Regional Teacher of the Y ear Gathering June 2013

1. Regional Teacher of the Year GatheringJune 2013 Focus Group Findings

2. Background • The ATPE Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation and public charity dedicated to the advancement of public education and the success of Texas schoolchildren through educator recruitment and retention efforts, literacy initiatives and technology programs. • The ATPE Foundation invited all 2012-13 Texas Regional Teachers of the Year to a gathering June 17–19, 2013, in Austin, Texas. • The goal of the gathering was to both honor the accomplishments of these great educators and to gather information that would help education organizations, state agencies, school districts and legislators improve public education. • In order to achieve the goal, staff members from Creative Consumer Research conducted focus groups to gather the educators’ opinions on topics including educator support, retention, technology, literacy and trending education issues.

3. Methodology • Five discussion sessions were held in conference rooms at the Sheraton Austin at The Capitol in Austin, Texas. • Each session lasted approximately 1.5 hours and was moderated by Joyce Walter and Joy Durham of Creative Consumer Research. • Sessions were conducted using an approved moderator's guide. • In the report and transcripts, no names are associated with the educators that participated in this study. • This report is based on the discussions from the focus groups. • It is important to note that the purpose of a focus group is to gather the opinions and attitudes of a small number of individuals. • Because of the small number and the interaction between respondents, the results of focus groups cannot be projected onto the population as a whole.

4. Support and Retention Participants felt that any teacher who is new to a particular teaching environment needs support and guidance, whether he is a veteran or a novice or was certified through a traditional or alternative certification program. Mentoring is an essential part of retaining educators. Campus-level mentoring programs are particularly helpful. Recommendation: Every campus in the state should have a mentoring program. • “Without a model to follow, you really don’t know where to go and how to go. There are a lot of examples out there where maybe there wasn’t a model [but] teachers still strive to achieve that greatness because they have that internal motivation, that laser focus to [create] relationships with the kids and be the best they can be, and they found a way to get there themselves. [With] some sort of mentoring and through some type of model to follow, you can get there faster and more efficiently and probably enjoy it more than if you have to struggle to get there yourself. “ • “At my campus, we’ve lost a few that were early teachers, less than five years experience, and I think part of that is because of a lack of leadership or a lack of support that they really needed to keep them in the profession.” • “What’s helped in our district is to have a common planning period with the mentor teacher.” • “You should never say arbitrarily you’re going to be a mentor; it should be somebody who wants to.”

5. Support and Retention Participants stated that support needs to come from all levels—campus and district administrators, parents, the business community, regions and the state. Recommendation: Develop programs to bring members of the community into the state’s classrooms so that they can experience an average day at their local public school. • “Elementary schools do a really great job of bringing the parents in. [You] get a lot more buy-in, a lot more contribution from parents and even the businesses for [which] they work. You get to middle school, and it gets a little smaller; then you get to high school, and there’s almost no engagement with the parents on that level. [We] need to do a better job of encouraging that continuum.” • “Regional service center folks have been in the trenches; I don’t know a single one there that hasn’t been a teacher, and I’m so thankful for them because they understand your needs.” • “Legislators need to spend a day in a classroom.”

6. Support and Retention Participants felt that many colleges, universities and alternative certification programs need to do a better job of training future educators for the classroom. Recommendation: Allow student teachers more time in the classroom to observe teaching in action. • “Student teaching has got to be revamped. Those kids don’t know where to start. They’re putting in an eight-hour-plus day for I don’t know how long. The paperwork that they have to do—there’s a [huge] binder and they’re pulling stuff out of there every day. They’re so busy doing the paperwork that they’re really not learning how to teach.” • “Maybe more observation during the college years, so [that] they know for sure that teaching is what they want to do and [that] they have more of a chance to see different types of teaching styles.” • “Just talking about the university I graduated from, I would say that their biggest downfall is a lack of [education] professors [who] were ever in the classroom themselves.”

