Galileo 3.0 Trusted Voices is a nonpartisan advocacy group which supports a network of teacher leaders, focused on building collaborative partnerships among teachers, administrators, and policymakers to ensure every Michigan learner receives the highest quality education. Trusted Voices lifts up the voice of teacher leaders to impact and inform, not only their local school districts and their constituents, but the broader audience of legislators and others who are decision makers in education. For more information on Trusted Voices, visit their website www.trustedvoicesed.com or Trusted Voices (@TrustedVoicesEd) on Twitter
Bob Maxfield and Dr. Suzanne Klein invited Jarod McGuffey, who leads the work of Trusted Voices, joined by Trusted Voice Fellows Mary Binge and Laura Haydamacker, to share the history, mission and current activities of Galileo 3.0 Trusted Voices. Trusted Voices is a nonpartisan advocacy group of teacher leaders, supporting superintendents through collaborative advocacy and serving policy makers by offering feedback on how education policy shapes Michigan schools, as well as the teaching profession.
Bob Maxfield introduced the background of the guests. Jarod McGuffey is currently a 21st Century Teacher and Instructional Coach in Fraser Public Schools, and Chairman of the Board of a charter school in the Detroit area. "He worked with the Galileo Consortium for the past four years to lead the development of a network throughout the state of Michigan of teacher leaders, concerned about the future of education.” Mary Binge is an instructional coach at the elementary level, from the Center Line Public School District in Macomb County. Laura Haydamacker is a middle school science and math teacher from Flat Rock Community School District in Wayne County. The third fellow, representing Oakland County is Kyle Geralds, who was unable to join us today. Kyle is a high school social studies teacher in the Farmington Public School District.
Jarod observed that the movement in education has been growing around teacher leadership, especially in recent years. “Teachers should be valued, both as the foremost authorities of instruction and as leaders whose feedback can inform the development of policies that can drive improvements in the education system and student outcomes.”
He credited “Dr. Bob Maxfield, who along with a powerful group of educators launched the Galileo Teacher Leadership Academy, which has empowered close to 1500 teachers. These teachers would graduate from one of the most transformational two year commitments in their career.”
As a graduate of the program, Jarod described the first year, Galileo 1.0, “as guiding teachers through the self -examination of their own practices and helping them become the best version of themselves, whether this is their pedagogical practice or just as an individual. Then Galileo 2.0 equips teachers with the necessary skill set to lead and build capacity at the building and or district level.”
“Dr. Maxfield launched the new initiative to expand that influence of teacher leadership at the state level. Galileo 3.0 is a nonpartisan advocacy group of educators focused on building collaborative partnerships among teachers, administrators, and policymakers, to ensure every Michigan learner receives the highest quality of education. The goal is to simply support our superintendents through collaborative advocacy, and serve policy makers offering feedback on how education shapes Michigan schools, as well as the teaching profession. So the mission for Galileo 3.O is to collaboratively reframe the agenda for public education.”
“The original priorities, which have shifted a little bit, were: teacher retention and recruitment, which still stands to be a very big concern, and the issues we need to continue to address: adequate, equitable school funding; mental health and social emotional learning; teacher evaluations; and the third grade reading law.”
“One way we could be most effective in meeting the needs around these priorities was by simply creating an awareness of the suggestions and findings of the 2018 school finance research collaborative, the SFRC. The School Funding Research Collaborative is a research based successful school model, bipartisan adequacy study that suggested that the cost to educate a general education student is roughly $10,000. Although we are closer to that number than we have been in the last 25 years, we still have further to go, hence the need for Trusted Voices.”
“Recently one webinar we hosted featured former state Rep. Dr. Sheryl Kennedy, who now serves as MDE legislative liaison, and current state Rep. Brad Paquette. Together they helped us walk our teachers and ourselves through looking beyond the pandemic. And that webinar can be found on our website.” www.trustedvoicesed.com
“Prior to the pandemic, Trusted Voices were holding meetings with dozens of the legislators from both sides of the aisle. We'd partnered with the Education Caucus in Lansing, where 10 educators and 10 legislators met together to build those relationships that are necessary in moving forward. We met with our current and previous state superintendents. We presented to MASA (Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators), regional superintendent meetings, and local ISD superintendent meetings. We wanted our superintendents to be well informed and to vet their Trusted Voices representatives. We published a few articles, one of which was an op-ed entitled “Trust teachers with reform ideas.”
