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Katie Toppel: [00:00:00] So one of the reasons I really love SIOP is because it’s a framework, it’s not a curriculum. And so the SIOP model offers eight components and 30 features. Over time in presenting about SIOP, I have kind of now crafted this new way of explaining it. That the components and the features tell us What it is that we need to teach to be effective for multilingual learners.
So those components and features list out things such as making connections to students backgrounds, connecting the current learning to past learning, explicitly teaching vocabulary, using supplementary materials. Those are like instructional moves and things we need to think about. Hi everybody. Welcome
Justin Hewett: to the ML Chat Podcast.
My name is Justin Hewett and I will be your host today. I’m joined here by my co host.
Mandi Morris: Mandi Morris.
Justin Hewett: And we just had the best conversation with Dr. Katie Topple. She is a published author, she’s an incredible practitioner, [00:01:00] and it was so fun just hearing about all of her experience in co teaching. And she’s been doing it for a lot of years now.
This is kind of a newer trend, it feels like, that we’re seeing becoming more and more popular each year. And she’s been doing it for quite a while now. And it’s just amazing to hear her story of, of how it’s grown over time.
Mandi Morris: I loved hearing Katie talk about her lessons in the classroom and how hands on the students are with learning and just organically grasping language through their experience in the classroom.
She. You know, her classrooms are so fun. She just makes teaching sound so fun and really highlights the benefits of co teaching for both the students and the adults in the room doing the teaching.
Justin Hewett: Well, it’s fun that the two of you work together for a number of years as well. And anyways, you are going to love this podcast, this conversation.
Thanks for being here with us. Let’s go jump in and, [00:02:00] and join Dr. Katie Topple. With 20 years in education, Dr. Katie Topple has taught students from preschool to university, beginning her career in a bilingual Head Start program. She has taught first grade, served as a special education teacher in Germany and taught kindergarten in Oregon.
Over the past decade, she has found her passion as an English language development teacher supporting multilingual learners. Today, she co teaches kindergarten and first grade. Katie co founded the ML Chat Book Club to provide virtual book studies for educators and helps organize the ML Summit virtual conference.
She is also a co author of DIY PD. And making content comprehensible for multilingual learners. The PsyUp model recently joining the esteemed PsyUp author team. Katie, we are so excited to finally have you on the ML chat podcast. It feels like preordained with you [00:03:00] having the ML chat book club that you should be on the ML chat podcast.
So thank you so much for being here with us today.
Katie Toppel: Thank you so much for inviting me. It’s, Oh, it’s such a pleasure to be here and I can’t wait to dive in and chat with you.
Justin Hewett: We are thrilled. I know Mandi’s been looking forward to this for a number of, for a long time as well, one of the things that we’re really excited to chat with you about that I’m not sure we’ve actually talked about much on the podcast is SIOP and you know.
What an honor for you to be invited to join that SIOP author team. How cool is that? I mean, that, that is that like, that’s a pretty big deal. How did that invitation come?
Katie Toppel: I first connected with Dr. Jenna Echevarria via Twitter through running virtual book studies with Tanh Nguyen. Her book, No More Low Expectations for English Learners was one of the earlier books that we, that we read and talked about.
And. I just started sharing about my [00:04:00] teaching on, on Twitter. It’s such a great, it, it was such a great platform to, you know, engage with other educators from across the U S and also internationally. And I just kind of. You know, show snapshots of what I do and materials I create. And in getting to know Dr.
Echevarria through, through the book study, I think that’s when she first started to know me. And I attended a couple of the SIOP virtual conferences over the summer and met the authors in person. And I think it’s just kind of putting my work out there to showcase what SIOP can look like and how great it is.
And. It was a couple years ago that they invited me to be part of the author team because I’m using it and I’m, I’m able to show the value of what it looks like and how it supports students in the classroom.
Justin Hewett: Oh, that is fantastic. I can’t wait to dive into that. We’re like, we’re, we’re going to go deep into SIOP and, and before we do that, I just have to mention like, Is it, can you believe the amount of [00:05:00] energy that Tom has?
I mean, he, we, we got to have him on a, on an episode a little while ago. And what an amazing conversation, very meandering and very just fantastic and fun and man, he, he brings the energy. That’s for sure.
Katie Toppel: Yeah, I think you’ll notice from when you read my bio, all of the things I do are with other people. I love to collaborate.
So, Tan and Dr. Carol Salva are co authors of DIYPD, and we, and also my fellow organizers in the ML Summit. Virtual conference. So we’re always collaborating and working together and we always say, we’re better together. If you’re going to do something on your own, you can make it better. If you find a colleague or a partner and you have someone else to be your thought partner and bounce ideas off of and reflect with, and they are both people who I agree.
Correspond with often via different, different social media platforms. And we Vox and send messages and we’re in three different time zones. So it can be tricky to actually [00:06:00] live lifetime to get together, but they’re, they’re both wonderful, wonderful collaborators and contributors to the field.
Justin Hewett: That’s fantastic.
And those are not like one hour time zone differences. Those are pretty significant. Yeah.
Mandi Morris: I mean, Katie, I love that. Like you, you highlight like right off the bat collaboration and how, what you do is better for, with collaboration. And that’s something else that we’re going to dig into today is your co teaching and how important collaboration is to that work.
So, I’m, there’s just so much to, to talk about that we are, we’re just so thankful for you to be here to have this conversation with us today.
Justin Hewett: Well, I think we ought to go back. I, I kind of want to hear about your journey to, you know, to where we are today where you’re serving English learners and you have this.
You know, tremendous passion and you found your, you know, your, your life’s mission, your, you know, this work that you’re doing, how did you get here? Right. I mean, you got into education, you’re trying a couple of different things out. You go to Germany. I mean, [00:07:00] kind of walk us through this experience and how you, how you ended up gravitating towards serving and supporting our multilingual students.
Katie Toppel: When I first moved to Oregon in 2005, I was looking for teaching jobs and that A year I didn’t get hired into a public school system, which is what I was aiming for, but I found a job. I think it was through Craigslist for a Head Start program, a bilingual migrant Head Start program. And I applied to be an assistant.
And when I interviewed, they offered me a position as a classroom teacher. And so I was an English speaking model in a classroom where I always had a Spanish speaking counterpart. And that was my first time really ever kind of, broadening my horizon that a classroom would be full of students who weren’t white.
My upbringing and my college courses really focused a lot on teaching, but without attention to students that have different needs and different populations. And so when [00:08:00] I was in a classroom where all of the students were Spanish speakers, it, it made me realize. Like, there’s a lot more to learn about teaching, and I don’t really know it all.
