 I mean, I think the video will be the next one, the next one, so I think you should listen. Yes, exactly. So what information do you need? Yeah. Do you want to find out who do you meet? I mean, you'll be able to type anything out. Yeah. So what I'm going to do though is at five o'clock we're going to have a break. And I'm going to talk to Ilani and find out if there are any, what he says, what you would do with the presentations, what you don't need to be, that would probably won't include in the editor. So make it easier for us so we don't have to do as much. I want you to keep everything from us so we can call you in. But I want you to, like, it's like, keep doing it. We're down-line at five o'clock, so I want you to keep everything from us so we can call you in. But I want you to call, like, oh it's really old. It's like, keep doing it. And we're down-line at five o'clock. Sure. Sure. Okay. Well, if you guys want it uploaded tonight, as soon as I leave at 4.30, I would go back to the office and start catching. So if you can get me those edits by, like, five. I can do that tonight. Otherwise I'd have to wait until Wednesday to upload it. I'd go straight back to the office. And then I'll capture the footage. That we won't be able to buy from that gallery. We'll just get sent here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, tonight, to get it turned around quickly tonight. I mean, stuff like the computer, like, I could just go ahead and cut out really quickly before I even upload it. Stuff like that. See if it's salvageable. Okay. It was pretty quick. And I zoomed in so you can really see that. Okay. Okay. I think we're going to begin in about one minute. So if people can find their seats and come back. And I'm going to ask the Montgomery County folks, the co-leads and the teachers to come on up. Yeah, I can run it down for you. Hey guys, listen out so much. Five or seven minutes teaching you. So without questions or anything. And then I'm going to just open it up for questions. Okay. Just stories. Okay. I'm worried now. Okay. We're ready to get started. Thank you all. Hopefully you learned a great deal. I know that I did in the last session. You know, I knew, you know, I knew that Minneapolis had been doing great things for a long time. And no, Lynn's not old. But now I even understand it better than I did before, even though Lynn was very instrumental in helping us put par in place in Montgomery County. She did workshops for us and presentations for us. And I'm just talking until the other talking stops. That's really what I'm doing here. So people are wondering why I'm still talking. You know, so far today we have talked about par as a thing. You know, as a set of events, a process, you know, something that you might have beliefs about. But I know this is probably sort of shocking to you, but education is really a people business. And so now what we want to do for the next hour or so is talk about what par means to the people, to the people who are actually experiencing this. You know, we can sit on, you know, design teams and create programs that, but we will never understand or know them really until we've lived in those shoes. And so that's really what we wanted to do today is to give you the opportunity to hear from the people who have actually lived in those shoes. And what does it mean? What does it mean to be a consulting teacher? How does it feel? What's the story? What's the wonderful things? What's the incredibly challenging things? I will tell you that in Montgomery County we did phase it in over three years because of our size and also in order to make sure that it was going to work and finances as well. And at the end of the very first year we had a novice teacher come to the Board of Education to present and he said, you know, this was the best thing that could have happened to me. He said, my friends who are in schools where it isn't there yet, because again it was being phased in in only a third of the schools, they go out in the afternoon and cry in the parking lot. And I know that if I feel like crying, I know who I can call. And believe me, I've made that call many times. So, you know, pretty heartwarming experience from a 22-year-old man first year, at the end of his first year of teaching who said his consulting teacher is what got him through it. Kimberly Oliver was one of the first teachers to experience PAR. She was national teacher of the year in her sixth year of teaching. I happened to know, because I was on the PAR pair, who was responsible for the consulting teacher who was working with Kimberly, and she didn't come in as a superstar. You know, her consulting teacher was working with her. She came in as someone with a great passion, you know, an ability to reach out to students in ways that are very deep and rich, but, you know, with a lot of things to learn, and five years later, she was national teacher of the year. And I'll tell you one more story before I let them tell their stories. The very first year in PAR, we had only 13 tenured teachers in the program, and they were put in the program as the result of the previous evaluation system. There was one teacher who was put in the program because of three needs improvements on that system. In 13 years in Montgomery County, she had been in 11 schools. You cannot change schools before you get tenure. So in other words, that's why that she had only 11 schools instead of 13, probably. In March, she brought me in as co-chair of the