Richard Pardo 0:00 This speaks right to diagnostic teaching, understanding where the pitfalls and where the miscommunication is happening in the moment, and teaching in that moment and pivoting to what they need, and so adjusting on the fly and making sure your students understand what's coming up.

Paul Beckermann 0:18 The topic of today's podcast is diagnostic teaching with Richard Pardo. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avidPaul Beckermann 0:18** The topic of today's podcast is diagnostic teaching with Richard Pardo. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes that we can raise the bar for education. To learn more about AVID visit their website at avid.org.

Rena Clark 0:39 Welcome to Unpacking Education, the Podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I'm Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 0:50 I'm Paul Beckerman.

Winston Benjamin 0:51 And I'm Winston Benjamin. We are educators.

Paul Beckermann 0:54 And we're here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 0:59 Education is our passport to the future.

Paul Beckermann 1:04 Our quote for today is from Erin Bead of NWEA. She says, "Formative assessment helps us evaluate whether our plans and responsive moves are working while there's still time to do something about it." All right. Rena, what are your thoughts about the quote today?

Rena Clark 1:20 For me, it's just a good reminder that assessment's not just about measuring, but really about empowering educators and how we can adjust our teaching and our instructional practices so that we can really meet students where they are and really help meet those objectives and those outcomes and those standards. Because we all know, as teachers, we're making a million different decisions all the time. So if we have good formative assessments in place, that's really going to impact and support those decisions, those instructional decisions we're making so that we're headed in the right direction.

Paul Beckermann 1:59 Nice. Winston, what are your thoughts?

Winston Benjamin 2:01 I really appreciate the end of the quote that there's something that we can do about it. I believe with the way things are, there's a lot of blaming students and abilities on a student, on a learner who's trying to learn something brand new, and not thinking about, "How did I deliver the information to this person who has no idea how this works?" So I think this gives it really puts the onus on the educators to be aware of their actions, and not just students inabilities. And it really changes this idea that students are incapable. And I really appreciate that.

Paul Beckermann 2:40 Yeah, thanks for that insight. I agree, Winston.

Paul Beckermann 2:44 All right. Our guest today is Richard Pardo. Richard is a teacher at Richardson North Junior High, where he teaches seventh grade AVID, AVID Excel social studies, and GT classes. Richard is also a member of the AVID Certified Educator program. Hey, welcome Richard. Thank you all.

Richard Pardo 3:06 Thank you all for the welcome in there. As you were talking about that quote, I actually thought that it was great because it's going right into what we're going to be talking about tonight. I think a lot of times when you're teaching, you're always thinking about that end goal in mind, but the quote really speaks to adjusting on the fly and making sure your students understand what's coming up. And so when I was hearing the quote, I was "This speaks right to diagnostic teaching as a whole." It's understanding where the pitfalls and where the miscommunication is happening in the moment, and teaching in that moment and pivoting to what they need. And so I thought the quote spoke great towards what we're going to be talking about tonight.

Paul Beckermann 3:48 Awesome. And before we jump into the diagnostic teaching thing, could you just introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners? Who are you, and what's a little bit more about yourself?

Richard Pardo 3:58 Yeah. So I am a 16-year teacher. Obviously, my name is Richard Pardo. I grew up on a farm down in South Texas in a place called Victoria, and my parents always stressed the importance of learning, and so at a young age, I kind of just understood that education was important. And although, in my college career, I did radio, television, and film, I quickly pivoted myself to teaching after about a year and a half of selling advertising, and so I have absolutely loved everything I do in the classroom setting.

As you touched on, I have a wide array of different things I've taught. And so I started off in D, ISD, many years ago, teaching first year ESL students, second year ESL students, where I was mentored by a late woman named Anna Blum, and she stressed the importance of AVID strategies, and so I've used them throughout my whole career. And so I've taught everything from ESL social studies and language arts to GT eighth grade social studies to the AVID elective and AVID Excel. And along the way, I've taught some different things during summer school.

Things that are important to me outside the classroom: I'm a big family person. I love spending time with my mom and dad, my brothers and sisters. I absolutely adore my wife and my two kids, and so I spent, actually, I was eating dinner with them before coming back to school to record with y'all. So it's just one of those things that I know family time is important, and it's something that I really enjoy, but I also like things like football and sports and basketball. I used to, in addition to teaching, I coached for a long time. And so that's kind of the rundown, man. I just enjoy what I do, and I'm kind of an open book.

