Episódio 87: Apreciação do professor com Spencer Tuinei

maio 2nd, 2025 /
Alexander Glaves /

Sup com o Sup

00:00 / 39:51

Welcome everyone to the next episode of Provo City School District’s What’s up with the Sup’ podcast. I am Superintendent Wendy Dau. Next week is Teacher Appreciation Week, and for this episode, I am joined by a member of our communications department, Spencer Tuinei. Spencer spends a lot of time in our school’s getting to know teachers, and he highlights all of the great things that they are doing.

So we are gonna talk about some of the awesome teachers that are here in Provo City School district and share some of the great examples we have seen as we have visited schools this year.

Mas, primeiro, deixe-me apresentar-lhe nossas atualizações.

For updates on the wall situation at Wasatch Elementary, please view the April 29th study session of the Provo City School District Board meeting on YouTube.
- More information will also be available on our website.
In Provo City School district, our library system provides families with tools to make informed choices, ensuring that parents can guide their child’s reading experience.
- In the system, parents are able to view our library catalog view your child’s checked out books, restrict your child from checking out specific books and review the sensitive materials policy and book review process.
- Visite o site do distrito para obter mais informações.
Há uma série de normas e procedimentos disponíveis para análise no site do distrito.
- Go to Provo.edu. Click on policies, forms, and documents.
- You can click on review draft policies here, and then you may leave your feedback.
The next school board meeting is on Tuesday, May 13th. This meeting will be at Shoreline Middle School.
- Please check the district website prior to the meeting to see exact times and the full agenda.
- We will be honoring our teachers of the year during the business meeting.
Watch for our quarterly newsletter coming out soon to all homes in Provo and continue watching for my weekly video casts in your email.
Esses vídeos são um lugar para você se informar sobre coisas importantes que estão acontecendo no distrito.

Today we’re gonna be talking with Spencer Tuinei, who is a member of our communications department.

So welcome Spencer to our podcast.

Spencer Tuinei: Thank you for having me.

Wendy Dau: So tell us a little bit about yourself. You were born and raised in Provo. Give us a little bit of your background.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah, so I’ve been a student in this district since Amelia Earhart, since they created it, I was the first kindergartner to go through.

Wendy Dau: Oh, uau.

Spencer Tuinei: I’m so proud.

Wendy Dau: You should be. Yeah, the aviators.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah, the aviators. Yes. Love them. I love that there’s so many people that I still know and recognize there. And then that’s sort of the thing about the district too, is that so many people return or stay or their kids work here. So I feel like I am connected in that way.

But yeah, I was a student in the district and I sort of got to see the support offered students from the inside. I only preface this because I don’t think my experience is particularly unique, but just to say that this happens and then we have teachers that do an excellent job, but I was undiagnosed ADHD.

My dad was the same way. I lost my backpack constantly like I lost at six.

Wendy Dau: Isso é incrível.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah. Like truly I’d, I’d finish football practices and then walk to my car and realize like, oh, I left my cleats somewhere. I don’t even know not wearing my shoes. Yeah.

Wendy Dau: This is the best story ever.

Spencer Tuinei: It’s that, that happened regularly or I’d show up late ’cause I just was sat parked in my car and not realizing like, oh, I’m 30 minutes late to class and I’m not even doing anything.

I’m just checked out a little bit. I knew teachers probably thought, this is a kid that doesn’t want to be in my class. Uh, but that really wasn’t the case. And I know everybody that’s in education always can say, I had a teacher that, right. Yeah. In my case, there were several and some of them are still around.

The first one that came to mind immediately was like, I had a high school English teacher named Ed Richie. Shout out Richie.

Wendy Dau: At Provo High?

Spencer Tuinei: Yes, at Provo High.

Wendy Dau: Excelente.

Spencer Tuinei: He went through the work and everything I wrote was extremely messy. But he-

Wendy Dau: As a typical ADHD kids work is.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah. Yes. But he made me an aide so I had time to, to work.

’cause he realized like, oh good, you, you need this. And then he graded my essays and helped mentor me in my writing. And he was that sort of teacher that when we had our parent-teacher conferences or whatever, he spoke to my parents and told them, like my parents were very concerned, but said, no, this is college work and he just needs a little structure in his life, and he gave me that.

I felt like that was pretty typical of my experience, and it was across the board where all of these structures were set in place to catch kids like me and to give them the support they needed. That was from my counselor. Recognizing that a little bit and talking to me in my work, and then seeing that reciprocated in some of the comments.

Where clearly that information had been disseminated to those teachers. And then they were taking care of me. Another one that’s still here is like Ventura.