panel and said, look at my data. Talk to me. This doesn't look like it's going well. And I said, what do you think? And she said, you know, I've done all I could. I'm just never going to meet these standards. How can you help me gracefully? And I said, I'll work with human resources. We'll figure this out. And she was allowed to resign without prejudice. She, you know, went on and, you know, but I did hear from her again. And I heard from her again in the end of August of that same year. So she went out in May because she actually went on a medical leave. And then in August I heard from her. And she said, I'm calling to say thank you. For 13 years, I woke up with a knot in my stomach, terrified to go to work because I knew I wasn't doing a good job. I am now working for a law firm downtown as an administrative assistant. I love the work. I have lots of potential for advancement here. And I am happy in my job for the first time in my life. So these are, for me, represent very powerful stories about the people that are affected by PAR. But it's time for me to stop talking and let you know about some more current people. So what we have, the people that we have here today are the co-lead teachers. There are currently 24 consulting teachers in Montgomery County. At one time there were as many as 48. You know, we're hiring a lot fewer teachers these days. And for that cohort there are, we determined early on, actually in the first two years of the program, that those consulting teachers needed a coordinator, needed someone that was going to be like their linchpin. And so we created the job of lead consulting teacher. And he discovered early on that he needed a help. So we have co-leads now. And that also provides for transition and leadership. So I won't discuss that anymore. So today we have the two lead co-lead consulting teachers. We also have a novice teacher who has completed the PAR program as a novice. And we have a veteran teacher who has completed successfully the PAR program. So I'm going to ask each of them to tell their story for a few minutes. And then we're going to open it up to you to find out, you know, what are your questions of the folks on the ground? So we're going to start, Brenda. Brenda Delaney is one of the consulting co-leads. And then there's Andrew Kirk is our beginning teacher. And Mary McCarthy is our experience teacher. And Vera Gaines is our other co-lead consulting teacher. So Brenda, why don't you start and we'll just go down the line. I'll tell you a little bit about my story and how I ended up being co-lead of the team. I have taught for, I would say, about 24 years. I taught for about 12 years in Yonkers, New York, and then moved to the area and was hired in MCPS. And Dr. Jerry Weest, who recently retired, is known by the parent community whose children entered school when he was hired in MCPS over 12 years ago. The high school graduates were called Weest babies. Well, I was hired in 99, so I consider myself an adult Weest baby. But his focus was on student achievement, closing the achievement gap. And one of the paths in doing so was through teacher development to impact student achievement. The reason I applied for the consulting teacher position was that I wanted to have an impact on how arts instruction was being conducted in class. I did not have interest in being an administrator, but I did want to be in a leadership position where I could have an impact. And being a consulting teacher seemed like the perfect opportunity for me. Well, I was hired in 2007 after my second attempt at applying. Not that I wasn't qualified the first time, but there really wasn't a need on the team for a teacher in my content area as they already had someone on the team. But I was sure that this was something that I wanted, and I applied again two years later and fortunately was hired. I had a case load of about 18 clients. And just for clarification, as Dr. Johnson gave you a lot of very important factual information about the PAR process and the work of consulting teachers, our typical case loads range anywhere from 16 to 18 clients. And we start our case loads with anywhere from two to four underperforming clients. So it can be a heavy case load, and we have our work cut out for us, but we are all highly committed to helping teachers improve. One of the things we stress in the Montgomery County Public Schools is the view that teachers have particularly experienced teachers of the PAR process. Many of our experienced teachers tend to view what they call PAR as a negative or as the possibility that they may lose their job, which they may. But there are somewhat negative connotations associated with it by some teachers. So we're working very hard and our leads, Chris and Gary, have encouraged the team to refer to this process as the peer assistance and review program because this is really a program about support. We're not looking to catch teachers. We don't want to give the impression that we're walking in unannounced as a gotcha, but it's a program of support and professional development. And consulting teachers are there to assist teachers in successfully meeting teacher standard. As a consulting teacher, we go into the classrooms and we do observations and we write reports based on data collected during those observations. But prior to going into the classrooms, one of the most important things that we do is relationship building with our clients. Again, going back to our experienced teachers, many of