A Conversation with Better Leaders Better Schools

Dr. Kristen Horton, principal at Atlanta’s Continental Colony Elementary School, and Joseph Hyun, TeachFX Head of Partner Success, recently sat down with Danny Bauer to talk about the transformations happening at CCES on this episode of the Better Leaders Better Schools podcast.

Give it a listen, or check out the transcript below (which has been edited for brevity).

And visit Better Leaders Better Schools to get even more resources for ruckus makers like you.

(00:02) Danny on the power of TeachFX to help teachers make meaningful shifts in practice

(06:30) Dr. Horton’s path to school leadership and her approach to adapting district priorities to her school

(10:56) Joseph’s mission of crafting meaningful professional development experiences for teachers

(14:37) Dr. Horton’s experience as a principal in choosing and implementing TeachFX

(24:44) How teaching and learning have changed at CCES since bringing in TeachFX — and what surprised Dr. Horton

Danny Bauer:

Here's the truth. If you're doing most of the talking as a teacher, your students aren't doing the learning.

We need to learn and figure out how to transfer more ownership to our students. One way we can do that is involve them in the process more.

But it's really hard to make the invisible visible. We all have great intentions – planning that unit, designing that lesson. Go out there and ask the questions and reflect – Oh, I did a really good job. Students really enjoyed that. They really learned. But then confronted with reality: oh my gosh, I talked the entire time.

If there was a tool for that, what kind of shifts would you make as a teacher?

If there was a tool for that, would you invest in it as a ruckus-maker? To help your teachers reflect on how much they spoke and how much the students actually learned?

Well, there is a tool for that. It’s called TeachFX.

The cool thing about today's episode is that we get to hear one leader’s story about how they’ve actually implemented TeachFX – the before and after; how education, how teaching and learning have changed on their campus. Dr. Horton will talk about that experience from her seat as a principal.

We also have Joseph Hyun, who helps facilitate professional learning experiences and helps teachers grow.

Dr. Horton began her career at Navajo Mountain Community School as a teacher in a multi-age classroom. Dr. Horton has a commitment to supporting students and teachers through collective educator agency and relational capacity. She currently serves as principal of Continental Colony Elementary School. As founder of L.E.A.D.S., she understands support for teachers will sustain her why every day to increase life chances for students.

Joseph Hyun started his educator journey at UCSD when he signed up to tutor local high school students and discovered his passion for teaching math and commitment to fighting for social justice. Today, Joseph serves as the head of partner success at TeachFX, where he supports teachers increasing equitable opportunities for their students to participate and engage in learning.

Doctor Horton, it's so important to see educators and leaders who look just like you. Can you tell me a bit about the K-12 leaders you experienced in your journey?

Dr. Kristen Horton:

I never really experienced having a leader who was African American. But in my classroom, my first time having a teacher that was like me was in fourth grade and again in seventh grade.

I had always wanted to be a teacher, but I knew that was one of the biggest things – that I wanted to be a representation for students of color.

Danny Bauer:

You mentioned to me that you were a reluctant leader. So how did you find yourself to be a principal?

Dr. Kristen Horton:

So this was not the path that I planned on taking. When I started teaching, I taught for eight years and then I became an instructional coach for mathematics. And I loved working the curriculum. I love working teachers and students. And so I really wanted to stay on the professional learning side.

But then I went to the district level and my supervisor said I needed to try being a building leader – it’s a difference experience. I was very reluctant, but I became an assistant principal, and I have to admit I did not like it that first year.

But then I was under a principal who showed me that if you put the right systems in place, you can be focused on instruction and students vs. just operational stuff. She really showed me that, being an administrator, you make the path for your school and you own the work. That’s what changed my mind about going into school leadership and why I chose to stay in leadership.

Danny Bauer:

When you talk about systems, what does that look like? Is there an example you can give?

Dr. Kristen Horton:

As a school leader, you have certain district mandates; certain things you have to do, certain PD that you have to follow.

But at the end of the day, you have to look at your demographic, look at the teachers you’re working with because they're all different, and you have to shape it to make it fit your building.

Just like in the classroom, we tell teachers there has to be differentiation. You have to do the same on the building level.

You look at what your staff need, what your students need, and look into products and professional learning that will fit that need. Not: this is what our PL is for the year, but what do your teachers need to move the needle in your school.

So as part of the district, yes, we’re going to follow the mandates that are required. But, we can definitely make it our own to ensure that we are comfortable with it, we believe in it, we own it.

But it’s also really about: I have a school you have to run, I have these things I have to do, but how can I shape it and make it the Continental Colony way.

Danny Bauer:

Joseph — You were a teacher who hated PD. But here you are now leading professional learning. What’s the story there?

Joseph Hyun:

I never would have imagined that this was the seat I would find myself in. I taught for 11 years, and maybe two or three PDs made a difference in my mindset or my instruction. The rest were just checking boxes.

I think back on a lot of curriculum PDs, where the district makes a choice on what we're gonna be teaching and how we need to do it. And the PD's for the curriculum just feel like: we have the answers, here now is how you need to do it; let's practice it together, let's go through your questions.

And there's no agency for the teacher there. You're struggling to just try to fit what you know what's happening in your classroom with your students to this outside entity that is now kind of forcing something on you.

But now I get to lead professional learning and try to create experiences for teachers that is everything that’s not what I experienced. It’s a tough challenge. I’m honored to get to work with Dr. Horton and her teachers at Continental Colony and with educators around the country.

Danny Bauer:

What makes PD work, when you know it’s landing?

Joseph Hyun:

There’s a couple things that I think have helped me. And I am still very much on this journey of trying to grow my own practice as a facilitator. But…

Number one is being really honest. I think it’s for me to be able to draw on my own experiences in the classroom and to share the challenges that I faced and to be openly vulnerable with the people I work with. That’s really important to me personally and to the work we do at TeachFX.

The second one – I’ll borrow Dr. Horton’s phrase about making it your own. It’s not me making it my own, it’s trying to create an environment where teachers are able to apply their own expertise and to share their expertise and to learn from each other. Those types of professional learning environments where it’s noisy and there’s productive conversation and there’s good tangents, relevant tangents, and even ones that aren’t relevant but draw people into the conversation.

Danny Bauer:

I know how awesome TeachFX is, I've known them for years. Dr. Horton, I’d love to hear from your experience as a principal, someone who hears about TeachFX, sees it, decides that this is something that will elevate student achievement on campus. How do you go about deciding to bring TeachFX into your school?

Dr. Kristen Horton:

So right before I heard the representative from TeachFX speak at a conference, we’d just finished our school improvement plan and our big focus was around student academic ownership. This was something that I saw us struggling with consistently in every classroom.

I could see that TeachFX was a way for teachers to own the PL. They’re looking at their data, they’re looking at their recordings. It was a great way to give them insight. First, insight that we did have a challenge releasing to students. Looking at your TeachFX data, you can see, you have 90% teacher talk, there is a challenge with academic ownership on behalf of students.

So I like the TeachFX program because we could allow teachers to see their insights and then, when we meet about it, it’s the teacher reflecting. Now, this was at first a big hurdle for me – the fact that I can’t look at the recording without the teacher sharing it with me. Because it is a reflection tool. And I think that makes it more valuable for teachers . It's not a program that we’re putting on you, but it's a tool to help you reflect on your practice.

We started small, with a small group of teachers. We piloted with seven teachers first – one teacher from each grade level, people who like to try new things. First, teachers recorded when they wanted to record. And now, it’s become part of our coaching conversations – I start off by asking them to share a proud moment from their TeachFX recordings this week.

And then, TeachFX came in, and modeled that it’s not just the app – they were modeling practices for teachers to use in their classrooms. And then teachers were able during the professional learning to actually listen to their recordings. So again, we weren’t giving them a program to go do. You’re actually looking at your data, listening to your lesson, and having the reflection and setting the goal for yourself.

So during these professional learning sessions, teachers are looking at what’s actually happening in their classrooms and being able to reflect and move forward.

Danny Bauer:

I appreciate how TeachFX is not an evaluative tool, it’s a reflection tool. That’s a key distinction. It might be difficult for school leaders, principals, ruckus-makers to let go of a bit of control. But reflection is a powerful thing. I think of it like scaling the Dr. Horton in the building, multiplying yourself, by providing objective feedback.

Danny Bauer:

Joseph, when you were working with the staff, how have you seen them grow when you put on these professional learning experiences and help them with how they utilize TeachFX?

Joseph Hyun:

Last year, a member of our team did a model lesson in one of the classrooms. It’s one thing to talk about pedagogy, to talk about instructional practices. It’s a completely other thing to actually have us look at it, in real time, and to have that culture where there was no evaluation, it was not critique. there was a lot of praise and celebration. But specifically looking at what ways to do discourse appear through the strategies that we've been talking about.

And this year, we put the teachers in a scenario where they were much like our students. We gave them a challenging math problem to work through. And the goal was to try to attack some of the state standards around mathematical modeling. But modeling is not something we just tell somebody what it is and how to do it. You really do have to have that experience to do it.

And Dr. Horton's staff, they're credible. They not only participated and dove in as learners, but they were also able to pull themselves down and reflect on that experience of – hey, when we took the time to think through this or when we paired up to have this discussion privately – they were able to rely on their confidence and their ability to participate.

And to me, that's a natural thing when a teacher makes that connection – Oh, I do this for my own students or I can do this for my own kids.

Danny Bauer:

What was teaching a learning like before TeachFX and what was it like after?

Dr. Kristen Horton:

I’ll start with the leadership, it was very eye-opening. We started to record ourselves. My coaches recorded their planning sessions, things like that. And what we saw was that we're asking teachers to create this wait time and this space for student discourse but we weren’t doing it as leaders. So we're leading teachers expecting something but as leaders we weren’t doing the same thing.

So even our professional learning, our collaborative planning, even our coaching conversations, are a lot different.

Before, coaching conversations were more – this is what I saw, these are the next steps. We were able to hear ourselves, and so we were able to ask more questions and give that wait time.

And on the classroom side, we’re not where we want to be with this yet but where I’ve seen major strides is the student voice. We’re really trying to value the process of meaning-making through student discourse. We want to be able to hear the learning, we want to be able to see the learning. And it has come a long way.

We’re hearing the student voice, we’re hearing the learning, a lot more than before. There was a lot of teacher talk before. And teacher talk is not bad. But there needs to be space for more student talk, more group talk, and even silence to make sure that we’re valuing the process of meaning making.

I was in a classroom just today. And there was so much wait time. The students are now getting used to it. They were really thinking. And then more hands were going up, more students were able to talk. And students that you may not hear speak.

Compared to last year, you see they are volunteering a lot more because they do have time.

Or, when there’s wait time, if there’s a long pause and still no one’s talking, then we’re throwing in those collaborative talk structures to give kids a chance to talk to each other before we come together.

Joseph Hyun:

Wait time is really powerful. But we know that students process information differently and they’re thinking differently.

And so while some students can benefit from having that time to process, other students actually need to be able to speak to someone. Our external processors benefit from being able to pair up. So there's no one-size-fits-all all move that you could ever do in a classroom that will equitably support every kid in the same way.

But a collaborative structure is a great way to shake up that routine. You can do something as simple as a think-pair-share type of activity.

And then there's some really fun ones, depending on the age group and the culture of the classroom. One of my favorite ones is stand up, pair up, share up. The students will all stand up, will all raise their hands. Until you pair up with somebody, keep your hand raised, which ensures that every kid finds a partner. And they have some kind of prompt. Then they do it again, and they get to talk with multiple people, kids that they don’t normally talk to every day, kids who don’t sit next to them. It really gets kids more active and engaged in the learning experience.

Danny Bauer

Dr. Horton – What surprised you, when you brought TeachFX in?

Dr. Kristen Horton:

What surprised me was the buy-in. We previously used a product that was for video recording and the teachers were very reluctant. With TeachFX, teachers are recording multiple times a week.

So, the reflective piece on how powerful it is for teachers to choose the practice. It’s feedback on a daily basis. It’s feedback whenever you choose to hit record. Not coming from an administrator, not coming from a coach, but you just looking at the insights in the reports and having that reflection time.

The buy-in from the teachers who are constantly recording and the change in their practice so quickly because of that ownership and the reflection.

Danny Bauer:

I want to hear about the student experience. I bet that the kids are seeing oh we actually have ownership now, within the class. But so teachers actually share the data with the kids and make meaning of that?

Joseph Hyun:

This is my favorite part of hearing our teachers and what they do, when they start talking about ways that they brought their students into this process. It's incredible.

One teacher actually will read their TeachFX summary of the lesson from the previous day to the students. And the students are all oh, wait, we did talk about that yesterday. And it’s a great way to tap into prior knowledge. But also acknowledge to the students: your voice helped guide our learning yesterday so let’s take the moment to revisit that.

A lot of teachers love the word clouds, and will share the top 30 words that they use as a teacher. But the kids get really excited when they see the top 30 words that they use. It can become a game where they want to see certain words appear in their word clouds, words of the day that they want to see in their word cloud.

Danny Bauer:

If you could put a message on all school marquis for just one day, what would your message be?

Dr. Kristen Horton:

The scariest place to be in is the same place as last year. Grow.

Joseph Hyun:

Listen to your kids.

Danny Bauer:

If you were building your dream school together, and your only limitation was your imagination, what would be the one most important principle?

Dr. Kristen Horton:

Everything is grounded in what students believe their purpose is.

Joseph Hyun:

We have a growth mindset. We’re all professionals. We all have the capacity to grow. So we engage in honest, data-informed reflection mindset.

Every teacher deserves to pursue their best, every day. 

TeachFX gives teachers technology and information so that they can be better for their students …  every single day.

With TeachFX, teachers can gather their own feedback on their teaching, in a way that’s low stakes and highly effective. It’s objective, private, and as frequent as they want it.

If you believe that all students are brilliant, if your teachers want to hear more from their students; if increasing student engagement in meaningful discourse is a top instructional priority; let’s bring TeachFX to your teachers!

Try TeachFX right now. Any teacher can try TeachFX in their classroom for free. The TeachFX free trial gives a glimpse of what TeachFX could do, with limited access to the app and no professional development.

Pilot TeachFX with a cohort of teachers. It takes no time to get started. Schedule your kick-off call, identify the teachers most interested in piloting, and schedule your teachers’ launch and debrief sessions.

Partner with TeachFX. With a school- or district-level partnership, your teachers have unlimited access to the TeachFX app and we’ll structure a series of professional development workshops to fit you.

Administrators & Coaches

Classroom Teachers