Rena Clark 6:08 Well, I am excited to read a little bit more about this book, open you up, get to learn some more. But I have to ask, as someone, maybe I'm just in the dark, someone over here in Washington State, what's GT? What's that stand for?

Richard Pardo 6:22 GT is gifted and talented, and so I've worked the realm. I've actually worked with first year ESL students, I've worked with inclusion students, I've worked with on-level students, I've worked with pre-AP or advanced students, and I've worked with GT students. So it has been the gauntlet, yes, but what's crazy is, I think when you adapt and you're using a lot of strategies that we use in class, every kid can learn. Every kid is more than capable of stepping up and showing you great things. And so it's a joy. I mean, I've worked with kids who, when they first walked into my room, they never thought they would be going to college, and the first person they called when they got into college was me. So I've worked with kids that knew they were going to dominate and go to college and do great things. It's crazy; you work with kids for long enough, and you start seeing them become teachers, too. I feel old, but then at the same time I feel young. I think it's crazy because having taught middle school majority of my career, they keep me young. Just being around kids. I get told all the time that I may look not as young as I feel, but these kids will just, they kind of pick on you a little bit, but then it's kind of like, that's kind of what they do to their friends. So it's kind of like, "Okay, that's cool, whatever".

Rena Clark 8:01 I'm excited to dig in. You brought it up earlier. We're going to be talking about diagnostic teaching. So if you can just give a little rundown for our audience, what is diagnostic teaching? What is it we're about to get into?

Richard Pardo 8:17 Yeah, diagnostic teaching is a teaching method or strategy that you use when you are figuring out and assessing your students' abilities. And what you're doing is you're identifying areas for improvement, and you're either working in strategies to help them improve or going back over what they might have missed. And I know that earlier y'all talked about formative assessments, and it's taking those formative assessments and informative assessments, and kind of seeing what you can do to help them grow in those different areas that they may be struggling with.

But I think to me, diagnostic teaching is something you can do right from the very beginning. It's been a little while since I've taught the AVID elective as a whole. I've been teaching eighth grade history in addition to AVID Excel, and this year, even with my AVID kids, I started to realize that I could do diagnostic teaching from the very beginning of the year. I looked at their star scores from previous years and saw where we could improve right off the bat. And so I've implemented some things that I would do with my AVID Excel kids, for my AVID kids, based on what their scoring was, and that's diagnostic teaching. You look at what they were able to accomplish the year before, and you start putting in strategies from the very beginning on day one or two, that are going to help them to grow. And so I looked at their reading star scores. And I was "Y'all didn't do bad." In fact, I came to find out that they did the best in district as a whole for my school, but I felt like, for AVID kids, we should be knocking out higher scores. And so we've implemented that. We've read every day for 10 to 15 minutes a day, and then we summarize what they read, and they have to put it in their own words. And so it's really diagnostic teaching when you think about it, because you're looking at what they came with, and you're already starting to improve from day one. And so that's what we're talking about today, is really just that assessment and changing the different ways that you instruct them, so that when you evaluate them, they continue to grow and rise.

Winston Benjamin 10:50 I appreciate that. That gives me a very high level. Here's what this context and concept is, similar to Universal Design for Learning. Here's this high level conversation about what it is. But is there a way that you can help, not only our listeners, but someone who is willing and wants to implement this? What are some of the day-to-day action steps in your classroom so that we can help envision how this is done in practice?

Richard Pardo 11:22 Yeah, perfect. I think that one example, Winston, that I was doing with my students this year is we were doing focus notes in class, right? It's an AVID strategy that's one of the bread and butter strategies within AVID. And what I noticed was my students were doing a pretty good job, but I felt like they could be stronger in certain aspects. And so being part of the AVID Certified Educator program, we were going over some strategies, and they gave us some resources that talked about creating stronger essential questions and creating higher level two and three questions within focus notes.

