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Candidates and Mentors, read each of your Induction peers posts from top to bottom.

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Create a separate post under your name for each of the following topic areas.  Please use the same titles below for each post. *MENTORS only need to complete the "Background" post.*

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Candidates and Mentors, for each of your peers, provide the following:
- At least two appreciations
(What do you appreciate about your peer's growth or the growth their students made this year?)
- At least one connection (What about your peer's learning experience in Induction, reminds you of your own?)
- At least one question (What question might push your peer's thinking and reflection on their growth or students growth this year?)

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Candidates and Mentors, share your content, grade level, years of experience, pertinent information about your school or teaching assignment, and one fun fact about yourself. Upload a photo of yourself or bitmoji to this post.

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Describe your inquiry focus question, CSTP focus indicators, and what factors (e.g. student area of need, professional learning goals, teaching context) led you to pursue this area of focus.

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Reflect on your ILP, mentor observations, choice activities and/or any other professional learning activities.  Identify at least  two major ah-hahs or turning points that shaped your growth this school year.

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Select at least one artifact or data point to share that highlights a celebration, milestone or significant growth area for you and/or your students.  Examples may include:

Formative Assessment Data (e.g. quiz, project, assignment)

Summative Assessment Data (e.g. NWEA, iReady)

Student Work Samples (e.g. pre/post focus student data, student work analysis)

Short video clip of instruction or student interaction, <5 minutes (e.g. Mentor observation recording)

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Choose one of the following reflection questions to respond to:

How did induction impact your growth as a teacher and/or your students this school year?

What successes or celebrations are you most proud of this school year? What conditions or assets made this success possible?

Which processes from Induction will you use again?  Explain how you plan to build on this work next year.

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I am the instructional coordinator for history/humanities at Synergy Academies, a small CMO serving primarily Latinx and Black students in Los Angeles, CA. I have spent the last decade in education as a teacher, dean, school leader, and instructional coach. In my current role, I support 7 history teachers across grades 6-12 in crafting equitable inquiry based lessons and supporting students in their academic and social/emotional growth. A fun fact about me is that I have spent most of my life playing or coaching baseball, and currently serve as a head coach at West High School in Torrance.

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Hello, my name is Mia Amaya and I am an 8th grade history teacher at PUC ICA. I am in my first official year of teaching, although I did technically start teaching in the spring semester of 2021. Prior to being a history teacher, I worked as a Site Manager for an after school program at Arizona State University. I worked at ASU for 6 years before becoming a teacher. When I left Arizona my plan was to become a high school teacher, but due to the pandemic, jobs were incredibly difficult to come across so I decided to begin teaching middle school history. It has been an interesting year of ups and downs, but I am grateful for the experience. One fun fact about myself is that I have six pets, three rabbits and three elderly dogs.

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Hello, my name is David Barrios-Garcia. I am a 7th Grade World History Teacher at PUC Nueva Esperanza Charter Academy. I have been at this schoolsite for 5 years. This year was one of many responsibilities for me, in addition to teaching, I served as an ASB mentor, grade level lead, and mentor. One fun fact about myself is that I like staying active; I enjoy hiking and working out and I have recently been into Tough Mudder runs!

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My inquiry focus question is: If I provide opportunities for students to practice skills & routines, will students increase stamina and self-start habits, as measured by student performance on writing assignments, Do Nows, quizzes and other formative assessments? What is preventing self-starting? routines and systems for stamina and self-start habits?

My CSTP Focus Indicators are: 4.4 Planning instruction that incorporates appropriate strategies to meet the learning needs of all students

I chose this inquiry question based on the needs of my students in the classroom. At the beginning of the year they struggled with coming into class quietly and following instructions. They also handled transitions in a poor manner and it made it difficult for us to get from one activity to the other. I figured if I focused on this initial need, we can then move on from there and make big progress. I also chose this question so that I can figure out where my students were academically. The problem was, if the students are struggling with behavior and getting on/finish a task, how can I even assess them?

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My name is Andrea, and I am a first year teacher, currently teaching 10th grade World History and AP World History at Synergy Quantum Academy in South LA. I have two masters' degrees in history, and come to teaching as a second career. A fun fact about me is that I play and coach rugby, and that is where I found both my bf and our dog!

