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.
Be part of a community of dedicated educators committed to student success and connect with like-minded professionals who are transforming education.
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.”
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 is the AVID Certified Educator program?
- How did the AVID Certified Educator program transform Tracie’s career?
- What is the benefit of being part of a collaborative professional learning team?
- How did Tracie transform her instruction?
- What insights from this episode could you apply to your own experiences?
- AVID Certified Educator (AVID)
- AVID (official website)
#388 Strategic Lesson Design, with Tracie McMurray
AVID Open Access
34 min
Transcript
The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence. Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.
Tracie McMurray 0:00 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, trying out the new strategies, and talking to my cohort friends, I’m staying in education. I wouldn’t be here without AVID and without my cohort, 100%.
Winston Benjamin 0:26 The topic of today’s podcast is strategic lesson design with Tracy McMurray. Unpacking Education is brought to you by AVID. If you’re looking for fresh ideas, meaningful connections, and impactful strategies, check out AVID Summer Institute, a professional learning experience where good teachers become great teachers. Registration is now open. To learn more, please visit avid.org.
Rena Clark 0:56 Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark.
Paul Beckermann 1:07 I’m Paul Beckerman.
Winston Benjamin 1:09 I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators.
Paul Beckermann 1:12 And we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.
Transition Music with Rena’s Children 1:17 Education is our passport to the future.
Winston Benjamin 1:21 Our quote from today is from the AVID Certificated Educators website at avid.org].
Paul Beckermann 1:07 I’m Paul Beckerman.
Winston Benjamin 1:09 I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators.
Paul Beckermann 1:12 And we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.
Transition Music with Rena’s Children 1:17 Education is our passport to the future.
Winston Benjamin 1:21 Our quote from today is from the AVID Certificated Educators website at avid.org, and in the description of the program, it says, “Be a part of a community of dedicated educators committed to student success and connect with like-minded professionals who are transforming education”. It’s valuable. So what are y’all thinking about that quote?
Rena Clark 1:48 For me, it’s just that word community. We often are craving community as educators, and I even know with some of the AVID elective we feel isolated. So to have an opportunity to be part of a larger community, and I think it’s great to have that like-mindedness, but with challenges, because if we’re all the same, then we necessarily can’t grow. But when I think of like-minded, I’m thinking more like we are like-minded towards how we want to be able to support students and grow in our practice, not necessarily how to do that, and then we can bring those different ideas together. And through community, we can share our brilliance and we discover things that we never thought were possible.
Paul Beckermann 2:31 I was thinking the exact same thing, Rena. Don’t underestimate the power of community, because I remember as a classroom teacher, I could go an entire day except for at lunch or going to the bathroom, I wouldn’t see another adult the entire day. And you just kind of feel like you’re on an island. You don’t see your colleagues teaching. You don’t get enough time to really talk about the craft of what we do, and to have an opportunity to be part of a supportive group with that common goal. That’s energizing. I’ve seen that happen with teachers over and over again.
Winston Benjamin 3:05 I love that. And part of it, the quote is the end, which is a connection with like-minded professionals. And I believe, today, we are in a connection with like-minded professionals, and one of them is Tracy McMurray. And I would Tracy, could you just introduce yourself? That’s one of the things that we try to do is have our audience get grounded in our guest experience in the past. Could you give us a little bit about yourself?
Tracie McMurray 3:30 Hi. Yes, I’m in my 20th year of teaching English in the Mesa Public Schools in Arizona, and it’s my seventh year as an AVID elective teacher, and now this is my first year as a recently certified ACE Educator. So I just went through the program and got my certification yesterday.
Paul Beckermann 3:53 Congratulations.
Tracie McMurray 3:57 Yeah, baby. So ACE is AVID Certified Educators, and it’s a nine-month program where you go through the foundations of instruction, and you learn things like strategic lesson design, which is what I wanted to talk about today, because it really changed my teaching for the better.
Paul Beckermann 4:16 Well, let’s talk about strategic lesson design. What is that?
