Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. My name is Roberta and I am your host. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast for you. Please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review by the end of this episode, which I'm sure that you will greatly benefit from because today I am joined by Tammy Haddad, she is an elementary school teacher.
00:27
She's here to share with us a lot of tips on how, especially parents with everything transferring online during the pandemic can be of assistance to them, especially with their kids' homework. And before I go any further, please help me welcome Tammy. Hi. Hi, it's so nice to be here today. Thank you for being here. What you're about to share with us is gonna help a lot of parents who have had such a chaotic two years with the lack of a better word.
00:56
because everything suddenly went from, my kid is going to school and the teachers will take care of the education part. I just need to parent them when they get home. And suddenly, mom, help me with my math. Do you have kids? No, I've only taught them. I spent 10 years teaching them in South Korea. Very nice. That's why there's no noise in the background, I guess. I guess I'm missing out on something. Before we dive deeper into your work and what you're gonna share with us, tell us a little bit about yourself.
01:26
Sure. So I have experience teaching all grades, but my main grades that I work with are that preteen age, fourth graders, fifth graders, sixth graders, love them. I graduated college just a year ago, so I'm pretty fresh up to date on all the latest education research. Last year, I finished my first year in the classroom, and the year before that, I was teaching online.
01:53
And I just started an educational podcast because I have a feeling that that's kind of the way that the direction that education is going in. What made you decide to study elementary school education? Sure. So when I was growing up, I never thought that I wanted to be a teacher.
02:14
I just liked school and I like learning and I like writing and I was good at school. And then I get to high school and I started playing, well, I started middle school, but I got pretty serious about it by the time I was in high school and I started playing flute that took me to college and I was looking at getting scholarships with my flute. But ultimately I could end up studying whatever I wanted because I had scholarship through the Navajo nation tribe, which I'm a member of.
02:41
Well, actually I started off as music education, but then I was kind of thinking I want to be able to have access to more jobs by the time I graduate instead of just the music teacher role. So that's why I went into elementary education and shout out to my second grade teacher. She used to play guitar for us, sing us all of these songs about skip counting. And to this day, they're still in my head. So I was like, you know what? I can teach music whenever I want in my classroom. So that's what led me to elementary education.
03:09
It actually does give you that flexibility. In fact, when you have music in your class, it makes it more fun. Just like you just gave a shout out to your teacher. Cause I remember when I first came to Korea, you can't just have a lecture style type of a classroom when you're teaching children, there must be a song. There must be a game. There must be an activity, something for them to be fun. Yeah. So that's obviously going to help a lot with your classrooms. So you recently graduated, which means that.
03:38
The first two years when there was that whole lockdown, stay at home, teachers are gonna teach through Zoom. Does that mean you were able to skip that? You started teaching after- Oh God, I wish I skipped that. No, that was how I was indicted into the teaching world. So I had to do my student teaching. I was going into my final year of college and that was the summer when they were talking about shutting everything down and then it happened. So I was in Salt Lake City School District at the time.
04:08
and they shut down. I'm gonna say they were pretty good at it. I use the term good. By good, I actually just mean that that particular school district decided to shut down and they stayed shut down, which is better than some districts that I've heard because for that whole year, that nine month school year, which was two years ago now, a lot of districts were switching on and off. Like they were trying to bring schools and students back in person. And then there would be more of an outbreak or something and then they would go back online.
04:37
Fortunately, I did not have to deal with that. But yeah, I was definitely on Zoom for six hours a day every day during my last year of college, teaching sixth grade online. Wow. I have a friend whose daughter, she was doing third grade at the time. They did that thing that you just mentioned where one minute they say, okay, this week you can come back to school. Oh, there was an outbreak. Next week, please don't come back. Let's go back to the computer. Can you imagine that?
05:03
chaos, uncertainty, not knowing what's going to happen. Or I remember also they did that whole list that, okay, this week, these are the five students who are going to come to school. The rest of you will be on the computer. So my question was, how does the teacher manage in that circumstance? Because the kids are not all in one location. How does the teacher manage? Honestly, I don't think a lot of teachers managed.
05:30
It really varied from district to district, right? And teacher to teacher, depending on what kind of technology you had access to. So I could just tell you about the school that I was teaching at. It was a title one school, which means that they had extra funding. So they actually were able to get hotspots for all the students who didn't have access to Wi-Fi. But during the first week of school, there was a really big power outage in Salt Lake City, where I was. There was like a windstorm.
05:59
And so the power was out for like a week. So the first day of school got canceled. And then the second day of school got canceled too, I think. It didn't even get canceled until like 20 minutes before the school day started. But I do remember the crazy wind and people didn't have wifi and it was kind of scary. And some of the students were scared, but it was nice, I guess, to be able to still communicate with the students. It was one little girl that texted us being like, I'm so scared. The wind is really howling right now.
06:29
you know, everything was kind of in chaos because we were all shut down and everything. But it was nice to be able to like text that one girl and just be like, Hey, you know what, it's going to be okay. Just chill out and relax at your house. And we're going to start school next week. Finding new ways to connect. Yeah, that's definitely one thing. My school we did, I want to say it was about six hours on zoom every day. And we would take like an hour break in the middle. Everybody was online for the first several months. I don't know how long.
06:57
At least the first semester, I think, because I remember I did the parent teacher conferences and stuff online. That really wasn't too difficult having all the students online. I mean, it was difficult in a way, but not compared to the second semester then where we went hybrid. So half of the students came in person and then half of them stayed online. So that one, we were lucky at my school that I was teaching at because we had the staff because they had hired three student teachers. So we're basically just like really cool.
07:26
qualified volunteers that were helping out. And then we had four sixth grade teachers for about 90 kids. So that's like seven adults for 90 kids. That's not a bad ratio. So that way we were able to have two adults in every room and one person controlled the zoom camera and the online chat. And then the other one of us would actually teach the lesson in person to the kids that were there. And we had to sit their desks three feet apart.
07:53
and put up like these plastic barriers between each of the students that we held to their desk with binder clips. Mm-hmm, with the social distancing. Yeah. Before we get deeper into that, shout out to the Chicago Public Schools system as well. They had, I think, funding for families who did not afford computers and Wi-Fi during that period as well.
08:17
Did any of the teachers get trained on how to conduct a Zoom class when this started? Do you know anything about that? I know you were still in college. Yeah. Well, I was really in the classroom teaching by the time it happened. And no, we were figuring it out right alongside them the whole time. Like how do you Zoom and stuff? I was working with these teachers that I think they knew what they were doing.
08:40
I was under the impression like Zoom is a pretty user-friendly program. So it wasn't exactly like we needed training on Zoom. I'm really just a strong proponent of, I don't think the school day should be held on Zoom. I don't think that there's a way that you can have a Zoom call and be teaching kindergarten like that, just like the way that you would have done when you were at home. I just don't see a way. I know there's more and more research coming out about it. It's just not the same. Listen, I've taught them. They're cute and everything.
09:09
person, there's always a way and a system to keep the class under control, even though they participate and you want them to be free and open. But there's a system, you know, there's an order in the classroom. How do you maintain order on Zoom? Are they even concentrating? The answer is no. The other thing is on a computer screen, like I'm talking to you now, there's other things on my top screen that are popping up and I'm a grown up and they're distracting me. Imagine being a kid.
09:38
There's just so much going on, I cannot imagine how they managed. Yeah, there's not even words to describe it, to be honest with you. It was an experience like no other. And oh, I was going to say to answer your question, no, they're not paying attention. What I've heard about kids is the number of years the age of a child, so say like a kindergartner is like five or six years old, their attention span is five to six minutes long. And I don't know how if that...
10:06
transfers on into like teenagers. I don't think it does. I think middle school, they say about 12 minutes, which is the age of a middle schooler. So, but like my grade, fifth grade, they can pay attention for about 10 minutes. Then after that, they need a little break. That's not to say like- They're not taking something else. Yeah, just a little something. And we would try to do stuff like that on Zoom, but I honestly felt like a fool in front of the camera trying to be like, hey everybody, turn your cameras on. Let's do some squats together.
10:34
In the classroom, I don't mind doing that. When I was having to do that in front of my webcam, like, so I was like alone in this apartment doing squats, like trying to act like you're doing. And you need to make it fun. Kids will follow you. If what you're doing, you are, you look like you're having fun as well. Yeah. But it was definitely hard to look like I was having fun. And another thing is homework. They're on the screen and as a teacher, you assign them homework. How does that work? Assigning homework online.
11:02
and checking if they did it the next day. Yeah. As an educator, my professional opinion is I don't really believe in homework. I don't really care to assign it. If I do assign homework, it's math homework. Research has shown that the only kind of homework that's really beneficial is math homework, and it's just because it helps you remember what you learned. But other than that, in our current school system, when kids are at school all day...
11:26
I just don't really think they need something else to do when they get home, unless it's something pretty quick and short, like a math review, that makes sense. Yeah, and the more you master, the more you'll practice. Yes, exactly. I definitely think kids should be reading at home. I would tell them, go read a book for 30 minutes, for an hour, or something like that. But I have assigned homework though, in every teaching job that I have, because it's not my decision ultimately, funny enough. It's actually the school's decision if I have to assign homework.
11:53
the homework when we were on Zoom, when we were virtual, I find that's a little bit easier, but I just wonder what it's like for a kid trying to use some of the software that we use, like Microsoft Teams or Zoom is, I mean, like I said, I think Zoom is pretty easy, but Microsoft Teams, it's for adults. I know they use Microsoft Teams in second grade and that just seems outrageous to me. Do the parents get involved in helping them log in and...
12:23
Is your teacher here? Look at your classmates. This is what you play in order to speak. This is where you mute yourself. It just depends, I guess. I would imagine if they're in kindergarten, their parents pretty much have to help them. When I was teaching sixth grade, I did do some fifth grade online, but that was when we were allowed to be back in school. When I was teaching my own class in fifth grade, we all were in the classroom. But if a kid showed symptoms or something like that, they'd have to quarantine for seven days and they wouldn't just get to stay at home from school.
12:53
That's when it was very difficult for me. I would have to create a zoom just for this one child to be with my class. And so I'd be teaching the rest of my 29 students in person. And then I'd have one Chromebook of like one student watching me. It was really hard. I would have, I didn't have any help or anything in the classroom. I kind of think you need two adults in there anyway with 30 kids, but to have them one online, so I would just have some of the students help me. And.
13:19
Kids are amazing. My students were amazingly helpful and so good at using Zoom by that point. That's so good. Okay, if there's a parent at home that's understandable, but I'm wondering parents that actually had to go to work. When you drop your kids off at school and then you go to work and you'll see them when you come home from work and they come home from school. Now the kid is home needing help from the parent, but the parent has to go to work. Yeah, I don't know what happens. I've had that thought as an educator. Things really changed after the pandemic.
13:49
because during the pandemic, it was difficult for students to get online if they didn't have that support from their parents. I think a lot more students ended up missing school. Then by the next year, 2021, when we were going back into school again, what I noticed in this last school year is that there's chronic absenteeism, just absences, galore. I had a student who missed a third of the school year.
14:16
He was a smart kid, but missing a third of the school year, he just gets passed on to sixth grade. That was the most extreme case, right? But I had many students with upwards of 20 absences in the school year, and that's not on par with years before the pandemic. What you were describing just now of parents having to go to work and just dropping their kids off at school, it makes me wonder how many students have just been at home by themselves because the idea
14:44
and respect that people had towards public education changed after the pandemic. Because they realized not just the education, but it's almost like a place for my kid to be safe until I come home from work. Yeah, a lot of parents, I think, think of school as babysitting, and that can be difficult too. I feel very thankful for my education, and I wish that other people really valued the free public education that we are able to get in America.
15:13
I mean, I'm sure that they do appreciate, but I just think in the last two years that there's just been so much that they've had to deal with. They never had to before when kids were just going to school and coming back home. Now I'm wondering, how did you grade as a teacher through Zoom? Through Zoom? Did they submit anything electronically or did they used to show it on the screen and say, hey, teacher, tell me, this is what I wrote. How does it work? There's a bunch of different ways you can do it.
15:41
When I worked in Salt Lake, we would have them take pictures of their homework sometimes and send it in. And honestly, that's kind of silly because the paper is blurry and the webcam quality isn't that good. So it's kind of like, what am I even looking at? School is a lot of just being able to turn stuff in on time. So that's one part of it that I still think, you know, meeting a deadline, that's definitely something that you need to practice to be successful in the future. There are other ways to do
16:11
So we use Canvas software. There's a lot of educational technology software. And I'm pretty sure that whole realm of business is really booming because everybody's all about the educational technology. But I mean, there's a plethora of websites where you can send something out to your student and tell them to just send it back to you, like GoFormative or Google Drive. You could just have them do it on Google Classroom. All right, so there is a system in a way for you to see. Did you get involved in any testing?
16:38
before they go to the next grade to see if they understood. Yeah, we have standardized testing, but the standardized testing, it's more like a report on the school and it doesn't actually affect the student's grade. Maybe I'm not the best person to talk to about this, but I don't know what a student has to do to get held back. Because like I said, I had a student who missed a third of the school year.
17:03
I mean, I had students that came to me at the beginning of the year in fifth grade that were reading at a kindergarten level. At least 10% of my class was in the bottom third nationally of readers. I'm not trying to like say bad stuff about my students. They were awesome. And we made a ton of improvement that year. I was so proud of them by the end of the year. And I understand why they would be behind too, because of the pandemic, the standardized tests. It was not fair because.
17:32
they missed a whole year of school, they were so behind. If that answers your question, we did do standardized testing, but it's just a report for the school and how the school is doing. Right. So hopefully from now on, life is gonna get back to normal and I think whatever positive things that were invented and systems that were created in order to cope, we can take those along as we go forward.
17:59
Yeah, definitely. Like I said, the business of educational technology, not only is it super blowing up right now, but it's really beneficial for a lot of people. Like even us right now, we're talking over zoom. I don't think that this would have happened before the pandemic. I don't think, well, we did a little bit like with Skype and stuff, but it's definitely different now. One really big positive I've seen out of this thing is in Nevada, which is where I am now, they came out with computer science learning standards for K through 12 students in 2020.
18:28
I don't know if they were working on that before the pandemic. I'm sure they had to have been because it's a very extensive computer science learning standards. I think that is so cool and important, like even for those little kids like that, kindergarten, first grade, to start learning stuff about technology because that's just how the world works these days. Right. And they are really good at it. I don't know how it is in your family.
18:50
but my young nieces and nephews know more technology than I do. Absolutely. Now let's talk about your website. Okay. Cozy Rainbow. So how did that get started and why did you name it Cozy Rainbow? Cozy Rainbow.org is my website. I am a podcast addict. I started listening to podcasts when I was in college.
19:15
It was, okay, I don't want to say really boring, but it was definitely a boring job where I was doing paperwork all the time. So I would listen to a podcast while I was working. So I just really grew to enjoy them. And then teaching probably in the first month of school, one of my students asked me, are we going to be learning about podcasts this year? I was like, what? You were listening to the podcast in front of them too? No, I listened to podcasts in my own time.
19:39
So I started teaching fifth grade. I never listened to a podcast in the classroom. Never mentioned it. No, no, no. We're doing like reading, writing math, all the traditional school stuff doing that. And yeah. So I asked my students, is there anything you want to learn this year in the beginning of the year, because I'm like, so yeah, this girl was like, are we listening to podcasts this year? And I said, I wasn't planning on it, but I'll look into that. And I said, where did you learn about podcasts? And she told me her fourth grade teacher used to play a podcast for them. It was a really popular podcast called six minutes.
20:06
their tagline is like the most downloaded family drama in history. And I believe it it's called six minutes, cause it's six minutes long. Fourth grade teachers at my school would listen to this podcast and then try to get the kids to do basically like different language arts standards with it. So like trying to make a prediction about what's going to happen in the next episode, this girl asking me that I kind of kept it in mind and we listened to a podcast in my classroom, we listened to this one called Mars Patel, or it's like the unexplainable.
20:34
Disappearance of Morris Patel. We listened to it and we did some vocabulary with it. It's kind of like listening to an audio book, which we would actually do all the time. I would play the audio of a book being read to them because that's a good thing to do for students, especially students who aren't reading on grade level, because when you listen to something, kids can understand two levels higher than their reading level, if it's a podcast or an audio book, because it's being spoken to them. So they're able to understand more.
21:01
The podcast was really cool because it was actually, I think a middle school teacher made it and he made it with his students. It's completely student actors voice, all the students in it. And it's voiced by real middle schoolers. One of my coworkers, she had a social media account that had cozy rainbow in it. And she was kind of like, Hey, you know what, let's make this podcast. That person is my season one co-host, Yanka. She was doing it with me for the first season. So that's kind of where the cozy rainbow name came from.
21:31
And I have a love of art and just learning new things and teaching it. So that's kind of what I aim to do on my website. So we publish student artwork and writing. I give like different little challenges on the podcast for students to do and listen to, and it's been a true delight to get this work from students all over the world. It's been really nice. It makes me smile every time. Wow. When did you get the started?
21:57
I hurried up and got it started at the end of the school year. I think I bought the domain name in April. And I remember hurrying up to try and get my students to sing the intro song. I taught my students how to sing it at recess. I wrote that little song on my ukulele. So about nine of them were like, yeah, of course, you know. And it makes me happy to listen to it now too, because I just remember them. I'm like, oh, and for them to volunteer, that's really sweet. Yeah. Oh, wow.
22:26
And when they submit this art to the website, what is it that you do with the art? I just finished recording, but we didn't have a ton of entries, obviously, because we're like a brand new podcast. However, I do interact with children a lot. So I went into a couple of schools around town to get some student volunteers, I guess you could say, to share their artwork with me. And the teachers were happy to do it. We talked about crystals and then we wrote.
22:50
some stories on crystals and then the artwork ones, they have sent them in. So I basically just hype all these kids up. I tell them your artwork is amazing. I tell them exactly what I liked about their art and writing. In some of my podcast episodes, we give writing tips. It's almost like the lesson that I would give in my classroom, except probably a little bit better because I record myself talking and then I edit out all the parts where I don't make sense.
23:14
I think it's definitely been effective and I've definitely been able to reach a few students and inspire them to learn some new stuff during the summer or write something. It's been great. Just spring out their creative juices. I think that's a lot better than video games. Not to say anything about video games, if you know what I mean. Yeah. I love video games, but it's not great to play them all day. It's good to take a break, maybe draw a picture or something like that.
23:40
But I love video games. So I actually have a few episodes planned coming up where I'm talking about video games. I've been thinking there's a lot of math in video games and- Oh, wow. That's what I think is so fun about making this podcast is I get to teach things that I think are fun and just incorporate it into those regular subjects. So we did an episode about Squishmallows and people all over the world are obsessed with Squishmallows. I am too. I have some of the background here. Are you still with me in Frozen? Yeah.
24:07
Okay, so a lot of people love squishmallows, a lot of kids love them. So I had a writing challenge about squishmallows and I had a mom that messaged me, my seven year old loved your podcast. She took notes on it and she was inspired to write a persuasive letter. It made my day. Oh, that is so beautiful. Yeah, because those are the things that kids naturally like to do. Yeah.
24:29
And what they naturally want to learn, it's not just video games. It just so happens that video games happen to be an independent activity. So like a parent could leave their kid, you know, with the video games and definitely going to be entertained for a while. So that you get out of things done. Yeah. But my advice to parents is to have your kids listen to an educational podcast. Maybe the cozy rainbow podcast. There's a lot of other good podcasts out there for kids to that way. Your kid can get a break from screen time. That's another great benefit of podcasts.
24:59
And like you said, the listening creates better understanding and especially as they are still a work in progress when it comes to their reading levels. Yeah. And listening is a skill too that needs to be practiced in schools. Listening is an English language arts standard in every single grade. It's not taught enough. And I think podcasts are one way that we could really get to teaching listening, because how do you teach listening? You think you learn how to listen on an everyday? Because I used to teach English as a second language.
25:27
So it would be one of the ways in which we test them. So I don't remember much of the listening. Exactly. Yeah, you don't remember much of the listening. I mean, same for me. What you're describing, learning a second language, the same way that you would learn a second language is the same thing that can help your first language. So I experienced the same thing. I learned how to speak Spanish. I mean, I started taking classes in middle school and I kept going till college.
25:49
best Spanish classes that I took my Spanish teacher would make us listen to somebody speaking in Spanish. Like she would give us the script and then we would fill in the blank. And that's a great learning tool because it's a way to teach kids how to take notes and it's scaffolded notes. So scaffolded meaning like it makes it a little bit easier for them to take notes, right? Because kids can't write that fast. Right. And they're not going to be able to catch everything. Just spinning in the one word. Yeah. Yeah. But if it's just one word, it's a lot easier.
26:14
and they can follow, comprehend while they're listening and then they know where to fill it in on the paper. Yeah. Tammy, this has been amazing. The information you've shared with us has been really helpful. I'm sure any teacher or parent or even students that are listening will benefit because the last two years have really turned things upside down for us. I mean, we've been able to overcome. We've come up with new ways, new technology to help us. Any last words?
26:41
No, I think you covered it all. Thank you so much for having me on this podcast. I really appreciate it. Thank you for being here. So tell us again, Cozy Rainbow. Cozy Rainbow, yes. So my website is www.cozyrainbow.org. My Instagram is at Cozy Rainbow NV. That's pretty much it. I also started a YouTube channel. I started animating the podcast a little bit. The animating part I think is really fun. You see, that's another part of the technology is adding to education, making it more fun.
27:09
because kids learn a lot better when they're having fun. And teachers have more fun when you're having fun. So I'll just have fun. Woo. That's all have fun together. Tammy Haddad, the elementary school teacher who is revolutionizing learning by creating a fun way in which kids can learn and express themselves through their art. Thank you so much for being here. And don't forget to give a review and a rating and subscribe to the Speaking and Communicating podcast.