So in the second nine weeks, to start the second nine weeks, I told my students, "Hey, your focus notes are pretty good, right? But I think that we could make them even stronger." And so kind of using that language to say, "You're doing a good job, but let's make it a little bit better. Let's make them stronger." And so I took a mini lesson that was kind of designed within our program, and I implemented that mini lesson to get them to understand where they could make stronger essential questions, understand that what they're seeing on the board as the objective is actually the essential question. And then from that, I started seeing stronger quality, focused note taking. And I'm "This is what, this is a skill y'all can use, man. This is something that as you grow up and you get to college level, you take what you're learning here, and that will translate at any college understanding how to take notes." Because I got kids come back and will say, "When I'm taking notes in college, or what my brother or sister said, they're taking everything the professor's writing." And I'm "No, you take the strategies we're teaching you here and you use them up there." You're not going to catch every word.

So in the realm of, how can they use it every day, whether it's a formative or informative assessment, understanding that when you're looking at kids' work, if you see a part where they can improve, just kind of creating that mini lesson or working it into warm-ups or exit tickets. Those are things that will help the kids to understand where they can get better and where they can grow.

Another example, when I was teaching history, what we started doing is we would build in re-teaching materials as they took formative assessments. And so what they would do is, if they got the question wrong on the Google Form, it would take them to a second part that re-taught the material, whether it was a short little video or short little reading that they could do, and then it took them back to the original question. And so from that piece that we gave them, they were able to kind of work their way to the correct answer. And so it was built in there for them, kind of the re-teach piece. And so those are two strategies that I kind of look at as saying, okay, one strategy is for when you're teaching it as a whole, it's kind of like informal. The other one is kind of more formal, like, they got this specific question wrong, but this little information is going to help them get to the right question. And I know you mentioned, in kind of backwards teaching, when you're creating that formative assessment as a teacher, I think you kind of know what they're going to historically struggle with, and so that's what we would do. We would put those re-teaching moments in for those questions we knew they were going to struggle with.

Rena Clark 15:17 And maybe we can dig into a little more, because we know one of the strategies used is Notice, Pause, Pivot. So could you just describe that strategy a little bit more and tell our listeners how you might use that in your classroom?

Richard Pardo 15:34 Yeah, absolutely. When I'm teaching, if I notice that students are struggling, I will pause myself and ask the question to them, "What are y'all kind of not understanding?" I kind of pause and kind of have that conversation with them of, "How can I try to figure out, how can I re-teach it in a different way and pivot to a way that they're going to understand it?"

A lot of times, with middle schoolers, it's a lot of vocabulary. They struggle with understanding what you're actually asking them, because they might not understand the full vocabulary of it. So a lot of times it may be rewording the question or simplifying the instruction for them to fully get it. But again, what I'm doing is I'm noticing they're struggling, pausing to figure out what I can do to help them understand it better, and then I pivot in a way to either give them another example or reword it in a way that I think that they'll fully understand the information that they need to get.

The objective has to stay the same, especially if you're working, well, in Texas, we have TEKS, right? And so nationwide, they have their own set of learning standards as well. You still got to hit the standard, but you have to make sure that the kids are understanding it. So when I pivot, it's never changing the objective. It sometimes it's never changing the actual end product. If I feel like the product is still what I want them to get to, it doesn't change that either.

Sometimes it does change the product. Sometimes the product becomes something totally different, and it's "Okay, so when I pivoted, this is what we're going to do now." And other times, I'll be honest, I've had some lessons I thought were going to be a knockout home run. I started teaching it, and then I started seeing all the blank faces, and I said, "Okay, we got to scrap this right from the beginning, the nuts and bolts, and if I have to walk y'all through this, I'm okay walking y'all through this. The most important thing is that you actually got the information and understood it." And that has happened before with GT students. I got this great lesson I was going to do on westward expansion, and I was "All right, eighth grade, we got it. This is a lot of review. We're going to start here."

And what I ended up realizing is they had forgotten a lot of the material that we had covered in the previous semester, and so I was expecting them to come in and knock out a lot of the stuff I had taught earlier. And it's "We're going to scrap it. Let's go back. Let's watch a video to remind us of what we taught earlier this school year." And then you start seeing the light bulbs go off on their heads. "I remember exactly what, not only the 13 Colonies, but I remember this Louisiana Purchase. In the days of the Louisiana Purchase, I remember all these things previous that we need to know to actually get through this unit on why America was expanding with manifest destiny."