Tracie McMurray 4:22 Well, all the foundations of instruction are taught during the ACE certification. And so we go through how to make our classrooms better in a really significant and strategic way. So they go through them piece by piece. And we had to rate ourselves at the beginning of the experience on how we thought we were doing as classroom teachers, doing things like diagnostic teaching or having clear learning objectives or engagement or belonging in the classroom in an appropriate environment.
And I thought I was doing really well with positive relationships and having a great environment, but I was one of those kind of lazy teachers, where I was just going off of natural talent, instead of having really great lesson plans, because they were constantly changing what I was doing, and so I was teaching on the fly all the time. And this program that I went through, where you’re working with a cohort of like-minded educators. None of them are English teachers, but we’re all passionate about AVID, and so we came together, and 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 at that time.
Rena Clark 5:40 So maybe we could just dig in a little deeper to maybe what some of those foundations are, so our listeners have a little bit better understanding. So when we say strategic lesson, what are those foundational things that are part of it?
Tracie McMurray 5:52 So we started with positive relationships, 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?”
There’s also information about the physical space in your classroom, so the appropriate environment, your philosophical space, the digital space that you provide for students, and then the academic discourse. Are you using language in the classroom that promotes learning and a scholarly advice? And are you doing what you can without prompting the kids to use language registers, academic language, academic vocabulary, in a way that’s really respectful and inclusive? And that, to me, was exciting, because I’m an English teacher, and so I was, “Yeah”.
And then diagnostic teaching is the next foundation. And for that one, yes, you can do checks for understanding, excuse me, checks for engagement, like, give me a thumbs up if you understand what I’m saying. But are you really tracking that data and using it to pivot your instruction when needed? And that’s something that I wasn’t doing. I wasn’t doing anything with what I gathered. I was doing a ticket out the door and then never really coming back to what was happening, because the time was moving, and that’s not really responsive teaching.
And so the other one is, “Do the kids know what they’re supposed to be doing? Do they know what level of thinking they’re supposed to be using?” And in high school, I wasn’t doing that. I taught junior high for a couple of years. I would be really specific about, “This is our learning objective, and this is the level of thinking”. And then I went away from that in high school, and I was getting older, but those kids stay the same age every year, and so there’s no reason for me to take it away as if it’s old when it’s not old to them. So just thinking about what you’re doing, and then all of those pieces go together where you’re actually designing lesson plans, and we would share those plans in our cohort, and they would comment on different aspects of the lesson design that you’re doing. And so it seems overwhelming, 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.
Winston Benjamin 8:30 So I love your honesty. I love the honesty of “a lazy teacher”. Oh, yeah, because the thing that you said was you were relying on natural ability. And I love that honesty, because there’s a lot of us who are doing it on the fly, moving on the fly, this works, I’m going to throw this at this. But then you continued, as you started to speak, you said you didn’t know what to do with the data that you had students give you.
So my question is, what is the role of data? What counts as data? Because that’s one, and then how did that impact what you did next? So there’s a two level. What counts as data, what did you want to get from students being more intentional, and then, how did that data inform your next steps? Or how did it help inform your next steps?
Tracie McMurray 9:31 So basically, they encouraged us to think about data in a different way. And for me, I would always give an end-of-course evaluation. “What did you that I did? How is my classroom different from other classrooms that you’ve been in? You’re the experts of how high school teachers are on a scale of one to 10”. And it just wasn’t really useful. I would use it to get rid of the unit that they hated. Or I would say, “Every year, this is voted the most exciting assignment. Here we go,”. But I didn’t actually use that to my real instruction, because my style was, “Look around the room, and when their eyes are glazed over, then I pivot”.