And that was just, that kind of opened my eyes to it, and when I first got a job in public schools, I realized, again, I’m completely not prepared for the classroom. Teacher ed does something, but it doesn’t do enough, and certainly it doesn’t prepare teachers to work with multilingual learners, doesn’t fully prepare teachers to work with students that have special needs.
And so, I think within my first year, I decided I need to get a master’s. I went and got a master’s in special education and an ESL endorsement because as a general ed teacher, I just wanted more tools. I wanted to know how to meet the needs of all of the kids in my classroom. And that included children with special needs and students who were learning English.
And I look back and I think about how I taught. Children who were learning English back then, and I tried my best, but I feel [00:09:00] like I have so many more tools in my tool belt now to make sure that I’m meeting their needs. And right after I finished my master’s, I’m like, I want more. I decided to get my doctorate and my husband at the time got a job offer to work in Germany.
So we moved to Germany and that put me in an international school setting. Which was different and very different than the U S. But again, it was just a, you know, a learning opportunity and you take something with you from every different role you have. And when I came back to the U S I got placed in kindergarten, which was not my choice.
And I thought, Oh, I don’t really want to teach kindergarten, but it turned out. I enjoyed it and just. In the process of becoming a mom and shifting from being a full time teacher to wanting to be a part time teacher so that I could also be mom and be with my babies, I, I ended up as an ELD specialist kind of just because we went to full day kindergarten in the state of Oregon.
And I said to myself, I. I don’t, I [00:10:00] don’t want to be a full day kindergarten teacher. I had been doing morning and afternoon half days and the job was available and I went for it. And it just, I mean, the stars align because this is the job that I’m meant to do. And I absolutely, I love, love being a language specialist, but when we get into talking a little bit more about collaboration, I can detail a little bit more about how different the job is now than what it was when I first, when I first started.
Mandi Morris: I would love to just pause here for a second because Katie, something that I’ve admired about you over the years. So we’ve known each other for, for years now, we both taught in the same school district. And you always. We’ve talked a lot about balancing being a mom and working. And I just want to sit on that for a moment because you, you know, you have a lot of accolades like you’ve published books, you have your PhD, you’ve taught in different environments.
And I think sometimes we can get a little bit overwhelmed as working moms. Like how did she accomplish, right? Can you just [00:11:00] talk for a moment, like how have you created those boundaries and honestly you’ve been really successful? do a model teacher at the work that you do while also holding some boundaries to be present as a mom.
Katie Toppel: It is not easy. And even though it looks like it may be all successful, I definitely have struggles and feel like I don’t have my life together sometimes. I think the biggest reason I was able to kind of. Do work in different areas or different buckets, so to speak, is because I did work part time in the classroom for a long time, and that was something I feel very fortunate to have been able to do so that my my babies had a little bit of daycare, and then I picked him up, and we came home, and they napped, and that’s when I chose to kind of do some of those things like Leading the book studies and keeping up on professional reading and just getting some of those mom things done.
But it’s, it’s definitely always a balance and there [00:12:00] are seasons and something always has to give. So in one moment I might be really focusing on writing or working on a project. And there’s probably dishes in my kitchen sink and probably my laundry is not done and I didn’t make my bed. And then. You know, maybe there’s another phase where some of those extra projects are completed, and then there’s something else that I’m able to kind of step up and accomplish a little more, but it’s very difficult to juggle all of the things and keep everything going at once.
And so I. definitely have had moments where I feel like I’m not doing it successfully. Or moments where I’ve had to say this right now needs to give in this season of my life, this particular thing can’t be a priority and it’s really hard to say no to things, but I’ve, I’ve learned, I’ve learned and I’ve asked friends and.
You know, I have a lot of, a lot of very strong women in my life who I go to for advice when I need help or feel overwhelmed. Shout out to my great friend, [00:13:00] Jess Bell, who is like my, my therapist and who will, you know, just tell me it’s okay to say no. And here, here’s how you could phrase it. And I’ll say like, Oh, somebody asked me to do this project.
And I just don’t feel like I have the capacity. And, you know, my friends and mentors normalize that you can’t say yes to everything. It’s okay to say no to things and you can’t do everything. So I just try to keep that in mind and do we’re all doing the best we can.
Justin Hewett: No, we, we totally are. And, and especially, you know, there’s a number of us that are overachievers that have a little bit of a chip on our shoulder for one reason or another.
And we just, we want to, we feel like we’ve got. You know, something that we need to give and, you know, and, and so I, I love that. I love hearing, you know, kind of how you work through that and you think about that. I think a lot of people have a hard time saying no to good things, right? And that’s the challenge is it’s not, you know, it’s, it’s not like they’re bad things.
[00:14:00] They’re really good things that really need opportunities. And in, you know, a lot of times those are the hardest to say no to because you’re not sure if it’ll come back or you really would like to do it, but it’s just in this season of your life. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s a no. And, and so I, I think that, you know, it’s You know, what’s your experience with saying no in those moments, you know, in those moments that it’s something that you’d like to do, but you say no.
And how does it typically fill in? How does it usually impact you? Just out of curiosity,
Katie Toppel: I try to be appreciative that someone would think of me to ask for help or, you know, ask for, for something that I have to offer that would benefit them or their organization. So I try to be gracious. I read somewhere phrasing it like, my plate is as full as I like it to be right now.
And so just because there is an opportunity doesn’t mean that you have to take it and [00:15:00] you don’t have to go bananas trying to be working and productive every moment of the day. There’s a lot to be said for knowing when to stop and when to engage in those things that bring you. Peace and a sense of calm.
I’ve taken up quilting and sewing just in recent years. And that’s something that I try to do for myself. And I get a lot of calm and peace in having to precisely cut things and arrange them. And there’s kind of creativity in that process. And I love reading. So I really try to make sure that I give myself the gift of doing those things.
And it’s hard to say no. And then sometimes when I do, when I send that email or I say. You know, no, thank you. I don’t have the capacity for that right now. My plate is as full as I like it. Then I feel relieved because we can’t do everything. It’s just not possible. So usually it’s guilt followed by relief.
Justin Hewett: No. And, and [00:16:00] that was actually, that was exactly what I was. I was excited to kind of hear you say, because a lot of times in the moment, you know, we might guiltily say yes, and then we regret it instantly. And it totally impacts so many different aspects of our life. When in reality. You know, the quick, hard no was so much better than the like the yes that then we have to prepare for and put all this work in for.
