Marian Dorsey is a North Carolina native who transitioned to Charlottesville in order to attend the University of Virginia (UVA) for her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Elementary Education. After receiving her her Master’s in Teaching from UVa in 2016, Marian decided to stay in Charlottesville and has taught 2nd and 3rd grade for the majority of her teaching career. She has transitioned into a new role as a Gifted and Talented Teacher and loves working with elementary aged students to incorporate their passions and hopes into the new content that they learn together. Marian enjoys building partnerships with families and their children to ensure success is achievable for all. When she isn’t working with kids, Marian enjoys running, reading books, and trying out new recipes.
In this inspiring conversation, Marian shares her journey as a teacher. Marian is fueled by her passion for ensuring success is achievable for all students. She shares advice for finding a school to work in that fits your personal and professional values. Marian also discusses what SLPs should know about teachers and tips for establishing collaborations with teachers.
Marian is a co-founder of Tutor-ish, a reading and math tutoring service which was founded in 2020 as a way to bridge an educational gap deepened by the abrupt switch to virtual learning when the pandemic began. The service aims to provide homework help, enrichment opportunities and remedial tutoring services through a series of affordable packages, with payment plans to help all families get the help they need. Find more information on Facebook or Instagram and connect with Marian on LinkedIn.
Episode Transcript
NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by a free tool called Otter.ai. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Danika Pfeiffer
Welcome back to about from and with. Thanks for spending part of your day listening to this episode. If you’re not already, please be sure to follow me on Instagram @danikapfeiffer.slp to stay in the loop about the podcast. You can also follow the podcast to be notified when new episodes launch, I’m so excited to share this conversation with you it is easily one of my favorite conversations that I’ve had so far on the podcast. One of my goals for this podcast was to include conversations with people from other disciplines that SLPs frequently collaborate with, because of my passion for interprofessional practice, and the research on interprofessional practice in schools that I’ve done so far. One of the things SLPs report wanting to know the most about, to help them collaborate better on teams is the roles and responsibilities of different educators in schools. So I hope this episode and future ones where I bring on people outside of speech language pathology will help to do that a little bit in this episode I chat with a very passionate and inspiring teacher Marian McCullough Dorsey, She is a North Carolina native who transitioned to Charlottesville, Virginia, in order to attend the University of Virginia for her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in elementary education after receiving her master’s in teaching from the University of Virginia in 2016, Marian decided to stay in Charlottesville and has taught second and third grade for the majority of her teaching career. She’s transitioned into a new role as a gifted and talented teacher and loves working with elementary age students to incorporate their passions and hopes into the new content that they learn together, Marian enjoys building partnerships with families and their children to ensure success is achievable for all. In this episode, Marian shares what she wishes other educators knew about teachers, as well as some amazing tips for finding a school to work in that aligns with your personal values, and she gives advice for how SLPs can collaborate with teachers more effectively. I hope you find this conversation as inspiring as I did enjoy. Hi Marian thanks so much for being here today to share your story.
Marian Dorsey
Hi Danika thanks for having me.
Danika Pfeiffer
I’m so excited to have you here and to get another perspective, there’s so many educators that work all together in schools and I can’t wait to hear your journey as a teacher. So let’s start out with a little bit about you growing up before you started your journey as a teacher.
Marian Dorsey
Sure, I actually was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, where I spent most of my time, and in my journey as a teacher I would say that it really all started in eighth grade when I worked at a summer camp for children at the Science Center, a local Science Center. And I just saw students having these experiences, a lot of aha moments, a lot of learning being really fun and engaging for them and knowing that I had been a part of creating that opportunity. And I think for me being able to create that for kids and watching the joy and the energy and the motivation that really existed in a variety of students from kids who hadn’t wanted to come to kids who were already really bought into the idea that science camp would be fun, made me think that creating those experiences and getting that feeling that you get when a kid gets it or when a kid feels like they are a part of their own educational journey is something I wanted to continue doing for, I guess now the rest of my life.
