Sally Baer: [00:00:00] I always say I have expertise, but I am not an expert, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be an expert because I am reflective in my work and knowing when something works, making it better, and when something doesn’t work, figuring out how to make it work. 

Mandi Morris: Today’s conversation with Sally Baer just explores what it means to have joy in the work that you do as a teacher, as an educator, and also how important it is to build community so that your work isn’t siloed and you don’t feel alone in the work that you do.

She’s truly a lifelong learner with two master’s degrees and is currently working on a PhD And I think has a lot of great insight about how it can be fun to continuously improve yourself as an expert in the classroom and in the profession, and just to stay curious and open to a lot of learning opportunities.

I hope you enjoy today’s episode with Sally. Let’s go. Welcome to the ML Chat Podcast. I’m Mandi Morris, your host. I’m here today with Sally Baer. Welcome, [00:01:00] Sally. I’m looking forward to diving into your experience, two decades in education, and the work that you’re doing today. Welcome. 

Sally Baer: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here.

It’s a privilege to be in community. 

Mandi Morris: Aw, awesome. Sally, two decades in education, you’ve most certainly, I’m sure, bounced around to different departments and different focus. You’re working on your PhD right now. Tell us a little bit about what’s the work that you’re doing right now, what drove you to start a PhD at this point in your career?

Sally Baer: So I started my teaching career in the School District of Philadelphia. It was a second career for me. I was on the management track, and I had a undergrad in business management, and I had always just be- been drawn to working with students and teaching, and I was like, “I think I’m gonna go back to school and get my master’s in elementary education.”

So I made a career pivot in my early 20s, and I started my career in the School District of Philadelphia. And when I was a tiny baby teacher, I was just really curious about why are all these– why are [00:02:00] so many of our Black and brown students in special education? Why does it feel like the needs of some of our most marginalized groups are not being met?

But I was new in my career, in my practice, and as I moved through the trajectory of I was an elementary teacher, I taught all grades K through 5, and then I moved out to Washington State, and currently I’m working outside of Seattle in, in an urban district. And I’ve just always had this curiosity and this passion for working in title where our, some of our most marginalized and some of our most gifted students reside, and the beauty and diversity that they bring to our spaces.

Fast-forward, I’ve been in Washington for about 15 years. In Washington, on the east side of Seattle, I was doing work as an elementary teacher and then moved into my reading specialist role, and then the role I’m in now as a multilingual specialist. When I tell people my why, my why is really supporting and elevating our students and families that have the potential to be farthest from educational and social justice.

So this [00:03:00] idea of us not meeting the needs of our beautiful Black and brown students and our linguistically gifted students has led me to where I am now. So pursuing my National Board Certification in English as a new language, and now furthering this work through my research as a PhD student, being able to contribute to that body of knowledge, to have more research about we need to do better as a system.

And being in the work with others has led me to our discussion today and the work that I’m in. 

Mandi Morris: So talk for a moment about the process of becoming a National Board Certified teacher. I’ve always heard that it’s grueling, that it’s a lot of work. I’ve known some colleagues over the years who have done it, but honestly not that many.

Tell me a little bit about what was that experience like, and did it feel worth it in the end, right? 

Sally Baer: This is such a great question. So when I was teaching in Philadelphia, it really depends on what state you’re in. Some states, they have a lot of supports for their students, and I don’t know what [00:04:00] Pennsylvania’s like now because I haven’t been there for decades.

But when I moved to Washington, I was hearing about National Board Certification, and I was like, “What is this?” And when I got done my second master’s degree in English as a new language, I’m just this, I have this thirst for knowledge and pushing myself To learn more and be better because teaching is reflective, right?

It’s a practice. We’re always getting better and learning. And I started with the cohort with the National Cer- the National Board as a candidate. And yes, grueling is 1000% the right word, and it’s the most transformative professional development that I have ever engaged in my decades in education.

National Board Certification, it not even forces you, it ma- gives you the space to unpack every part of your practice, and you’re being reflective about, “Why did I make this decision? Is this the right decision? Ooh, I need to pivot this decision,” because we’re making so many decisions as educators just quick, right?

Yeah. So it gives you the space [00:05:00] to really examine your practice and be, reflective is the word, that it’s really transformed my teaching, and I’m just so much stronger in my ability to, to backwards plan, do like that backwards plan design, and also make pivots when I see that my students need them. It’s about 400 hours of work.

It’s, it is a lot. I loved the process so much, and it was so transforming for me that I actually do contract work for our state superintendent, OSPI, helping other educators to embark down this road. I believe in the process, and I am the biggest cheerleader for anyone who’s even considering it. I’m always like, “If you’re thinking about it, do it.

I can support you. I can get you in touch with support.” So yeah, it’s … I, I just would recommend it to anyone who wants to just deep their knowledge and their practice. 

Mandi Morris: That’s really, that’s such a good campaign marketing advertisement. 

Sally Baer: The board, yes. 

Mandi Morris: The Board Certification. I’ve never heard it spoken about in that [00:06:00] way, and I really appreciate that perspective.

