Ever wonder how educators can harness the power of student data to better shape their teaching methods? This episode promises to provide an insightful dialogue on this very topic. We're joined by Joe Cuprak, National Director at Curriculum Associates, as he shares his extensive knowledge and experience in the field of education. Listen as Joe imparts advice on systemizing the approach to help students comprehend their own data, spot learning gaps, and use that knowledge to foster growth. He reveals how teachers can effectively set the stage with the entire class, involve families in the learning journey, and maximize limited time with quick individual conversations. You don't want to miss Joe unveiling three crucial best practices that can help teachers bolster student learning.
As we continue our riveting conversation with Joe in the second part of this episode, we delve deeper into the substantial impact of data in education. Joe emphasizes the vital role of creating a living record of student learning, accessible to everyone involved in the student's educational journey. He offers invaluable perspectives on how to harness data to increase learning retention. Picture a classroom through the eyes of Joe, as he touches on strategies to efficiently manage time and shares his top hits of strategies he has witnessed work. Stay tuned for this enriching discussion with Joe Cuprak filled with invaluable insights and a fresh perspective on teaching.
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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! Hey everyone, this is Sari.
Danielle Sullivan:
Hi, it's Danielle and welcome to the Extraordinary Educator podcast. And today we are speaking with one of my colleagues, Joe Cuprak. He is a national director at Curriculum Associates and he is a lifelong educator teacher himself. He's been in the education space, I think, his whole career. He's a super awesome father, co-worker, and we are really excited that he's sharing his expertise and things that he's learned around talking to students about their learning.
Sari Laberis:
Yes, and some really great best practices, tips, systems and sort of mindsets that you can incorporate into how you talk to students about data and make that a living system in your classroom. So we hope you enjoy it. Here is our conversation with Joe. Welcome Joe! Thank you so much for being here.
Joe Cuprak:
Hey, thanks for having me. This is awesome.
Danielle Sullivan:
So, Joe, tell us a little bit about some things you've been thinking about recently.
Joe Cuprak:
Oh my gosh, so many things. So last week I spent a lot of time kind of digging into the new California framework for mathematics and it was kind of amazing because all of the things that I've been doing in education and I was a classroom teacher for 23 years and then moved into curriculum development and then have been working in the publishing industry and so just it was kind of an affirmation of all of the things that have been important for so long, focusing on children and the fact that all students come to us and they are pre-wired for foundational mathematics and foundational communication and then, as teachers, it's our responsibility then to connect those ideas together and extend them so that they can understand, you know, formal mathematics, formal language, reading, writing, all of those things. But to get back to that foundation that intrinsically they come to us just ready to go and we just need to capitalize on that.
Danielle Sullivan:
So, in thinking about that, what are some ways that we can either operate, like I love for you just said, capitalize, but operationalize, really systemize, all the words -ize, that end in -ize. How do we help do that? What are some actionable things that you've been thinking about?
Joe Cuprak:
Yeah.
Joe Cuprak:
So the big thing is this as teachers, every year we get a new batch of students and you look at it, all of those faces, and you're trying to figure out who's who, what's what, which of the students that you're going to totally bond with, which of the ones that you're going to struggle with.
Joe Cuprak:
And the biggest thing is being able to identify where students are when they come into the room, and the thing is they're not all coming to us equal. They have little gaps in understanding that either that was the week that they were out sick, or that was the week that they had to stay home and watch their brothers and sisters, or there's so many things that impact their ability to learn everything that we expect them to know when they come to our, for example, fourth grade classroom, and to be able to identify, first off, where those gaps in understanding are either because they never learned it or they were never taught it and then to try to be able to come up with a plan, have a conversation with them about where those gaps are and then what we can do collectively to work on filling those gaps in.
Sari Laberis:
Love to dive more into the conversation piece. So, for teachers who are listening, how do you recommend this happens? There's only so little time in a school day. They have about 30 students. Middle school teachers might have, you know, 90 or so. How do you find time to meet with students and what does that kind of look like in the classroom?
