Real Talk Intervention

In 2016 the Houston Chronicle published a report claiming that the Texas Education Agency had imposed a "special education cap" on the percentage of a district's students that could be classified as special education. In 2018 the US Department of Education completed its investigation and found that Texas had indeed illegally set this cap at 8.5% and that this cap had caused qualified students to be denied services.On today's podcast we talk about how, yep, this is totally a thing, a thing that we have experienced in our years of education, the students that were denied services because of this cap, and where we think this misguided, illegal policy came from.We discuss why it is so vitally important that we serve our special education students, what is going on with dyslexia services in Texas, and where we go from here.If you work in special education, we'd love to hear from you! Comment on this blog, on our Facebook page, or email us at realtalkintervention@gmail.com.Listen to us here or subscribe to us on iTunes or Stitcher.

Your at-risk student is looking for your support. Your GT student is looking for a challenge.We've talked a lot about intervention for your struggling students, but what do you do when you have gifted and talented students who are struggling?The struggle may look different when you're working with advanced courses and high achieving students, but the struggle is real all the same.Today on the podcast we have veteran AP teacher, multiple Teacher of the Year winner Valerie Minor on to talk about how she intervenes and differentiates for advanced students as well as what she's learned in her transition into a special education co-teach setting this year.You can listen to the podcast here or follow us and subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.Give us a like on Facebook, rate or review us, and please share! We love to hear from our listeners!

All of us have been asked the question at one point or another.What made you decide to become a teacher?You've been asked it in job interviews, where the right answer seemed critical.You've been asked it by incredulous family members, where the right answer seemed impossible.You've been asked it by students, where the right answer seemed loaded.We've all got our response memorized. Whether that response reflects your deeply felt, inspirational path into the classroom, the safe-for-work, sanitized version of your winding road towards respectability, or is simply a rehearsed tale that carefully avoids saying "I don't know why I do half the things I do."I don't know about you, but I'm bored by my story. It's not particularly inspirational, and, frankly, it's not particularly interesting.You want to see into a teacher's soul? Don't ask us why we started.Ask us why we stay. Why do we stay in a career that puts many of us below the federal poverty line?Why do we stay after school day after day, night after night, sponsoring UIL teams, supervising clubs, buying doughnuts, and falling asleep on the couches in the break rooms?Why do we stay in a job where politicians legislate seemingly every.single.thing we do, while the entire country comments on it?Why do we stay after Columbine? After Sandy Hook? After Parkland?Because we do stay. We stay for years. Many of us in the same classrooms, in the same hallways, in the same schools.Why do YOU stay?In today's podcast, we talk about Parkland.And isolation in a school culture.And violence.And inspiration.Connection.Community.Education.And why we stay.Click the link here to listen to today's podcast or find us on iTunes or Google Play and subscribe.And please leave a comment below telling us why YOU stay.

 In the midst of our wider, cultural conversation about women, and power, and leadership, and power, let us pause for a moment to consider the quite curious case of gender in education.Of course, education is an historically female driven profession - for much of the last century it was, in fact, one of the few jobs a woman could even realistically perform. That history continues to influence our profession today. 76% of classroom teachers remain women. As women slowly take on larger and larger roles in industries all over this country, education sits as an - actually rather large - island. An experiment if you will, of sorts - an enormous, functioning machine -  a bureaucracy, a power structure - inhabited almost exclusively by women. The lazy among us often joke how the world would be different, how much better it would be, if it could be run by women. Well, education gives us a glimpse into what that world might actually be like.  And apparently we'd just give control over to the men?The gender inequity that exists in all other power structures in this country, continues in education. A mere 13% of superintendents are women, and surprise, they're paid demonstrably less than male superintendents, and hardly half of our administration are female. The statistics are hardly worse than the rest of the country, true, but ... isn't it just somehow even more appalling in 2018? This World War 1 factory floor filled with female workers, while the men look down hardly seems aspirational.But what, exactly, is perpetuating this inequity? In our podcast here we discuss societal messages to women leaders - Lean In, ask for a seat at the table, be assertive - and how those messages, and those leadership behaviors, may be keeping you from succeeding, in, not only a female-dominated workforce, but with male leaders used to a female dominated workforce.Listen to the podcast here or find us on iTunes and subscribe.If you're a teacher, a teacher-leader, or an aspiring teacher-leader, we'd love to hear your thoughts.Discussed in depth is Adam Grant's book Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success. His TED talk on Givers and Takers will get you thinking. 

Well my friends and colleagues, welcome to 2018! Welcome to the second half of our year ... the LAST half of our year!Are you back at work? Are you sitting in professional development? Are you currently being trained on the latest piece of life changing #edtech that your district has bought for you? Don't you wish you could find a piece of educational technology that would ACTUALLY change your life?What are the things that you wish edtech would for you?On today's episode we talk about what we wish tech could do for us as teachers, what pieces of technology we're currently finding helpful for at-risk students, and ask the question most won't dare to ask - do our millennial students actually prefer digital learning opportunities?Give us a listen and share your experiences with educational technology here on our blog.Listen to our episode above, or find us on iTunes. If you like our show we appreciate likes and reviews on iTunes.

On today's episode, we have a special treat -we are joined by our guest, long-time teacher, first time author Brendon Lowe, who speaks with us about his new book, Know Thy Students: Differentiation Made Simple available now on Amazon right here. Differentiation made simple? We're in.Brendon comes to the tricky topic of differentiation as a secondary educator, who can speak to the particular difficulty of differentiating in the overcrowded, content-driven high school classroom.His system teaches teachers how to use data to quickly assess where students are in a learning standard based on their performance on each Bloom's Level within a standard.This method of empirically quantifying variables that may seem unquantifiable creates a snapshot of students that teachers can use to modify instruction, modify assessment, and wow their administration.To learn more, listen to the full episode here, or as always, download and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.

Hey teachers.We've got a subversive message today.YOU are enough for your students.Drop the professional development. Drop the instructional strategies. Drop the trainings.It's not that.It's not pedagogy.It's not curriculum.It's not co-teaching.It's not graphic organizers.It is YOU.On today's episode we talk about the empowering, amazing, humbling power that is being a teacher. Take fifteen minutes today to listen to our podcast to remind you that no matter what you do in the classroom, because YOU are doing it, you are making a difference.Listen to us here, or download us on iTunes or Stitcher.

In today's episode we discuss what a data driven classroom can ACTUALLY do for you. What does state wide, school wide, or even classroom wide data actually mean to you? Can you really use data trends to inform your teaching? Does that even make sense?Listen to our new episode here or where you listen to your podcasts.As always if you like our podcast please subscribe or rate and review us on iTunes or Stitcher.

Real Talk Intervention is back!We took a summer hiatus to refresh our hearts and souls and prepare to return to school, intervention, and podcasting.But it's August now, school is back in swing, and on today's episode we discuss how to get a great start to the new year. In our conversation we move beyond the First Day of School, policies and procedures, and dig into what you can start implementing right NOW at the beginning of the year that will seriously improve your classroom for the rest of the year.Start the year out right - subscribe to Real Talk Intervention on iTunes and Stitcher this year for inspiring content for your high school at-risk learners.

In today's episode, we take on the Texas science standards with our friend John Long, a former AP/IB/PAP biology teacher.We take on how we differentiate instruction both for at-risk students and for students who really need to be gearing up to take AP classes in a few years. And, of course, we address the ongoing controversy over those re-written evolution standards in Texas. How do those standards change our teaching?  Does the wording of the standards provide an opening for creationism in the public schools?Listen here, and don't forget to subscribe to our email list or on iTunes and Stitcher.

In today's episode we speak with two women who served on the Texas Education Agency's standards writing committee for the brand new English Language Arts TEKS. They shed light on who it is, exactly, that writes these standards we all follow, how involved the state assessment department is with the standards, and they give their opinions on how their work came out in the end.Referenced links in this episode include:Dr. Revelle's opinion piece in the Dallas Morning News where she criticizes the final ELA TEKS.The vertical alignment of the new ELAR TEKS.Additional resources that support the content of this episode that you may enjoy include:Are Common Core and the TEKS Really That Different?ACT StandardsTexas College Readiness Standards

In today's episode, we discuss the philosophy behind the standards. How can one set of standards for every content possibly satisfy all the different educational outcomes a student might want to achieve? This month we're looking at the philosophy behind the standards, wondering how the standards align to college and career readiness standards and college entrance exams such as the SAT, and talking to experts in the field of English and science standard writing.Listen to our episode here, or download us on iTunes or Stitcher.

May is #happyteacher month at Real Talk Intervention! Standardized testing is behind you, and before you lies the most rewarding time to be an educator - June, July, and part of August.It's time to recharge those batteries by thinking about what you really LOVE about your profession. What makes you a #happy teacher? Stefanie and I share some tricks and tips from our eleven years of working with at-risk students that we've found make our lives, and our students' lives, just so much happier on this week's podcast.Special shout out to one of my favorite podcasts Happier by Gretchen Rubin for the inspiration and formatting of today's episode. It's a fanisode!Never miss an episode of Real Talk Intervention by subscribing on iTunes or Stitcher.

Its April, and that means just one thing - less time spent outdoors in the beautiful spring weather, and more time spent inside preparing detailed test reviews before your STAAR exam in May, your class's final exam, or, if you're SUPER lucky - BOTH!Test reviews are that special kind of terrible - not only are they frequently no fun for teachers or students, but they also usually feel extremely ineffective. The kids who need to do them usually don't, and often no matter how much effort we put into them we don't see the fruits of that labor result in increased test scores.Well here it is you guys!We may have fancy district titles on our two-page job description, but we actually do all day, every day is TEST. REVIEW. On today's very special podcast we're talking about our most successful test review strategies, the research behind them, and how a few tweaks to your test reviews will ignite your test scores right now.Listen to our special episode test review podcast right here. 

Let's be real - there can be a LOT of complaining in education.You're sitting in the teacher's lounge, just trying to eat your noodle cup and chat about last night's episode of The Bachelor, when in comes THAT teacher. That guy who's always mad; the lady who yells at her students every day at 2:45 like clock work. And you feel for them. You do. You used to be that teacher. Heck, some days you ARE that teacher.You listen to them sympathetically - because we've all been there- , but you really wish you could just say - "Okay but why are you doing that?" Why are you making life more difficult for yourself with that policy, with that assignment, with that rule? If you would just change your mindset, switch your perspective, bend just a little bit your life would be easier, your students would be happier, and you wouldn't be so stressed out all the time.Well this is Real Talk Intervention - and we. went. there. Are the things you're doing in your classroom stressing you out? Well ...Why are you doing them??On today's episode we confront some of those rookie mistakes teachers are making - that we all continue to make year after year - that stress us all out so much that, really, if we would just stop, we'd see increased student engagement and motivation. We all need a slap upside the head every once in awhile. Listen to what you wish you could say to that teacher in the lounge - or maybe what you need to say to yourself - here. Music courtesy of The Creative Commons.http://www.bensound.com

The human face of the school accountability movement is one no one wants to see.The human face is 18 years old. He has attended school for 90% of his Mondays through Fridays. She has ridden the bus for twelve years. Attended all the classes. And done it all with the entirely reasonable expectation that at the end of this journey lies the cap, the gown, and the high school diploma.And even the hardest of hard liners on the school accountability movement does not want to tell that student that at the end of these last twelve years there will be ... nothing. No one wants to tell anyone they can't achieve dreams.Particularly not politicians. So things get ... tricky.A little schizophrenic.Requirements for graduation? Or are they more like guidelines really?In this week's podcast we discuss high school graduation requirements, and how Texas politicians are avoiding the public relations nightmare of thousands of students being denied high school diplomas.Listen to our podcast here.Or subscribe to us on iTunes or Stitcher. 

Today's special episode was recorded live and on location inside a Senate meeting room as we prepared to give testimony against Texas House Bill 1333, colloquially known as The Teaching Over Testing Act.This bill, which aims to reduce the number of standardized tests given by Texas to the federal minimum while also drastically reducing the emphasis these tests have on school accountability, has been well received by the state anti-testing movement.We, however, stand with the many civil rights groups, the Texas Association of Business, and the many, many nervous and silent teachers who know that the anti-testing, anti-accountability movement's well-intentioned, but misguided, efforts damage the hard work educators are doing to create a more equitable society across Texas.To give a voice to all the educators across Texas who feel as we do, we traveled to the state legislature with the support of a non-profit educational foundation group called Texas Aspires to give our testimony against this bill. We discuss our experiences at the State Capitol and share our testimony with you here.Listen to our podcast here.Music courtesy of The Creative Commons.http://www.bensound.com

April is a tough month. The weather is getting beautiful, teachers and students are getting burnt out, and end of the year assessments are looming.We spent the month of April casting a critical eye on education - from teachers to the government - and now we're casting that eye on ourselves.It's time for some Real Talk - why do WE do the things we do in the classroom? We ask each other about some of the questionable practices or mistakes we've seen each other make over the years. We are two very different teachers, in two very different contents, who make very different mistakes.If you're an optimistic innovator in the classroom who finds herself in tears at the end of some days like Stefanie or a grumpy cynic who rolls her eyes during professional development like Sarah you'll hear your voice, and your experiences, in this one!Listen to us here.Music courtesy of The Creative Commons.http://www.bensound.com

