In this episode of the oneSMFC podcast, Superintendent Ochoa is joined by two rock star teachers, Ms. Lang and Ms. Dixon, and the Director of Curriculum and Instruction for Elementary Schools, Pam Bartfield.
Our educators dive into the spirit of collaboration that's reshaping our approach to teaching by highlighting how our teachers have been revolutionizing the way our students learn how to read.
Our conversation is an intimate look at the supportive teaching environment we cherish, highlighting the resilience required to foster educational triumphs that aren't always immediately measurable, but with the right systems, can see the results we expect.
In this episode of the oneSMFC podcast, Superintendent Ochoa is joined by two rock star teachers, Ms. Lang and Ms. Dixon, and the Director of Curriculum and Instruction for Elementary Schools, Pam Bartfield.
Our educators dive into the spirit of collaboration that's reshaping our approach to teaching by highlighting how our teachers have been revolutionizing the way our students learn how to read.
Our conversation is an intimate look at the supportive teaching environment we cherish, highlighting the resilience required to foster educational triumphs that aren't always immediately measurable, but with the right systems, can see the results we expect.
But now it feels good to have our district all on the same page.
Speaker 2:I see teachers more comfortable. I see teachers making it their own. I see teachers knowing here's where. This is where my, because of this program, because of what I know, I can see where my students are and where I need to take them.
Speaker 3:It's really exciting to be able to learn from each other, share what we know. Looking forward to it.
Speaker 4:Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us again. My name is Diego Ochoa, I'm superintendent of the San Mateo Foster City School District and I'm delighted to have you join us today on the One SMFC Podcast. This is a program that we put together in our school district. We try to invite teachers, administrators, parents and, if you go back into our archives, even students that we've interviewed actually, one from one of our guests today their school and these podcasts are just really wonderful opportunities for us to connect with our families. And we don't do it alone. We bring people into the studio and we have a conversation about the things that matter to us and the things that are going on in our school district. And I'm joined by three really awesome colleagues. I'm going to let introduce themselves, starting with Hi everybody, I am Pam Bartfield.
Speaker 2:I'm the director of curriculum and instruction, working with our elementary schools.
Speaker 4:You're also kind of a famous podcast guest, right.
Speaker 2:I feel like I am.
Speaker 4:How many podcasts is this for you?
Speaker 2:Well, it's got to be around 10. It's a lot, I don't know. It's a lot.
Speaker 4:You've been on a lot of these. I had somebody mention that to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Who is this Pam person? Why is she on the? I'm the director of curriculum. We're an education organization.
Speaker 2:I wasn't considering getting a manager, but I think we're okay. You know where to find me.
Speaker 4:Yeah, or a publicist, publicist. Start with the publicist because, then you build up your persona.
Speaker 2:True, true. Then when you start booking more gigs, isn't there a whole industry behind that.
Speaker 4:It's a whole world, all right. Well, it's not just the two of us. Who else is here with us, hi?
Speaker 1:I'm Jill Lange. I'm a first grade teacher at Audubon Elementary School in Foster City.
Speaker 4:What a lovely school. We were just there yesterday, yeah.
Speaker 1:We had some people come into my room. I don't know.
Speaker 4:I had to leave because I wanted to be able to visit lead. I started my day at Audubon and visited. You have a fifth grade teacher, I think is it Ms Fredrickson?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Doing an awesome job with her math lesson.
Speaker 4:Oh wow, like I took a group of kids with me to visit.
Speaker 3:You saw them yeah.
Speaker 4:I was one of your former students and Sierra student that went to Foster City and they just came away saying, wow, the way we're teaching math at elementary school is just the total eye-opener. They both said we wish we had been taught math like this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I saw them and a lot of people there. It was really nice you had some community members and board members and students.
Speaker 4:We had the chief of police.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I heard that. You know when.
Speaker 4:I met her.
Speaker 1:I knew the old chief of police, but not this one.
Speaker 4:Tracy Avalard, chief of police. She's just the most delightful person you ever want to meet Well, I actually. She's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I worked with her a little bit when we had community readers. Yes, remember, you came to Audubon also and we had our community readers, which, by the way, anytime you want.
Speaker 4:I had the best time reading at Audubon, yeah. The teachers were kind of like you really got into this, diego. I said, yeah, yeah, I used to do this. I used to do this all the time, yeah.
Speaker 1:It was nice. It was nice. We'll hopefully do it again next year.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and thanks for being with us today.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 4:There's still one more with us.
Speaker 3:I am Tara Dixon. I teach first grade at Foster City Elementary School in Foster City.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that's you know what do we call it? That's the biggest school in the district. At one point I used to tell your principal I said one out of every 10 kids in our school district goes to Foster City Elementary School, did they?
Speaker 3:not know that the?
Speaker 4:ratio got. Yeah, it got to that point.
Speaker 4:I said well, and it's gone down a little bit because we opened up a new school in Foster City, but thank you for joining us and, as you all know, we have an event coming up here February 8th. We're really excited about it and it's an event that we wanted to put together to really invite our colleagues from around the peninsula to come and visit our schools. It's the first grade teachers literacy summit. We're hosting it and we have folks coming from Pam. Do you remember all the districts?
Speaker 2:I know it's 11 different districts.
Speaker 4:So I know we have Hillsborough.
Speaker 2:Redwood City, pacifica, santa Cruz, san Bruno, hayward, monterey. We have a district from Monterey coming.
Speaker 4:We sent some invitations across the bay. I think Hayward is coming.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Hayward. A couple of others are coming. The two of you have been in education for many years. Have you had teachers from other districts come and visit your classrooms before?
Speaker 1:I have not. I find it to be really exciting. I love going to other classrooms and having other people come here and just having that community of you. Know it doesn't matter what district you're with, we're just all working together, doing with the same goal.
Speaker 3:It's the same for me. I have not, but I think it's really exciting to be able to learn from each other, share what we know. Looking forward to it.
Speaker 4:So let me pose it to you as like pick a word Exciting, or anxious, or curious. How would you? What's the feeling you most have going into this?
Speaker 3:I think inspiring just to learn from our colleagues in this district and share what we've been working so hard over the last year and a half.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean you're at Foster City. We have 16 elementary schools. How often do teachers from Park or from Laurel or from George Hall get to come and watch you teach?
Speaker 3:Not that often, but no, yeah, I mean it doesn't happen very rarely.
Speaker 4:So that's one of the sort of odd things about our profession is we put ourselves in these literal boxes, these rectangles we teach in and then we don't leave, we stay right where we are.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the thing. We even have teachers at a school who have never gone into other classrooms. So we are in our own classroom and I had a teacher at my school, jen Flores, who had a student teacher. She was able to come in and observe me while she had the student teacher and we found it so collaborative, because she says oh, and here's what I do. And I said oh, okay, and you work together and build off of that. So even you just don't even have people going from one classroom to another, and let alone schools.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and when they come and visit us, what are they gonna see in your classrooms? Let's start with you over at Audubon. What are these folks gonna see, Jill?
Speaker 1:Well, if somebody were to come into my classroom, they would definitely see the PAF, our phonics program. They would see Benchmark with the writing program and hopefully, now that we have certain programs, they would see the same thing as in Tara's room they would see good teaching.
Speaker 4:Tara, what about you? What are you excited for people potentially to be able to see and for you to see in other people's classrooms?
Speaker 3:I think just a variety of all the different literacy activities that we've been doing with PAF the tracing, the letters in the air and the sight words, the pocket chart, the songs, the chance, the games, the dictation is really just cool to see the growth that has been coming along.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Pam. You work with our toasters pretty closely, our teachers on special assignment. You visit a lot of classrooms in the district. What stands out to you in terms of us being in our second year with this reading program, and what are you most proud of?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm staring at here, right now, our Literacy Summit.
Speaker 4:They can't see it on the podcast. This is just audio, so there's no. You can see it.
Speaker 2:What I'm gonna say is actually Jill is featured on the invitation because-.
Speaker 4:With the yellow shirt. Yeah, that's me. The Audubon colors, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I've spent actually a bunch of days in Jill's room. We did some videoing in there as long, as well as some other schools, but just from going from school to school. I know this year and we're still new Terri said like a year and a half ago we made a big change in our district around our literacy work. But this year I see teachers more comfortable. I see teachers making it their own. I see teachers knowing here's where this is where my because of this program, because of what I know, I can see where my students are and where I need to take them. We also see, because all of our schools have language and literacy tosas, so we also see how that support works. I know we're gonna see that and all, and we see lots of language on the walls and lots of opportunities for our students to engage. And then in Jill's room you also see some of that's really cool stuff because she has a lot of little pets.
Speaker 2:A whole thing's going on in her room.
Speaker 4:Yeah, your room is famous. Tell us what they're gonna see in your room.
Speaker 1:I have a Russian tortoise named Checkers. I have a couple of chubby tree frogs, Trevor and Brynn. I have a leopard gecko Quincy, a crested gecko Mushu, some blue death fainting beetles who are hilarious. They're so dramatic and a vinegaroon, so we have quite a few little pets.
Speaker 4:Yeah, every kid in the school is just like this class, should they just? I watch them. I hear them outside talking about it and I know our work with students is we're opening doors for them. We're really, and that's to me, what stands out about the place that we're at with our reading program is we invite partners in to look at our schools and, as I mentioned earlier, just the other day we had a group visiting Audubon.
Speaker 4:We had a different group visiting LEED and we had a different group visiting Borel City. Council members, chiefs of police, ceos of nonprofits, parents, pta presidents they all came away with some version of I can't believe how the quality of instruction that's happening in your district. And it was again a middle school, a big middle school, a thousand kids, an elementary school serving a lot of students with incredible need, and then an elementary school in Foster City and it's really the thread that connects those, those three programs. So you've got a group coming in a couple of weeks. What will you tell them was the hardest part of making this shift? Cause that's gonna be one of the questions they ask is when you went through this process, what was the hardest? So what will you share with them?
Speaker 3:I think just learning a new program, adjusting, there's a lot more phonics, which is great for our students, but it was a little bit of a switch for us and the different the balance of time yes yes, incorporating all of that into our day and, as Pam said, making it our own. But we're excited seeing that growth is the best part, of course, yeah, and then how about for you?
Speaker 4:what would you tell teachers was the hardest part in terms of making that change.
Speaker 1:Well, my journey's a little different in that this was like probably about five or 10 years ago. I was actually approaching our previous curriculum directors of curriculum instruction and talking about how I would like to go over more towards the so-called science of reading, and at that time we were not doing that. We were more of a balanced reading district. So I learned a lot and was kind of not as successful until Pam over here brought everything.
Speaker 4:The systems came in. The systems came in, so you felt it though you had been teaching.
Speaker 1:I've implemented this, you know.
Speaker 4:For years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't wanna say that nobody else has. I mean, I know that Tara is always known what to do, and other people have known what to do too, but now it feels good to have our district all on the same page. That's the amazing part to me. So we're putting out information that's accurate, that's based on empirical studies, on what has proven to work with every child. A lot of people think we don't. Everybody learns to read differently and we don't. We all need the same thing to learn.
Speaker 4:There's a path for each of us. So, going into next year, what's your biggest hope for next year? You're already more than halfway through this year. You'll be in year three of implementing these new materials and all the support systems and the collaboration time with your peers. What's your hope for year three?
Speaker 1:My hope is just continuing, I think, with the program.
Speaker 4:I think every teacher's like don't change, because when you're talking to administrators you're like we know you folks like to change everything. Stop doing that.
Speaker 1:Well, and every year the teachers get more comfortable, and the more you do something, then the less cognitive load it takes. So you can continue to learn and you continue to grow. I might not. I might be able to implement one thing this year and then next year I can expand on that and build on it Every year. That's really exciting and having our TOSAs here has been amazing.
Speaker 3:I know.
Speaker 1:Terry, you feel the same way about that, so hopefully that continues as well.
Speaker 4:Yeah, how about for you, Terry? What's your big hope for next school year?
Speaker 3:I think, just to continue to be more confident and really feel almost not an expert but, an expert in my room.
Speaker 4:And that'll be the case, though, and with 30 year, you start to hit that expertise area.
Speaker 3:And just have it flow. I feel like it's flowing pretty well right now, but just to really perfect the little things, fine tune and continue.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Pam, how about you?
Speaker 2:I would echo and I know, diego, working with you over the last couple of years where we began this journey that we knew we want this to take time and we don't want to what we're used to in education, where we start something and then maybe not see the data change right away and then move to the next thing Although with us, we are seeing great interesting things in our data about students moving, which is very exciting but even with that, we need to stay the course, and so my hope for next year is we do build expertise, which I know we have so much of, and continue to build that in our staff and stay the course.
Speaker 4:What I want to see. I want to go to schools after the bell rings and I want to see kids with a book in their hand. I want to go to our after school programs and I want to see the arms shoot up when the staff says who wants to go to the library first. Because for me, what this is all about yes, test scores matter and, yes, instruction as a general topic matters, but to me, what at the heart of this process has been let's create readers, let's give kids tools so that they have this lifelong skill that they take with them wherever they go. I think we're on that path. We have a bunch of people coming to see us. I'm really, really excited for February 8th. Much more to follow, and thank you all for being on the One SMFC Podcast. You.