Team Teaching in Mesa Public Schools

Welcome to the Future of Education.

And now here's your host, Michael Horne.

Welcome to the Future of Education. I'm Michael Horne. And you are joining the show where we are passionate about building a world in which all individuals can fulfill their potential and live a life of purpose. And to help us think through that, today we have a very special guest. Her name is Dr. Andy Forless. She's the superintendent of Mesa Public Schools in Arizona. Andy, thank you so much for joining us.

So happy to be here.

Well, I can't wait to hear about your story because from my reading, it sounds like your pathway to becoming superintendent. And perhaps some of the formative experiences you had as an educator have really shaped your approach as a superintendent. So can you share some of that journey with us before we get into some of the work that you're doing now?

Yeah. So this is my 32nd year in education. I'm a career educator. And from the time I was a little girl, I knew I was going to be a teacher, wanted to be a teacher. And so this is a dream of mine to be able to support children in so many different ways. I started off teaching middle school and I had the great fortune to teach on a teaching team with sometimes a team as large as five other teachers or three other teachers. So I have always worked in a team environment outside of my first two years. And that's when I realized I really needed to have a team. More heads were better together and worked in a variety of environments, worked in low income schools as well as affluent schools, and kids are kids and the more adults that we can put around students, I quickly learned was made me a better teacher and got better outcomes for our kids.

It's so interesting to hear you say that because it makes a lot of sense when you say it. I think people from the outside think, oh, educators like to be by themselves. But as you noted, that wasn't at all your experience as an educator. And then what really caught my eye and made me so excited to talk was I had this conversation with David Schuller, the, of course, the executive director of the School Superintendents association. And he was telling me about this work you all were doing with the Next Education Workforce Initiative. And a couple years earlier, I had had Arizona State University's Dean Carol Basile join us to talk about the work that she was pioneering there at the Next Education Workforce Initiative. And I believe Mesa has been one of the pioneering sites for the team teaching that they espouse. So maybe tell us about how this work started in Mesa.

So such an interest, such an interesting journey. So in 2019, I was a deputy superintendent and I became superintendent in 2020. Well, always remember 2020. What a year to become superintendent of the largest district in the state of Arizona where we had to invent and reinvent how we were going to do school, how are we going to take care of children and their families, and then how we were going to take care of our employees. And throughout my career. So this is going to be kind of a long conversation, but throughout my career I, I was a classroom teacher and then I became a mentor teacher. And then I, my, my path to the superintendency has been through teacher leadership. And so I've always had the ability to be a classroom teacher, be close to classrooms, and to understand that the working environment and the working conditions of teachers must change if we want to get better outcomes for our students. And so throughout my career I support, I was a director, professional development, director of curriculum, assistant superintendent, teaching and learning. So I came, my pathway into this, into the superintendency position was all around supporting teachers and supporting learning. I was never been a principal, never been an assistant principal, but I was always in that support role. And through that support role, what I quickly learned as I was studying this, the labor shortage that was happening, the teacher shortage that has been happening for decades, I quickly learned that teachers are not leaving their profession, they're leaving their working conditions. And as leaders, we have the ability to change those working conditions. So now bring us into 2020. I'm the new, I'm the superintendent and we are having to reinvent everything. Well, this is a perfect time for us to start to reinvent, to say, let's break down that one teacher, one classroom. Let's go back to age old research around team teaching. This is not a new idea. It's a new idea in this particular area, in this particular era of education. Because what has happened over time is we have built everything around the one teacher, one classroom model because that's easy to measure and it's easy to hold people accountable. So one teacher assigned a classroom of 25 students. In an era of accountability that came through no Child Left behind, we started measuring everything that we possibly could and we created a lot of artificial structures. We talked about quartiles of kids, we talked about what is the impact of a teacher, how do we measure a teacher based on a state assessment? And so we started then breaking down teams of teachers and putting them into these isolated boxes that we could measure. We started talking about things like highly qualified and Appropriately certified. So I was a middle school teacher and I taught sixth, seventh and eighth grade. I had one, an amazing time where I was able to loop with my kids and keep them over a number of years. Well, I was the language arts teacher, but I also taught social studies. Well, no Child Left behind came along and I was no longer highly qualified. So I could no longer have integrated thematic instruction that made sense to kids. You had to pull it all apart. And so as we lived through this era of high levels of accountability, our teacher shortage began to grow and we were creating teachers and putting them into isolation. So as a leader, it was easy for me to reach out to Dr. Basile at Arizona State University and say, let's talk about changing the working conditions of teachers. It's not working for us. Let's rethink what teaming looks like. Let's bring this back together and let's define this in 2020 because it's going to look very different than it did in the past. So having the largest teachers college in America in our backyard, and we're the largest district in this state, it was a perfect match for us to start working together.

