also mentioned other practical things she picked up on in her GVSU classes; graphic organizers, rubrics to help keep her students informed on how they were being assessed and to keep her grading consistent, a daily classroom agenda on the whiteboard and trays in the back of the class for work and missing assignments. Little things that together combine making a more efficient and organized classroom.
Kim’s started college hoping to be an elementary teacher, until she got excited taking political science classes. By her own admission she was not much of a government person in her high school career, but her professors in the Political Science Department at GVSU honed her interest to the point that her students laugh at her excitement about teaching the Constitution. In the process of her coursework at GVSU Kim decided that her elementary degree, even though it was in Social Studies, did not expose her to the depth of knowledge she wanted in order to correctly instruct her students. She then changed her major to Secondary Social Studies, but she thought at the time she would be a middle school teacher. When the high school position came open at Allendale she chose a different path. In her words, she “fell into the high school thing”. (Kocsis, video interview, Feb 2008, p. 4). She mentioned that she felt bad about the direction her career took, as if having a career in a direction not planned was a bad thing. I have had numerous students in my time at GVSU who thought they knew they were going to be a third grade teacher, or a middle school teacher or a high school teacher and when “life happened” they discovered they were quite capable of shifting their plans. The unchanging target was helping students learn and be successful in life.
Strategies and Methods, 2008
A lesson that Kim applied directly to her teaching came from one of Political Science professors, Dr. Kevin DenDulk. Dr. DenDulk, currently chair of the Political Science Department at Calvin College, gave his GVSU students the United States Citizenship test. Kim asked Kevin if she could borrow his lesson (good teachers steal good ideas from other teachers all the time) and he assented. Kim pared the test down to 30 questions, told her students that they needed to correctly answer 70% of the questions or have their “green card” revoked. This activity is how she started off the semester. Most students did not pass and Kim’s answer was, “that’s why you are here!” (Kocsis, video interview, Feb 2008, p. 5) At the end of the semester she gave her students the test again and most of them passed it.
Kim was careful to point out that not all the content she learned in her undergrad years has stuck with her, a common theme with many of the teachers in this study. The old phrase, “If you don’t use it, you lose it” comes to mind. Kim started at Allendale teaching U.S. and World History but she admitted that besides the historical connections to her Civics and Government classes she does not use much of what she learned from her course work at Grand Valley. I think that is an important point to be made when teachers’ job descriptions or teaching assignments are changed in a school district. Even though a teacher is certified for a general area like Social Studies, it might take quite a bit of re-learning for someone who has not taught a particular content area within a broad spectrum major to feel grounded in the content. Granted that teachers need to keep current in their content and pedagogy but for administrators to re-assign teachers to different roles without the understanding the time and effort for those teachers to re-train is poor instructional leadership.
Kim brought up another problem area for many Social Studies teachers: teaching Economics. She took the two required courses for her Social Studies major in her freshman and sophomore years at GVSU and then did not teach Economics for several years after she graduated. While taking those two classes the coursework was not geared towards how to teach Macro and Micro Economics. In Kim’s time at GVSU there was only one Social Studies methods course and that course was supposed to handle how to teach all the different disciplines within the Social Studies, with solid, hands on ideas and methods for teaching those disciplines. In a 14 week semester there simply was not enough time to impart a deep understanding of the methods and strategies in teaching U.S. History, World History, Economics, Political Science and Geography, the core disciplines for the Social Studies major at GVSU. Changes have been made in the intervening years to strengthen the content and methods requirements but teacher candidates in all programs in all states need to be made aware that they are not totally prepared for their upcoming careers and only by continual learning, either professionally or personally, will they hope to stay current and do the best job for their students.