Anyways, I just I appreciate that. And I’m wondering how that’s impacted you in the classroom. How do you think being able to kind of set these boundaries? Be able to say no to certain things. You know, how, how does that impact your work, you know, as a co teacher today?
Katie Toppel: I feel like I have a high standard for excellence and in collaborating people rely on.
On me. And so to me, that is an area where I don’t, I don’t want to ever give my self permission to fall [00:17:00] short when it comes to my teaching, because it’s. It’s not okay to not be prepared when someone else is relying on you to plan something or bring something or, you know, have thought through something.
And so saying no to some of those other things allows me to then have. My full capacity when I’m coming into classrooms and working with the children who are, who are on my caseload and, and also the children that are my own, because those are the most important children in my life. So I want to be, I want to be fully present for, for both of those areas.
And sometimes that means. Yeah.
Mandi Morris: I, I’ve, I’ve really, I’ve just admired you over the years to be able to strategically think about what is a yes and where you show up with the full focus and value and then where it’s a no. And I just really appreciate you talking through that with us because [00:18:00] teachers do have a lot on their plate and there’s a, you know, an initiative this year that changes halfway through the year and then there’s a new initiative next year or.
A change in colleagues, a change in leadership. It can, you know, you, we hear a lot about the teacher burnout or teacher exhaust. And I think that these principles you’re talking about, there are some things that are just part of our job and like, you’ve got, they’re part of the responsibility. Right. But I love how practical you are at taking a step back and, and categorizing what can be a no.
And where is my yes, where it’s non negotiable that I show up with full excellence.
Katie Toppel: Yeah, I’ve been exchanging messages with a, a dear friend who just went back to teaching after a while of being a stay at home mom. And just earlier today we were, we literally sent each other pictures of the dirty dishes in our sink saying, I chose to not worry about this last night.
And I went to bed and got a good sleep and fix it in the morning and that’s okay. And so, [00:19:00] you know, if something has to give and it’s the dishes, that’s okay. I’d rather make sure that I’m giving my best too, to the people and the humans. It’s in, in my circle.
Justin Hewett: This is so good. This is, so I think everyone’s going to be able to relate with this, Katie, and appreciate you kind of sharing the realities of, you know, all of the, the different hats that you wear and, and the people that you’re trying to serve and the, and the work you’re trying to do.
That’s really fun to hear. I want to shift gears just a little bit and think about, you know, the work you do in serving multilingual students. You know, you’ve ultimately. It developed quite a following, you know, on X on Twitter, and you’ve shared so much through your book clubs and shared so many things that you’re doing in your classroom.
You know, how do you figure out if something’s working or not for you and in your classroom? I mean, you’re trying all these different things. How do you decide if it’s working or not?
Katie Toppel: When I see how children respond. And how [00:20:00] children experience success. That’s, that’s what tells me. So I’ll give you, I’ll give you an example.
We have a student in kindergarten this year and he is new to our country. So he’s new to school in the U S cause he’s five, but also new to the country. And when I screened him with the Elpa screener, he is emerging in all four language domains. He is brand new to English and. When we recently had a week where we’re learning about plants and doing all of our instruction, all of our lessons that we planned together, our activity at the end of the week is to ask students to draw a picture that shows us what they’ve learned and tell us about it.
Cause kindergartners are not writing on their own yet. So we just ask for them to tell us. And he. Shared five complete sentences with us about plants and he is a sponge and he he’s so phenomenal and it it’s you can see it you can see when kind of the light bulbs [00:21:00] go off and Students are just experiencing success Versus when you try something and you know, they’re their reaction is a lack of engagement That’s really kind of what I’m looking at is.
Are they? engaged or are they not engaged? This week we’re learning about birds nests and how, how birds make the nests, nests and materials they use. And I printed out pictures of all these materials that birds, birds use, and I put them on the carpet in my classroom and kind of scattered them around. And we were talking about how birds search for things and search was one of our words.
And so I had students hold a little laminated bird and I said, okay, the bird needs some twigs. Can you help me search? And then you bring it around and it’s just, it’s making it physical and engaging and things to look at and hold. And you can see in their faces and their reactions and, and hear when that language starts really coming out that, yeah, this is working.
Justin Hewett: I can imagine my first grader really enjoying [00:22:00] that activity. Yes.
Katie Toppel: And one, I had little, little eggs that I crafted so that they would open with a, a brad and there was a little birdie inside. Just all, just, you know, paper pictures. And one student, he sat on them and, are you sitting on the eggs? So they hatch, but just kind of that playfulness and that, that fun way that students that even if they don’t yet have the linguistic capacity to tell you something.
You’ve made it comprehensible to them and they can show you that they are engaged and they understand what, what they’re learning about.
Mandi Morris: Katie, when you’re co teaching now, you’ve been doing this for years. What content areas are you co teaching in and which have you found there’s the best bridge, if you will, because as you’re talking through that lesson, I’m visualizing it and I’m thinking, wow, there’s just so much here that is naturally students can move and touch and [00:23:00] manipulate.
What’s your feedback, your experience there?
Katie Toppel: I have primarily co taught during, during a literacy block when students are focusing on reading and writing. And that is my preference because there’s such a, a natural convergence between. Literacy standards and language standards, and we need to be reading and writing and speaking and listening when we’re engaging in literacy.
Sometimes the content that we’re using for literacy or what students are kind of learning about their topic or their theme has connections to science or social studies, and so those can can kind of weave in, but primarily through through literacy time, and I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer of.
You know, the best content area to use as a platform for co teaching, but the main focus is that no matter what you’re teaching, whether it’s elementary science, social studies, math, or high school, secondary, like a specific topic, that language is infused in that and that students are able to access content and learn [00:24:00] language in conjunction with anything that they’re learning because it should be Access to rich language throughout their entire school day.
Not just one specific block that is their ELD or their language block.
Mandi Morris: Earlier you were talking about collaboration and We’ve heard from other guests on the podcast too, that co teaching is a process. This is not something you roll out in your school and the first year it’s magic and it, and all the pieces fall into place.
It’s a journey. I’d love to hear you talk some about what has that journey been like for you personally, professionally, and also what does collaboration look like as a puzzle piece in this journey?
Katie Toppel: When I first started as an ELD specialist, all of my instruction was pull out in small groups, kind of standalone ELD.
And I was serving like kindergarten, for example, I had just been on the kindergarten team and I worked collaboratively [00:25:00] with those teachers. And in shifting roles, I felt a huge disconnect. And I felt like I was teaching content in my ELD group that was not at all connected to what they were doing in their classrooms.