“In order to really have an impact and a seat at the policy making table, Trusted Voices needs teacher leaders who are conversant in both classroom practice and education policy, to speak the language and understand the invisible playing field. We held some initial training on policy and representing one's district with former state Rep.Christine Greig, accompanied by district HR and public relations personnel. Dr. Kathy Merry from Wayne RESA (Wayne Regional Education Service Agencies) clarified for us the difference between advocating and lobbying, as we need to make sure that we are seen as advocates as opposed to lobbyists. Dr. David Arsen, MSU professor of Educational Policy, led us in a zoom meeting regarding issues of school funding and finance. Additionally we had mentors like Dr. Randy Liepa, Wayne ISD Superintendent, and our Oakland University Galileo team.“
“Trusted Voices has worked with representatives from both sides of the aisle; former state Rep. Dr. Sheryl Kennedy, a Democrat and former school administrator, who now serves as MDE legislative liaison, and current state Rep. Brad Paquette, a Republican and former public school educator. This whole initiative has to be seen as oriented toward education policy, not toward the platform of either the Republican or Democratic Party.”
Moving forward as the new school year begins, Jarod notes that “Zoom is the appropriate choice for communicating with our stakeholders from every level. Recorded zoom trainings can be re-watched, shared and archived. Zoom has enabled teachers to lead from the classroom without leaving the classroom.” As far as future plans, Jarod emphasized that "the SFRC remains relevant. Although districts have ESSER funds, we still need to address this blueprint and create that awareness.”
Laura Haydamacker reflected that “the pandemic gave us time to evolve, reinvent ourselves and self-examine our goals; how we can influence policy to help teachers in the future and how to highlight what's best for kids through policy. We want to highlight the benefits to students of programs created with ESSR funds. There are programs that are new, innovative and well needed to help learning for all Michigan students and to be more equitable now that funds are there. So we're excited to be able to advocate for these policies to continue.”
Mary Binge commented on the long standing concerns and inequities which were revealed by the pandemic. In her district which went virtual, “not all children had devices and the district rallied and got devices to everyone.” Sharing the concern for internet access, she seconded the importance of equity and access for all students in Michigan. “In the metro area, we know that a lot of the schools have different needs but I mean Michigan. There's a lot of rural parts of Michigan that children don't have access to the Internet.”
Jarod explained, “Equity we define as the responsibility of public schools to ensure all children receive an opportunity for success, and when you have this reality of resource scarcity and that's simply with public schools that the need for our students will always be greater than the available funds.” He alluded to the current environment, “which exposed inequity with some districts lacking some critical resources and the need to shift thinking about school funding. While acknowledging the need to address funding, the current mission of recipients of ESSR funds is deciding what to do with the money."
Mary Binge previewed the agenda for the upcoming months. Along with this podcast, she listed writing an op-ed and a call to action to our Trusted Voices Fellows. Writing organized letters to legislators and policy makers was another action on her list. The first letter would be written in September or early fall, introducing Trusted Voices as partners and thanking them for the additional funding. A second letter would be sent in January, providing examples of how this funding has impacted our students.
Another goal of Trusted Voices is reconnecting with legislators and policy partners such as the Michigan Education Caucus, The Education Trust-Midwest, the Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators (MASA) as well as Launch Michigan which has a similar goal of equitable funding for students. Mary shared that she has established Trusted Voices connections with Rep.Lori Stone from her district, and former Center Line Public Schools Superintendent Eve Kaltz.
For more information on Trusted Voices, visit their website www.trustedvoicesed.com or Trusted Voices (@TrustedVoicesEd) on Twitter
Bob Maxfield:
Welcome to Podcast for Leaderful Schools, coming to you almost live from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, from the School of Education and Human Services, and today from the Galileo Institute. My co-host is Dr. Sue Klein. Sue welcome, how are you today?
