Inside the Black Box of Instruction

Welcome back to Hand in Hand, Place to Place, Transforming Teacher Preparation. I'm Valerie Sakimura, your podcast host and the Executive Director of Dean's Frimpact, a national nonprofit with a mission of ensuring all students access well-prepared teachers. Our five episode podcast series will examine how teacher preparation has evolved over the last decade, where it's headed, and how stakeholders can work together to ensure all pathways into teaching are affordable and high quality. PK-12 classrooms are changing fast from making instructional shifts in literacy and math to leveraging artificial intelligence. But too often, we hear the same critique, that the programs preparing future teachers aren't changing fast enough to meet the demands of these classrooms. And yes, teacher preparation programs absolutely still have work to do. And over the past decade at Dean's Frimpact, we've witnessed meaningful sustainable change among the nearly 300 teacher prep programs that we've worked with and the future teachers they're preparing. Today, I'm joined by three amazing leaders whose work is deeply intertwined with instructional change efforts in teacher preparation. They're bridging preparation to the realities of PK-12 classrooms, embedding cognitive science principles into teaching practice, and exploring how technology might support better practice and feedback for aspiring teachers. I'm going to ask each of you to say a quick hello and tell us a little bit more about your cells. I'm Leah Brown and I'm a faculty member in the secondary education department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, so I work as a teacher educator for folks wanting to become middle or high school teachers. Hi, I'm Julie Cohen. I'm a faculty member at the University of Virginia and I'm an elementary teacher educator and I run a large research lab focused on teacher learning. I am Courtney Bell. I am the vice president of Research and Innovation at Tennessee Score. We're a statewide research and advocacy organization based in natural Tennessee and the portfolio of work I lead includes work that we call strategic practice, which is essentially just great fun to work that we do on the ground with K-12 and higher ed partners to generate proofpoints of what is possible and that is how I came to know deans for impact and work with them on improving teacher preparation. Well, I'm really excited. The three of you are here. You know, I started my career in education in roles that were more kind of system-facing, looking at policies and resources and structures that needed to shift in order to see changes and outcomes for students. And in those roles, what I kept coming back to was that the success of any of those changes, whether it was an amazing policy idea or an amazing curriculum or an amazing new idea about how to design schools. The success of all those was deeply dependent on what was happening in the interactions between teachers and students every day. And so I came to believe that if we didn't attend to those details of teaching and learning, we'd implement a bunch of structural shifts that went nowhere. And yet, issues of instruction haven't historically gotten as much nuanced discussion in the national conversation, as I think they should. So really glad to be able to have that conversation here with you all today and hope it sparks more conversations about instruction and instructional preparedness of teachers. So let's kind of start with what we're aiming for. We often hear people say that the goal of teacher preparation is to get future teachers to be classroom ready. Courtney, I know sometimes we talk about classrooms in the abstracts, but a lot of your work has been thinking about, no, classrooms are very specific and have specific needs. So would love to hear from your perspective how you would define classroom ready. From my perspective, increasingly, I think teachers need to come in with a firm understanding of the research and science around how students learn. That is really important. And I would also say in Tennessee specifically, we had some pretty big changes in instructions specifically in literacy and what our expectations are for students. And so making sure that future teacher candidates are aware of the current expectations of teachers in Tennessee classrooms. So for example, I think Prepp and R state had often been focused on classroom management, on unit design, on lesson design, and in Tennessee teachers are expected to use the high quality instructional materials that are provided to them by their school or district. And so it's really important for them to know like, what does it mean to do intellectual prep when you're given materials? How do you ensure that you're able to differentiate the materials for the different student needs? How do you understand what student needs are, what data do you need? And so I think just making sure that they understand what they're stepping into and kind of those core understandings of how kids learn to read and what does good instruction look like feels more important than some of the more wrote tasks like lesson design, unit design that we had asked of teachers in the past. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, how would you define what classroom ready means? What's fundamentally important is a focus on relationship building. I think our new teachers need to know how to develop and cultivate positive relationships with our students. And then it's just about having in my view of just a beginning toolbox with some very specific strategies in mind that help them implement routines that have a, you know, a safe, efficient learning environment, but also the ability to bring the content to the learner. And Julie, what about for you? So Courtney and Leigh did a lot of heavy lifting for me and I would double down on relationships and understanding how to use curricular resources for sure. I inherited a lesson planning course when I became a faculty member at UVA 12 years ago and pretty quickly shifted into a focus on what I call being an informed consumer of curricular resources, really trying to orient future teachers around what HQ I am look like and how to use them in skillful ways that are aligned with what the developers of those materials intended. So I think that is essential. And also I think that really expert teaching is is so complex and