Wendy Dau: Ah, sim.

Spencer Tuinei: He was coached Ventura to me.

Wendy Dau: He’s coached Ventura still to a lot of people, so it’s okay.

Spencer Tuinei: I love it. I love that he still sees me. I had that another one, Nichols is in SPED, I think.

And he’s chad Nichols. Yep. Coach Nichols to me, but Ventura was one of those two where I would lose my work on the way to his desk. And he’s like, what’s going on? And I explained, I’m like, I don’t know. I, I finished my work. And he’s like, I know exactly what sort of person you are. You just gotta,

Wendy Dau: He had it down.

Spencer Tuinei: Yes, he knew. Sit next to me. When you’re done with your assignment, I’m going to tap you on your shoulder. Just hand it directly to me. That’s my experience. Through and through. Kristi Gibon is still here. I could say a thousand different names of great teachers that do an excellent job no matter what sort of student or person you are or your background, they knew how to differentiate and sort of take all that into account and work in a framework.

It feels tight knit and I like that there’s diversity, but everybody sort of brings that and they know how to approach it too, and, and creates spaces for community. And it’s something that I love so much about Provo City school district that I left, I taught, I worked in marketing, communications and marketing for an MLM and it was, I won’t say the name, but it was worse than snake oil.

Like-

Wendy Dau: Wow.

Spencer Tuinei: The worst thing. Yes.

Wendy Dau: Oh wow. Yeah.

Spencer Tuinei: Uh, and I just missed it. So it was, when I saw this opening, I, it was really nice to come back into communication and that’s just been my job is going to school, seeing the work that people are doing, getting to appreciate and just tell people and hopefully in rewarding ways.

Tell their stories and it feels very selfish where I get to sort of live this life that’s like always riding on the highest of the hardest of the programs. ’cause I know there’s, there’s lows, but.

Wendy Dau: Right. But you’re accentuating all of those really great moments and you kind of help us all remember why we went into education.

Like you’re capturing that. That’s pretty extraordinary.

Spencer Tuinei: Well, thank you. I hope. Yeah, that’s the hope at the very least, is like, if I can treat these things like love letters to the people that most deserve it, that’s all I want.

Wendy Dau: Oh, wow. I love that. I love that analogy of it’s a love letter. Like I just want you to know this is, this is the impact you’re having.

Talk to us a little bit more about what you do for the district. What does a typical day look like for Spencer?

Spencer Tuinei: That is a big question. The first and the part that we’re talking about is writing stories, so that’s looking in with not only recognition, but also promoting events and programs that need it.

So I work a little with CTE. I work mostly with secondary schools and principals, and I ask them about what’s going on in their schools and I could talk to you about teachers and and principals. I cover Provo Way, and that’s our recognition program. So we reach out, take nominations from, I mean, recently we’ve been getting students.

Usually it’s internal, but I love the ones that are written by students.

Wendy Dau: I do too. Those are my favorite.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah, they’re the best. And then we’ll go film them. There’s a reward. They get chocolates. Truffles, our board invites them to the board meeting and then rewards them. So we try to recognize our teachers for what they’re doing, and hopefully that helps not only with retention, but help them recognize that they’re being seen.

And that’s why I love the, the student aspect of it.

Wendy Dau: Certo.

Spencer Tuinei: But yeah, video projects, podcasts, like this one, I help transcribe and edit and publish. I run social media. There’s a lot of components. Communications means a lot of things. Right, right. Newsletters, channels like that. So every day looks a little bit different.

There’s a lot of filming, there’s a lot of pictures, there’s a lot of talking to teachers. There’s a lot of talking to students, and I’ve learned a lot both from teaching first, but then from this job seeing so many different lanes. Recognizing what teachers do. I don’t know, maybe this is too big of a pivot from what I was talking about.

Wendy Dau: No, go for it. Keep going. We’re we’re good.

Spencer Tuinei: But yeah, you’ve, you’ve worked in multiple districts.

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: And in many roles. Um, you’ve seen a lot of evolution in education, and I was wondering what you’ve seen teachers do in Provo that you’ve found unique or noteworthy? Oh, that’s changed from teaching to like all these different roles in different districts.

Wendy Dau: I think one of the things that I see in Provo quite a bit, especially when I go into elementary schools, and you probably see it everywhere, but this is really a district where I spend a lot of time in elementary schools, is just the amazing talent that our teachers have in small group instruction. If I could help high school teachers figure out how to do small group instruction, it would be a game changer.