And when we adopted a new curriculum for ELD instruction, it was like the same, but not aligned. And so my curriculum was practicing letters and sounds and familiar topics. Like family and school, but it wasn’t aligned with what classroom teachers were doing. And so there’s a disconnect. I might be on the family unit and in, in the class, they might be learning about bird’s nests.
And so there’s a disconnect for students. And it actually, I think adds to their cognitive load because the vocabulary is different and the letter focus might be different and the concepts or the, the language focus might be different. And so. There were [00:26:00] similar components, but the fact that they weren’t aligned, I think, made it more difficult for students and my colleague at the time mentioned co teaching and I really hadn’t even heard of it.
I didn’t. It wasn’t even in my, my realm of possibility. And when we started to think about collaborating with teachers to work with them, so that students A, would be in their classrooms learning with their peers. And accessing rich language in that context, but also continuing to just learn what their classroom teacher was teaching, that we would enhance the classroom content.
It just seemed like the perfect solution. It seemed like such a smart thing to do, because there’s nothing worse than showing up when you’re prepared to take students out of the classroom, and they’re doing something fun, and you have to have them stop. Because it’s time for them to go and then they return to [00:27:00] that classroom 30 minutes later and That they have lost the context and the flow of what’s going on and students who really are in the most need of support and clarity of academic directions and Activities they’re kind of then pushed back into the mix and they they’re floundering of I don’t know what to do now And maybe that’s not always the case But that’s kind of my worst case of Taking them out when they’re doing something fun and bringing them back when they’re now lost and so the idea of You Being someone who comes into the classroom and really working so tightly with classroom teachers, it It’s not easy.
It’s not always smooth, but it is so powerful.
Justin Hewett: When does that planning take place with, with the classroom teachers? Like, how do you make sure that you’re on the same page, that you show up ready to, to co teach and not just co exist in the classroom?
Katie Toppel: So the, which is a great question because there [00:28:00] has been a little bit of a movement towards away from standalone ELD and a movement towards.
ELD specialists being in the classroom, but not necessarily co planning. And so there is a difference between an EL specialist being physically in the classroom without having planned, without having previous, you know, knowledge in advance of what’s going to be taught in that co planning piece. The co planning piece is essential.
The teams I work with have a weekly meeting where they plan together. I feel very fortunate that I work with teams who are Already very collaborative and in our profession. You need your people. You need to be able to say these are all the tasks we have. Let’s divide and conquer and let’s help each other.
And so I join their team meetings and we plan together. I. I, through the work of Andrea Honigsfeld and Maria Dove, I’ve learned that there’s three parts of planning. There’s pre planning, co planning, and post planning. So for pre planning, I look ahead. My teams are [00:29:00] very organized and that is another gift that they have kind of a year plan that they’ve worked out.
And so I can look ahead and see what they’re going to be learning about. I can consult our adopted curriculum. I can look online at curriculum materials and I can kind of jot down. I have a notebook with sticky notes and just ideas of what vocabulary could work. What, what activities could we do? What would our linguistic focus be?
And then during our co planning, that’s when I kind of present in an organized way. I’ve already done a lot of thinking, here are my thoughts. And most of the time the teachers are. Willing and ready. Like that sounds great. Love it. And then after we plan together, that’s when I would spend time kind of really fleshing out those lessons more or creating materials or prepping slides.
A lot of most of our materials post COVID are now. digital because when we first came back, we couldn’t share materials and we found that creating kind of digital resources like slide decks makes it easier for all of the teachers to have access at the same time, rather than [00:30:00] me bringing something into the classroom and then taking it with me when I leave.
Mandi Morris: So when you think about planning, This is something that I mean, you’re many years into your career and you also have teachers that you’re collaborating with who are experienced teachers, right? They, like you said, they’ve got a year planned out and they’re organized when you think about co teaching. I think what scares some people is they’re hearing the amount of work that you guys put into it, the amount of time, how much are you able to reuse and recycle?
Do you start the next school year and you’re, it’s like a blank slate. And, but how much help people out here who are feeling like, how are we going to take this on? Like, what is your advice for people who might want to take this on?
Katie Toppel: Yes, we can reuse a lot of stuff. We’re always, we’re always continuing to innovate and tweak.
And I don’t think there’s ever two consecutive school years that are just. That’s the same status quo. Teachers leave, new teachers come, [00:31:00] class sizes change, like the quantity of classes in a grade level might change, admin changes, curriculum changes, just kind of the, I don’t want to say flavor of the month, but you know, kind of instructional, the instructional focus for the year or the district focus, all of those things shift.
And so there’s always other things we have to continue weaving in and adjust and kind of enhance. But yes, I have. That’s why Google, my Google Drive is my best friend and everything is archived there. And so I’m definitely not starting from scratch. Next year when we adopt a new reading program, we will be starting over in terms of kind of the year plan and that, that is going to be a, you know, a bigger workload.
But then once that’s done, then it’s just kind of how it evolves over the next The next year’s it’s not not starting completely new and there are teams that I used to co teach with and I don’t now just because of the difference in my FTE across different years, and they are able to still utilize [00:32:00] resources that we use together, even though I’m not coming into the classroom anymore.
So for sure, having digital creating digital resources is one way that we can reuse things year after year.
Mandi Morris: I’d love to shift into SIOP. I know you’ve spent, you know, a lot of energy and effort and time in this model. And I would love for you to highlight for us, you know, what does this look like? What does it mean for you to utilize SIOP in your classroom?
And what might that look like for someone who’s interested and they just want to learn more?
Katie Toppel: So, one of the reasons I really love SciOp is because it is, it’s a framework. It’s not a curriculum. And so the SciOp model offers eight components and 30 features, which kind of, I, over time in presenting about SciOp, I have kind of now crafted this, this new way of explaining it that the components and the features tell us what it is that we [00:33:00] need to teach to be effective for multilingual learners.
So, those components and features list out. Things such as making connections to students backgrounds, connecting the current learning to past learning, explicitly teaching vocabulary, using supplementary materials. Those are like instructional moves and things we need to think about. When you learn, when you read the SIOP text or get fully SIOP trained, you get the why behind that.
What is the research? What, what is the more detailed and nuanced information about Why these things are the things that we are having in, in the framework, but the how piece is. up to the teacher. It’s not dictated for the teacher. And that’s part of what I love because I consider myself a creative person.
And I like to design things and innovate things and come up with new ideas. And then a lot of those ideas become kind of a a routine or something that we use and change based on what we’re learning about. But I really like that [00:34:00] creative part. And I think that that is a piece that gives teachers agency because we, as the teachers know our students the best.
