In this episode, we are joined by Gina Gamnis, Executive Director for AVID Center in the Upper Midwest Area. Gina shares her insights into the skills that students need to be future-ready as well as proven classroom strategies for enabling students to develop those skills. She shares practices from AVID classrooms that can be used in any classroom, and she introduces listeners to the AVID Certified Educator program.
. . . Leverage collective educator agency to collaboratively build and routinize philosophies, approaches, and practices that result in college and career readiness for students.
AVID Center, in describing the AVID Certified Educator program
Resources
The following resources are available from AVID and on AVID Open Access to explore related topics in more depth:
- Relationships: The Secret Ingredient in the Recipe of Success, with Robin Ilac (podcast episode)
- Accelerate Learning by Making Connections: Build Trust Through Relationships, Community, and Connection (article)
- Community-Building Strategies (podcast episode)
- Recognize Students and Celebrate Together (article)
- Accelerating Learning with AVID to Empower Students and Educators Through Agency, with Dr. Lynn Kepp (podcast episode)
- Sparking Collective Educator Agency: Reigniting Hope Through Professional Learning, with Jenn Nagle (podcast episode)
Intentional Design
Not all students come to our classrooms having had the same opportunities to build skills and develop confidence. As a result, it’s important for teachers to be intentional about designing classroom learning experiences that help all students develop those types of lifelong success skills. Gina emphasizes this point, saying, “That intentional design as an educator creates the opportunity for every single student in the room to build those skills—not just those kids who came in with a little bit higher level of those skills, but every single student.”
One of the conditions that enables these rich learning experiences is a supportive classroom community. While it takes time to develop this, Gina believes that it’s critical, saying, “It is time that is very, very well spent, and it pays back in dividends for the types of academic experiences that students have when there’s a community built where they feel comfortable engaging fully. Not every student comes into every classroom feeling that way. When it’s created intentionally, then every student has that opportunity and can learn at high levels, engage at high levels, and build skills at high levels, too.” The following are a few highlights from this episode:
- About Our Guest: Gina Gamnis is Executive Director in the Upper Midwest Area for AVID Center. Prior to her 11 years with AVID, Gina was a middle school science teacher and an AVID Elective teacher. She has also worked in curriculum and instruction at the district level supporting AVID. Gina is passionate about “supporting schools, and districts, and educators in implementing AVID and finding the best ways to support their students in being college- and career-ready.”
- Student Skills: Gina feels grateful to be able to talk with students from schools across the country and learn what skills they value. Among other areas, she says that students need skills in information literacy and evaluating, analyzing, and discerning the accuracy and reliability of that information. She also says that they need to be able to have a “productive, academic discussion,” use their voices, and engage in discourse that is “respectful and productive.”
- More Than Career Awareness: Gina says, “Kids need to be able to know not only what they want to do but what problems they want to solve [and] how they want to engage with other people in the world.”
- Learning Experiences: Gina stresses, “As educators, we just need to be intentional to build this space for students to practice those skills.” Those foundational skills must be integrated into the design of the classroom. Integrated skills, such as setting goals and attaining them, help students build confidence.
- Scaffolds: Part of effective learning design is integrating scaffolds and supports. Gina shares the example of academic language sentence stems as one way to help build confidence and related skills with public speaking and small-group communication.
- AVID Elective Classrooms: Gina values the practices that she has experienced in AVID Elective classrooms—practices that she says can be scaled and used in any classroom. Among these strategies, she points out AVID’s WICOR® (Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization, and Reading) methodology and the creation of a “student-centered, student-owned environment.”
- Tutorials: One AVID practice that empowers students is the tutorial process. Tutorials typically occur twice per week and require students to share an area of learning where they are struggling and need support. Classmates then engage in a collaborative inquiry process to work together to answer questions posed by one of their peers. It’s a process that builds communication skills, critical thinking, collaboration, confidence, and more. Gina points out that student confidence grows through this process because students are “supporting, encouraging, and celebrating each other.”