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Suzanne Klein:
I am great Bob, and so excited to introduce the guests we have and talk about Galileo 3.0 Trusted Voices.
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Bob Maxfield:
And for our regular listeners, we've done a series going back into last spring that we have entitled "The Great Reset" or resetting public schools after the pandemic. The reason we wanted to talk with our Galileo 3.0 leaders today, is that at the heart of getting things working better and best and as appropriate as it can in the fall are our teachers, and so we couldn't think of better guests to have for that. So welcome listeners; we hope you'll stay with us as we continue to discuss important issues about the future of public education. So with that, let's begin by introducing sort of the leader of the band, Mr. Jarod McGuffey.
Jarod welcome. Jarod has been working with us for three or four years now, on a project that he will quickly explain. He is a consummate teacher leader; he has developed a network throughout the state of Michigan of folks who are concerned about teachers as leaders, concerned about the future of public education. His day job is a teacher consultant in the Fraser Public Schools, and he also is a Chairman of the Board of a charter school in the Detroit area, so he's got a broad variety of experiences. So Jarod, welcome and I'll let you say a little bit and then introduce your team.
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Jarod McGuffey:
Thanks Bob, appreciate that and to be here. It's good to see you again.
So my position is a 21st Century position so it's fair to say instructional consultant. I'm part time working with the teachers and I'm also working with the students. So I get to work as a specialist teacher, teaching the students digital citizenship here in Fraser Public Schools.
And I am so excited to announce our three fellows. We're rebooting this year. We have Kyle Geralds; Kyle is not joining us today on this call, but he's now in Farmington Public Schools. He is a high school teacher with a social studies background. And today, also on the call we have Mary Binge; she's from Center Line in Macomb County. She's an instructional coach at the elementary level, and Laura Haydamacker, who is from Flat Rock Schools in Wayne County. And she's a middle school science and math teacher.
So we're excited so much to be here; we appreciate the opportunity. Would it be all right if we asked Mary and Laura to each greet the audience?
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Bob Maxfield:
Please do.
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Jarod McGuffey:
Mary, how about you?
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Mary Binge:
Hi, my name is Mary Binge. I'm happy to be here to talk about education.
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Laura Haydamacker:
And I'm Laura Haydamacker and I'm really excited to continue my work with Trusted Voices. I've been teaching for 26 years and I can't see myself stopping.
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Bob Maxfield:
The both of you are, in fact all three of you are veterans who have been exemplifying the best of teaching, for many, many years. Mary happens to have a daughter who's also a teacher, if I recall correctly.
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Mary Binge:
Yes actually my son is a high school teacher at Lakeview and then my daughter just got her first teaching job. So she is now going to be at L'Anse Creuse Middle School South also teaching English as my son.
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Bob Maxfield:
Well, congratulations to her for a new job, and it truly is a family business. Yes, so that's pretty neat.
So Jarod back to you, tell us a little bit about Galileo 3.0. How did it come about and how did it become known as Trusted Voices, and basically what were the needs that we sought to meet when this was organized?
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Jarod McGuffey:
Sure absolutely, so to begin with a little bit of the history here of Galileo 3.0 Trusted Voices. We need to start with this movement. This movement in education has been growing around this notion of teacher leadership, especially in recent years. It's a very simple, but yet powerful idea that teachers should be valued, both as foremost authorities of instruction and as leaders who inform the development of policies that can drive improvements in the education system and student outcomes.
So, to understand the origin of Trusted Voices let's focus on that first part, the teachers as instructional leaders and explore one of the most influential teacher leadership groups in southeast Michigan, which we know is the Galileo Teacher Leadership Consortium, the Galileo Teacher Leadership Academy.
A little over 20 years ago the legendary Dr. Bob Maxfield, might I say, along with a powerful group of educators launched the Galileo Teacher Leadership Academy, and since then has empowered close to 1500 teachers. These teachers would graduate from one of the most transformational two year commitments in their career. And I personally have had the opportunity and privilege to graduate from one of these cohorts.