And there’s no curriculum that’s coming prepackaged that knows our students. And so having that flexibility to really think about these are the humans in front of me this year and these are the people that I need to make this lesson work for. And so year to year that changes depending on your student population, just depending on what grade level you’re teaching or whether you have a lot of newcomer students or students who are really at kind of that cusp of proficiency.
So, That’s what I appreciate that the framework gives you the what the research behind it gives you that, like why this is working, but the how is really up to the teacher based on what is going to work for their particular students.
Justin Hewett: I wanted to ask it. I loved what you said about. You know, there’s no curriculum that [00:35:00] really knows our students necessarily, right?
And you know, it seems like to me that that’s one of the challenges that we face really across the nation to some degree, is that when it comes down to having curriculums for our multilingual students, and you know, that there’s not. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like there’s a leading curriculum, if you will, or something.
You know, this, this one, you know, use this content all the time and these districts use it and they get the great, you know, the best growth or whatever it might be. There’s, there’s just not, you know, there’s not something out there like that. And I guess I’m just wondering if you have any idea why.
Katie Toppel: I mean, I, I truly don’t.
And I, I was just doing a presentation earlier today where I showed a graphic by Valentina Gonzalez, who has a wonderful, brilliant capacity to take complex issues in education and put them into kind of concise, beautiful graphics and infographics, and it’s a picture of a teacher manual with [00:36:00] that little box in the corner of, you know, how, what you should do if you have multilingual learners, and that seems to be.
A way that it’s situated that, oh, they’re an afterthought or just this extra add on. And on that slide in my presentation, I had Valentina’s picture and then next to it, a GIF of Patrick Swayze approaching Baby and Dirty Dancing saying, nobody puts Baby in the corner. That’s not how we should situate instructing multilingual learners that they’re just this corner box of, you know, use a picture.
Well, there’s a lot more to that, and it really needs to be central and fundamental to our entire process of planning instruction. And another important piece to remember is when we are, and I always use the word enhancing, when we’re enhancing a program to make it responsive to our learners. That is going to benefit everybody in the classroom.
It’s not just going to benefit our multilingual learners. [00:37:00] It is going to benefit all of our students in a way that is holding them accountable for grade level standards. We’re keeping the rigor. We’re not watering down or making it simple. We are just making sure that we’re making content comprehensible so that it is understandable through, you know, a variety of components and.
That we are continuously addressing language while we’re doing that content and language always together.
Justin Hewett: Well, and the thing that I think really sticks out to me the most when I think about this is there are so many of our students, not just our multilingual students who are learning English, who would benefit from us infusing language development into all of our content, not just the little black box, you know, nobody puts baby in a corner, like.
Not just this little black box of wave your hands like this for your English learners or, you know, [00:38:00] use this picture like you got to be kidding me. Why are we not infusing language throughout, especially today? Like our students today are challenged with language more than You know, I don’t have the data necessarily, but I just see it.
And I hear it that students are struggling with language. And, and so that just is what’s top of mind for me is I’m just thinking, why don’t we infuse language into all of our content?
Katie Toppel: That’s something we talk about often. When we talk about why we love co teaching, because all of the children get access to that instruction, because there are times when our language use survey is not perfect, and it doesn’t, it doesn’t always, it doesn’t always get students who might benefit from language development and it, it doesn’t, you know, sometimes it gets students who truly, they might not need services, but when it’s, when the language instruction is situated in the classroom, everybody is getting access to it.
That rich language development. And I’ve had [00:39:00] conversations with other, especially kindergarten teachers of what is it? Is it the technology and the devices that kids are maybe a little bit more attached to screens, but that language is so important and it does benefit everyone. And we always say, if we gave a language screener to every child entering kindergarten.
There would be a lot of monolingual speakers who qualify for ELD. It’s it would, and I maybe even across more, you know, multiple grade levels, but giving, making sure that, you know, any, any content, any subject area is language rich does benefit all students in academic language and just kind of, you know, general vocabulary for English language, reading, writing.
It’s absolutely.
Justin Hewett: That’s the best case I’ve ever heard made for co teaching. Actually, like, like seriously, and I know that’s not actually what you were doing, but like, when I think about the ability of, you know, the ELD, you know, [00:40:00] partner in the co teaching relationship to infuse language into all of these different, you know, concepts and content that is being taught, you know, that is going to.
Like that’s gotta move the needle in such a significant way. Is there data and research behind the efficacy of co teaching that you, that you’re aware of or you can point us to?
Katie Toppel: I, Andrea, Dr. Andrea Honexfeld and Dr. Maria Dubb are my go to for anything and everything related to co teaching. They, they are the gurus and they They are it.
So if you’re interested in kind of that Avenue, I would absolutely search up the work that they’re doing. And I can’t cite particular studies off the top of my head, but yeah, or maybe the co teachers are too busy doing the co teaching to also research studies. But I sure, I sure can see firsthand that it’s effective.
Absolutely. And that’s part of the other reason I like it is because. When I was teaching in standalone classes, I didn’t get [00:41:00] to see the work that a typical peer would produce. And so that left me not really sure of how much to push the students on my caseload. And now that I am fully embedded in classrooms, I see that amongst the class, you know, there’s a variety of skills.
And for one first grader, it might look like this. And for another first grader, it might look like that and they’re very different. And so I can kind of see where my multilingual learners fit into the, the classroom community and you start to see that we, we, we don’t have this attitude that will all multilingual learners are struggling students.
No, they’re not. And you know, some of them need significant support as do some monolingual students. And so it just helps you to see how multilingual learners fit and that we are not. watering down content for them. We’re not making it easier for them. We can see what a typical student does [00:42:00] and we can agree on what the grade level expectation is.
And then we can support all of the students in the class to reach that level, whether or not they are English learners.
Mandi Morris: I love something that you pointed out just then. I think a lot about, I, I’m like you, that I love to collaborate and I work with some incredible educators on, in my CNI department. And I’ll say often, like, they sharpen me, we sharpen each other.
And I love that you pointed that out, the benefit for, we, You spend some time talking about the benefit for the students. I’d love to hear you talk some about the benefit for the adults in the room of co teaching. Like, how do you see that process as you sharpening one another?
Katie Toppel: Absolutely. We, we are in an era.
Where I don’t think there’s any teacher that doesn’t feel kind of stretched to their max. And so when it comes to professional learning, you know, we we have opportunities and [00:43:00] often we are it’s kind of decided for us what what our focus is or what we’re going to be learning about and I’m somebody who loves to learn.