7. Literacy and Technology Participants felt that literacy is a key component to student success in all subject areas. Technology is playing an increasing role in literacy education; however, the human element is critical. Parental involvement and fostering the joy of reading are both important factors in students becoming successful readers. Recommendations: Develop programs to better integrate literacy in all course subjects. • “We need more curricula that fuses subjects together so that kids can start seeing meaningful connections to the real world.” • “Social studies tests and science tests have become more like reading tests.” • “A lot of times, there[are] teachers [who] say, ‘I’m a math teacher; why should I have my kids write?’ [These teachers] don’t see [that] there needs to be reading and writing in all of these classes.” Integrate technology to improve reading fluency and comprehension and engage students. • “Audio books help with fluency a lot. Your reading level is always two levels below what your listening comprehension level is, so when you’re hearing it at the same time you’re looking at it, I think that helps a lot.” • “There are many videos and discussion [ideas] on YouTube—little snippets—that will help you to deliver your content better.” • “At our school, the kids bring Kindles or their iPhones or iPads. I’m not even very good at technology, but we use it, and it is amazing how engrossed the kids [are] and [how] they [read] to each other.”

8. Literacy and Technology Participants stated that technology is used daily to deliver content in virtually all classrooms across the state, yet adequate training and broadband problems continue to be issues. Virtual textbooks and “Bring Your Own Device” policies are helping to further integrate technology into the classroom and deliver up-to-date content in more engaging formats. Recommendations: Districts need to invest resources in technology training for educators and in hardware, software and broadband improvements to expand accessibility for all Texas schoolchildren. • “[Regarding] technology training, there is a lack of follow-through and practice.” • “Some of the best technology training [sessions] that I’ve been to weren’t just ‘here’s how to use it’; there was a time period to practice, they asked us to bring our lesson plans, our thumb drives, or our laptop, or whatever we had. Then they said ‘open up what you’ve got, and let’s figure out how you’re going to use it.’” • “Where I’m at now, we don’t have any WiFi at the school. That has been a big disadvantage for our students.” • “We’ve had difficulties with bandwidth at our school. Whether it’s been us trying to access certain programs or do certain things like live Web casting out to or with somebody else, that’s always been a real big issue.”

9. Literacy and Technology Districts should consider “Bring Your Own Device” policies in order to keep pace with rapidly advancing technology and the costs that go along with providing that technology. • “I’m excited that we are bringing our own technology because there is no way the school districts are ever going to be able to provide enough technology for these kids.” • “Until all districts across Texas start letting kids bring their own devices, we are never going to be able to keep up, money-wise.” • “Technology is constantly changing, [so making] that huge investment [is questionable]; in five or 10 years down the road, it’s not going to be relevant anymore. Bring Your Own Device is a much better decision.”

10. Trending Topics in Education Participants identified school funding, the public’s perception of public education and standardized testing as some of the most pressing issues facing Texas public school educators today. Recommendations: Develop a unified public relations/marketing campaign for Texas public schools to change public perception and encourage an increase in funding. • “Education is underfunded because it is not valued. Once it becomes valued enough and important enough, then that becomes a focus point of the public’s attention and efforts. Until that happens, and until the Legislature and the public makes that shift, I don’t see that it will happen.” • “A [public relations] campaign is needed. Do you know what your teachers do behind the scenes? What they do with much less than you think they do? What they have to purchase on their own? What they do with their summers? What they do after 3:30 p.m.? What they do before 7:30 a.m.? What they do on the weekends? Unless you’ve lived with a teacher, most people don’t know.” • “Can you image if the true story came out in every newspaper across Texas about local teachers, what [the profession is] really like? It’d raise a fire, stir some controversy.”

11. Trending Topics in Education Student achievement should be measured more on individual gains in performance than on results of standardized testing. • “You’ve got to test based on how is the student doing—not just on their math, reading, writing and science. How is this child doing as an educated person?” • “It’s like you’re putting together a photo album of each child’s progress. You want snapshots of where they started and where they are now. How did they get there, and what kind of growth happened throughout [the] whole year?” • “You are dealing with individual children and individual skill sets for every single one of those kids. They’re not all equal. They’re not going to be all equal. Having a cookie-cutter test that you expect every kid to reach exactly the same [level] on is very, very unfair. We’re all different humans, and that human element is going to come into play. ” • “I love a cartoon I saw recently that has a picture of the teacher standing in front of different kinds of animals [including elephants and fish] and [reads] ‘we’re going to test you today on how high you can climb a tree.’ We have our children succeed in different areas, and when we force them all to succeed equally, I think we’re doing them a disservice and sometimes discouraging them from rising to their fullest potential in that area in which they [are] gifted.” • “I think there’s a disconnect between what legislators think rigor is and what we think rigor is and how many standards we’re teaching compared to other states. “