Cary Sabados:
The aha was like, if you can just get people to change a small thing and get them kind of hooked in and get them open to the idea that they’re improvers every day, they’re changing and tweaking and modifying what they’re trying day in and day out. But if we can then take those changes and make them a bit more strategic, make them a bit more collaborative, a bit more open, in the sense that we’re learning from each other, that that can be really beneficial.

Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton, and that was the voice of Cary Sabados, the National Director of Teacher Leadership Development at Teach Plus. Teach Plus is a nonprofit that empowers teachers to facilitate student-centered improvement.
For the past five years, Cary’s been working on the Network for School Improvement that Teach Plus launched in Chicago in 2021. A Network for School Improvement, as the name implies, is a network of schools that are working on improving together. And quick note, we’ll be referring to Network for School Improvement as NSI from here on out. That’s how the cool improvement kids say it, you’re welcome.
I talked to Cary together with Morgan Hython. Morgan is a fourth grade math and science teacher at Piccolo School of Excellence, a public pre-K to eighth school in Chicago. Morgan’s been a teacher for 18 years. Two years ago, she became the instructional lead for Piccolo’s grade three to eight math team. That same year, Piccolo joined the Teach Plus NSI and Morgan was one of two teachers who took the lead on that work.
I wanted to talk to Cary and Morgan because of a remarkable piece of data, and I need to share this data in two parts. Here’s the first part. At Teach Plus’ partner schools, the percentage of eighth grade students who were considered on track in English language arts, or ELA for short, jumped from just 13% at the start of the NSI in 2021, to 49% in 2024. That’s impressive, but it gets really exciting when you desegregate that data by race, which brings us to the second part.
When the Teach Plus NSI started in 2021, only 6% of black eighth graders were on track in ELA. Remember in that year, the overall on track rate was 13%. That means that black eighth graders were less than half as likely as their peers to be on track when they entered high school. Three years later, in 2024, 50 1% of black eighth graders were on track in ELA. That’s almost nine times higher than it was in 2021. It’s also three percentage points higher than the overall on track rate. So, black eighth graders went from being less than half as likely to be on track in ELA entering high school, to being more likely to be on track than their peers. That’s awesome.
Now, I looked at this data and I thought, I really want to know how Teach Plus achieved this. Cary Sabados looked at this data and wanted to know why they weren’t seeing the same results in math. That’s why when Morgan’s school, Piccolo, joined the NSI, they focused specifically on math results. They also focused on making improvements across the school, not just in eighth grade.
Clearly, Teach Plus knows a lot about improving outcomes for kids. This is no surprise, they’ve been around since 2007, and continuous improvement is a relatively new part of their work. They did a couple small pilot projects prior to the NSI, but starting the NSI in 2020 was the real launch of that work. And when I hear about an organization taking on something like this, I have a question that I’m really curious about, but it is a little bit indelicate. Has doing continuous improvement actually changed how they do things? Or in this NSI, are they pretty much doing what they’ve always done with a different name? I asked Cary this indelicate question, and he did not hesitate to take it on. Here’s what he said.