So the first year, Galileo 1.0 if you will, guides the teachers through the self-examination of his or her own practices and helps them become the best version of themselves, whether this is their pedagogical practice or just as an individual. And then you shift that second year where you have Galileo 2.0, and 2.0 equips the teachers with the necessary skill set to build capacity at the building and, or district level.
Just a few years ago, Dr. Maxfield you probably remember this conversation very well, when you had just launched this new initiative you wanted to harness and you already had two fellows, but I was in your office and you presented this charge. And this charge was how do we harness the teacher leadership and move beyond the “oneself” and move beyond the building, district level and expand that influence of teacher leadership at the state level.
So you, along with Dr. Klein launched this new fellowship which brings us now to Galileo 3.0 empowering teachers across the state to advocate for teacher leadership.
As mentioned earlier I was a third fellow to join this team, so kudos to the first two who had done a lot of the legwork, but at this point we now solidified our name and we call ourselves Trusted Voices. As grassroots we knew we needed to not just brand ourselves, but we had to learn a little bit from some poll data when thinking of our name. We came across some data that suggested that parents who really wanted to know what's going on in the school district, or the building level; if they really wanted to know they could approach the superintendent, yeah and that's great, but if they really want a more personal level, they would maybe contact the administrator.
But they found that the ones they really trust the most to give them that snapshot of what's going on in their child's life was the teacher. So if the teachers are the most trusted of the voices, we now refer to ourselves as Trusted Voices. The Galileo 3.0 fellows who have joined us today, as they're recruiting teachers in every district, we refer to those teachers as a Trusted Voice.
So our mission for Galileo 3.O is to collaboratively reframe the agenda for public education.
As a nonpartisan advocacy group of educators we've focused on building collaborative partnerships among teachers, administrators, and policymakers, to ensure every Michigan learner receives the highest quality of education and our goal is to simply support our superintendents through collaborative advocacy, and serve policy makers offering feedback on how education shapes Michigan schools, as well as the teaching profession.
And we initially had five priorities, now they have shifted a little bit, but the priorities initially when we launched were: teacher retention and recruitment, which still stands to be a very big concern, and then issues we need to continue addressing: adequate, equitable school funding; mental health and social emotional learning; teacher evaluations; third grade reading law.
And we figured, to answer your question about meeting the needs, we figured we could be most effective in meeting the needs around these priorities by simply creating an awareness of the suggestions and findings of the 2018 School Finance Research Collaborative, the SFRC. And this research based successful schools model, professional judgment, bipartisan, adequacy study suggested bottom line, that the cost to educate a K-12 gen ed (general education) student is roughly $10,000 and although we're closer to that number than we have been in the last 25 years, we still have further to go on moving that needle, hence the necessary and the need for Trusted Voices.
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Bob Maxfield:
Thank you for that. Sue, why don't you pick it up here because I think you've been closely involved with how we've tried to navigate this during the past 18 months?
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Suzanne Klein:
And as our listeners know and as Mary, Laura, and Jarod appreciate as well, the last 18 months have been difficult, and yet I know and you all know that you have not been inactive. There has been perhaps less visibility to your work or the pause button has had to be pushed on some initiatives that you might have moved more swiftly had the plan been only yours to try to unravel, rather than the pandemics. So step in for a moment, what progress has been made in the last two or three years?
Because as Jarod set the stage for us, there are some very visible, as well as meaningful goals looking at this notion of teacher leadership and how it can impact and inform, not only in the local school districts and with their constituents, but the broader audience of legislators and others who are decision makers in education. So when you think about those priorities that Jarod just reviewed with us, where do you see there has been movement forward and what you might anticipate? We'll talk about in just a minute.
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Jarod McGuffey:
So you're absolutely right, we did have to push the button on our advocacy work, but we were still very successful in some initial progress. So while each Trusted Voice including the fellows, had to give 100% of themselves to their families and their respective districts, as we all navigated through the pandemic these past few years past year and a half, the Galileo 3.0 fellows stepped up during this crisis and they offered support to our educators across the state.
