Episode 43: Zooming In on Student Engagement with Michael McLaughlin
How to reach Michael:
Austin Prep Twitter Account
Michael’s Austin Prep Twitter Account
Transcript:
(transcribed by kayla.r.fainer@gmail.com)
Melissa Milner 00:09
Hi, this is Melissa Milner. Welcome to The Teacher As... podcast. The goal of this weekly podcast is to help you explore your passions and learn from others in education and beyond to better your teaching. The Teacher As... podcast will highlight innovative practices and uncommon parallels in education.
In this episode, I chat with Michael McLaughlin. He's the head of middle school at Austin Prep in Reading, Massachusetts. I met Michael when I took a really cool workshop with him about how to make escape rooms with Google Forms. And afterwards, I just really felt like I needed to have him on The Teacher As... with all his creative ideas.
So welcome, Michael.
Michael McLaughlin 00:51
Hi, Melissa.
Melissa Milner 00:52
Hello. What would you like The Teacher As... listeners to know about you?
Michael McLaughlin 00:57
Oh, sure. Well, I'm sure like many of the listeners, I also am emerging from the coronavirus pandemic. It certainly has been quite a year for educators, teachers, and administrators, and everyone in our building.
And so firstly, congratulations to everyone for making it through and doing all that all of us did throughout the last 16 months to be able to navigate our craft, which was normally in person and with our students, and to be able to transition that to a digital platform, to transition it to a hybrid platform. But we all did this because we care deeply about our students.
And so I think the first thing I would want the listeners to know is just the great sense of gratitude and camaraderie that I feel like I have with the fellow listeners here. I'm a listener to this podcast as well. But I think a bit of background about me, I've been in education for 15 years. I began my teaching career in Mississippi as part of a service through teaching program with the Alliance for Catholic Education at the University of Notre Dame.
I was placed in Biloxi, Mississippi right after Hurricane Katrina for a two year service through teaching program. And I enjoyed the people and my students and the families I had the opportunity to meet so much that I stayed beyond my commitment for seven years, and then transitioned back home to New England, where I became principal of a K through 6, and then Pre-K through 6 elementary school in New Hampshire. And then for the last six years, I've been head of the middle school at Austin Prep in Reading, Mass.
Melissa Milner 02:51
That is so interesting that you had elementary experience as a principal first and then switched to middle school, number one. And number two, what were your teaching experiences like? And why did you choose administration?
Michael McLaughlin 03:06
Sure. So I was a history major in college. I went to the College of the Holy Cross here in Massachusetts. And my first teaching position was to teach World and European history in Mississippi. And then that later expanded to AP American History.
I did a Topics in History course where I did some semester electives on the Renaissance. I did one on the Holocaust and remembrance. I also was in charge of the school's drama program, as well. So I had really my hand very deeply in the history department, but also in the fine arts.
And then coming back to New England, there was an amazing opportunity to be able to be the first lay head of school at St. Benedict Academy in Manchester. It had been a school that had been run by sisters for 124 years. And on its 125th year, I became not only the first lay person, but the first man to be head of school. And so really, it was a treat for me to be able to be the head of that school.
But a couple of years in, I really missed being in that middle school, high school environment. And that's where the sort of transition to Austin Prep happened, and being able to work in a very special way with the middle school students and the faculty of the middle school at Austin. I think there's so much potential for middle school learners. And that's what attracted me most to the position.
Melissa Milner 04:54
Great. Can you tell us more about this potential that you're talking about and what your mission is as head of school?
Michael McLaughlin 05:02
At Austin, I oversee the middle school division. So we're a 6 through 12 school. So I oversee grades 6, 7 and 8. And then my colleague oversees the high school. And then we both report in to a Head of School who oversees the entire campus.
With middle school in particular, I absolutely love the middle school grades. I think this is a time in a young adolescent's life where they are growing and glowing in a bunch of different ways - and often at the same time, although at different rates and sometimes in different directions, right. So of course, early adolescence, they're growing physically.