And so I just when we created the lesson, it was "They're going to get this. It's going to be great. I'm having them make advertisements, and having them tell me why they want to go to Oregon Territory and all these things." And all of a sudden it was "Wait a minute, let's, let's review the 13 Colonies before we get there." So it's happened before where it's "I'm pivoting totally and having to go back to let's get the foundation." I was thinking too high. We got to go back to foundation stuff. Teaching is hard, because sometimes you get that lesson and you think it's going to be a home run, and then a lot of blank faces.

Winston Benjamin 19:44 That is the everyday reality of the classroom, the fun and the joy of it, also the joy of that pivot when it works and then you see the light. That's also joyful. But I got a real question there, because a lot of times when we think about when students are not getting it, you notice something, right? So what are the different ways that you can notice which, what students need, right? So is it the blank faces that you mentioned? What are some of the examples, and especially thinking about diagnostic teaching? What are some of the examples that you can use to notice when students are in need and what they need?

Richard Pardo 20:22 Well, a lot of times, what I'll do is I'll open up a unit with an open-ended question, kind of "What can you tell me about this?" And it's not always discussion based. Sometimes it's written based. And so if I'm walking around the room and I notice that students are struggling to write kind of the thoughts that we kind of covered before, or thoughts that are coming up, and ideas that they should be able to get to, then it becomes "Okay, I need to go back," right? And so sometimes it's the open-ended questions that will help you to gauge where kids are understanding.

Sometimes it's the exit ticket. Say, I just taught a lesson, and that exit ticket, I'm figuring, "Okay, we're going to get 80% or higher most kids." And then it comes back, and some of the kids are at 40% out of five questions. I know I need to go back and re-teach that, or I need to put it in different words that they're going to fully get what I was getting at. I think that when you're teaching diagnostically, you're always kind of looking at what they're understanding, what they're not understanding. And it can be just that look. It can be how they actually perform on an assessment. It could be that takeaway.

I know a lot of times with AVID kids, I'll have them summarize different things, and when I'm looking at the summarization, I'm "Oh no, this was not where we should have been." Or the other thing is always having them write down questions in a parking lot. That's an AVID strategy that I've used over my career as well, and one that I learned at one of my first AVID Summer Institutes was a parking lot. And so some of those questions are very good to get to diagnostic teaching, too. Just, whether it be a virtual parking lot or on a Padlet or a parking lot that you're using in your classroom, sometimes the kids will just tell you, "Hey, I'm not getting this," because the questions will lead you to that. So it's kind of like being open with my students and having those open discussions.

I also think the huge key to this is making sure they're in a safe environment. When students feel like they're in a safe learning environment and they know it's okay not to get something, they're more open to tell you, "Hey, I'm struggling with this." I think a lot of times that relational capacity that we build with students gets them to be more open with us than other teachers, maybe even. And so when you build that relationship, you have these strong relationships with kids. From the very beginning, they're more open to tell you, "I really just don't get it. I know you're trying to do a great job. I'm not getting what, what the, I don't even remember what the objective was at this point in time." So I think that relational capacity is also a big piece of diagnostic teaching.

Paul Beckermann 23:35 So you've mentioned a couple different AVID strategies along the way here. Can you pick out one or two AVID strategies that you intentionally try to work into this diagnostic teaching process?

Richard Pardo 23:52 Yeah, I obviously, because I'm teaching AVID just as an elective this year, I tend to like to see what they do with the summarization piece. A lot of times I'll close out class with, or it's not always necessarily a summarization. Sometimes it's "Give me one thing that you took away." Just give me what was key to your understanding of this process, or "Tell me why organization is important to you." We were just setting goals again this past week when we came back from break, and the big question at the bottom was, "Why do we revisit our goals constantly?" And what I want them to take away from it is, as you continue to grow, you need to re-shift your thinking and fully understand why you are always looking back at these goals and why you're creating new goals. I want them to leave this classroom knowing it's okay to sometimes go back and lower your goal if your goal was way too high, because, like I tell them, you could be shooting for 100 in a class. But if you're making a 65, I'd rather shoot for a 75. Shoot for something that's attainable first before you start shooting for 100, because if you fall a little bit, you're not going to get so disgruntled. So one thing I like to do is the summarization piece, or "Give me one thing that you're getting from it."

