ALWAYS FREE

COHORT CORNER
D.C. REGION PILOT COHORT / NOVEMBER 14, 2011
Please send along your students most recent assessment data so I can be looped in about where your kids are and we can use the data to inform next steps in our work together. Im building a site out for our cohort, but would love you all to add some resources in our cohort Drobpox entitled Pilot Cohort Site. Youre all doing incredible things in your classrooms and I want to be able to spread the resource love! Check your inbox for the Dropbox invite!

Issue # 5

Action Items
SEND YOUR STUDENTS MOST RECENT ACHIEVEMENT RESULTS

SHARE RESOURCES ON OUR COHORT DROPBOX!

Announcements











COHORT BRUNCH What: An important opportunity for us to reconnect as a cohort, as well as to brainstorm and provide input on strategies
collaborating and the kinds of learning for experiences we want to undergo together. RSVP and record your brunch item here! When; December 4th @ 1pm Where: Chelsea Kirks! (1400 Irving St NW, Apt 221) TFA HOLIDAY PARTY What: Come kick off the holiday season with staff and CMs and celebrate the work you and your colleagues have done this year at our annual holiday party! When: Friday, December 9th, time TBD

What is your Why?

In Early November, members of our cohort sat down with Steven Farr, and he asked how everyone was doing. Everyone was feeling differently, but a common response was that people felt decent about their teaching, understood their content areas better than they did in year 1, and felt like their quality of life is better, but did not feel fully fullled or inspired by their work. He then circled back with a statement and a question. You work too hard to not love what you do. What is your why?
This question was especially timely for many reasons. With a few months of teaching under our belt, weve all been reminded of just how high the mountain is that we set out to climb. In order to reach the top, we need emotional and psychological nourishment. We need to take care of ourselves, to nd comfort in the small wins, and most importantly, to remain grounded in what inspires us to do our best work.
One of the most common misnomers about transformational teaching is that theres one archetype for what that looks like. Its easy to think we all need to look like Rebecca Snyder, and if not, weve obviously failed in our quest to have a lasting impact on our students. This is simply not true. As Rebecca herself said, if you tried to do everything she did the way she did it, you wont get the same outcomes.
Rather, as Steven reected, its the teachers who most faithfully abide by their own personal convictions, seek out opportunities for re-inspiration, and remain grounded in their visions that truly realize this level of impact.
When you walk into these incredible teachers classrooms, theyre unmistakably their own, he said. You can see the teacher everywhere. If the teacher likes music, you hear music playing all the time. If they enjoy Shakespeare, the kids perform Shakespeare. Great teachers bring themselves into their classrooms.
His message: know yourself and what drives you in this work, and then bring yourself into your work.
As I think about our cohort, Im eager to re-center us back on why we all rst joined together back in August: to commune and collaborate with each other to achieve transformational change with our students.You all set out to do something different and extraordinary with your students this year, and Im eager to talk with you about how well work together until June to make that happen and also share some ideas your colleagues have already been discussing at our post-break cohort brunch on Sunday, December 4th!

Resource Spotlight



















EVOLUTION OF A VISION Follow one 2011 CM as he experiences the evolution of his vision, reects on the challenges of October and opening himself up emotionally to his students. RESOURCES FROM BROOKLYN LATIN Check out this zip folder of awesome rubrics that Brooklyn Latin HS teachers use to evaluate students performance on formative science activities, Socratic seminars, as well as their collaboration skills
MATH/SCIENCE WEB SITE! Looking for an awesome library of engaging online math and science simulations? Jordan recommends that you check out Gizmos! You pay to create an account, but can alternate between email addresses to extend that 30-day trial :) NEW DISCUSSION TECHNIQUE Check out this awesome discussion technique that Eliza found at a recent PD! MATH COMMON CORE VIDEO LESSONS Get ideas for how to teach Common Core Math content for grades 3-9 at Learnzillion (thanks, Cendahl!) PARENT CONFERENCES POWERPOINT See how Julia Sadowsky shares students holistic progress and tips for ways parents can support learning with an amazingly concrete PowerPoint

Team Shout Outs

Chelsea Kirk and Shajena Erazofor sharing powerful insights during our discussion with Steven Farr. Notably, Shajena made the case for grounding our cohort conversations in the why behind the work we do, while Chelsea emphasized the importance of recognizing that teachers themselves arent suddenly transformational, but that they facilitate transformational learning experiences that can have a lasting impact. By shifting the conversation in that direction, she moved us away from viewing transformational teaching as some absolute threshold that we do or do not meet, but rather as a collection of powerful moments that can occur in any classroom. I also want to shout them out for reaching out to share their ideas for fostering collaboration and culture between members of our cohort, and for working with me to brainstorm ideas for an inspiring video well be putting together to ground their students in their visions. I look forward to sharing that out when we wrap that up!-Joaquin Anne Marie, CJ, Maria, Alex, Anamika, Jordan, Laure and Beth for an amazing Excellent School Visit trip and for staying positive through all the crazy bus adventures--Debbie Sim Gillon Crichtonfor hosting awesome Saturday tutoring sessions with his students!--Megan Indira Cruzfor developing airtight systems and routines ,elevating rigor by immersing all of her students (even with her beginning Spanish kids) in the target language, and for pursuing her vision of moving away from packet work to interactive activities that push her students to apply what they are learning! --Joaquin Meredith Ackermanfor spearheading the awesome TFA Social Committee! I had an awesome time at DC9 and at the pumpkin patch!--Beth Megan Gilbertfor recruiting a TON of parents to come on her Smithsonian eld trip - just one of the MANY ways that I've seen her get families involved early on in the year!! Go Meg!!--Campbell Josh Johnsonfor working months in advance to put together an incredible campus-wide science fair for the entire Prek-8th grade student body and reaching out to Campbell to collaborate around ways that he can bring his school on board. working with me to brainstorm a holistic way to give feedback to his students that helps them receive and then apply feedback on their academic performance as well as their performance against the class value expectations. --Joaquin