Kim also raised an important and truthful point about teacher job interviews. In her two interviews up to this point in 2008 she was asked about classroom management, teaching methods and how to work with parents, but never asked about her content background. In all the interviews I was part of during my time at my high school in Kansas the one question I asked consistently was “what have you read recently in your content area?” but I never really pursued what the interviewees learned or how they put that knowledge to work in their lessons. Beyond their transcript and work history I never really knew what they knew and how they incorporated their content knowledge into their classes and some times that lack of specific questions came back to bite the students in our school, like when I found out that one teacher in my department at Circle High School thought Eisenhower was a one term president and could not answer the question, “So who was elected President in 1956?” He honestly answered that he didn’t know who was elected but that didn’t make any difference in his teaching. That teacher was a “one term” teacher, but that involved more about his attitude and preparation than just his lack of Presidential history.
I was fortunate in the early part of my career that my colleagues at Southern Cayuga teased out my content background, offered books and articles to read, engaged me in discussions on the knowledge I would need to be successful in the classroom and did all that in a manner that was constructive. New York State also required at least 30 graduate hours of credit in the first five years of teaching in the mid-1970s and those courses, plus help from my colleagues helped to fill many of my knowledge and pedagogy gaps. Kim had that kind of support from her colleagues at Zeeland, although she didn’t have the same postgraduate demands from the state of Michigan. Kim’s experience at Allendale is also one that faces many new teachers. A teacher leaves, many times through retirement, and empties out their files. The department is small so there might be only one teacher teaching the subject and there is no one and nothing to fall back on for advice in teaching a particular course. You sink or swim.
Beyond the content and methods, Kim returned to the relationship she struck up with her students. She admitted to them that she does not remember everything she learned in high school, or college, for that matter, but she wants them to understand the content that is given to them and how they might find out more knowledge if they wanted. She reinforced with her students that she remembered things from teachers who taught her how to study, cared about what they taught and got engaged with applying the knowledge to their students’ future lives and careers (Kocsis, video transcript, Feb 2008, p. 13).
Pearls of Wisdom
At first Kim said that she did not have any pearls to share with current students at GVSU, or anyone going into teaching as a career for that matter. After just four years and two schools with several class preparations and multiple extra duty assignments Kim was doing what every new teacher does: trying to survive and do what is best for their students. Quickly, however, she started to share some thoughts. First, no one and no program prepare you for everything you will face at the beginning of your career, especially extra duty assignments. One of the things Kim shared was to delegate responsibility to the students and act as a supervisor instead of trying to do everything yourself.
Another bit of wisdom was to set limits on yourself. Kim reflected on setting limits in this way:
There’s only so much that you can do, and (teaching) can become really consuming, and it still is at times…really consuming and you burn out fast. There are times when I just wanted to be done (with teaching) and “I want a 9 to 5 job. I want a job where I never took a bag filled with books so heavy that I needed two bags. I want that job.” And I would get paid double for that job (what I’m making now), but that’s not what I went to school for and that’s not what I love, and so it’s worth it if you can learn to set those limits. After that first year when I was taking all that homework home every single night and showing up to school at 6 in the morning, not leaving until 6 or something at night, like it was crazy, but I was trying to get everything done and grade everything and lesson plan everything and you don’t have to do it. You need to know what the kids need to learn, and then how you’re going to get there and then it’s a process. And if you laugh with them every day, and you have some fun in your room too and it’s all a party[2] and a game because there’s times when it’s not (Kocsis, video transcription, Feb 2008, pp. 14-15).
Lastly there was a ‘heads up’ to future teachers: the expectation that as a new and untenured teacher there was an expectation by administrators that they would not be turned down when they asked new teachers to take on additional duties. In Kim’s case she was asked to sponsor three proms and in her second year at Zeeland East to develop a brand new Advanced Placement Government course. Even with all that work and those expectations by the administration, especially at Zeeland, Kim knew that the administration took note of her long hours, suggested she leave the parking lot before 6 PM and take a break from some of her work. By the second semester of fourth year, despite the grading, course development, and extra duty responsibilities Kim knew that a time would come when courses would only need tweaking instead of constantly rebuilding, grading would be restructured to eliminate unnecessary assignments and there would be time to take a breath away from school.
