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>> Hey, everyone. Sarah Brown Wessling here from the Council of Chief State School Officers' National Teacher of the Year Program and I'm excited to introduce Voices from the Classroom, the State Teacher of the Year podcast. CCSSO's National Teacher of the Year Program provides a platform for exceptional educators to elevate issues that affect teachers and their students expand their leadership roles and inform policy and practice. I was named National Teacher of the Year in 2010 and since then, I've been committed to sharing the stories and elevating the voices of the State Teachers of the Year. It is my hope that this podcast will give you insight into the incredible work they do. The 2021-2022 School Year has commenced and many educators have used their experiences over the last two years to reflect on how they can better serve students to ensure their overall success. In these new episodes, the 2021 State Teachers of the Year will share how they use the shift in learning environments as an opportunity to refine their approach to teaching so they can better support students and their varying needs. You can join the conversation on social media by using the hashtag #ntoy21, or by visiting us online at ntoy.org. That's N-T-O-Y.org. Hello, everyone. This is Sarah Brown Wessling and I have the pleasure today of talking with Susan Richardson, the 2021 Wisconsin State Teacher of the Year. Hi, Susan. How are you?

>> Fantastic. Thank you for having me.

>> Absolutely. I cannot wait to dive into this conversation with you. But first, I would love for you to share just a little bit about your teaching context, where you teach, what you teach, how long you've been teaching, if you want to share that.

>> Sure. So, I teach at Milwaukee German Immersion School. This is my ninth year there. I've been teaching about 23 years in total. And the Milwaukee German Immersion School is unique in several ways. So, we're part of Milwaukee Public Schools and we're one of many language immersion programs. So, what does that mean? Well, we are a normal public school in that we follow all the Wisconsin academic standards but our main language of instruction is in German. So, the language though is integrated into all of our content and curriculum. So, there's never a German class per se. It's just the vehicle to learn math and science and social studies. So, it's a K5 school and then when the kids leave our school, we are a feeder school to a middle and high school which has not just German language, German immersion students, but Spanish, and French, and Italian, and Chinese, all of the different immersion programs in Milwaukee. So, it truly becomes a K12 experience. So, the main student that we get is not a student who has prior German knowledge. It's just a normal urban Milwaukee student. And so, they enter K4 having known no language at all and, you know, the first couple of days, there's a lot of repeating and observing and singing and gestures. But usually by Thanksgiving, that's when the miracle happens because the kids, they absorb so much, right? Language and vocabulary acquisition is just phenomenal in the ages from four to seven. And so, by Thanksgiving usually, we call it the Thanksgiving miracle, the kids really can understand everything their teacher is saying. Although they cannot always produce it themselves correctly, they can communicate in the target language. And so, K4, K5, and first grade are completely in German. In second grade, we introduced two 30 minute English windows a week. In third grade, it's 30 minutes a day. Fourth grade, hour and15 and fifth grade, they have 90 minutes of English a day.

>> Wow.

>> So, by the time you leave our program, you're fluent in German and you are still hitting all of the academic standards for ELA.

>> That's amazing. I mean, just kind of like wrapping my head around what a unique experience that must be not only for the students but for you as a teacher to be in that space and be the conduit for, you know, such an immersive experience. That's so neat.

>> It is definitely a unique program. And we often have a waiting list, which is such a testament because unfortunately our district is often in the news for negative reasons. But our program is such a gem as is the other language immersion programs. And I just love talking about our program. I'm drinking the Kool-Aid [inaudible]. I try to recruit teachers left and right because we do -- because it's an accelerated program, you need to be certified for elementary, but you also need to be fluent in German. And just because you're fluent in speaking a language doesn't always mean you can teach it, right?

>> Yeah.

>> So, there are a lot of different elements when we're looking for new staff members.

>> Yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the things that I find to be a consistent pattern when I learn about schools or staff members who are really excited about their work, you know, it always coalesces around this really clear purpose. And when that purpose is so clear to all of the students, to all of the staff, there's just a synergy and a forward movement that I think is really special.

>> Right and we how the kids thrive, right?

>> Right.

>> Because it truly is this productive struggle, right?

>> Yeah.

>> Because your brain does have to work a little bit harder --

>> Yeah.

>> -- when you're learning things. And I mean, our standardized test scores are the biggest piece of evidence of hard data, because our students never learn perpendicular in English, right? All of the math is in German so they learn [foreign language] but when they take their STAR or their math test, the question is in English and we still score higher than the Wisconsin state average.

>> Wow.

>> On our ELA and our math scores because the -- whenever you're learning or speaking a foreign language, your brain has to work at an elevated level, right?

>> Right.

>>And so, all those bridges, synapses are forming your connections.

>> Yeah.

>> And so, you can see all the -- we can't see it, but you know there [inaudible] happening in your brain and your brain is getting stronger. And it's not just the brain science or the scores. We really see that our kids, they're so used to seeing things another way, right?