Another thing that I do with AVID students is a simple, "Give me a thumbs up if you get it, give me a thumbs down." That kind of gives me a good understanding. I also will have them talk to their partners. I have them find a partner, and they'll have to tell their partner what they're getting from the teaching. If they're able to explain the objective or what was important about what we just covered to that partner, I know they got it. If they're sitting there, blank, it's "I don't know what I was supposed to do," then I didn't do my job, and then I have to go back and kind of retouch on things.

One example of that was during our final exam. I had them do a gallery walk. So they created presentations over leadership and had to tell me two qualities that they saw in leaders, and they created a Google Slides presentation. But when they did their gallery walk, they had to give kudos—one grow and one glow—to every student that they saw the presentation of. And so a lot of times, I like for them to work together to see where they can improve, because it's not just me seeing it, it's also their classmates. So building that authentic audience, building relational capacity among each other as well. I think they enjoy it too, which is cool. They were looking at presentations, and then they had to do the glow and grow for each one of their classmates. And then they had to tell me which was the best presentation they saw. And what was great about it is that they did not just choose their best friend. It was "This kid's presentation was the best one, because in their slides, they were very thorough with their explanation of why this person was a great leader." This was great because of the presentation itself. It just boomed. It was great seeing their presenting skills within their presentations. I was "This is good. I like this. This is, this is authentic." And when they do that, their classmates know that they're welcomed by other classmates.

Rena Clark 27:54 I love that. And you've mentioned a couple of times, and so I feel like our listeners are going to be intrigued. You've mentioned the AVID Certified Educator program. So can you talk a little bit about that and how that program has really helped you grow, especially in this particular area?

Richard Pardo 28:23 Yeah, so, 16 years, right? That's what I've been teaching, and I feel like a veteran in my school. We have a lot of younger teachers that I work with, and so I've been nominated before for Teacher of the Year, stuff like that, but I really feel in year 16, this might be the best year of teaching I've ever had. And one of the reasons why, and I talk to my Certified Educator presenters all the time, Gina Gamnis is one of them, about just teaching with more intention. It's crazy. When I'm actually sitting there lesson planning, I'm "This is where I can include this strategy. This is what I can do to make this even stronger." And it's those little pieces along the way, like I was telling you, like when we started second nine weeks and I saw that lesson on creating stronger essential questions. I was "We can make stronger essential questions. We can do this as a class."

I'm going to take this piece and use it, because I'm being more intentional with my thinking behind everything I'm doing. And I've always thought of myself as a pretty good teacher in that regard. But now it's like everything I'm doing is intentional. So we come back from Christmas break, and I had the kids creating goals, but I also wanted them to do some type of relational capacity piece, right? And so I sat there and said, "Well, what can we do that's kind of in the background, but they're still building relational capacity, but they're still taking care of my goals?" Yes, that's the first thing we want to do.

And so I was bouncing ideas off with my wife at home, and she was "Well, what do you think you could do?" And I was "Musical bingo. Let's do it." This is a great strategy. It's a nice breaker of sorts. And so what we did was we did Disney musical bingo. And so while they're working on their goals, they're building relational capacity, because all of a sudden you have a kid just jamming out to a song from Aladdin in the back of the classroom. It's "I didn't even know you knew that cartoon. That was for my when I was a kid." And so then you had kids that were singing Moana songs and all types of things, but they're playing the music in the background. They're playing this bingo game. They're taking care of their goals while they're working, but they're still getting that relational capacity piece. And in the past, I might have been "Okay, we're going to take care of goals on day one," not thinking about relational capacity in any regard, not thinking about, "Oh, I want them to do something fun while they're working on this." But I think what the AVID Certified Educator program has me doing is it's taking every piece along the way and coming up with ways to do everything at one time.

It's crazy. When I was even when I was doing my final exam, we're on the piece right now where it's teaching us to be more retrospective while we're creating lesson plans. And so when I was creating my final exam, I was taking pieces. "What can I do to make the objective, the learning objective, more clear? What can I do to make sure I'm doing diagnostic teaching?" And so during their final I put in different pieces that they had to reach before they can move to the next thing, and I had to check it to make sure that they were doing it right. So that was the diagnostic teaching piece, making sure that they had gotten every piece of it before they moved on to the final product. And then including things in that final product, they had to create a set of focus notes over the person that they were going to do their presentation, over which made them research and read and write before they started on their actual presentation.