There was one webinar, for example, we hosted and featured former state Rep. Dr. Sheryl Kennedy, who now serves as MDE legislative liaison, and current state Rep. Brad Paquette and those two were fantastic. They partnered up and they helped us walk our teachers and ourselves through looking beyond the pandemic. And that webinar can be found on our website, if anyone is interested in checking that out. www.trustedvoicesed.com
We talked about teachers and how they felt heard and having their voice matters, so we have a few other initiatives that we completed. I'll just go ahead and list a few out that we're really proud of here.
So this is prior to the pandemic, we had gained some initial traction. We were holding meetings with dozens of the legislators from both sides of the aisle. We'd partnered with the Education Caucus in Lansing, where we had 10 educators and 10 legislators, all together, in a think tank in Lansing where we were able to build connections, share personal stories, and build those relationships that are necessary in moving forward. We met a few times with our current and previous state superintendents. We presented to the MASA (Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators) regional superintendent meetings, and even local ISD superintendent meetings. We wanted to make sure that our superintendents were well informed and we wanted to make sure that they knew that we were asking for them to vet these individuals.
We published a few articles; one of them in particular had legs on it. It was an op-ed entitled "Trust teachers with reform ideas." We held orientations for new teachers; we recruited some key players and trained them to begin to think like a policymaker.
So telling our stories on how actual policy plays out with actual students in the classroom, that's just a start. We always say share our stories and that's great, but that's not enough to reform education. We need teachers who can speak bilingual- both classroom practice and education policy and to offer solutions if we're going to have this impact.
And I can just share quick, two or three trainings we had former state Rep. and House Minority Leader, Christine Greig come in. She was accompanied by district HR and public relations personnel from my district and another district, and they provided some initial training on policy and representing ones district so in other words, as a Trusted Voice how might we conduct ourselves and represent our district.
We had Dr. Kathy Merry from Wayne RESA (Wayne Regional Education Service Agencies) come in. She helped us understand the difference between advocating and lobbying as we need to make sure that we are seen as advocates as opposed to lobbyists, and finally, and this was at the beginning when Michigan had shut down at the beginning of the pandemic, we had Dr. David Arsen. He led us in a zoom meeting regarding all things school funding and finance. Of course, we had our fellows and our mentors like Dr. Randy Liepa, and our Oakland University Galileo team such as yourselves. You guys have been instrumental, inspiring each of our Trusted Voice teacher leaders as well.
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Bob Maxfield:
One of the things you said a moment ago, when you talked about former Representative Kennedy and then Representative Paquette, it needs to be underscored. What is there about the two of them that was unique in terms of education policy?
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Jarod McGuffey:
Well they've previously held positions in education. So Dr. Sheryl Kennedy was an administrator and Brad Paquette is a fantastic educator with great ideas and these two are... You have a Republican and a Democrat,… the team, and you have two that are leading this group of educators that we have in Lansing now.
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Bob Maxfield:
And what I think is so cool about that, and what you've just spoken about, is that this whole initiative has to be seen as oriented toward education policy, not toward the platform of either the Republican or Democratic Party. And so working across the aisles is something Jarod you've done really well and those two representatives were a great example as they played off each other.
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Jarod McGuffey:
Absolutely, yeah absolutely. If I can say one word over and over it would be nonpartisan and I think that that's key. You know these Trusted Voices, these are actual practitioners. These are the experts in the classroom on the front line. We do not have an agenda; we are simply just trying to offer our voice and support to all policymakers, regardless of which aisle.
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Suzanne Klein:
And that's an important piece Jarod ,when you think about lessons learned, lessons learned just from how you can position your advocacy work and how you're going to lead it forward. But I also know that with the year and a half plus under our belt of the pandemic, there's probably some lessons learned that you all are considering, as you think about moving ahead and moving forward as the new school year begins. Jump in with your thinking about that and give our listeners a preview in terms of what the last year and a half has meant that's shaping what's coming ahead.
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Jarod McGuffey:
Absolutely Sue you're right. The pandemic has definitely shaped our thinking about our future plans. If I may start quite primarily the communication, whether it's meetings with one another, our stakeholders from every level, maybe even, especially when it comes to our training. So Zoom has become as normalized as emailing or making a phone call; we all know we've been living in this world.