But you go into, uh, say for example, Tierra Wakefield’s. Kindergarten class at Timpanogos Elementary. That is a magical place. I don’t know how else to describe it, but she has different students that are doing different things. These are five-year-olds, and some of them will be on a Chromebook or an iPad. I don’t even remember what it was.

They knew exactly what to do. She had given them the instructions. Then she’s working with kids on spelling and reading and letter sounds, and then there’s another group that’s doing math and the behavior is just amazing. She has the expectations. She’s so positive, she’s so calm. I am pretty sure that some days it’s really chaotic, but when you see that kind of transformation that, that’s pretty magical.

I think the other piece that is so powerful in Provo is how connected people feel because it is a smaller district. So most of the time when I talk to people, teachers are very aware of what’s happening in other schools. They’re aware of what’s happening with their peers. They advocate for one another.

You don’t see that a lot in other districts. It becomes very much about my classroom. My school, this is too big. I’m not worried about that. It’s like, well, I have it really good at my school, but I heard that so and so at this school. What could we do to help them? I’m like, how do you even know this is happening?

And I’m like, well, let me look into that. So there’s a caring and a, a familial type of sense, especially I think at the elementary level that’s very collegial. And then there’s healthy rivalries, obviously. Like we could spend all day talking about that too, but. I would say the other thing that Provo teachers are very unique about is they care very much about the mental wellbeing of their students.

They want to know that they’re safe. They want to know that they’re well, they appreciate the work of the social workers of individuals that are helping students in the whole child, not just in the academic realm. I haven’t seen that in other places, like it’s sort of like, well, yeah, that’s kind of convenient, but I, I don’t know what those people really do.

And here it’s like, don’t take our social worker, and that’s from K through 12. These people are vital. That’s pretty profound. There is definitely a care that exists here. For that. And that helps students learn when that space is cared about.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah. I think I fully agree with you. Yeah. Uh, to that point, I won’t say what district I was in, but that-

Wendy Dau: I won’t say which ones I was in either.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah. So, well, you know.

Wendy Dau: It’s a secret. Some, some other ones.

Spencer Tuinei: I thought the same thing when I taught and I taught at a time when Covid had just happened, so everybody was feeling inequity.

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: And I love that Provost City school district cares so much about these systems of support. Yeah. And they do.

They they value their social workers. Um, and they are connected. Hopefully that speaks to maybe comm’s doing a good job.

Wendy Dau: Yes, it is. It is very much so.

Spencer Tuinei: Um, but yeah, and then when you mention a small group instruction, it’s so true. I thought I did a good job. Until you see somebody like, and I’m just gonna mention, uh, Stephanie Marris

Wendy Dau: Ah, sim.

Spencer Tuinei: At Canyon Crest. Oh yeah. Um, it’s like Hive Minds. Not only does she have like a clear learning target, and she’s described, you know. For those that don’t know, you’ve got things like Bloom’s taxonomy. You’ve got like verbs. So you’re having them work towards a higher matrix of learning by, by skills, right?

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: So you’re, that goes from identifying stuff where you’re like, oh, I just can recognize a word to analyzing and evaluating where they’re making judgments. And then the classroom management and the small room instruction. When I went there, it really was like a hive mind where the kids were doing hand gestures of chains when they were making text to text connections.

And then she had them split and they did think pair share, but she had modeled with the classroom and then they were teaching each other and they were also doing metacognition. They were talking aloud about the learning target and. Well, what do I think about this book? And, and making predictions there.

She was just doing everything and it was shocking to see that she could manage those accelerated learners or the, the kids that were ahead and they were sort of working on their own. And then they had some that were working in pairs and then some that needed help with language, had an iPad and, and that sort of level of classroom management where she’s got hand gestures. Rhymes signals. It’s,

Wendy Dau: Ah, sim.

Spencer Tuinei: It’s like a, uh, not, not a circus because it’s organized. It’s not a circus, but just so lively. You realize what teaching can be and how much is going into just an, every single day we’re reading a story about Mrs. Tabby the cat.

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: And you know for a fact that the kid is learning and picking up so much, but they’re not going to be able to express that to their parents.

But that’s just happening in so many of our classrooms. Well, Merris is also amazing.

Wendy Dau: No, no, no question. I mean, how could you not walk into her classroom and just be like, I love coming here every single day of my life. You just do. Yeah. Like you just know you’re loved and just the way she even interacts and talks with the students.

I love it when our teachers call them friends. She’s like, well, friends. I don’t know. Yeah. It’s just like, I could just sit here all day. This is incredible. I wish every parent could see. What it is that she does for every single kid in her class. This is the incredible nature of our teachers. Like they’re amazing.