Super interesting. So let's fast forward then. Like you kick off the work, you're in it now. What does the team teaching look like on the ground? How have you changed all of those structures that isolated teachers that you just described?

So what. We have a very simple definition of what a team is. So a team is at least two teachers sharing a roster of students to co design and construct deeper and more personalized learning. And we sometimes get excited and we shorten the definition and say it's two teachers, at least two teachers sharing a roster of students. It's far more than that. They're sharing a roster of students so that they can deeply understand the children in their classrooms, understand their strengths, understand their needs, so that they can have, so that they can create opportunities for students to get what they need when they need it. So if I. If. Let's just say a typical third grade teacher has 25 kids in a classroom. They're on a team. It's now 50 students assigned to two teachers. One teacher could be doing a small group instruction with a very specific, working on a very specific skill or content area with a, with a student. Let's just say that's a group, a small group of eight students. Well, the rest of the kids can now be instructed not by that other teacher who, who are working at a different part of the lesson where they don't need that very, very side by side feedback. So now you've created a different learning experience and a different learning opportunity for kids. The other is when we talk about teaming, it's not just the teachers. So our definition again is at least two teachers sharing a roster of students to design deeper and more personalized learning, but every adult that comes into that classroom, we now think about them as being on the team, not just, not just an instructional assistant that comes in for 20 minutes on Tuesday. Now this is a member of the team. They're part of instructional design. And so we are rethinking how we are putting adults and their expertise around the needs of students in very different ways.

That's super interesting. And I love how your definition in the district is around making sure that each student is getting what they need in this new structure with at least two teachers sharing a roster of students and that personalization, obviously you're singing my tune now. I love this reinvention work. And my understanding from David is that this is actually, it's maybe even more innovative. Not only are you doing this team teaching, co teaching model, not only are you personalizing the learning, but you've actually been able to create some different flexibility for teachers to help frankly keep them in the classroom. They might have left because, you know, the five day a week sort of rigid structure of being in a school didn't work for them, but you've sort of been able to reinvent that part without shortchanging the students. Can you, can you talk about some of that? Because I'd love to learn about it.

Absolutely. So our, our larger teams, if there's a team of teachers, let's just say a team of four, there is a team leader, that team leader is a classroom teacher on that team. But they also have leadership responsibilities. We pay an additional stipend to them for their leadership duties. They serve on the instructional leadership team of the school. The goal of our teams are they become self improving teams. They're the ones that are constantly reflecting and saying, what do we need next? They are charting their professional development plans. They're talking about, oh my goodness. We have for example, a team that I had met with just within a month ago. We're seeing an insurgents of refugee children that were coming into their school and they did not have the skill sets that they needed to be able to communicate with their parents and to be able to assimilate them into their classrooms. They just did not have that training. So now this team says, this is what I need. This particular team is saying, this is the training now that the team leader is the one that reaches out to our district office as this is the work that we need, works with the principal. Now you have a teacher lens that is guiding the professional learning and that just in time support that is needed. And no one teacher. We don't have isolated teachers working, all saying, oh my gosh, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? No. We now have an orchestrated event and coordinated efforts to bring the resources into the teachers so they can better serve their students. Wow.