They're going through all sorts of the difficult changes that one would experience in early adolescence. But that physical growth is accompanied by all sorts of emotional and social growth. And that opens up new opportunities and experiences for students athletically, artistically.
Students in this particular age group also have a real sense of fairness, equality, and justice. And so they're craving to be agents of change. They have this desire to want to go and do good and to tap into these different gifts that they have.
And so I feel like as a teacher, as an educator, the middle school grades are a really unique time where middle school students are most looking for somebody outside of their home, outside of their family unit - a mentor, a teacher, a coach, an administrator - who is going to acknowledge and celebrate the great potential and gift that each of these students has within them, and is going to encourage them to utilize those gifts to be that agent of change, to be that difference in the world.
And so I feel like being an administrator in the middle school world, I'm in a really unique position where I can encourage faculty members to be able to be that mentor for students. And then I have the benefit of working with middle school students every day, that through my conversations through the different programming that I'm engaged with with the middle school students, I'm also able to participate in that journey for the students who I interact with.
Melissa Milner 07:29
Very cool. Now you have me curious of all the different programs. What is a typical day for you? And what is really a passion in the work you do?
Michael McLaughlin 07:40
So for me, the typical day begins before students arrive on campus, getting myself settled in the middle school office. And really by 7:30 when students begin to arrive on campus, I'll begin to see students either make their way through the middle school office, or as I'm walking down the hallways to check in with colleagues, and encountering middle school students, that first interaction, I think, is really important. And I would say that this is true for teachers and administrators in schools across the country. To be able to share in that opening moment a positive word with whatever student you're encountering-- I spend a lot of my afternoon down on our baseball field at Austin Prep, or on the track, or watching the field hockey, or lacrosse programs, depending on the season, or out at the hockey rink, or in our performing arts center to be able to watch our student performers.
And so those students, as they're walking through the hallways, if they were on the lacrosse team, if they were in The Nutcracker, to be able to say, hey, great practice yesterday. Or hey, I saw that goal that you scored. And so as they're beginning their day, they're getting that validation, that feedback about the cool activity that they're participating in in the afternoon.
And so for me, it's not just about what happens from 8:00 to 2:30 when we're in class together. But it's also about all those enveloping experiences that happen after school with all of the different activities that are offered as a part of the Austin experience and making sure to celebrate those stories as I encounter the students. I really make an effort over the course of my day. I have 200 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students in my division. And I make an effort to have a conversation with each of them every day.
And so hopefully those conversations are about something that they were engaged with in an activity after school, or maybe a piece of feedback that I got from a faculty member about their participation in a lab, or something that they wrote on an English assignment. But to really let the students know that their work is something that I noticed, that it's cool, and that I have questions about, and that it's not just about giving praise.
But it's that accomplishment that they've had is an invitation for conversation. And so then it's like, okay, well, what's the game going to look like today? How are you going to take that lesson learned in practice and take it to the next game or to the next performance? What's next on your docket for writing? With our seventh grade writers, they actually write a novel in the course of seventh grade.
Melissa Milner 10:37
Wow.
Michael McLaughlin 10:39
Yeah, to talk with the students about, what's your next plan for this character?
Melissa Milner 10:44
Do they do NaNoWriMo?
Michael McLaughlin 10:44
They do, yeah.
Melissa Milner 10:47
National novel writing…
Michael McLaughlin 10:48
Yeah, it's such a cool program. So yeah, over the course of November, they'll write their own 10,000 word novel and then work on editing it. Actually, this year, the seventh grade asked me to participate alongside with them.
And so in the midst of working to help faculty members on Zoom and do workshops with The Collaborative, which is where you and I met, Melissa, I was also writing my own British spy novel set in London. And being able to tell the students, yeah, I'm working on my characters as well.