That’s super interesting. Right now, maybe always, but right now we know teachers, it’s an interesting time in our career. I think there are a lot of teachers coming into the career as second careers. There’s less time than, at least in my time in education, my two, almost two decades in education, I feel like there’s less time for professional learning than there has ever been before in our profession.

So it’s this interesting friction point of we’ve got a lot of people coming into the career who might not have had that traditional four-year degree with an internship in a school and then going into the classroom, but, like, getting the alt cert in their 30s or 40s and transitioning from a different career, being thrown into a classroom, and it’s like, “What am I supposed to do?”

And then not having professional learning to support them through that process. And we know when funds get cut in public schools, a lot of the times the positions that go first are the support positions, like coaches to [00:07:00] support or new teacher programs to support new teachers, means you have to funnel in those funds for classroom teachers.

We need the educators in the classroom first and foremost. What has your experience been like as you’re coaching people to go through this board certification or working with new teachers? What are your thoughts about the current state of professional learning and the best way for teachers to access that?

Sally Baer: I love this idea of friction, the word that you use, and when I think about teaching as a practice, it’s like being in the medical field or being in, in another field where we need new research to drive the things that we’re doing because every child that walks through our doors deserves evidence-based practices.

They deserve the most accomplished teachers. And the reality, just from my lens and being in this work for so long on both coasts, is we have so many mandates, and that’s where the professional development opportunities for teachers to guide their own learning, they’re sometimes few and far [00:08:00] between because we have so many, so many state mandates, so many district mandates.

And the national board process for me, it’s about teacher agency, so being able to choose to deepen your knowledge in this practice, because it is a practice. I always say I have expertise, but I am not an expert, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be an expert because I am reflective in my work, and knowing when something works, making it better, and when something doesn’t work, figuring out how to make it work.

And that is the true reflective cycle of national board certification. It feels really empowering to be able to choose to deepen your knowledge as an educator in a time where sometimes we, we don’t have a lot of autonomy and agency in growing in our own work So I love that idea of friction. There is a friction point, and also we- we’re adult learners, and we bring so much knowledge to this work, and so much expertise and passion, that something like the National Board Certification can be really [00:09:00] powerful to re-spark your joy and energy for this work.

Mandi Morris: Before we started recording, you talked about community, and it sounds like that’s really a theme for you. That’s something that brings you a lot of passion, and it makes me think about times in my career where I had, you know, surrounded by educators. Even here, even at this place where I am in education, which is different from when I was in the classroom, but you work with educators.

Oh, man, they’re just sharpening me. It’s this symbiotic back and forth of I’m learning from you, and I can tell that, that you’re learning from me, and that community feel, whether it’s in a PLC or whether it’s in the hallway between classes, it might come from unexpected places. That’s the part of education that is so beautiful and so powerful.

And is its own kind of PD, right? But I love what you identified as the difference between mandate, like you have to do this thing in your classroom, versus choice. I’m excited about taking on this problem or this pain point [00:10:00] because I really want to find a solution for my students, find a solution for my instruction.

And when you can do that within community in your school, or finding a community online, or through board certification, that is the most freeing and empowering type of professional learning and professional experience. 

Sally Baer: Yeah, I totally agree. I think that I always use this, this phrase, like being in community, and it’s, it’s really, it’s very meaningful to me because when I get to talk to somebody like you, or talk to colleagues, or present at a conference, my bucket is filled up again because- This work is beautiful, but this work can feel very heavy and very siloed sometimes.

And being in community and being able to share our passion for this work, like having a platform for that feels just, it’s really a privilege to sh- very obvious that I have passion around this, right? So yeah, I love the idea of that teacher agency, I call it like cultivating teacher agency, that we need [00:11:00] more of that in this profession.

We need more teacher choice because that’s what we want for our students, right? We want our students to be able to drive their own instruction. Educators deserve the same. We deserve the same opportunities because we are professionals and we have expertise in our work. So yeah, I love– I could talk about National Board of Certification a- all day long.

I just, I can’t say enough about the power of it. 

Mandi Morris: So you had connected to Flashlight through a webinar that we had done with Steve Gill. You’ve said you followed his work for many years. Steve is a big believer in student choice and how powerful student choice is for engagement, for learning, both in the short term and long term, right?

I’d love for you to talk a little bit more about why have you been so invested in his work, and what does that look like in application for you in the work that you do? 

Sally Baer: I have been following Steve Gill’s work for probably about 10 years. I was in another district in Washington where I was a classroom teacher.

I hadn’t moved into this [00:12:00] multilingual like universe yet. And I heard about this matrix and I was like, “What matrix?” And I really believe in evidence-based practices because we have such a short time with students in our space that we wanna be giving them the most accomplished teachers, teaching curriculum and using strategies that have been proven to work, right?

Every student deserves that. So I’ve been following his work and when I came, when I– like I’ve moved districts a few times in Washington, and every district has been its own place with this idea of the critical data process. So when I think about why this is important, teachers, we want our students to be successful, and sometimes teachers, me included, we are, our plates are so full that it’s hard for us to learn 20 new things at one time, right?

