Ignite Your Teaching
Ignite Your Teaching
Dear New Teacher: Planning, Assessment and Creating a Culture of Belonging - An Interview With Dr. Lori Friesen
Transform your teaching toolkit with the wisdom of Dr. Lori Friesen, the beacon for educators navigating today's classroom challenges. Unearth the secrets to lesson planning and assessment mastery, and let us guide you through shaping a classroom environment that's as organized as it is enriching. By the end of our discussion, the teacher planning binder and student data binders will become your new best friends, dramatically reducing your workload while amplifying the effectiveness of your teaching practice.
Classroom culture is an ever-changing tapestry, and this episode weaves together the threads of connection, social and emotional learning, and the delicate balance of work-life integration. With Dr. Lori's insights, discover how to bridge the social skill gaps in students and tailor your approaches to combat the evolving landscape of education. From creating a community with interest inventories to secret compliment envelopes, we delve into strategies that foster a sense of belonging and help raise the bar for student relationships and classroom standards.
Effective communication with parents can be the linchpin of educational success, and our episode pinpoints the tactics that make engagement effortless. Embrace the power of home communication notebooks, classroom apps, and timely newsletters to keep parents in the loop. Plus, with our special segment on Dr. Lori's TikTok debut, you'll have access to an ever-expanding fountain of educational resources at your fingertips. Join us and light up your teaching journey with the insights from this must-hear episode.
Check out Ignited Math and Ignited Literacy and learn how you can get your math and literacy lessons planned for the whole year to save yourself hours and hours of doing it all yourself at www.ignitedteaching.ca
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Okay, so we're back. This is my second conversation with my dear friend, dr Lori. She's written a new book all about how to help new teachers get ready to start their year off. Right, but it doesn't matter whether you're a new teacher or a veteran teacher, a teacher who's getting their first contract. The information she shares with us in today's video is so amazing that, no matter where you are in your teaching journey, there will be something here for you to take In today's episode.
Speaker 1:This is part two of our conversation and we are talking all about planning, assessment and parent communication. Stay tuned for part two, with my conversation with Dr Lori Lori, I just wanted to say welcome back. We had a great first discussion and this is just continuing on, and I can't wait to add even more juicy pieces of information to our discussion. So thank you so much for joining me again. And do you just want to give the audience if they missed part one and they haven't quite gone back and checked out part one, if you want to just introduce yourself and let everyone know who you are and what you do?
Speaker 2:Sure. So my name is Dr Lori Friesen. I taught for 10 years in Canada and overseas. I taught at the University of Lethbridge, did my PhD at the University of Alberta and I have a podcast called Beginning Teacher Talk. I have programs and courses for beginning teachers. It's my heart's work. I really do love supporting new teachers because you are the future of our entire profession. So, if you're interested, I just purchased or just purchased I just wrote a new book called Dear New Teacher, here's exactly what to do. You're five step ready for school roadmap for elementary, and it'll help you to get a really solid lay, the groundwork for your first year, before you even start awesome.
Speaker 1:So let's dig right into part two of our conversation with dr laurie. Okay, so we're talking about. We talked about classroom management and it's so good because everyone struggles. What about? Yeah, the teaching part, because we can planning an assessment. Yes, we can plan for classroom management, but at some point we got to get down to business and get some teaching in place. And then the dreaded assessment which is, I think, the bane of every teeth every teacher's not even new teachers, but every teacher's sort of existence is figuring out.
Speaker 2:It was scary for me, yeah, yeah, you know. I think, like you said at the very beginning, it was really key. The fact that planning to plan is actually the most important thing that you could do in this, in this area, because planning for planning and planning for assessment in advance is going to help you to create systems so that you're saving time. One of the biggest things that teachers do, especially new teachers in the first few years, is spend way too much time planning why we don't have a system for it. So I want you to get a system for your planning so that you can think of ways that you can streamline this, make it faster, just like your classroom management. And the way that we do that is, we set up a structure, and so, when they're just at the beginning of the year before you, before you even set foot in your classroom, I want you to think through two things what you'll. Number one, what you'll include in your teacher planning binder whether it's digital or paper doesn't matter, but you can set this up in advance you want to think through do I have a weekly lesson plan template? Do I have something that's already set up that I can quickly fill in once and duplicate over and over again, right? Do you have sections for a variety of different resources to make your planning simpler and more streamlined throughout the year. So, for example, first name checklist nobody told me about first name checklists. You're gonna have scholastic book orders. You're gonna have hot lunch forms. You're gonna have a hundred things that you need to keep track of throughout the year. If you have a first name checklist, I have an amazing fillable form. So basically they type in their class list once and it populates on like 50 different forms that you can just print out and it's all done. Right? You need a master calendar because sometimes you don't have access to the internet when you're in like an IEP meeting or something, but everything in one calendar. It can be digital, it's up to you. It depends on your school's internet.