What’s been some of the most unique things you’ve seen or or things that where you’re like, wow, that was really creative and appreciated that teacher pushing those kids or doing this or-

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah. I have a billion, this is the easy part.

Wendy Dau: Okay. Yes, yes. Good.

Spencer Tuinei: I think the one that I always think about, because some of it was just that there was so much visually entertaining, and when you’re writing too, you’re thinking about metaphors-

Wendy Dau: Ah, sim.

Spencer Tuinei: And shapes and of stories. Um, but there was a girl named Mila Prokorov and she won a full ride scholarship to Alfred University, which is a university that is like, nationally recognized for the best ceramics. I know nothing about ceramics.

Wendy Dau: I don’t either. That’s incredible.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah, it was cool. So I went over and I spoke to her and she is, she, she was very highbrow. She, you could tell she’s working, you know, she’s like, loves art. And then I’m like, so how? Yeah, like how did you get to this point in your career? How did you make this, this piece? And then that’s when you meet Davidson. Um, Robert Davison is at Timpview. I love him.

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: But he’s so different. I asked him like, so what, what does your day look like?

Uh, and he’s like, I wake up 4:00 AM in the morning. I feed my-

Wendy Dau: Oh, that’s early.

Spencer Tuinei: I know, I know. Yeah. So he feeds his, um, goats. He tends his land.

Wendy Dau: Oh. See, if you had asked me what animal he was gonna be feeding goats was not what was gonna come to mind now. All right. Feeding the goats at 4:00 AM I love it.

Spencer Tuinei: Me neither. And then exactly. He drives in, he’s built his classroom around feng shui. So every piece,

Wendy Dau: Ah, sim.

Spencer Tuinei: Builds in a circle. But he like really takes his time. And he talked so much about what, what all learning is, which is like incremental learning. That’s, but putting in the hours, I loved too that he talked about the fact that, like, particularly in ceramics, like you just have to be there throwing and working and it takes hours and hours and there’s no shortcuts.

Wendy Dau: Yeah. There’s no fast way to make this happen.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah, exactly. And he found in, you know, in Mila, like a girl that was interested but didn’t have those sort of resources and she was like, I would just spend five or six hours and you know that he’s waking up at four in the morning, so, but he’s willing to spend those extra hours.

Working with her, building, working, throwing clay, just improving s slowly over time. Uh, she ended up making this piece called the Eastern Moon meets the Western Sun. Yeah, it’s, she’s building with porcelain.

Wendy Dau: Ok.

Spencer Tuinei: And then Robert Davison, of course, is like, he has his own little analogy, so she’s like, there’s form and it’s almost rit-, it’s ritualistic.

It’s almost like religious. And then he goes on and he is like, it’s like working with snot. And I was like, that’s, it’s, it’s that I feel accepted in this space and you’ve got this teacher that cares so much about the content, yes. But way more about the kid.

Wendy Dau: The student. Yeah.

Spencer Tuinei: And so she’s going to Alfred University and then, but her end all be all goal is to become a teacher. And to give back.

Wendy Dau: That’s amazing. I love it.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah. So they, they threw like 600 bowls for a local charity. I can’t remember the name of the charity right now, but like, just that’s what they did. Their free time is work on giving back to the community. Even though this is Provo, Utah, you have teachers that care.

Yeah. And they care so much about the students and you have excellence that can rise up wherever.

Wendy Dau: Certo.

Spencer Tuinei: Um, and it’s, and it really does come through that sort of care, that willingness to, for rigor and time spent with students, that is built in invisibly to the structures of their class that you can’t fully appreciate unless if you’re in it.

And that’s why, again, I love my job, is that you get to see these crazy, that’s the arts, fine arts and CT is so visual.

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: But we have so many teachers too that just are in English language arts and math in our AVID classes where you wouldn’t think, I mean, you would know that that’s making life changes, but you just don’t see. The incredible work that they’re doing.

Wendy Dau: It’s easy to see why kids can connect with art, right? That becomes a little bit easier and it’s like, how do I connect with secondary math three, yay. Go team. But yet we have teachers who can do these incredible things and, and help kids connect in that way.

Spencer Tuinei: We do. Have you ever spoken to Jacob McLean?

Wendy Dau: No. You gotta tell me.

Spencer Tuinei: Jacob McLean is great. He is at Provo High. First off, he talks about math and how people approach math as teaching and how there’s so many ins and outs that feels like when people talk about art, he’s not like over intellectualizing it, but he likes thinking about math.

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: So even as I’m talking to him, I’m like, oh, you’re somebody who can get people excited. Thinking about-

Wendy Dau: About this.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah. It was interesting too because he’s like, there’s so many tools. I was asking him, do you like inquiry based instruction? What’s your pro, you know, all this stuff.