The beauty of the critical data matrix is it is a tool that can help when we’re, we have a student of concern and that student is a multilingual student, and it’s this tool that [00:13:00] helps distinguish disability, a possible learning disability, from language acquisition. And just in my work and in my continued learning as a profession, we know that Jim Cummins, who coined the terms BICS and CALP- CALP is that academic language.

It’s the language that no student comes to school knowing. We teach them how to use that academic language in the classroom. So knowing that CALP, that academic language takes five to seven years for a multilingual student to acquire so that they can feel and be successful in, in some spaces. And the work of Steve Gill is just really powerful because it allows educators to look through a lens at multilingual students through that asset-based lens.

So thinking about the culture that they’re bringing, the languages that they’re bringing And that linguistic power and being able to harness and leverage that linguistic power for understanding. So I love his [00:14:00] work. After the training with Flashlight, I reached out to him and I was like, “Can I interview you?

I really wanna write an article about your work.” And we had a couple iterations, and he was so gracious to, to talk to me about his work. Where I am now with that process is I’m really just the biggest cheerleader about using this process as true fidelity with any multilingual student, that we might have social emotional concerns or academic challenges.

And in my PhD work, I’m doing program evaluation of what does the process look like, and what do teachers need to feel successful? Again, linking back to that idea of teacher agency. What do you need? What do you need to feel successful using this? So that’s gonna be published soon. I’m in digging through data right now.

But I just think his work is amazing, and I’m so grateful that he is in this community with us doing the work. 

Mandi Morris: I really appreciate Steve Gill’s work. I think he does an incredible job of distilling something that can feel really big and overwhelming. And I don’t know, as a classroom teacher, where I’m supposed to [00:15:00] start, what I’m supposed to do, and 100%, every school district is in their different space as far as process and in place or where they are in that journey of analyzing their own internal data and interpreting what that data means for them and their own referral process.

But his work is so powerful in that it, it creates like a roadmap, right? Of I can follow this thing. I think as a new teacher, it can be very overwhelming that there’s so much I have to learn, there’s so much I have to do, there’s so much I don’t know, and you ki- you need moments, really no matter where you are in your career, of, “Oh, someone already figured this out?

Great.” 

Sally Baer: Yes, 1,000%. Yeah. “

Mandi Morris: Here’s the thing that they have proven that works,” and go from there. So I, I appreciate that a lot about his work. I’m curious to get your perspective on something. You talk a lot about the most effective teacher in the classroom, and I’m, you know, I think we’ve both been in education about the same amount of time.

I feel like in my career I’ve seen this, like shift of like there– When I started teaching in 2006, there were no computers in any classrooms. [00:16:00] No students had devices at all. And then of course, that gradual shift of one-to-one devices, and then things shifted so much in COVID where there were a lot of funds around technology.

Six years post-COVID, those funds are gone. The technology that people bought six years ago doesn’t work anymore. Your Chromebook carts are broken. And what does that mean? And enter AI, right, into education. I’m wondering from your perspective in the professional development that you do, professional learning, the t- teachers that you support, and- For yourself, how do you think about now AI in the classroom versus teacher agency?

So like the good old-fashioned teacher working with a student versus student and technology. How is that shifting? How is that impacting education? Are we in a space right now where we’re like, “We don’t know. Things are moving, but we don’t know exactly where they’re going”? 

Sally Baer: This is such a timely topic, and I’m so lucky to learn from other PhD students in my cohort that are really like AI is their thing.

They’re trying [00:17:00] to figure out answers to all the questions you just asked. From my lens, I, I believe in the power of technology and that we should harness it for good because it, it can be so amazing in so many spaces. Kids are living, they’re growing up in a time that this is what their work life will look like in 10 or 20 years, right?

I also think that AI is, it’s not a replacement in educational spaces for our brains, right? Students thinking like when I use AI, I think there’s a lot of ethical dilemmas that I face just as a researcher and an edu- educator. AI for me is to put a cherry on the top of my thinking and my learning. And when I use AI, I always look through the lens of AI as a tool for my brain, right?

It’s not my brain. I’m giving it the information, and I’m asking it to help me maybe get, make a graphic or help me reword something, right? I’m an adult, and my [00:18:00] brain is fully formed. I do think there’s some ethical dilemmas in terms of what does AI look like in elementary school, what does it look like in secondary.

If we think about child development and a child’s brain is still forming, there’s, they lack the judgment-making and looking ahead to possible consequences because their brain is not fully formed, right? They’re supposed to make mistakes. That’s how we learn. That’s how adults learn. The difference between me using AI and a 10-year-old u- using AI is they don’t have that, that, that full brain development to maybe know to weigh those ethical dilemmas of like when is this appropriate to use, when is it not.

I also worry, I can’t take off my parent hat, right? I’m a parent of a middle schooler, and I feel like there’s just so much gray area in districts now about we have AI. How do kids use it? Are we teaching them how to use it? Do teachers know how to use it? And those are some questions that I’m still grappling with, right?

