Growth Through Connections Initial Research Findings

Susan Trickett, Director of Research

1 | P a g e

Growth Through Connections Research Report

Executive Summary The goals of the Growth Through Connections program are to increase student engagement and academic achievement by training and supporting teachers in developing culturally competent, strong, and healthy relationships with the students they teach. An initial pilot program was launched with nine teachers in four Denver public schools and ran from February to May 2017. Teachers in the program participated in a book study, attended four all-day, whole-group training sessions, received personalized coaching, and participated in two off-site learning lab visits. As a result of training and support, teachers’ practices changed by providing more opportunities for students to engage in higher-level cognitive and learning activities, providing more student choices in the classroom, focusing on building relationships with their students, and incorporating specific practices to build a culturally competent classroom culture. Teachers reported increased engagement in their students, improved quality of student work, and an improved classroom culture. Introduction

In 2016, Dr. Sharon Bailey conducted a qualitative study probing the experiences of DPS’s African-American teachers and students, and she published her findings in a document known as The Bailey Report. Dr. Bailey identified a number of themes that require attention, or in her words, “fixing”. These include a lack of cultural competence, the negative impact for African-American students of DPS’s predominantly white teacher culture (“demographic mismatch”), discipline practices that disproportionately seem to target African-American students, and low expectations for these students. One student participant in the study said this: “The majority of teachers think they are doing the right thing, but they don’t have the same experience. Some of the negative approaches to our children are intentional, some are non-intentional….They don’t know what they don’t know.” Whereas a long-term solution within Denver Public Schools (DPS) includes recruiting and retaining more African-American teachers, an immediate response has been to increase current teachers’ cultural competency by helping them to “know what they don’t know.” The Growth Through Connections program (GTC) is a response to this need, and an effort to eliminate the inequities experienced by students of color within DPS. Through a program of teacher training and coaching, GTC focuses on improving teacher-student relationships, specifically in classrooms where the student body consists primarily of students of color being led by a white teacher. Numerous research studies confirm the positive connections among strong, caring teacher-student relationships, student engagement, and student academic outcomes (e.g., Cornelius-White, 2007; Klem & Connell, 2004; Rorda et al., 2011); the obverse of this connection is that students who experience poor relationships with their teachers, for whatever reason, are less likely to be

2 | P a g e

engaged or to achieve academic success. Thus, the goal of the GTC program is to support teachers in building strong, culturally competent relationships with their students and, as a result, to improve student engagement and ultimately to contribute to students’ academic success. Funded by a grant from the Janus (now Janus-Henderson) Foundation and implemented jointly by the Imaginarium (DPS’s innovation lab), the GTC program was launched as an exploratory project in February 2017, with 9 teachers in 4 schools within DPS. The main purpose of this initial project was to learn what specific training and supports a teacher needs to change his or her practice to focus on relationship-building, to understand the teacher’s experience, and to begin to study the impact on student outcomes. With continued support from the Janus-Henderson Foundation and the Public Education Business Coalition (PEBC), the Imaginarium will continue to develop the GTC program in the 2017-18 school year, expanding the reach of the project, which now involves 5 schools and an additional 11 teachers, and conducting formal studies of the impact on students and their teachers. The Imaginarium is conducting an additional study to inform efforts to scale the GTC program both within a school (i.e., involve all teachers and staff within a school) and within the District itself (i.e., to introduce this program more broadly within DPS). Program Description

The GTC program was developed based on the work of Dr. Christopher Emdin, outlined in For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…And the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education, which specifically addresses issues of race and “demographic mismatch” in urban classrooms. Reality pedagogy posits that in order to create a classroom culture that is conducive to learning for all students, teachers must first develop empathy by learning to understand their students’ backgrounds and to appreciate their uniqueness. This belief then allows teachers to build the “7 C’s” of a successful classroom:

A co-generative dialogue which, in many ways, takes the structure of hip-hop cipher. They then learn to co-teach so kids can teach the classes along with their peers. Teachers can develop cosmopolitanism, which allows students to feel they’re responsible for the classroom and the operations of the class. You can focus on context, which is learning the environment and the neighborhood the kids come from and how you can incorporate that into the classroom. Then you can focus on content, which is knowing that you don’t know all the answers. A child would rather learn from somebody who can say, “Here is where my content expertise ends so let’s learn together” as opposed to someone saying, “You must learn what I know.” After content is competition. And finally there’s curation. It’s really an opportunity for the teachers to be able to research their own practice, take video of themselves and have kids give them feedback. It’s collecting artifacts from teaching and learning to teach better in the future.

3 | P a g e

Excerpt from PBS News Hour interview with Dr. Christopher Emdin

The program, which was created by the Imaginarium with support from staff at PEBC, was designed to “be narrow and go deep” by providing intensive training and support for a small number of teachers in a few schools, rather than trying to cast a broader net and providing more diluted supports. Thus nine teachers in four schools were selected to build and test a program that could then grow within each school (as teachers would become trainers for future cohorts within their school) and among schools (as the Imaginarium would partner with other departments within DPS to spread and scale the work).

In order to recruit schools, Meg McCormick, Imaginarium Director of School Supports, and Amy Burns, Senior Innovation Partner, invited the school leader at several DPS schools to join the GTC program. Dr. Julie Murgel (DCIS-Montbello), Mary Varveris (McMeen Elementary), Leah Schultz-Bartlett (Beach Court Elementary), and Eric Rowe (PREP Academy) accepted this invitation. School leaders then offered teachers the opportunity to participate in the program based on somewhat varied criteria, including demonstrating growth mindset, the belief that good teacher-student relationships are the basis upon which learning takes place, and the fact that a teacher was a teacher-leader and could thus spread the work within the school via the in-school coaching model that was already in place.

The training and supports consisted of: • 4 whole-group training sessions held at PEBC in February, April, early May, and

late May, including book study, information sharing, group discussion, and individual and shared reflection time

• 2 loccal learning trips to PEBC lab classrooms • 2 individual teacher observations and coaching sessions, conducted by PEBC

staff • 1 individual teacher observation and coaching session, conducted by

Christopher Emdin Impact Evaluation General Approach

The Imaginarium takes a mixed-method approach to studying the impact of the programs it supports. As mentioned above, our primary focus in this early phase of implementation was to understand the teachers’ experience and their support needs, in order to improve the program for the expanded implementation in the 2017-18 school year and beyond. Thus we gathered both quantitative data to understand actual shifts in teachers’ practice as a result of the GTC training and coaching and qualitative data (via interviews, coaching notes, observations, teacher logs, and feedback surveys) to understand the teachers’ experience. In order to understand the impact on students, we

4 | P a g e

attempted to gather quantitative school attendance and behavior referral data, as well as informal survey data asking about their classroom experience. In addition to sharing our analyses below, we also discuss pitfalls we encountered in our data collection efforts and how we are applying those lessons learned to our current (2017-18 school year) studies.

Measurement In order to understand whether and how teachers were changing their classroom practice, we modified Brooks and Richart’s (2012) self-assessment tool, Developing a culture of thinking in my classroom. We administered this assessment three times—at the beginning (February), in the middle (April), and at the end (May) of the program. The rationale for the mid-term assessment was that teachers are likely to over-rate their activities before beginning the work; once they understand more fully what activities a culture of thinking entails (i.e., after they have received some training and coaching), they are likely to downgrade their assessment to a more accurate set of ratings. This mid-term assessment then serves as a second baseline from which to demonstrate potential growth in the final assessment. The Developing a culture of thinking survey can be found in Appendix A.

In order to capture teachers’ experiences, we developed a weekly reflection log to be completed on Friday afternoons. The questions in the weekly reflection log are found in Appendix B. In addition, we conducted a reflection session with teachers after coaching by Dr. Emdin and end-of-year semi-structured interviews in which teachers reflected on their overall experience in the GTC program (see questions in Appendix C). Finally, we surveyed all the teachers about their hopes and support needs for the next school year. In order to capture the students’ experiences, we asked teachers to have their students complete a short weekly survey asking what kinds of activities they had done in class that week (based loosely on Bloom’s taxonomy—Krathwohl, 2010) in order to glean the students’ perception of the teacher’s strategies to develop a culture of thinking by focusing on higher-order cognitive activities (see Appendix D). We also asked teachers to have students complete a short pre- and post-survey to gather information about students’ perceptions of their teachers and their engagement (see Appendix E). What We Learned Because the GTC program aims primarily to shift teacher practice, our first set of analyses explores the ways in which teachers changed the way they approached instruction. Data from the Building a culture of thinking survey show that overall, teachers reported using higher-level thinking strategies more frequently from the beginning to the end of the program (see Figure 1). (Note that two teachers joined the program after the initial survey administrations, and so the analyses include only data from the seven teachers for whom we had complete data.) As Figure 1 shows, the largest gain was in use of time, which, on average, teachers reported increasing almost an entire “step” on the 5-point response scale. As Figure 1 also shows, the hypothesis that teachers’ initial ratings would drop mid-training was not supported; in fact, the gains appear to occur between February

5 | P a g e

and April, with only small, if any, additional gains between the April and May measurements. A paired sample t-test from pre-training (February) to the end of the training (May), showed significant gains in all categories except for Physical Environment; this is most likely due to one teacher’s scale score dropping from 5 in February to 4 in May. Given the small sample size (N = 7), we interpret these results with caution; nonetheless, there does appear to be an overall trend that suggests the training and supports resulted in teachers experiencing growth in their practice (see Table 1).

Figure 1: Teachers’ self-assessment over time about the frequency with which they practiced strategies to elicit higher-level thinking in their students

6 | P a g e

Measure Mean Score (Feb)

Mean Score (May)

t Sig (2-tailed)

SEM

Expectations 3.31 3.86 2.96 0.25 .18 Language 3.36 3.83 6.35 0.001 .07 Modeling 3.51 4.09 2.97 0.25 .19 Time 3.03 4.06 6.43 0.001 .16 Physical Environment 3.31 3.9 1.8 0.122 .31 Interactions 3.97 4.37 3.46 0.13 .16

Table 1: Results of paired t-test on changes in self-assessment of teacher practices

Our qualitative analyses support the notions not only that teachers made shifts in their teaching practice but also that they found great personal value for their practice in their participation in the GTC program. Because of scheduling conflicts, we were able to conduct end-of-year interviews with only five of the teachers. All five teachers were unanimous in their enthusiasm for the GTC program and the value of their participation, although each one acknowledged some initial trepidation. All teachers were approached by their principal and most agreed to participate simply based on that request, without much knowledge of what they were signing up for. A typical response to our question was, “I didn’t have much information…but right off the bat, it was really clear what we were going to be doing, and then I was really excited about it.”

All five teachers named the lab visits to other classrooms as the most valuable component of the training, along with the post-visit debrief in which they were able to discuss what they had seen with their peers and figure out how to adapt it to their own classroom. One teacher put it this way: “Going out and seeing different practices and coming back and talking this through with this group of people who are going through the same thing. It’s valuable because things we see aren’t always applicable to the kids we serve. We were able to talk about how we can use this to fit our own students’ needs.” Although two teachers specifically mentioned Dr. Emdin’s visit and coaching feedback (one teacher commented, “I’ll never forget it”), none of the teachers mentioned the coaching in response to this question. This is important, because individual coaching has been shown to be an effective means of improving teacher practice in general and DPS in particular has committed to providing ongoing professional development for teachers through its Teacher Leader coaching model. Coaching is also the backbone of the GTC program, and given especially that it is labor-intensive and costly, we need to understand its role in the GTC work. In this instance, we did not ask specifically about the perceived value of the coaching sessions and will therefore add this to our interview protocol in the future.

Despite teachers not specifically talking about the coaching they received from

PEBC, all teachers reported a change in their thinking after Dr. Emdin’s visit and feedback

7 | P a g e

to them. A high school science teacher commented, “I used to think my classroom was so noisy. Now I’m thinking my students come from home cultures that are noisy. I take a step back and evaluate whether noise means off-task.” She further remarked, “I used to not want students to tell stories. Now I’m seeing where those stories lead and building on them.” A 2nd grade teacher said, “I was thinking it was my job to engage each kid, and when they didn’t engage, it was a power struggle. Now, I think kids have the ability to engage each other and invite each other to join in.” And perhaps most powerfully, a Special Ed (SpEd) teacher revealed, “I was thinking, I’m SpEd and I don’t have time to waste. Now I realize time I invest in relationships pays off later. I’m giving them time to talk, share, ask questions of each other at the beginning. This makes the academic time more productive.” These and other similar teacher reflections provide insight into power of coaching feedback to transform a teacher’s practice.

Four of the five the teachers interviewed described their pre-GTC teaching philosophy as focused on building strong relationships with students; however, they also noted that their participation in the GTC program had strengthened that philosophy through the training sessions and multiple opportunities for individual and group reflection. All four teachers made reference to having gained additional tools and strategies to support their goal to build better relationships. This general sense that participation in the program served to support an existing approach to instruction rather than to cause a radical shift raises the question of selection bias among the teachers invited to participate. This will be an important consideration as the program is scaled to include all teachers in a school, not only those either selected by their school leader or opting in themselves. One teacher, who teaches high school science, provided a different perspective: “I’m much more focused on relationships…in the past, I didn’t have time for relationships, but now I see they’re so critical. All I could think of was how are you going to meet the requirements, but I see how much time I’ve wasted with the students because we’ve clashed in different ways….This program has been instrumental in helping me hone in on relationships.” All five teachers were able to discuss specific changes they had made in the classroom, and these aligned with the “7 C’s” identified by Dr. Emdin. Some examples include an exemplary student work bulletin board that no longer consists of student papers but uses images of students doing their work, a music playlist consisting of students’ suggestions rather than the teacher’s choices, classroom jobs, more project-based learning, students tracking their own behavior, adopting a more flexible approach to scheduling and pacing that allows more time for students to express their ideas, offering students more choice, taking risks with the curriculum, and providing regular time and space for students to simply say what’s on their minds prior to beginning formal instruction. Despite the range of strategies teachers had adopted, they were unanimous in their observation that student engagement had increased dramatically as a result. One teacher said of her 8th grade history students: “They are way more engaged in this project than the kids were last year. Last year for the Civil War we did notes, some written response questions, we did that for about two weeks and then we did a paper test. And they bombed it. It was bad. And it wasn’t fun at all. This year, I took a totally different approach; they’ve been on task, I’ve had kids done with things faster because they’re into it. Some of them fly through it and want to

8 | P a g e

edit. I’ve seen a positive change in work ethic….And they have not complained about the music! They used to complain all the time. They just work, and it’s been quite peaceful.” Another teacher has seen a dramatic change in some of her more challenging 2nd graders: “Speaking to some of those kids whose engagement has gone up through the roof was using the strategy of the cosmopolitan classroom; each kid has a job…the autistic boy who perseverates over being on the computer became the computer functioner….and my little fidgeter became our classroom points manager and shout-out guy…and all of a sudden, he’s up with the community of learners.” Although anecdotal, these stories provide powerful examples of how changes wrought by participation in the GTC program are making a real difference in young people’s experience of school. In addition to engagement, teachers reported an improvement in the quality of students’ work, particularly in their discussion, inquiry and reflection skills, and on the classroom culture as a whole. One teacher commented that students are writing more because they are more interested in what they’re learning and in providing evidence to support their views; another noted that although “Verbally, we’ve seen some really cool things, we’re trying to transfer it to writing skills.” She also commented that student peer feedback had improved and that in-class discussions were better, with students attempting to take on the role of facilitators rather than simply trying to promote their own views. The only area where teachers did not see a big shift was in student attendance, although one teacher reported a student with absentee issues telling her that even though he skipped his other classes, he always made sure to attend hers! Although we attempted to capture the student experience directly by having students complete a pre- and post-survey and a weekly survey, unfortunately, we were unable to collect this data. Only four teachers had their students complete the pre-survey, and only one of those teachers had students complete the post-survey. Furthermore, even in that class for which we had both pre-and post-survey responses, only three students completed both surveys. As a result, it was not possible to measure change in students’ perceptions of their relationships with their teacher or their overall engagement. We had a similar low response rate for the student weekly survey and learned that teachers found that this request placed an undue burden on them and their students. Lessons Learned and Looking Ahead Overall, our results suggest that there is great potential for the GTC program to help shape teacher practice that can address the “demographic mismatch” and attendant cultural divides experienced by many of Denver’s public school students. Teachers’ self-reports show an overall increase in practices that promote higher-level thinking in their students. Teachers also reported that their participation in the program strengthened their beliefs and provided them many more tools and strategies with which to implement a pedagogy based on strong relationships with their students. In some cases, teachers became persuaded that far from wasting valuable instructional time, a focus on relationships made that instructional time more productive. Teachers reported increased student engagement, improved quality of student work, and a better classroom culture.

9 | P a g e

Teachers did not report improved attendance, and we do not have data to support our hypothesis that student classroom behavior would also improve. For most teachers, the chief benefits of their participation in the program were the opportunity to visit other classrooms that focused on building relationships and the opportunities for discussion with peers and for individual and collective reflection. Although teachers found value in Dr. Emdin’s visit and coaching, they did not specifically talk about—nor were they asked about—the value of the coaching they received. We need to learn more about the impact of coaching, in part because it is one of the core features of the program and we need to find sustainable ways to replicate the impact of providing the opportunity to receive feedback from Dr. Emdin. Collecting data from both teachers and students proved much more challenging than we anticipated. Teachers were forgetful about completing the weekly reflection log and reluctant to detract from instructional time by asking students to complete additional surveys. In order to address the first issue, we have added a project manager to our team to ensure that reminders are sent out in a timely manner, and we have employed a part-time graduate research assistant (GRA) to capture video footage of classroom practices and to interview teachers about their experience. In this way, we hope to have more consistent survey data from teachers as well as qualitative data to explore actual changes in teacher practice. We are using the CLASS observation rubric (Allen et al., 2013) to evaluate the effectiveness of teacher-student interactions (the CLASS rubric is a valid and reliable method of coding short segments of video-recorded classroom interactions on three domains—emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support—that have been demonstrated to have an impact on student engagement and achievement). We have equipped each coach and the GRA with a Swivl camera with which to record these classroom interactions. In order to address the second issue (understanding the impact of the GTC program on students), the GRA will conduct student interviews and focus groups at mid-year and at the end of the year. All students in our participating schools have taken a beginning-of-year survey to assess their attitudes and beliefs, and we have a commitment from school leaders that students will complete the same survey at the end of the year. This survey measures students’ self-efficacy, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement, motivation, sense of belonging, metacognitive skills, capacity for self-direction, and perception of school culture. We will continue to work with school staff to secure data about attendance and behavior referrals, and to explore ways with teachers to collect data about classroom behavior at a fine-grain level that can track change in more reliable ways than observation. Nonetheless, we are aware that teachers have many demands placed on them, and we are committed to finding ways to secure data we need that do not impose an additional burden on teachers. In summary, the GTC program shows promise as a mechanism for preparing and supporting teachers to understand, appreciate, and build strong, healthy relationships with their students, particularly students from a wide array of racial, ethnic, and cultural

10 | P a g e

backgrounds. The program has already expanded to include an additional school (Smith Elementary) and 11 additional teachers, so that it is now serving five schools and students in 19 classrooms. Studies in the 2017-2018 school year will build upon the preliminary evidence reported here and will focus on more deeply understanding both teachers’ and students’ experiences within a learning model that concentrates on building relationships between teachers and the students they serve.

11 | P a g e

Appendix A The Development of a Culture of Thinking in My Classroom: Self-Assessment

Imagine someone were to stop into your classroom on any random day or time. How likely would this visitor be to notice each of the following actions described below. For each statement assign a rating between 5 and 1 using the following scale: 5 = Hard to miss it 4 = Highly likely to notice 3 = Hit or miss depending on the circumstances 2 = Not very likely to notice 1= I doubt anyone would notice. EXPECTATIONS 1. I make a conscious effort to communicate to students that my classroom is a place in which thinking is valued. 2. I establish a set of expectations for learning and thinking with my students in a similar way that I establish behavioural expectations. 3. I stress that thinking and learning are the outcomes of our class activity as opposed to ‘completion of work’. 4. “Developing understanding” is the goal of classroom activity and lessons versus knowledge acquisition only. 5. Student independence is being actively cultivated so that students are not dependent on the teacher to answer all questions and direct all activity. LANGUAGE 1. I make a conscious effort to use the language of thinking in my teaching discussing with students the sort of thinking moves required by verbs such as ‘elaborate’, evaluate’, ‘justify’, ‘contrast’, ‘explain’ etc. 2. I seldom use generic praise comments (good job, great, brilliant, well done) and instead give specific, targeted, action-oriented feedback that focuses on guiding future efforts and actions. 3. I use “conditional” phrases such as ‘could be’, ‘might be’, ‘one possibility is’, ‘some people think’ or ‘usually it is that way but not always’. 4. I try to notice and name the thinking occurring in my classroom. For example, might I be heard to say things like, “Sean is supporting his ideas with evidence here”, or “Sam is evaluating the effectiveness of that strategy right now”, or “Iris has presented an interesting analogy today”. 5. I use inclusive, community-building language by talking about what “we” are learning or “our” questions. MODELING 1. Thinking is regularly on display (my own as well as students) in the classroom. 2. I demonstrate my own curiosity, passion, and interest to students. 3. I display open-mindedness and a willingness to consider alternative perspectives. 4. It is clear that I am learning too, taking risks, and reflecting on my learning. 5. Students model their thought process by spontaneously justifying and providing evidence for their thinking.

12 | P a g e

TIME 1. I make time for students’ questions and contributions. 2. I provide the “space” for students to extend, elaborate, or develop the ideas of others. 3. I avoid disseminating an abundance of ideas without the time to process them. 4. I give students time to think and develop ideas before asking for contributions. 5. I monitor the amount of time I talk so as not to dominate the classroom conversation. PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT 1. Displays in the room inspire learning in the subject area and connect students to the larger world of ideas by displaying positive messages about learning and thinking. 2. I arrange the space of my classroom to facilitate thoughtful interactions, collaborations, and discussion. 3. My wall displays have an ongoing, inchoate, and/or dialogic nature to them versus only static display of finished work. 4. I use a variety of ways to document and capture thinking, including technology. 5. A visitor would be able to discern what I care about and value when it comes to learning. INTERACTIONS 1. I ensure that all students respect each other’s thinking in my classroom. Ideas may be critiqued or challenged but people are not. 2. I make it clear that mistakes are acceptable and encouraged within my classroom. 3. Students are pushed to elaborate their responses, to reason, and to think beyond a simple answer or statement? For example, by using the “What makes you say that?” routine. 4. I listen to students and show a genuine curiosity and interest in students’ thinking. It is clear I value their thinking. 5. I listen in on groups and allow them to act independently rather than always inserting myself

13 | P a g e

Appendix B Semi-Structured Interview Questions for Teachers

How did you get to be involved in the GTC program? How did you feel about your involvement? Why? How would you describe your teaching philosophy before the GTC work? How has it changed since GTC? What challenges did you have prior to the GTC program? Has the GTC work addressed any of those challenges? If so, how? If not, how do you address them? Which components of the GTC work were most useful for your practice? What have you done differently in your classroom since beginning the GTC program? Have you noticed any impact or effect on students'

a) attitude or beliefs b) behavior, attendance, or readiness to learn c) the quality of students' work

Has there been an impact on your teaching style?

Appendix C Weekly Teacher Reflection Log

What did you try this week, related to the Growth Through Connections training? What went well? What, if anything, would you do differently? Please rate your current (i.e., right now!) level of confidence in your ability to implement what you have learned in the training (Scale of 1 (extremely low) to 10 (extremely high)) Please note anything unusual that happened in your class this week (e.g., testing, having a sub, field trip, etc.)

Appendix D Student Weekly Survey

Please say how often you did each of these activities in this class this week (Scale: Never, Hardly ever, Quite a lot, Every day): Complete a worksheet Answer questions about information or facts you learned earlier Listen to the teacher explain things Share ideas with other students Explain something you are learning about to yourself or to others Support an idea with facts or evidence Ask a question about what you are learning Make connections between what you are learning and your own life Reflect on your learning

Appendix E

14 | P a g e

Student Pre/Post Survey

Please say how true you think each of these statements is (Scale: Always true, Often true, Hardly ever true, Never true): My teacher in this class understands me My teacher in this class is helpful when I ask for help My teacher in this class encourages me to do my best My teacher in this class really listens to me My teacher in this class believes I can do good work Please say how well each statement describes you (Scale: Completely like me, Mostly like me, A little bit like me, Not at all like me): I pay attention in this class I get in trouble in this class I feel bored in this class I like being in this class I have fun in this class I am proud of the work I do in this class I talk to my family about what I am learning in this class I would like to learn more about what we are studying in this class I have to work hard in this class

15 | P a g e

References Allen, J., Gregory, A., Mikami, A., Lun, J., & Hamre, B. (2013). Observations of Effective Teacher-Student Interactions in Secondary School Classrooms: Predicting Student Achievement with the Classroom Assessment Scoring System-Secondary. School Psychology Review, (41), 1, 76-98. Bailey, S. (2016). The Bailey Report. Retrieved from http://thecommons.dpsk12.org/cms/lib/CO01900837/Centricity/Domain/43/Dr.-Bailey-Report-FULL.pdf. Accessed November 14, 2017. Brooks, S. & Ritchart, R. (2012). The development of a culture of thinking in my classroom: Self-assessment. Retrieved from http://www.pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Self%20Assessing%20CoT.pdf. Accessed November 14, 2017. Cornelius-White, J. (2007). Learner-Centered Teacher-Student Relationship are Effective: A Meta-Analysis. Review of Educational Research, (77), 1, 113-143. Emdin, C. (2016). For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education. Beacon Press: Boston, MA. Emdin, C. (March 28, 2016). PBS News Hour Interview with Kenya Downs, retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/what-white-folks-who-teach-in-the-hood-get-wrong-about-education. Accessed November 14, 2017. Klem, A. M., & Connell, J. P. (2004). Relationships Matter: Linking Teacher Support to Student Engagement and Achievement. Journal of School Health, (74), 7, 262-273. Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview. Theory into Practice, (41), 4, 212-218. Rorda, D. L., Koomen, H. M. Y., Spilt, J. L., & Oort, F. J. (2011). The Influence of Affective Teachers-Student Relationships on Students’ School Engagement and Achivevement: A Meta-Analytic Approach. Review of Educational Research, (81), 4, 493-52.