them are very anxious and nervous about the process. So we make a concentrated effort to really relationship build with those teachers. Let those teachers know that we are there to support them, that we will provide them with the resources, the tools, whatever is necessary to assure that they have a successful year. We also stress confidentiality and we share with our clients the fact that the work and support that we provide them is strictly confidential. We strictly maintain confidentiality protocols. And we explain to our clients that we will not discuss the support that we are providing them without their written consent. So that while the expectation is the consulting teacher works collaboratively with the school-based staff development teacher and resource teacher, if the client, whether they're a novice client or a tenured client, is not comfortable with sharing information, then we respect that. But that is an option for them that we can bring on board the school-based supports. Once we go into the classrooms and begin collecting our data to assure that all of the observations that are done, that all of the qualified observers in MCPS are speaking a common language, it was earlier referred to by Chris and Gary, that all qualified observers and our consulting teachers complete two courses, observing and analyzing teaching one and two, so that when we go into the classroom we are all speaking that common language and looking through a similar lens in terms of the vocabulary that we use when we provide feedback to our clients, as well as the written documentation that we provide our clients, as well as our parapairs and administrators. As a consulting teacher, on average we have a case load of about 16. We can look at writing approximately 48 reports in total, give or take some for those underperforming teachers that may involve writing two additional reports for those clients who are consistently meeting standard when we go in to do our informal observations, as well as our formal observations, can be as little as two formal observations with the opportunity for a probationary teacher to receive a waiver of their second report. But it is up to the principal's discretion as to whether or not they are willing to agree on allowing the teacher a waiver of that second report. Some principals like to have as much data as they can get, so they are not necessarily in agreement with a waiver, and others are happy to sign off on a waiver. Another course that many of the consulting teachers have taken is studying skillful teaching, which also helps us to understand sharing with our clients specific instructional strategies that are research-based for effective classroom instruction. In terms of writing mastery level objectives, what look-fors that we need to see when we go into the classroom, such as routines, effective management strategies. So all of the work that we do with our clients are based in educational research done by Dr. John Safier. In terms of the work that I do individually with my clients, probationary as well as experienced in my initial meetings with the clients, in addition to that relationship-building piece that's so important and building a relationship of trust with the client, I also make very clear the expectations that I have of my client in order for them to have success. I think it's very important for our clients to know that we are there to support them. We are not administrators. We are not evaluators. We are not sent to their classrooms by the administrators, but we are data collectors and supports. And as mentioned previously, the data that consulting teachers collect does not often agree with the data collected by the administrators. Also in MCPS, we stress with our clients the use of equitable practices because in MCPS there is an incentive to close the achievement cap through the use of equitable instructional practices. So that's another area that we focus on with our clients. But most importantly, I think for me, is building that relationship of trust with the client and letting them know that this, again, is a program of support. So I would like to end by saying that in my over 20 years of experiences as an educator, this job has been the most rewarding because I have seen teachers go from being mediocre or from going from being really unsuccessful in the classroom and occasionally not good for kids to being highly successful by the time they exit the program. And I'm really honored to have one of my former clients here with me who successfully exited the program and also taught me a lot as a consulting teacher. So thank you very much. It's quite an honor to be thought that I might have any knowledge to share to such a large body of experienced educators. My name is Andrew Kirk. I'm a first year teacher at Kennedy High School, I guess I'm a second year teacher now or soon to be. I graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art with undergraduate and graduate degrees. And I think I did pretty well in PAR. I found it to be a very easy transition from the attention I experienced in graduate school where you're kind of living under a microscope in the professional setting where you still are to a degree living under a microscope but it was very easy to transition from that. I felt like the greatest success overall with the PAR program was being able to get better at it with my students, not somebody's students that I was borrowing when you're student teaching in a way. And I think about what Chris said, maybe Chris or Gary said it, which is when you have good people, you help them grow and you help make them stronger. And I felt like that's what the PAR program was for me. Dr. Delaney really hit on this very profoundly with talking about trust, is that from the get-go I felt like there was a lot of trust, both established with a mentor teacher that was brought in when I joined the faculty and in a more formal setting with Dr. Delaney and the administrators at Kennedy High School. Related to that, I found that informal and that formal aspects of the PAR program was really beneficial about it, was being able to adapt to a given context. Kennedy High School was a context that was very different from the ones that I had students taught in or had experience in. But it helped me to very quickly get a hold on that and to use that to my advantage. I felt like that trust built a sense of reassurance and the practices that I was doing, the things that kind of came naturally to me. Also, I found positive adjustments and it was all based on that trust from Dr. Delaney. I felt like I had somebody that really knew what they were talking about. I didn't ever question, maybe they don't know what they're saying, maybe they don't have the experience to back this up. Knowing that she was a visual arts educator really made that difference there for me. In particular, I really found some benefits in terms of little things like classroom management. I know, and I can't remember if it was in one meeting where we had talked about relatively common practice where somebody might get up and leave the room. What do you do then? And it was funny because in the next observation, that happened. So it was a perfect opportunity to implement what we had talked about. But it really was a thing. It always felt like a good resource and we were always in contact. There was always an email about every week or so. And I always felt reassured in that. And it was always like I wasn't alone in that regard. Another aspect was the organization of data and student knowledge. The really critical questions were coming from Dr. Delaney about how do you know that they got this? Really, how do you know? Prove it to me. And maybe that sounds like it was a little bit more intense than it was, but there was always a real burden of proof. And I think that's one thing that the PAR really stresses is how do you know? How do you know that the teacher is meeting standard? How do you know that they're not meeting standard? And it can be proven from every step of the way. And I found that to be really useful in my own practice is really how do you know that they learned this? How do you know that they didn't learn this? Is it valid to reteach this? And from that, learning what's best at any given time for the students. I remember Dr. Delaney came in the day before spring break. Not the best time in the world to come in. But you have to be ready for these kinds of things. And I took it pretty seriously, the whole PAR program in general. Always wanting to do my absolute best and being ready for that kind of thing. But it never felt like it was a gotcha moment. It didn't feel like it was a gotcha moment at that time. It felt like we need to see this. It always like we need to see what you're like on the day before spring break. And yeah, the atmosphere was lighter than what it probably normally would have been, but it still fit the mood. And there was still room for improvement, for the successes that were realized. And I think that was something that I always, it's like I always got encouragement when I needed it. And I always got some critical responses when I needed it. When my teaching needed improvement, I got it. And when I needed that reassurance that I was doing something right, I got it. So I think for you that are thinking about instituting PAR programs is really thinking about what are your goals for that. And I think of how PAR has helped me improve my skill set and helped improve the skill set of other teachers that I know. How they come across resources for adapting instruction. Also, I think the most important thing is how they build a community of excellent educators. One thing that PAR has helped me do is build a community outside of my school with excellent educators. I know who I can turn to at different schools that teach exactly what I teach and how I can use their strategies and how we can share with that. I think that really makes a successful program in anything. Really. And also within the school too. And that's a really critical component. How you meet with other teachers and I think what is the standard six I think speaks to that where you're constantly going to things like staff meetings but beyond that how you're meeting with colleagues and developing from that. So I think that's about it. That's about all the notes I have. Thank you. Well, my story begins with my principal telling me that I did not meet standard in two areas. Maintaining positive classroom atmosphere and knowing the curriculum. A teacher of 36 years doesn't know her curriculum. Her student data is excellent both on daily data checks and monthly data checks. This made no sense to me. Classroom management was a challenge that year because I was teaching two classes of heavily impacted students with behavior and learning disabilities or both. And as it turned out, three of those children were on the autism spectrum. I was very angry. I had never had a negative