I know many districts, they don’t have AI policies, [00:19:00] and kids might be able to access it on their– So I think it’s, like you said, been a shift, especially since COVID, but I think there’s a lot of work still to do around AI. I think it could be really powerful, but knowing, thinking about the ethics behind it and thinking about how it’s being used.

Mandi Morris: Yeah, absolutely. It is, it’s an interesting time for sure. 

Sally Baer: Yes. Yes. Interesting times as a phrase my one friend uses when we’re sort of perplexed by something, just like, “Sally, these are interesting times.” I’m like, “These are interesting times, yes.” So interesting times is our quote for the day. 

Mandi Morris: You’re clearly someone who loves learning.

You said you have two masters. You went back in your 20s to shift careers, then earned two masters, now doing a PhD. Where do you hope for that to go? The impact of getting your PhD, do you love learning because you just cannot get enough of professional development? Do you love the community that you build through continuous education?

Or are you really hoping to accomplish something new or different in your impact in your school building? 

Sally Baer: I think the idea of [00:20:00] being a lifelong learner, like we hear people use that word, and that’s every student I interact with, I want them to always thirst for knowledge of something that they’re passionate about.

When I look at my work and just this thirst for knowledge, I wanna have an impact on the world and leave it better than how I found it, contributing to the body of knowledge. But when I think about just being in educational spaces, like a master- like graduate work or PhD work, it’s really powerful to be in community with- in spaces where people are, people are curious learners entering with vulnerability and saying, “I don’t know anything about that.

Help me understand more.” Because this is all in service for our students, right? So that idea of being in community, sharing our knowledge, contributing to the body of knowledge around the work that we do, whether it’s facilitating at a conference, presenting research, engaging in research school publishing research.

So then my next steps, I’d love to continue [00:21:00] this work where I have a greater reach of educators around the country and the world. Don’t know exactly what that looks like yet, but I’m always that person that I like wr- writing, writing literature reviews. I like doing research. I like digging down and, like, figuring out why something is broken or why something is fractured, and then trying to figure out how to fix it in an ethical manner and with research that we already have in the field.

So I don’t know what that looks like for me. I do know that I want a, a network where I can share these findings and other educators can learn from them and do better for students, because that’s our goal, right? We want to improve the lives of students and their families. 

Mandi Morris: You talk about digging down with research to try to unpack or uncover and to come to a new understanding or a deeper understanding.

This is such an important part of being an educator, and [00:22:00] going back to an earlier part of the conversation, it’s like time is always a constraint for all of us, right? I don’t have enough time to do X, Y, and Z. What advice would you give to a teacher listening to this today who’s, “I am just like whack-a-mole.

That is my day. I live in a whack-a-mole space. I don’t have time to think critically about the work that I’m doing. I don’t have time to stop and reflect.” What advice would you give to that teacher? And then in practice, I recommend starting here, because it can have a huge shift on your practice. 

Sally Baer: Yes, absolutely.

I’m guilty of this too. I’ll go to a conference and I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m gonna try these five things in my classroom. This is amazing. I wanna just change.” I’ve realized that when we do that, especially as educators or anyone in a field where we’re just, we’re always fielding all of these outside influences, and we are sometimes playing whack-a-mole, and we’re also siloed with this whack-a-mole.

Focus on one or two things that you want to adjust in your practice in a year. I’ve found that if [00:23:00] I’m focused on one or two key i- that I am more successful because I’m just putting that cognitive bandwidth and that learning into the space to change one or two things in my practice, because it isn’t sustainable to try to change 10 things.

And we would love to be able to change, right? I think something like, like at, when I facilitate at conferences and teachers are like Yes. All of this, yes. And when will I have time to do this? And this is how I answer the question. Pick one thing that resonates with you, that’s evidence-based, and that you can semi-easily change in your space, and then do it for a half of a year, do it for a year.

Keep refining, because what we’re doing when we do that is being reflective. I have a teacher that I partner with, we’re great thought partners, and she wanted to unpack, “I, I need my kids to be able to engage in academic discourse.” And we came up with two things she was gonna try, and I love the connections that we have about, “I tried this.”[00:24:00] 

And it was a train wreck, but I tweaked it, and now the train is back on the track, and I see these changes in my students and in my practice. So my advice would be, yes, this work is our plates are full. Sometimes this work feels very heavy because we are literally changing the lives of tiny and median humans.

Pick one or two things that you feel like you want to adjust in your practice, something you’re interested in, because then there is that idea again of teacher agency. 

Mandi Morris: I love that you continue to highlight that. Choose something that you feel interested in or excited by, a need in your classroom where you’re like, “Man, if I could figure that out for my students, if I could figure that out for my planning, I would be stoked about that.”

I would be spazz at the end of the year to look back on my data and say, “This was something that was a problem I needed to address.” And that could be behavior. That could be student engagement. That could be backwards planning. This is the end of unit goal, and I’m gonna do a better job [00:25:00] of making sure that I’ve got that alignment from my end of unit goal happening all the way through.

It’s not just kids show up at the test and this is the first time they’ve seen X, Y, or Z. There are so many different things it could be, but I really appreciate that you’re just emphasizing here, pick something that you feel excited by, because then you have the buy-in to say, “I’m gonna commit the time.