- Community: Gina says, “We know that relationships are super important in education. There is a multitude of studies that will point to relationships being the number one factor in student success.” She shares specific strategies for developing classroom community, such as doorway greetings, birthday walls, and classroom celebrations.
- Community Building Takes Time: Gina says that while community building is important in the first weeks of school, it can’t stop there. It needs to be consistently developed throughout the school year. She says, “It takes time to build that kind of trust, so you have to show up day after day after day—not just saying that you care and you believe but showing that you care and you believe, and providing the support, and being there right alongside with the students, letting them know that their success is your goal every single day.”
- More Than Teacher-Student Relationships: While Gina agrees that mutual trust between a teacher and their students is of great importance, she also says, “If you really want them [students] to become critical thinkers, and innovative problem-solvers, and collaborative team members, they have to feel that sense of community and feel comfortable with their peers, too.”
- Improving Academics: A strong classroom community enables academic success. Gina explains, “It’s about starting with a low risk level, allowing them space and time to get to know each other, and then creating depth and progression in that to get to the place where they can wrestle with something, and have . . . a conflicting conversation, and find their way out of some conflict within that community because they care about each other. And they care about each other’s success. And that’s where you really get the outcomes back from learning is when you can create not only the trust between the adults and the children but also the community amongst the students themselves.
- AVID Certified Educator: Gina describes the AVID Certified Educator program, which she has been instrumental in developing, saying, “It’s a cohort model where teachers will be together with a group of like-minded, motivated, committed educators throughout the school year, so they can take the learning of what are the best practices of instructional design and pedagogy and actually practice them throughout the year with the support of that community, and that cohort, and their AVID Center facilitators.” This opportunity is available to any teacher at an AVID school.
- Numbered Heads: Gina shares that one of her favorite classroom strategies is Numbered Heads. She likes this one because it allows students “to be able to share their voices in nonintimidating ways.”
- Gina’s One Thing: To all teachers, Gina says, “You’re the best. Thanks for everything that you do.”
Use the following resources to continue learning about this topic.
If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:
- What skills do you believe students need to develop for future success?
- How can you build community in your classroom?
- How can you empower students with personal and academic confidence?
- How would you describe ideal professional learning?
- What are your biggest takeaways from this episode?
- AVID (official website)
- AVID Certified Educator Program (AVID)
Episode #322 — Pedagogy to Prepare Students for Their Futures, with Gina Gamnis
AVID Open Access
30 min
Keywords
students, avid, classroom, educators, elective, skills, gina, learn, education, teachers, create, important, cohort, kids, support, engage, build, talk, school, conversation
Speakers
Gina (74%), Paul (15%), Winston (10%), Transition (1%), Rena (1%)
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Gina Gamnis 0:00
It takes time to build that kind of trust, so you have to show up day after day after day, not just saying that you care and you believe, but showing that you care. And you believe in providing the support and being there right alongside with the students, letting them know that their success is your goal every single day.
Paul Beckermann 0:21
The topic of today’s podcast is Pedagogy to Prepare Students for Their Futures, with Gina Gamnis. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes that we can raise the bar for education. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org.
Rena Clark 0:40
Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark.
Paul Beckermann 0:51
I’m Paul Beckermann.
Winston Benjamin 0:53
And I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators.
Paul Beckermann 0:57
And we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.
Transition Music 1:01
Education is our passport to the future.
Paul Beckermann 1:06
Our quote for today is from the AVID Certified Educator page on avid.org in outlining goals for educators in the program, they state that participants will “Leverage collective educator agency to collaboratively build and routinize philosophies, approaches, and practices that result in college and career readiness for students.” What do you think about that, Winston? Reflection.