requires such an advanced constellation of knowledge, skills and beliefs that that no matter what we do in teacher prep, we're not going to get people to that place. So when I think about my work as a teacher educator, my north star is really like what are the things that are foundational to getting people to that over time. And so for me, there are kind of three core ideas. One is that all kids can reach ambitious learning goals. And that is true across the board that I think to enter classrooms teachers need to believe that at a very fundamental level. And then second, they need to see themselves as centrally responsible for helping kids meet those goals that the locus of controls with them. And that I think often beginning teachers have a tendency to think about, you know, when kids don't meet goals, is it being the fault of the child or the family or the community. And so for me, the really core thing is that teacher see that they have the knowledge, skills and beliefs to help scaffold kids towards the goals they have for them. That that is their responsibility. And that if kids aren't meeting those goals, that it is their responsibility to try to pivot and, you know, find new ways to help kids. And the third is that teachers need to feel comfortable asking for help. I think that for for decades, we've had teachers who enter classrooms thinking that it is their own private domain. And that we can never expect a skilled teaching workforce with that kind of mentality. Because teachers need to be able to see each other as resources. They need to feel comfortable asking for help. They need to know who they can go to to ask for help. And that they need to see school-based personnel coaches, principals, other teachers as kind of allies and supports for them as they build and grow. Julie, I really appreciate this point about teachers seeing it as their responsibility to support student learning. I think there's like a really strong connection here between how you think about what Courtney talked about in terms of understanding how kids learn. If you understand how kids learn and how to create the conditions for that learning to happen, then you can feel efficacious in knowing how to make that happen for your learners. If you all had to point to one or two pieces of evidence or insight from your work, that best illustrate what actually moves the needle for new teachers and ultimately student learning, what would you highlight? And Julie, maybe we'll come back to you first. So I think, again, kind of two main things. One is that teachers need lots of chances to practice. And I've seen that in my work as a teacher educator and I've seen that in my role as a researcher. This is really hard work. And I think asking people to do that without giving them lots of chances for scaffolding and delivering a practice where they can try things out, get feedback and try things again. I think without that we're not going to get where we need to be. And the second thing that we've seen kind of time and time again in my research is that practice alone is not going to be sufficient. We have a paper that came out, I think, last year in Journal of Educational Psychology called practice does not make perfect. When teachers especially beginning teachers have chances to practice that are not kind of scaffolded by more expert others, by coaches, by those who have different kinds of sets of knowledge, skills and beliefs, that a lot of times those practice experiences can actually be negative. The teachers can, you know, degrade in their skills and that they can double down and kind of on productive beliefs about kids. More deficit oriented ideas about kids that they don't see the focus of control to the point I made a little bit earlier, they don't see the focus of controls within themselves. They have this tendency to kind of assign blame. So to me, it's really important that we don't just think about practice as kind of the goal. I really appreciate you raising this Julie because I think the idea that teachers, beginning teachers need practice has definitely become more mainstream over the last decade and sometimes I don't know that the second piece is as kind of thoroughly attached to the idea of more practice in the ways that it needs to be. So I appreciate you naming that. A little additional layer on that. I think having teachers who understand high quality instructional materials and how they should be used and prepared, I have gone into classrooms where I've seen a teacher who's on day three doing very effective instruction because they were given the resources that they needed to be effective and the preparation protocols to allow them to stay in front of a room of kids. Even if they're not perfect, they're proficient on that first day. And I think that that when I think back to my first year of teaching was certainly not the case for me. So I think that that is something like giving them a strong foundation of resources and not expecting them to be able to be instructional designers and all of that on day one and letting them just focus on the art and science of teaching, I think is huge. And then I would also double click on Julie's point around practice. You alluded Val to our focus on specificity. And so we facilitate a network of educator preparation programs in their district partners where we've been trying to help them align on their vision for excellent literacy instruction. And one of the things that we found is that candidates didn't have enough opportunities for authentic practice in that subject area before they were entering the classroom. So they would have student teaching placements. But it was often kind of a check the box experience. And so we made a purposeful effort to pair student teachers with teachers in K2 literacy so that they would enter the classroom three years later. Having had experiences teaching foundational skills lessons, teaching knowledge building lessons. And that was just not true in the past. And so building practice opportunities where teachers are able to like go in and teach with a specific goal of like we're gonna learn how you teach a foundational skills lesson. And you're gonna be getting feedback from one of the teachers in the school who is the best at doing that has been really powerful. And building in those practice opportunities earlier in a teacher's career where it may be just a field experience rather than a full