I’m gonna commit the effort, and I’m gonna measure, right? The impact that it has. I’m gonna have some data and some key results that I’m looking for so that I can look back and say, ‘This worked. Didn’t work at the beginning,’ like you said. It was a train wreck, but then I adjusted, I adapted.” I really love that approach.

Sally Baer: And when you, when I think about what we’re talking about, that really is the cycle of action research. It’s the cycle of teacher inquiry. And even if you don’t mean it, if a teacher is doing this work, that’s what they’re doing. They are seeing a problem, something that they wanna fix. They’re [00:26:00] maybe reading a book, a academic, like a piece of academic text or an article, going to a PB, implementing something, and then seeing what the data tells them, going back and readjusting, and then making the change.

And that cycle, it’s like the writing cycle for students, right? That cycle is continuous. So trying to do 10 of those cycles, you probably aren’t gonna be successful. Doing one of those cycles within a year or even two years, that feels realistic, and it also feels empowering that you have agency, and you do have that, what you said, buy-in.

It’s something that you are passionate about, not something that … It’s not a mandate, right? It’s something that a practice that you’re improving in your space all in service to your student, and that’s, teachers are helpers. That’s what we want. That’s why we’re in this work. 

Mandi Morris: That gets me excited. I like- approach a lot, yeah.

It feels freeing, and I’m sure there, it might be a teacher listening today that says, “My admin would never let me do that. We have a school goal of, and I have to [00:27:00] write my personal professional goal aligned with our school goal, or aligned with our district goal.” But I like the idea of just putting a seed in people’s heads.

Remember to also find joy in your work. And that means that you have to find ways to embed intentionally things that make you happy and make you excited and make you feel joy. And it doesn’t matter what job you’re in, the grass is always greener, right? It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, there will be parts of your job that you love, and parts of your job that are a grind.

It doesn’t matter what profession you’re in. How can you find joy in your classroom, joy in the work that you’re doing, joy in improving what you’re doing, and setting goals for yourself as an educator to improve the experience that you’re having, the experience the students are having? 

Sally Baer: Yeah, absolutely.

When the year started, I love the idea of this word joy. I like self-publish a newsletter on LinkedIn called The Multilingual Memo, and my first article of the year was called [00:28:00] Finding Joy in the Heaviness. Because we are in times that we have so many things happening outside of this work that we want to put blinders up because we just wanna be there for our students, and sometimes we can’t unsee what’s on the outside of education.

It is just, it’s a very tumultuous time, I think. And I think that the idea of bringing joy to a space where you’re modeling that for our students, like when you’re excited about doing something new, students can’t help by being excited because the person that they are looking up to as their mentor and their guide is excited.

So it cultivates that idea of, “Oh, my teacher doesn’t know everything, and my teacher’s still learning.” So finding joy in sometimes a, sometimes a place where we don’t have a whole lot of autonomy. 

Mandi Morris: Yeah. I think I have a colleague who will say, “People know when you like working with your colleagues. People can feel that energy,” right?

Think about that in the classroom. Your [00:29:00] students know when you like the thing that you’re doing, when you enjoy the thing that you’re doing. And I can think back to my years in the classroom and think about the specific lessons that I had a lot of fun teaching, that I was like, “Wow, I am truly a learner alongside my students because this is so interesting.”

And all of a sudden it’s like this snowball effect. Oh, like kids are bringing in like little toys that they found on their own, or like story that they had on their own. It’s like they’re excited because I’m excited about this learning. And yes, I know there’s someone out there who might be saying like, “Sounds fun.

I have to be on page blah on day blah. I have to follow my curriculum map.” But I think- Maybe the takeaway here is find a way to make it mean something to you. Because if it doesn’t mean something to you as the adult in the room, as the educator in the room, it’s gonna be a hard sell for the kids in the room.

Sally Baer: 100%. And that idea of I have had the privilege of just [00:30:00] partnering with, collaborating with the most gifted, passionate teachers, and I find that the best teachers are the ones who are authentic with their students and vulnerable with students. And that can be really hard as educators because I don’t know everything, and I enter in with vulnerability in this work because I learn, just like we said before, I learn right alongside my students.

And entering with that vulnerability that, like I still have things that I need to learn and things I want to accomplish so that I keep improving the lives of students. I think that’s just, it’s really powerful entering authentically as yourself, and you can feel the energy. You can feel this like vibe of somebody who is, is connected and who’s passionate about the work.

Mandi Morris: I think in some ways, the multilingual space, we’ve had a little bit more autonomy and freedom, which h- is a double-edged sword perhaps, because you hear often from ML educators the word you used earlier, siloed. I feel siloed. I’m the [00:31:00] only person in my building that is teaching ELD, or I’m the only person in my building responsible for my ML minutes.

The other side of it is we sometimes will hear from content teachers that very restrictive learning environment of, “I have to teach this curriculum with fidelity. I cannot stray from my pages that have been dictated from the districts.” And in the ML space, I think we have been afforded a little bit more autonomy to have more fun in our classrooms, like find things that make us feel passionate, make the students excited.