Winston Benjamin 1:32
I love this because my thing is I’m used to working with high schoolers, and the way that I would push kids to go to college or go to the postsecondary versus friends of mine. How would they push students or thought about what their next steps were? We’re so broadly different, so inconsistent. So hearing this ideology about creating a common approach, a common philosophy, a common discourse on how to assist students, to identify their next steps, I really appreciate that, because then all kids get a very robust type of assistance in identifying the right pathway for them. I really appreciate how this is talking about creating a collective understanding of how to support students in their thinking about their next steps, postsecondary opportunities.
Paul Beckermann 2:27
Yeah, you know, I hung on that same thing, that collective educator agency, what we can do together and I’ve never heard this word before–routinize–but we can kind of take some of those best practices and make them routines in more classrooms, and by doing that, we can really prepare kids for their future, which is what we’re here to talk about today. And we’re really excited to have our guest with us, Gina Gamnis. She is the Executive Director for AVID in the Upper Midwest area. Welcome, Gina.
Gina Gamnis 3:00
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Paul Beckermann 3:02
You betcha. You want to just introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners?
Gina Gamnis 3:07
Sure. So I have been with AVID Center full time for 11 years and, prior to that, I was an educator in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. I started as a middle school science teacher. Best job ever. Got the great opportunity to be an AVID Elective teacher and worked at the district level for a little while in curriculum and instruction and supporting AVID for our district. And then I came to AVID, and for the last 11 years, have been supporting schools and districts and educators in implementing AVID and finding the best ways to support their students in being college- and career-ready.
Paul Beckermann 3:53
Awesome. So you’ve supported students and teachers in lots of different ways throughout your career, and you’ve seen lots of great ways that things can be implemented in classrooms. So, I’m wondering if we can start a conversation kind of with the outcomes, which is what we do in leadership. What kind of skills do you think students need as they’re graduating our schools and going into college? In the workforce worlds? What do they need?
Gina Gamnis 4:19
Yeah, so this is one of the great privileges of my role, as I get to talk to students from schools across the country. And there are some things that really stand out as consistently the way that students speak to what really prepared them when they left K-12 education to be successful in their futures. Some of them are things that they can explicitly state, and some are things that you just recognized in them in the way that they carry themselves. Also, I am a mother of two children, one who is about to be a junior in college and one who’s about to be a high school senior, so this is always front of mind in our house to what do our kids need to go off and be successful in the world. And one of the things I think that’s maybe a little bit different now than when I was going off into postsecondary is young people have an abundance, unending abundance of access to information. And so a skill that we just really need to help them with is evaluating, analyzing, discerning what of that information is accurate, reliable, what speaks to their values, what informs their perspectives, how to filter through everything that is out there for them. So I think that’s something that’s extra important in this current day and age.
Also, what do you do with that information? How to engage in discourse? How to have a productive academic discussion, how to learn from and listen to and incorporate other diverse perspectives into your own, and to be able to use your voice to share your own thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and opinions. I think that’s also increasingly important with how polarized our world is becoming, and just being able to engage in those respectful and productive types of conversations. So providing students with those types of skills, I think, are really important. So a couple others that just really stand out that kids talk about a lot is they feel like they are becoming better at public speaking. A lot of times they’ll say a skill that they’ve built is public speaking, and I think something that goes along with that is that they’ve built the skill to take risks and to be confident in themselves and in using their voice. And I think that’s really, really important, too. Our workforce and future world is changing so fast right now, and kids need to be able to know not only what they want to do, but what problems they want to solve, how they want to engage with other people in the world. And so just feeling that sense of confidence and the ability to try something new and be innovative and put themselves out there into the world, I just think that there’s really nothing more important, and that’s something that I hear from students a lot, that that’s what’s kind of carrying them into their future.
Winston Benjamin 7:32
That’s so different than what people talk about kids nowadays, right? The way they talk about kids nowadays, like your conversation is so different than the narrative that most people are talking about our teenagers. And it’s refreshing to hear that. It’s so refreshing.