Wendy Dau: Oh, good question.

Spencer Tuinei: Just like, how are you dressing up math? And he’s like, well, the truth is some of this is going to inevitably be direct instruction.

Wendy Dau: Sim, é.

Spencer Tuinei: It was a nice reminder for me that these teachers have a full range of tools and that you know when to utilize those tools. And he talked about a time when he was at UVU and somebody did only inquiry based learning, and he was like, it was a nightmare.

Nobody knew what was going on.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, no. That can be so frustrating. He’s right.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah. He then went on to talk about how he finishes with these project based learning assignments, so he had all these students create stained glass simulations where they like black construction paper. And they cut out napkin.

The long story short is that they spent time in their classroom designing a small scale sort of cathedral wall, and then-

Wendy Dau: Oh wow.

Spencer Tuinei: They reasoned out how to build it and scale it to their own thing, and then he, he hung it up on the wall, so you could see like stained glass, the, the light pouring in throughout the day.

He just has those sort of project based learning closeouts, not only did surprise me just from how we talked about math, but like. Going in, you could see kids that had done artwork on their pieces of him and clearly cared a lot about ’em. So I have five siblings. They’ve all gone to Pro City School District.

I asked her, I was like, do you know Jacob McLean? And without any hesitation, she’s like, he’s the best. I was like, really? She doesn’t particularly love math, but she loves that he, again, thinks deeply about these experiences. He structures in learning that’s going to lead to project-based learning. But yeah, we have a a thousand teachers like that.

I don’t, I’m sure you have some that come to mind.

Wendy Dau: I was just thinking about, I was in Bobby Daley’s class and he was teaching Asian studies and we were there when he was doing, kids had like 15 documents on the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And they were pulling, you know, really specific examples from the documents and he was asking them to create arguments and it was a great discussion and every kid was participating. But also when I talked to him about it, you know, afterwards you recognize he didn’t just throw that lesson out there, right? There was some direct instruction about what had taken place prior to that. So kids had the context and then he had walked them through some of the documents and help them understand it.

And I mean, there were several phases to this. This is why it’s so important in my mind to have principals and administrators, assistant principals in classrooms because if I just walk in for 10 minutes and I happen to just see that direct instruction piece, it might not be as energetic as this part of the classroom that I saw with Bobby Daly, right.

It just shows the planning and the care and the, this is how I’m building the skillset. Like, you know, you were talking about Bloom’s taxonomy. I’m starting with these level one thinking skills, and by the end, these kids were evaluating like, what would you do in this situation with the information that they had at that moment?

Did they make the right decision? And why are you making that argument? Like, that’s intense, you know, like. Oh, I don’t wanna be that person that’s making that decision, you know? And just recognizing the context of that. But that takes a ton of planning. This is not a, hey, I’m gonna figure out what I’m gonna do next, period.

This is, I’m planning this unit and these are the outcomes that I want students to have. I wish people could see how mindful teachers are in that process and that our most gifted teachers are very intentional and very purposeful in addition to being very engaging and caring about kids. And it isn’t just happenstance.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah, I fully agree. And I see maybe a lane for us to continue telling maybe long form stories with teachers. Because it’s true.

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: I would agree. There’s the word I think they used when I was in did the edTPA was syntax. It was like-

Wendy Dau: Uhhuh.

Spencer Tuinei: The structure of how you set this up. But it’s true, the year takes so long.

In that example, it’s like you know that there had to have been a period of time where they, where they just sort of brainstormed and talked about an act activated, we could say,

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: Background information.

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: Um, and then from there, exactly direct instruction. And there’s all of these steps. And then he has to source this information.

And that takes a lot of time. That takes prep, that takes hours of making sure all the kids feel prepared.

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: Sitting up structures.

Wendy Dau: Finding the documents.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah. What documents are you gonna use? Are they appropriate? Like, good luck with that.

Wendy Dau: That’s a whole other, that’s a whole other topic.

Spencer Tuinei: But yeah. And then kids that are quiet, I remember listening to this podcast.

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: Uh, just ensuring that there are ways for them to engage, engaged in a Socratic seminar, and so that their voices are the ones that are. I think I just saw another post from Gina Hales, our board member, that said like, we want to fill our spaces with learning. And it’s, it’s so true. It does, it does take time.

Some of that’s gonna be direct instruction. Some of that takes building towards, but those sort of assignments and those sort of lessons are, are great and it’s, it’s cool that we have teachers that are capable of that and recognize like, how can we draw on our students.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I agree.