evaluation in all my years of teaching. The principal put me on a growth plan. This plan required me to write down my daily lesson plans and reflections and email them to the principal, the assistant principal, the staff development teacher, and the reading specialist. I started doing this, but I was receiving no feedback from any one of the four people who were getting my emails. I requested feedback, but I still didn't receive any. It then became apparent to me that the purpose of the growth plan was not to help a struggling teacher but to add to my workload. So in May, a CT came out and observed me, and she said, you definitely know your curriculum. No question about that. And she said, I could make some suggestions to you about classroom management. So we'll put you in part the next year. And so I said, fine. And during the summer, I took a behavior management class. I'm always open to new ideas and perspectives. The following year, I was assigned a teacher from our PAR program. We met before school started. This gave us an opportunity to share what my principal's concerns were and what mine were. After school started, she came to my classroom often enough that I got to know her. My students were not distracted by her. Most importantly, I learned that she was there not to nitpick, as I was used to from my administrators, but to give positive, honest feedback. After my observation, she would email my principal to tell her that she had been in and that she didn't see a problem. My principal would reply, thank you. This went on until it was time for my CT to present her findings to the PAR panel. My CT met with my principal to tell her that she saw me meeting all standards. When the CT asked the principal if she thought I was meeting all standards, she said no. I was not professional and did not employ equitable practices in my classroom. The standards that I was not meeting had somehow changed. During this school year, I did not have any formal announced observations from my principal. Once I thought I was having a formal announced observation, we had a 90-minute post-observation conference where I was grilled on everything that I did during the observation. I felt I defended myself well and even provided the written assessments to back up my reasoning. I never received any write-up of that observation. There were some brief informal observations after which I would receive an email telling me things like I went over my allotted time for reading by five minutes and that meant that I started my writing block five minutes late and so therefore I was not implementing the language arts block with fidelity. This went on until May when my CT said that she would be going before the PARA panel to present me. My principal persisted in saying that she did not think that I was meeting standard and that I should have another year of PARA. My CT was recommending that I be dismissed from PARA. The panel would vote to see if they agreed which they did. Even after that, my principal stated that she wanted to appeal this decision even though she had no data. This meant that my principal would go before the PARA panel and then I would go before the PARA panel to testify. I was ready to tell my story but a few days before that hearing my principal rescinded the appeal so I was released from PARA. To say that my consulting teacher was a lifesaver is an understatement. After enduring professional abuse she kept me going telling me to hang in there. My confidence in my teaching had been completely undermined but she helped to restore it. My story points out that the PARA system worked and experienced competent teacher was not dismissed or forced to retire because of retaliation for being an active vocal union representative or due to age discrimination or whatever. So that teacher is continuing using her experience to help with collaborative problem solving at her school, doing union work and serving students and parents. When I got the email to say tell your story it resonated with me because that's what I do when I meet my new clients. I tell my story because I have two very different stories. I have a story that I tell my novice clients so that I can begin to build that relationship with them and to gain their trust and I also have a story to tell my veteran teachers. So I'm going to start with my novice story. As a first year teacher I quit my job at the end of June. I was 21 years old I had just turned 21 January 27th I'm not going to say the year and I was teaching I was a speech language pathologist in a rural county in Virginia and my caseload was infants all the way to 12th graders in high school and they had never seen a woman of color in this county and I had people tell me I remember one lady said to me her two year old son with hearing aids I was never going to go to a black woman and have speech therapy and this little boy was just a baby so of course he climbed up in my lap and I did my thing but I was not supported I was the only speech language pathologist in this county and even though I did my job and I guess I met standard there was no one for me to collaborate with I had no one to talk to my family was in Georgia I was in Virginia because my husband now but my boyfriend was there he was about an hour away and that's one of the reasons why I took the job but by that June I was done and I was done with teaching so I moved back to Georgia and I took a job in a bank as a bank teller one of my high school teachers came in about