Danika Pfeiffer
I love that. Yeah, I think that is so rewarding when you see those light bulbs go off. Did you know for sure that you wanted to be a teacher when you started college.
Marian Dorsey
Absolutely not. Really wanted to work with kids and make a difference, but I also really wanted to potentially do theater so I ended up not knowing what I wanted to do for a really long time switching majors, a couple of times. At first I thought I wanted to be a psychologist, so I started to major in psychology but that bell curve was not for me.
Danika Pfeiffer
And I started off the same I also started off thinking I wanted to go into psychology and change my mind, you
Marian Dorsey
know, people are really made for that I was not a and I took a class called teaching as a profession with this amazing professor, and I remember hearing him talk about the personal connections, he had made to teaching for his own child and for his own learning and how he kept learning and how that had brought him to uda to be our professor and I thought it was really cool that he had had all these varying experiences that he was inspired that he could see it working within his own life and I remembered that eighth grade time and thought, you know, I took this class kind of seeking and exploring and now I really feel like working with kids is something that could inspire me and while I was taking that class I was doing my first field experience through VA and I got to sit with kids after school, every Monday, Wednesday, and do tutoring with them and I saw those light bulb moments happening and I realized the personal connections, I was building, kids were building something really cool so then I didn’t have a chance to turn back around, especially knowing that that bell curve was waiting for me.
Danika Pfeiffer
That’s amazing. Can you talk a little bit more about the field experience that you mentioned. Sure,
Marian Dorsey
so my field experiences with a program called Day in the Life, and it was a tutoring program and for UVA, the way that it works at least when you’re considering it or at least exploring the idea of being a teacher. During my program, you had to do one credit of experience which normally meant you could choose one day or two days, I did too. It was about an hour of tutoring after school with students, or you could have picked a different time that worked with your schedule, I’d experienced doing what was called an America Reads tutoring program to where I’ve gone into classrooms and I went during the day like during the actual class time, this one was just after school with a small group of kids, and typically I would take kids one on one to do things like homework help, but also to do things like practicing skills that maybe hadn’t been the strongest for them.
Danika Pfeiffer
Okay, so that’s something you could do while you were still deciding if you wanted to be a teacher or not, yes. Okay, got it, and then when did you make that decision that you did want to become a teacher,
Marian Dorsey
so I made that decision after my field experience when I was just exploring. And the way that it works is in your second year of college you or your sophomore year you apply into the program so you can do more field experience take classes that are specifically geared towards not just working with kids, but building your own content knowledge pedagogy knowledge and understanding your own role and your own autonomy in those things so I applied my second year found out that I got in and then that’s when I started to do more field experience for longer hours and more days and more really deep diving into what curriculum looked like, how it impacts students who benefits who does it, and just a bunch of different content strategies that I probably never would have thought of on my own.
Danika Pfeiffer
What are their requirements for becoming a teacher.
Marian Dorsey
So the requirements for us were that we wouldn’t be in the program for two to three years. It depended on where you were and how far along with college credits you were in the program so I did a five year bachelor’s and master’s program, and I did that knowing that I would end up staying at UVA and in Charlottesville for an extra year beyond what my undergraduate graduation time was because I really wanted a master’s in teaching I wanted the graduate level experience. And so I took graduate courses and undergraduate courses at the same time, from pretty much the spring semester of my sophomore year, until I was done with graduate school.
Danika Pfeiffer
Okay, so it sounds like a graduate degree is not required, but it’s an optional thing if you would like to continue on, you can get a master’s degree. Yeah, and what would be the benefits in terms of thinking about your future teaching going on and pursuing the master’s degree,
Marian Dorsey
I would say for me, the big benefit was probably getting more in depth conceptual knowledge about pedagogy working with students getting more opportunities to start exploring questions that I had, I think that working in the graduate program and being a part of it really inspired me to remain curious throughout my time as a teacher, I think it’s what’s inspired me to continue working and going back to school I even went back to school this year to get an endorsement and gifted and talented education and I think that that natural curiosity that natural building toward, how do I inspire students in this how can I be a better teacher and grasp conceptual things or common mistakes so that when I see them, I can really push children to success and push them to purpose with understanding how they learn what’s important to them and kind of, it gives you more independence and tools to push students to say, what are the things that you feel like are helping you, what are the strategies I’ve been using because you have names for them. And I think in the graduate program having names for strategies I was using having names for common mistakes and concepts and eventually being able to talk with kids about those things and kid friendly language that all came from the graduate experience that I had. Oh wow,
Danika Pfeiffer
that’s really interesting, thank you for sharing that. Were there any specific experiences during the rest of your college experience after you had decided that you wanted to become a teacher that you feel like really shaped who you are as a teacher of today.