Paul Beckermann 7:49
Yeah and it’s kind of interesting too, because a lot of the things that you mentioned, Gina, are things that you maybe aren’t finding directly in the curriculum. They’re like these, some people call them soft skills, life skills, whatever. But these are the things that the kids are saying they value and that are really making the difference in addition to the curriculum things.
Gina Gamnis 8:09
Absolutely.
Winston Benjamin 8:12
Now that we’ve identified that there’s some soft skills that we really don’t know how to connect directly to the curriculum, thinking about your experience working with schools and organizations, what are some of the most effective approaches that you’ve seen that help students identify, firstly identify and then build on, those skills, in terms of taking the risk, putting themselves out there, as I hear as that’s being one of the core things that I would be afraid of. But how have you seen others approach this successfully?
Gina Gamnis 8:45
Yeah, so I think what Paul was sort of alluding to is, as educators, we just need to be intentional to build the space for students to practice those skills. And the ones that I was speaking to are the ones that stand out to me, that really carry students, but the ones that build the foundation for that is what we need to, as educators, really incorporate into the design of our classroom experiences. So, helping students set goals for themselves and figure out how to plan for reaching those goals are things that help build confidence. Giving students the scaffolds and the scripts for their academic language to be able to engage in an academic conversation are the things that build the public speaking and communication skills that they need. Having collaborative activities regularly, where it’s really clear what the expectation is for both, individual and collective responsibility, build that skill of engaging in teamwork and being a productive contributor, and learning how to be part of a collaborative group and knowing what the end result needs to be to be successful. So, that intentional design as an educator creates that opportunity for every single student in the room to build those skills, not just the kids who came in with a little bit higher level of that skill, but every single student to engage really fully and productively in building themselves as that person that’s going to be ready to take on whatever future path they choose.
Paul Beckermann 10:30
And those are the experiences that fire kids up, too. I mean, they want those kinds of rich learning experiences, rather than just sitting in their seat and listening and passively taking in. Their active participants in developing the skills because they are active.
Winston Benjamin 10:45
Exactly.
Paul Beckermann 10:48
So one of your roles, Gina, is you were an AVID Elective teacher, and now in your current role, you work with a lot of AVID teachers and coordinators, so you’ve seen a lot of the things that are done in AVID Elective classrooms. I’m wondering what kinds of approaches you’ve seen in those settings that could benefit all classrooms?
Gina Gamnis 11:10
So there are a couple of really important things, and it’s very consistent the way it shows up in AVID Elective classrooms or pretty much anywhere you go, because it’s designed this way. One is community. It’s very intentionally embedded that community is built in the AVID Elective classroom, and there’s time set aside for it, which time is always a challenge in education, right? Finding the time for something? But it is time that is very, very well spent, and it pays back in dividends for the types of academic experiences that students have when there’s a community built where they feel comfortable engaging fully. Not every student comes into every every classroom feeling that way, and so when it’s created intentionally, then every student has that opportunity and can learn at high levels, engage at high levels, and build skills at high levels, too. So I think that’s a really important component of the AVID Elective. The AVID elective is centered around instructional practices that we use an acronym for, called WICOR—Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization and Reading. And they’re specifically chosen practices that foster rigor and engagement, inquiry, collaboration, and deep thinking. And so that allows also for every student to be in the driver’s seat of their learning. That’s a very student-centered, student-owned environment in the AVID Elective classroom.