Sally Baer: Pros and cons. 

Mandi Morris: Right? But I wanna go to that word siloed. Because you mentioned it, and for sure it, this is something we, we definitely hear nationally from ML educators. How do you think that being siloed shows up for teachers and impacts their ability to do good teaching, right? How have you seen that show up, and what are your thoughts about that?

Sally Baer: When I think of, like I couldn’t name it for quite a while. I’m around all of these adults [00:32:00] that love doing this work. Why, why do I feel isolated? Because I’m not isolated. I’m a very extroverted person. When I enter into a space, it’s like I’m showing up authentically 100% excited myself. 

Mandi Morris: Yes. You did say earlier that presenting at a conference fills your bucket, which I really

can’t do. It terrifies me. I have done it, and I do it, but I don’t know that I could say it fills my bucket. You must be a true extrovert. 

Sally Baer: I extrovert, and also I’m, I love the idea of, obviously within reason, but like when something feels scary to me, I feel like that’s a green light. Maybe I should try this because that’s how my capacity for learning new things gr- grows, right?

If it scares me, and my husband’s always, “Maybe not everything that scares you is good to try.” And I was like- Thank you for protecting me from myself. Yes, hear- heard, but the idea of collaborating, I think, in, in spaces, those opportunities, unfortunately, in some districts, in some states, they’re few and far between, and that is– that’s [00:33:00] what takes those silos away.

That’s what knocks down those silos. When teachers are in PLCs that are efficient, all of the stakeholders are at the table, the special education teacher, the multilingual teacher, the content area teachers, because we all bring in our expertise. And if I ruled the world, I would really… You know, that’s where that true collaboration all in service to our students happens.

Because sometimes the collaboration, it’s a conversation five minutes before the end or before the beginning of the day. And we are, we do have expertise in our work. But if we wanna be really, really intentional about breaking down these barriers and, and creating spaces for all of our students to be successful, teachers need time to collaborate with each other because we’re all ex- experts in our field.

So silos are real, and you named it before, in many buildings, same with me. I’m the multilingual teacher in this building, and I have expertise, but [00:34:00] carrying all of the knowledge, that’s a lot. Because I wanna share my knowledge with Everybody in my space so they feel empowered. And it’s not a lack of teachers wanting– teachers want to do right by their students.

Have building that capacity for students, and it links back to that idea of what do I want my work later to look like when I am– when I’m done my PhD? I’m doing that work now by building trust with my colleagues, doing something like this where I get this opportunity to talk about education with someone who’s like-minded and maybe spark a curiosity in an educator who’s listening.

I think that silo, those silos could be really broken down if we allowed more space for professional learning communities where teachers are coming, they’re discussing problems, they’re brainstorming po- solutions. We’re more powerful as a group than one person trying to do all the work, two people trying to do all the work, if that makes sense.

Mandi Morris: We’ve talked about it on this show [00:35:00] before, and any educator understands it. It’s an interesting profession in that you’re surrounded by people all day long, but in a room with the door closed. And it’s very isolating career in a lot of ways because you have so much responsibility on you for the students in your room, and if you’re a secondary teacher for the 150, 170 kids that are on your roster.

But it, there really isn’t a lot of time to collaborate with colleagues, and so much of the day is teaching minutes. That’s, that is so much of your day. PLCs are so powerful. That’s not anything new. That’s not anything that people haven’t heard. It is so important to advocate for that time. Do what you can as an educator, talking with your admin to voice how important that time is and how sacred that time is.

I know teachers get creative around how can we collaborate together on a shared Google Doc or [00:36:00] asynchronously. But advocate for that collaboration to happen during your workday as well, and not just on the weekends and at night on your own time. Because the power of having time for a meaningful PLC, a structured PLC, has such incredible impact on your practice and also I think your own wellbeing of having that time to connect with other adults in your building.

Sally Baer: Yes. Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, humans are meant to be around other humans, and that connection with educators, like the most successful co-teaching that I’ve done this year and in the past, it takes- A lot of time, and it takes a lot of– You’re taking on extra capacity, and it shouldn’t feel like that.

It shouldn’t feel like something extra because it isn’t extra. And you know best practice with, at least with multilingual learners, is co-teaching in a space where there’s two experts, two adults in the room that are, we’re moving back and forth. We’re parallel teaching. [00:37:00] I’m supporting the language development, the teacher is supporting the content.

And I’m lucky enough that I was in an elementary space, so like I’ve never– I still wear that hat. I still wear that like elementary teacher hat, and I hope that I’m never so far away from that work that I forget being in a classroom managing a group of 28, 30, 35 kids all day long. Like it is a lot, and our teachers make it look…

And we are just, we’re superheroes that don’t wear capes. We really, we truly are in this work. And I hope everybody who’s listening, the people that probably are listening, they already know that. They know that we are superheroes. But making space for that collaboration is just, it should be part of the teaching practice, not an extra or not something above and beyond.