semester-long clinical, but they're going in once a week, but they're going in with purpose and with focus and getting feedback on that practice. Can I jump in on something for me? Yeah, because it's it's sparked something for me. So I just wanted to say that I think that especially when we're thinking about the preparation of elementary teachers that preparing people to use HQIM is absolutely essential. Because elementary teachers are generalists and I'm gonna be curious to hear at least thoughts on this because she's working with secondary candidates and I think it's a different terrain. When we think about secondary teachers and the materials that they have available to them, but I think at the elementary level you are so much likelier to see skilled teaching day one, year one, if teachers are working with strong materials and know how to use them well. That I think that any vision we have of teacher preparation that doesn't foreground that we're gonna be missing the boat because when we ask elementary teachers who don't have the kind of content expertise that we need them to have really to ask them to be teaching things from scratch, designing lessons, thinking about the learning trajectories across grade levels and connections across subject areas that we're not going to be able to have the time and teacher preparation or in most teachers careers to be able to cultivate that kind of skill teaching. So I just think emphasizing Courtney's point about materials is crucial. I think it is a big cultural shift within teacher preparation programs for many teacher preparation programs to think about preparing teachers around specific materials instead of as Courtney talked about kind of lesson designing or lesson planning from scratch. Leah, add on here, we'd love to hear your thoughts and then also kind of a particular piece of insight or evidence from your work that you want to elevate that you think moves the needles for new teachers. I would agree with Julie that I think the HQIM is more from my view more common in elementary to we see it some in secondary for sure and definitely in some contents more than others and it's it is really varied. You know and when I think about my group of interns I have some who are having to design from scratch and it really does put them back on the starting line and the ways that you've described and then some who you know who have HQIM materials available and it's interesting because the ones that do sometimes they're almost feeling like they're cheating when they you know when we're asking them to bring a lesson to the to the you know record themselves or bring something to talk about and look at and their practice and they're they almost feel like they're cheating if they're bringing something that they didn't create and so you know it really is that conversation about well you're delivering it whereas you know where can you use your critical eye on this where can you can you think about your students and their needs with you know these materials and how are you going to bring it to life. To sort of complement that I what I've noticed is they've benefited with a lot of modeling and observing of expert teachers and so you know modeling in through my work with with DFI I've been you know implementing the things that I've been we've been asking our students to do have been doing them myself and being really explicit about notice how I worded this question and how I you know made this a deeper processing type question and notice how I delivered it to you in such a way that everybody had think time so I would always sort of step out of the teaching moment and describe what I was doing and why and I know I have a student that used to say oh Dr. Brown's going meta again whatever I would do that but you know I think that that really helps them see from they they're being students of of you know the the learning science so that they can then teach it themselves but the other thing that has been helpful is co-observing expert teachers in the field you know I think sometimes when our candidates are observing their mentor teachers or other experts those experts are so good at what they do that some of their moves are invisible or they're thinking is invisible and they don't always know how how they get to this place where the the teaching is just really alive and effective and so I've done some co-observations and so you know we watch it together and then we can talk about and then we bring in the the person we're observing and talk about you know why did you do what you did like how did you get to this point and explain your thinking and the question you asked and that move that you made because sometimes I think a lot of that because there's such beginners a lot of that sometimes is really invisible to them so that's really helped yeah I'm struck by the um how the role of experts in what each of you talked about is so critical right yeah you know you were talking a little bit about this work to bring learning science into your courses and Courtney I know one of the things you said was understanding how students learn is really critical um in our first podcast episode we talked a little bit about a report that actually deans for impacts very first report we put out um the science of learning which translates principles of cognitive science into practical applications for teaching practice we release that report a decade ago it continues to get a ton of traction I think because it's quite accessible um for educators who may not have access to some of the kind of research papers that um that some of these ideas come from Leah you've been working um with dfi over the years to really embed some of those insights from cognitive science research into the preparation of um teachers at University of Alaska Fairbanks can you talk more about what that's looked like with faculty and candidates and what outcomes you've seen from that yeah it's been um very impactful work um for our program um for sure and it's you know started with for faculty very deep professional learning uh so that we we had a common understanding and and developed a common language around um the principles of learning science and and the um the practical applications or you know the teacher actions as we called them you know we did a really deep look at our program we did some early assessments just kind of get a baseline of where we were at and where candidates