Speaker 2:You need a space for year plans. You need to start thinking through your plans, finding a copy of them, don't create them from scratch. Scope and sequence plans and meeting notes. If you have sections for all of those basic things in your teacher planning binder at the beginning of the year and you've got individual sections, I show them how to do this in the academy that individual sections for each of your subjects and then you basically set it up as a reflection of your report card. Now you have a system in place for your planning. Now, that's a very basic, rudimentary system, but that's all we need at the beginning. Once you have that, now we set up a system for how you're going to plan, but your planning binder.
Speaker 2:The second thing is a student data binder. We don't know how to organize our thinking around student data and that's where we get into trouble and it's a lot more in depth and I'll go into more detail in my book, of course, if they want to read about it. But a student data binder is basically giving yourself another system for how you can organize and track all of that data well in advance, so that you're not trying to figure out how to do this in the middle of the year. And I show you how I did it in my classroom and how our school did it as a model, so that you can go oh, actually I can take that piece and that piece and I can modify that piece and, okay, perfect, once you've seen how someone else does it, it makes it so much easier to create your own system. But nobody taught me how to do that at the beginning.
Speaker 1:No, no, no one ever teaches you how to assess, and I think, um, I think, when we're talking about assessment too, so many people and I don't know how you approach this with your community, but so many teachers get bogged down by assessment, overwhelmed by assessment and not sure what to make, what to count, what not to count. Do I mark everything? Don't I mark everything? No, yeah, that's what I say too. No, don't mark everything there. But it's how? Do I make sure I have enough evidence before I put a mark on a report card? So what would you say to those overwhelmed teachers? I feel like they have to mark absolutely everything and none of it's worthwhile to justify a mark, cause that's what I get a lot of questions.
Speaker 2:So, first of all, excellent questions. First of all, 80% of what we do at school should be practice. Kids are not. We're not weighing. I hate that expression, but weighing the pig right, weighing the pig more often does not help us to have a quality measure, because they haven't had an opportunity to gain any weight, they haven't had an opportunity to learn yet. So I always tell teachers you can mark for completion, you can give a sticky for completion like a sticky note or a sticker for completion for effort, for trying. I tell teachers a lot if you're really want to get a snapshot, exit tickets are fantastic.
Speaker 2:Weekly quizzes Now this is another one. I give teachers a what's called an assessment starter kit and I give them all of these templates for very basic quizzes that they can use in any subject area, no matter what. It's literally true and false, 10 true and false. Just a strip of paper, or 10 yes and no, or 10 short answer or 10 multiple choice, whatever you wanna do, and you can make up an assessment on the fly, write down your questions as you're asking them and then have the kids correct them together and then you take them in and you get an idea of oh, because who needs to do the learning. Who needs the practice? Not you. On Saturday morning, when your family's going to the farmer's market, the kids need the practice. So take that extra 10 minutes, find out where they're struggling. Okay, now I've got a clear idea of what we need to review on Monday, right? So I gave a lot of short quizzes on Friday because I like to know, and it was very quick, very short, and the kids knew it didn't really count.
Speaker 2:Sometimes. I would take them in. That was the other part. I wouldn't tell my kids which ones counted for marks, right? So whenever we did a little quiz, I would tell them I might take it for marks and I might not, let's just see. And so I would go through it and I'd, and then I'd pull out a little. I'd have a thing in my planner so they would find out later if it was going to be and I. It was predetermined but I wouldn't tell them. So I'd be like, see, this one's going to be taken.