And it used to be just a noun right, and now it's a verb. It went from "Shall we make this formal zoom call today scheduled at four o'clock?" Now it's as simple as "Hey let's zoom it up, what are you doing after work? Let's zoom it up after you're done zooming, how about we zoom it up with some other friends?"
So it's become integrated with this how we do things, right or culture, so why wait for in-person meetings, when you can just schedule a zoom call? You don't need the expensive venues and all sorts... so it's really changed the way we're looking at meeting.
And besides that seems a little bit more appropriate to record a zoom call, as opposed to recording a phone call. You know you get a phone call and say," Do you mind if I record this phone call?"; it's a little different. But when you want to record a zoom call it's expected, and that's when we can use those recorded conversations for training. So for example whether it's a virtual training we can reduce the stressors of travel and time. And most importantly, recorded zoom trainings can be re-watched, shared, archived, housed on our website, so reps that come in the future can go back and watch some of these fantastic trainings that some of our guests have facilitated for us.
And I think the big one is the teacher shortage. Every superintendent would agree hands down, one of their concerns are how do I prevent our staff from leaving the classroom because we just don't have the subs out there. So we're being very mindful of that need and to address each district.
So, in the past, we might say, “Okay we're going to have a meeting on this day or orientation or training. “Come, you know , see if you can get a day off." Zoom has really changed the playing field in how we can communicate and get things done quicker, with teachers leading from the classroom without leaving the classroom.
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Bob Maxfield:
Mary and Laura, as you think about the impact of the last 18 months and then how it impacts your role, how it might influence your role as Trusted Voices leaders, what pops into your mind in addition to what Jarod said in terms of communication and using the classroom as your platform?
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Jarod McGuffey:
So, I was gonna say I know Laura and I briefly were talking about this earlier, so I know she has a few things. We do know that as far as future plans the SFRC remains relevant. And it's a blueprint for adequately and equitably funding schools, so, although we have seen excessive amounts of ESSER funds come in, we know that we still need to address this blueprint and create that awareness.
We just had our annual retreat and Laura, feel free to chime in on a few of the things that you talked about or you thought about as far as how we reshaped our thinking.
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Laura Haydamacker:
Well, I think that the pandemic, although it made us pause, was a good avenue to help us shift our focus. It gave us time to evolve and reinvent ourselves and self-examine our goals; how we can influence policy to help teachers in the future and how to highlight what's best for kids through policy.
We've shifted from trying to get funds now that they're available, because we wanted to get funds to help learning for all Michigan students, to be more equitable now that they're there.
We've kind of shifted our goals to highlighting what fantastic programs will be able to be used with those funds, and what all of those funds really will be used to help children in Michigan. So we're excited to be able to advocate, for you know these policies to continue, but also to highlight what those funds are going to be used for.
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Bob Maxfield:
I think that's really an important focus because people in the public will say, ‘Oh yeah, the schools are awash in all this federal money and they're probably just going to waste it.’ I think it was one of the local newspapers, recently just gave a smattering of some of the ways it's being used. It was pretty gratifying and I'm guessing in all three of your districts, you can present similar examples.
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Laura Haydamacker:
All the way from you know, new and innovative summer school, this summer even. I mean it wasn't even two seconds and we had things going on that were new and innovative, and new to the district that were well needed too.
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Bob Maxfield:
So one of the things that we heard a lot, as we started the 18 month journey through the pandemic, was that kids being home being away from school ironically highlighted problems that have always been there, that we became more aware of things we should have been thinking about before. And I think that in knowing our recent retreat those were issues that you guys began to focus on.
You know so talk a little bit about that. What are some of those long standing concerns that became all the more evident during the last 18 months? One of you can jump in on that.
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Mary Binge:
I can talk a little bit about that. We saw was really you know, funding every child the same, no matter where they live, what their needs are. It really brought that to light for us. Because we went virtual, our children did not have devices, so the district rallied around and got devices to everyone, Chromebooks. And that was something we always talked about, we knew it was there, we knew what was there, but it was always later, later, never, never got to that point. And then the pandemic was there and within weeks children had Chromebooks in their house.