Marian Dorsey
Anytime I got to work with students throughout those field experiences, I just learned so much about the minds of children, and the minds of the people that were helping me to be the best teacher tutor and instructor that I could to them. I remember one time working with a kid who was in fourth grade, and trying to teach them how to read, and I’m sure that you as a speech language pathologist have encountered this, when children are reading sometimes it’s not a matter of teaching them the art of reading but it’s really the science of understanding why they’re saying the sound that they’re saying, what it is that they’re seeing that they are holding in their brain and I remember her talking to me about this term called the SRA, and I said I have no idea what that is, I have no idea why they’re pronouncing it this way. But then I remember having this lightbulb moment of whoa you have to be so intentional about the way that you’re teaching children’s strategies and the way that you’re talking about the process of reading, writing, even with math I learned the same thing through my professor, I learned so much about how to start getting in a child’s mind because you can understand that it’s common misconceptions and because I could see how frustrating it was when I didn’t have language for what was happening, because then I couldn’t, I couldn’t problem solve it, I couldn’t work with a child and say, Oh, I noticed that you’re putting these two letters together and I want to talk to you about why this exists.
Danika Pfeiffer
Right, right, you have to get on their level and explain things in terms payable understand. Yeah, I love what you’re saying there because I think that we encounter the same thing in grad school we learn all of these really technical terms and are reading these textbooks about all of these great things but then it’s, it’s really helpful once you are actually working with kids and you can see how that translates from the textbook to real life, and how that manifests so you can figure out what your treatment plan should be and how you can like you’re saying explain these things in terms that the children will actually understand what does the job application process look like for teachers so as you finished your degree and we’re thinking about where you’re going to go next, what does that process look like.
Marian Dorsey
So, in my final year, I went through a checklist and so in our checklist you had to take a reading exam to prove that you could read and write and talk to kids about that, I think I had to take two practices, and then I also had to make sure that I had gone through different modules so that I could apply for a certificate as a teacher for licensure, so I applied for licensure with all of the tests that I had taken with all of the credentials I had built with all my fields experience recorded, and really just put all of that together and pack it and then once you have applied for licensure, it’s not necessarily that you have to have licensure before you apply you just have to have a receipt saying I’ve applied for licensure I’m pretty sure I will get it and go through the application process so I filled out an application to work here in Charlottesville. And I ended up a few weeks later hearing back and going through the interview process with them so I did a screening interview I received an early contract which just meant that I could apply to jobs, earlier than most candidates could and then I got my job by February typically around here it’s around April May is when you hear back and you can start applying to jobs and really choose the school that you would like to be a part of so I found myself applying to one job at the first school I ever worked at because I really admired the principal and I admired the way that she talked about children. And so I applied and got a job working there and sometimes you’re not sure whether you’re going to get a grade level position that’s a specific one. Sometimes you’re given a range and at the time I was told I would be either second grade or third grade, so I applied, received a job offer and because I wanted to work at the school I was willing to do whatever, Great, I was gonna give it.
Danika Pfeiffer
That’s great. That’s so interesting, I loved how you talked about your decision making process and you talked about, the principal and how you admired the principal and the way that she talked about children. I think that’s not something that I ever really thought about and thinking about a job in a school, you know, thinking about what the principal’s philosophy is I think so, so much of the time we’re just focused on getting a job that we don’t always think about those things. Are there any other things you were thinking about in terms of where you wanted your first job to be.
