The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Best practices, tips, and stories to help you be extraordinary in your classroom and beyond, featuring Curriculum Associates' Manager, Voice of the Customer, Hayley Browning.
The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Fostering Growth in the Classroom: Insights from Joe Flick
Today we are joined by Joe Flick, a passionate teacher transitioning from elementary to middle school math instruction in New York! Joe treats students as humans first, tailoring their academic goals around their individual needs and personalities. Not just that, he is also leveraging his math skills to revolutionize goal setting. Tune in to hear about his plans to empower his sixth graders to take charge of their learning and foster an environment where they can fearlessly make mistakes and grow.
The second half of our engaging conversation takes a deeper dive into education. Joe discusses practical strategies for meeting a diverse range of student needs and building fruitful relationships with colleagues. Anticipating the stress accompanying such a significant transition, we also touch upon the crucial importance of self-care and maintaining positivity. Joe's passionate commitment to pushing his students towards their potential and cultivating a growth-centric environment is truly inspiring. This conversation is a treasure trove of insights, whether you're an educator looking for effective goal-setting strategies or simply someone interested in the captivating realm of education.
Read Joe's Blog: CurriculumAssociates.com/blog/goal-setting-with-students
Listen to Jessica's Episode: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/69-transitioning-from-elementary-to-middle-with/id1495246793?i=1000551240418
Follow us on Twitter: @CurriculumAssoc
Follow us on Instagram: @MyiReady
Have feedback, questions, or want to be a guest? Email ExtraordinaryEducators@cainc.com to connect with us!
Curriculum Associates presents the Extraordinary Educators podcast with hosts Danielle Sullivan and Sarah Loveris. Here tips, best practices and successes to improve your teaching and leadership and drive student growth and learning. We're here for you.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, welcome to the Extraordinary Educator podcast. I'm Danielle.
Speaker 1:And I'm Sarah. This week we are joined by Extraordinary Educator Joe, who is transitioning from teaching elementary to middle school math in New York, and we talked to him about all things goal setting.
Speaker 2:And he is first off. We're so excited for his students because he's such a great educator and we're excited for him to now bring his amazing energy to middle school. But he gives some really good tips on also meeting them as humans first and then using that to help set goals both for their personal growth and their academic performance. So he's just a wonderful, wonderful educator and it's just it'll be really good for you to listen to this.
Speaker 1:Enjoy our conversation with Joe. Welcome, joe, it is so great to see you and welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you, so happy to be here. Really enjoy talking to both of you.
Speaker 2:Well, we love talking with you too, joe, so we wanted to know what are some things you're thinking about this school year, or maybe thinking of refining this school year.
Speaker 3:Well, this school year is a very new one for me. It's different than anything I've ever done, so I'm really excited about that. I'm leaving the world of elementary this year and in September I'm going up to the middle school. It's a big jump. Sixth grade math will be where I'm going to live, at least for next year, hopefully maybe for a while. So there's a lot that I'm really thinking about and excited about, to be honest.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's a jump. So in thinking about beginning to plan, or whenever you're listening to this listeners during planning it's really important for middle school students in particular to know what to kind of own their learning. So how are you approaching that mathematically? How are you helping them? Maybe like set goals around learning, like talk to us a little bit about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's actually something I'm really excited about is the opportunity to set some goals with the sixth graders. I've had some chances to do that with first and second graders and I just feel like it's going to be a completely different experience, something I'm really excited about. I'm hoping that these students really get into it and take ownership of it, just because their brains are a lot more developed at this point in their lives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we spoke to them first graders. Yeah, it's just a tad. It's interesting and we also have spoken about this exact transition before and we can link the episode in the show notes for those who are interested. But we spoke to a teacher in Florida, jessica, who also made the transition from elementary to middle, and it's fascinating because you're right, joe, obviously students are at a different place in their developmental journey. At the same time, there's a lot of stuff that work with the youngest students that still hold true for middle schoolers. So I'm curious, and, as we focus on goal setting, what are you kind of taking with you in terms of best practices for that and how you implement that with your students?
Speaker 3:Well, best practice for me has always been get the students involved in their learning, and it's just going to be through conversation, through dialogue. I like to ask the kids a lot of questions and really just kind of listen to their answers and try to then focus in on what they say and take it to that next level. I'm just really excited to hear what's on the minds of sixth graders and where they're willing to go with me, because I'm going to want to push them, really, really push them something. I felt I've always been able to push my first and second graders, but I feel like I can really go different places that I've wanted to go, that I just maybe I wasn't brave enough to go with the little ones, but now I'm like, oh, we're going places.