Mandi Morris: When you think about your work or about the educators that you work with, conferences that you’ve been at recently or participated in, what has you really excited right now? Like you’re looking on the horizon, you’re looking ahead to the 26/27 school year. We’re wrapping-ish [00:38:00] the 25/26 school year, depending on where you are in the country.

What has you excited when you’re thinking forward? 

Sally Baer: When I think forward, I wanna continue what we, what we were talking about before, are finding things that I am, that I have an interest in, that I’m passionate about, and being able to build out that capacity for other teachers. So it’s things that are sustaining and realistic.

One thing that I’m super excited about right now, and I know you had Kate Seltzer on your podcast, and I, it’s in my queue to listen to, but I followed her work for years and years. And I’m really now leaning into this idea of like translang, what that means. So I realize I have to enter into, to this space with a lot of vulnerability, and I’m okay doing that because I, I’m confident with who I am, and I can be vu-vulnerable and say, “Ooh, I, I don’t know what this means,” or, “Help me understand.”

But the idea of the work of Kate Seltzer and others is this idea that students shouldn’t check- Their identity and language is at the door. They should be bringing that into [00:39:00] every space where they are. And I believe a teacher who’s culturally responsive, and I work with this amazing team in my space, that we are culturally responsive and giving teachers that efficacy and that agency of encouraging students, bring in your linguistic power.

Talk to other speakers of your language to make meaning and make sense, and make it normalized. Make that, Kate Seltzer called it shift design and planning, that we need to shift our thinking to one of not a monolingual hierarchy, but a space where we’re just like this melting pot of with languages and cultures and traditions.

And I’m excited about learning more, doing more with this work in my PhD, and continuing to grow out the things like Steve Gale’s work, that every school should be using a tool like the critical data process with fidelity to make sure that our multilingual students are not over-identified for [00:40:00] special education services or to central evaluation.

So those are two things I’m super excited about in my research and what this year and next year looks like for me. 

Mandi Morris: Dr. Seltzer’s episode is phenomenal. 

Sally Baer: I cannot wait to listen to it. I saw it in the queue and I was like, “Oh, I don’t have the capacity right now.” But yeah, she’s amazing. And she was gracious enough to meet with me when I was– I did an, a pilot study on translanguaging pedagogy in co-teaching.

And just like what we were talking about, like, it was time outside of our normal day-to-day meeting with this co-teacher, and some amazing findings from that study that I’ll publish soon and that I wanna share with Dr. Seltzer. She’s– her work is just so transformative. I 

Mandi Morris: think a message that I interpreted from her that I think is really meaningful for a lot of people in education, the vast majority of educators are white women, right?

Like historically, like a vast majority, that’s just the data. And there has been work over, at least I’ve seen in my years in education, there has been work [00:41:00] to change that data, right? That like our teacher population does a better job of representing our student population, and our country is very diverse, and our teacher population, I think, is adjusting to better represent our student population, which is very exciting.

And I think something that you named is really important for every educator out there who is like us to say, “Hey, this is who I am, but I’m coming to this work with humility and curiosity and care. And I wanna be genuine and I wanna be authentic. I wanna own the things that I don’t know and the experiences that I don’t have, but I’m willing to learn.”

And m- my time that sitting and talking with Dr. Sulzer was, I think what I love about her approach is she said, like, the languages are existing in our students’ brains. Cultures are existing in them. And whether the teacher in the classroom is going to own and embrace that or not, it’s happening, right?

[00:42:00] That I think that is such great wisdom for every teacher out there who’s in this space, who’s in the ML space and saying, “I didn’t grow up bilingual. I didn’t grow up maybe around a lot of diversity or diverse cultures. I didn’t, but I’m in this space and I’m passionate about it and I wanna do the best that I can.”

Her work, I think, is really powerful because I- it speaks so broadly to educators coming into this space from a lot of different experiences and backgrounds. 

Sally Baer: Yeah. I agree 100%. I think naming it, which she does just so eloquently, and we need to do better just as a teaching profession. And I always think about building things that are sustainable and realistic with where we are, disrupting that monolingual bias, and also entering into a space, you named it, I 

Mandi Morris: think it was, gosh, is it, 

Sally Baer: I think it’s Brene Brown, entering with curiosity, not judgment, and also clear is kind.

So I always think I wanna be very clear and [00:43:00] transparent. It also might be the East Coaster in me. Like, even though I live on the West Coast now, like East Coaster at heart, Philly girl at heart. That transparency and that vulnerability and humility, I love that word, is so important in this work because this work is nuanced, and we don’t know what we don’t know.

Like naming, like I don’t know how to make space for my students who are multilingual and speak more than one language to use that language. What does that look like in my classroom? And I think that Dr. Sulzer and others have done a great job of naming it and being like, “Hey, let’s keep learning and working to make culturally responsive teaching even stronger, and make these practices just part of the norm, that our kids are, they’re not checking their languages at the door.

They’re bringing their whole authentic self into the space.” 

Mandi Morris: That’s right. And it’s not ever going to be something where you’re like- Checked that box. I went to that one-day training with Dr. Seltzer. I’m good. I got everything, you know? [00:44:00] And it’s not that. It’s a mind shift. It’s incremental, and give yourself permission that it’s going to be incremental.