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My Inquiry focus question is: If I provide clear expectations and cultivate a rigorous learning environment that includes frequent checks for understanding, will my students be able to master the unit content knowledge and skills as measured by teacher created formative and summative assessments?

My CSTP focus indicators are: 4.2 Establishing and articulating goals for student learning
5.2 Collecting and analyzing assessment data from a variety of  sources to inform instruction
5.3 Reviewing data, both individually and with colleagues, to  monitor student learning
5.4 Using assessment data to establish learning goals and to plan,  differentiate, and modify instruction

I chose these indicators and this question as they are aligned with there I felt I lacked experience and wanted to improve upon when I left my credential program last year at CSULA. In addition, these indicators and my question are the focus of my current professional growth goals on campus.

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One Ah-ha was when in the second semester I made a switch in the mode that students were presented with class materials, from 100% digitial to a combination of 70% physical/paper and 30% digitial. This shift in the way that content was presented to students has greatly increased student comprehension and their writing. I was blown away seeing just how much more students gained from the reading and how they were able to put their own voice into their writing.

A second turning point would be during my midyear observation, when my principal noted in our debrief that a particular student was very engaged and performing well in my class, in a way that he was not in his other classes. This is a student who was of concern at the start of the year, and who I have built a relationship with. We joke about sports and check in each class period. While I noticed the change in the students academic performance, and knew we have a good relationship it was another thing for someone else to notice. And not only for her to notice, but for her to tell me that he is not as engaged in his other classes, which really tells me that I am making a difference and that my efforts to get to know my students have really paid dividends.

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After completing the ILP, mentor observations, and choice activities this school year I was able to see the impact that interventions had on my students and classroom. I was very proud of how adding new routines and procedures such as do-nows and timers worked to get my students ready for learning. It took several weeks to see positive change, but over the semester my students were able to self-start within 5 minutes of entering the class as opposed to 15 minutes. Using these routines immediately will be extremely helpful as I begin my second year of teaching in the fall. Since I am doing this for the first time it is all a learning experience. My second reflection is that building relationships is one of the greatest things that I should focus on. This has been incredibly beneficial for me and has allowed me to push my students to try challenging activities. I would say this is a great turning point for me because when our most challenging students exhibited difficult behaviors outside of the classroom, I had them behave well inside of the classroom.

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This student's first completed writing assignment is satisfactory, yet formulaic and uses a lot of the text rather than the students own voice.

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The students second writing sample from 4/26

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In the students second sample, you can see the student using their own voice to convey the thoughts and ideas of the material, make comparisons, and draw conclusions. I am especially proud of this student, and the growth that they have achieved over the course of the year.

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The students that I have mentioned eariler. I am proud of them because of the level of growth for those folks. I know EVERY KID has grown this year, every kid has gotten better at something, but these three kids went from 0-100. The effort that these kids are putting into the work (and everything) that they do is spectacular. I want to celebrate them. I think I did a good job of building relationships with students and I can see that in the academic progress that so many students are making. Students are resonating with me and the class itself, and are finding joy in doing the work as well. The student work quality and the care that they are putting into the work is improving SO much. Students are genuinely caring about the learning and are putting in so much effort. From the first assignment on the first day to the last assignment most recently, there is just SO MUCH growth. I think this is going well because of the relationships I built with kids and they found their own potential because someone believed in them…that is really cool.

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The number one piece of growth evidence that I have identified is a decrease in time from 15 minutes to 5 minutes for do now completion. I started the school year at 7 minutes for a do now, but my students immediately showed that they were not able to achieve that yet. It would take 15 to 20 minutes to get them to stay seated with their do now and complete the work. It was a very messy experience and took away a lot of time from our learning. Now that we have progressed to completing our work in just 5 minutes we are able to quickly award the students HERO points and move onto our regular lesson plans.

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Hi everyone. My name is Oscar Montes Sarabia. I am currently in my 3rd year as a 7th grade World History teacher at Morcs, Monseñor Oscar Romero Charter School, in LA. I was a substitute for LAUSD for quite a few years prior to working at Morcs.  As a sub for LAUSD I have worked with every grade from TK - 12th, except 9th grade. I think that was an insightful experience.

Fun Fact: I nerd out to history pc games. Like I will dedicate time to this.. (lol). I also have a very light sense of humor. I like to see the positive in tough situations because life is too short to be upset all time. Finally, I would say I go to enjoy my time with my friends when we go the extra mile to try out new food spots we discover on social media. Lots of disappointments unfortunately.

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Inquiry Focus Question: If I create differentiated exemplars, will ELs, Students with special needs, and general ed students, be able to meet written response objectives as measured by end of unit writing prompts.

CSTP focus indicators:
1. Engaging and Supporting all Students in Learning  and  6. Developing as a Professional Educator

Factors that led me to pursue these areas of focus:
During my first year as a history teacher I felt that there were many students that were excluded from accessing either the content or the expectations in assignments. The number of F's I gave that year were rather high. During my second year I made a few changes and noticed some improvements in the number of F's given in every grading term. These aspects let me to realize that by focusing on providing differentiated exemplars I would be able to make the content and expectations for the assignment accessible to the most number of students possible. I felt the CSTP focus indicators one and six were directly affected by my efforts in my inquiry focus question. At the end of the day, I want to be as effective and efficient with my time and energy spent.

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Even though I am in my 3rd year as a history teacher I have to admit there have been many Ah-has and turning points for me this year.

One particular Ah-ha moment that I had was the result of a student calling me out on the confusing nature of my instructions. I have tried to foster a very open and safe classroom environment so that students have the comfort to speak to me directly without wasting time explaining getting solutions to problems. So a while back I asked the students if they were having difficulty following along with the assignment and they expressed that my instructions were very unclear. That led to more insights/complaints  in regards to how I tended use too many vibrant colors in my assignments and that I needed to tone that down a bit, or at least not use such vibrant colors. That open, yet truthful conversation definitely had positive effects on the effectiveness of my written communication. I have also toned down the selection of colors and that has been well received. I just believe plain white documents make it difficult to engage the focus of a 7th grader.

My willingness to be adaptable and understanding of students and the problems they encounter at their current age is something I have always valued in myself. There have been numerous situations where I sit back and think about what a funny interaction I had with a student that can be problematic at times or disrespectful in other circumstances. A particularly interesting Ah-ha moment was when a student unknowingly re-assured me that it was okay to be who I have been with them so far. So the context is a student told me a few weeks ago, "I'm going to keep it real with you mister.  I don't always pay attention but when I do I appreciate the enthusiasm with which you teach history because I don't really like it but I do your work." All I could think about was that enthusiasm and passion expressed in our craft does reach our students who may not always be interested in school or are going through a rough time. I think her comment was a bit of a reward because teaching can be mentality exhausting sometimes...often. While I am sure there are still many things I need to improve on, I truly am happy that at least one aspect of my personality and aspect of my teaching is well received by the students. Sometimes when we, I, don't get the type of reactions from students we are looking for it can cause self-doubt in our ability to relate to the students and it just felt great to hear her words expressing appreciation for me enjoying what I do.

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For my evidence of growth I selected an essay we worked on a short while back. While I have developed different templates for writing, they have largely remained similar in fashion when writing essays.

I selected this assignment because I worked hard at trying to support every single student any all groups throughout this massive undertaking.  I say massive undertaking because I am not an english teacher and realized that I really needed to focus on assisting all students in the structure of their writing. Students with writing struggles needed a clear exemplar for the introduction to get them going. Students who I thought were great writers tended to talk about more that one topic in a paragraph.

While, I have to admit that not all writing samples look like this, I was very proud of the fact that I saw myself having a positive impact in the writing development of students who tended to be the high achievers. This excites me because as a teacher I realized that if I start at the beginning of next year with a small portion of this task and focus on breaking down this whole thing in sections, I can possibly make essay tasks accessible to students of all groups. That in itself is exciting for me. While this tool of mine may need further polishing, I feel I am headed in the right path as an effective teacher.