September and said what are you doing here I thought you were teaching you wanted to teach be a speech language pathologist and I said no I can't do that anymore I can't teach I got a phone call probably by the end of that week by Human Relations for DeKalb County in Georgia and they said come on in we want to interview you come in HR said we don't have any teaching positions but we have something that might interest you because I wasn't certified in elementary education I was special ed certified we want you to go into a co-teaching kind of position so I'm thinking okay co-teaching you're like a paraeducator but we'd like for you to go into this classroom and teach with this veteran teacher there are 34 students in this class so I thought okay great I'll take this position I'm not really the teacher of record I'm not in charge I'm a teacher's aide how hard can that be well when I got into the classroom with this teacher she knew that I was educated she knew that I was certified she knew I could teach she let me teach not only did she let me teach how to plan how to build relationships with students she was my mentor she was what I needed in my first year and so when I tell my story to my first year teachers I tell them that back in the day teachers would teach in isolation you can't do that now you can't survive in this economic climate if you teach in isolation you have to learn how to collaborate and so I'm here to be your mentor to show you how to collaborate I'm here to show you how to reach out to that veteran teacher across the hall who maybe you're not quite sure how to build that relationship you're not quite sure what to say to your staff development teacher or your administrator I'm here to help you with that so that's one story I tell and I tell that story to my novice teachers for my veteran teachers I tell them this story I came to Montgomery County in 1993 so that was Virginia Georgia got married finally the boyfriend in Virginia proposed so that was only one year in Georgia but that was a good year I was ready to come back and teach and DC hired me right away I taught for six years right here in Washington DC not too far away from here and it was a wonderful experience I had aunts grandmothers teachers just embraced me you talk about collaboration they had that down in DC I mean there were a couple of reasons why but we had to be a family of teachers and so again I had great mentors around me came to Montgomery County in 1993 time to have babies wanted to move to the suburbs so I was hired in 1993 Montgomery County came into teaching there was no one to support me doors were shut teachers were jealous envious of each other I had teachers telling me the colors that I could use for my bulletin boards and so I learned very quickly that I just needed to shut my door and do my thing and I was here in Montgomery County in 1993 my administrator would come in and evaluate me and would give me this nice checklist to tell me that I was a good teacher and I knew I was a good teacher by then so I had this little checklist to tell me that I was you know I was passing or whatever in 1996 I went out on maternity leave and I was home for four years I resigned from Montgomery County after my third year of maternity leave because back then they gave you 36 months so I resigned in 19 in 2000 2001 somewhere around in there I reapplied to Montgomery County because I was enrolling my I had two daughters but I'm going to try to cut it short I don't tell them this whole big story but I had two daughters enrolling them in elementary school my principal said to me because she rehired me I was a good teacher hey I got this part time reading position why don't you take it for us it's perfect for your young daughters so I took the position I'm in my classroom doing my thing because I learned very quickly to close my door and do my thing into my space asking me what I needed do I have materials what was I thinking and finally I went to the administrative secretary and I said who is this person like is this like the new assistant principal like you know what's her deal she won't leave me alone and she said Vera that's the staff development teacher that's part of this new professional growth system that we have here in Montgomery County because you gave up your tenure and you're a probationary teacher again this is an evaluation year for you and the staff development teacher is here to support you because you can't get a CT a consulting teacher because you have experience when I found out that this was a fully released position in my school that this person was at my beck and call I was all over her and we became best friends but I tell that story because we need support and not only that I was evaluated that year through the six standards that you heard about earlier and under each one of those standards there's a whole laundry list of performance criteria and I was one of those weird teachers that would actually read the professional growth handbook because I was like okay I'm doing this, this and this but oh look I can go I can do this, this and this that's what it's all about that's the beauty of it that's why I love to say professional growth system it took a good teacher and made me even better and that's why I applied to become a consulting teacher because I'm so passionate about growing teachers and when I get my caseload of 16 to 18 clients I don't other than differentiating my support based on their needs I don't treat my