A really good example of the way that students build these skills in the AVID Elective is through the tutorial process. So twice a week in the AVID Elective classroom, they work in small groups, and they take turns presenting a question or a problem that they have from one of their classes, and they’re trained in this process so that it’s collaboratively inquiry based, and they have to ask each other questions to help them get to their point of clarity, to understand the concept that they were struggling with. And that process, in and of itself, builds every skill that we were talking about already, plus in a biweekly, twice a week kind of scenario. And so often I’ve spoken to kids and I’ll say something just almost exactly the same as each other. That it’s something like I was so afraid the first time I had to do a tutorial. I never spoke in front of people before tutorials, and then I had to stand up in front of five or six or seven of my peers and say that I didn’t know how to do something. Like that’s really scary, but as soon as they did it, after only one or two times, they started to feel confident because of the way that it’s structured. Their peers were encouraging them, and they weren’t laughing at them, or judging them like they were afraid might happen. They’re asking them questions that would help them get to the answer and feel confident about their understanding, and they were supporting and encouraging and celebrating each other at the same time. That’s part of that community that they built that allows for them to learn so deeply and collaboratively together, and then they’ll attribute that process to why they feel like they can speak in front of people now and feel confident about their ideas and feel okay being vulnerable in front of each other, which is one of the most powerful things that they can do, to feel comfortable being vulnerable and know that it’s okay, and that’s a point of growth for everyone, and that they can support each other and it feels so good to support your peers and all those things like you said, Paul. What makes them want to come to class and want to be there for themselves and for each other?
Ah, man. I feel like you’re in my brain taking the words out of my head and putting them out. I’m so glad to hear someone else speak about classrooms and students in this way. So the question that I’m going to ask is I recognize that in the AVID Elective classrooms, there’s a very particular approach that’s important in risk-taking. So I’m going to try to expand that out a little bit in this question. So why is classroom, community, and relationship important, thinking about the larger context of school and classroom, not just specifically the AVID Elective if you might provide an answer to that, if you don’t mind?
Yeah, absolutely. So we know that relationships are super important in education. There’s a multitude of studies that will point to relationships being the number one factor in student success. And I think a lot of times we focus on that being teacher-to-student relationships, and that’s super important. We know that when students believe that the adults in the building believe in them and care about them, that they’re going to show up and they’re going to want to learn, and they’re going to want to engage at a higher level. And so we’ve got a lot of strategies for that. We have specialized greetings at the door, and we have birthday walls, and we have celebrations in the classroom, and things to show that we care. I think there are a couple of really important pieces that we need to think more deeply about in that one, is taking it beyond the beginning of the school year. A lot of times it’s all about relationships on day one and maybe the first week, and then it’s like, Okay, now we’re getting down to business. And relationships aren’t built that way. They take time, and you have to, in order for a student, especially students who maybe who haven’t been able to trust a lot of adults in their life, it takes time to build that kind of trust, so you have to show up day after day after day, not just saying that you care and you believe, but showing that you care and you believe in providing the support and being there right alongside with the students, letting them know that their success is your goal every single day. The other piece is it can’t end with the teacher-to-student relationship. If you don’t create the relational capacity amongst the students, it’s really hard for a lot of students to show up in the way that we were talking about—being able to be vulnerable, being able to engage deeply, being able to share thoughts and ideas. If you really want them to become critical thinkers and innovative problem solvers and collaborative team members, they have to feel that sense of community and feel comfortable with their peers, too. And so it’s about starting at a low risk level, allowing them space and time to get to know each other, and then creating depth and progression in that to get to the place where they can wrestle with something and have a maybe a conflicting conversation and find their way out of some conflict within that community, because they care about each other, and they care about each other’s success. And that’s where you really get the outcomes back from learning, is when you can create not only the trust between the adults and the children, but also the community amongst the students themselves.
I can just feel your passion for this, Gina, and having other conversations with you, I know that this is a passion area for you, and because of that passion, you’ve been really instrumental in developing a program called AVID Certified Educators. As a program, that’s one example of how a focus on intentional pedagogy can improve education. So you just want to take a minute and talk about that program? What is it? What do you hope to accomplish?