Interview, 2015
In October 2015 Kim was no longer Kim Harrison. She was Kim Kocsis. She had left West Michigan and now was living near Detroit and working for the Oakland Intermediate School District as an instructional consultant focused on project-based learning, classroom climate and culture, and other methods of student engagement. Pontiac was on a watch list and threatened by a state takeover if changes and improvements were not forthcoming in student performance[3]. Kim had some definite questions that she used to answer the same question I asked her in 2008: How did she define “success” in the classroom? Her response were the form of questions: “Are those students engaged? Do those students feel cared about? Do they find meaning in what they are doing? Can they articulate to you what they are doing or what objective of the day or lesson is, or even the week or the unit? Are they striving to do their best? Are they reaching mastery of the standards? Can they articulate the connections (to the standards) to what’s happening in your classroom and the world outside?” (Kocsis, video transcript, Oct 2015, p.1)
Defining Success, 2015
Because of an interview I conducted with another participant in September of 2015 I also asked Kim about her feelings concerning student growth versus the results on “high stakes” tests. Kim said that measuring teacher success on how much students improve over time versus set standards was her personal philosophy, but in the case of Pontiac, the results of the state tests were all that really mattered. That measurement was a difficult one for Kim, especially when there were many students in the district who were reading below grade level. Kim’s personal experience in West Michigan was in the area encompassed by the Ottawa Area Intermediate School District. I have been a board member for that district for the last 10 years. I know of no other I.S.D. or Regional Educational Service Area (R.E.S.A.) that shares the same advantages that OAISD has. How can everyone be expected to live up to the same standards when the basic ingredients for success in teaching vary so much? That is not to say that there should not be high standards for all teachers and students, but rather that reality has to exist when, using the corporate/industrial model of high stakes testing, districts are working with varying types of raw material in producing their final product.
Challenges, 2015
The first challenge to Kim’s career was the layoffs she endured multiple times, and, yet, she admitted that those experiences led her to her position at Oakland ISD in the Instruction and Pedagogy Unit. She had no inkling in 2004 that her career would lead in that direction. Like many pre-service teachers and other members of the public, Kim had very little knowledge of what an ISD was or what it did. “In my first couple of years of teaching I could have really leaned on the ISD and the support there and I didn’t even know it existed. And so now working at one and providing support to the teachers in the county, that’s something that I had wish I had known” (Kocsis, video transcription, Oct 2015, p. 4). Not only was Kim changing jobs many times but she was missing out on a valuable resource that would have added her teaching.
Second on her list and compounded by her job changes was the need to accomplish as much as possible in the time provided. Most of the people in this study have admitted the same pressure. How best to serve the students under their care? She admitted this challenge was still a work in progress, even though she thought she was getting better at it. She asked her husband before this interview if she was getting better at time management and he shook his head “no.”
Third on her list was keeping up with all there is to know in education. “There is always the new tool or the new strategy or the new technology or the new program.” (Kocsis, video transcript., Oct 2015, p. 5) Increasing that challenge in Kim’s present position is the feeling that she must vet the best possible new ideas and processes and then translate those improvements to teachers in schools that do not have the same resources as teachers in more affluent districts. How do you keep a level playing field when you know you are fighting against the odds?
Next Kim focused on pulls: factors that shifted the focus away from instruction.