novice teachers any different than I treat my veteran teachers because when I walk in and I say hello my name is Vera Gaines and I'm your consulting teacher I tell my story I say I know that this can work for you I know you can be successful and I'm gonna be that worker bee buzzing around you in your ear because I know you can be successful because it worked for me that's my story so you heard a couple of different times this morning about a perspective on peer assistance and review where we talked about it really being a supportive program that the design of the program isn't just the weeding part as our good doctor we used to say but a lot about the seeding part and making sure that people have what they need to be successful or to make good choices because that's really what this is about helping adults make good choices around what they do on a daily basis to provide the best instructional program we can for the students in our charge so you have it from folks who have lived it so now I want to throw it out to you guys for questions what do you want to know from them about their experiences I have excellent wait time when an administrator has concerns about a teacher's performance and that teacher is not in par the administrator can apply for or request a review by a consulting teacher so the consulting teacher will go in in the spring meet with the client try to build a relationship and the CT conducts two observations the first is announced so the client has an opportunity to select which class and which date they might like to be observed the second observation which is unannounced and again those unannounced visits are not a gotcha but really just for us to go in to make sure that teachers are maintaining those strategies and those effective practices that we expect to see based on the data that's collected in those two observations two reports are written and we make a recommendation as to whether or not we feel inclusion in the peer assistance and review program if the recommendation is in agreement with the principal that the teacher would benefit then the teacher is automatically placed in the peer assistance and review program if the data is not in agreement perhaps these consulting teacher based on the data that they collected feels that the teacher does not need to be in the peer assistance and review program then there's a brief appeal process and presentations are made to the PARA panel and the PARA panel makes the decision I've kind of got two questions I think both are pretty small ones one is do you have required forms for all of these reports are these standardized observation forms and reporting forms so we do have a standardized form that we use for our formal observations that's in our professional growth system handbook that's on the website yes absolutely so there is a form that consulting teachers use and it's standard based so we write it you may have heard Chris and Gary talk about the CEIJ so we make a claim based on the standards and then we have our evidence and then we have an interpretation you know how that impacts students so it's written in that format and all of the consulting teachers on our team are trained to write our formal observation reports through the course that we take observing and analyzing teaching one and two and the principles use the same forms principles use the same format their form looks just a little bit different it's also written in the CEIJ paragraph so the teacher is seeing some of that common language and that language is also taught I think Brenda talked about it earlier that language is also taught in the studying skillful teaching courses as well Rob if I can just add a couple of things in the state of Maryland teachers are not allowed to evaluate other teachers it's prohibited so I haven't been able to change that and so the report looks different because it's called a report and not an evaluation so with some minor tweaks but it's also true that every single individual in the school system who ever has any responsibility for observing teachers must pass this coursework the observation and analysis of teaching and I can't emphasize that enough because it is about having that you know identical lens all the way through thank you all for sharing your stories I had a couple questions I didn't attend the breakout session for your district but I'm wondering how are you supported as CTS and then what are your goals or how are you evaluated to ensure that this is successful well having just finished my third year as a consulting teacher and being recently appointed as co-lead as Vera said the consulting teachers are our case load Vera and I maintain a modified case load but we are really there our main job is to support the consulting teacher team with their case load and there are a number of supports in place for the consulting teachers in addition to Vera and myself there are the par pairs each consulting teacher is assigned to one principal and one teacher who meets with them monthly for hot cases and they're able to ask questions and get advice from their colleagues in that par pair group as well so there's a lot of support in place but consulting teachers as co-leads we provide the majority of the support for our consulting teachers and we also have support we talked about the observation writing reports we have there's in district trainers who support us with our writing and they are in charge of teaching the studying skillful teaching courses and the OAT