Melissa Milner 11:30
I did NaNoWriMo. It's a lot. It's a lot when you're teaching full time and doing other things, but it is very worth it. So you mentioned The Collaborative, and that was-- maybe you can explain, because I know what it is. But people who aren't in Massachusetts might not know what that is. What is The Collaborative? And how did you get involved? What was that genesis?
Michael McLaughlin 11:55
So The Collaborative Project is an initiative from Salem State University. And it's a professional development network that was created by Salem State for educators throughout Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. But over the course of the pandemic, with a lot of the offerings happening on Zoom instead of in person, that network actually expanded to schools a bit away.
We had educators joining us from Maine, and New York, and New Jersey, and Delaware. But most of the educators who are participating in The Collaborative Project are from the North Shore area. And it's an opportunity for school districts and independent schools to really share some best practices with each other.
And so I had taken several workshops with The Collaborative Project over the course of my continuing education as an administrator and a teacher. I think it's really important as educators that we continue to listen, we continue to learn, we continue to grow, and that we model that both for other educators within our buildings and communities, but also for our students, as well.
So I had taken several workshops. And it's really, I think, dialed into the network. And there was an opportunity early on in the Fall that they were looking for some new workshops, particularly ones that were focused on the use of technology in the classroom. And I had delivered a workshop with the University of Notre Dame where I attended graduate school, on how Austin Prep had transitioned from being in person to being fully remote. And so my mind had been traveling down that path for a while.
And so I thought, oh gosh, I think I could put together a workshop that other educators in the area might find useful. So I put together several different workshops. And some of it was in doing classroom observations and walkthroughs of Austin Prep, I saw some pretty amazing things happening with my colleagues. And then that inspired me to try some of those things out in the classes that I was teaching this past Fall.
And then I thought, oh, I'd love to be able to turn key this and share some of this with other educators. And perhaps in sharing that, I may be inspired with some more new ideas and certainly some new contacts to continue to improve my craft. Because we're in the business of continuing education.
So I put together some workshops on formative assessment, a deep dive into different apps like Quizlet and Flipgrid. After seeing one of my colleagues do an escape room on the bubonic plague in her history class, I was like, wow, this is cool. And the seventh grade students were just so engaged. They were reading primary sources from Italy and Germany and looking for key details to be able to solve the puzzle that she had created.
I was like, I need to learn more about this. Kristen and I sat down, and she explained how things worked. I was really inspired by what I saw and asked her to show me the magic of how she had created this escape room using Google Forms. I was like, Google Forms? I always used that to collect the students' t-shirt size for our trip to Washington, DC. How are you using this as a teaching tool?
So it was really awesome to be able to sit down with another educator and learn from them and then to be able to build this workshop on escape rooms in Google Classrooms. And as I learned more, I took a dive into the educational research about gamification of learning, and how that can be a real motivator for students, and also how the use of things like Google Forms really was activating different 21st century skills that our students need to be able to use not just technology, but also processing information from a variety of sources.
And so I put together this workshop and then delivered it with The Collaborative. But it was very successful. So Kristen and I ended up team tagging this workshop again for the New England League of Middle Schools and presented the workshop at their annual conference.
With regards to The Collaborative, it was a really unique opportunity to be able to share what was happening in my classroom or at my school with other educators and to connect with other educators, hear about some of their experiences with different apps or different strategies, and then to be able to take some of their ideas back.
And so as I was having conversations with teachers in my building and noticed conversations about, how do we engage our middle school learners here in the midst of the COVID pandemic? I was able to take some of those ideas and say, oh, well, have you tried this? Or when I was talking to this educator from this other school, they were trying this. Have you tried this strategy? And as much as it's been an opportunity to share, it's also been an amazing opportunity to get and be inspired by new ideas. So it's been, really, an amazing experience.
Melissa Milner 17:55
Do you always have a passion for technology, or is it more the passion for getting the kids engaged with these fun things?
