The Extraordinary Educators Podcast

Empowering Students Through Goal Setting and Data Ownership with Mindy Geer

• Danielle Sullivan & Sari Laberis • Season 5 • Episode 15

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Have you ever wondered how to inspire your students to take ownership of their learning journey? If so, this episode is a goldmine for you! We had the pleasure to talk with Mindy Geer, a seasoned third-grade educator with an impressive 24-year teaching spree, who unwraps the secret of student empowerment through data ownership. Mindy, with her rich and diverse classroom experiences, enlightens us about the importance of individualized goal-setting and feedback in cultivating a student-centered learning environment.

Our intriguing conversation with Mindy didn't stop there; she offered us a detailed look at her unique strategies for one-on-one meetings with students to collaboratively set goals. The importance of these individualized sessions, even for students with higher needs, and the role of productive group work and independent work, were also deeply discussed. Mindy shared some priceless advice on how to juggle these tasks in the middle of the school year. How about communicating these goals with families? Well, we've got you covered there too! So, join us, and let’s get inspired by Mindy's student-centric approach to teaching. Don't miss out on this episode packed with actionable tips, advice, and insights!

Read Mindy's Blog: CurriculumAssociates.com/blog/tracking-student-progress
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!

Sari Laberis:

Curriculum Associates presents the Extraordinary Educators Podcast with hosts Danielle Sullivan and Sari Laberis. Hear tips, best practices and successes to improve your teaching and leadership and drive student growth and learning. We're here for you.

Danielle Sullivan:

Hi everyone, welcome to the Extraordinary Educator Podcast. This is Danielle.

Sari Laberis:

This is Sari. This week we are joined by Extraordinary Educator Mindy Geer, who is a third grade teacher in her 24th year of teaching in Michigan.

Danielle Sullivan:

I mean it was such a pleasure talking with her because she has such an ease on how she approaches student-centered learning and you can tell her expertise in teaching but y'all this is a master class in supporting students with understanding, where they setting goals with them having conversations around their data. She really laid out some wonderful best practices, but really easy to implement.

Sari Laberis:

Exactly so here is our conversation with Mindy. Welcome back to the podcast, Mindy. We are so excited to have you.

Mindy Geer:

Thank you, I am so excited to be here with both of you.

Danielle Sullivan:

Hey, Mindy. So we are in the thick of the beginning of the few months of school and I wanted to dig in. I remember last summer when we met you telling me about some really great strategies on, and the importance of students owning their own data and their learning journey. So, first off, why do you think it's important for students to have ownership over their data, ownership of where they need to go to grow?

Mindy Geer:

Well, Danielle, I think that it is so important for kids to be in charge of their data.

Danielle Sullivan:

I really think that them seeing where they start and setting goals it really pushes them to be better at whatever their goal setting subject may be. So can you walk us through how do you begin to think about this and how do you operationalize having students track their own growth and goals in your classroom?

Mindy Geer:

Sure, well, I think about what subject matter we're working on could be math and the topic that we're on and meeting kids where they're at. But showing them here's our standard, here's what we're achieving by the end of the school year is so important for them to know, but where they are at that point and where they would like to see themselves grow in math, or also adding my feedback too, just letting them know where they, you know, where we hope they are at the end of the year.

Danielle Sullivan:

And how long does this take? Because, I know, we hear from a lot of educators that sometimes having these conversations or tracking progress, like you just said, depending on the subject, so do you do different goals for each subject that you teach and how long does that take?

Mindy Geer:

I think goal setting is ongoing. I know with math and reading and writing, it's a lot of data chats with kids sitting one on one with them, showing them where they're at, showing them what they are doing great at, what they've accomplished, and just saying, hey, here's our next steps and this is something maybe you can't do yet, but this is where we're going. So I really think it's important to meet those kids, maybe weekly, some maybe more than weekly, but I have found that I do have different goals and that's my goal this year in all the subject matters, whether it's math, reading and writing.

Sari Laberis:

That's awesome and thank you for everything you're doing with your students and having a goal without setting goals, very meta here. I have a question for you more about just like logistically. So if I'm a listener and I'm a teacher and I want to do something with my students, if I, you know, teach elementary, I might have around 30 students, middle school even more how do you find the time to do that, like where does it fit into your school day and how do you ensure that you're not missing out on instruction or other important parts of the day?

Mindy Geer:

Sure, and that is something that I've struggled with as a teacher, and I know many teachers do. that I'm going to meet, make sure that I meet, whether it's in reading, writing or math, throughout that day. So if I had, like this year, 22 students, then I'm hitting at least I'm hitting everybody by the end of the week. Now, realistically, is it going to happen every week? No, and some I may need to meet more with and it might take longer, but that's just making me accountable, knowing that I'm hitting those five daily, and with 22, you know you're going to have six one day or four one day.

Danielle Sullivan:

How do you select the students? Do you review, are there certain criteria that you're setting up to think about during each day, to change the sticky notes, or you just kind of cycle through your students more systematically?