Marian Dorsey
I really wanted a job with a school that cared about the needs of diverse learners like I really wanted a school that could talk about the gifts and assets they saw and all of their students and how they believed that even kids who are classified as behavior problems were a big part of the learning process. And I think that’s just my own experience as a kid, I grew up in North Carolina and I wasn’t particularly a bad kid, but I was a kid who if I got bored or if I really felt like I was missing social stimulation sometimes that would just get me into trouble and I wanted to hear. I think from my own perspective, what students who are like that, what, how are their assets viewed, how is it that they are treated and how do teachers work with them because I always felt like, those were the moments that I really came to admire my teachers if a teacher was clearly feeling overwhelmed by my personality or my need to socialize, were they able to step back and recognize where the intent of my socialization was why was I doing that or was it something where I would be viewed as a problem, and oftentimes, at least in my upper grades experienced elementary school I was definitely viewed as a problem. And so I really wanted to hear from not just an administrator but from other teachers, how do you pivot from giving kids as problems to problem solving with them and to helping them feel like they that curiosity or that energy, that they have is still really valuable, because often with students of color, that energy is not viewed as valuable, it’s very much so viewed as disruptive, and sometimes I always think about the three Ds which are defiance disrespect and disruption, and I wanted to work at a school where those words were not used lightly and where it was, it just because a child interrupts sometimes or has a lot of questions or sometimes even questions why we’re doing what we’re doing, I really wanted a school that was going to help me understand how to continue talking to kids about that with patience and care.
Danika Pfeiffer
Wow, thank you for sharing that, that is so great. I’m so glad that you brought this up because I think it’s something for us to think about as speech therapists too and I wonder if you have any advice for educators just broadly going into a school during that interview process of how you can get some of that information because I would think it could be challenging to find out, you know what goes on in the school building, how did you figure out and kind of get the answers that you were looking for.
Marian Dorsey
Some of it again was the administrator and talking with her. I was really blessed I was a part of the African American Teaching Fellow so I had connected with her prior to that and had been able to pick her brain for what was probably a year. But I think that something I learned as I transitioned jobs I switched schools this year is really utilizing connections that you have. So, as a graduate coming into a division in a system, sometimes you don’t know anyone or you don’t know everyone that you need to know to ask those questions but I have had people do this and I think it’s been really helpful, of when you are doing some schools do group interviews when you’re doing group interviews just emailing a teacher afterward that was on that panel and say, I really wanted to pick your brain about this, whatever values you hold that you really want to know more about and you wonder if they align and you want to make sure you’re getting the most authentic representation of that school I’ve seen people reach out to me and ask questions and sometimes schools will take you on tours of their school so that you can see it in action and I highly advocate for people to ask to go during the school day because it’s the most authentic time you’re going to get to observe and to see what that administrator really does interact with students and also how your colleagues will interact with students sometimes I’ve walked around school buildings and I’ve seen kids sitting outside and a teacher talking to them and I don’t listen in on the whole conversation but I can very clearly hear a tone very clearly tell this conversation is one thing before or this is one where the teacher is just feeling out how the student is feeling about themselves. So I think those are natural ways just getting into a school building too, and even if they don’t offer asking that administrator can I go on a tour of your school I would love to come during school hours and especially if you’re feeling really good about that school just that confirmation that you are feeling good and it’s a right fit or it’s not is a really clear way to do that.
Danika Pfeiffer
Thank you. Those are great nuggets of advice I think that would be so helpful, especially when you’re just coming out of grad school for speech language pathologists, we have to have a master’s degree so we’re wrapping up grad school and just like you, you know you went through grad school and, you know it’s a lot of hard work and you’re at that point, you’re so excited to just finally get there to get the job, but I think what you’re saying is really important to also really do your research about that school that you’re going into, and make sure that it’s a place that you feel like meets your own values as well.
