Cultivating Colleagues, Growing Great Teachers

By Laura Hershberger, Master Teacher, Avondale Elementary School District, Arizona

Laura Hershberger is a NIET 2024 Fellow and Master Teacher from Avondale Elementary School District in Phoenix, Arizona. Hershberger has more than 25 years of teaching experience and is a National Board Certified Teacher. From K-2 classroom teacher to TAP mentor and Master Teacher, her impact extends through curriculum committees, professional development initiatives, and educator training. Read more about her selection as an NIET Fellow here.

It takes years of study and practice to become an effective gardener. Careful attention to the soil, temperature, and conditions for growth are essential to yield fruit or bloom flowers. Much like tending to a garden with a variety of plants, the right attention and care from an instructional leader can grow teachers from a variety of backgrounds and help them reach their full potential.

My role as a Master Teacher in the Avondale Elementary School District (AZ), a leadership role that is a component of NIET’s TAP system for Teacher and Student Advancement, positions me to work with educators from different backgrounds and experience levels. The teachers who fill our math classrooms range from non-certified teachers who are in the process of attaining their certification, to brand-new and emerging teachers who began less than three years ago, to seasoned educators with decades of experience, and a mentor teacher who taught numerous grades over the last 18 years. Over the last few years, we have also gained teachers with international teaching experience, including a teacher from the Philippines who moved to the United States a decade ago. Understanding that these teachers come from such varied backgrounds and experiences, it is my role to support their growth by meeting them where they are in terms of their content and pedagogical knowledge. But, as educators well know, with growth comes change - and change can be hard.

Through my work with NIET, I’ve helped hone the skills I needed to cultivate positive settings for the group of math teachers I support. Some of these skills include understanding the content of other grades, how to have crucial conversations, and how to provide high-quality, actionable feedback. NIET has structures in place to address these challenges. As a new NIET mentor or master in training, teachers go through structured training focusing on the Teaching and Learning Standards Rubric, evaluations, coaching, and other teacher leadership strategies. EE PASS is a wonderful tool that can be used to provide real-time, targeted coaching support. There are countless paper resources and videos available to support leadership team members. These structures and layers of support from NIET ensured I was learning and growing as a teacher leader to pave the way.

As a gardener uses different techniques and methods with different plants, so too does an experienced coach differentiate and modify, based on the needs of the teachers. Even with the shared group goals of the five math teachers with whom I currently work, the progress of each educator to reach their goals may look very different depending on their backgrounds. Much like a garden of plants needs different amounts of water, my teachers need different levels of support to implement change. Learning how to provide that varied level of support while keeping our shared goals at the core of our collective work deepened my understanding of how teacher leaders can effectively cultivate their colleagues for the betterment of students.

Finding Common Ground With Effective Modeling

When I first started working with this group of math teachers, I noticed that the majority of their students were not demonstrating comprehension in the daily lessons. To determine the root cause, I observed their students in the classroom and asked them questions about their learning to ascertain if students knew what they needed to know and do to be successful. The teachers and I collected and analyzed this student interview data, along with walkthrough data and student work. Through that process, we identified that the students were not yet taking ownership of their learning, nor were they always clear on the steps needed to be successful.

To begin the work in cultivating change, I began by asking myself one question: “How do I best support teachers with a variety of needs to increase student ownership and clarity in their classrooms?” I knew that if the students were unclear on the purpose, the teachers most likely needed support with developing their understanding of the standards - which is where my work as a Master Teacher came in.

Keeping the diverse experience of my teachers in mind, my goal was to find a throughline with the teachers to support math instruction and to promote student ownership. I designed a field test that incorporated clear learning intentions and success criteria, modeling one success criterion at a time using a gradual release of responsibility, with clear checks for student understanding. I created a teacher model and student practice component in which teachers would model each success criterion and then the students would practice it. I called this the parallel model which was intended to support teacher and student clarity of the content through the delivery of a logically sequenced and segmented model while using the structure of the process to increase student ownership. Over the school year, all of our math teachers - from grades 4 to 8, were applying this model in their classrooms while receiving varied support based on their needs. It was truly a parallel model - both from the teacher to the student, but also in the sense that our entire math group was aligned and working toward the same goal, yet all taking their unique paths with my support to reach it. Infusing NIET-based strategies into my work supported the implementation of this structure through teacher collaboration and support, developing a common language, and building trust, knowledge, and credibility in the classroom.

We built on this work in our weekly teacher collaboration, called cluster, by learning strategies for engagement through aligned activities and effective questions. We adjusted the visuals that support students’ practice to only include the learning goal of the lesson and practice areas for each success criterion, resulting in an immediate shift in observable student ownership behavior. Student data, both quantitative and qualitative, began to rise. Slowly but surely, change started happening. I started to see growth in the teachers and they started to see growth in their students, much like how a garden begins to bloom in the spring.

Sowing the Benefits of Collective Goals

The growth among teachers was varied due to their different starting points, but they all started to flourish. Teachers had my support to increase student ownership in the classrooms and an effective tool to help—the parallel model. Teachers discussed the impact of the modeling structure and student ownership strategies on their students in cluster meetings, and classroom evaluation data demonstrated that the implementation of strategies increased student ownership.

As a result of our work, their students had the tools to talk about their math learning and could see their progression of learning, which was evidenced in the increase in student engagement, student discourse, and overall achievement. Students gained 10% points in 8th grade math and 21% in 7th grade math on state assessment data. Students knew what they were learning and could talk about their progress.

It can be challenging when working with a diverse group of teachers to identify a common strategy and professional development goal. However, working with teachers of varied backgrounds and experiences only strengthens this process - and makes me more effective as a Master Teacher in supporting a wide variety of teachers. The ability to differentiate support for teachers is even more critical as more non-traditional pathways create alternative routes into teaching. Collaborative structures in cluster provide the opportunity for all teachers to share their thinking and strategies that others may not have been introduced to if they were only surrounded by teachers of similar experience levels.

As a teacher leader, my learning is never done and often calls for me to lead positive change. It has always been my goal to cultivate an environment where teachers can thrive and make the biggest impact on their students, and learning how to do so in a diverse and varied group has made me all the better in this role. NIET’s approach to teacher leadership is effective because it leads to change and can be applied to support all teachers, at every level. Sometimes, not every seed blooms simultaneously or under the same conditions - experience, pedagogy, culture, and pathways all make a difference in how we can best support our educators and become the best teacher leaders we can be. Every student deserves an excellent educator and teacher leadership provides that for every student by encouraging collaborative development, a go-first mentality, and the creation of a common language among educators.