Program Storytelling Video

So, learning partners actually is a program that brings schools together and where we share best practices across each school. What really appealed to me about this partnership and what made it seem very different than a lot of other things we've been involved in is that it included a team and the idea of collaborating with that whole team.

It's like the power of teaching when you're not in front of the whole class.

This whole idea of collaborating with one another, sharing resources, and sharing ideas has really sparked in the building, and the culture of the school has really started to change in the recent past.

The Learning Partners Program is a great way to make sure that teachers can see those best practices, take those things that light up the student's eyes in the classroom, that light up the teacher while they're teaching in the classroom, that what you feel is best practice, and give that to others.

Each of these triads is centered around the work of a learning focus area. So every triad has a host school who has strong or the strongest practices in that learning focus area, and two partner schools who would like to improve in that same learning focus area.

So, at one of our sessions at 3:21, our teachers discovered the conferring notebooks and they fell in love with them. So the teachers felt that this tool-we call it a tool, a literacy toolkit-would actually help improve their practices in the classroom, and would also have a positive effect on the children's outcomes.

When we visited 321, we actually saw the book in action, and it was just wonderful. You know, she had something that she wanted to work on with the students. She called them over, and she just opened up to a page.

That one, Semaya, what's that called? Yeah, what does that tell your voice to do?

Pause.

Yeah, we take a quick little pause or a breath, right? Richard, what's that one called? Good job, and what does that tell your voice?

Excitement. Yeah,

right there. Exactly. It helps you to improve. It helps you to improve your craft as a teacher, because as you're bouncing ideas off of each other, you may all of a sudden have an aha moment where you have a kid in mind, and you say, "Oh my gosh, now I know how to help this child.

All right, good work, good work, good work.

The conferring notebooks are really great because it's almost like taking the charts that we make, our anchor charts that are hung throughout our classroom and putting them all in one book. Many times we teach something to the students and they might forget or they didn't really pick up on it the first time. They might monitor it, monitor their learning, and realize they need a little bit more help with that. Maybe a reteach, and it's all there in the book for you. That's

what it is. It's a tool. It's like you're going to repair something, and you walk with your toolkit. You're going to teach reading or writing. This is a toolkit. So the teacher actually gave this toolkit to three kids. They went off and they taught the lesson to their peers. So can you imagine the power behind these toolkits that you're creating?

I find that the students, when they see me with the book and I call them over, they're really excited. They like the opportunity to try out the work on the post-its.

They see how excited I am about the book. Like I hold it like it's my baby, and so it makes them excited. When I call them to the rug or I call it, you know, I walk over to them with the notebook. They just, I mean, they brighten up, and they're so excited because they know that this is something I've put a lot of time into, and it's something that I truly feel like works for kids.

Any time that we're able to just learn one thing, even if it's just one thing, as simple as conferring notebooks, it's not only helping the teachers, but it's helping the students, and that's what's obviously most important.

Having the opportunity to get out of our school, to go to a different location in the city, such as Brooklyn, where we're here in Queens, seeing different students and different ideas, it's helping us grow in many ways that are not even measurable by our focus of just looking at literacy at the school level.

We didn't go into the the partnership thinking, oh, the conferring notebook is going to be the focus of it. It really was more, and the conferring notebook is only a tool. I think what's what's so powerful about the conferring notebook is that it's a tool for teachers to make sure. That they have some guidance when they're conferring, when they're meeting, teaching small groups of children, individuals.

In watching a lot of these lessons being done in our partner school and our host school, one of our goals was to get the kids off the carpet. So, how can we tweak our lessons? How can we time our our mini lessons, so that the kids have time to really go off and work on it on their own, because that's when they're truly, you know, using the skill and showing us what what they can do.

I've been using the conferring book a lot lately with my bottom group, especially in reading, and I find that it's a very successful tool.

I'm glad to see that you're enthusiastic about it. I hope that we can spread it across the grades, and I know that Miss Garcio and Miss Myers have started to talk to other teachers about it.

It went very well. Also, as I circulated the room, the excitement among the various grade teams, and then this list of people from the entire staff who were requesting the books and the binders. I think that this alone speaks for itself, and the great work that was done. So you talked about using it for math. I'm like, that's a thought. Absolutely, Miss

Faddin too. I said to her, "Do something around science. I don't know. And she goes, "Oh, I'm doing something on drawing conclusion. Perfect.

Yeah. Sometimes you feel like your school community is so big and you're doing so much, but you have no idea about what's going on, you know, in other schools and all throughout the city.

And I think also that teaching sometimes can be a very-you can often feel very alone in here. You're the only adult in most cases for five days a week, for eight hours a day, and I think that sometimes you get stuck in your own ideas in your own brain, and it's always helpful to hear what other people are doing, new ideas, fresh starts.

We got a lot of ideas from the teachers at 321, so we took like some of their, you know, pages that were in a in a higher grade, and we brought it down to our level. So I mean, just sharing across the board just makes it so much easier.

I think it's been an awesome experience. I find that I continue to grow, even though I am a part of the host school. I think that just collaborating with other teachers from other schools, getting fresh ideas, new ideas, and also a perspective of some of their areas that they want to grow in, just sort of even makes me reflect on my own teaching and my own practice. The

opportunity to give those moments to others, the opportunity to get those moments from other teachers, that's been amazing. That's been wonderful, and that's really you know, it's my 11th year teaching, and it's just made it feel like it's new and fresh, even though it's 11. And I love that teaching allows you to do that, and I love that the learning partners really draws that out and helps that happen.

Here's my model. This was the page, and then they try it on their own. And if they don't get it, the fresh shot will get it in a second.

Are you happy to go? I am.