What are some of the other things that you’ve seen with teachers that you wish the public knew about? Like we’ve talked about this lesson planning piece and it’s intentional. What are some of those other pieces that are-

Spencer Tuinei: I think that beyond like learning outcomes, they’re, they’re building skills that I don’t always love to talk about.

What does an employer get out of it? Because I think school should be much more than that.

Wendy Dau: Certo.

Spencer Tuinei: But there is a piece about speaking and listening and learning how to learn and metacognition that isn’t immediately metric driven. Like it’s not very seeable, it’s sort of invisible.

Wendy Dau: Mm-hmm.

Spencer Tuinei: Going off the cuff, I might think of somebody like Maddie Johnson at Centennial Middle School is an English language arts teacher.

She focuses on building civil discourse first.

Wendy Dau: Mm-hmm.

Spencer Tuinei: Not only is she doing a little bit of direct instruction, but then they build their own the way that they want to, to speak to each other, and then some of the rules and parameters of their classroom.

Wendy Dau: Mm-hmm.

Spencer Tuinei: From there, they did like wonder boards on their own interests, and they talked and practiced.

Wendy Dau: Oh, uau.

Spencer Tuinei: So, yeah, they, they use sentence stem, so they sort of like. This is what I like about this. This is how I disagree. Just realizing that they’re learning civil discourse in a very fun topical sort of way to start with. And then that built into them in performance, them doing read alouds of their own comments and then having like open table Socratic seminars where they could talk amongst each other.

Those sort of skills. In a world with ai, those learning skills are extremely essential. You can learn a lot of hard skills online. You can learn a lot of hard skills in different settings, but public school is very good at creating situations and scenarios where you’re going to talk to people that you’re not going to agree with.

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: You’re going to learn from people you don’t necessarily agree with sometimes, too.

Wendy Dau: That’s a really good point. Yes. And that’s okay. There’s something to learn from everybody, right? Yeah.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah. Tupo Tuione runs Avid.

Wendy Dau: Avid, yep.

Spencer Tuinei: So she’s using backwards design, right?

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: So you’re starting with the end in mind.

She’s taking that and she’s teaching students how to think about thinking, think about their life, set these goals, like what do you really want? And then work from that goal. Just, just basic life long-term skills that they’re gonna be career ready, they’re gonna be college ready. And it’s sort of the skill that you, you know, you can talk about math, you can talk about career readiness, but that’s something that’s gonna serve you for the rest of your life is knowing how to-

Wendy Dau: They’re, they’re calling those now durable skills. ’cause they got worried that if we were calling them soft skills, it didn’t sound very important. Um, but they’re durable skills because you have to have them no matter what area you go into, whether you become a stay at home parent, you know, and you gotta interact with other parents and with teachers and your kids and your neighborhood and whatever to being a CEO of a company to being a business owner, to being a nurse, you have to have those durable skills. And that’s what I hear from employers all the time. I, I want employees that know how to show up, that know how to work with other individuals that are reliable, that can collaborate and they can communicate appropriately.

Spencer Tuinei: Mm-hmm.

Wendy Dau: Wow, okay. I sat there for a second and I thought, well, I think either our jobs just got harder or they got easier. I haven’t decided which, which side that goes on yet. I’m not sure.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah.

Wendy Dau: What are the classrooms that you’ve been in, and maybe this happens more at the elementary level, but I think it would be good for people to hear about this at the secondary level too.

’cause I don’t think we think about secondary schools in this way, but are really magical places of learning where you’re like, holy cow, these kids are learning, like, the most amazing things, like what are those classes that come to mind? Okay.

Spencer Tuinei: I’d love to hear yours in an elementary too.

Wendy Dau: Yeah. I went to a Christmas concert for the choir at Rock Canyon with Megan Christensen and then their play, Aladdin. And I don’t know, she’s a magical person and it doesn’t matter what room that Megan goes into, it just becomes like everybody wants to be in that room. Who would not wanna be here with Ms. Christensen like, and they will do anything for her. Like I was in her classroom, I was so amazed at what she was able to get kids to do and to engage in, and I was just like, this is incredible.

It is, it’s magical. It’s just like, I don’t know, it’s, it just rejuvenates you and it, it renews you when you’re in that classroom. There’s no way a kid’s gonna walk outta that class and not have like the best day ever.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah.

Wendy Dau: It’s just, it’s weird. It’s awesome.

Spencer Tuinei: I always think about Isabella Lechy.

Wendy Dau: Oh, Bella Lechy. Yes. Yeah. Bella. Yes.

Spencer Tuinei: Her experience in our DLI programs were-

Wendy Dau: Ah, sim.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah. Not only are they learning culturally, but then it, they got this big capstone to Brazil where they got to experience it. Um, but that whole time, and I remember reading from the Bridge Director, like she’s just an excellent student, but Lily Bueno put in.

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah. Just loving all those kids. And she was in a situation where she could teach the elementary, the middle, and the high school. So followed these kids and the amount of kids too, that when we were doing interviews for our Teacher Appreciation Week last year, they were like Lily Buenos. She’s always been there for me.

She cares so much. We have so much fun in her class. But Bella being one of those people that’s like, took it on herself to learn not only the language, but how to develop curriculum.

Wendy Dau: Yes. That was pretty incredible.

Spencer Tuinei: That’s crazy. And then, um, presented in Brazil to teachers and peers, I believe.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, that’s correct.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah. So those sort of experiences are really cool to me. Core Totei is another student that we had that was in DECA with Chris Edie.

Wendy Dau: Oh, that’s right.

Spencer Tuinei: Mr. Edie. And had the experience of getting to go to a workplace and think about retention at a credit union. So engaged in that in a really practical way, and then got to go to like student government.

And, uh, employ some of those things. It’s not quite answering the same question. And I know that we have a lot of things that are going on in like English language arts or in our core classes that are magical too. Maybe Sauerbeir, I think is another one.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, he’s, he’s pretty awesome.

Spencer Tuinei: Sauerbeir’s great. He was talking about his end of year, which is just a project based learning. So he’s got his own rubric for success. But what you can create in his class is anything. So you see art pieces, physical models, like molded pieces, podcasts, just all sorts of things. I’d love to ask him actually if we could share some of those at some point.

But in that class, you are really getting to take it all in, engage in again, discussion with other people. Learn and think about things in, in a place that you feel safe with and then synthesize it in a way that’s like, I loved my high school experience. There was a lot, we didn’t really have avenues for that sort of thing.

I think constantly about like, how has education changed because these things did not exist.

Wendy Dau: That’s right. It was, it was way more traditional. Think about what you just said though about Mr. Sauerbier’s class. Think about all of the things that he’s doing in this. So. There’s metacognition that’s happening. ‘Cause I have to reflect on how I learn and how I did it, and then how am I gonna transfer that to somebody else, right? Because my knowledge becomes more powerful when I can apply it in a new situation and also when I can share it with others, right? So he’s getting the kids to think in that perspective.

He’s also allowing them to present what they learned in their own modality. So I’m taking ownership of my learning right, as a student, and I am creating something like, I mean, just when you, when you watch just how much he has hit on every single tier. And when you look at how incredible that is, that didn’t happen by accident.

That’s so purposeful and so meaningful. On so many levels, but it takes so much more work than photocopying or downloading a test onto a Nearpod or something and just having kids check a box, a multiple choice, and sometimes we forget that we want teachers to do all of these amazing things, and it’s like we need to realize how much time and, and really recognize the commitment that comes when we’re asking and we are demanding this kind of rigor. And when we see teachers doing this, we, we need to really be like. Oh my gosh. Because before it’s presented, there’s just so much thought and planning that goes into it. And so the more teachers can help each other and work together, like you’re trying to do that on your own.

But if I can do that with a team and we can divide up that work, that’s gonna go a lot better. If I can share this and then you share this, like then we can really start to accelerate. If I could say where I would want teachers to go at some point is. We have a lot of rock stars. I want rockstar teams.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah.

Wendy Dau: That happens. So where these ideas are shared, and so maybe it’s not such a heavy lift for an individual teacher.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah, that’s a great direction. I was thinking about that too, like maybe if I could ask you a question.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, of course.

Spencer Tuinei: Maybe where you’ve seen education and the expectation of teachers change, and then we’re talking about collaboration and teams.

What do we have in place? We are looking at this. This is what we want you to lean on.

Wendy Dau: I think so much we teaching used to be a very isolated profession and it was about, I have to worry about the kids that I teach and, and now we’ve become a lot more aware of kids in our entire school. You know, it’s like when I was growing up, you know, SPED was a pullout.

It was something separate. We don’t think about that or we shouldn’t think about that like that. Students that have disabilities are sitting in every single person’s classroom. They are all of our students.

And I do think Provo teachers have that attitude. I do think Provo teachers believe that students that are not speaking English right out of the gate. They don’t see them as well, put them over there. They see them as, I need to figure out how to help them. That those are always the questions that I get. Is it, it’s not like, can you figure out what to do with them? It’s, can you help me figure out how to help them?

Spencer Tuinei: Mm-hmm.

Wendy Dau: That’s such a different conversation than when I first got into teaching. Right. It’s a lot of work when you take a lesson plan. Let’s think about, you know, uh, Mr. Sauerbier’s example. I have to think of an entry point for a multilingual student, for a student with disabilities, because of the variations that he has, he does have those entry points, but he has to be very deliberate.

How great would it be as if it’s like in this unit I’m designing it, and then his partner teacher who teaches the same content, the next unit comes up with the next way in which students are demonstrating their learning. And it doesn’t mean that on the day to day, I still don’t have my own personality because we, we have to have that.

That’s why we wanna be a teacher, right?

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah.

Wendy Dau: Like you’re not gonna be a robot and be exactly like somebody else. But it would be nice if people could start to see that collaboration piece as this actually takes work off my plate. And when I’m struggling with how to reach a student, to lean on my peers, to help me figure out what to do to help with that.

And that’s really where I feel like that structure of our Friday early outs sometimes is just used for planning purposes. Like where are you in your calendar of things? And it should really be like, ’cause this is what I feel like happens. There are 70 standards that, what do you have to teach in this unit?

You know, it’s not quite that many, but it feels that many. What are the most essential things and what do we think would be the best way to have students demonstrate that? Because I have a limited perspective, somebody else has a limited perspective. When you put them together, you get a much broader perspective and it allows more students to be successful.

That’s what I would really love to see, and that these aren’t just my kids, these are all of our kids. These are all the ninth graders, these are all the seventh graders, and let’s work together to figure out what’s the best way to do this? And what you see is in schools that are having the highest levels of success across the state of Utah, as well as across the country, it’s when it, they’ve identified these high performing teams of teachers.

Spencer Tuinei: Hmm.

Wendy Dau: So it’s not just. An individual teacher because that individual teacher’s only gonna teach. If I’m a high school teacher, I’m only teaching 180 kids. Imagine if that expertise now goes to all of your ninth grade English teachers or ninth grade social studies teachers. It’s now expanded to a class of 400 students.

That’s. That’s big impact. Right? And then you don’t want it to be that because this teacher leaves, let’s say this teacher goes and becomes an assistant principal or you know, whatever, they become an instructional coach or something that all of a sudden then it’s like, well now we lost our. That structure is built in place.

We should be able to deal with that change. And there should be that support. It’s not gonna be the exact same, I get that, but that support should be there. That’s what I really see. I, if wishes were fishes, that’s where’s where we’d be in a few years.

Spencer Tuinei: I love that. Yeah. Yeah. It’s cool that we have good PLCs and yeah, hopefully we can help bolster those and for the schools and teachers that are doing that, like kudos. That’s awesome.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, no, it is awesome. And I wish that people could see something too in our district office is that we don’t work in silos. Like we’re working in teams constantly and constantly communicating, and this person has this area of expertise, which I don’t have. They’re gonna help us with this and we gotta rely on each other and help each other.

It’s, it shouldn’t all be on one person, but we do have amazing teachers in this district. Just, they’re incredible. They’re, they’re absolutely rock stars. We are so lucky.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah, I would agree. Yeah. They, the amount of time and effort that it takes, like we’ve talked about, to prepare experiences for kids, I know it doesn’t mean as much just for one person to say it, but I appreciate you.

We know that you’re doing excellent work. Yeah. It. I don’t know if teachers are listening to this right now. You know what I’m saying? Yes.

Wendy Dau: But yeah, we do. We see, we see them. We see you, and we see the work that you’re doing. And when we’re walking into those classrooms, man, we walk out and go, wow. There was a lot of prepping that went into that.

There was such a lot of thought and incredible work that went in there. And that’s like 90% of the time when we walk out of a classroom. That’s what we’re saying. Like, because it’s that incredible. So we are very lucky here in Provo. We have amazing teachers.

Spencer Tuinei: Agreed.

Wendy Dau: Thanks Spencer, for do all the work that you’re doing to highlight the great work that’s happening in our district.

We’re so grateful for you too.

Spencer Tuinei: Yeah. Thank you.

Wendy Dau: Sim.

Spencer Tuinei: Appreciate it. I, I love it. So it’s fun. Awesome.

Wendy Dau: Thank you everyone for joining me for this week’s episode of What’s Up With the Sup’. As always, all episodes will be posted on the district website, YouTube, and anywhere you get your podcast. If you have any topics or questions you would like us to discuss on the podcast, please email us at podcast@provo.edu.

Don’t forget to join us again next week for another new episode of What’s Up With the Sup’. Have a great weekend everyone.