I May Be Certified, But Do I Feel Qualified?If you’re like us, you took your ESL certification test for one inspiring reason  -  your district mandated it. And despite the rigorous preparation provided by taking that test, we still felt unprepared for the actual reality of beginner and intermediate English learners in our classrooms. This year close to a million Texas students are classified as English Language Learners or ELLs, according to PEIMS data released by TEA. Teaching English Language Learners is certainly one of the biggest obstacles we encounter as high school teachers. Districts throughout Texas have been, with varying levels of speed and enthusiasm, accepting this new reality. More and more of our students are actively engaged in the process of learning the English language - even though that may be not be what we are actively engaged in teaching them. The bald fact is that nowhere in the high school standards does it call for us to teach phonics, verb conjugation or the thousands of high-frequency words that make up the structure - if not the content - of our subjects.This month we spoke with educational stakeholders at every level of ESL education - teachers, parents, and students - and we discovered a surprising truth. The secret to preparing your English Language Learners for success lies in … The accommodation sheet you get at the beginning of the year. Wait...Really?Accommodations, of course, are not our favorite thing. And we deal with them literally every single day with virtually every single student. Yet after speaking with our three podcast guests - listen to a teacher/parent here, a student here, and an ESL specialist here - one thing was clear. It is the accomodations - but it’s not about what you do but why you do them. Accommodations are not there to make the content “easier”.Let’s break down the most common, most helpful accommodations, and how we should be using them. Shortened Assignments/Extra time:How We Use It: On multiple choice tests, we strike out one answer. Instead of 20 vocabulary words, we assign 10. If an essay requires three examples, now they only need two. We give an extra day for reading the chapter.Why It’s There: You know that feeling you get every Friday of every week, where you think, “If I have to listen to one more ridiculous excuse for not turning in their work, I will move to Hawaii and never look back!” That deep soul tired that sends you, yet again, to the drive through line for dinner because that is just all the advanced planning you can take.Brain fatigue is an actual neurological issue that results in forgetfulness, uncontrollable falling asleep, difficulty retaining information, and emotional turmoil. That is the feeling our ELs are getting every time they do work in English. Kids who are working hard to learn a language must read an English text, mentally translate the words, string them into ideas in their native language, and then process their reactions back into English. This fatigue is exacerbated by background noise and side conversations (otherwise called high school classes). The cognitive work required to filter and process all the different sensory inputs drains the brain quicker than a last generation iPhone the week after release date.Your ELLs are using multiple brain “apps” to read, and they frankly can’t sustain it for very long. Their language centers have just not become background system processes yet. In the second part of our English Language Learner series, Ali - a brilliant refugee student who came to our schools speaking very limited English and graduated in two years - spoke candidly about the struggle of sustaining the mental energy needed for a five-hour English End of Course test. If you listened to Ali in that episode, you know that if he can hardly do it - it’s way too much. How We Should Be Using It:We certainly never connected the shortening of assignments accommodation to this reality of brain fatigue. Don’t shorten assignments to make them “easier”. Instead “chunk” them. English Language Learners need just as many repetitions and opportunities to interact with content as we all do. So if you have twenty necessary vocabulary words, then you have twenty necessary vocabulary words. Don’t shorten the assignment by removing those words. But chunk them together. Are some of the words related to each other by theme? Are they part of a word family? Can they be chunked together and studied as a group? Can you use a word bank on your tests, or sentence stems for writing assignments that will take some of the burden off of their minds?Another way to shorten assignments is actually to allow talking about it beforehand. Just giving your students talking time to process can help an ESL student feel more confident and comfortable with an assignment. And the repetition is a key variable in good learning practice. Reducing the Reading/Difficulty Level:How We Use It: We take advantage of Lexile-leveled texts when available. Difficult reading passages are not assigned. We show movies or use summaries of difficult texts. Instead of assigning passages with “big words”, we simplify the vocabulary using descriptive language.Why It’s There:You would be surprised at how many words an ESL student will try to translate in their readings. We once watched a kid meticulously go through a paragraph assigned by a teacher, translating roughly 70% of the words she encountered. Can you imagine the brain fatigue this creates? The toll on comprehension? According to research, students must know 98% of the words they read in order to have a shot at understanding a text, let alone analyze that text.How We Should Be Using It:When you’re reducing the reading level of text, what, exactly, are you reducing?Research shows that BICS develop quickly with ESL students. These are the basic 500 or so words that every kid knows in order to get their basic needs met. But CALP, the rigorous academic vocabulary needed to