These are things that in the past, I would have just said, "Alright, this is what we're going to do," and I wouldn't have laid it out for them so clearly, and that's what the AVID Certified Educator program is doing. I'm being so much more intentional with every single piece along the way, and trying to create that environment where everyone feels safe, everyone feels that they're a part of the classroom, that they're a part of the learning that goes on in here. And so I feel so strong right now in my teaching. It's crazy. And I would tell, if you're out there and you're teaching AVID right now, and you have an opportunity to become part of the AVID Certified Educator program, I would tell you to do it, because I think what you're going to find yourself doing is you're going to find yourself not just being more intentional, but you're going to be stronger in every asset of your teaching.

Paul Beckermann 33:18 I love that growth mindset and always trying to grow and become better. Kudos to you for joining that group to try to better yourself, even after a long, solid career already that you've had. And we like to do that in our show every week, too, and one of the ways we do that is through our toolkit. So let's hop into our toolkit.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 33:36 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 33:46 All right. Toolkit Time. Rena, what do you got?

Rena Clark 33:51 I think first and foremost, I'm going to put in a couple tools, because I do want to honor what Richard was talking about, is our AVID Certified Educator program. And if you want to find out more information about that, honestly, the easiest way is just going to be to Google AVID Certified Educator program. That's going to be the easiest way. There's lots of information on our AVID website, and so you can go ahead and find that there.

And as far as kind of some formative assessments, one that I've been using a lot with the high school teachers I've been supporting recently is different chat bots. So we find that that's been really great, a different way to kind of assess students, understanding what they're knowing. One we've been using a lot is SchoolAI. They have their sidekick chat bot. And the free version, you can have 75 uses per day, and if you become really good at prompting, you can have it. So I've used it with math teachers, science teachers, ELA teachers. It was acting as different characters, but it's a different way for students to kind of interact with a chat bot, and it gives you a full summary. So you have that live teacher dashboard, so you can kind of see how students are interacting, summarize what they're saying, and it's a lot of fun, and it gives you just a good overview of their thinking, and a bit more open ended. So it leaves for some different directions. And I always have people trying to break the chat bot, but I learned something about them as well, even in their attempts to break it.

Paul Beckermann 35:31 So you're using the one at SchoolAI, is that right, Rena?

Rena Clark 35:34 Yep, yeah, and it's called sidekick, but the one at SchoolAI, and then I know MagicSchool and other ones have that as well.

Paul Beckermann 35:42 Yeah, find the one you like. I love it. Winston, what about you?

Winston Benjamin 35:51 It's a real simple reminder: develop mini lessons after assessments that directly re-teach concepts of misconceptions before moving forward. I don't even know that that's a simple tool that is right there. Actually do that, be more intentional, and stop and do that. I just think that's a great tool that we should have in our toolkit.

Rena Clark 36:13 There you go, use data to inform your instructional moves.

Winston Benjamin 36:17 Whoa, Rena. Calm down there!

Paul Beckermann 36:22 That's awesome. So I'm thinking of one that another teacher mentioned to me that she did. She had a Google Form that she posted at the top of her LMS, and it was just there every day, and it was for kids who had a need or a question or needed to tell the teacher something, but they didn't feel comfortable doing it in front of the class, publicly. So they would go on to the form and they would put in "I couldn't get my homework done last night, my baby brother was sick, and all this stuff was happening. I'm kind of lost today." Well, then the teacher set up an Autocrat rule so that she would get emailed when a student did that, so she had a little email notification and she could check when, take attendance, and just quickly check and see if any student checked in. And that was a way for her to assess, kind of and diagnose if there were some unique needs of that student for that day. I just thought it's kind of a simple little thing, but it really helped a few kids in a big way.

Paul Beckermann 37:35 Richard, you get a chance to, you've had a chance to share some things today, but what's maybe one tool or strategy that you didn't get to that you want to drop in the toolkit?

Richard Pardo 37:49 Well, if I could drop two, one's very simple. At some point when we were talking about objective learning and learning objective within the AVID Certified Educator program, I started putting the learning objective on every assignment we were doing, and just making sure kids understood exactly what they were supposed to get out of it, and even underlining key words that they were supposed to fully get. And I think that that's kind of before we even start the assignment. Before I go over what they're supposed to get out of it, or, excuse me, not what they're supposed to get out but kind of the explanation of what the assignment is, I go over the objective. It's "Hey, it's right there for you. It's right in plain sight. It is right on your desk. It is right on the assignment."

And then the other one kind of hits on that Magic School AI that you were talking about, Rena, and it's I used it to create some different lessons earlier this year that I needed to have my kids learn how to ask questions, for when we were about to start the Tutorial Request Process. I wanted them to understand that you ask questions to get to your answer. And so I created some mini lessons on Magic School AI that kind of put the kids in detective shoes, and they had to solve mysteries. And I put a quick, "This is what I want," into Magic School AI, and it made it in two seconds. I was "This is exactly what I need," because I really wanted them to understand you ask questions to get where you're going. And that's the Tutorial Request Process. Is asking questions to kind of get the kid or the student where they need to go. And so Magic School AI was cool for that for me. So I love that tool when it came to that particular assignment that I created. So two things there: just putting the objective out there for everybody to know, and Magic School AI where they can just use a couple words.

Rena Clark 40:00 Yes, and boom, it knocks it out for you. Nice. Well, I love all those great things in the toolkit, and that's going to roll us right into our next section of one thing.

Transition Music 40:20 It's time for that one thing. Time for that one thing. That one thing.

Paul Beckermann 40:22 So what's our one thing that we are taking away or left pondering? So why don't you start us off?

Paul Beckermann 40:28 I am thinking, and I don't know if this was intentional, Richard or not, but at one point you said informative assessments. And I love that, because not only are they formative, but they're informative. They inform us about what we need to do to make that lesson better, maybe where a student's lacking or where they're struggling. I think that just is golden for me. I love that.

Rena Clark 41:01 I like that too. Another T-shirt. Informative could be. I like that. I like that a lot. How about you, Winston?

Winston Benjamin 41:09 For me, I think it's, it's okay to slow down, to go fast. Take the time. Really figure out what the students are in need, because if you do that, then you'll actually get to the end of whatever your goal is, because the students are on board on the train. So I think it's okay to slow down, to go fast. We're still in New Year goal territory. So I feel like that aligns that. You don't just start out sprinting or running the marathon. You got to go slow to eventually get to that goal, and you're going to go backwards a little bit, back and forth.

Rena Clark 42:02 I appreciate that. I still, I'm never stop being surprised that this is such an "Aha" still for so many people, or even 20 years in. We need to use data to inform and adjust our instructional practice, but data comes, and I always say, all form, shapes and sizes. So we are constantly collecting data. We're basically improv actors, educators, and we are collecting data in all kinds of different ways, shape, sizes, and then really taking that data in both formal and informal ways to adjust our instructional practices. So we're pretty impressive, honestly.

Paul Beckermann 42:33 Teachers rock.

Rena Clark 42:34 Yeah. How about you, Richard? You have something last, mic drop or anything you want to leave our listeners with?

Richard Pardo 42:41 Well, I think, just as an educator, I think we don't hear it enough: Just give yourself praise. Because you're right. We wear a lot of different hats all day long. Earlier today, I was giving a kid a Band-Aid, and then I was doing this, and then I was doing that, and it's "I'm wearing a lot of different hats here." And then I was comforting someone who was having a bad day. And so I think as we enter the semester, just understand that you're doing a great job. And you're trying your best for your kids. I think that's the key: that if you bring your A-game every day, your kids are going to grow. And if you use some of the things we were talking about, as far as diagnostic teaching, and you catch it early enough, you could definitely guide them to the Promised Land, as they might say, and help them to improve on whatever they may be struggling with.

Paul Beckermann 43:41 All right, that sounds like a good way to end today. Thanks so much for being with us today, Richard. We appreciated the conversation.

Richard Pardo 43:47 No, I appreciate y'all. It's one of those things that I love talking about education and what it has brought to me, because it's a joy. I've had a fun time teaching and creating relationships with students, and I think when they come in here, they feel it and they just want to try their best. So giving some insight on your show and hearing y'all talk about different things, it's just an awesome experience for me.

Paul Beckermann 44:16 All right. Well, thanks again, and you take care and best of luck with the rest of the school year for you.

Richard Pardo 44:21 Thank y'all. Y'all have a great evening.

Rena Clark 44:24 Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 44:27 We invite you to visit us at avidopenaccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 44:41 We'll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark 44:46 And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 44:49 Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 44:51 You make a difference.