Speaker 2:So, as you think about how you set goals for your first and second graders and now thinking about middle school, is there like a certain best practice that you're going to transfer, or how do you begin to think about it, even with over 80, 100 kids that you're going to have to make it manageable for you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I like to basically just start out by asking them like, what are your goals for this year? You know, and yeah, I'm the math teacher, you know, in their cohort, but I don't necessarily need to focus on math with them. You know, goals can be, you know, set specifically in my classroom around math, of course, but I really want to focus on the whole child. I think that'll be really important this year and so just to get them involved, you know, with that very first question, what is a goal that you have? It could be educational. It could not be educated, you know, it could be really open-ended in the beginning. Eventually I would like to steer some goals to the educational part of the journey, but in the beginning I want to really just get to know the whole student and see what's important to them. You know, I think that'll help me guide them to some educational goals.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and it sounds like you use that one-on-one time with your students not only to set goals, but another sort of hope from what I hear you saying is that you're also building that relationship and trust and getting to know them as a person, along with what they want to work on right, which is kind of cool, because you're doing that at the same time as actually setting the goal.
Speaker 3:Well, you know. So, when I think about best practices, something that's really important to me in the classroom is setting up that environment where the student feels like, okay, this is a relationship that we have, we're comfortable, we can take risks, you know, we can grow, we can make mistakes, and it's really okay. So I feel like if I get to know them a little bit, if they get to know me a little bit, that will really set that foundation for what, ultimately, I want is risk taking in the classroom, you know, and if they're not comfortable with me, with themselves, with their classmates, then they won't take risks and they won't grow to where I want them to grow, you know, and where they probably can grow.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. Do you use, like a Google form, a student interest survey?
Speaker 3:How do you go about collecting, I guess, data on the whole human yeah, you know, that's probably something that I probably should work on is maybe creating a form. I've always just had dialogue with students and you know what, now that I'm going to, now that you say it right, I'm going to have a lot more students than I've had in the past and maybe keeping track of all that would be a helpful thing. You know, through a Google form and just jotting it down, I've had students in the past just write down things in their notebooks. You know like we had like a little math notebook in my classroom and they would write it down because I would always want to go back to it at certain points. You know, hey, how? You know we'd have check-in time.
Speaker 3:You know how, how's it going? You know, are we still on the path to? You know, you told me you wanted to to learn multiplication, right? I'm just throwing something random out there. How are we doing? Let's, let's, let's go back? What are some of the things that we've done so far to to get you to that goal? But I do like the idea of a Google form just to collect some of that data and get to keep track of it. I think that's the best part of it, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we're here for you, joe. You know you're about to transition from having what 25 kids to like 85 to 100 kids so anything to make your life easier.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so exciting though I really is. It's something, honestly, something I've wanted for a long time and it just really hasn't been an option until now, and when it became an option, I jumped at it, you know so.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. We're so excited for you. Before we close out, is there any sort of last word or parting advice you have for our listeners who are also headed back into the beginning of the year or already, you know, have completed their first weeks of school, as they think about really celebrating and tracking goals with students? Sure, yeah you know.
Speaker 3:So the one thing I have for teachers you know, as they're starting school maybe are back to school planning and thinking is just when setting goals with with their students. Just remember the enthusiasm to share with the students along the journey. Celebrate the small steps that they make along the way, because that can go a long way to inspiring them to continue to push towards whatever it is the goal that they set for themselves.
Speaker 2:Well, we appreciate you, Joe. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today.
Speaker 3:Thank you anytime.
Speaker 1:Get inspired by following us on social media and please tag us in your posts on Twitter, at curriculumasos, and on Instagram at my iReady. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or want to be a guest, email extraordinaryeducators at cainccom. Subscribe where you listen to podcasts and if you'd like to help more educators like you join the conversation. Please leave a review and remember be you be true, be extraordinary.
Speaker 2:The Extraordinary Educators podcast is produced by curriculum associates. Editing by whiteboard geeks, social media by Atstie Hannan, guest booking by Sarri Laveris. Production by Hailey Browning. This podcast is copyright, material and intellectual property of curriculum associates.