Yeah, I would love to. So at AVID we provide many different professional learning opportunities, and have for a very long time. Their very high quality teachers walk away with lots of ideas, strategies, a toolbox full of things to bring back to their students to create rigorous, engaging, learning environments. This is for the first time now, where educators can become AVID Certified Educators, and what that is is just taking that professional learning experience to the next level by including the application component. So it’s a cohort model where teachers will be together with a group of like-minded, motivated, committed educators throughout the school year, so they can take the learning of what are the best practices in instructional design and pedagogy and actually practice them throughout the year with the support of that community in that cohort and their AVID Center facilitators. So there are checkpoints throughout the year where they can come back together and say, these are the things I’ve been trying in order to foster an appropriate physical environment in my classroom, to create community in my classroom, to increase the rigor in my classroom, whatever the component is that they’re working on, and have their thought partners in their cohort group, to be able to share feedback and ideas and support and encouragement, so that it doesn’t end with that three or two days of learning where you come back—we’ve all had these professional learning experiences where we’re so jazzed up, and we come back, we’ve got a notebook full of notes, and then we put it in our drawer, and the next day, all the things happen, and we kind of forget they were there. And maybe we pull one out every once in a while, but this is about holistic application of a classroom environment in a pedagogical design that creates that environment where students are building those super important skills that they need for whatever future they choose.
And so we’re super excited to have the opportunity to support educators in this way, and to be able to learn from that, to learn from what is most impactful and effective in the classroom, to make sure that every single student is college- and career-ready. And I’ve spoken a lot to the experiences that I’ve had talking with AVID Elective students, and I just know the way that they speak to their experience in school, I want every student to speak to their experience in school in that way. And I don’t think there’s any reason why that can’t happen. We see it happen so consistently, and it’s so replicable across the country. It’s unique and special, but it can be replicated, and that environment can be created in any classroom. So we’re using the AVID, we call the AVID Foundations of Instruction, as the basis for this experience, and that’s how to create the environment that fosters that sense of confidence, vulnerability, risk-taking, all that. How to create the positive relationships to build a community. How to strategically design a lesson from beginning to end, so that it includes those practices that prioritize student engagement and rigor, collaboration and inquiry, creating all those skills, and then how to be a really thoughtful diagnostic teacher in a way that follows what the students are needing and how they’re driving the learning to be able to pivot when needed and respond to their needs, so that every single day is so well thought out in order to create those outcomes of students being 100% ready to take on whatever future they choose.
Paul Beckermann 23:09
I love that cohort aspect of it, and I’ve seen that in my own experience as a district leader. When teachers have that extended opportunity to work together and keep coming back. They go practice, they come back, they reflect, they collaborate, they go out, and they practice, they come back, and they reflect. That is immensely powerful. Now, what you’re developing is for AVID teachers, correct?
Gina Gamnis 23:36
Yes.
Paul Beckermann 23:37
So if there are AVID teachers listening, how might they learn more about this?
Gina Gamnis 23:43
Great question. So when we say AVID teachers, it’s really any teacher at an AVID school. So if your school is implementing AVID, you don’t have to be an AVID Elective teacher. You could be a science teacher, a math teacher, a kindergarten teacher, so K-12 at any AVID school. We have a website that has more information. We’ve got new cohorts that will launch in 2025, and in the next few weeks, we’ll be posting more details about dates and application processes and all that. So, if we can share the link to the website, that’d be the place to get all the information.
Paul Beckermann 24:27
We will post the link on the write-up for this episode.
Gina Gamnis 24:31
Perfect.
Winston Benjamin 24:33
All right, so, Gina, you mentioned several times in your response about specific tools and how people will walk away with tools in their toolkit. Now it’s a big transition for our toolkit.
Transition Music 24:47
Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? So, what’s in the toolkit? Check it out.
Winston Benjamin 24:58
So it’s time for the question. What’s in your toolkit for today’s conversation? What’s your favorite thing you’re going to bring with you and consider using? Paul, I’m going to throw it to you.
