New Teachers- Middle School Edition

The Promise Podcast

Today’s episode is all about new teachers. What are the biggest struggles they are facing in the classroom, are these struggles what they expected, what advice would they give to people considering this profession? I had so much interest in this episode that we decided to make it a three-part series. We are going to start with our middle school teachers, then next month you’ll hear from our high school teachers, and lastly, you’ll hear from elementary teachers. If you are an elementary teacher and are interested in being a part of the show, please reach out to me at [e-mail].

Before we start this specific episode with our middle school teachers, I want to explain a few things that are talked about during the show. If you aren’t in the education world you may need a few acronyms explained- when we talk about RTI- that stands for Response to Intervention. It’s our way to make sure that every student is getting what they need and if they don’t understand a concept, how will we make sure they get there? At Washington Middle School, where I teach and where the teachers you are about to hear from teach, we do this in three ways. We first have classroom pause days, where teachers pause and use formative assessments to see where the class as a whole is lacking. Did everyone miss a concept? Does the teacher need to explain that in a different way, or do the students need more time to break down this idea? Or maybe, the teacher was planning on spending a lot more time on a topic that students have already grasped and they can move on. That is called tier 1 instruction. The next step is tier 2. Teachers have retaught a concept in a new way or given more time, but the students still haven’t mastered it. They need additional time or resources- Washington does this by what we call AO. This stands for Academic opportunity. This is a 30-minute block of intervention time. It’s new to us this year, and taking some time to get used to, as you’ll hear in the episode. The idea is that students are placed in various AO classes by their teachers. Maybe we had a test over main idea and you still aren’t getting it. As your literacy teacher, I may request that you come see me next week so I can work with you and the other students who are still struggling with that concept. We keep our intervention groups for AO at no more than 10. We have a lot of content groups that break up concepts that need to be covered and share kids. So maybe if I’m doing Main Idea next week, the other literacy teacher may be doing theme. This helps us get out of the mentality that they are “my” kids, and change to they are all “our” kids. If students have mastered a concept that’s being covered and no teachers need them for that day, they get to choose an enrichment class based on their interests. And just to finish this explanation, tier 3 would be students who are significantly below and need all three tiers, so they are maybe in a class that is covering concepts from previous grade levels, basics that the student is still struggling with. Anyway- all of that to explain our process here for RTI, because this is something you’ll hear new teachers discuss in this particular episode and I didn’t want you to be lost.

I was surprised by a lot of what I heard from our new teachers, but also really encouraged, they are working hard and doing a great job. I had a lot of fun talking with them and I can’t wait to share this conversation with you, so let’s get started.