Mindy Geer:

I started cycling through and then I changed to looking at kids with the high needs. But the kids with the higher needs I know I'm going to meet with. So it's really important for me to have a checklist of okay, I've got it. I've got to start at the beginning of, you know, the top one, number one on my list and just go one through five. Then I might mix it up, because then the kids you know they're third graders, they're aware like, why does she meet with me every Monday? Why is she only talking to me about math on Monday? So I don't want it to be so routine and in third grade it's, we're very flexible but it's so important to meet with those higher kids, the kids in the middle, the quiet kids that are, you know you're sitting there thinking that they are getting it, but in reality they're not until you sit one on one with them and look over, you know where they are and let's say reading, and let's set a goal for the next time that I chat with you.

Danielle Sullivan:

I love that. What are the other students doing when you're having these data conversations?

Mindy Geer:

So I try to do it during productive group work, so when they're in a small group working it could even be during independent work. It could be a quick chat during an assessment, a math quiz, exit ticket that they're working on, and I could easily call, you know, within that time, three, four kids over one on one. So it's really holding me as the teacher accountable.

Sari Laberis:

Absolutely. Thank you for sharing those systems that you have in the classroom. I think it's really helpful for others to hear just kind of how it works. In terms of the conversations you're having with students. It might sound like a silly question, but I know it's one that teachers wonder and I wondered when I first started in the classroom. Do you have the goal in mind before you meet with the student? Are you actually arriving at the goal together, collaboratively, or is it like you know what you want it to be but you, in through your conversation, you have the student arrive at it with your support? Like, how does the actual setting of the goal work?

Mindy Geer:

I think it's all of those. You know, I think at the beginning, like right now, the beginning of the year, we're getting through those initial testing and seeing where students are, where I may have this goal in mind, but after talking with the student my thinking changes and you know, then we collaboratively set the goal but I want their say in it because if they're not part of that, they're not going to be as engaged or as driven to meet that goal.

Sari Laberis:

Absolutely. That's so, so important. And then, piggybacking off of that, how do you then communicate the goals you set with families, and how often does that happen?

Mindy Geer:

So I've done it a few different ways. I've done it on a sheet where the kids are then writing down maybe you know, math goal, this is my math goal and then sharing it with parents at conferences saying, hey, this is what we set at the beginning of the year, based on this data, and look how far your child has come since then and now these are their new goals to push themselves. So you know, being informative with parents is so important, because then you have their support from home.

Danielle Sullivan:

I mean, Mindy, you just shared so much wisdom. Let's just recap for a minute for educators, because even you just snuck in another really great strategy called productive groups. I don't know, listeners, if you caught that. Productive group time, independent work time. We appreciate you so much because this is something that we have seen in our travels high impact strategies of engaging students, making everything you just said. You want to make sure they're owning it, they're sharing it with their families.

Danielle Sullivan:

I love how you start a year with an idea, but then you use the students' interests and their progress to also recalibrate goals. So, unfortunately, I mean, we could talk to you literally all day. I could talk to you all day about this topic, but that's all the time we have. But just as teachers are in the thick of it, what is some advice you could give them? Like it's, I think, it's around October. They've gotten a lot of their initial assessments. This is the time October always feels like the longest month on the planet when you're in school, because it's just you're waiting for Halloween, you wait for Thanksgiving. So what advice can you give teachers? Even if they didn't do this, how can they start now with this really important practice?

Mindy Geer:

Sure, I think that just taking on one subject, focus on math and what is something that maybe you see as whether it's a big chunk of your kids maybe not understanding I think about the properties in multiplication in third grade oh my goodness. And what can you do with just that standard? Start small. This is I'm going into my 24th year of teaching and I'm just now realizing some of the stuff to do. So give yourself grace.

Mindy Geer:

I'd say, start small and, you know, involve the kids. It's amazing to me their ideas that they come up with, or where you, when you finally sit down, or when you sit down with a student and you have that goal in mind, but then they say something else and maybe that assessment that you had, this goal I'll plan for. They just had a bad day and you're going through that conversation and they really understand what they did. So it's not just forming a goal on assessment data, but observations, and you really get to learn so much more about your students with those one-on-one data chats, goal setting, but it offers so much more info.

Sari Laberis:

So true and really makes meaning of the data and understanding the human behind it right. And also, I love what you said about ensuring that students are your partner in their learning journey right. You don't have to do it alone. They have great ideas and involving them is a win-win for all. So thank you again, Mindy, for being here. We love chatting with you, like Danielle said, and we appreciate your time. Get inspired by following us on social media and please tag us in your posts on Twitter, at @CurriculumAssoc, and on Instagram at @myiready. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or want to be a guest, email ExtraordinaryEducators@c ainc. com. Subscribe where you listen to podcasts, and if you'd like to help more educators like you join the conversation, please leave a review.

Danielle Sullivan:

And remember, be you, be true, be extraordinary. The Extraordinary Educators podcast is produced by Curriculum Associates. Editing by Whiteboard Geeks, social media by Atziri Hannan, guest booking by Sari Laberis, production Hayley Browning. This podcast is copyright material and intellectual property of Curriculum Associates.