I think there are pulls everywhere, no matter what district you are in, but the more of a “priority” (“Frequently Asked Questions about Michigan’s Priority Schools”, accessed July 12, 2017, (http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mde/Priority_FAQ_427729_7.pdf) district that you are, the more of those outside “pulls” you are getting. So, you’ve got your state monitors and your reporting and all the extra testing, on top of the MME and the ACT or SAT. You have to run an ILT team (Instructional Leadership Team) and all of these things that tend to get “siloed” and become compliance rather than working together to move instruction forward and have students grow. So that’s been really challenging in helping them manage that, for both teachers and I said for administrators, too. There’s little time for administrators, and again, I’m talking about these “priority” districts, to do classroom walk-throughs or sit with a group of kids in a history class and hear about what they’re learning and then give honest feedback to those teachers about what’s going on in the school because they are constantly filling out reports and paperwork and sitting in meetings and being with monitors and it’s just… We’ve created a system that’s really broken. (Kocsis, video transcript, Oct 2015, p. 6)
I related to Kim an experience I had at a meeting with Ottawa County school administrators and how they were concerned about the changes in the law for teacher evaluation. There was a general feeling that there was no way to find the time for all the lengthy evaluations the administrators were supposed to accomplish, on top of their other duties. Kim’s response was that education was becoming more of a matter of compliance rather than focusing on student growth.[4] She reinforced the idea that the teachers and administrators were doing the best job that they could do, given the circumstances. (Kocsis, video transcript, Oct 2015, p. 6) Kim said there was one positive in the stress that the new evaluation system was causing at this time in 2015. Teachers and administrators in the Pontiac Schools, more than before, realized that they both were stressed by the amount of work they had to accomplish, and even though teachers’ morale was low, they had the feeling that their administrators were there for support. (Kocsis, video transcript, Oct 2015, p. 7)
Dealing With Stress, 2015
Kim dealt with stress primarily by working with her colleagues. She mentioned co-planning Economics lessons with a middle school teacher when she was teaching at Zeeland. Just the act of bouncing ideas off one another did not remove the amount of work but the collaboration made the process much easier. Educators do get “siloed” and focused on their own personal responsibilities without realizing that other teachers have the same responsibilities and many times the same classes to prepare for and it is possible to separate out that work and then share in the workload. Kim’s life changed when she became a mother. She realized that she had responsibilities to her own child and it was necessary to set a specific time in the evening to step away from her job and focus on her family.
One of Kim’s coping mechanisms is to keep a notebook by her bedside. During the night if she wakes up in the wee hours with an idea or a worry about a task to be completed, she simply writes it down and then she goes back to sleep. Just the simple act of committing the thought to paper helps her to rest. She admitted that writing something down in the middle of the night, no matter how well intentioned, sometimes ends up in some garbled reference when she reads it in the morning but she usually figures it out. She does put a “Do Not Disturb” message on her cell phone at 10 PM, but she still uses her phone for written and voice notes during the night. Between her phone, a physical notepad, a paper planner and sticky notes all over her desk she manages to keep organized and that helps to keep her stress level under control.
Motivation, 2015
Kim’s immediate answer was the students. Not just the students she saw in the halls every day in Pontiac but students from her past schools. She related a story of a tweet she recently received from one of her Zeeland students. This student shared the news that he just got his dream job as a graphic designer in Chicago. Those stories keep Kim going, even when she admitted that her life and career would have been much easier working in a 9 to 5 job, with no homework and no after work duties. She also said that there were so many negative stories in the media about education and teachers that dedicating yourself to the teaching profession was not an easy task…unless that dedication was for the right reason…caring about education and caring about the future of the students. That motivation and dedication carried over into Kim’s job as consultant with Pontiac. She knew the district was flagged as a Priority school and if there weren’t positive results in the near future then the district was in deeper trouble so being the best consultant she could be and helping teachers find resources in order to better engage their students was Kim’s motivation.
Another point of motivation for Kim was the importance of helping teachers and students with the explosion of information on the Web. Memorizing dates and names was passé. Finding the information needed to solve or avoid problems and then applying that information successfully was more important to Kim. Making it easier for teachers and students to learn to do this, especially teachers and students in challenging situations, was Kim’s biggest motivation at this time in her career.
Methods and Strategies, 2015
With all her experience in different districts and schools as a background Kim changed her approach to classroom instruction. If she had the opportunity to return to her previous classrooms Kim would disengage herself and her students from as much teacher-led instruction and create more student-led, inquiry-based lessons and learning. She was a PowerPoint lecturer, in part, but now teachers have the ability to pose questions and then have the students investigate and, with a constructivist approach, decide what is important for them to learn, with the teachers guiding the students with additional information and skills for interpreting and applying the information to their lives. Kim also appreciated the method of a blended learning or flipped classroom environment that involved more use of technology for accessing and applying information. She saw a blended learning classroom as an opportunity for differentiation in learning for students, with more opportunity for individualized instruction.