courses observing and I'm trying not to use acronyms we're big in Montgomery County with acronyms but observing and analyzing teaching so they're the folks that teach those courses and they are at our beck and call we can call on any instructional specialist in the county if we are working with teachers who are out of our certification areas so we have folks that if our team can't get a hold of those folks then we can get a hold of them as well as Gary and Chris being co-chairs of the PAR panel there's support to us as well can you two talk to the evaluation piece for consulting teachers as well so you were also asking about that I'm just kind of curious what are the goals that they're held accountable for I know you're supporting teachers but what does that look like our PAR payer is responsible for evaluating consulting teachers also Gary and Chris oversee the work of consulting teachers as well so at the end of the year the teacher and the administrator that's been assigned to that consulting teacher because we're only evaluated in our first year they are the ones responsible for writing that evaluation of the consulting teacher and that data is based on their monthly meetings with the consulting teacher the formal we give all our formal observation reports to our PAR payer so they're reading the observation reports monthly in our dialogue we're talking about the support that we're providing our clients, we're going through our caseload so they have data that way they can also contact Brenda and I and we can talk to them about the client's caseload in addition to that during the course of the year we send out a survey to our clients as well as administrators asking them for feedback on the work that we were doing with the clients and to also help us to continually improve the program so that survey goes out twice a year and information in the survey is also included in first year consulting teachers evaluations and just to give an example when I was a first year consulting teacher some of the feedback that I received from it and of course this was anonymous feedback but from the administration survey it suggested that while I was turning in appropriate documents and providing adequate support to my client some of them felt that I hadn't been in contact with them enough so I didn't I wasn't contacting them each time I went in for an informal I was really just making those communications when I went in for a formal observation so the feedback on those surveys also helps to provide us with areas in which we can improve as consulting teachers and again included in our formal evaluations as CTs I know that you have a very large budget in Montgomery County schools but can you tell me how much is predicated or how many dollars are allocated towards this initiative and maybe you don't know that answer I might have to say large budget where's Chris Lloyd four years no raise we actually we don't know that the numbers but I do know that a piece of this there's some grant money involved as well I do know that some of our consulting teachers are paid out of a pot of grant money great thank you Gary so if I'm a parent and I have kids in the school system and I'm really displeased with what's happening in my classroom do I have any access to the PAR program or should I have any access to the PAR program no you want to expound on that well first of all as you heard we're very concerned about confidentiality and then also you know why we like to entertain input from parents we are the professionals and we can take comments and input and so forth but the professionals are the ones who really need to look at that and then decide what needs to be done any other questions she's running over can you tell me the difference between the CT and the staff development person is that a different type of instructional coach a staff development teacher is usually school based and that is a person who is responsible for coordinating staff development for the teachers bringing in additional resources coordinating what we call PDCs or professional development cohorts but it's basically the in-house professional development person that role changed slightly this year when staff development teachers because of budgetary constraints had been asked to take on teaching one or two classes there's still one staff development teacher in each of our schools whereas the consulting teachers are full-time supports we telecommute we have an office that we can work out of or we can work from home we travel to different schools for example since some of my teachers were split between several schools I was moving between about 22 different schools last year but we do try to coordinate our support with the permission of the client in addition to school-based resource teachers at the secondary level who are content specific for their departments okay alright well I want to thank the panel once again for coming speaking to us today and thank you and you guys can stay please if you like and so now we're going to to Dr. Milton's question about cost we started that conversation this morning and we're going to take it a little bit farther this afternoon and we're going to start if we can get the computer up and running by the way this is the website I think it was up here before lunch the website for the user's guide to PAR that Susan was referring to oh you okay I hear a lot of people writing it down oh Susan's putting up over there and let me bring up our other PowerPoints