Speaker 2:But I always tell teachers honestly, for any subject, for any unit that you're teaching, I do one or two quizzes, a unit test and then some kind of usual group work or partner work and or individual work, because it doesn't once. You have two or three pieces of evidence, as long as it aligns with the standards, you don't need very much more than that. And of course it's a, it's a snapshot. I get it Like maybe on that day the child didn't do well. I also think there's room for interpretation. You know, if a child knows that standard, you can give them a second chance, you can do some small group reteaching and you can, you can increase their grade based on actually they do know this. They just weren't able to show that there. So we have space for being able to make adjustments even if a child did not perform well and you think they know better. They know more than they're showing. So I mean I say, take the pressure off quizzes, more short form assessments, easy to grade, and let kids participate in the process as much as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things that is really decreased my marking but still giving me marks is because as we move on in sixth grade, we move through and we have more digital access, but using Microsoft forms or Google forms for those self-checking. Hey, here's a reading comprehension quiz and I want just to answer these questions. All the multiple choice get automatically marked, the marks are immediate and I find it so much simpler, even for their short answer questions, to mark as they come in, and it's just saving some time and the idea that you know this like you have quizzes. That's your formative assessment. You're just doing it to inform your instruction and when you have confidence through your observations, conversations and the products that they're producing, then give them a summative. So you're gathering. You just have to know are they getting it? Great, we're ready for a summative. Are they not getting it? Okay, reteach, reteach, reteach. Or sometimes just move on because you can't get everything.
Speaker 2:We can come back to this later if we have time.
Speaker 1:We got to get through some stuff, kids, so we can't spend three months on graphing, but we got to get through it. But I think we overthink it and I we over. Yes, veteran teachers as beginning teachers, where you know, almost like that picture, we have to have that mark book that has just column after column after column after column for justify what mark we give them. And the reality is your professional judgment is just as valid If you are gathering that. You know formative assessment, you're doing your summative and it shows you get it most of the time, some of the time rarely, or they like rocket ships and they get it all the time.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be and to ask yourself why, why are you doing this assessment? Like, what is the intention here? Because if it's just to add another grade to your grade book, that is not a reason to assess students. If you really do need to know and you're not sure if they get this concept, then it's a great time for a quiz. But also remember we're assessing them to understand how much they know and to help them to learn.
Speaker 2:I like to use assessments to as a teaching tool, so I almost always graded things in class Almost always. The only thing I don't like about the on, like the instant digital, is if it's just for me and for me to get a quick snapshot, that's awesome. But a lot of the time I don't realize how much they're struggling in a certain area until we correct it together. And everybody got question eight wrong and I'm like what? Okay, stop everything, how, how could you have gone? Okay, let's stop and go back and figure this out. Well, now they got eight, nine and 10 wrong, because that was a whole concept. Oh, okay, we need to go back and reteach that. So, and then, and then you ask them questions about well, why did you answer it that way? Well, now everybody's learning. Well, I thought that too, that's what I thought, and well, now you understand. Now it's an opportunity for two teaching, so I do love that for assessment and to take to really think about. Like again why are we doing this? How can we help kids learn more?
Speaker 1:Yeah, really Like. That's why we're there. We want them to learn. Yeah, and I think that's the point right.
Speaker 1:How do you, in the post COVID era, as a classroom teacher myself, one of the struggles that we have and on that same thread of you, know we do all of this work and we want to ensure the learning but there is post COVID kids, this sense of apathy in the classroom and getting them engaged.
Speaker 1:How do you not? We, many teachers, have a savior complex. Let's be honest, we sometimes get into teachers that save children. So where do we protect our own mental health and draw that barrier between I have to realize when I need to move on and when I need to realize that I can't save them all. When I need to realize that I can't save them all, it's really hard, especially for a new teacher that is disillusioned with the idea that they can be the freedom writers teacher and they can go and Yep, they're all gonna change the world, we're all gonna change the world. So how do you help support your teachers in sort of protecting their own mental health, dealing with some of this apathy that is happening in classrooms after COVID, to sort of realize that there's, there are limits of impact that you can have.
Speaker 2:And there are limits. But I also think there is a lot that we can do to prevent that from happening, and I think we're not. I think what we used to do is not going to work anymore, and we used to be able to get away with not really genuinely connecting with kids at the beginning of the year. We used to get away with giving them, like you said, the what were you using? Tickets or whatever it was. We used to get away with that and most of the kids were fine with that. Kids have wised up. Parents. Parenting has changed that, yeah, and most of the kids were fine with that. Kids have wised up. Parents, parenting has changed.