they wanted to make their family members, friends, or themselves proud. By pushing kids to make meaningful connections to their short and long-term goals, she is helping kids to understand the motivating purpose behind the hard work they are doing. --Joaquin Lydia Peelefor going out of her way to reach out to parents and families of her middle schoolers by conducting home visits. By doing so, she is building positive relationships with her most hard-to-reach students and families and reected that doing so made students feeling incredibly valued. I was also impressed to see incorporate a seminar activity in her Math class, which provided her kids with a meaningful way to practice their accountable talk and discussion skills. --Joaquin Eliza, Molly, Gillon, and Campbell--for inviting parents and families to join our parent/student panel during Cohort time at the last PDS. After, several CMs from our cohort reached out Lia and I to share that the insights they gleaned from these parents and students perspectives pushed their thinking and inspired them to take meaningful steps to build more meaningful relationships with families. --Joaquin Chelsea Kirkfor being a constant source of joy, encouragement, and fun in my life. Looking forward to many more years of teaching and friendship!-Shajena Anne Marie Norgrenfor facilitating an awesome series of expositions (or boardwork), which she picked up on during our excellent school visit to Brooklyn Latin High School. I was inspired by how she used this activity to elevate rigor in her classroom. At each stage, presenters had to justify their responses using precise math language while their peers evaluated presenters answers for accuracy. After, they provided their peers with meaningful feedback on their presentation skills using their iPads. Not only did she use this activity as an opportunity to push their Math knowledge, but she added some innovative twists to help kids improve their public speaking skills and tech literacy. --Joaquin Joaquinfor planning an awesome ESV trip for our region!--Beth Clair Briggsfor being quick to implement changes in her classroom that led to visible improvements with some of her most challenging mods! Im excited to work with her to build on this string of wins :)--Joaquin Indira Cruz for her extreme dedication to her kids and for a muchneeded chat on PDS Saturday - thanks for keepin' it real with me!! :)--Campbell Josh Johnsonfor going above and beyond with his kids by getting an awesome grant for the second year in a row! Can't wait for more crazy greenhouse stories :)--Kelly Gleischman Lauren, Josh, and Beth for running an awesome session on Socratic seminars at PDS!--Meredith Anamika Dwivedifor reaching out proactively to a staff member to brainstorm ways in which we could extend the learning experiences that CMs are undergoing in our cohort to teachers in other cohorts. I love how shes viewing the region holistically and not just thinking about her or our cohorts students, but what needs to be true to maximize the experience for CMs and students across our region. --Joaquin Anne Marie Norgrenfor holding it down out in PG!--Cendahl Alex Kruppfor modifying Laurens high school debate resources to facilitate a debate with her elementary students. Although she was unsure of how it would go over, she realized that students would need more opportunities to converse with each other if she wanted them to realize her vision of pushing her students to become Socratic scholars. After, she reected that passing the reins along to students was not only liberating for her, but highly motivating and empowering for students. Engagement spiked, in large part because students were asked not to recall others views but to share their opinions in a structured and constructive way. --Joaquin Carolyn Byrnefor reaching out to collaborate around an idea she has for partnering with a diverse array of experienced staff and educators to helps ECE CMs in our region develop a clear vision for what learning experiences students in early childhood classrooms should experience to be set up for long-term success. Im excited to work with her and other ECE CMs and staff in our region to facilitate a conversation that I know could push the thinking of many students. --Joaquin Chelsea Kirkfor being a great inspiration to me this year!-Anne Marie

Anamika Dwivedifor laughing loudly at my ridiculous Science jokes

after our adventures in bus-riding. Thanks to my other ESV pals for keeping me sane and entertained and for being great listeners and travel companions.--Beth Joaquinwho works endlessly to help make us a better group of transformative teachers!--Shajena Campbell Glennfor successfully launching a school-wide management system that she learned about while visiting Uncommon Schools. This system allows students to earn bucks for meeting school expectations, which they can then exchange at a quarterly auction for tangible rewards. Kudos to her for working to cast a wider net of impact on school culture and for persisting through challenging interactions with colleagues to build consensus and get teachers behind this successful initiative. --Joaquin Gillon Crichtonfor pushing his students to engage in higher-order thinking through the careful integration of reading and writing instruction and ipping the script on his instruction by facilitating an innovative lesson in which students spent the rst half studying about and learning a topic and then second half teaching each other topic. During this lesson, kids studied a text, extracted key ideas from it, and then taught those key ideas to their classmates. This student-centered approach to instruction made for very little teacher talk and pushed kids to do a lot of the heavy cognitive work. --Joaquin Josh and Laurenfor sharing their awesome Socratic seminar resources and ideas! So excited to try out lots of your suggestions!--Beth Nicole Spoelmafor using morning meeting as an important vehicle for fostering a trusting environment, reect as a class on their progress toward reading goals, and establishing a personal link to their goals. During my last visit, one student proclaimed that she wants to work hard so that she could be the rst in their family to graduate from high school, while others shared how