 I am participating in the My Teaching Partners secondary program from UVA. They approached me about a year and a half ago and asked if I would be interested in participating in this research study, and they told me all these wonderful things, and then they said, and we're going to give you a video camera, and every two weeks you're going to videotape your class and send it to us, and then we'll talk about it. I was very put off by that. I don't mind people coming into my classroom and when you have videotaped evidence of it, it's a little unnerving, but I had just taken on the 11th grade curriculum, and it's an SOL test a year, so I was very nervous, so I thought any help would be great, so I signed on for it, and videotaped my class the first time in October of last year, and I was really nervous when I put that little memory card in the envelope and melded it off, and then a couple of weeks later, my consultant, she contacted me, she said, okay, I've pulled some great video clips, they're up online, I need you to go watch, I'm going to respond to the questions, and then we'll talk about it, and we do telephone conferences, and some of the other teachers who participate in the program do Skype. I prefer talking to Sharon, you know, on the phone, and I was really blown away with that first consultation, because she had pulled three clips that were about a minute, a minute and a half each, and she had talked about the various parts of the class rubric that they hit on, and we got to really hash it out for an hour, an hour and a half, that first consultation about everything that I was doing right, and things that I could do to make the class go better, and work better, because I was really nervous. The class I had chosen to videotape wasn't my best class, which is why I chose that class, because I needed all the help I could get. And I was watching the video clip, and I'm seeing it from my point of view going, oh, this lesson's going horribly, you know, this kid is doing this over here, and this kid is doing this, and Sharon helped me see that while they may not be doing what I would have thought would be perfect for that class, they were still engaged in the lesson, they weren't daydreaming, they weren't putting their heads down and going to sleep. If I asked a question of a kid who I thought wasn't paying attention, they were on point the whole time. So it really helped me kind of step back and see, okay, just because they're not all sitting there perfectly still and staring at me with these bright expressions doesn't mean they're not paying attention and getting the lesson. Excellent. And so you're in the second year of this My Teaching Partner Secondary project. Is that right? Yes. And as I understand it, there are some teachers that are part of the program but are not getting the same kind of coaching that you're getting. There are some teachers who videotape every couple of weeks and they send their videotapes off, but there's no consult. They just tape the class and send it off, and then UVA uses that for their program. And then there's those of us who they videotape and then we have the consultant and we get a lot of that hands on. And my consultant is great anytime I need anything. And sometimes she just tells me how that class was bad. She's honest. Thank you, Danielle. So, Noreen, tell us a little bit about how observation is working at Appletree. And I should pause to give a little bit of context for those who don't know. Appletree was a winner of one of the I3 Investing in Innovation grants. And through that has been developing a tool that they had already kind of started crafting from what I understand called Quality Indicators, which is an observation tool that's looking at preschool and pre-kindergarten teaching, correct? But you have also been observed under the class tool and another tool is the ELCO, which we describe in our report, which is looking at an English language acquisition and learning concepts as well. So tell me a little bit about what the observation has meant to you at Appletree. Well, I am most familiar. I think we started out my first year when I was at DC Prep using class and ELCO. That would make it three years since I've been using class and ELCO. I have been more, had more experience with class and ELCO. And then on my, which is my first year here, my second year using class and ELCO, we started using Quality Indicators. And what that meant for me was more observations. I had my coach coming in. She observes me with a Quality Indicator three times per year, formally. And she referred to them on a continuous basis based on what my needs are. To be honest with you, I never liked the idea of being, you know, watched, especially it feels intimidating because you're doing what you do every day and someone comes in and they're at the back and they're typing and you're like, what on earth am I saying? No, is it good or is it bad? But how it has really helped me is that when I asked, you know, how was the lesson, which I mean, I've been teaching for 10 years. I usually get, the lesson was good. And I'm like, but or how or what does that mean? Or what could be improved? Because I am eager about knowing how something could be improved. How could it be better? What next could I do? How could I bump up that learning experience for my kids? And she will look at me and say, OK, based on the different indicators on the quality indicator, you did well on, let's say, student engagement, but your concept to a development could have been better. For last year, because when in preparing for this discussion, I thought back on my experience, especially last year when I had great coaching. My coach has been so great. She comes in and she watched me again. And she came back to our coaching or team meeting or our coaching session and she said to me, the lesson was great, but I think that you could have bumped up, what was it, supporting and checking understanding. And of course, it wasn't something that I had thought about before, but it made me put into context, you know, what am I doing? How could I have checked for understanding? And that brought up other issues that I hadn't thought about before, even though I've had great lessons, if you get what I mean. It leads to that level of specificity that I like. There are areas that I'm very strong in. I'd be very strong in, for example, pro-social behavior. But she comes and she says to me, OK, how could you check for understanding? How about you use a graphic organizer? What is a graphic organizer? And she sits with me. She will even come in and model. For example, I'm not too comfortable. I'm not too sure how to use it or how to implement it. She will come and she will model for me in the next week and show me how I could effectively use a graphic organizer for a lesson. And that has helped me so well.