succeed in academic settings, comes much slower. When we reduce reading level, if we’re not very targeted, we end up sacrificing the necessary academic language - the CALPs - in our quest to remove the stumbling block BICS. Simpler reading assignments run the risk of shortening or abridging academic vocabulary. The fact is that it is not helping your students to expose them to less vocabulary. All three of our guests used one word repeatedly - vocabulary. Taking vocabulary shortcuts, like calling the numerator and denominator “top and bottom” number, may help students in the moment, but all you’ve actually done is push the necessary learning off to another point of time. A poor application of the “reading level” accommodation leads to that common complaint - “Well my students really KNOW the content, they just can’t transfer that to the test.” Often they can’t transfer their knowledge to a test because they learned the content but not the language. Don’t shortchange one goal to meet another.If you’re reading a long, complex text - chunk it. What are the “must haves” in that reading? Assign those and provide vocabulary-rich summaries for the rest. Texts are more comprehensible when they include shorter sentences, with fewer clauses, and a lot of context clues. As teachers, we can and should write up our lessons and lectures using grammatically simpler language and sentence structures, while utilizing academic vocabulary and context clues and pictures. Creating our own expository texts can be a great way to make sure the kids practice reading, follow up on the information you gave them, and have a study sheet for vocabulary in context.Individual/Small Group Instruction:How We Use It:“Sheltered” classes with ESL students working together on specialized curriculum that is accommodated and modified. Pairing an ESL students with a classroom mentor student.Why It’s There:Sheltered instruction is more of a mindset than a class - a set of guiding instructional principles that ensure ELLs have access to lessons with explicit language support and academic task instruction. We teach students what to learn, how to understand it, and how to retain it. By its very nature, it requires a flexible and individualized approach to student learning and a pacing that is both academically challenging and that adapts to their burgeoning proficiencies.How We Should Be Using It:There is a significant difference between language competency and cognition. Just because two students are at the same English language proficiency level, does not mean they are going to experience equal levels of frustration or success in a class. A very bright student who would excel in a Pre AP class if they were just linguistically capable needs to have the accommodations that will enable him or her to learn the more universal content language as quickly and completely as a regular student. Rather than using sheltered classes as an opportunity to slow down the pace of curriculum and instruction, these classes should be providing instruction at an accelerated pace and focus on the must have standards in the foreground, while keeping the nice to know standards to enhance or deepen understanding and skill in the background as needed. Many teachers say they cannot differentiate for so many variables, but you don’t always have to. Your gifted ESL students have burning questions and curiosities that they want to know more about. Give them an opportunity to create their own learning goals.  Some kids need a coach rather than a teacher, and adopting a sheltered individualized plan to address content goals can be done with conferences and and action plans can be the key to quickening student progress in content and language goals.Linguistic Accommodations:How We Use ItKids get a Longman’s dictionary from the shelf as needed, or we allow them to use Google translate on their phones. If they raise their hand and ask, we come over and re-word directions for them. We make sure we use gestures, and we put pictures in our powerpoint slides.Why It’s There:According to research, it takes four to ten years to be able to own a new language. A high school freshman who started speaking English in elementary school is still well within that gap.How We Should Be Using It:Language acquisition is overwhelming. Students by necessity will make inferences and draw conclusions about the meaning of individual words in order to make it through complex texts without looking every single word up in the dictionary. In Love’s Labor Lost, Shakespeare said, “They have been at a great feast of languages, and stol’n the scraps.” Unfortunately these scraps oftentimes lead to erroneous, or less than ideal, conclusions that can dilute or completely destroy the meaning of the content.All ESL students (and most intervention students generally!) should be directly taught high frequency academic vocabulary that will assist them in any content in addition to your contents’ vocabulary. For linguistic accommodations, providing an easily accessible copy of your content’s high frequency words that they can use with their assignments is much more relevant and user-friendly than simply providing a dictionary. For a place to start here’s Jim Burke’s list. While Google Translate is undeniably great, don’t underestimate the power of the human voice - specifically your human voice. Then need to hear you pronounce words and use inflection that varies based on word context. (Are you entering a CONtest, or do you conTEST the police officer’s ticket?)What it all comes down to is...It’s not what you’re doing - it’s why you are doing it.Accommodations can be frustrating at the high school level, where you’re overwhelmed with the sheer number of them, and they often feel like they are not actually doing anything at all. But with just a slight shift in perspective of how you view these accommodations you will suddenly find them making a huge impact in your students’ success.