Cary Sabados:
I think when we came into it, we saw an opportunity, because we’re so passionate about teacher leadership, and in my read, and I was not very well versed in improvement science with kind of the copyright logo. I mean, we had done a lot of like PLC inquiry cycle, those sort of work, and there’s lots of overlap with continuous improvement. Right? You plan out an idea, you implement a practice, you collect some evidence, you study it, so it’s not worlds apart. So, I think my read of it was that a lot of the continuous improvement, improvement science work was done at the level of school leader, district leaders, that a lot of that was understandably, come up with these theories, the working models, the driver diagrams, and then kind of figure out how to get teachers to do it.
And I think there was an opportunity there from the work we had done, where it was like, well, teacher leaders one, should be a part of these conversations, they have on the ground expertise and knowledge about, what is the theory around what’s working and what’s not? So they should be a part of these conversations, but also if you invest them in understanding this work, they can help lead the work into classrooms. They can help bring their colleagues together. As I said, they can provide a model of what it looks like. They can help figure out how to adapt the drivers or the initiatives or the practices to the particular environment they’re at. So, one was just sort of us saying hey, we really like the improvement science, continuous improvement work. It’s similar to work we’ve done before, and we think there’s an opportunity there. A teacher leadership could really be effective.
And I think it changed the way we thought about some of these sort of improvement cycles. I think when we were doing them in schools where you were grade level teams doing these inquiry cycles, they were sort of on a quarter basis. They were kind of these six to eight week long week long cycles. And I think one of the things that for me personally was sort of an aha, is I really liked the continuous improvement kind of focus, or at least the continuous improvement we were doing, really focused on these very short, quick cycles, these very small tests of change. And the aha for me was like, oh, that’s one of the biggest challenges if you’re leading a team of teachers, is to get them to actually do the thing. We come together, we say, “Oh, we’re going to try out this questioning practice in our classrooms,” and then people go and maybe they do it, maybe they don’t. Maybe you ask them to bring back their student data, maybe they don’t.
But the aha was like, if you can just get people to change a small thing and get them kind of hooked in and get them open to the idea that they’re improvers every day, they’re changing and tweaking and modifying what they’re trying day in, and day out. But if we can then take those changes and make them a bit more strategic, make them a bit more collaborative, a bit more open, in the sense that we’re learning from each other, that that can be really beneficial. So that was something we learned, I think, was like, oh, we’ve been doing kind of this improvement inquiry cycle work, but there’s a lot of the tools that continuous improvement and improvement science has, whether it’s the short cycles, whether it’s actually having a well-developed theory that’s captured in the driver diagram, whether it’s these root cause analysis, these empathy interviews, so whether it’s these data routines.
So, hopefully that answers your question, which was, we saw an opportunity where, oh, teacher leadership I think could be applied here, while at the same time going like, oh, there’s a lot for us to learn about how we do improvement work from what other NSIs are doing or other organizations who are in this space.

Alec Patton:
I think we had a really similar experience at the High Tech High Grad School of Education, where it’s like on the one hand you see continuous improvement and you’re kind of like, oh yeah, we’ve always done a lot of this stuff. This isn’t that different from stuff we’ve done before. And on the other hand you go, oh, but there are some things that are distinctive and are really, really helpful and are useful. So I think that, I mean, certainly what you drew out about the PDSAs, about the empathy interviews, about the driver diagrams, are all things that we’ve seen. I particularly like the way, that point that often just the hardest thing to do is to help everybody find themselves in a place where they’re willing to do the thing. And that PDSA cycles can be a really effective way for doing that.

Cary Sabados:
Yeah, and if I can draw just a quick analogy, because I think there’s an analogy between what we found with the teachers in the network and what we found as an organization, which is, I think Morgan mentioned that she’s a part of this math inquiry lab. So, one of the things in looking at the outcome data, I think you mentioned we saw huge gains in ELA, less so in math. And so, one of the big pushes for us this year is we’ve partnered with community design partners. They’re helping us run a math inquiry lab, which is really focused on how to select and try out really high quality effective change ideas and practices in the math classroom.
And I think there’s this, yes, we want to get people started quickly and doing the work, and then they get to a point where they’re sort of ripe and kind of ready for that sort of technical expertise. Where we’ve been doing it, we’ve been mostly relying on our own kind of ideas and things that we’re seeing from our own development, what’s happening in our colleagues’ classrooms, what’s worked in the past, what we’re interested in. And now we get to the point where like, oh, we kind of have these routines and patterns down, now it’d be really great to talk to someone with some expertise and kind of infuse that into our system, and that’s going to help us kind of go to the next level.
And I think the analogy is, as an organization, I think, yeah, this was things we’d seen before we had done sort of it, so we had that kind of baseline. But being a part of the NSI and being part of the community of practice and working with other organizations was just, oh, there’s all this technical expertise that I feel like we were in a place to really take in and turn around and feed it back into the work that we were doing. And so, that as an organization has been really great because we get to not only learn from what our teachers are doing and the amazing work that they’re doing, but also from all these other organizations that maybe have had more time doing this or have already learned some of the pitfalls. And so, feeling like we’re at this right place to really be taking all of that expertise and really making the most of it.

Alec Patton:
And Morgan, were you aware that you were joining a continuous improvement project?

