#388 – Strategic Lesson Design, with Tracie McMurray

In this episode of Unpacking Education, we speak with Tracie McMurray, an educator with 20 years of experience whose participation in the AVID Certified Educator program reignited her passion for teaching. From rethinking the role of student data to revamping classroom routines, Tracie shares how strategic lesson design transformed her instruction and helped her reconnect with the purpose that brought her to education in the first place. Along the way, she found a supportive network of like-minded educators and a renewed sense of belonging that reaffirmed her love for teaching.

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AVID, on the AVID Certified Educator webpage

Resources

The following resources are available from AVID and on AVID Open Access to explore related topics in more depth:

• Integrating WICOR®, with Kera Diller (podcast episode)
• Diagnostic Teaching, with Richard Pardo (podcast episode)
• Establishing Your Classroom Environment, with Sarah Neitz (podcast episode)
• Pedagogy to Prepare Students for Their Futures, with Gina Gamnis (podcast episode)

A Transformational Experience

Tracie McMurray didn’t just grow from her AVID Certified Educator experience—she stayed in the profession because of it. As she puts it, “The year was so difficult that I said, ‘What if I just walk away from this?’ . . . But collecting the data about how kids feel about my classroom and trying out the new strategies and talking to my cohort friends, I’m staying in education.” Through a community of educators who challenged and supported one another, Tracie discovered that intentional lesson design could create not just better learning outcomes but a stronger connection with her students.

Her journey is a testament to the power of professional reflection and collaborative growth. Tracie embraced the mindset of “radical honesty” in her teaching, replacing reactive instruction with strategic planning, student voice, and visible learning goals. The result? A classroom culture where students feel safe, engaged, and valued—and a veteran teacher who rediscovered her spark. The following are highlights from the episode.

• About Our Guest: Tracie McMurray is an English and AVID teacher for Mesa Public Schools in Arizona. She is in her 20th year of teaching and recently earned her AVID Certified Educator certification.
• AVID Certified Educator: AVID Certified Educator is a 9-month program where a cohort of teachers collaboratively study the AVID Foundations of Instruction™ to improve their craft. The program’s website states, “The AVID Certified Educator cohort experience is designed for collaborative learning, professional growth, and mutual support where you can share your experiences, challenges, and successes in applying the AVID Foundations of Instruction in your classroom.” Tracie enthusiastically adds, “It really changed my teaching for the better.”
• Strategic Lesson Design: Tracie describes strategic lesson design as an intentional approach to lesson planning where “all the Foundations of Instruction are taught.” She says, “We go through how to make our classrooms better in a really significant, strategic way.” The experience begins with a self-assessment process that helps inform personal work and growth to come.
• Intuition vs. Intentionality: Tracie says that for most of her career, she got by on “natural talent, instead of having really great lesson plans.” She calls this being a “lazy teacher.” The AVID Certified Educator program has sparked a change for her, and she believes that it has made her a much better teacher. She talks about the benefits of focusing on the science of teaching—things like diagnostic teaching, formulating clear learning objectives, and facilitating engagement and belonging. She says, “We learned how to use the Foundations of Instruction to work together to make really great lessons that were engaging, and rigorous, and honoring of the kids’ abilities.”
• Relationships First: “We started with positive relationships,” Tracie says. “And we had to decide, how are we doing with community and connection? How are we doing with respect and belonging? Are students consistently working in collaborative groups in a way that’s strategic and not just random?”
• Classroom Spaces: The classroom space goes beyond the physical environment. Tracie points out that she now pays attention to other spaces as well, such as philosophical and digital spaces.
• Diagnostic Teaching: This aspect focuses on gathering meaningful data and using that data to shape the direction of a lesson and future learning opportunities. Tracie says that because of the cohort, her gathering and use of data has become much more intentional and meaningful.
• A Path Toward Consistency: Tracie reflects, “It seems overwhelming. Like I can’t have an amazing lesson every single day; sometimes, I just have to have a catch-up day. But if you start to incorporate enough of these anchor lessons, then your entire classroom culture just changes.” This approach leads to consistently strong lessons over an extended period of time.
• Data Gathering: Before the cohort, Tracie shares that her style was, “Look around the room and when their eyes are glazed over, then I pivot.” Now, she is much more intentional about building in specific, data-gathering activities that align to the learning in the classroom—data that can inform her instruction.
• Impact of AVID Certified Educator: It was motivating and rewarding to Tracie to earn her AVID Certified Educator certification. She says, “I put the badge on my email. I’m so excited.” She adds, “I wanted to push myself to learn from other people in my district. . . . You get that question in your mind, ‘Are we doing AVID right? Are we doing AVID to the best of its ability?’” This program’s cohort has given her the means to address these questions and improve her craft.
• Saving a Career: The AVID Certified Educator program literally saved Tracie’s teaching career. She reflects, “So they [her cohort members] changed my teaching career because I was ready to call it quits at 20. The year was so difficult. . . . The year started in such a crazy way that I said, ‘What if I just walk away from this?’ But collecting the data about how kids feel about my classroom, and trying out the new strategies, and talking to my cohort friends, I’m staying in education.”
• More Engaging Strategies: Tracie has learned to intentionally design her lessons to be more student-centered and engaging. She describes how she transformed a simple ACT review test activity into a fun, motivating, and student-affirming lesson that her students loved. She admits, “Would I have ever done that in a million years before this program? Zero. No.”
• Stronger Bonds: Even though she has always had good relationships with her students, those bonds have become even stronger. Her students tell her that they miss her when she’s gone, and Tracie says that the comments in anonymous surveys have been very positive. She shares, “They said the most lovely things about me. It was so affirming.” Tracie wants to help spread those strategies that helped with transforming her classroom to other teachers.
• Focusing on What Matters: “I just kind of let everything that’s teenage angst roll off me at this point because it doesn’t really matter” Tracie says. “What matters is how they feel in my room.” She shares a specific story of a student who was confused by her directions. Instead of getting defensive about it, she praised the student for speaking up and then had that student help her revise the directions, so they were more understandable. This approach empowers her students and sets the example that it’s okay to be open and honest in her classroom.
• Engagement: Tracie integrates many forms of student engagement into her lessons. That might include engaging in a Jigsaw or choosing classroom music. She gives the example of having students borrow ideas from each other using the “Admire and Acquire” strategy. She also uses lots of celebrations and state-changing activities with her students, sharing, “I never would have given space in my classroom for those things before because I was content-driven and not experience-driven.”
• Worth the Investment: Tracie wholeheartedly recommends the AVID Certified Educator experience to any teacher. “I would say, ‘Do it. 100%.’ It’s a wonderful, joyful experience.” She acknowledges that it took a lot of time to do the work, especially learning new technology to make her classroom content more visible for students. She says, “I am a better digital teacher now.” She shares that it also helps her be more intentional about planning, and it’s easier to reuse content and lessons from year to year.
• Becoming a Better Teacher: “I can reiterate it a million times: I thought I was pretty good at relating to kids, so I thought I was a pretty good teacher. . . . but now, I know that I’m an excellent instructor, and I can teach other people how to do what I’m doing. And I didn’t always know that about myself. . . . Now, I feel like I can take any lesson given to me, and I can make it more engaging, more meaningful. I can get to the meat of what we’re supposed to be doing so much better.”
• Tracie’s Toolkit: Tracie values the lesson design template that she learned about with her AVID Certified Educator cohort. It includes a clear 4 Es structure: Enter, Engage, Evaluate, and Exit. She says, “I think that really helped me to structure my lesson plans in a district where I’m not required to give my lesson plans.” As needed, she could also add in AVID’s The 4 A’s®: Adopt, Adapt, Accelerate, Advocate®. She explains, “You can start to do that gradual release of responsibility and just lesson plan one or two in each of your units, and then go on every year from there and make it better, and better, and better.”
• Tracie’s One Thing: Tracie encourages teachers to practice “radical honesty.” She wants teachers to be honest about what they are struggling with, listen to others’ struggles, and help each other out in an open and transparent way. She adds that it doesn’t help to hide in a classroom and pretend that those struggles don’t exist.
• Shout-Out: Tracie ends the show with a shout-out to her AVID Certified Educator cohort table members who changed her life, as well as her AVID senior class at Mountain View High School, to whom she shares this message: “I do this for you, and I love you.”