An area where Kim still did not have an answer for when thinking about teaching and learning was grading. She admitted that if it were not for “effort” grades and extra credit assignments, which displayed her perseverance and discipline) she might not have been an A/B high school student nor been accepted into Grand Valley State University. School districts are now experimenting with standards- or skills-based grading, but that form of assessment and evaluation is not universally in place in education. Another member of this study teaches at one of the schools where Kim taught and while Kim was there the discussion began about standards-based grading.[5] The district began the change in middle school and then moved it to the high school. Reported grades went from letters and numbers to “1-4”, based on a set of grading rubrics. As related to me by a current teacher in that district parents were somewhat skeptical in how those grades might be interpreted by colleges so the district created a kind of interpretive calculator and that seemed to calm the fears of the parents. As far as I know that district has not reverted to the old grading scheme and I have not heard nor read of any problems this grading scheme has caused with college acceptance procedures.
Another area of interest for Kim in the area of teaching methods and strategies was project-based learning. Kim was running project-based learning cohorts through the Pontiac School District when I interviewed her in 2015. She would work with a group of teachers for five days and then the teachers would apply those lessons in their classrooms. Finally, they would return to Kim with the results and reflect on what they and their students learned through the process. Kim also said that she incorporated project-based learning from the beginning of her teaching career at Allendale. She knew that there was a trade-off in terms of the amount of material that could be covered in a traditional, teacher-centered approach versus a project-based learning approach but based on the types of informal learning students encounter outside of the regular school environment and the impossibility of knowing all the information that exists today, a project-based approach is meaningful. The ability to find the information that is needed and apply that information to a particular problem is better than building a huge content base which may not be applicable to students’ lives or careers.
Kim was very much aware that at the time of this interview that “high stakes testing” with summative assessments was the way K-12 education was measured, but she considered project-based learning as a different and more engaging process for the students, which may lead to similar results on traditional assessment. If students have a better understanding of the basis for information and are more engaged in the process of developing and creating meaningful (to them) applications of that knowledge then they should retain what they learn.
Evaluation, 2015
Kim related that in her first five years of teaching about the only evaluation of her teaching that she received was through formal, scheduled observations. A result was that she depended more on the assessments she gave her students as a means of developing feedback about her teaching. As for her formal assessments, Kim had this to say: “I felt like, ‘Ok, you have got to put on the show’ when this person comes in because this is what everything is based on and the truth is sometimes they wouldn’t even stay for the whole time…and it didn’t feel meaningful because we would have a kind of conversation but it would never go very deep and then it would be, ‘Ok, sign the paper. It’s filed. Your evaluation is filed.’” (Kocsis, video transcript, p. 19, 2015) Her experience changed for the better when she taught at Hamilton. Her administrator thought feedback was very important and went beyond the formal, scheduled observations. No matter how long he stayed in her classroom he always developed a conversation with her about what he observed. In a good way she felt pushed professionally. The whole staff had meetings about the evaluation process and how and why the process was conducted the way it was.
Although Kim continued using student assessments, she now thought that she should have followed the same path as her administrator and continually set up conversations with her students in order to gain insight into how and what they learned and how she taught. Now that she is working as a consultant with Oakland I.S.D. she is “providing a lot of ongoing feedback to teachers and it’s mostly informal.” (Kocsis, video transcript, Oct 2015, p. 19) Kim conducts classroom observations and then comments with great things she saw and some things to think about. (Kocsis, video transcript, Oct 2015, p. 20) In three years she has developed positive relationships with teachers. They are reaching out to her for feedback, not just from Kim’s workshops, but also on their daily lesson planning.
Kim agreed with me that it was not so much the manner or format of the teacher evaluation, whether it might be the Danielson Framework (http://www.danielsongroup.org/framework/) or Marzano (http://www.marzanoevaluation.com/) but rather in how that model is used and especially the amount and depth of feedback presented on a consistent and regular basis. Is there constant and constructive conversation about teaching or is it the “one and done” model? In Kim’s words: “And the ability for the administrator to be that instructional leader and be able to, and if not be able to offer some support on the specific thing that that you are doing, be able to point you to a resource that does. Just having that toolkit (as an administrator and instructional leader). Rather than just checking the boxes. I don’t think the tool matters as much as what that administrator is doing with it.” (Kocsis, video transcript, Oct 2015, p. 22)
Mentoring, 2015
Kim thought her professors at GVSU, during her undergrad work, and Western Michigan, during her graduate work were good mentors. She also had a good mentoring work done by her principal at Hamilton and through the people she works with at Oakland. The teachers who were assigned her as mentors, based on the amount of time their own responsibilities demanded, were focused on the minutiae of the job, e.g. how to put in paperwork for substitutes, the daily schedule, how to get copies…practical things…but not about “growing as a professional or as a teacher” (Kocsis, video transcript, Oct 2015, p. 22). Kim knows that part of the problem is the lack of time that teachers have in order to be effective teachers. Responsibilities beyond the teaching standards keep being added to the list of things to do and there are some misplaced priorities when it comes to providing effective instructional leadership, both by teachers and administrators. This is more of a systemic problem than it is a personal one.
Continuing Education, 2015
Kim earned her Master’s in Educational Leadership with a focus on Curriculum and Instruction and later received her K-12 Principal’s certification. Her professional development at her first two school districts many times represented the “one and done” model. In the districts where I taught in New York and Kansas and in conversations with teachers from many states in the various conferences and institutes I attended over the years it seems that professional development takes the form of the soup of the day model. What new educational reform would be good to study once, implement on a short time scale and then ditch when the next latest and greatest idea comes down the pike? Kim realized a new model for professional development at Hamilton where she encountered a true professional learning community. In that case the district studied formative assessment for a year with a constant feedback loop. They had a book study, as a staff, and had a conversation around it. Her comments reminded me of the discussions surrounding my high school in Kansas. We spent several years studying the possibility of block scheduling before we actually launched the new schedule. Not everyone was happy with the format but there was more than enough time and discussion, with multiple opportunities to attend conferences and visit other schools that had adopted some sort of block schedule.
Basically, Kim said that the majority of her professional development throughout her career was a matter of making sense and stitching together her various opportunities and by herself she decided what ideas to keep and implement and what ideas would not appear in her classroom. The greatest benefit to her teaching was she has been able to develop a process for deciding what and how to provide good professional learning opportunities for the districts she consults (Kocsis, video transcript, Oct 2015, p. 24).
Kim has witnessed a move toward more in house professional development versus PD provided through the ISD. Oakland ISD was pursuing ways it might support this change in who provides the training and she agreed that teachers respond positively to professional development led by their own colleagues and administration. She also was charged with investigating and presenting on blended instruction, both from the application to the classroom and as a part of teacher professional development. She had not made a podcast as of fall of 2015 but there was a studio at Oakland and she knew that it could be done.
Pearls of Wisdom, 2015
Kim told me that when she was preparing for the interview she felt really negative about what she might say when offering advice to future teachers. Her idea of a reality check was that good teachers work really hard, and, at the same time, teachers need balance between their professional and personal lives. Her two questions for future teachers were, “Am I really prepared for this job that doesn’t turn itself off, even over the summer, if I am going to do it right?” and “How am I going to deal with that (the amount of necessary work) and manage it?” Almost all the teachers in this study had similar words at some point in their interviews and almost all of them told me that they still are working on perfecting the work/life balance. Her other advice was for future teachers to reach out to their colleagues and start building collaborative teams. She was cognizant that new teachers might think themselves pests if they continually asked questions or asked for help and ideas for their classrooms, but this was no profession to “go it alone.” Even though keeping to yourself may show independence and individual responsibility, it is far more productive to work together.