With the numerous supports found throughout this task many students were able to achieve some aspect of it. Numerous Els were able to develop essays and structure their writing in an organized manner. A few resource students were able to develop topic sentences on their own and with the graphic organizer for support were able to provide some evidence to support their topic sentence. The thing I enjoyed watching from the students that are confident writers was to see them realize that they just had to follow a pattern and as long as they followed that pattern in their writing they knew they were doing well. Some of them decided to focus on developing better transitions and that self drive was a special thing to experience.

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How did induction impact your growth as a teacher and/or your students this school year?

The induction program served as a teacher of various things for me. To begin with, I realized that I have to organize my time effectively so that I can complete all of my tasks as a professional and as a person with their own private life. I realized I am no longer 20 years old.

While it may be silly to say that I realized I'm no longer 20 years old, I go out of my way to say this because I realize that I truly have to be intentional and effective with the strategies I utilized in the classroom in order to have the highest possible effective outcome so they reach as many students as possible. To have one task that challenges all students for growth yet provide support for all student groups is a feat in itself.

The activities of the induction led me to explore my colleagues' classrooms, and all of the tremendous experience they've accumulated over their years in education will hopefully save me a few years of grinding it out.

The program's activities helped me be more mindful in the supports I provide for my students, allowing me to spend significantly more time one-on-one with them during the writing projects. From my observations, I can say that students have more non-teacher supports that aide them in their writing in a more independent manner. They have received more one-on-one time with me when needed as a result of more effective supports.

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What successes or celebrations are you most proud of this school year? What conditions or assets made this success possible?
- The successes I am most proud of are building great relationships with my students and getting them to self-start in class. I focused very early on building relationships because my students had an incredibly rough transition in the fall. They were not ready for learning yet because they were not comfortable being in a classroom. After the first couple of months we got into a nice classroom routine and the students felt comfortable. That foundation and class culture, with the addition of minor procedural changes and increased expectations led to a very positive/effective learning environment. The conditions that made this possible were strong teacher-student relationships, increased/consistent expectations, and consistent routines.

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Appreciations
It's great to see how much you've improved in your current situation with the do now. I'm having similar issues, so it's encouraging to see another teacher's daily routines improve. I'm lucky enough to have a Promethean board with a massive clock and loud speakers and because of how bothersome that alarm can be, most students aim to finish before it goes off. Aside from that, it's great to hear you're able to form strong bonds with your students. If students are unable to form bonds with us, they may not always feel safe pushing themselves and trusting that they are in a safe atmosphere in which to explore.

Connection
As I previously stated, I've struggled, and continue to struggle, with reducing the amount of time it takes to finish the do now phase of my day. While certain classes may be more efficient than others, I believe the overarching message I've learnt is that it should be a quick and short exercise rather than an all-consuming one.

One Question
I believe that now that you've discovered ways that work for you in terms of efficiency on the do now, you should consider what other aspects of your teaching you may improve. It could be the directions on an assignment, the assignment length itself, or whether the information is at an accessible level for students experiencing difficulties.

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At least two appreciations
1. Oscar I appreciate your ability to reflect on your teaching practice in order to become a more effective teacher. I noticed this when you mentioned that you needed to give clearer instructions and adjust your handouts.
2. I also appreciate that you are able to have fun with your students and treat them like people. I feel like sometimes this can get lost in the student-teacher relationship, but it is very valuable in building rapport.

At least one connection
1. One connection that I made with Oscar was in regard to the writing growth that he mentioned. I also want to focus on chunking up writing tasks and using this to help students improve their writing development over the year. I think that this will help them master each piece of the writing process rather than giving them the entire task all at once.

At least one question
1. My question is: How do you intend to begin a writing task at the beginning of next school year with your reflection in mind?

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Appreciations
It's wonderful to see how you experimented with going back to paper-based activities and saw such incredible results from the students. It's interesting to observe how, rather than being beneficial, technology can sometimes be a distraction for students. I'm glad your bonding experience with your particular student was a success, and that it was observed by others. I know that when other adults witness those great connections with struggling students, it can lead to more positive outcomes in other classes simply by changing our attitude on them. I'm glad to hear you're having such a positive influence on students.