Marian Dorsey
I definitely think that’s true and I think you can read a statement online and feel really excited I’ve definitely had those moments, And then I think sometimes you just want your own confirmation and I think the best way anytime you’re feeling like you want to know more or you’re curious, is to be there. I’ve learned so much from observing other teachers I’ve learned so much from being in the thick of it and feeling really validated and feeling like my values align with someone, there’s nothing greater than when you meet someone and you’re like, Oh, we’re gonna hit it off.
Danika Pfeiffer
That is the best feeling. Absolutely How would you describe what a typical day looks like for you as a teacher. Oh my gosh, do you want pre pandemic or now. I would love both,
Marian Dorsey
okay. I can do that, I would say that before COVID Which I kind of cringe every time I think about the fact that I now have to describe life as both BC and AC COVID But before COVID It was a hodgepodge of things I was in my fourth year of teaching, and I feel like the first three years are kind of working to get a stride and I finally felt like I was hitting my stride, and so it looks like getting up, getting to school by 740 which is when we started really getting there by 720, and then from the moment kids are starting to walk in building that rapport greeting them, showing them different lesson plans and I mean my lessons ranged depending on what was going on that week depending on what our sponsor had been to the lesson before, sometimes the lesson response was not great, and I think for me, intentionally planning those lessons the night before with a student in mind, that maybe didn’t connect with the lesson, the day before or student who didn’t connect specifically because they were bored and or frustrated was almost always how I would play in those lessons so we would do in our reading time and that meant, often doing things in small group but doing things like Word Study, which is our spelling instruction program whole group, and introducing it to students and giving them tools to sort of break down words that probably where I would start talking about a SWOT and start talking about why words are trying to clean up and trying to provide connections doing small group reading opportunities with them where they could start to practice that in text and hunt for words and look for those kinds of things or trying to pick a piece that I thought, a student who wasn’t really loving reading would feel engaged by sometimes, it looked like taking whatever we were doing in science or social studies and bringing it into a reading platform or writing platform so that students could get that depth and breadth of information, and then you’d have math and in math, math is, number one, the top thing that I hear from parents is, it is not like when we were kids, and I even feel that way I feel like when I’m teaching to kids I’m trying to give them a big conceptual knowledge that, honestly, you don’t see the fruits of it until the next year when a student really glommed on to something that is supposed to build on a concept that they had the year before. So students who are really good at addition and subtraction by the time they get to me. We’re talking about addition and subtraction with regrouping with larger numbers, and you can help put that conceptual framework has really been built, when students are starting to make those connections. So I would say, a lot of the lesson plan work that I did during the day was hoping that students could make that connection between something they have learned before, and something that hadn’t, and if they did it really working closely with my co teacher at the time to say okay, what is the prior knowledge that we need to build for students that don’t have any. And so we had SLPs coming through, we had occupational therapists coming through, we had counselors coming through and they would come during the day, and would pull students also so it would be an interesting time in our gifted program is a little different so our gifted teacher would push in and would do lessons with our second graders, and then would do some mindset work with our third graders, which I thought was really interesting. And so in that sense I felt like our room was kind of the hub for everyone to come in for everyone to provide services to work with students, and also it was this destination for it where students were understanding that it wasn’t just their teachers that were teaching them or working with them, and it became more of a natural process. But I would also say that felt like chaos everyday,
time, and I would say that that like those in person connections you just learned so much so I learned so much about my students I learned so much about some of their tells like just their facial expressions because, second and third graders are wide open, like there is no hiding the emotion of frustration or confusion, even you can really spot it, and I think that that’s where some of my best teaching happened in the AC times and the Africa times I would say it’s been a lot of time in the virtual world and ironically I switched jobs so I had been a second and third grade teacher for two years, and I was really hoping to work with a more adult and Kid facing role so I shifted into our schools gifted and talented. Well, not our school, a different schools gifted and talented position during the pandemic in the summer, because I wanted that experience. It was a little crazy and I don’t know, I would still recommend it, but it was a little crazy and I spent a lot of time on Zoom pushing into virtual zoom rooms watching students engaging with students, I remember because it was a new school I also was spending a lot of time on Zoom introducing myself and trying to get students to know my face, and trying to