Her next comment was echoed by many of the people in this study. Education and teaching is political. Not just political in the sense of national or state politics and policy but rather internal and district politics. She didn’t elaborate on that comment but with her background and experience in all of her previous jobs I got the sense that, like many teachers, Kim knew that the relationships between teachers, with the community and the administration is sometimes fraught with conflicting views and agendas. Whether is it the politics of teacher unions; teacher associations; school board agendas; administration and teacher relations or even teacher to teacher relations, there is much to learn in the educational landscape for people new to the profession and those politics change from place to place and district to district.
I started to think about how I might address the nature of educational politics with my GVSU students but after consulting with my colleagues and other teachers I realized that all politics are local and beyond mentioning that there are politics in many different settings the nature of those relations is so specific that teachers need to learn on their own what exists in their school. A university classroom discussion will not provide the specific information necessary to effectively cope with the reality that exists.
Beyond those comments, Kim said her career was well worth the challenges. To receive a tweet from a former student who had to share with Kim that she/he just got a job as a graphic designer in Chicago or another student’s email that she just realized her dream job in Washington, D.C makes the challenges worth bearing, as long as teachers are prepared to face those challenges.
Kim’s last word of advice concerned economic disparity between school districts and sometimes within districts at different schools. Even though her GVSU field experience required two different placements in two different schools, she still did not feel she was ready to handle what she experienced, especially when those placements happened after she had already dedicated four years to her content major and minor. Her suggestion was for teacher preparation programs to have their students out in field every year, as much as possible, in as many different schools as possible. In the fall of 2015 her younger sister was attending Oakland University near Detroit, majoring in elementary education. Kim’s sister, for varying amounts of time, had been in various schools every year she attended college. It might be two days or week or a drop in once a week, but even those limited time experiences would give a potential teacher a better background in which for deciding whether or not a teaching career was their best path for the future.
Kim is very definitely a survivor. Based on the statistics for new teachers leaving the profession, she has beaten the odds given the challenges she has faced. Without a doubt her focus on doing what is best the students and the teachers under her care and guidance has given her the strength and persistence to continue doing what is best for them and for her.
- I sent Kim the first draft of her chapter and she modified what she said here. Her words, “Yuck, I can’t believe I said that.” Instead of “imposing wisdom” she wished she had said, “helping students learn” or something similar. ↵
- Kim reflected later that, “it is also important to laugh and have joy in the classroom as well…not necessarily treat the classroom as a party. ↵
- Kim added this explanation in a Google Document email: “When I first started at OS in the 2011-2012 school year I worked as a project coordinator for an alternative high school program we were running in the county at the time. This was a natural transition for me because the last two years I had worked in alternative education and was almost finished with my masters in Ed Leadership. The program allowed students in Oakland County who found themselves disengaged with traditional high school a different way of doing things. Through blended and project based learning, we worked with our students to help them earn the credits they needed to graduate from high school. My responsibilities included supervising the teachers in our program, coordinating with families and their home schools (the diplomas came through the home district), and advising students as they worked through the program. In 2013 I was asked if I would transition from the coordinator position to being a consultant for the Pontiac School District. At the time Pontiac had a few schools on the state priority list and was at the start of the turnaround process. My role included supporting teachers and administrators at the secondary level with blended learning and project based learning instructional strategies.” ↵
- Email, Google Document, Kim Kocsis, August 8, 2017. ↵
- Email, Google Document, Kim Kocsis, August 8, 2017. “My thoughts on grading explained more--ultimately through all of my experiences in the classroom and working with other teachers in their classrooms, I definitely lean toward a more standards based approach to grading for students. Students should be evaluated on what they know and can do. When I was first in the classroom I spent so much time giving points for every thing students did, looking back I would definitely consider homework practice as students would always be working toward the goal of their learning objectives. Although I used formative assessment in the past, I do not think I used it enough or truly used the data the way I should have. I would definitely spend more time with that data now to make sure that each of my students was on the right path.” ↵
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