Connection
I've had comparable successes with a handful of my own students, and it's a fairly satisfying feeling. I'm sure it made you happy to see a student with that kind of difficulty succeeding in your classroom, especially because you were a direct cause of it. I'd like to figure out how to be more deliberate about it.

Question
I'd like to know how you intend to be purposeful in bonding with students so that you may have an even greater impact on your students, particularly those who are experiencing those types of difficulties with you and other teachers?

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At least two appreciations
(What do you appreciate about your peer's growth or the growth their students made this year?)
1. I appreciate that Andrea took the initiative to identify an area of growth in her own presentation of content.
2. I appreciate that Andrea took the time to identify a need for relationship building with one of her students. She was able to see a large change and it ended up benefitting both herself and the student.

At least one connection
1. The one connection that I made was with the relationship-building aspect. I also focused on building relationships with my challenging students and it made a big difference. They treated me and my class with respect and there were less behavioral outbursts in my class compared to others.

At least one question
1. What form of assessment do you use in your class that you feel best demonstrates student growth?

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At least two appreciations
(What do you appreciate about your peer's growth or the growth their students made this year?)
1. TBD
2. TBD
- At least one connection (What about your peer's learning experience in Induction, reminds you of your own?)
1. TBD
- At least one question (What question might push your peer's thinking and reflection on their growth or students growth this year?)
1. How does your learning in Induction support your role as a teacher mentor?

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At least two appreciations
(What do you appreciate about your peer's growth or the growth their students made this year?)
1. TBD
2. TBD
At least one connection (What about your peer's learning experience in Induction, reminds you of your own?)
1. TBD
At least one question (What question might push your peer's thinking and reflection on their growth or students growth this year?)
1. TBD
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Two Appreciations
I appreciate how your focus question is centered on differentiating work to meet the needs of students who may be struggling. I also think that focusing on how how your time and energy is spent because at the end of the day, you need to make sure that your time planning, teaching, and assessing students is equitable and sustainable.

1 Connection
I can connect to your interaction with the student who called you out on the confusing nature of your instructions. I remember being called out on this as well on my first few years as an educator. I think economy of language is a skill we end up obtaining with time and, of course, with student feedback!

1 Question
My question:  After embarking on this writing assignment, what will you keep and/or change when approaching large writing assignments next year?

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2 Appreciations:
Hey Andrea, I appreciate seeing the planning and implementation of rigor in the classroom coupled with frequent checks for understanding. Those two are a dyanamic duo! I also appreciate your strive to collect and review data and then plan around your findings. Data--in all its forms-- is vital in tracking our students progress and its great to know that as a a first-year teacher you already understand the importance of this. The approach you are taking fosters growth and postive classroom habits and procedures not just for your students but also for you!

1 Connection

I connect with your statement: "I did a good job of building relationships with my students". I strongly believe that coupled with your willingness to build relationships, was having strong classroom management. There is little to nothing we as teachers can actually teach if we don't build postive relationships and gain control of our class. Once those two goals are met we can teach them anything!

1 Question

My question: Do you have a teaching partner? I ask this because, I find that if you have a teaching partner, even once or twice a week, it can be very helpful. They should be able to help you gather data and assist in your planning!

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2 Appreciations:
Hello Mia, I appreciate and applaud your entire focus question! You embarked on a task that I personally believe is challenging. We came back to in-classroom instruction at a time when, mental health and the challenges our students face are greater and perhaps more complex than they have ever been. I also appreciate your strategic implementation of clear classroom procedures and changes throughout. This provided an equitable approach to your focus question.

1 Connection:
Building positive relationships and a positive classroom culture is super important! Without those two aspects in our teaching, we can not implement rigorous lessons or teach our students anything! I think your focus question paved the way for positive relationships, class culture and of course, accountability!

1 Question
Now that you have found ways in which classroom management, procedures, and routines can be implemented and modified to your and your students needs, it would be a good idea to start thinking about how academic rigor in the classroom can be implemented. Perhaps, considering what strategies and approaches work or don't based on student needs. It is all essentially trial and error and you will eventually figure out what works best for your subject, students, and yourself!