It’s going to be an iterative change to your prac. That’s okay. You can go slow and have huge impact. If you’re being intentional about the work, you’re being curious, you’re collecting data and reflecting on that data, you can have a huge impact on your students and on your own practice. And I really appreciate that about Dr.

Seltzer, the way that she approaches this work in particular. To me, it felt refreshing. I felt permission not to have to know everything. I felt permission to be able to say, “Hey, this is how I’m showing up right now, but I wanna get better. I wanna know more. I wanna learn.” And she just has, yeah, really a graceful way of approaching the work, that I think is ve- just very refreshing and encouraging.

For anyone out there who wants to learn more about translanguaging, who you’ve heard the word, but you’re like, “I don’t know what that looks like in my classroom,” yeah, check out [00:45:00] her work because I think it’s, it really is special the way that she’s approaching it. 

Sally Baer: Yeah, she’s definitely one to follow, and the work that she does in New York, in the college where she teaches, like they’re the, that’s the first place.

And when my teachers ask me, I’m like, “I’m still learning about what translanguaging pedagogy looks like,” because I am. And this is where you wanna go. These are the GOATs. These are the greatest of all time. They’re like, they’re laying down that, that groundwork for the profession and the people that are working in these spaces to, to do, to allow space for our students to be exactly who they are, and to use that linguistic power, because our multilingual geniuses are everything in our space.

They really are. 

Mandi Morris: Yeah, absolutely. So we talked some. We total- we went on like a sidebar geek-out over translanguaging practice. I love it. Where else would you recommend for people to go to learn about some of what you’ve been talking about? So you highlighted the, your work that you followed [00:46:00] with Steve Gill.

Where would you say, “Hey, like I am just really enjoying this source of information right now,” or, “I just love this book that I recently read.” It could be anything. What would you like to share with teachers who are curious to learn more? 

Sally Baer: The work by Dr. D- Lillian Ardell. She just published this beautiful book called Disrupting the Monolingual Bias.

That book is amazing because it help us as A society and educators check our implicit bias because we all have it. It’s implicit bias is not the same thing as racism. We all grew up with this set of, of values, and we’re taking that into our work with kids. It’s, for me, it really helped me name this is a monolingual hierarchy.

This is, even though we have multilingual students in many of our spaces, it helps unpack and examine that idea of dis- being a… And I love being a disruptor because I’m a person that’s, we are always going to do best by our students. I’m always going to advocate for my [00:47:00] students, even when it’s hard, even when I get pushback.

That’s something that I think is so important. Her work is amazing. And I also think the work on accountable talk, I’ve really done a lot with accountable talk and learning about how powerful that can be in classroom spaces. Say the work of Jeff Zwiers, he’s a really good resource for that. And any book that you can read about academic conversations, a lot of books are published with math, but you can use it in any content area, having students own that conversation and giving them the tools to be able to enter in equitably to any academic conversation.

Those are things that I’m excited about in my work, and also that I’m always ringing the bell like, “Hey, check out this book that I read.” But yeah, that could be powerful being in spaces where you can discuss that with other educators, like a book study. 

Mandi Morris: Absolutely. I love that you brought up accountable discourse, academic discourse.

This is something that I’m personally very passionate about, and [00:48:00] in my own work in curriculum design and development, think a ton about because a lot of this work is put on teachers to have to embed, to have to create from scratch. And as we develop curriculum and we develop resources for teachers, we have to own, right?

That should be embedded in how resources are being developed, not just pushed off to teachers to have to create on their own. So it, it’s something that I also am very passionate about, and it’s important in all content areas. Students need structure to talk about that academic language, to use and play with the academic language so that they can then own it for themselves.

They don’t feel like an imposter using that academic language Um, and I think that’s just really powerful work. 

Sally Baer: Yeah. I agree. I agree. It’s exciting to give teachers the tools that they can use in their space and model that, where any student, a newcomer student who is brand new to our school and brand new to our country, [00:49:00] feels like they have an equitable opportunity to engage, even if it’s not through words, even if it’s through a gesture saying, “I agree,” or the thinking and processing is part of that silent period where students are just taking in information, and they’re listening and processing in multiple languages.

Like, I, I’m just so humbled by kids in spaces that are bringing, like, three, four languages, plus learning English. It’s really, like, it’s humbling. As a monolingual speaker with my low novice Spanish, it’s really humbling. So yeah, I agree. I think that is something that can really transform a practice when we know how to create tho- those protocols and have students have the efficacy and ownership over, over their discussion.

They’re driving the conversation. We are like the mentor or the coach, and it takes work to get to that, but it is doable, and it’s really powerful when it happens. 

Mandi Morris: Absolutely. Sally, this has been such a lovely conversation today. I’ve really enjoyed chatting with you about a lot of different things [00:50:00] and the world of the ML space.

It’s been so nice to get to know you and to just talk about what’s important in the work that ML educators are doing right now and where it’s going. So thank you for making time for us.