Paul Beckermann 25:09
Gina has mentioned so many great strategies already, and I’m going to let her talk maybe about her favorite there, when she gets a turn here. But, what it made me think of is one of my favorite strategies, and it does all the things that that Gina was talking about, you know, the collaboration, the problem solving. That’s having students problem solve and create together. It’s like my magic recipe for the 4 Cs: Collaboration, Communication, Critical thinking, Creativity. When students create together, they just inherently do those four things, and that is a life experience right there, so that they can build those life skills. Maybe even have them do a career project together, then they’re getting the career component in there, too. But have students create together, that’s mine.
Winston Benjamin 25:58
I love that. I’m gonna be a little cheater, and I’m gonna throw an avid.org. All right, everyone. You go and check out the website, get some information, so that you can start being more intentional about the things that you’re doing in your classroom and with your students. And then also, you can look into the AVID Certified Educator program. Gina, what’s your tool that you want to throw into the toolkit?
Gina Gamnis 26:23
So, I have a very favorite strategy, and it’s called Numbered Heads. And the reason it’s my favorite is because part of my passion in all this too, is as a mother, watching my own kids go through their education. I’ve got one who’s very, very introverted and has a lot of anxiety, and so being put on the spot in classrooms was always a big trigger and a challenge for her. And so finding ways for students to be able to share their voices in non-intimidating ways is something that I’ve been very passionate about. So, Numbered Heads is a strategy where you put kids in a group and they number off. If there’s four kids, they number off, 1-2-3-4. You give them a prompt or a topic. They talk about it together, and then you have the number that you choose. That’s the number that shares from each group. So if I say number two, the number two person from each group shares. And the great thing about that is, if I’m called on to share now, I’m sharing based on the thoughts and ideas of all the people in my group, which is much less intimidating than just sharing my own thoughts. So it’s just one of those sort of scaffolded ways for every single voice to be in the room, and for ways for kids who maybe wouldn’t always be the first to raise their hand, to share in a way that feels a little bit more safe.
Paul Beckermann 27:50
Fantastic. You know what this time is, Winston? It’s time for…
Winston Benjamin 27:56
What? What? What?
Paul Beckermann 27:59
All right, let’s hop into our one thing.
Transition Music 28:01
It’s time for that one thing. One thing. One thing. Time for that one thing. It’s that one thing.
Paul Beckermann 28:12
All right, Winston, what’s your final takeaway today?
Winston Benjamin 28:17
Everything has been a final takeaway. But since I have to narrow it down to one thing, I’m gonna bring it to relationships are so important, that it’s not just for the first day of school. I really appreciate that. Everybody’s gonna be building relationships, get to know their kids, and then back into the lesson. So I like the idea of making sure that we actually do that three months from now and then till the end of the year. So I love that.
Paul Beckermann 28:47
Cool. And I still really like the idea of sustained professional learning, where you’re learning with a cohort of people for an extended amount of time. I just think that’s so powerful because the one-and-done things, they don’t stick. But if you can apply, come back, debrief, get some new ideas, go try again. It’s really that whole resilience piece. It’s that failing forward growth mindset. It’s all of that wrapped into that. So that’s my one thing. Gina, how about you? Final thought today?
Gina Gamnis 29:25
Yeah, I just shout out to all of the teachers, the educators out there. Teaching is a hard job. It’s so dynamic and challenging, and emotional. And I feel so grateful to all of the educators that are out there and to take on even extra just by continuing to be lifelong learners and continuing to evolve their practice. And you’re the best. Thanks for everything that you do.
Paul Beckermann 29:57
And thank you, Gina, for being with us today. We really appreciated having you on the show.
Gina Gamnis 30:01
Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it.
Rena Clark 30:06
Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.
Winston Benjamin 30:09
We invite you to visit us at AvidOpenAccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency, equity, and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.
Paul Beckermann 30:24
We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.
Rena Clark 30:28
And remember, go forth and be awesome.
Winston Benjamin 30:32
Thank you for all you do.
Paul Beckermann 30:33
You make a difference.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai