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[ Silence ]
[ Applause ]
>> Adam Gray: Thank you.
I'm going to hit the lights just a little.
Is that okay, maybe, if I hit a light?
Okay, that'd be great.
Try not to fall asleep.
That'd be great.
Maybe that right there.
Okay, so if you can see what I'm going to talk about today.
It's a talk that I've given several times
to prospective teachers and other teachers working
in struggling schools.
It's called the Beauty of Believing --
positively transforming school culture one day at a time,
increasing student engagement and motivating students.
So, while I am a mathematics teacher, I --
this applies to all teachers,
regardless of what subject you teach.
I will use some math examples in here.
But really it applies to anyone.
So, the objectives for today, because I'm big on objectives,
number one is to use data to pique your interest
about education policy and hope that those data points will lead
to meaningful conversations about the teaching profession.
So not just what's happening in your classroom,
but what's happening at your school and at the district
and the state level and the federal level as well.
So I'm hoping that some of the data that we look
at today will lead to conversations between you guys
after this talk and after --
you know, after class and after school and on the weekends
and all that kind of good stuff.
Second objective -- I'm going to share my experiences
as a math teacher working in an underperforming school
to shed light on some
of the daily challenges that you may face.
You may not face them.
It just depends on where you're going to be teaching.
Different schools face different challenges.
I'm going to share mine today.
The third is to try to provide you with some tips on how
to handle these said challenges.
Before I get started,
I just will show you a little bit of my year review.
It's been pretty crazy in a good way.
And I used to sit right where you guys are sitting,
assuming that -- for the undergrads in here,
I was sitting right where you guys are sitting,
probably five or six years ago.
So this is where -- this is kind of what my last year has been.
And five or six years ago, I was sitting right where you are.
I had dinner with Michelle Rhee in October
at the Boston Speaker Series.
She was in town giving a speech
at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
She invited me to have dinner with her and some
of her other people in the community.
And I sat right next to her.
It was a pretty interesting conversation.
Whether you agree with some of Michelle Rhee's tactics --
she's the former chancellor of the D.C. public schools
and the current CEO of StudentsFirst --
whether you agree with her leadership ability or not,
she is someone, I believe, that is well-intentioned.
And so, we had lots
of interesting conversations at dinner.
This is Arne Duncan.
He's the secretary of -- U.S. secretary of education.
This is at the International Summit
on the Teaching Profession, where labor and management
from 28 countries across the world came together
in New York City to talk
about how we could elevate the teaching profession globally.
So, this is Secretary Duncan and me.
This is President Obama and me at the White House.
I was one of 54 Teachers of the Year that met him on that day.
You might be asking yourself, 54?
You're not making us look good here, Adam, coming to UGA.
There can't be 54 Teachers of the Year.
There's only 50 states.
American Samoa, Department of Defense, the *** Islands
and Washington, D.C. -- so,
that was the four additional ones besides the 50.
This is, again, Secretary Duncan,
at the White House, and me.
The lady on the right, her name is Celine Coggins.
She's the CEO of a non-profit organization called Teach Plus,
and her compadre, Alice Cain, who's the vice president
of policy at Teach Plus.
So this is kind of crazy.
I got invited to be -- to standing on the field at Fenway,
which, I believe, is the oldest baseball --
the oldest park in baseball.
It was kind of cool, and like, you know, six years ago,
I was just sitting right where you guys are, and then,
in the spring, I was standing on Fenway field, pretty wild.
This guy, for the professors in the audience,
he's a pretty well known guy named Michael Fullen.
He's a Canadian guy who is just fantastic, and has great ideas
about how we can elevate the teaching profession.
We have Bieber fever here in the U.S.,
and we need Fullen fever, if you ask me.
And then, these are some clowns --
okay, I don't know where this picture came from.
This is Halloween.
Anyway, I don't know how I got that picture in there,
former roommates and worst wingmen ever [laughter].
So, the outline for the today's talk --
I just wanted to go through that to show you, you know,
kind of the cool year that I've had, guys.
And I was sitting right where you were five or six years ago.
So, great things are on the horizon
for all of you, I'm sure.
The outline for today is, we're going to use these clickers
to respond to audience response questions
and collect some data from you guys.
Then I'm going to talk about some leading
and lagging indicators from the high school
where I used to work.
Then I'm going to give you two anecdotes
about my teaching experience.
The first one, I like to call Humble Pie.
The second one is called You Damn Right.
And then fifth, we're going to talk about tips
for some behavior management, if that's something
that you find yourself, maybe, struggling with
or thinking a lot about.
And then, number six, we're going --
I'm going to give you some suggestions for moving forward.
Some terminology that I might use today
that you may not be familiar with.
The first one is,
student-to-staff constructive feedback form --
you may be familiar with it.
You may not.
If you look at the form that I gave you guys, I think this --
oh, I won't tell you how I feel about it, because I don't want
to sway you one way or another when I'm trying
to collect data here in a little bit.
But this is a form used by students to provide feedback
to teachers on how they can improve.
So you're asking students how you can improve.
It's a pretty interesting concept.
The next one is leading and lagging indicators.
So, socioeconomic, ethnic, special education, etcetera.,
makeup of the student body, and then, attendance,
suspension, graduation.
And then, of course, student growth based
on high-stakes test.
And then, the last one is MCAS.
I can't remember what the Georgia equivalent
of a high-stakes test is.
But we have something called the MCAS, which our students take
in public education, grades three
through eight and grade 10.
And they can't graduate
from high school unless they demonstrate proficiency
in their grade 10.
So this is our high-stakes test.
And I'm going to be showing you some data today from that.
So, before we really dive in -- I know, here we are.
I would like to kind of know who is in the audience today.
So, you can take your clicker, and I want to know
which of the following best describes you today?
Is it a prospective teacher, a current teacher --
so you're a paid current teacher, is it a principal,
a teacher of teachers -- so are you a professor,
or are you support staff --
someone in the College of Education that happens
to maybe find this interesting?
>> Teacher of teachers?
>> Adam Gray: Teacher of teachers.
Teacher of teachers could also be a mentor teacher.
And if you have to change your -- you can change it.
Yes, ma'am?
>> You had formerly taught,
but you're back [inaudible] full time.
>> Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
>> Adam Gray: I would say...
>> Teacher of teachers.
>> Adam Gray: Teacher of teachers, yeah, okay.
>> Etcetera [laughter].
>> Adam Gray: Yeah, so then, that's good.
I can take that back for the next presentation.
I should have revised that.
So, it looks like 69% are prospective teachers,
and you can see the breakdown there.
And there's a little thing there, if you just want
to jot some of these data points down,
you're more than welcome to, because we might refer back
to them a little bit later.
I want to know this data point,
just to see what you guys think here.
Which country below -- United States, Finland, South Korea,
Japan or not sure -- spend the most time --
direct instructional time -- in front of students.
That's that stand-and-deliver time, time where a teacher is
"in front of students."
Which country do you believe spends --
asks its teachers to spend the most time in front of students?
So, we have 30 people with clickers -- or, 32, okay.
[ Background conversations ]
Okay, 33. Need two more, folks.
[ Background conversations ]
Okay, so it looks like 44% say the U.S., 19% Finland,
16% South Korea, and 12% are not sure.
Interestingly enough, there was a report in "The Atlantic" --
in the October issue of "The Atlantic."
The U.S. spends 500 more direct instructional hours, on average,
per year, than both Finland and South Korea,
500 additional more stand-and-deliver hours
than both Finland and South Korea.
Let's take a look at this.
Which country below do you believe performed best
on the mathematics portion of the 2009 PISA?
It's an international test that's given to students,
and it stands for the Program
for International Student Assessment.
So you can say United States, Finland, South Korea,
Japan or you're not sure.
Remember, 12% were not sure in the last one.
44% were U.S. Yes, ma'am?
>> How did they determine which students were taking this test?
>> Adam Gray: How did they determine the...
>> Like, what students actually took this test?
>> Adam Gray: You know, that data point, I'm not quite sure.
The OE - it's the Organization
of Economic-something Development.
The OECD is...
>> Cooperation?
>> Adam Gray: Cooperation of Development.
They're the ones that kind of administrator this test, and so,
one of your professors might be able to better answer
that question than me.
[ Silence ]
Okay, so it looks like most people think [laughter] --
okay [laughs] -- 0% for the United States,
okay, good, good, good.
Hopefully, this doesn't parallel our confidence
in moving forward as a profession.
So, 47% for Japan, and then Finland
and South Korea get the other ones, and I'm not sure is 3%.
Okay, interestingly enough, for math, South Korea, again,
and Finland, which spend 500 less instructional hours
in the U.S., they perform at much higher levels
than the U.S., which ranks 30th on the PISA,
just an interesting data point there.
How about this, guys?
What percent of teachers nationwide do you think have 10
or fewer years of experience in the classroom?
Talking K-12 here -- what percentage of teachers --
there's 3.9 million teachers nationwide based
on a study in 2008.
What percentage of those 3.9 million teachers do you believe
have 10 or fewer years of experience?
Okay, I must have done something a little funky on this one.
That's okay, we've still got...
[ Silence ]
Okay, so everybody's voted.
So it looks like 36% say 50% -- 52%.
And that's actually correct.
52% of 3.9 million teachers, based --
that was published in a report in 2008 had 10 or fewer years
of experience, which is a major shift --
a major shift in the demographics
of the teaching profession.
Okay, so just a couple more questions here, guys.
How many years have you been teaching or plan to teach?
How many years do you plan on working?
And this -- yeah, this applies for everybody.
So, if you're a teacher of teachers,
if you're a grad student, how many plans do you --
how many years do you plan on teaching?
[ Background conversations ]
>> In the K-12 setting?
>> Adam Gray: This'll -- so this -- you can call --
you and Dr. Wilson [assumed spelling]
and other people can plan on -- teachers of teachers.
This applies to everybody.
Yeah.
>> Count college.
>> Adam Gray: Yeah, college as well.
Teachers of teachers also teaching, right?
Okay. Three more to go.
Two more to go.
You guys are just like my students.
There's always one person that waits until like the --
like the six, five, four, three, two --
gets it in at the last second.
Okay, so more than 20, fantastic.
Okay, interesting.
So, I've worked in a --
in an underperforming school in Boston.
And so, 50 percent of teachers leave the profession.
They don't just migrate to another school.
They leave the profession, I believe,
after just three years in the classroom.
It's pretty high turnover right, there.
How about this, guys?
What do you think is most influential factor affecting
student achievement?
Most influential factor affecting student achievement?
Is it socioeconomic background, class size, teacher quality,
education of parents or quality of life at home?
[ Silence ]
Couple more questions.
Couple more questions here.
[ Background conversations ]
Okay, so 42% say teacher quality.
26%, which is second, is socioeconomic background,
and education of parents ranks last at 10%.
Okay, now the student -- I don't know if you've had a chance
to look over it, but this --
I just want to ask a couple questions about this.
The first one is, do you think
that student-to-staff constructive feedback forms
could be useful for teachers?
>> Did you give the answer on that one?
>> Adam Gray: Maybe I didn't.
What's the...
>> What were the factor...
>> Adam Gray: Yeah, okay.
>> Which one was...
>> Adam Gray: Let me answer that after this, okay?
Well, let me give my opinion.
I don't have an answer for it.
>> [Chuckles] Oh, okay.
>> Adam Gray: Thank you for that.
And if you guys answer once on the clickers, and you feel
like you have to change your answer.
If you change it, it'll just change up here.
It's not a big deal.
[ Background conversations ]
Okay, so 88% say yes.
Now, before we move to the next question --
before we move to the next question,
I'm going to address the last one.
The last question said, what do you think is most influential
factor in student achievement?
Now, I asked that question that way, because I left
out a really important word, which was "school-based"
or "non-school-based."
I guess left out both of those words.
And I was basically just trying
to see what you thought was the most influential factor,
whether it was school-based or non-school-based.
I believe there's research out there
that says the most influential school-based factor is
teacher quality.
And non-school-based factor would have been one
of the others ones -- education of parents or quality of life
at home and so on and so forth.
But I asked that question, not because I have an answer to it,
but just because I like to see what folks
in the audience believe, okay?
Next question here, and this is where the profession is moving.
This is where the profession is moving here.
At least it is in Massachusetts, and because we're a leader
in the nation in terms of K-12 education,
I feel like it'll be moving elsewhere as well.
Do you think
that student-to-staff constructive feedback forms
should be part of a teacher evaluation?
Yes, sir?
>> Just part of the evaluation?
Or is it -- let's say, like teacher pay is going
to be based off of this?
>> Adam Gray: Just part of the evaluation.
>> Part of the evaluation.
>> Adam Gray: That's all we're talking about right now.
Mmm hm. Now, whether or not teacher pay is linked
to evaluation is another question.
This is just, should it be a part of evaluation.
Good question, though, really good question.
[ Background conversations ]
Remember that 88% said that it would be useful.
Okay, 58% say yes, really interesting,
really interesting, okay?
12% say no, 21% say maybe.
They just need a little bit more clarification.
And then, I'm not sure.
Okay, good.
So, what I'm going to get into today, I'm really going to kind
of start talking about my experiences
at the underperforming school.
And I'll be happy to email you this data
if you'd be interested.
Maybe it could, you know,
kind of spark some conversations later on.
This was a word cloud.
Have you guys, by a show of hands,
have you ever seen a word cloud before?
Okay, you have.
So basically, the -- I was at this professional development
with all the Teachers of the Year
across the country in Dallas.
And, a former National Teacher of the Year asked us to text
in words that we thought of when we thought of effective teaching
and effective teachers.
So, the words that appear the biggest appeared the most.
The words that appear the smallest appeared the least.
So, those three words are passionate,
dedicated and relationships.
So, I've been kind of using this as a go-to slide all year
to really kind of tell the story of teachers at the school
where I used to work, and the kids that used
to attend the school where I worked.
So, I'm going to spend the next little bit talking
about how we used passion, dedication and relationships
to overcome some of the challenges that we faced
at the struggling high school in South Boston, okay?
Before I get that, this is now kind of the leading
and lagging indicators, is just to paint a little bit
of a picture of what it was like to work at the school
that I worked at in Southie for five years.
So, this data that you see up here,
it's going to be a little confusing, but I'm going
to highlight just a few areas that you need to focus on.
This data is of students
that I taught during their 10th-grade year in 2009,
but the data is about them during their freshman year,
okay?
So this relates to their attendance,
their socioeconomic makeup during their freshman year.
But these are students I taught during the sophomore year, okay?
Leading and lagging indicators.
I taught 83 10th graders in 2009.
30% of them were students with disabilities.
70% of them were classified as coming from low-income families.
This bottom part right here talks about attendance
of those students during their freshman year.
If we look closely at this, we can see that 24%
of those 83 10th graders missed 20 to 36 school days
in their freshman year.
We can see that 22%, or 38 to 54 of those sophomores --
or, 22% of those 83 sophomores missed 38
to 54 days during their freshman year.
And 18% missed more than 54 days.
Altogether, approximately 65% of my students missed
at least 20 days of school during their freshman year.
That's a lot.
This is a -- kind of a doughnut chart
that represents how they performed
in their core subject areas in their freshman year.
Okay, 44% did not pass a single subject the year before they
came to me.
17% passed one.
16%, two subjects.
77% failed at least half
of their classes during their freshman year, okay?
Now, this is the MCAS part -- our kind of high-stakes test
that we gives in grades three through eight and grade 10.
On the mathematics portion
of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System,
we can see that 14% passed at the proficient level
or higher during their eighth-grade year.
So, those 83 10th graders, when they were eighth-graders,
only 14% of them were proficient or higher.
And more than half of them failed the exam.
A couple years later, after they came to Monument
and had their ninth-grade teacher, and then they came
to me, and after they had me, we increased that to 45%
at proficient or higher,
and we decreased the failure rate by 40%.
So you know -- you guys are math and science people,
and even if you're not, you can make data really say anything,
okay?
So that's pretty phenomenal, what you just saw,
those two slides right there.
And Massachusetts is a --
we have a pretty rigorous assessment.
So, students can -- students can pass --
you know, maybe in Mississippi,
they can pass their high-stakes exam with a really high score.
And then they can go to Massachusetts and,
because it's a lot -- we have much higher standards
in Massachusetts than we do in a lot of places in the country,
they could potentially not do well on that assessment.
So, the fact that we were able
to move the achievement needle based
on this high-stakes test is pretty great.
But you should be skeptical of it,
because you can make data say anything.
So, you should be thinking about,
you know, how did you do that?
Did you teach the test?
And I'm going to get into that here in a little bit, okay?
You should always be skeptical of the data.
All right, so I started my career
in Boston public schools shortly after I graduated from here.
I moved up, I was 23 years old, and I moved up in May
and started living with my brother and commuting
to Southie on the Red Line.
If you guys have ever seen "The Departed,"
then you've seen the Red Line go right there
through Park Street station.
And in the first month of work, I lost 15 pounds on what I
like to refer to as the hypertension diet.
Wasn't a -- wasn't a very healthy diet,
and I don't recommend it for anybody.
And I remember that, every day that I would wake
up in the morning at 5:30, my first thought was not,
what was my hair going to look like today, it was, uh oh,
I wonder if the photocopy machine is going to work.
You know, am I going to be able to make photocopies for my kids?
And my students used to make fun of me --
I mean, every day, every day.
And I thought, you know, at first I was kind of going along
with it, because I thought it was hip, and I was going
to be cool, and I was going to be their friend.
And they used to ask me, every single time I would hand
out a worksheet, would you like a Quarter Pounder and cheese,
or, you know, would like fries with that,
or all this kind of stuff.
And I didn't really get it, but it was kind of funny,
and everybody was laughing.
Until I finally figured out that they had noticed the widow's
peaks on my forehead had formed a pair of beautiful arches
and had nicknamed me Ronald McDonald [laughter].
So again, I thought this was -- I thought this was funny.
But look at that clown.
It wasn't funny.
It wasn't funny at all, right?
They were not trying to help put --
help me put that healthy weight back on.
They were, like, terrorizing me, okay?
So now I'm going to move to the next slide
so you don't keep looking at that.
And so in any case, I remember in late September
of that same year, I'm walking down the hall,
and one of my good friends --
he was kind of a good friend at first.
I didn't know how close we would grow over the years.
But he was a colleague of mine.
He taught on the same grade level team.
He was our 10th grade English teacher.
His name's Jamie Dougherty [assumed spelling].
He was a ninth-year vet.
And I was just walking down there,
and I think I had maybe a planning period.
I was going to use the bathroom.
And I decided to kind of peek in his window
to see how the students that terrorized me --
I was like, curious, like,
how were they were terrorizing Jamie?
Were they calling him Ronald McDonald
or some other clown's name?
And I kind of turned my head, and I looked through the window,
and every single kid in that class was in a seat,
just like you guys are right now, they were writing something
down or they were engaging in some kind of rich discussion.
And I knew at that moment, that it wasn't their fault.
They didn't value education.
They came from poor homes.
They didn't get it.
They didn't respect adults.
The problem wasn't theirs.
The problem was mine.
The problem was mine.
He was showing me that it was my problem.
And I took a big old bite out of humble pie.
Big old bite out of humble pie.
So, in the weeks and the most that ensued,
I started talking to Jamie.
I had unwavering high expectations.
You know, they were rough.
I probably quit in my head, not every day, every period.
Every period -- hot damn, I'm not doing this.
I'm going back to Georgia.
It's starting to get cold up here.
It's September already, you know [laughter]?
These kids don't respect me.
I'm going back.
The problem wasn't Boston.
The problem wasn't Massachusetts.
The problem wasn't the kids.
The problem was me.
Okay? And I say that, and I'm standing here
as the 2012 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year, so,
big old -- big old bite out of humble pie,
and it's the best thing that ever --
one of the best things that's ever happened to me.
That's my humble pie anecdote right there.
And I'll get a little bit into how I became more effective here
in a just a little bit.
I started -- I know, you guys are kind of starting to froth
at the mouth, and then some of you guys are like,
what the hell is this [laughter]?
So I started a math honor society to try
to dangle a carrot in front of the students at the school.
I remember, I emailed Dr. Wilson a couple years ago about that.
We were on CNN.
We got some coverage on CNN, and I was trying to keep some people
in the loop here about that.
It was kind of cool.
And basically, what I told these kids, I said, listen,
come to school every day.
Don't cuss at your teachers.
And get a 3.0 GPA.
This is not Harvard.
This is Monument High School.
You can do this.
If you do that, I will take you
on an all-expense-paid field trip at the end of the year.
Now, I had to look and see, of the upper classmen that were --
because to be eligible for this math group,
you had to be a junior or a senior.
I looked at all the students' behavior, right?
I looked at their grades.
I looked at their attendance.
How many of the approximately 189 to 200 students qualified
to be in this honor society right off the bat?
There were 11.
11. Only 11.
So I took those 11, and brought them to my classroom,
and I said what I just told you.
I'll take you on an all-expense-paid field trip.
They thought I was totally full of it.
"How much money you got, Gray?"
I don't even have enough nickels to rub together.
I don't know.
I don't have any money.
I said, but trust me.
Keep coming to school.
Keep being leaders.
And I'm going to take you on an all-expense-paid field trip.
So, in any case, I'm not here to tell you that anecdote,
although it's a great one, basically, cold-called tons
of companies and raised $15,000 in three months
to take these kids on an all-expense-paid field trip.
And the next year we went to Chicago with 16.
And in the third year we took 30 to D.C., all right?
So, here, what I was trying to do --
what you see up here is four scatter plots.
This is 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.
And I'm not -- I'm not a -- I'm not the best math student.
Professors here would tell you that, all right?
But I'm well-intentioned,
and I'm passionate, and I'm hard-working.
And I thought that these would be the right metrics to use.
And they may not be.
They may not have been.
But I was trying to figure out, what metrics can I use
to measure the influence of the math honor society?
So I took, basically, grade point average of each student
at the end of their 10th grade year, and measured
that against their scaled math MCAS score.
So this is what I thought is, when students do better
in class, they're going to do better
on a high-stakes assessment.
And if they don't do well in class,
they're probably not going to do that well
on the high-stakes assessment, right?
So, I was -- I figured that, you know,
the R-squared value would get stronger over time, you know,
as we started to gain momentum
and have a stronger presence at the school.
So this was 2007, 2008, 2009.
Just to give you guys a little bit more about what this means.
It's a 1.58 GPA and 262 on the math MCAS.
280 is a perfect score.
And again, we have a rigorous assessment in Massachusetts.
It's a floor, not a ceiling.
It's not what it needs to be.
But it's a fairly rigorous assessment.
And so that's interesting, right?
A 1.58 GPA and a 262.
Why is that?
Why is that?
What we can see -- well, this bottom tier is failing.
This is kind of that needs-improvement area.
This is proficient, and this is advanced.
And what you see is that, as time passes on, right --
2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 -- we're moving kids up.
But we're not moving kids to the right.
Kids are doing better on a high-stakes assessment,
but that doesn't necessarily translate to an increase
in grade point average.
So they're not doing as well as they should be in their classes.
So we're having a little bit of influence,
but if we're not getting them to graduate and walk
across the stage and be college-bound and college-ready,
you know, the success is debatable.
So I want to talk a little bit about my --
one of my former students, Chanel [assumed spelling].
Chanel -- oh, anti-establishment,
often had a scowl on her face, really thick --
you know, really kind of tough.
But, beneath all that, beneath all
that was a softie -- was a softie.
But she was anti-establishment.
She was stubborn.
And I'm kind of like that myself, so I kind of was like,
I -- we kind of got along a little bit.
So, Chanel had this problem where she would come
to school 15 minutes late pretty consistently, okay?
Pretty consistently, and Mr. Gray had this thing
where I would just be a nice little thorn in anybody's side
if they did things like that.
Nice little thorn, not a mean thorn, a nice thorn.
So, at the end of every day,
I'd make a little yellow sticky note, and I'd write kids' names
that were late, they were absent,
they didn't do their homework, misbehaved.
Also on that list, which I'll get to later,
were kids that did well, that came to school on time,
but had historically not done that.
So, you know, you're not only calling for bad things.
You're also calling for good things here.
So, Chanel, unfortunately for her,
was on that little yellow Post-it a little bit more often
than she would have liked.
So, there was a stretch where Chanel was late
to school 15 days in a row.
15 days in a row -- 15 minutes.
So, let's just -- let's take it back.
On the first day, Chanel walks in.
She's 15 minutes late.
Okay, her name makes the yellow Post-it.
On the way back to South station, I'm going back to --
maybe it was Central -- no, it wasn't Central Square.
It was Porter Square at the time in Summerville, Mass.
I call her mom, and her mom's name was Linda.
Ring, ring, ring.
Ring, ring, ring.
Hey, Linda, how's it going?
My name is Adam Gray.
I'm Chanel's high school math teacher at Monument.
Chanel is a beautiful person.
She's got a lot of energy.
She's a little stubborn like me.
I can see that.
I don't want to know what her room looks like at home.
I'm sure she never cleans it.
I just want to let you know, Chanel was late today.
She was late by 15 minutes.
And Chanel's not coming to me at grade level.
So, if I'm going to get her to the 11th grade, the 12th grade,
and to be college-bound and college-ready, I need Chanel
to be at school every day with her butt
in a seat and ready to learn.
You think you can talk to Chanel?
"Yeah, Mr. Gray.
She's just as -- you're just as crazy
as she says -- as she says you are."
Okay, okay, Linda.
But she was laughing, you know,
because she knows I'm in the same corner.
I developed a rapport, and I had a reputation for that.
So she talks to Chanel that night.
Next morning comes around,
and I had Chanel first period during the day.
Chanel walks in 15 minutes late, 15 minutes late, okay?
Got a scowl on her face, ooh, like you've never seen before,
so she comes in, she walks down,
she sits with her book bag in the seat.
She doesn't take anything out,
doesn't write a single thing down.
Okay, take note of that.
Not the first time I've seen that.
Not the last time I've seen that.
Bell rings, second period.
Chanel, come talk to me for a little bit.
Let's try to work this out a little bit.
I can see that you're upset.
Take Chanel outside.
She's still got that scowl on her face --
won't make eye contact with me at all.
I told her, listen, Chanel, you're 15 minutes late.
You're not coming to me at grade level.
If I'm going to get you to 11th grade, 12 grade, college-bound,
college-ready, I need you to be here every single day,
ready to learn, right, on time.
Okay, so are you going to be here on time tomorrow?
She said, "Yeah, I'll be here tomorrow."
I said, okay, okay.
Chanel walks down to my buddy Jamie Dougherty's room
for English.
So, Chanel was late that day.
She made the yellow postie note.
On the way home, walking towards South station to go back
to Porter Square, I call.
Ring, ring, ring.
Ring, ring, ring.
Linda picks up.
Hey, Linda, how you doing?
"Good, Mr. A. Good.
How's everything going with you?
Is Chanel okay?"
Yeah, yeah, she's all right.
She's all right.
But Linda, I thought that -- did you talk --
did you get a chance to talk to Chanel?
I know you're busy.
I know you work a couple jobs.
You know, did you get a chance to chat with her?
"Yeah, I chatted with her for a minute.
I chatted with her for a minute."
And I was like, okay, okay.
Well, Linda, Chanel was late again today.
She was 15 minutes late, just like she was the day before.
So, we got to figure this out.
We got to come together.
We're all on the same team here.
We're in her corner.
We got to convince her of that.
We got to get Chanel here on time every day.
"Okay, I'm going to talk to her tonight.
She's going to understand that she needs to be in math class,
ready to learn, tomorrow on time."
Yes, ma'am, looking forward to it, okay.
Next day rolls around.
What do you think happened?
Chanel's 15 minutes late.
15 minutes late.
And she was more PO'd than she was the day before.
I didn't even know that that was possible.
I didn't even know that was possible.
I mean, they even make masks --
scary masks and sell them in Spencer's that look
like Chanel's face that day.
She was so upset.
So, she walks in, puts her --
sits down in a seat with a book bag, doesn't take anything out.
Doesn't take any notes, anything like that, okay, seen this --
not the first time, not the last time, bell rings, second period.
Everybody's going to Jamie Dougherty's class down the hall.
Chanel, come and talk to me a little bit.
Come and talk to me a little bit.
Chanel doesn't make eye contact.
She wears that scowl the whole time, maybe even the whole day.
She keeps walking, goes down to Jamie's class.
Okay. Well, Chanel's 15 minutes late.
Her name made the yellow Post-it.
So, I'm on the way down to South station.
I give Linda a call again, ring, ring,
ring, hey, Linda, Mr. Gray.
"Are you going to call every single time Chanel's late
to school?"
Can you remember from the outline?
Do you know what I said?
You're damn right I am.
Damn right I am.
Because Chanel's not coming to me at grade level, if I'm going
to get her to the 11th grade, 12th grade, college-bound,
college-ready, I need Chanel to be here every single day,
with her butt in a seat, ready to learn.
Do you think you can talk to her again?
"Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She'll be there tomorrow."
Okay, Linda, that's all I want.
I'm in your corner.
I'm in her corner.
Don't get hostile, please.
Okay. Next day rolls around, guess what happened?
Chanel's 10 minutes late.
She's 10 minutes late.
Now, don't be too happy with the progress.
She's still late now [laughter].
She's still late.
She's still late.
In fact, Chanel was late for the next 12 days.
So she made that yellow Post-it for the next 12 days.
And so, I called Linda for the next 12 days.
But you know what's funny?
Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring,
linda never picked up again, never picked up again.
But the cool part about this story, guys,
is that Chanel was 10 minutes late.
Next day, she was eight minutes late.
Next day, five minutes late.
Got to a point where Chanel was two minutes late every single
day, even though she got to school
on time, just to *** me off.
I respect that.
That's okay.
She's going to go far in life [laughter].
She's just showing me who's in control.
I don't have kids, but for those of you that do,
know that that's probably a natural --
you know, a natural reaction.
That was fine.
I had dinner with Chanel before I left Boston.
I'm currently on sabbatical this year.
And I had dinner with her.
She graduated from Monument, and she's now enrolled
in a program -- she's not a Northeastern freshman.
She's enrolled in a program that, if she does well,
she's going to be enrolled in Northeastern next year.
And I will tell you, as the Massachusetts Teacher
of the Year, that is not because of me.
That is because there are a lot of people that worked
at that school that were like me, right?
It's not just me.
So, people always say, "Oh, thank you, Mr. Gray.
You know, you're the one that --
you know, I'm here because of you."
Now, maybe I went the extra mile a little bit.
But there were a lot of people that contributed to that --
a lot of people that contributed to that.
And it sounds like a lot of effort, guys.
Sounds like a lot of effort.
You write a name on a Post-it.
You got it in your cell.
You make the phone call on the way to the train.
Not that much effort.
And who knows, had we not taken the time to do those sorts
of things at Monument, who knows
where her trajectory would be right now, okay?
Who knows where it would be.
So, what we have to realize is, both teachers and mathematicians
and people that are going to engage in this --
in these policy discussions in the future,
because that's what you guys are going to have to do
if we're going to keep this profession, you know, healthy --
or get it healthy, I guess I should say, is that, behind each
and every single data point is a living, breathing human being,
living, breathing human being.
So, the data's important, but we also have to know the faces
and the challenges that come with them.
And what I tried to tell Chanel was something I try
to live every single day.
15 minutes early is on time.
On time is late.
And late is unacceptable.
And that's the kind of, like, intensity that you guys got
to bring to the classroom every day.
Whether you work in a challenging school
like Monument, or you work at a really fine institution
that is hitting on all cylinders.
That's the kind of intensity that you have to bring every day
to the classroom, okay?
Oftentimes, the students that you do have will come
on the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
They're going to be looking for safety.
They're going to be looking for love and belonging.
They're going to be looking for a prom date.
They're going -- all kinds of teenage chaos,
or little kid chaos, is going to be going on.
And it's our job to not only meet them here,
but get them here to self-actualize.
So that means, we have to have high expectations for them.
We have to have rigorous content.
Okay, and we have to get them to a place where they can --
they have the skills and the tools that they need
that will open doors for them
that otherwise would not be open, okay?
Behavior management -- number one, build relationships.
I'm not going to spend any time on this, because I feel
like the last anecdote basically sheds light on the kind
of commitment that you have to have, both to your colleagues
and to your students, okay?
Build relationships, number one.
So, these students, your problem childs, more times than not,
they have absolutely always had teachers call home
and say bad things about them, right?
We've all made those phone calls.
And if you haven't, you will, okay?
So, what I would suggest, the very first day of school,
you can identify some of those problem childs.
They're not problem childs, but, you know, they're --
they just might not be into your class yet.
They might not be academic.
Make a phone call home early, and just say something like,
hey, I'm going to channel this young lady's energy.
I'm really excited to watch her develop both academically
and personally over the course of the year, right?
And then you might be the first teacher that's ever called home,
and said something positive about that student.
And then, all of the sudden, that student's going to walk
through your door with their chest poked out,
and their chin up, and they're going to be able to --
eventually, what they'll do, if they know you're going to run
through walls for them, they'll walk through walls for you.
You got to build that relationship.
Second one -- and this doesn't get talked about enough.
All right, and this is extremely important.
And I'm glad that I'm talking to you guys, because I know,
Dr. Wilson, you guys are really talking about content in here
and how you're going to deliver this content
in a way that's rigorous and engaging, okay?
Content connections which will lead
to curiosity, that's a big one.
How many kids do we teach these days that are naturally curious?
Naturally leaders?
They just want to do the problem,
where do I plug this in, and then move on --
go to the next class, right?
This is also a tool for behavior management.
Let me tell -- let me give you an example.
And again, this is not something I did early in my career.
This is something that I'm still working on.
I have a lot of room for improvement.
But it's something that I've learned the last couple
of years.
I came up with this fictional Nike case study.
We were studying surface area.
And rather than saying, oh, 4 pi R-squared in the formula
for the surface area of a sphere, let's just --
given a radius, calculate the surface area,
given the surface area, calculate the diameter,
all this kind of stuff, which --
you know, isolating variables is important.
How am I going to apply that?
How do people apply that in their real life?
So I made up this kind of fictional Nike case study.
And you can make up your own case studies,
too, which are fun.
Nike -- Beaverton, Ohio, right?
How many people know that -- kids are going to know that?
So basically, what I said is, you are --
split up my class into thirds.
Let's say this third are going to be people that work for Nike.
Okay? This third are going to be people that work
in Bangalore at a factory.
And then the back third are going to be people that work
at -- I guess that's Guangzhou, I guess.
I don't know how -- necessarily how to pronounce that.
But these are -- these are places in the world
where Nike has factories.
And we want to basically make basketballs.
So I took a basketball, I took a knife, and I cut it open.
And I said, let's see what's inside of a basketball.
There's rubber on the inside, or lining.
There's leather on the outside.
And we talked about what it takes
to actually make a basketball.
This is roughly spherical, right?
And you use a lot of math to make this.
Then, we eventually got to financial statements.
So we're dealing with surface area.
God, I'm hitting the standard for surface area here.
I'm teaching surface area.
But I'm teaching a heck of a lot more than surface area.
I'm teaching it in a way where kids are thinking about,
how does surface area even apply to me besides, you know,
painting a house that has windows and a door,
and you're not painting the floor, right?
Something a little bit sexier than that.
So we talk about financial statements.
We talk about shipping costs.
We talk about labor costs.
I threw a curve ball at my kids -- I've only done this twice,
and it's been -- it's getting better over time.
Labor costs right here.
So basically, I said, oh, in China, you know there's a lot
of people that are killing themselves
because of poor labor conditions.
So they're talking about unionizing.
And what does -- what is the history of unions?
So, this surface area conversation can lead
to so much more -- so much more than just surface area.
And it really gets kids to think about the global economy
and their future role in it.
Unions and working conditions and things like that.
So again, I think as teachers, it's really important for us
to deliver content in a way that does the following.
That does the following.
It leads to conversations between students after class.
And this would be great if you can do this.
It leads to conversations at the dinner table at home.
If you can teach content in a way where kids are psyched,
and they're ready to run through your door instead of running
out of it, that is when you are doing a great job.
Now, I'm sitting here,
Massachusetts Teacher of the Year.
There are plenty of times, even in the last year,
kids wanted to run out of my door.
So, I'm not perfect.
I'm not a 10 every day.
My effort, my commitment, is always a 10.
You have to be -- you know,
work towards being consistently effective.
And it starts with being rigorous, which can also be used
as a behavior management tool.
Also, something really important, guys,
if you're talking about Beaverton, Ohio, and China,
India, please emphasize that this is not drawn to scale.
If they're thinking that Ohio and India are
about the same size, that's problematic.
So just be cautious of that.
You guys have seen those geometry problems
where things are not drawn to scale.
Okay, another one -- "The Tipping Point."
Have you guys ever heard of Malcolm Gladwell
or read "The Tipping Point"?
Okay. So, Malcolm Gladwell, I mean, he's not the person
that came up with this, but wrote a really cool book called
"The Tipping Point," and he talks
about crime rate in New York City.
So in my algebra class last year, we were talking
about polynomial regression.
Had a bunch of data points, and let's fit a curve to it
to make future predictions and predictions --
you know, interpolate -- we were interpolating --
well, a little bit.
So, instead of just doing that, right, on a TI-83 or a TI-84 --
instead of just doing that, I thought, okay, well,
let me just get some real data.
So we looked at the number of murders, or the crime rate,
in New York City between, like 19 -- well, we --
I just got this picture off the Internet today.
We only looked from 1960 to, probably, 2005.
And what you notice, there's a major tipping point here,
right at about 1989, 1990, where the crime rate just plummets.
And so this guy named William Bratton, who was hired
as the head of the New York City Transit Police during Rudolph
Giuliani's early years,
had implemented this thing called the broken windows
theory, where he basically said, we're going to focus
on the small things, and the big things are going
to take care of themselves.
So, we're going to arrest people for peeing in public.
We're going to arrest them
for jumping turnstiles, vandalizing trains.
And when they did that, what they noticed is,
everybody that they arrested for doing those small things,
maybe one in five had a warrant out for their arrest.
They had weapons on them.
They had drugs on them.
So, they focused on the small things,
and they started getting all the big people, right?
The broken windows, I believe, is named for this reason.
If you walk into a neighborhood that has broken windows,
and you don't fix them, people will think
that they can just break windows,
and it's no big deal, right?
So, if you walk into a neighborhood
that has broken windows, and you fix them every single time
that they're broken, people are going to walk around,
and they're going to, like, "Well,
I can't break windows here.
They're just going to get fixed."
Okay? So that's kind of where the --
I think, where the theory comes from.
But it got the kids talking.
We're not only doing polynomial regression,
but we're applying it to things
that are being talked about in real life.
But then, we threw this in there.
I threw this in there.
Steve Levitt, who's the author of "Freakonomics,"
he has his own opinions about the tipping point of crime rate,
not only in New York City, but nationwide.
He's an economist.
He's graduated from MIT and now works at U Chicago.
And he said that it's not broken windows theory, you know?
We like that kind of American story.
The cowboy comes in, he cleans things
up with this great theory.
Instead, what is -- the reason for the tipping point
and the decrease in crime rate is Roe v. Wade,
which is really controversial, right -- abortion, 1973.
And what he pointed to is, basically he said, okay,
crime rate not only decreased in New York, but if you look
at the crime rate in Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles,
and a lot of different kind of cities --
not megacities, but cities across the U.S. during
that time, they all had tipping points at around the same time.
So, guys, we're sitting here,
we're hitting the standard big time, man.
We are hitting it big time.
Kids know how to graph it on their calculators
and interpolate and extrapolate.
But you know what, this is leading to conversations
after class, on weekends and at home.
Kids would come to me and say, hey, Mr. Gray, I was talking
about this with my parents, and they disagree.
Or, they agree, and kids start looking at each other
and talking to each other.
So, this is a -- this is a behavioral tool, because kids
that are bored are going to act out.
And if you can hook them and engage them with something
like this, you know, you can't do this 180 days
out of the year.
I'm not pretending that you can.
But, the more often you can do it,
the more kids are going to be engaged.
Tips for implementation, if you're curious about this,
I would say, allow your students to present their solutions
to problems routinely, even if their solutions are incorrect.
Have students reflect on what they've learned
and communicate through writing.
I mean, this is something I learned last year,
and you know had already been selected
as the Teacher of the Year.
And it's great to learn these things,
because I have so much room to grow.
Get your kids writing about the mathematics that they're doing.
Get them to really reflect on what they're doing in class,
not just solving and isolating variables.
Not just calculating the area of a circle
when that circle's not really attached to something
that they're going to have to use in real life.
Get them to write.
Be the ultimate facilitator.
Interestingly enough, ladies and gentlemen,
this has been my experience -- the less you talk,
the more students learn.
The less you talk, the more students learn.
Get them to look at each other when they are speaking,
and student engagement will increase.
Be the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage, okay?
Now, I get it -- these are just my opinions.
I'm not an expert in this.
But this is what I have found to be successful
in my classrooms, okay.
Be the guide on the side and not the sage on the stage.
Other suggestions -- how we doing on time here?
Doing okay?
All right.
Other suggestions, I've already talked a little bit
about building relationships with parents
and students and colleagues.
Let's see.
Is this clock right, Dr. Wilson?
>> [Inaudible responses].
>> Adam Gray: What time is it, guys?
>> 5.
>> It's 5 o'clock.
>> Adam Gray: It's 5:00.
Okay, so we got 15 minutes, maybe?
>> Yeah.
>> Adam Gray: Okay, good.
I don't know if I want to tell this anecdote or not.
We'll just -- we'll keep going here.
Collaborate.
You're going to learn -- this is kind of unfortunate, I think,
in our profession these days, is that veterans, who,
by definition these days, are teachers with more
than 10 years of experience.
Unfortunately, these teachers have been labeled as lazy,
or they're not willing to improve, or, you know --
especially, I feel like, in New England, where we have --
we have strong unions up there.
And that's not the case.
I mean, I have very rarely met veterans that didn't want
to improve in their own practice.
I've met -- most veterans I know are skeptical of new policies.
That's true.
But they're certainly well-intentioned and committed,
and they want to continue growing and learning.
Invite your colleagues into your classroom.
Invite them into the classroom, and here's why.
Because my experience has been, when you ask to go
into a colleague's classroom, it can be threatening.
You're the young folks.
All you guys look really young in here.
You're the young folks.
You know, it feels awkward.
It feels awkward.
But if you invite veteran colleagues into your classroom,
here's what's going to happen.
They have lots of experience that they can share with you,
and give you tips on how to improve your own practice.
And they probably have deeper relationships with the kids,
unless you've been there for a long time.
But unbeknownst to you, they're going to learn from you.
They're not going to tell you.
They're not going to tell you.
But they're going to start taking some
of the great practices that you have in your classroom,
and they're going to start going
and implementing in theirs, all right?
And that's going to -- and then you --
once you start to develop that strong bond with colleagues,
then you're going to start to openly discuss pedagogy
and other things like that.
Ask for constructive feedback from colleagues, so that kind
of goes to that same thing.
These student feedback forms have been some
of the most valuable feedback I've ever gotten.
I mean, my administrators have evaluated me over the years --
I mean, very nice, well-intentioned,
really smart people with Ph.D.s from BC and all over the place.
But it's really hard to kind of figure out where a teacher's
at in terms of quality of teaching, if you're only
in a classroom four times a year, right, and it's announced.
So, really, what I have found, personally,
is that the best evaluators of me, the best judges
of me, are the students.
And if you look on this --
you guys just look on this for a second --
flip it over to the back.
On the front side, what's really cool about this is
that students have to evaluate themselves first.
Do I come to school on time?
Rarely, never, always, whatever.
Do I pay attention in class?
Rarely -- you know, they evaluate themselves first,
I wouldn't even call it evaluating.
But then they give you feedback on the opposite side.
Don't -- please do not implement this
by letting them give you feedback first
and then evaluate themselves.
You make them reflect on themselves first.
Because, you know, Johnny might have been there one day
out of five for the whole year.
If he's only there 20% of the time,
what does he know about you?
He doesn't know anything about you.
So, you get them to reflect on themselves first,
then get them to give you feedback.
What's awesome -- one thing that has helped me
out with this -- can I just grab this?
Thanks. There is a part at the bottom here.
Number 17 -- what are some good practices you observed
in another class that you would recommend for this teacher?
I mean, goodness gracious.
Kids will not lay into you.
Kids will say, in Ms. Wilson's class, this is what they do,
and it really works for me.
Or, it really works for the class.
And you will -- you know, maybe Ms. Wilson is --
and, I know, Dr. Wilson, you're not like this.
But maybe Ms. Wilson doesn't invite a lot
of colleagues into her classroom.
But here you are, you're learning about Ms. Wilson's --
kind of her best practices, through the kids.
And they're saying it's working for her.
You know what I mean?
So, you're getting good feedback from the kids, and this is --
has been a really good tool for me.
Feel free to use it, and obviously, constructive feedback
from administrators, recognition.
Lead by example.
I'll just keep going here.
Have high expectations for yourself,
for your students or colleagues.
Here's some great suggestions.
Teach to the standards, not to the test.
Guys, our profession is moving in a direction
where we are starting
to incorporate value-added measures into our evaluations.
Now, I'm not going to get in --
maybe during a Q-and-A session we can talk about it,
but you know that can be a really scary thing.
That could be a really scary thing.
But I advise you not to teach to the test,
but to teach to the standards.
So like I was talking about with surface area
and polynomial regression, when you do that, kids are going
to knock the assessments out of the water, all right?
Don't teach them process of elimination.
That's not good for the profession
and not good for students.
There's a great professor --
I don't know if you guys have ever read about this guy,
Richard Elmore, who's a professor at Harvard.
He has this kind of theory -- task predicts performance.
Students will do what you ask them to do.
Low-level assignments won't equip students for complex,
demanding high-level work on tests or later in life.
So, you know, when I wrote objectives
at the very beginning, they weren't rigorous objectives,
because this isn't a lesson.
But, you know, ask your students to do a lot, and they will more
than likely produce a lot.
Where do your daily assignments fall on Bloom's taxonomy?
Map out your entire year, and let your students know
when you will covering what.
So, I would even put a map on the wall and say, hey,
you know in September, here's about where we're going to be.
October, about where we're going to be.
And this is kind of how we're progressing throughout the year.
And it allows kids to really monitor their own progress.
I'd map out the whole year, guys, and just say,
these are the -- these are the days that I'm going
to hit these particular standards.
Organized, organized, organized.
Know where the ship is headed, and let your shipmates know
where the ship is headed.
And your shipmates are your students, right?
Greatest suggestions.
How many guys in here have not been teaching full-time?
Raise your hand if you have not taught full-time.
Great, so you guys need to take note of this, okay?
You're going to be working real hard.
Real hard, okay?
And you know, I may be -- I'm up here, and I'm like,
call, Post-its every day.
You don't have to have that level of intensity.
But regardless, you're still going
to be working really hard doing lesson plans
and different things.
So, it's going to be hard to have much
of a personal life for a little bit.
I recommend work-life balance, definitely,
but it'll be challenging at first.
So, I recommend, like, OkCupid and Match.com [laughter].
EHarmony is a great website
that my roommate has had success with.
This is one I'm not
yet qualified for, Millionaire Match.
I hope to in -- someday.
And for some of you guys, SugarDaddy.com is the one that's
up and coming, I hear, but anyway.
Suggested readings -- this is two more slides right here.
Suggested readings, a book that -- a book that really helped me
out that not only learned -- that kind of helped me learn how
to be a more effective leader in my classroom,
but a more effective leader at the school level,
and even a leader in my own relationships with people --
friends and partners, is a book called
"Leadership and Self-Deception."
If you have time in between, you know, messaging people
on Match.com, you might pick this book up and read it.
It's a book that basically talks about a guy
who thinks that he's a leader.
He's working in isolation.
He's working.
He's working.
He's working.
He's working.
He looks around, he's judgmental to people around him.
They don't do this.
They don't do that.
He's not really communicating with these people,
or his wife at home -- excuse me, his wife at home.
And he's lucky in that he gets a mentor who starts teaching him
about what real leadership looks like --
genuinely caring for those that you work with.
And when I say work with,
I mean both students and colleagues, okay?
So, that's a good read for you guys if you're interested.
Another read -- you know, you guys are going to --
you know, you're the future of our profession.
You're the new majority.
Teach Plus is a non-profit organization that I'm affiliated
with -- opportunities for teachers
and results for urban students.
They have a great newsletter that you can read,
just to be up to date on education policy,
not only in urban schools, but nationwide.
So, it's something I would check out, because guys, you know,
there's a lot of -- I mean, there's a lot
of ed reform going on out there.
Some of it's good.
A lot of it is -- you know,
a lot of it's scary, is what I'll say.
And so it's on us to really start being engaged
in the policy discussions.
And I know it's hard, because I'm a teacher, too.
And we work in isolation.
But it's really -- it's really up to us
to start engaging both district, state, union, federal people
and these types of things and letting them know how we feel,
even if we feel differently.
So Teach Plus is a good way to do that.
Last quote I'll leave you with is, the greatest danger for most
of us is that that our aim is too high and we miss it,
but that it is too low, and we reach it.
So have high expectations for yourself, for your colleagues
and your students, and you guys are going to be great.
And it's great to be here.
If you guys have any questions, more than --
I'm more than welcome to stay,
and we can have a great conversation with all of us,
and if you want to reach, or connect out,
my email's adamgray2012@gmail.com.
Thanks for having me.
[ Applause ]
And all questions, but I won't answer OkCupid
or Match.com questions.
I'm sorry [laughter].
Those are questions I will not answer,
or respond to, I guess I should say.
I don't have a lot of -- I don't have answers to a lot of things.
>> Do you have the time for questions, too?
>> Adam Gray: Yeah.
Yes, sir?
>> It seems like, when you're planning a lot of these lessons,
there needs to a be a significant amount of time
for the discussion of, I don't know, say, the global economy
and that kind of thing.
When you plan, how much do you --
do you think leaving time for discussion
versus content development?
>> Adam Gray: Oh, I'd say, probably --
you know, it's something that's kind of changing,
because I'm growing so much.
I think, you know it used to be where I would lecture for,
probably, 70% of the class.
Then we would do a few problems, then we would talk
about a few problems at the end.
And kids would go home -- maybe they got it, maybe they didn't.
So, to answer your question, I would say, I probably budget
about 20% of every class open for discussion.
Now, what that means is the following.
I have dry erase boards in my classroom.
So, even if, you know, we're talking about --
let's just say we're talking
about a regular old surface area problem,
right, of a composite solid.
You know, I'll give dry erase boards throughout the class,
and I'll say, okay, you got number five.
You got number six, and you got number seven, right?
And at the end of class, 20 -- last 20% of class,
you'll come up, and you'll do your problem.
Maybe it's right.
Maybe it's wrong.
Maybe you got it wrong, but we're going to see something
in your -- in your -- in your thought process.
And we get to number six.
And we don't get to number seven.
Or, we lead with number seven the next day.
We'll lead with number seven the next day.
In terms of the global economy and stuff, like I said,
this is not something that I do 180 days out of the year.
This is probably something I would do once a term.
Now, I would like to actually increase that.
I would like to start flipping the classroom a little bit.
Now, I've never tried that, so I don't know if that's kind
of like this new, sexy thing that actually doesn't work.
But I like the idea of it, right?
So, let's derive, on a video, the --
you know, the formula for the surface of a sphere.
Let's derive that.
Then, let's show you some practice problems.
Why don't you go home and watch that.
We'll talk about it a little bit in class.
But then, for the rest of class, we're going to work
on some stuff that's a lot better
on the Bloom's taxonomy scale, you know what I mean?
But right now, I'd say I budget about 20%
of conversation per day, for even regular problems.
But it's only about once a term where I get
to those global economy or broken windows theory projects.
But if kids know they're on the -- on the horizon, you know,
they get pretty excited about it, that answer your question?
Okay. And what's cool about that, too, is I'm no --
I mean, I'm not an expert.
I'm not -- I wouldn't even say that I'm an expert in math.
And I'm sure as heck not an expert on the global economy.
So you have to do a lot of homework, right?
And when kids ask you questions, you just have to be --
have the courage to say, I don't know,
and we're going to find out together.
Yes, ma'am.
>> Do you collaborate with teachers
in those other subject areas when you're...
>> Adam Gray: So, that's -- so, the answer's no.
And part of that is because there's --
the school where I worked, all the data that I showed you
up here, did not have built-in collaboration time during
the day.
The school where I worked last year did.
But it was my Teacher of the Year year,
so I was working full-time and kind of doing stuff
like this almost full time, and I was, like, kind of a hot mess.
I wasn't -- we had collaboration time in place,
but I wasn't doing a lot of collaborating.
I was working on other things, like presentations
and speeches and things like that.
But it's one of the things --
there was a recent study that came out by Teach Plus,
that I was in Washington, D.C. talking
about just a couple weeks ago, and they were comparing ideas
for both new majority teachers and veteran teachers on how
to elevate the teaching profession.
And they had areas of high agreement
and areas of low agreement.
Areas of low agreement would be people that have grown
up in the era of accountability are more open
to having test scores as a part of their evaluation.
They're more open to compensation reform
and pension reform and all these things that are, you know,
in the news these days in the policy discussions at least.
Two areas of high agreement were the following --
that I talked about in front of Congress --
congressional staffers -- were, we need an increase --
we need to increase the amount of school day time that we have
to collaborate, but we don't want
to necessarily lengthen the school day.
Right, talk -- look at that data point earlier where Finland
and South Korea spend 500 hours less than we do, right?
I mean, that's a lot.
And yet, they do so much better than we do.
Now, I'm not saying -- you know, there's a lot more
than just time that goes with that, but,
you know, anyway, yes, ma'am?
>> If -- what is your normal, like,
typical class period look like?
>> Adam Gray: My class period would be --
so basically, kids come in, and we have --
we'll do a couple of homework problems.
So, in Boston, we have a thing called Do Now.
Do you guys have something like that?
It's like where, you know,
we have this blackboard configuration
where you have the objectives, and the homework,
and the Do Now and stuff.
What I do like about the Do Now,
and I don't know how my administrators feel about this.
I don't even -- I'm still growing as a teacher,
if this is good practice,
but I don't give rinky-*** problems for homework, right?
I mean, I give pretty challenging problems
that make kids think.
So I know that kids are going to, you know, really struggle
with number six or number seven.
So, we'll either start going over number seven the next day.
Or, I know kids are going to trip up on these,
and we'll have kids come up and solve them.
Right, the less I talk, the more they learn.
Because kids will say, well, I got a different answer.
Well, let's now see your answer, right?
And let's not pretend that there's one way
to solve one problem, right?
There's lots of ways.
So, I would say -- one second,
because I haven't answered the question yet.
I would say, you know, students are up at the beginning.
Then, if there's any kind of like lecture, or like, you know,
discussion about -- I say discussion --
really, if there's like a lecture,
and we're talking about, you know, Pythagorean theorem
or something, we'll derive it.
And then we'll do a couple examples,
and then kids will do practice problems.
And then kids will get the dry erase boards,
and we'll do them at the end.
That's pretty consistent.
And I use these clickers in class.
So, for example, I never use multiple choice in class,
so what I'll say is, I'll give a really complicated problem,
or maybe a medium problem,
and kids will generate their own solutions.
And then I'll throw a slide up on the -- on the --
on the PowerPoint screen.
It'll have five options.
It'll be like, A-2, B-4, C --
like, 6, D will be got a different answer, and E will be,
I did not understand the question.
So they're not process of elimination.
They're not doing that.
They're generating their own answer.
They're clicking it in.
And if they don't know, they're showing you they don't know.
So I didn't do a great job communicating that.
Or, if they got a different answer, let's see that.
And I don't always put the answer in A, B or C, right?
Some -- I oftentimes put the answer in -- not up there.
So the kid that got the different answer probably got it
-- maybe have gotten it right.
So, that's what I do every day.
Yes, sir?
>> So, I know that a few
of us here just finished our student teaching.
>> Adam Gray: Okay.
>> Last week.
>> Adam Gray: Congratulations.
>> We're excited about it.
But, I guess ,while we student taught, a lot of us struggled
with motivating students, and it's still kind of a struggle.
So, what did you face during your first year of teaching
in terms of motivating students, and how did you overcome those?
>> Adam Gray: What did I face?
Kids skipping my -- I mean, in terms of, like, some of the --
kids skipping my class, kids coming late, kids swearing
at me, kids threatening me.
You know, and -- you know, oftentimes,
first-year teachers can be set up for failure, right?
Set up for failure.
You're not given a mentor teacher.
You're not given the resources you need to excel.
You know, and so you just have to make do with what you have.
How I eventually got past
that was building those relationships, right?
And then you get -- basically, what you have is,
you have older people that are selling you their cousins
or their brothers or other people coming up.
You know, they're like, oh, you know -- what's your name?
>> My name?
>> Adam Gray: Yeah.
>> Brian Pigeon [assumed spelling].
>> Adam Gray: So, Mr. Pigeon, man, he's doesn't play --
or, you know, wait until you get to this project
that he's doing, you know.
They start to sell you.
But you have to build that relationship.
Because they said, Mr. Pigeon, he is a jerk, you know?
And then, those -- you know, I mean,
at least where I was working.
I don't know where you'll be working.
But, you know, those were the challenges that I faced,
and overcoming those was becoming more
consistently effective.
Effective is a crazy word, because does that mean
that you're a 10 every day?
I don't even know that that exists.
But consistently effective,
and that you build relationships with students.
And that's how I overcame it.
I wouldn't even say overcame it,
because I don't even think I -- you ever overcome it.
>> Yeah.
>> Adam Gray: That's how I've dealt
with the challenges I continue to face.
Yeah.
[ Silence ]
>> Well, it's about the...
>> Adam Gray: Great.
>> ...end of our time here.
If you have more questions, please email.
>> Adam Gray: Yeah.
>> Thank you very much for coming in.
>> Adam Gray: Sure, yeah.
Thanks, guys.
[ Applause ]