Michael McLaughlin 18:04
I think more the passion for engaging the students. Certainly when I begin teaching and thinking about some of those different lessons that I developed and implemented 15 years ago, I did stations. I did different activities with primary sources, and parsing things out, and getting them to work collaboratively.
But being able to be in an environment where students have access - the 1:1 iPad program or other schools that may have a Chromebook or whatnot - with students having access to technology, and then certainly over the past year, where students were compelled to access their education virtually at least for part of the year, it really encouraged me to think about, okay, how can I engage my students in such a way that when they arrive to my class, I'm not just lecturing at them for 35, 40 minutes before they do their independent work. But how can we be learning and processing knowledge together?
And so that's where these different technology programs came into my pedagogy and practice. And so certainly the Google Forms and escape rooms that I have engaged with with you was one of those. But I've done some other workshops for The Collaborative on things like Quizlet, and Flipgrid, and Padlet, among some others. Bitmoji Classrooms was a popular one from back in the Fall. To be able to meet the students in the environment that they were at.
And sometimes it's not about having the students come to you. Education so much is about you going to the students and meeting them where they're at. And they very much, because of the pandemic, are in this digital space.
And so it was incumbent upon me as an educator to dive into that digital space, to get to know and become familiar and comfortable with that digital space, and find ways to leverage that world to engage the students.
Melissa Milner
In your work right now, what are you zooming in on?
[ZOOMING IN SOUNDBITE]
Michael McLaughlin 19:32
What am I zooming in on? Right now, the summer is, for me, a time when I'm really planning and preparing for the Fall. This summer is all about transition. I talk to parents, and teachers, and kids all the time about the importance of transition in the middle school. I feel like it's really the theme of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. But for students coming in new to the school, I'm really using this summer as an opportunity to help them transition from other schools into my middle school, and certainly from being in a world where we were experiencing hybrid or remote learning into the in person learning.
So right now, I'm zooming in on activities and experiences to get kids excited about school and about building community among themselves. I've created a series of different programs to occur throughout the summer to provide students with multiple opportunities to get to come to campus, so they can feel comfortable and feel at home on campus.
Opportunities for them to engage with myself and members of the faculty so that they can get to know us, so that they can feel comfortable, knowing that they have different cheerleaders for them on their journey as they begin middle school. Opportunities for them to be able to navigate some of the educational technology that they'll need while at school and some other skills that they'll need right off the bat. And then most importantly, opportunities to engage with each other.
So over the last few weeks, we actually took a break from traditional normal classes for a few days. And we arranged field day experiences for the different grades and gave them some opportunities to be able to interact with their peers through project adventure and through some field days and even just a dance out on the field, capped off with some watermelon blush in the heat that we've recently been experiencing here in New England, and just give them some opportunities to make those connections with their peers.
Because for middle school students, as they go through really the most intense period of growth that they've gone through since they were infants into toddlers, they're going through all of this while also answering the fundamental life questions of, who am I and how do I fit in? And you can't answer those life questions in a bubble. You have to do so in the context of community.
And so for me, I've really been focusing my attention on, how do I create opportunities within the classroom, but then also within those enveloping experiences of students' time in middle school to access that unwritten, hidden curriculum so to speak, where they can have time to interact with their classmates and be able to process those life questions by developing friendships and relationships.
Because there's so much that we can teach them within our classroom about history, and math, and science, and the skills associated with our disciplines, equally important to middle school kids is the opportunity to discover who they are beyond the classroom and the gifts that they have on the stage, and on the playing field, and in service and leadership. And so finding opportunities for students to explore the full dimension of themselves is really important. And that's really going to be what I'm zooming in on this summer.
Melissa Milner 24:37
I love that answer. This whole interview, it's just really hitting me, the importance of middle school. And I know for many, those are the roughest years. It just sounds like you do a very good job of trying to provide a supportive, probably challenging environment itself. It's fantastic. Was there anything that you were hoping to talk about that we didn't talk about?