I don’t feel like there are enough opportunities for professional learning, but it’s always a balance of the things you need to get done and the things you want to get done. So that time is always tight. There’s never enough time. Code teaching offers what we kind of call job embedded professional learning.
Because there’s a modeling component to it, that when we are teaching together, it is, there’s different models and there’s different ways that co teaching can look. In my setting, we really like to, there’s kind of two models we gravitate towards. One is that we’re teaching together. Both teachers are teaching the class at the same time.
And there’s a give and take, which I wouldn’t say it takes practice, but it takes. Time to kind of develop that back and forth. And then the other one is kind of a one. One teacher is leading and the other teacher is supporting or focusing on [00:44:00] one specific thing. And it might be checking for engagement. It might be sitting by students who need.
extra support or repetitions. It might be supporting kind of with behavior management. It might be, there’s just, there’s a lot of things, but we, we usually do those too. But so there is an opportunity for each teacher to in certain moments, step back. And kind of observe or take in what their colleague is doing.
So when I am in classrooms during math, my counterparts are typically leading the math instruction. And that gives me a lens of how are they teaching it? What are they saying? How are the students responding? When we’re doing our ELD block, often there’s pieces that I’m leading and classroom teachers get to see what these language tools and strategies look like.
And I think that that is something that even if you go to a professional development. Session, you don’t always get to see what it looks like in action. And that’s what teachers want. They want a takeaway and they want to do now, what can I do now? [00:45:00] What does this look like? And so code teaching offers that the access to seeing what it looks like when it’s modeled.
And then teachers being able to. Take that in and utilize it even when the language teacher is not in the room. And that’s what I see. I see colleagues that I’ve been co teaching with, some of them for nine years now, they own it. If I, I, and I’m going from one class to the next. And I, my schedule is when I finish in this classroom, I’m starting in the next one.
It’s like, One boom, boom, boom. And I will, you know, leave one classroom and come to the next classroom. And my co teacher is already introducing the objectives and she’s starting the instruction and she could do it without me, but she’s thankful that I’m there. And then we do it together, but it really is about.
Owning the language instruction all day. And there’s just this beautiful way that it’s, it’s not like you’re going to learn about language development strategies today. Let’s start at the beginning. It’s just kind of this immersion [00:46:00] and it’s really beautiful what they, the skills that they can come out with.
Likewise for me that I can learn from them. I always have kind of a. If I do four classes in a row, my first teacher kind of sets the tone and they might add certain things that they’re making connections from what they’ve done in the classroom and then I can carry that forward or how a teacher kind of leads the technology instruction or the writing instruction because something that’s true about Classroom teachers is, they’re in their classroom, they’re in their silo, and they don’t often have time to go visit other teachers.
It’s like they’re in their own space with their kids from the time the kids arrive to the time kids leave. And so being able to kind of spread the wisdom and the excellent practice that I see across classrooms is really powerful too. So there’s so much benefit to teachers, absolutely.
Justin Hewett: In my head, I’m thinking of that as like baked in professional development, but I [00:47:00] felt like you had a different name for it.
What did you what did you call that
Katie Toppel: job embedded? Yeah, job embedded.
Justin Hewett: Yeah, that is that is fantastic. You know, it’s really interesting. It makes me, you know, think a little bit about, you know, the work that we’re doing with Flashlight 360, where we’re, you know, going in formatively assessing speaking and writing.
And, you know, frankly, a lot of teachers, you know, even a lot of our ELD teachers don’t have a lot of experience doing that specific work. And so it’s interesting to me that, you know, sometimes we’ll talk with a ELD teacher who’s been doing this work for 12 years or 13 years working with middle school students.
And their biggest takeaway from using flashlight is, Oh my gosh, I like, I never had a tool to do this. I’ve never received any coaching on how to do this. And. You know, and then we come back later and we hear how much they feel like their instruction has changed and their approach to, you know, infusing language into their conversations and how that’s changed.
And it’s just, it, it really resonates with me that, you know, if you are [00:48:00] working to model infusing language into all of these lessons, right. And into, you know, into these classrooms with your, with your co teachers. Like what great modeling that you’re providing that, of course, a teacher that you’ve been working with for six or seven or eight years as a partner is going to be able to, you know, really be mindful of infusing language into all of their lesson planning.
They’re going to be so much more mindful of it. And I just, I love, I love the craftsmanship of that when it comes down to, you know, thinking about. You know, the work and how we approach serving our students.
Katie Toppel: Yeah. Well, and think about, I mean, my context is always elementary, but if you think about co teaching in a, in a secondary setting, when you, you really have a content specialist and a language specialist that can work together, when they, when they first co teach they might.
Kind of have like complimentary strengths that one person is really bringing strong skills in this area and the other person is bringing [00:49:00] strong skills in different areas. We have individual strengths and when you co teach. You really, you learn from one another, you kind of absorb different skill sets and then you, you own that ability.
And so, you know, I’m sure if I started co teaching with a, a high school biology teacher, I’m not coming in with a good foundation of being an expert in that content, but through working together, I would stand to learn so much from that teacher about their expertise. And vice versa, and it becomes just very transformative that we can start off kind of covering our own ground.
And then over time, we learn so much from one another that really does kind of supercharge our instructional skill sets.
Mandi Morris: I like something you added there is over time. It gives people permission to know that it takes time to do this work well. And it takes time [00:50:00] to, you said it earlier too, when you’re co teaching together.
Simultaneously. It’s like giving a presentation with someone, right? You almost have to find that groove for like, what’s the give and take? When do I step in? When do you do this part? And then you build your relationship and it flourishes. I wonder if you have any advice that you could give for people who are, you know, thinking about, I want to dive into co teaching at secondary or maybe at elementary school.
And just that time piece, like what’s a realistic Expectation for getting started. It’s year one. Do I start with one class out of my schedule? Like I’m a pullout ELD specialist. And what, where’s my small step where I start?
Katie Toppel: We started one grade level at a time, just kind of for uniformity of services across the grade.
And I just think the, a piece that is important is, I mean, authentic [00:51:00] buy into the process, because if either party is, is. opposed or uncomfortable, that makes it very challenging because especially when you’re, you’re starting, there’s a lot of negotiating what’s going to happen and thinking and planning.
And if you have the attitude that it is worth the effort, that’s coming from a different lens than if you are feeling like. This was forced upon you or you, you don’t, you don’t buy it. And so, I mean, I would, I would encourage people to be open minded to, to try it. But that, that sense of willingness to really, to really try it and engage, I think is an essential, essential first step.
And then it’s, it’s just time and being vulnerable. There’s a vulnerability to have someone coming in your classroom. The language specialist is not evaluating you. They’re not observing you. They’re not judging you. It’s, I view [00:52:00] it as teachers have so much on their plate. And as a language specialist, what can I take off your plate?
What can I prep? What can I create? What can I think about? What can I do so that you have a little bit less to do? And there’s one more person on your team. And I think with, with that lens, teachers realize, I mean, I’ve had teachers tell me. Who are new to the school. Yeah. I really had no idea what this was going to be like.
And I kind of, over time I’ve learned to say, just trust the process. And then they can see that it really is another contributing member of the team, lightening the load and. Just being someone else that can be another thought partner, another person, whether it, whether it is making copies or preparing something or coming up with ideas, it’s, you know, the more, the more the merrier.
There’s more people on the team to engage in that work.
Mandi Morris: You mentioned that. Teaching feels like a high capacity load right now. This is your 20th year in education. So you’ve seen some [00:53:00] shifts, some changes over the years. What is education? What’s morphing right now? What’s changing? Like, what do you see on the horizon?
For educators right now and for English learners. I
Katie Toppel: honestly with this particular week, I can’t even answer that question. I don’t know what is on the horizon in all honesty, kind of TBD. Some of the things we have seen in kind of a post COVID world are, you know, kind of cohorts of kids who, when they were toddlers, they were really inside a lot, not as many social experiences.
They. Didn’t live a life of, you know, robust play dates and activities and things like that because so many things were closed off. I feel like we’re starting to now be on the other side of that with kids starting kindergarten who didn’t have that experience. I think attention spans. are something that we’ve noticed are short.
And so, you know, we have to plan accordingly that this is not going to be a 45 minute lesson. [00:54:00] This is going to be 15 minutes and we’re going to tap our magic button and have a 30 minute dance party and move our bodies. And, you know, kind of that need for a lot of. Not so much breaks, but we do, we incorporate brain breaks and opportunities to relax and I’m seeing a little bit of a shift with younger students toward more play.
We learn through playing and that is something that at least when I was a kindergarten teacher was on the way out, like we need to learn, we need to spend all of our minutes learning and this needs to be academic. And I think now I’m seeing teachers pushing back saying, no, kids need to play. They are five and six and seven and they need these opportunities to take a break and kind of absorb what they’ve learned and we need to kind of chunk out our instruction a little bit more.
So
Mandi Morris: that actually makes me feel really hopeful. I love hearing you say that teachers are starting to question that and say like kids learn through play. There’s a, there’s a lot of research behind that and [00:55:00] think about how much language is learned. Through play. So low pressure, it’s organic language. It’s not, you know, a sterile, it’s not sterile language.
Back to house for my kindergartner, the kindergarten teacher was, you know, doing a presentation and she said, well, Eloise said, and I was like, Oh no, Oh no. What is she going to say? Well, apparently Eloise, my daughter, she had said, Miss teacher, this is so boring. The teacher was saying, yeah, I mean, kindergarten is boring.
Kindergarten is the new first grade. Like, expectations are high. You know, and I, my takeaway from that, I left feeling a little bit of that. Is there play still? Is there opportunity for that creative spark, the fun? So that actually makes me feel really hopeful to hear you say that.
Katie Toppel: Yeah. [00:56:00] And that’s, that’s the kind of stuff that takes that teacher agency to look at the group that you have and think, what do these children need?
And, you know, we have classes with children that come. At a variety of different starting points and teachers need to meet all of their needs, which can be a lot. And so it is thinking about, okay, if we’re learning about pumpkins, what’s this? What’s our science lens? What are we going to do? Oh, we’re going to open it up and we’re going to take out the pumpkin seeds.
We’re going to feel that pulp and we’re going to count the pumpkin seeds and then we’re going to describe the pumpkin. What can we do art wise? Kindergarten teachers had students painting little rocks and drawing the little features we had learned about. If you didn’t know this, the pumpkin’s stem is called a peduncle.
And we taught students that word and beginning level language learners were using that word peduncle. And they’re incorporating it into their drawing and identifying it and naming it. And so, you know, it’s not just about the academic lens, but it’s about really that holistic How are we [00:57:00] making this fun and engaging and hands on and having kids really enjoy this process, not just sitting and getting information and that’s what teachers do.
That’s what we’re good at doing is that creative decision making around what’s going to be the best for our students.
Justin Hewett: You weren’t teasing us. That really is what the stem is called. I went and googled it. Yeah. Dude, how cool that you’re teaching that to all, all your students. How fun. I love, I love playing with language.
That is awesome. Katie, this has been such a delightful conversation, and I, I feel like I’ve learned a lot. From this conversation, but I, I also feel like you’ve given me a lot of like hope for our work and the work that we do. And, and I just, I just want to honor, I guess, the work that you do before we go into this lightning round of, of making this work so approachable.
I think that that’s the, one of the things that I’ve really [00:58:00] taken from you and really all of your work is that, you know, you’re doing your best to model it and make it approachable for any teacher. And. And I think that that’s, we need more of that, frankly, because, you know, language can feel so complicated and teaching language because every student is going to learn it a little bit differently and they all show up with different assets and, you know, and different unfinished learning and some have some formal education and some don’t, and, you know, some have a little more support at home and some don’t.
And, you know, it, it, it really is a different student that shows up. You know, every single one. And yet, you know, we have the opportunity to pour into those students. And, and so, you know, I, I just really have appreciated your work. How do you simply, and then we can go to the lightning round, but how do you simplify it like this?
Like, what is your secret? Like if I’m You know, an EL teacher in Des Moines, Iowa, and I’m, you know, I’m [00:59:00] new, I’m like two years into the profession or something, and I’m trying to figure out how does, how does Dr. Katie topple make this seem so easy and approachable? Like, what are you doing to simplify it?
What are you doing to make it approachable?
Katie Toppel: I think I appreciate a good routine or, or template in a process of, you know, for example, in kindergarten, as we go through our week, we start the week with vocabulary. We make sure students have a lot of opportunities to talk. Then we move into making sure that they’re engaging in text, whether it’s some simple high frequency words they’ve learned or decodable text as we move into the year.
And we end the week writing about what we’ve learned about, or, you know, at this stage, they’re dictating to us and they develop skills and start to write. And we kind of have. Just that routine that we consistently use. And if I’m going to create something that I want to use material wise, if it’s kind of a template that can be adapted to different topics or [01:00:00] themes that works, you know, I’ll something that I can repeat.
I have a lesson template that I use. These are the things I’m going to put into place. And part of that is using the SIOP model as my process and my framework of the things I’m thinking about when I’m planning lessons. And at this point, I feel experienced enough that those, a lot of those decisions are more intuitive than following a checklist, but just kind of having some of those go to tools and processes to work with, I was saying this morning.
I have so many tabs open on my computer and they’re organized by my case management tab and my, my tab for kindergarten things and my tab for first grade things and my school wide resources. And they’re all just always there. My planning tools, SIOP and standards, and those are all kinds of things that I, I go through.
So just having a routine of either a thought process or materials or things like that for me is very helpful. And it’s not cookie cutter. Cause it’s not the same exact thing week [01:01:00] to week, but it’s some structures in place are very helpful.
Mandi Morris: I appreciate that a lot. I think it can be overwhelming knowing how to structure your class day and then add behaviors on top of that.
And, you know, culture mixes or clashes within a school or building. I mean, there’s so many elements here, but I love your. You’re simplifying it down for teachers, have a process, have a routine, start there, and then grow out when you’re ready for the next step. And work together.
Katie Toppel: Work together so that you can, you know, I’ll take this, you take that.
Okay. We each have our own, our own piece of the puzzle that we’re going to accomplish so that everybody doesn’t have to do all of the things.
Justin Hewett: So good. Collaborate. You know, many hands make. Light work or work lighter, at least. Okay. All right. We can go to the lightning round. We don’t want to, but we got to get there.
Cause we know that you have [01:02:00] other places you got to be. Our, maybe the first question we’ll ask is, and this is kind of meant to just be a kind of a quick, you know, off the cuff, you know, response or insight. But what is one piece of advice that you would give an ML teacher? And maybe let’s say an ML teacher who’s not co teaching but wants to be.
What piece of advice would you give them to help getting started doing this in their district or in their school?
Katie Toppel: Make friends. Ask. Ask. Ask somebody. Invite somebody into a partnership. That’s a, that’s a great first step. The worst they can say is no, the best they can say is yes.
Justin Hewett: It didn’t cost you anything to ask.
Ask away.
Mandi Morris: Yeah.
Justin Hewett: I love that. Yeah, that’s fantastic.
Mandi Morris: So you’ve talked about some different researchers and some different people that you follow, you know, on social media. If where can teachers, if they’re like, I’ve got a 30 minute commute to school, I have time for, that’s how much time I have for a [01:03:00] podcast or I have 20 minutes at night that I can read something or what, you know, what is, where are they, where could someone go to get some real.
digestible information, a great place to start with maybe limited time.
Katie Toppel: I mean, I would give a nod to both of my coauthors, Tonwin and Dr. Carol Salva. They both have podcasts and podcasts are one of those areas where I have. I’ve gleaned so much professional knowledge along with reading books because I have never felt like I’ve been handed the PD that I needed or that I wanted.
And so that’s part of the reason we wrote our book, DIY PD, because you have to find what works for you. And if going on a walkout. It’s a way that you can access information. You are doing two things at once. You’re learning and you’re, you’re getting exercise and you’re being healthy. So they both have wonderful, wonderful podcasts that Tan interviews, so many authors and experts in the field who have books and resources and [01:04:00] in, maybe it’s not as quick as 30 minutes, but in an hour, you can learn so much.
It might be the drive to end from work and Carol also just has really engaging topics and. So much to offer.
Justin Hewett: I love this. This is my love language. Like that’s where I, I am out walking, listening to podcasts or working out or whatever it might be. It really has been so helpful for me to. To find a few different places where I can, I can glean and show up to learn.
And, and it’s amazing how no matter what I’m listening to, I end up finding something that’s relevant for me at that time, you know, in regards to, you know, teaching language development, did you have a moment or an experience where. Everything changed. You know, a lot of times people call this like a light bulb moment.
Did you, have you had a light bulb moment that you can kind of point to where you’re like, everything changed then?
Katie Toppel: Yes. Starting, starting the ML [01:05:00] chat book club, I think was a trajectory changer. Cause like I said, I. I didn’t get a lot of, like, I didn’t always get professional learning about serving multilingual learners.
And I just craved it so much. And when I decided that I wanted to co teach, there was no, there was no, there was a few schools doing it, but there was no precedent. And so it wasn’t like, oh, here, you can go to this training and here’s all of this information. It was, it was on us to find it. We had to actually present formally to beg to have permission to co teach.
And. It was tweeting that I wanted to read Collaboration and Co Teaching by Andrea Honigsfeld and Maria Dove and Tan replying, Hey, let’s like read it together and tweet about it. And that was where that whole book club idea came from. And we read and we just via tweeting discussed these books. And we did [01:06:00] over 30 book studies across multiple years.
And that’s That’s where I learned how to be a language specialist in reading the wisdom of all of those educators and scholars in the field who took the time to write a book and share about what works and what they’re doing and the research. And you know, now even they’re including beautiful infographics and pictures in the books and just that’s, that’s where I got my, my education on being a, an ML specialist.
And it really was because of finding people via social media. Which sounds so weird, but Dr. Jana Chavarria, Dr. Honigsfeldt, Carol Tan, my good friend, Jess Bell. They’re all people that I met through social media.
Justin Hewett: And that’s why you are the perfect person, Katie, to write the book or to coauthor DIY PD. A Guide to Self Directed Learning for Educators of Multilingual Learners.
How cool is that? Like, that is, that is, [01:07:00] that’s, thanks for sharing that story. And thank you for being here. Thank you for all the work that you’re doing. It is so neat to, to see the ripples of your work and how it’s impacting, you know, students really all throughout the nation and helping teachers, you know, enjoy their work a little bit more.
Do it a little bit better. Make it a little more simple, you know, more approachable. This is, this has been an amazing experience for us. Thank you so much for being here with us.
Katie Toppel: Thank you. I appreciate hearing you say it that way. Cause I feel like last year, last year all around was a hard year, but I think a little bit, I lost my spark last year and felt like it was just really hard.
And this year feels different. I feel like it’s like I’m back and I really, I, that my love for my job never left, but last year was definitely a downward trajectory of feeling like the, it just, everything was a lot and the, the spark and the joy is back. And it does make me feel so happy to hear that [01:08:00] it impacts.
It’s teachers and students beyond my, my circle in my, in my state and in my school. That’s thank you.
Mandi Morris: Thank you for being here, Katie. This has been such a wonderful conversation today.
Justin Hewett: It has been such a pleasure to have you here. Thank you, Katie, Dr. Katie topple for being here on the ML chat podcast.