were at. And then I think the most impactful thing has been threading that content throughout the program. So it doesn't just sit in one course. So it's not a one and done. Here's a topic. Then they take another course and move on to the next topic. But pieces of it are threaded throughout from the very first introduction to end class. They take all the way to their internship where they're doing practices with coaching a feedback cycle on the teacher actions that leverage learning science. And I mentioned earlier, I folded it into my own teaching. I've been using and other faculty in the program have as well using those principles to enhance the ways that we teach our students, both for learning and for modeling, as I mentioned before. But yeah, we've seen several shifts in our candidates. A lot of things come to mind, but one specific thing is definitely when we look at their end of the year performance assessment, we look at some of the teaching videos they present for coaching, there really has been a move away from activity driven planning and definitely more intentionality in alignment with standards, learning goals, activities, that really is exciting to see. Because they're demonstrating their understanding of specifically with learning science of what students focus their attention on is what they're going to remember or learn. So our candidates are getting much better at ensuring that what they're teaching and what they're asking students to do is focused on the right thing. Related to this, this candidate said that one of the things that they have taken away from the program is the importance of reaching all learners. And that was a big part of the science of learning, making sure that these teaching actions that they're doing are providing access to this deeper learning opportunities for all the students in their classroom. And this candidate said that they've seen that their students who have struggled in the past have been very confident and successful in their classroom and because of the things that they had learned in the program around that. So that was really exciting to read. We had that just brought me a boost of joy this morning. Thanks for sharing that. You know, one of the things that we've touched on is instructional coherence. And I think in K-12, we talk about instructional coherence within a school or within a district. But we don't talk as much about intentionally planned coherence between expectations for instruction in K-12 schools. And then the way teachers are prepared for those schools, which Courtney, I know you've touched on a bit already in our conversation. So you mentioned this work that Tennessee Score has been doing through the lead in literacy network where you have been partnering with us and with TNTP to kind of create more of that coherence between teacher preparation and instructional expectations in schools. Can you talk a bit more about some of the impact of that work that you've seen or learnings from that work? Yeah. I think for years we had worked on the K-12 side in helping districts adopt high quality instructional materials. And we were frequently hearing complaints about we're continuing to get teachers who are coming in unprepared. And they don't understand the science of reading and they don't know what needs to happen. And so there had been a lot of like top down efforts to get changes to happen. And we thought, what if we just bring everybody to the table together and talk about what actually is our shared vision for what we want students to do. And from the ed prep side, it wasn't that they didn't want to prepare students. It was that they were being asked to handle an elementary level. For example, literacy content knowledge, math content knowledge, social studies, science, trauma informed instruction, you know, classroom management, like you name it. And they were like, we only have a certain number of hours in the day. And we were like, that's totally fair. So let's talk about what is it that you are going to be focusing on ensuring that candidates develop? And then what is it that the district is going to need to know that candidates are going to need support on in those first three years? So what if instead of thinking about like the ed prep experience as being a two year experience that you check the box and it's done? What if we think about that as being a five year shared experience and two years of that is in your formal ed program. I mean, and then the next three years is in really thoughtful embedded induction support that helps candidates develop any gaps they may have because there are limited number of hours in which you can do things. And so I think bringing folks together for that mutual learning and just setting a table where they could say like, here's what we're working on. What are you working on seeing faculty member, shoulder to shoulder with a district supervisor saying like, here's actually where you access the materials that we use in our classrooms. And here's where you find a teacher guide. Here's where you find the remediation guide for students who may be struggling. We had faculty members and EPPs. We try to do every semester learning walks together. So where they will go and they will do the intellectual prep for a lesson. And then they will go observe it together. And then they will debrief it. And so just building that shared understanding across silos was really powerful. And then I think I often take for granted some of the structures that we have in K 12 like we have a great upon standards. We have usually scopes and sequences. PLCs are a thing. That's an expectation. And for faculty members, sometimes folks who were both like they're the two literacy faculty members and they never had an opportunity to sit at a table and say, this is what I do in my course. What are you doing your course? And then when you fold in, spend teachers and MLL teachers as well, there was just this complete disconnect and lack of visibility. And so I think just bringing folks to the table for that shared learning and creating opportunities for folks to learn something new and different and in higher ed academic freedom is such a such a big piece of it. And people feel really attached to the materials that they developed. And sometimes really reticent to share that openly. And so one of the things we did with DFI was to have them first semester pilot the modules around literacy