Morgan Hython:
Yes, but I will say, I didn’t know all that was going to be a part of it. Again, my principal reached out to me and my other colleague who we kind of represent our school together in this program and was like, “Our school’s invited to be a part of this. Are you all interested?” And then there was a letter that said what it was going to entail from us as teacher leaders. Are you ready to sign up for that? So, I didn’t fully know everything that was going to be a part of the program. I know it was focused on obviously school improvement and we were going to be going through cycles and leading our team through improvement cycles. But that was kind of my general consensus when I signed on. But I was excited to have support and coaching, leading adults through learning since it was something I hadn’t been focused on previously.

Alec Patton:
So, when you found out that it was so directed by you and your colleagues and trying things out and testing things out and collecting data, as opposed to an expert saying, “Hey, do this and your math scores will, do this and kids will learn math better,” what was going through your head when you realized that?

Morgan Hython:
I mean, I was a little bit nervous because a lot of it was, to your point, kind of like you said, here’s this information and here’s the support, but some autonomy to do what you want with that. So, I think I mentioned before, it just really pushed me out of my comfort zone. Me and my coworker, we tried something, we’re like, okay, parts of that worked, we’ll keep those parts but then we’ll adapt the cycle and try this with it. Then we’re like okay, that improved it, okay, let’s keep that and then add something onto that. And then there’s just been a lot of pivots with breaks in the school year or different things happening with the team or aligning it with our school’s continuous improvement work priorities. Yeah, it’s a lot, in addition to, again, as I mentioned, and I know we’ll loop back to this, PERTs. Making sure the students feel heard, the teachers on your team feel heard, that you feel like you’re growing as a leader. Yeah, there’s lots of components, but I think it pushed me and I’ve grown a lot from it.

Alec Patton:
So, what was your goal going in?

Morgan Hython:
We specifically focused on piloting for year one some changes in my specific classroom, like my teacher leader classroom. Because one thing, when we did our initial in school year 2023, 2024, our initial school walkthroughs, we just saw that one thing that was really lacking was student discourse in math. And as Cary said, our school, we’ve also seen a lot of growth in ELA and reading at our particular school because it’s been an emphasis for a while now. We have reading tutors like ELA and growth and reading has been the priority, and we have not experienced in recent years that same growth in math. So since I lead the three through eight math team, we were really thinking, what can push our students in math to be seen the same growth that we’re seeing in reading?
So year one, when we observed classrooms, we just saw a lot of students listening, students participating, but it was a lot of teacher asked questions, student responds. Teacher asked why a student got a certain answer, student responds. But there was very little student to student discourse. And so much data and studies have proven that the way kids really learn math is grappling and having productive struggle over materials as a group, as a whole, the same way that humans, any of us dissect and really learn.
So last year in my specific classroom, we piloted these math talk protocols where students got to talk about math through the specific scaffolded protocol to get them more comfortable at first. And then we kind of incorporated a skills choice board where students could choose, okay, what do you want to work on? Who else is working on that? You guys collaborate, work on this. And then piloted in my class using PERTS as a driver for student voice. So, I was the first person last year in my school to use this PERTS survey in my class, beginning, middle, end of the year. And then after each survey. I analyzed the data and then shared with my students and had pretty vulnerable discussions, like, what can we celebrate? What are you guys happy with what I’m doing? And also, okay, what do I need to work on? What do I want to focus on as your teacher to make sure this class is the best class for you and you’re as comfortable as possible? So, all of that was zoned in more to my classroom in year one.
And then this year two, seeing those successes on both PERTS data, which we saw a lot of growth on, and on my class’ achievement data, specifically in math, who had one of the highest growth in math in the school last year. This year, kind of rolling that out to the entire team. So practicing math discussion protocols with the whole team. Now third, fourth, and fifth grade are all doing PERTS data, breaking that down with teachers, showing them how to have discussions with students. So basically, took a small internal classroom change in my classroom and have now have rolled it out to a wider teacher practice change that can impact more students around our entire school.

Alec Patton:
Tell me about that first time you sat down with your students to talk about your PERTS data.

Morgan Hython:
It was very difficult. So we’ve learned a lot in Teach Plus, because I had always, every year I had given a survey at the end of the year, like a little teacher report card that was self-created, just because I liked feedback. But that was the end of the year, so at this point it’s like, okay, I’m reading what’s there, I see what they said, but I can’t really change anything at that point, the year’s over.
So what’s been really helpful for me for PERTS is like, okay, after the beginning of the year, there’s all these checkpoints. I can address this right now. So I know one thing that was low the very first time I gave it, was in this class, I feel like my thoughts and opinions are taken seriously. So I reflected on that and your first instinct is almost to get defensive like, what? I definitely take their thoughts and opinions seriously. But then reflecting, just sitting with them, okay, why do you guys think that? I feel like I take your thoughts and opinions seriously, but is there a time when you didn’t feel like that? Some of them said it wasn’t just me, they were thinking general of the class. Some of them were like, “Well, some students sometimes make me feel uncomfortable saying responses.” And some things came out of the conversation, like, “One time I said this answer and this student laughed at me.”
And so, it kind of opened my eyes to what kids pick up on and what I need to do to make the classroom kind of always feel like they are comfortable making mistakes. So after that first survey, especially the younger kids, I think the younger they are, the more they need that explicit language of I’m like, okay, this is what I’m working on, making sure that this classroom is a comfortable space for all students to express how they feel and how they think.
So if that had happened, again, if someone laughed when someone said an answer, it’s like an immediate shutdown and a quick discussion of, do you know why we don’t do that? Because in math, mistakes are proof that you’re trying. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not… Actually connecting the why for them, so they see why we’re not doing that and why it’s important we do this instead. And naming that language of, this is something that I’m working on, so I’m going to hold you guys accountable to this and I’m going to hold myself accountable to making sure everyone feels like their thoughts and opinions are important and taken seriously. And we actually saw a lot of growth in that particular indicator by the end of the year, and I don’t think it was an accident. I think it was because of the explicit conversations that I had with students, that I had with certain students, things I shut down in order to make everyone comfortable, a variety of things.

Alec Patton:
Connect for me how those PERTS surveys and the PDSA cycles that you’re doing connect together.

Morgan Hython:
Yeah, so our PDSA cycle was focused on math, the discussion, and student to student discourse. So we connected that between, okay, where can we see improvement in math in our achievement scores? But then also, some of the student voice indicators on PERTS are particular. For example, what I just said, I feel like my thoughts and opinions are taken seriously. My teacher uses student ideas in this subject to make class better for me. So we kind of wanted to combine, okay, students feel more heard when they’re able to discuss within their peers and they feel like people are listening to them, both their teacher and their classmates. So, that was kind of our connection. What was low on PERTS for us was student voice.
What was also low was student discussion in math. And again, I’m speaking about math because the team I lead in subject. So we kind of connected those two of like, okay, let’s give students more opportunity to discuss in the subject, to have their voices be heard, their thoughts, their strategies. And then also, that will kind of blend into them feeling like people are listening to their opinions, people are listening to their thoughts, the teacher is listening to their ideas. So, that was kind of our connection between the two, it all kind of went back to student voice.

Alec Patton:
All right, I’m curious, I think sometimes math teachers feel a little bit suspicious of the idea that discussion is going to raise scores. Did you have any of that?

Morgan Hython:
Oh yes, we definitely had that. And honestly, if I’m being totally honest, math discussion has always been an area of growth for me since I started. And I think there’s lots of ways that I’ve tried to improve that over the years. But it’s difficult, it is really difficult.
I think it’s difficult to get buy-in from teachers sometimes because kind of to your point, they’re like, okay, well I want them to understand how to do this. So I don’t know if I have time to spend on getting them to discuss it and maybe not get to the right answer. But I’ve actually changed my mindset on that a lot. There would be activities in our curriculum where I’m like, oh man, they have to cut these out and then find a partner and then discuss what… That sounds like a lot. It’s easy to skip past, but because of this program too, and me leading these cycles myself, I’ve pushed myself to do it and then seeing like, wow, that was really beneficial. Kids actually understood something on a different level than they would if I had just asked them a question and told them to tell me the answer.
So yeah, it is a tough sell, I’m not going to lie. But I think if you can show that it actually impacts data and results and you have the data, whether it’s achievement data from our assessments or you have the PERTS data from students themselves saying they feel comfortable talking, discussing, they like this class and even more, then that kind of can help with buy-in.

Alec Patton:
Do you think that you would’ve got to that point without a structure like the PDSA cycles?

Morgan Hython:
I do not, only because I think too, I had heard of PDSA cycles somewhat before this program, but I wouldn’t… More so I feel like I did work through PDSA cycles but didn’t particularly name them that so specifically. But I think it’s really forced me too, to practice what I preach. If I’m having my team do this, I don’t want to be asking them to do anything that I am not willing to do myself. So if I’m like, we’re focusing on discussion, this is the push, we want our student voices to be heard. I need to listen to my students’ voices. I need to make sure that I am doing these discussion activities. I try to, in our professional learning communities, our PLC, is like, I model first before asking my team to do something. This is what I did in my class, this is what I saw, these are the challenges, this is what worked, before asking them to do something. So, I don’t want to have them do anything that I wouldn’t do myself.

Alec Patton:
Yeah, what I’m hearing is it’s almost like a discussion structure in a way that I hadn’t thought of PDSA cycles being, exactly. That rather than kind of being like, “Hey, I tried this. It seemed kind of interesting.” Maybe you can sort of say, “Well, I tried this, I did it for two weeks. These are the things that I saw. These are the things that I definitely wouldn’t do again.” It makes it much more appealing, it seems like.

Morgan Hython:
Yeah, and I think so too. We’ve had to, like I said before, adapt some things. We tried something, it was working. We did walkthroughs, we had made observations, gave feedback. And then it was Christmas break and testing, and when we checked back in, it’s like, okay, that seems to have waned a little bit, so how can we pick that back up? Or we had these grand elaborate plans for our team, like, let’s do this. I went to this PD and had all these huge ideas and I was excited to try them. But then we did this other activity with the team and I’m like, okay, I don’t think we’re actually at that point. It kind of helped us realize, maybe even gaps. So it’s like, okay, we need to address this first before we are able to tackle this. Whereas I don’t think some of those things would have come out or we would’ve been able to realize those things without the clear PDSA cycles in place.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. We’ve talked about student voice through the PERTS survey. We’ve talked about the ways that PDSA cycles are structuring this work. We’ve talked about kind of going from a single classroom and expanding out into other classrooms, so kind of scaling up on a small scale within a school, which I think is really cool. And so I just want to know, what’s [inaudible 00:23:40] coming up for both of you? What’s your final thought here that you want to leave folks with?

Morgan Hython:
I think that the main thing that I’ve learned from being in this program and from Teach Plus in general, is that I think teachers really want to be seen too as professionals, and I think that sometimes that is not always the case. So through this program, the opportunities I’ve gotten, the coaching and development I’ve gotten, the feedback, has just really helped me to grow, and I really appreciate it. And I think about constantly how I can get other teachers, how I can use what I’ve learned in this program to then give some of those same things to other teachers that I lead. I think it’s really important at our school, even when this program’s over next month, that many of the things I’ve learned and my colleague who does the program with me have learned, will allow this work kind of… There were already things established that allowed it to take root, but I think that’s a lot of conditions that will allow it to sustain.
So my principal and our school has a really strong commitment to distributive leadership. So it’s not just one leader, it’s many teacher leaders and team members across the school making decisions about what is best for students. And so I think the main thing I’m taking from this program and the whole thing is Teach Plus as an organization uses teacher development and teacher leadership as the driver. And I think that should kind of be the model for all programs that are created to help teachers, in addition to all schools who need to develop good teachers to serve our students.

Cary Sabados:
Yeah, I don’t have much to add other than, I think Morgan is a great example of why our organization continues to do this work and continues to be excited about this work, that there’s Morgans in sort of every school. Like folks who are amazing teachers who maybe are taking on informal influence or leadership, but are capable of helping to direct improvement work on a larger scale and are capable of engaging their colleagues, being both a model and a resource, but also kind of an example to them. That with a little bit of development, a little bit of leadership coaching, a little bit of support, that there’s a lot of expertise already existing in the schools that can be uncovered and can help drive this work. So yeah, it’s a lesson I keep learning in this role and I keep enjoying learning, is that there’s great teachers out there to be developed.

Alec Patton:
Awesome. Thank you both so much, this has been a delight and really eye-opening.

Morgan Hython:
Yeah. Thank you for having us.

Cary Sabados:
Yeah, thanks Alec.

Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted and edited by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by Brother Herschel. Huge thanks to Cary Sabados and Morgan Hython for this conversation. Thanks for listening.