I didn’t, I didn’t say, “Okay, everybody stop and put on a sticky note. What’s the one thing that you feel really confident about right now?” Or, “Put on the other side of the sticky note, something that you’re still confused about”. I would not really stop and do that because I didn’t have time, because every class period was a different course I was teaching, and that’s currently my schedule. First hour is different from second and third, and so I don’t have a break until fourth, when it’s my prep period. So I was, “I’m not collecting this data”. It’s for them to think about. And then I wouldn’t change myself, because I would look at their faces and know this needs to change. And that’s again, you can’t replicate that year after year, and you can’t work on it when you’re not in front of them. And that’s, I can’t just work in front of them. I need to be able to work outside of their little faces looking at me.
Paul Beckermann 11:05 You’ve talked a little bit about being in the AVID Certified Educator cohort. What did being part of that mean to you, personally and professionally?
Tracie McMurray 11:17 I’ll start with professionally, because it’s a shorter answer. I love that I can say that I’m AVID certified right now. And at first we all said, “What does that even mean?” And then I can talk about what it means. So they gave me the badge. I put the badge on my email. I’m so excited.
Personally, I wanted to push myself to learn from other people in my district. We have kind of a smaller AVID program, I would say. And then at my school, specifically, I work with two other teachers right now, so the three of us do the four grade levels at our school, and we have one or two classes per grade level, so we’re a relatively small group, and that works for us as far as working together. However, we’re not getting input from other people at all. And so then you get that question in your mind, “Are we doing AVID right? Are we doing AVID to the best of its ability?” You started in San Diego, moved across the nation. “Are we doing it right in Arizona?”
And so that’s why I love to go to Summer Institute, path training. I try to get out of my room as much as possible to meet other educators. And so in the ACE certification, we could go to Austin in person. Now they’re not going to do an in-person one again, but we went to Austin in person, and I met these lovely ladies from Texas and from Tennessee and from Pennsylvania, and they were having the same struggles that I was having, and I thought, “Wow, it’s not COVID, it’s not Arizona, it’s just a thing that’s happening”. So how can we overcome it? And one of them is a science teacher. One of them just teaches the AVID elective, and I could still relate to them, even though I’m coming from the English perspective, and that was amazing.
So they changed my teaching career because I was ready to call it quits at 20. The year was so difficult. Summer was great in Austin, meeting with everyone, but 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, trying out the new strategies, and talking to my cohort friends, I’m staying in education. I’m going to go for five or six or 10 more years, who knows? And that’s huge. I wouldn’t be here without AVID and without my cohort 100%, because if you tell people in your district you think about quitting, they’ll just do the complaining echo with you. If you tell people who don’t know you as well, who don’t know your situation as well, and they can just talk about you and what they’ve seen from your work. It just builds you up beyond anything. I can trust them because they’re not saying something for political reasons or for whatever. It’s amazing. It’s a really amazing experience.
Rena Clark 14:19 So, I mean, you’re talking about, we call that a professional learning network. So you have this network of teachers outside, I love it, outside your school, outside your district, outside your state, to work with. And you alluded to what that experience was a cohort, and the fact that, I think you said you were the only ELA teacher that you were there. And so even though all of those things, look at all these amazing things you’ve taken away, and you can talk a little bit more about that.
But I’m really curious. You’ve alluded to it several times that your teaching has changed, and we’ve talked about using data. I mean, can you give a concrete example of if I were to walk into your room tomorrow, what might be some things that I’m going to see, and how is that different from what you talked about earlier?
Tracie McMurray 15:10 I have just a few things for that. Number one, one day we were going to go over the answers to the ACT practice test. The juniors were going to take it. This is a regular junior English class. Instead of reading the answers, we did it in groups where they could check their answers with their peers, decide on what the best answer would be, and then when I read the answers, we celebrated the table that had the most correct answers collectively together. And I literally put a star on their table that was a helium balloon. Would I’ve ever done that in a million years before this program? Zero? No, because it’s student English, and I would do fun things in AVID elective, but I wouldn’t do those same things that are just great for kids. And they they loved it. In the end, the group that won, they got little slinky fidget things that I had in my desk, and they loved it.
Second thing, they miss me when I’m gone, which is kind of weird. Normally, kids are, “Yay, sub”. They’ll tell me, “He didn’t know our routines. He didn’t realize that we were supposed to do this. She was standing in our personal space. You don’t do that. We that about you”.