Joe Cuprak:
Yeah, so the level setting can happen within the normal conversation within the class. So, whole class, you can make sure that students understand what the process is. Right that we are looking to help them in finding those challenging areas for them or the areas where they need assistance. And if we have a student that is at or above grade level, then same thing to be able to find the challenges for them. But you can level set that upfront and just tell the whole class everything so that then when you're working with individual students later you don't have to go through all of that foundational stuff. So you know whole class or whole group, you do that big level setting. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to have a conversation. What I want you to think about is what you can do, and the same thing is to bring in families into that as well.
Joe Cuprak:
Right that we need to make sure that caretakers, whoever it is, that that child goes to outside of school, that they understand the process as well, and maybe that's a letter, or during family night or whatever.
Joe Cuprak:
Then, when it comes time to actually have those conversations, it's easy enough to find a few minutes here and there when you have students working outside of the lesson. Obviously, you know we need to make sure that we're instructing, but then, once students move to more independent whether it's a rotation or a center, or whether they're working on homework or practice within class, whatever it is you can pull students one or two at a time and then just have a quick conversation based on data that you've pulled, information that you have from having PLC conversations with prior year teachers, and then it doesn't become so daunting because now it's a quick process. The students know what's expected of them. Generally, we give them a form or something that they can begin to fill out that we've already started prefilling out, and so the actual time that you're taking student by student becomes much shorter. You're not going through the entire process with every child, you know, because that can end up taking a big chunk out of your day.
Danielle Sullivan:
Thank you for that and I'm curious because you have a lot of experience in education and in your travels. Are there like three tools that you've noticed, or three absolute best practices, like what I just heard you say is, maybe there's a form they could fill out? If they have the structure, it doesn't take a lot of time, but is there certain? Have you noticed data folders really working? Or a notebook or a certain or certain questions that teachers ask, like what are kind of your greatest hits of things that you've seen?
Joe Cuprak:
Yeah, Danielle, that's awesome. So there are consistencies, right. You call it whatever you want to call it a portfolio or a data folder, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. You need to have a consistent place that students can go to find information, that families or caregivers can go to find that information, that teachers can go, administrators, counselors literally everyone in the boat has to be rowing in the same direction, right, and so, however you collect those, so the first thing I would say is this you have to have good data, data that informs where students are and allows you, with that level of granularity, to kind of identify the needs. That's the first thing. So, once you have kind of that guide, that GPS map, whatever you want to call it, then it's about having everyone stop, think and plot something, write something down, right, and so having a form that students, depending on their level of sophistication, can actually add to. Now, maybe that's the teacher sitting down grabbing those notes, or a parent helper in class for our younger students, for middle school students you know, Sari, you mentioned middle school students, they can absolutely write.
Joe Cuprak:
If you ask a student what is it that you struggle with mathematically, and give them some time to think about it, they'll tell you and they are blatantly honest, right that, oh, I never learned how to multiply. I still multiply my fingers real quick, you know, but I don't have foundational facts or whatever that happens to be. So now you have the insight of the student themselves, you have the insight of, hopefully, prior grade teachers, that you can have that conversation, but getting that written down. So first the data, then having a form, and then making sure that everyone understands that's a living document. It's not. You know, we sat down, we talked about this and that was it. As you're going through teaching, students are going to remember things. Oh, I forgot that. I don't know how to do that, right, those things are going to come up and we need to be able to adjust on the fly and identify those things.
Sari Laberis:
Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. It's so powerful to think about like this kind of living artifact of their learning and where they're at, where they need to go that's accessible for all of the different parties involved in their educational journey, right, so their families, themselves, their teachers. So thank you so much for all of that, Joe, unfortunately, that is all the time we have for today. Really appreciate you being here and talking about all things data chats with us. Get inspired by following us on social media and please tag us in your posts on Twitter, @curriculumassoc, and on Instagram @myiready. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or want to be a guest, email extraordinaryeducators@cainc. 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 and remember be you, be true, be extraordinary.
Danielle Sullivan:
The extraordinary educators podcast is produced by Curriculum Associates. Editing by Whiteboard Geeks, social media by Atziri Hannon, guest booking by Sari Laberis, production by Hayley Browning. This podcast is copyright, material and intellectual property of Curriculum Associates.