that DFI has developed. So it was sort of taking like, okay, now your personal pride is out of it. We're going to just look at these materials. Let's talk about what do you like about this? What is helpful for your candidates in this? What might you want to adopt? And so it kind of just like lowered people's guards a little bit. I think it enabled them to have really fruitful conversations about what they wanted to be true in their classrooms for their student. Yeah, it's been pretty remarkable. I had the privilege of attending some of the network meetings. And early on, I think there was a lot of kind of crossed arms and leaning back from the table. Skepticism about working across these groups. And in subsequent meetings as some of those shared experience had occurred, there was kind of growing trust that values were very similar. And there was space to kind of problem solve together. The orientation, I observed really shifted. People were excited to be in the room together. And so I really value that. Julie, I know Courtney talked briefly about materials for teacher educators. And you and I have talked a bunch about that. Curious if you want to add anything about the value that high quality and structural materials for teacher educators could bring? Yeah, thank you for bringing it up. I was going to chime in. Because to me, we don't provide teacher educators with many materials at all. And when we think about how helpful HQIM have been in the K-12 space, I think that HQIM for teacher educators could be equally powerful in higher ed. And I think it's easy to think that the issues lie in higher ed faculty. Because academic freedom is central to an academic's identity. And also, I think a lot of the kind of hesitation around reform is that, people don't have the time, the incentives, the resources to kind of shift what they're doing in their courses. And that I think if we could develop more materials, make them available, create spaces like it sounds like you all have done in Tennessee for people to engage with those materials that I think there's a high likelihood that many, if not most, teacher educators, would be excited to kind of learn and grow and develop. But I think it's very unlikely to expect people to completely redesign their courses without kinds of resources to do that well. And so what we've been doing in my lab at UVA is also building modules that are available online for teacher educators, for K-12 districts, to help teachers learn the kinds of skills and the knowledge that we think they need to be able to support students in learning. In the context of my work, we have classroom management focus skills, which I like to call relational skills to the point that Liam made at the beginning, because I think teaching is about relationships, not about managing. But also skills for teaching and literacy and in mathematics in the elementary grades. And those materials include opportunities for simulated practice to this point that practice is really important. But they also include modularized content to proceed the simulated practice and to come after it. So kind of schema building around student misconceptions, you know, around mathematical content or central ideas and literacy, how to scaffold what we know about evidence-based practice in those spaces to see videos of experts to this conversation we're having about expertise to see experts doing these things well to have those examples kind of decomposed or analyzed and to then have what we call tip sheets for kind of bridging simulated practice, these kind of more scaffolded, deliberate practice spaces into classroom teaching with kids. Teachers are learners but we just don't often treat them as such. For many teacher educators as you need, they want to be doing some of these things and incorporating them into their practice and may not have the time or the resources to do that kind of full revamp of a course and so providing some resources in order to get people started is really, really powerful. I think that people think that teacher preparation when done in higher ed context is resource rich and you know I think it's important to name that it's often not that teacher ed programs, you know our resource-concerned and really important ways that university-based teacher educators are not compensated, you know, very well especially considering that people have PhDs for the work that they do and so you know I think there are a lot of assumptions about you know what motivates people or doesn't in higher ed spaces that are actually kind of fundamentally misaligned with what's actually happening on the ground in higher ed context. People, teacher educators care deeply about teachers and kids and want to do what's right for them and you know need tools to be able to do that too. Also, Lily, I love hearing you each talk about your work because it's just kind of bright spot after bright spot to me of all the good things that are percolating in the teacher prep space around instructional improvement and some really glad that folks who are listening are going to be able to hear about the incredible work each of you are leading. We're getting to the end of our conversation and so I'm going to tip kind of a last question we've used to conclude each of our podcast episodes in this series as you reflect on the last decade what's the single most important way you think the fields of teacher appropriation has made progress since 2015 and as we look ahead to the next decade what do you think it's most important for us to be paying attention to? I think focusing on quality has been been a shift especially for my perspective you know with integration of science and learning and sporting the ways the teachers think and enact their teaching and learning this was not a part of my teacher preparation like Courtney I feel like my first year you said first few days but for me like the first year I would have could have been a much more effective teacher for my early students and that gives me pause and thought a lot of the time you know when we think about different pathways I think there's less of like a more embodied mentality and more of like you know longer clinical experiences there's now financial support that's being embedded in residency and apprenticeship models and I think that's that's been a good change looking ahead um yeah I guess a collaboration between teacher programs and their their districts