And I started to pull them for relational capacity things in the class and the things that they say about you when they don’t think that you’re going to know it’s them. They said the most lovely things about me. It was so affirming that I’m, you say I’m there for the kids, but they said my classroom feels different to them than every other classroom on campus that they are a part of during the day. And so if I can spread that by being an AVID educator and mentoring someone else wants to go through the program, and for my district, that floors me, because that’s a legacy. That’s having a legacy, and I love it.
Winston Benjamin 17:16 You keep saying things where I’m, “Oh, I need to take you and just bring you to my new teachers,” and have you communicate with them. As you’re speaking, your reflection is so honest, right? The lazy teacher, all those things. And I don’t mean to put that up as a pejorative. There’s one thing that I want to ask you, though. You’re a vet now, right? You would consider you’re a vet. How does acknowledging that you’re a vet impact your teaching? How does that impact your teaching, your interactions with students, your classroom, how does it impact your use of the game? If that makes sense.
Tracie McMurray 18:02 It does make sense. I’m a rule follower, but after 20 years in the classroom, I just let go of a lot of things that, as a new teacher, I was stuck on, and the kids will tell me, “You don’t make a big deal about this. You don’t make a big deal about that”. And my other teachers, I can’t talk to them because I’m worried about how they’ll react. And so as a veteran teacher, I just kind of let everything that’s teenage eggs roll off me at this point, because it doesn’t really matter. What matters is how they feel in my room.
And so I started doing things because of ACE, praising kids that are confused by my directions, because I’ll say to them, “I’ve given these directions for the past 15 years that I’ve been teaching junior English,” which is an exaggeration, that’s not quite right, but I’ll say to them, “I know what I’m saying. When you ask me to change it, I can make it better, and I can put it in student language right away”. And so I’ll literally pull up the directions, and I’ll say to that kid that was complaining that he didn’t understand, I’ll say, “Help me rewrite number five so that it’s really clear what I wanted you to do”. And so he feels empowered, or she feels empowered to then say, “It would be more helpful if you did this,” and I change it right there in front of everybody. And so no one is afraid to ask questions in my room.
And that comes as a veteran. At the beginning, you’re, “I’m the authority. I’m the one that knows things.” They should my directions they need to know, because I am in my 40s, giving directions, and they’re 16 and 15, and they need it in their way, and not my way. And so I try to be really open about that. And this year, after the nine months of ACE, I became very specifically strategic about that, because in lesson design, you want it to be in student-friendly language. And I wasn’t always doing that.
Paul Beckermann 20:07 I’m hearing student-friendly. I’m also hearing student-centered. You’re really putting the student at the center of your classroom, at the center of everything that you do. I’m wondering how AVID strategies improve that student-centered engagement piece? Could you talk about that a little bit?
Tracie McMurray 20:27 Yes, so many of the strategies that people use, that’s the tried-and-true Jigsaw. It’s to help take the mental load off of everybody by letting them just do their own thing. But when you put Jigsaw with gradual release of responsibility, then now you’ve upped it a little bit. I’m not asking them to Jigsaw week one. I’m asking them, “Would you rather” questions on week one, and then later we get into relying on our classmates for doing work that matters.
In the beginning, we’re just becoming a community. They get to pick the music that I’m playing in the classroom, little things. But specific strategies Jigsaw, Focus Notes, if we can do more opportunities where they can cheat off each other, because they’re going to go to another expert and give one, get one, or they’re going to admire and acquire. I love that. I heard that at Summer Institute in San Diego in 2018, “I’m going to admire and acquire that”. Then you are borrowing from other people. They have a great quote underlined, you admire and acquire it. And it’s not cheating, it’s collaborative learning. And when we do that, I’ve even let them take tests together, because I don’t care, as long as they learn it, then that’s great.
And once I shifted from a more pedantic, “follow the rules, this is how will I know they really knew it?” Well, were they listening to the other kids talk about it? Who knew it? Okay, well, eventually I will measure them individually, but all these AVID strategies that are collaborative or even celebrations. I started using state changers in the classroom, which I didn’t really do before the ACE program, but that’s where we’re going to pause what we’re doing. We’re going to go find somebody who has similar shoes to us. We’re going to say, “Hey, how’s your day?” And then we’re going to compare our answer to this question. And then we’re going to come back to our seat. I never would have given space in my classroom for those things before this because I was content driven and not experience driven.
Rena Clark 22:46 So a lot of little tips and tricks right there, as well as just your whole, it sounds the whole atmosphere. And one thing I love that you pointed out is that we often, we said it on here before, how valuable it is to be able to leave your classroom. And through ACE, you were able to do that in a different way, with your cohort, which I just think is so. We can hear it in your voice, in the way that you’re describing the year, just the impact, the change that you’ve experienced. And it sounds your students have had an amazing, amazing year. So if you are going to encourage other educators to join ACE, what would you tell someone that was thinking about it?
Tracie McMurray 23:33 I would say, “Do it 100%”. It’s a wonderful, joyful experience. It did take hours and hours and hours to learn the technology needed to digitally make what I was doing in my classroom visible to others. And so I say, do it, because I am a better digital teacher now from having to share my information with everyone digitally, because I keep a calendar on my desk, write in it every year, kind of a person, and then I just get rid of the last one, and then I look at the last years, and I go through. And so that’s what I mean by lazy planning, lazy teaching. No one can follow me, because it’s all in my head. And now I was pushed into digitizing all of these wonderful things that I do, and documenting it with pictures and videos, and coming up with surveys to give to kids, and then quoting the kids and asking if I could use their project as an exemplar. And it just it changed my record keeping for the better, and also thinking about each of the foundations of instruction, piece by piece, also gave me such confidence. I can’t reiterate it a million times, I thought I was pretty good at relating to kids. So I thought I was a pretty good teacher, because kids me and they come back and visit me, 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. And so that’s, in the past few years, I was the AVID Coordinator at my school for a couple of years, and so I learned how to be a trainer of teachers, and I would give professional development. Now I feel 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. And that confidence comes from the experience where you’re reflecting every couple of weeks on what you’re trying in your classroom, and you’re documenting so many things. And then, if you’re a procrastinator, the night before the meeting, you’re trying to jam it all into a Canva page. And you’ve never used Canva in your life, but now you go and you learn, and you teach yourself how to do it. And it pushed me beyond the, “Oh, I’m the veteran in the room. This doesn’t apply to me”.
Rena Clark 26:18 I love that. That’s great.
Paul Beckermann 26:20 You know, we’ve heard a lot of great tips and strategies, and so now let’s package it all into our toolkit.
Transition Music with Rena’s Children 26:31 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.
Paul Beckermann 26:38 All right, toolkit time. Rena, why don’t you go first? What’s in your toolkit?
Rena Clark 26:42 Well, Tracy’s alluded to a lot of these strategies. So if you’re one of our AVID teachers out there, great. This sounds probably really familiar. Others might be, “Huh?” because I know we have a larger, wider audience. So if you want to go to avid.org or AVID Open Access.org, we have a lot of information and also tools that can be shared with you around some of these strategies that could support you on your own journey.
Winston Benjamin 27:11 Ask students for real student data. Don’t just get numbers. Get actual information so that you could do something with that information. That has been a really big tool that I’m going to turn back around and ask my teachers to think about.
Paul Beckermann 27:30 Very good. Tracy, anything else that you’d to drop in our toolkit? It could be a strategy, a mindset, a thought.
Tracie McMurray 27:40 A mindset. I think that using the lesson design that was provided to us, Enter, Engage, Evaluate, Exit, I think that really helped me to structure my lesson plans in a district where I’m not required to give my lesson plans. So Enter, Engage, Evaluate, Exit, if you just think of those E’s, and add in some of the four A’s—Adopt, Adapt, Accelerate, Advocate—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.
Paul Beckermann 28:26 I love that. Having that framework just to kind of make sure you’re intentional each day as you plan that lesson. Awesome.
Rena Clark 28:33 And I love that it’s not this, sometimes it’s so complex all these lesson plans, but I love it, just the 4E, Enter, Engage, Evaluate, Exit, and then you can integrate all the other things as well. So I think this moves us on to our one thing. It’s time for that one thing.
Paul Beckermann 28:58 It’s our one thing.
Rena Clark 29:00 So what is that one thing that we’re still resonating or thinking about, what is maybe one thing we’re taking away? So let’s share our one thing. Who’s up?
Paul Beckermann 29:12 I will just say the thing that hit me the hardest from everything that Tracy said is being part of this collaborative, professional group saved her in the profession. We need to keep people in the profession, especially great teachers Tracy. We need to build that community so that we can retain teachers and recruit more, because people will hear about those positive experiences and want to be part of this community. So that’s really stuck with me.
Rena Clark 29:45 And I just appreciated the attitude. I mentor a lot of new teachers. You’re describing that journey, but I love just let it go. The whole idea of let it go, and some of those things that we’re so worried about, the pencil and not a colored pencil, I don’t know. It’s, what is it ultimately that we’re trying to do? What are the goals that we’re trying to reach, and how we want to engage with students? And if we just let go of some of those things, it can be really powerful and changing. And I feel you explain that really well, and I just want to honor the work that you put in. So I’m doing more than one thing, but it’s you get out what you put in, and it seems you’ve told us how much you had to put in, but if you can’t see her face, the experience and even that of your students, you can tell that that has shifted, that shift from good teacher to excellent instructor. I really appreciate all that you’ve been doing.
Winston Benjamin 30:52 Similar to you, Rena, I agree with there’s a thing of becoming a better teacher, and it’s don’t take things personal. Give students a shout out for helping you be more clear, because you’re in your head, you’re not in theirs. So I really appreciate the taking to celebrate the students for asking you for clarity. Tracy, what do you got?
Tracie McMurray 31:19 I think, just being honest and not hiding in your classroom. Being honest about what you’re struggling with. It’s so tempting to complain instead of help to build each other up, and I think that’s what was so important to me. They just listened, and they were constructive, and they had great ideas. They didn’t know who was running for my school board. They didn’t know who was my principal. They didn’t know who my evaluator was. They knew none of that. It was all about the teaching and the learning, and so just radical honesty with where you are as a teacher and transparency. That was it.
Paul Beckermann 31:54 That’s a t-shirt, radical honesty.
Rena Clark 31:57 With an ’80s theme. I’m making it. I just got a sublimation printer. That’s happening.
Paul Beckermann 32:10 I’ll be waiting for that, Rena.
Winston Benjamin 32:13 So Tracy, I just want to say thank you for coming here and sharing your journey as a 20-year vet who’s still in the process. And this reminds me of something Charlotte Danielson once said, “What we do for teachers, we do for students”. The professional development that you went on as a journey to become a better teacher really clearly demonstrates how you turn that into creating a better learning space for students. And I really want to say thank you for becoming student-centered and not just saying, “Yeah, that PD is for younggans. I’m a vet,” but I appreciate you still approaching it as that you can still learn. Thank you for your time. Appreciate you.
Tracie McMurray 33:00 Can I give a shout out to my AVID kids?
Paul Beckermann 33:03 absolutely, let’s do it.
Tracie McMurray 33:07 So the AVID senior class of Mountain View. All 18 of my little darlings. I do this for you, and I love you. And to table seven or eight. What table were we? Kinsey, Jocelyn, DD, Naomi, Gina, you guys changed my life.
Rena Clark 33:21 Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.
Winston Benjamin 33:24 We invite you to visit us at avid Open Access.org where you can discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.
Paul Beckermann 33:37 We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.
Rena Clark 33:42 And remember, go forth and be awesome.
Winston Benjamin 33:46 Thank you for all you do.
Paul Beckermann 33:48 You make a difference.