Speaker 2:And so, honestly, although, yes, we absolutely mean, I'm not going to say that teachers are to blame for any of this. We absolutely are not. There is such a challenge in terms of the shift in not just parenting styles but the way that children come to school. So, of course, but I also want to give teachers hope, because the biggest difference one of the things that I learned so much over the years was the biggest difference that I could make in a child's life really depended on how invested I was in genuinely caring about them, and I think the moment kids feel connected to you, if you do genuinely want to build a relationship with them at the beginning of the year, it can help. It can't, it doesn't always, but it can help prevent a lot of the apathy that we do see, empowering kids, giving them class jobs, showing them that you trust them, asking them to be integral parts of your classroom community, and being strategic in that first week of school, the first like several weeks of school we need to be strategic and we can't just slap some things together and do some getting to know you activities and hope it works. They need social and emotional learning, skills that they have not gotten. They have deficits. They have really strong skill deficits. They're coming to school without skills that they previously had. So it means our role has shifted and we are not prepared for it. It is not our job, we are not classroom therapists, and yet if we choose to ignore it, the need gets bigger. So we're in this very interesting quandary of well, if we choose to ignore it because it really isn't our job, then we're going to have a much harder time of things, and so I think just the way we approach kids and the way we approach.
Speaker 2:This job is changing. So I always focus on prevention as much as I can and filling those skill deficits, especially with children who have very challenging behaviors, who have oppositional, defiant disorder, who have all of the labels right. If we can give them kids, they wanna know do I matter, do I belong? And if they feel like they matter and they feel like they belong in those first few weeks of school, if you really do connect with them and that's not easy, I'm not suggesting it's easy and I'm not suggesting we have the skill sets but we need to increase our skill sets if we want to match these needs. Because the teachers who are, who don't, who are still doing things the way that we did 20 or 30 years ago, are probably not going to be able to or want to stay in this profession. They're going to say I'm out, I'm not doing this.
Speaker 2:So when we think about planning for the year, I mean there's only so much we can control. Number one that decision to understand that this is just a job, that, even though it's your dream, it isn't your life. Even though it's your calling, it isn't your life. It won't hold your hand when you're sick, it won't go on your dream vacation with you. It won't. If you get sick, it's not going to be there for you, right? This is a job. At the end of the day, it's our calling. We love it, we're passionate about it, but it it will not be there for us when we need it, and so we need to make sure that we're clear and we start practicing this.
Speaker 2:So, as we're preparing for the school year, I always tell the teachers I work with I know you want to be at the school every day. I get it. I know you really want everything to be perfect and you want. But this is the time when we start practicing those work-life boundaries. This is when we start making decisions about I'm going to the lake with my family this week and I will get this work done next week and I will only work this amount of hours.
Speaker 2:The sooner we can start doing that for ourselves and understand there's only so much we can do. We can be preventative, we can build in curriculum that we didn't have before. We can be intentional and strategic, but also we have to take care of ourselves. We have to build in those boundaries. So it starts now, my friends. If you are just graduating from college and you've had no boundaries before. Now that first day of school, you're telling parents I'm only available during these hours. I do not take evening or weekend phone calls. These are my office hours. This is the hour that I will email you back. I will probably not have a phone call with you unless it's being observed not observed but on the phone with my administrator if there's a problem. So there's a lot of things we can put in place to put those boundaries, to set those boundaries from the start. But this is all for again, planning, thinking this is all preparing for how we can manage it Now, when you're in that first week or in those first few weeks, we can be very strategic, though, and so I always tell teachers.
Speaker 2:It isn't just about oh, that's so cute, I want to do it. It's on Instagram. I want you to think about three things. First of all, I want you to think about how can I get to know this student? So things like interest inventories, finding out what they love, and using that information, not just taking the information in and going, oh, isn't that cute, they love motorcycles. No, no, you find out that five or six of your boys, like I did, were obsessed with motorcycles but hated reading. Well, guess what I did.
Speaker 2:I set up a motorcycle section in my classroom library and they were like fighting over the books, right, so use that information. If you find out some things about the kids, you're like, oh wait, they're obsessed with Disney. I could work in a Disney unit, I could work out whatever it is right, and then so you're getting to know them. Then you want them to bond with each other, and I especially want kids who naturally would not go together, not be gravitating towards each other to find things they have in common with, because the moment that we can find common ground, maybe the kid who's the bully or the tough kid or the whatever, also has a little brother who drives him crazy and you bond over that. Maybe you're the only two kids in the class who love cheese pizza, I don't care what it is, but I want you to start finding connections within the most unlikely places, because that becomes the glue, that's. That's a big part. And then I want teachers to also be intentional about finding and reinforcing all of the good that you see in your students. So this is a habit.
Speaker 2:I don't think a lot of us were raised this way. I know my mom did not constantly look for the good in me. She constantly looked for how I needed to fix things right. You're not doing that right? Oh, your cousin got this. Why didn't you get it? I mean constantly, not that she didn't love me, it's just we were raised I think because they're my parents were raised that way, by their parents, right? The mothers were always wanting the best for their daughters and being very critical, and I don't know if it's probably the same for fathers and their sons, but I'm sure it is. I'm not a son, so I don't know. But when I think about teachers with students, this is when it's uncomfortable and we aren't used to doing it. But we need a system to help us learn the habit of noticing the good, the light, the gifts, the talents, the kindness, the any little thing. I want you to be a joy finder. I want you to be constantly looking for light, constantly looking for that little dark cloud, that little guy that's walking around with the rain cloud over him. The moment he smiles, I want to tell him how beautiful his smile is. I want you to look for good in every student.
Speaker 2:So one of the ways I do this at the beginning of the year, every year, is I do something called secret envelopes, like secret compliment envelopes. So every child writes compliments. We talk about writing genuine compliments. They get, they draw a name several times a day and they write a compliment for whoever it is and put it in their bag and we talk about. I don't want to hear about all the things that are wrong with those kids. We all have things that are wrong with us. I don't care or I'm focusing on what you think is awesome. So we're finding the awesome in everybody.
Speaker 2:And when you're constantly building that, in the first few now kids feel what they belong, they feel they're celebrated and guess, at the end of every week they get to read them all but they have to put them back in and at the end of a month they get to take them home. Now they have like 50 compliments from their classmates that they've been gathering over a month. How do you think that kid's going to feel about school? Yeah, I mean it's amazing, right, when you talk about noticing all the good. So that's really when I think about what we can do in terms of prevention, in terms of helping them to feel like they belong.
Speaker 2:We will not be the freedom writers, teachers, but we will be the best authentic version of ourselves to bring to these kids when we choose to focus on our light when we choose to focus on all the good that we can bring. So I don't want teachers to feel hopeless, because kids need more these days. They need more help, they need more support, they need more skills. They are coming to school If we think of everybody having a reading deficit. They have an emotional deficit. They don't know how to feel good about themselves, they have low self-esteem and they're taking it out on everybody because they they just haven't been held to high enough standards and so they don't feel good about themselves. So let's raise their standard of themselves. Let's raise their belief in themselves. Now we'll see some magic happen.
Speaker 1:Right and I find it's so important to find even that kid's currency, the currency of their communication. And for some of my students it's joking around. For some of my students I have a few that love to give me a hard time and they love it. Give them a hard time back. They'll be like, what are you wear today? And I go, I don't know what are you wearing today.
Speaker 1:And they you know it's that, you know that relationship where you can, you know them well enough that you can, you can joke that you know I'm going to go be adopted by your grandma Cause she sounds awesome and you know I can reach those things and, like, I know that grandma is a really important person in that kid's life. So I can bring that up and share a little bit about myself. I can, you know, you can you have these like individual relationships where you get different kids and I kind of I like to test myself every once in a while. If I were to go around my classroom, can I tell if someone were to come to my classroom, could I tell that stranger something special and unique about every student in my classroom and then do it.
Speaker 2:Right, do it. I had a teacher mentor who did that. Every time I went into her classroom she'd be like oh, come over here, christopher, christopher, do you know Mrs Friesen, christopher is an amazing saxophone player. Christopher, tell her about your saxophone playing. He's quite amazing. He's been doing it since he was five years old and she would brag him up right in front of me. I'm like I'm stealing that. I'll tell this whole story in my book. I'm stealing that, like anything like that that can brag kids up and celebrate them.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, you've got to know who they are and they also have to know that you, you genuinely care and that you're not just putting on the facade of care. They can see through, that these kids can see through.
Speaker 1:They know better than of course we all can, we all know it's you know so genuinely caring, genuinely getting to know them, knowing who they are, knowing what makes them tick and having some fun with them. Yes, exactly, I'm realizing that kids feel safe with boundaries and one of the things I pride myself on is I always read the book. Miss Nelson is missing at the beginning of every year and I use that as a very way of like I might not be as mean. As you know, I can't remember what her name is the teacher, yeah, the teacher right, miss Viola Swamp, I mean, I might not. Yes, that's her name. It's been a long time.
Speaker 1:I want them to understand that I have boundaries. And one of the things I pride myself on is my students will routinely say you are a fun teacher and I like you as a teacher. But we know there's a line and we know that if we cross that line, we don't like the teacher that we get Like yep, you are, like there is here, there's a line, and it's like okay, I know I, I know I screwed up and I'll get her back on this side. And, yeah, they know very clearly like if they come in my classroom and they are chewing gum with our mouth open, that's getting thrown out, and they know why it's thrown out? Because it grosses me out and I don't like it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, yeah you know those, but you so again, you've taught the rule, you've taught, taught the expectation. They know what work, what the boundary is, but if we don't know what they are in advance and we haven't taught them to our students? That's why the thinking work is so important. The planning, the preparation of this is a no, this is a non-negotiable for me, right, and it wouldn't be for another teacher. But you need to know what yours are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they need to know what those boundaries are. They need to know what yours are. Yeah, and they need to know what those boundaries are. They need to know where you stand and they need to know, if they need to know, where the walls of the box are and draw very clear lines for them so that as long as we play in the box, we're good. But they need to know that that is safe, the walls are stable, that it's made out of steel and wood and concrete.
Speaker 2:Yes, they can trust it. They can trust it. That is the biggest thing. They need to know. They can trust your word. So, when we talked about classroom management, this is where we fail or where we succeed. If we ignore behavior and we don't follow through when we tell them that we're going to do something they've learned, immediately they can't trust us. Yes, and if they know they can't trust us, they're going to keep testing to see where the boundaries are, and if they're different every day, guess what they're going to say? It's not fair and they're right, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's not fair.
Speaker 2:I hate you, yeah, and I don't blame them. I mean yeah because they don't know it's not, it's not a predictable environment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it needs to be predictable for them the routine and all of that comes back into place. You know, they know where they are. So what do you have for advice for developing positive parent relationships? Let's be honest you mentioned it before parenting has definitely changed. The relationship between parents and teachers have definitely changed, some better than others, and we have anything from, you know, the super vigilant parent to the completely absent parent that isn't there, and everything in between. So what advice would you give to teachers in today's day and age with dealing with difficult parents?
Speaker 2:So we've said this several times being veteran teachers, we understand, first of all, that failing to plan means planning to fail right, and on all things I am proactive. I'm all about cleaning up my side of the street, making sure I've done everything I can to prevent problems with parents. I talked about problems to prevent problems with classroom management, to prevent problems with planning and grading. Becoming a monster to prevent. You're going to hear this over and over again from me. I am all about prevention. I am all about prevention. And so when it comes to parents, at least for me, in the first few years I did not know what I didn't know in terms of what I could do to help to set myself up for success and ensure I could prevent these challenges with parents Not all the time, but I would say 90% of the time, because I was. I had my side of the street cleaned up. What does that mean? So, first of all I talk about especially in the book and in the academy you need to have a clear plan for daily, weekly and monthly communication with parents. I don't care how you do it, I don't care. Some people do dojo. In my classroom, I had a home communication notebook that parents literally initialed every single day If there's anything they needed to tell me or if I need to. Kids just left it open on their in the corner of their desk and that's it. It was so simple. Every day they knew to come in because we had a routine. They opened their notebook to that court and put it on the right top right corner of the desk. I would walk around as I was doing everything else and I'd quickly initial. It took me 30 seconds, but I could see in a glance if there was anything that parents needed me to know, and I expected them to do the same. And the kids earned scholar dollars for bringing it back and forth. So they wanted to do it. Weekly communication Maybe it's dojo, maybe it's an agenda that the school does. I don't care how you do it, as long as you have a system in place. Think this through now, poolside at the lake. I don't care when you do it. And and then the third is monthly. I always send home a monthly newsletter, and I'm gonna say monthly because there's no need to be writing a newsletter. You're not a journalist, you're a teacher. Let them know every month what's coming up. Give them an outline, as long as you have that daily and weekly communication, we're good, we're golden. They know what to look for. So you train them, train parents to know and meet the teacher night. This is what you can expect from me and this is how we're going to prevent a lot of miscommunications.
Speaker 2:The second is throughout the school year, how will you involve parents? Like, do you have a system in place? Do you have a volunteer schedule in place? Do you have, do you know when you want parents involved and how? Think this through in advance. Are you going to have regular volunteers in your classroom for specific tasks or subject areas? Are there field trips that you already know? Are planned special events? You'll know you'll need parents involvement for let them know in advance, if you can, at the beginning of the year, as much as you can, just so that they're involved.
Speaker 2:And then the third thing, of course, we talked about assessment. We get into a lot of hot water with parents when they find out there's child is failing or not doing well with something. So how will you keep parents in the loop about formative assessment to prevent surprises and problems during conferences? And then, at the same time, how will you be contacting parents with good news, because we don't want to just be talking about. Here are all the things that are going wrong, and here's where Sammy needs some help.
Speaker 2:But also, what can parents expect? What will you commit to to let them know that good things are happening? Will it be phone calls home that are awesome? Will it be positivity bracelets? I used to have a little bracelet around that my kids that they would write home. They would, I would write on it Mrs Friesen is super proud of me for and I'd write in whatever it was and it's fluorescent, and they would. I would put a sparkly sticker on it and they'd go home and they'd be showing their bracelet to everybody all day, Right, like something like that that they know to look for. Yeah, so yeah, just those kinds of little tips. I go into a lot more detail in the book, but there's so many different things you could do.
Speaker 1:And I would imagine, in today's day and age, if we're talking about planning, we have AI as a tool and I know I I love the AI Yep, me too On my Instagram lately.
Speaker 1:But I think you have your long range plans and many of us have long range plans and, for those of you listening, if you don't, you can get the Madly Learning plans because they're there. But it also tells you you're going to generally know what is going to be coming up every month, so you can pre-plan. And with ChatGPT, you could simply say I'm going to be teaching this, this and this of the Ontario curriculum or the Alberta curriculum or the New York state standards, and you could say, okay, cool, this is what I plan on teaching. You could have Google Docs rewritten out of all of the information based on what you theoretically are going to be covering. Add in a couple of things, pop into chat gpt. It will make your letter for you. It doesn't have to look super pretty. It can just be a simple email that lets parents know what's doing, without you doing all the legwork of writing on your website like just update your website every month and let parents know.
Speaker 2:Here's the link, I mean it's. You can make it so simple yeah, yeah, and use it.
Speaker 1:Use the power of chat gpt to write things else for you, including to snarky emails from parents, if you need I have a whole guide on that.
Speaker 2:It's generated partially with ai, but it's like 25 common scenarios that you have. You kind of can get in hot water with the parents and how to respond positively and productively.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so much you can use all there Well is. Those are all of the questions I have. Is there anything else we didn't cover that you wanted to make sure that you mentioned to people about the things that you're an expert in you know, what I would say to new teachers is give yourself grace.
Speaker 2:You know that we're talking about a lot of different things and what we need to do and what we need to make sure we do, and but I want you to hold it all loosely and give yourself the same compassion that you do to your students. You're a learner. You're going to be learning a lot of things this year, so it won't all go as you want it to. You'll feel like a failure a large part of the time, and the reason I can say that and Patty can agree is because we feel we just are learning so much so quickly and you can't learn that many streams all at once and do well at everything. So give yourself grace, be compassionate towards yourself and find a community of support so that you're not feeling alone throughout this year. So yeah, that's about it Awesome.
Speaker 1:So, lori, how can people find more about you, your book and how to work with you?
Speaker 2:So my book is on Amazon, on Kindle and on Audible. So if they wanna go tolauriefriesencom or on Amazon, you can just search for the title Dear New Teacher, here's exactly what to do. And then you can find me on Instagram at beginningteachertalk, or on Facebook at beginningteachertalk. I'm also sort of on TikTok. Apparently, I have 30,000 followers.
Speaker 1:I never do it. Yeah, exactly, we're all sort of on TikTok, absolutely, and we'll put all of those links to in our show notes, both on the YouTube video as well as in our podcast, so you can check out. Lori Lori, thank you so much for all of this information. It has been such an honor to have you on our show today, so thank you again for sharing all of your wealth of information with my audience today. If you want to learn more about how you can work with Dr Lori, you can find a link to her website, as well as her new book, dear New Teacher, in the show notes of today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you in the next episode from Ignite your Teaching.