Michael McLaughlin 25:05
Well, I've listened to the podcast quite a bit actually. I take the time in the morning before school. I typically try and go and walk three or four miles. And your podcast is one of the podcasts in my rotation. So I know--
Melissa Milner 25:24
Oh, great.
Michael McLaughlin 25:26
But I also know timewise, we're probably close on time. But in thinking back a while ago, you had said we could sort of go in two different directions. And I'm really glad we went in the direction that we went in. But in terms of some of my experiences beyond the classroom, I'm really involved in a lot of the activities for student and faculty travel. That has certainly taken a backseat during the pandemic.
But that is something, as we emerge from COVID, that I'm really excited to resume and work on with teachers and students. We have a pretty dynamic travel program for our students at school. We have, for the middle school students, a study abroad program in the UK for three weeks. I'd be really excited to bring them back to London next summer.
But for our upper school students, we have no service trips. And we brought, actually, a group of middle and upper school students to Rome just before COVID. They had the opportunity to sing for and meet Pope Francis on New Year's Eve.
Melissa Milner 26:48
Wow, that's great!
Michael McLaughlin 26:51
Yeah, but it's been tough for these last 16 months not being able to participate in or plan some of these really incredible journeys for students and same for faculty. In thinking back to The Salem Collaborative, this amazing opportunity for teachers to be able to network with each other, and to grow, and to demonstrate that continuing education and that growth mindset that we try and model for our students.
Melissa Milner 27:22
How can people reach you if they want to know more about your work?
Michael McLaughlin 27:26
So I'm able to be reached in a few different ways. Certainly, at Austin, the social media handles for the Austin Prep Middle School accounts are available. So we have a Twitter account, @AP_middleschool at Twitter. And so I really try and post a lot of different stories and programs that are happening in the middle school there. And from there, you'll find the links to the Austin Prep Middle School blog, where every couple of weeks I try and capture a different middle school program or experience, capture that in some writing to share with our community.
As I say at the end of all of my workshops with The Salem Collaborative, I really enjoy connecting with educators to be able to talk about the craft and practice of teaching, both to share ideas and to hear what other folks are doing, and be able to take some of those ideas back and share them with faculty members in my building, and to share some of the incredible things that I see teachers doing at Austin Prep. So I certainly welcome folks to also reach out by email. So I'm available at mmclaughlin@austinprep.org.
Melissa Milner 28:48
Awesome. So last question. Here we go. What is your favorite movie, and why?
Michael McLaughlin 28:56
Oh, favorite movie, hands down, Harry Potter.
Melissa Milner 29:00
Which one?
Michael McLaughlin 29:01
I know there's eight, so really tough to pick from, but I would say The Goblet of Fire. That was the first of the books that I read. So I read the series completely out of order. I started with book four. I absolutely loved that book. It was definitely one of my favorite books growing up.
But having had the opportunity to spend quite a significant time in the UK and having visited the Harry Potter studios, Harry Potter would be at the top of my list and probably Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit trilogy as a close second.
Melissa Milner 29:39
Excellent. Well, I'm very thankful that you were able to take some time to talk to me.
Michael McLaughlin 29:45
Well, thank you so much for inviting me to be on the podcast. And I really appreciate our conversation today, Melissa.
Melissa Milner 29:54
If you enjoyed this episode, and have not done so already, please hit the subscribe button for The Teacher As... podcast so you can get future episodes. I would love for you to leave a review and a rating, as well, if you have time. For my blog, transcripts of this episode and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.theteacheras.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner. And I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates.
I am sending a special thanks to Linda and Lester Fleishman, my mom and dad, for being so supportive. They are the voices you hear in the Zooming In soundbite. And my dad composed and performed the background music you are listening to right now. My intro music was "Upbeat Party" by Scott Holmes.
So what are you zooming in on? I would love to hear from you. My hope is that we all share what we are doing in the classroom in order to teach, remind, affirm and inspire each other. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap!