Spence Holds Teaching Institute

The Spence School hosted its Teaching Institute at Spence (TIaS) this August with a weeklong program for nine teachers. The Institute is unique among professional development opportunities by tailoring the program to experienced teachers who are highly effective in their schools but wish to improve their practice. This year’s participants represented a range of 12-28 years of teaching experience and a variety of disciplines, including humanities, history, math, philosophy and English.

TIaS has three tenets:

We believe teachers can grow at every stage of their career.

We believe that teachers grow best when they make their teaching visible, reflect on their practice with others and focus on student learning as evidence of effectiveness.

We believe that schools cannot get stronger without a culture of sustained teacher learning.

Benjie Messinger-Barnes, Middle and High School math teacher and Math Department chair at Friends Seminary, said the experience was a good reminder that there are always more opportunities for growth in teaching.

“It was invigorating to dive deeply into our teaching with the explicit intent of critically reviewing and questioning our practices so we could continue to grow as educators,” he said. “This is a feeling and energy I haven’t felt since I was a new teacher, and I’m excited to return to school and put to practice some of what we discussed during the Institute.”

One thing he found surprising after looking at the video segment of his own teaching was that he tended to take away some of the student ownership during the final phase of learning a new concept.

“I will think more intentionally about whether each lesson really needs to be ‘tied up nicely,’” Messinger-Barnes said. “Learning is messy, and teaching is messy. Math, while beautiful, is sometimes messy! Why not embrace that messiness and allow students to experience the tension of discovering something they believe to be true without the ‘approval’ of an authoritative math figure, such as a teacher?”

Abby Abbott, a history teacher and Grade 9 co-dean at St. Luke’s School, said the Institute helped her examine the quality of engagement among her students and whether or not she allowed for “productive struggle” to occur. Abbott and her peers watched a video of her teaching and talked about the lesson together.

“I assumed I’d have to revise the type of questions I ask in class in order to make the class more rigorous, but after watching my videos and dissecting the lesson with my group members, I came to realize the structure of the activity itself was limiting cognitive demand in my classroom, not my style of questioning–that I was doing the ‘heavy lifting’ of learning for the students,” Abbott said.

With help from her fellow Institute participants, Abbott devised some modifications she can make in the classroom to provide more opportunities for students to productively struggle and persevere.

“The facilitators did an outstanding job of curating resources, designing activities, leading by example and creating an environment where vulnerability is not just tolerated but explicitly invited,” Abbott said. “I am walking away from this conference with the courage and inspiration to make my teaching visible to colleagues in hopes of inviting the critical feedback necessary to aid in the perpetual journey of becoming a great teacher.”

Erika Drezner, Upper School English chair, teacher and American Studies Coordinator at The Berkeley Carroll School, said that while she already knew she needed to speak less to encourage students to speak more in class, she realized (through watching herself teach) that she needed to think about where she is physically in the classroom too.

“I need to sit back, keep still and disappear more deliberately from time to time to make more space for my students,” Drezner said.

During her time at the Institute, Drezner drafted a rubric for student-directed discussion that will both allow her to give them feedback on their progress, as well as teach students specific discussion strategies that will enable her to step back and for the students to become more collaborative thinkers.

“I think I already assumed that I needed to ‘make my teaching visible’ and ‘reflect on my practice with others,’ but this week I’ve thought in a new and profound way about ‘student learning as evidence of effectiveness,’” Drezner reflected. “What does student learning look like? How can I notice it more frequently and understand it more accurately? What can it tell me about what I need to adjust as a teacher? Essentially, I need to move away from just asking, ‘What and how am I teaching?’ and toward the questions, ‘What and how are my students learning?’ ‘How can I tell?’ and ‘How can that information deepen my classroom?’”

Drezner added that the Institute directors created a sense of community among the participants so that they grew to admire and appreciate each other over the five-day program.

“I learned that one of the Institute’s participants was a retired teacher, and this detail inspired me so much that it brought tears to my eyes,” Drezner said. “Absolutely—even this Institute, which was so important for the teaching we’ll return to in a month, was worthwhile in and of itself. Those of us who met here are so devoted to pedagogy that even after we retire we’ll still want to keep exploring and refining our craft.”

To learn more about the Institute, visit the TIaS page here or read this article featured in NAIS Magazine. Applications will open October 1, 2018, for the following Teaching Institute at Spence, which will run August 5-9, 2019.

TIaS at The Spence School is quite possibly the best professional development I have ever done. I highly recommend this teaching institute! I am so blessed my school values PD so much! #TIaS2018 #ilovemyjob
— coachfredlovesmath (@Mfredgrassi) August 9, 2018

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