is really important for us in particular we serve districts across the state from urban to very rural indigenous communities and so the needs of districts are really different and we feel this this pressure sometimes to be all things to all districts and you know it can't it's not possible and so that that really does make that collaboration important like broadly what should we be doing and then for specific district needs you know where where is those more micro collaborations needed such a good point Leah because I you know this is a challenge we hear from many teacher preparation programs right they want to have these meaningful partnerships with districts and aligned instructional vision and that's really challenging when you're partnering with 50 districts and so like trying to get a clear sense of how to do that in practice when you have 50 district partners seems like a really good challenge for us to be working on over the next 10 years so I think the fact that we all kind of coalesced around this idea that practice is important to me that is yeah a testament to the progress that we've made in the last decade and in part because of the excellent research that's been done to sort of show the importance of a strong mentor a lot of that work's been done in Tennessee so um you know being able to do that work in partnership with states um to have strong research collaborations that allow us to build evidence about what works for for teachers school development um and so I think we now know pretty conclusively that a a good clinical teaching placement matters enormously um and that can pay dividends in terms of you know teacher effectiveness down the road um so that to me is a teacher educator and someone who studies teaching and teacher policy is is hugely important um and has been a transformative shift in the last um 10 years and to me where we need to go is also kind of to bring us back to the start of the conversation is that I think that people can kind of take up those insights about the importance of practice you know in ways that misconstrued what we actually know about practice which is that it's not just doing things over and over again um that's going to make the difference that's going to translate into just called teaching we need we need strong supports around practice um and we need more research about what those look like what are the things that that need to proceed practice um what are the skills that we need people to have at different kinds of points because to Courtney's point about five years thinking about induction as a crucial part of the the preparation puzzle I think that that we haven't gotten there yet um and you know the other thing I'll say from my vantage as a researcher is that I think people who study teacher preparation and people who study teacher professional learning tend not to be the same people um that there is this kind of siloena of academics and of the evidence base um and that I think we need considerably more work um and more experimentation and innovation around thinking about teachers and learners across uh their developmental trajectories across spaces um over time and to do that well I will again Courtney didn't pay me to say this but you know I think kind of see is is really you know a leader in this space in thinking about state data systems that let us look at teachers across pre-service and service spaces they're really not very many state contexts um where you can do that kind of work and there's a reason why so much of the knowledge that we have about teachers comes from you know a small handful of state contexts yeah I would just uh double click on what you said Julie and I think it's both kind of researchers who were working in the teacher preparation and the teacher professional learning field trying to bring that together I think that's the true of support providers who providers who are providing learning opportunities for pre-service teachers versus in-service teachers how could those folks be brought closer together I think it would create huge value for the fields um Courtney bring us home I think I'm going to say the same thing uh just we have a solid research base of what we need to be doing that that's clear and that's more jointly shared I think we have specifically in literacy like a kind of a sea change around I don't know longer telling people the whole language strategy is in three queuing um and so I think that that's that's powerful and then also just the emphasis on clinical we have one of the programs in our state has a full year long residency so just an acknowledgement that teachers need more supported structure practice um under an expert to allow them to be successful just like many other professional fields do um so I think those are both exciting advancements um and then I think if I'm thinking about like what is what needs to come next I think I would say a few more carrots we've had a lot of sticks um we've had a lot of you know 75 different accrediting bodies are people evaluating your program or um a set layering on different assessments that don't actually have any correlation with teachers success in the classroom to to feel like we're checking a box on yes teachers are definitively prepared and I think what we found through our network um we provide stipends to the faculty who participate to Julie's earlier point of many people want to redesign their programs but they're not given the time and the charge to do that in this space and the pay to do that and so you know relatively nominal stipends for people to come to the table open their classroom say this is what I'm teaching what feedback would you have for me how could I make this stronger um and creating the space for that collaboration to happen I think time is a limited resource and so you have to incentivize people to use that limited resource in a different way and so in a few more carrots we could get more folks who are willing to to roll up their sleeves because I think the will is there it's just time is time time is hard. I totally agree Courtney that so resonates with our experience as well. Well I hate to bring this conversation to a close. I am so grateful to each of you for being here, for the work you do every day on behalf of teachers and kids and all that I've learned from each of you over the years. It has been a joy and thanks to each of you and to our listeners for tuning in. Take care.