But it was, do they have the internet access? So all those kinds of things. Making sure that one of our goals is that there's equity for all of our kids because like in the metro area, we know that a lot of the schools have different needs but I mean Michigan. There's a lot of rural parts of Michigan also, that children don't have access to Internet. And so those kinds of things really I felt like became a part of this pandemic and brought it to light. It was always there, we knew it was there, and then it was like we need to do something about it immediately.
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Bob Maxfield:
Thank you.
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Suzanne Klein:
This has been such an interesting time, interesting in quotation marks obviously, and your own lived experiences in your local school districts have informed your thinking, if you have children of your own, or children that you know from your neighborhood, or children you love, you're watching that unfold.
And when you think about the role of teacher leadership and this notion of 3.O advocating for all children, I'm curious what else has come across your thinking or in your conversation that we've not touched on yet, and wanted to give you a chance just to step in with those kind of ideas as we're moving through the interview.
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Jarod McGuffey:
Sure I'll kick it off. Now I would like to go back to our planning and Mary if you want to prepare, you can go ahead and share those goals and plans out.
But before we do, I just wanted to touch base and we've said a lot of things. I think there's this invisible playing field that we have as teacher leaders. And we're stepping on this playing field that the policymakers have and we're trying to really understand it. When I go back to being bilingual earlier, if we really want to have that impact and have a seat at the policy making table, we need to be able to speak this language and understand this invisible playing field. And one of the areas in this playing field will be equity.
And equity we define as the responsibility of public schools to ensure all children receive an opportunity for success, and when you have this reality of resource scarcity and that's simply with public schools that the need for our students will always be greater than the available funds.
And then of course we have accountability, and Bob mentioned the article that I believe was Bridge that just released Michigan has 6.1 billion funds that were just poured into our schools, and we know that we need to be focused on it because there's going to be some accountability pieces there so, given the limited resources it's important to know whether public schools are being used to yield the best possible outcomes for all kids.
Back to that equity, so we have this planning session, to make sure that the next few years are going to be relevant to this current environment of "Hey we understand equity, we understand that the pandemic has really exposed some inequitable instances, whether you have haves and have-nots, and we know that some schools are lacking some critical resources. We really need to focus and shift our thinking a little bit on how we fund schools in the future, but our current our mission right now is, hey we got a lot of money now, what are we going to do with it?"
Mary, would you mind sharing some of the goals and plans that we had from our last retreat?
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Mary Binge:
Sure I loved to, so we sat down and met and talked to some goals of where we want to go. One of them was, you know, this podcast interview talking about our initial launch and getting those views out, writing a call to action and op-ed containing a call to action for our Trusted Voices fellows.Trusted Voices for districts within our legislature. Lori Stone is my district's representative, District 28. She holds a teacher round table. I participated in one and another one is scheduled for next week, and this is really how our voice is heard, and then shared with legislators. So that was a goal.
Another goal we had was to write some organized letters. We know that districts have been given this extra ESSER funding, and it's really important for us to communicate how it's impacted our students, our schools. The first letter beginning late September early fall, is to introduce ourselves as partners and thank you for that additional funding. Laura had talked about how summer school funding was able to affect her district. Same for us. We were able to offer virtual programs, we were able to offer face-to-face. We were able to have grades pre-K, children going into kindergarten, all the way to eighth grade. So that right there is an example of how it's impacted children.
And then talking about organized letters to our legislators, mid-year it would be a good idea for us around January, how's it going, provide some information on how the funding's impacted our students. Really give examples and stories to show how educational outcomes have improved by this extra funding.
And then another goal, which we've had previous partners, and some of those we want to reconnect with that. For example, we have Michigan Education Caucus and really I feel like we have already started that, especially me personally with Lori Stone and District 28. We're going to be having a round table; teachers talking about what's happening day- to-day in the classroom. So reconnecting with that.
The Education Trust Midwest investments and strategies to help boost our literacy rates. So a big initiative has been The Literacy Essentials, research based documents on how to improve literacy in Michigan because as we know that's been a struggle for many years for us. And this part of the Education Trust is having these minimum standard of care so we have something, essential practices research based from birth to age three, pre-kindergarten, grades K-three, grades four & five, and then grades six through twelve, so that all areas of our schools are able to build that literacy.