Okay, so now that creates a structure in which teachers are all of a sudden have some authority to actually, when you say co design, you really mean co design because they're saying design. This is the set of expertise I need. This is the supports we need. The student needs X. Do they, I mean, how does that, how many schools are doing this today? Is it throughout the district? What does that, what does that evolution look like?

So we have 84 schools, preschool to high school. So we are a comprehensive K 12 unified school district in the state of Arizona. We have 84 schools. I set a goal that by the end of this, this school year that we at least 50% of our schools would have at least one team working within their school. We've accomplished that goal. And they are all at different places because they are very unique to their. Every team is unique to their context. So this is across Mesa Public schools, we have some schools where, for example, we have a Montessori school. Montessori is inherent in collaboration and multi age and teaming. So they are, you know, they're up and running and they run teams all the time. They have formalized those roles and what that looks like. But we also have back to basic schools. That is something that our community had asked for many years ago. And so our back to basic schools, that does not teaming would not fit their philosophy. So I'm not expecting that that happens in those schools. So our goal of 50% is saying, take a look at your context, take a look at the desires and talents of your teachers and think about where you might get this started. So in some schools they started with a kindergarten classroom, and some schools they started with a fifth grade team because that fifth grade team is saying, you know what, we've worked together for quite some time. We think that if we broke down some of the barriers, we, we would be better together. We have 91 therapy dogs across our district. So in our teaming schools, therapy dogs are part of the team. So when a team of teachers is working to instruct and design instruction for students, design Learning we know that some social emotional supports are needed for kids. While that therapy dog then is used very intentionally to support students when it is needed and the therapy dog becomes it is part of how the teach, orchestrate and use the therapy dog. Time. We have, we have a feeder pattern of schools that elementaries and junior highs that feed into our one of our very large high schools that has a huge STEM focus and engineering program. So these are STEM schools, elementaries that feed into this Red Mountain high school. So we have a very, very strong partnership with Honeywell Aerospace division and their industry Mentors join our within that feeder pattern. And so they're coming in and serving as mentors, project coaches our kids. When you walk into a classroom and it's project time, kids will ask their teacher, Can I please FaceTime my engineer? Right now I need some coaching and support. So when we talk about team it is how are we going to expand the expertise within our schools, within our communities and bring them in to support the learning of our kids.

Wow. Okay, so talk us through this then. I imagine the Montessori school already set up for this sort of thing from a infrastructure sort of classroom perspective. But other schools did you have to retrofit them? How have you sort of made the buildings work? How does that play out?

So the then what is most important is proximity. So if you have a third grade team and many of our teams have become multi age. So if you have a, a three, four team, the three, four students, they need to be in close proximity to one another because they're constantly moving around and the teachers are moving around. So in some of our schools the biggest ask was we all need to be together. So you get them together, then they start working their systems. They generally meet as a do a family meeting in the morning where all just say a three, four team, all third, fourth graders on that team, they come in, they have a learning, they have a morning meeting, they set their learning intentions for the day, they check the health and wellness of their community. How's everybody doing? This is what our day is going to look like. Here is where you have choices throughout the day. They set their own goals and they create their own schedules for the day. In order to do that, a principal came to us and said I would love if I could have doors opening in between classrooms so that kids aren't going outside to the next classroom. So we have put large opening doors that are with frosted glass in between. They can be propped open during the day. But those are all interior doors. So that's Been our largest, our biggest, our most needed solution is creating interior doors, spaces that allow kids to freely go between classrooms. And we've also done some garage doors at our high schools.

Gotcha. Very cool. Okay, so talk to us about impact. What have you seen? How are you measuring it? How are you thinking about the impact that you've seen so far from these changes?