>> Right.

>> So, like a monolingual student, if you say, "What can you do with a brick?" Oh, you can build a house, you can build a bridge, you can build a building. OK, right. So, one word has one purpose. But because bilingual and multilingual kids are so used to, it could mean this or this or this or this, they have been trained to look at things in different ways.

>> Right.

>> So, if you ask a multilingual person, "What can you do with a brick?" Yeah, you can build a house but I can also step on it to reach the bubbler. I can hit my sister with it. I could use it to break a window.

>> Right.

>> And their brains are just trained --

>> Yeah.

>> -- so it's working [inaudible].

>> Differently. That's so neat. So, you mentioned productive struggle and I feel like we as a country, as a world have been in the midst of -- sometimes it's just struggle and not always -- you know, but certainly productive struggle as we think about, you know, teaching through this pandemic and then certainly, as we think about where we're at right now. So, I'm really curious about as you reflect on this experience, as you reflect on where you're at right now, what are you going to keep? So, you know, there have been piles of things given to teachers. What are you going to hang on to as you continue to go forward?

>> Excellent question and one that my whole team has been pondering. One of the things that we learned immediately in the past 18 months, with virtual learning a key element was missing and that was the hands-on experience.

>> Yeah.

>> So that is definitely something we are going to accelerate. For example, right now we're doing a plant cycle unit. And so, I took the kids out to the courtyard and we are physically touching the different parts of the plants. We're identifying, we're talking about their purpose. We talk about what parts of the plant we can eat. So tomorrow, every kid is going to get a little cup, have a piece of spinach, a carrot, a broccoli floret. Because this element, they're touching it, they're experimenting --

>> Right.

>> -- they're tinkering with it --

>> Right.

>> -- that is something that's a little bit difficult to do through a Google Form.

>> It is a little difficult to manage all of the manipulatives. But I love that and I love the way that you're thinking about not just the technology, right? Because certainly, technology is wonderful and it has taught us a lot and it has been invaluable and it's still not everything. So, I think that's so important. So, if we kind of move to the flipside of this, not what you would keep but thinking about what you've had to let go of, or what you're happy to let go of, or what you're going to let go of in order to create the space for what's most important to you, what would that be?

>> Definitely what was a difficult realization for me was, you can't do it all.

>> Yeah.

>> And again, reflecting on -- because my whole district was virtual last year, we realized the students were not learning at the typical pace. And so, we weren't getting through all the units in our pacing guide. And I'm kind of a rule follower, I stay on schedule and that was really hard for me. And a few times I found myself trying to push them and they weren't ready. They hadn't mastered the content that we were working on. And we just needed to meet them where they were and stay there until we were ready to move on. And so yeah, that means maybe of the eight units, we got through seven of them. But we did the seven well and they learned the material. So, I would say definitely let go of this pressure or this notion of you have to check off all the boxes. Because at the end of the day, yes, I'm teaching math but I'm teaching eight year olds.

>> Yeah.

>> And that's what we need to focus on.

>> Yeah, absolutely. OK. So I just want to know how you got your brain to get there, how you got your teach heart to get there. Because what you're describing about this idea of wanting to do it all, I mean, so many teachers I think carry that, sometimes as a badge of honor, sometimes as a burden. But how did you get to the place where you finally could say to yourself, it's OK?

>> I think it was because a little girl didn't mute herself and she was crying in the background. "She's going too fast. I don't know. I don't know what to do here." And I don't know if she was -- I think she was actually at the daycare and she was talking to like the daycare provider. And like I said, I had had those whispers, which we're battling with that. But we have to move on now to social studies.

>> Yes.

>> And we all just need to give ourselves [inaudible] because yeah, I may have 20 plus years of teaching experience but this was a brand new teaching context and we all jumped in, like with three days' notice, right?

>> Yeah.

>> And so, just experiencing that and knowing that she didn't know that we were observing it, it really struck a chord.

>> Yeah. You know they always tell us, don't they? The students always tell us what they need. And sometimes, maybe we need to unmute for them, right, either literally or figuratively. And, you know, and just ask them. But that's a beautiful story and I think that will really resonate with teachers as they are thinking about how to get to that place where they can tell themselves, "It is OK. I don't have to do all of these things." Susan, thank you so much for your time and for your insights. I know that this is going to be so beneficial and helpful to so many teachers.

>> It was lovely being here. Thank you.

>> Thank you for listening to the latest series of Voices from the Classroom, the State Teacher of the Year podcast. This podcast is brought to you by the Council of Chief State School Officers' National Teacher of the Year Program. It's our honor to elevate the voices of educators across the country and provide them with a national platform to amplify their message and advocate on behalf of their students and colleagues. Please, share these lessons on social media with the hashtag #ntoy21. That's hashtag N-T-O-Y 21. Let's keep the conversation going.