And just reconnecting with those partners; another partner is the Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators (MASA). My former superintendent Eve Kaltz, from Center line, she's now retired but still active in education. We personally meet and talk about education when we get together and you know, she realizes the importance of mentoring new teachers, mentoring superintendents, what's happening in our districts. And then Trusted Voices can meet with superintendents who are retired to mentor new superintendents, so really building up that connection,
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Bob Maxfield:
Thank you for that. That is really an ambitious agenda and speaking for Dr. Klein, we thoroughly enjoyed meeting with you guys a while back, and just kept hearing your energy or feeling your energy and hearing your great ideas.
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Suzanne Klein:
And the momentum that you spoke about a moment ago Mary, is something that I know you're going to use to best advantage as people return to their districts in the fall. You've been thinking you've been planning things, you've been connecting with folks and I think there's going to be great interest and enthusiasm for this kind of work with the legislature, and advocating for teachers and teacher leadership, so I look forward to seeing where these plans take you.
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Bob Maxfield:
So if one of our listeners or many of our listeners wants to know more about this, wanted to know how do I become as a non-teacher a supporter of Trusted Voices, or as a teacher, how do I become one of those Trusted Voices, how do they go about finding out about this?
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Laura Haydamacker:
Well, we have a website, www.trustedvoicesed.com and we have a Twitter handle @ TrustedVoicesEd so follow us. If anybody out there is like me, and just can't sit back and complain about things and want to be part of the positive solution and make education policy benefit our kids, then join us on either www.trustedvoicesed.com or Trusted Voices (@TrustedVoicesED) on Twitter.
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Bob Maxfield:
Thank you Laura, because if you know somebody was listening to this and they say 'well I'd like to do it, but I don't know how.' Hopefully they got a gist today and if they contact you, they can get more information on how do I start, you know like how do you start talking to your legislator, how do you start writing these letters., So as you folks develop your own prototypes, those are going to hopefully start spreading statewide.
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Jarod McGuffey:
If I may, you just said something that was, how do I start, and I think one of the most important things as a teacher leader listening to this podcast, if you're wondering, hey I don't know anything about legislation, that's perfect. That's what we're looking for; we're not looking for experts in policy, we're looking for experts in the classroom. And we can help or I should say, we can put you in connection with those who can train you in that area, so thank you.
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Bob Maxfield:
So as we end today, we will put on our website, on the Podcast for Leaderful School's website, the links that Laura just mentioned and so you don't have to have written this down quickly, those will be readily available to you. So Sue as we wrap this up, are there any final words you have?
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Suzanne Klein:
The notion of Galileo 3.O is always one that's exciting because it assumes that Galileo 1.0 in terms of a leader in every classroom; Galileo 2.O a leader who is working with the issues, not only in their classroom but their school and district, is now expanding to a larger audience in Galileo 3.0. That's advocating for the professions, connecting with other organizations that are also in support of education, connecting with the legislators and getting a seat at the table as Jarod mentioned earlier, so as a Trusted Voice, you are the one that person would call about legislative ideas or priorities or budget ideas, those kinds of things from a classroom perspective; from an outstanding teacher leader perspective.
You have much to share and inform the dialogue about education in our state, so I'm very excited to see where your next plans are going to take you, having listened as Bob said at the retreat. It will be a time of impact, it will be a time for realities to get shifted, and it's a pleasure to know there's people out there like you all leading that work.
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Bob Maxfield:
And I predict that come August, 2022, when we have this conversation again, we'll be able to point to an ever expanding network of Trusted Voices reps around the state. I think currently there are 25 or 30 folks who have identified themselves this way and they go as far as northern Michigan.
I'm guessing we'll have double or triple that in another year, so congratulations to all three of you on establishing a wonderful, very important program. And to our listeners thank you for being part of this installment of Podcasts for Leaderful Schools. As always we're coming to you, almost live from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, and specifically from the Galileo Institute.
And that's a wrap.