So our original intent was to focus on the working conditions of our teachers. And so we have done a lot of work of paying attention to what is happening to teachers in our teaming model. So what we have seen, some of our key findings have been higher retention rates. So those on teams are staying in the profession. They have longer career plans. They see themselves not only being a classroom teacher, but also building into a team lead role and then, but without having to leave a classroom. And they still have leadership capacity and they still have influence and they are driving decisions within their schools and increased satisfaction. They prefer coming to work. They like to come to work. They have less absences and if they do, they, most of them choose not to have a substitute because the team is coming together around. And if they do have a substitute, the substitute comes in and helps to do some other tasks, but generally not.

Teaching because no more movie days with the substitute. We're not sure where we are in the learning. That's really cool.

So one of the things that we are paying attention is how much instructional time are we capturing. We also see that teachers on teams have higher, they have improved evaluations, so their evaluation scores are higher, they're happier at the work that they do. We also know that a particular study of one of our elementary schools, a deep dive into their student assessment scores over the last three years. There's, it's hard to compare them because every student is on a team in that school. But from where they have been, they are showing at least 1.5 month gain in English language arts. And then in our high schools, what's very, very, very interesting when we take a Look at Algebra 1 scores in students on teams in our high schools and another other high schools without teams, Algebra 1 scores are higher, but mostly among girls. Huh.

Interesting.

So, and, and what we are learning is it's around the collaborative environment and the way that because this has to change instruction. So if we're using the same old boring, non relevant, non engaging instruction in a team, we're not going to get better results. It's the power of the teachers working together to each bring their unique skills and strengths. So if you're an elementary school teacher, right you're teaching five different subject areas. Well, if you're on a team of five, you generally have somebody who specializes and they're the ones that do the deep dive into the research and say this is going to be the best lesson that we do. The best units that we do and they're never done. They're not done in isolation, they're brought back into the unit. But instead of trying to be all things to everybody, if you're on a team, you have a team of experts that are wrapped around you. We also have excitement in our ed professions courses. Those are our high school career technical ed courses that are high school students that are interested in becoming teachers. They are working in our teaming schools. They join a team and they're doing their practicums in a team. And then we have some that their senior year they have a half day schedule. So we are hiring them and they are serving as instructional assistants the other portion of their day. So not only do they have their student id, they also have their MESA Public school employee ID on. And so we are building teachers to be working in teams as soon as high school.

Wow, that's really cool. And I love the point that you just made in terms of we can have the best lesson, you know, because we have that math expert say on the ground in the elementary school and we can make it coherent with the science and social. Like we don't have that trade off right. Of excellence or coherence. We can have both because the team can say, oh, we're going to relate this to the science concept we do later on and then the science can relate it to something we're doing in social studies. On and on. But we get excellence as well. Last question as we wrap up here. What's been the reaction of parents and students to the changes?

So it's very interesting. We have parents that have said, wow, I kind of want that one teacher that I'm going to call. So when they realize that they're children are on a team, they quickly understand that we have just increased the chances that their child is going to have a positive connection with another adult. And it may not be the teacher that they were assigned to. You know, the student information system spits out the kids, well, that may not be the one that I connect to. So they're seeing that their children have more opportunities to connect and to share passions and interests with. And we are having requests. So let's just say you're a school that is beginning in teaming and it is a second grade team. Parents are then putting pressure on the principal to say, we need a third grade team. We want our kids to be in the same environment. Also, when we're taking a look at inducting and bringing new teachers in, our teachers are staying longer because they never have to do hard things alone. They never call a cranky parent by themselves. They have somebody on their side. They have rehearsed, they have practiced. They've got somebody on their side. And so parents also know that that teacher is well supported. And so that means that they know that they're getting a better product for their kids. Wow.

That's a phenomenal set of changes. Sounds like you were riding a nice wave of momentum at a time when a lot of other districts are trying to find their footing. This set of changes has really led to some reinvigoration across the district. Andy, thanks so much for joining us.

Oh, my gosh, it's my honor. There's love to talk to you more at another time and love would love for you to be able to talk to our kids about their experiences.

Well, let's. Let's find a time to do that. I would love it. And just thanks so much for joining us in the future of education. And for all you tuning in, check out what Mesa Public Schools is doing and stay tuned next time.

Sam.