make those connections. I thought that in the pandemic time it was interesting to see how many students would turn their cameras off or felt really similarly to someone who has been at home for a long time right they felt kind of disengaged so I think rebuilding engagement during that time was tough, building those connections with students. Sometimes could be more authentic because you could see what was going on in the background you could see a toy that maybe they really loved or you could see a family member nearby you could engage with them more quickly. I definitely think that in the first half of the year when everything was virtual. It was really Trial by Fire you’re trying to get students engaged you’re trying these different games you’re giving different opportunities and you’re not sure which ones are sticking. And I think that was the most interesting component of working virtually is watching teachers collaborating with teachers to try and come up with ideas that students would engage with and would feel like they were still growing in so I remember going into zoom rooms, and working with fifth grade teachers to create content that was like a little Genius Hour, and having students think about their passions and their interest and things that they really were proud of, because the word assessment became such a moving target, because you didn’t know how you get the most authentic responses from students without knowing whether or not, like, families were with them. And the question became, then to like, is it okay if students have data that’s reflected from network with families does that tell us how much potential they have, can we find other ways to determine what a student is capable of can we find other ways to talk about what they’re really good at or what we hope they grow in, especially if we’re not seeing them face to face. And then the middle of the year when we decided that we were going to send students back I actually shifted and became a third grade teacher for the second half of the year. And so I have been in person with students for the second half of the year back in third grade, and just building relationships with students, I can’t convey how much the excitement of students, propelled a lot of that work for the rest of the year just having my students be excited to be back in school and ask questions and say, Can we stay at school forever. It was a different is a different zone than what I had been used to before COVID In some ways in which students sometimes would come into school and would say, I’m not sure I’m supposed to be here. I’m really confused I’m really tired, having students this year be really energetic and be like, I’m really excited to be here. I’m really asking a lot of questions because I haven’t been with my peers in a long time or I haven’t been with an in person teacher in a long time, Even though things were different, and distance, and there were a lot more regulations and rules for students to keep up with I learned about, I think the resilience of kids from that.
Danika Pfeiffer
Wow, I’m sure it sounds like, everyone was probably ready to get back in that school again and have some human contact with, especially the children with their peers, I’m sure that must have been just so challenging for them. It sounds like something that came up. It keeps coming up from you is how important it is to engage the children, what would you say are your main roles as a teacher in the school, it sounds like engagement is definitely one of them, but what else would you say are really your roles as a teacher in the school,
Marian Dorsey
beyond being a teacher, someone who is a family communicator like I communicate with families pretty often, I was part of our school’s equity team so I would say that, within that, there was always an opportunity for me to work with my administrator and other teachers to just sit and say, Are we doing what we say we’re doing, are we really meeting the needs of all students and if we’re not whose needs are we not meeting and how do we audit that how do we make a plan for that, I would say that that was the work that was really really fulfilling for me. I also ended up doing a lot of enrichment for all students and trying to provide those opportunities because I think that it’s hard to be a gifted and talented teacher, and to not consistently consider the opportunity gap that exists once students become identified as gifted and what that means and I think in this pandemic year in my school I really notice the awakening of multiple colleagues and other colleagues from the school I’d worked at previously where people were saying, Whoa, we really noticed that there is a gap here and that if we aren’t careful and we are intentional. Some students really won’t make the progress that they have so much potential to make some students really won’t continue that growth and development and I would say for me, that became a part of my role consistently asking not only who doesn’t have a seat at the academic people but what’s my role in building curriculum and instruction and engaging things that allows students to do that so anytime someone would ask me to take on a role that was not just within my building I would because I wanted to learn because I, I think I’ve learned in this in this time, how important it is to continue learning and building knowledge and not even just building knowledge building curiosity about why things are unfolding the way they are and why outcomes exist and what our individual role is within systemic outcomes because I think that teachers, and any practitioner that works with a kid plays such a crucial role in developing really good equitable outcomes for kids I’ve never stopped believing I think that students and their families are able to have outcomes that reflect the very best of them. And I think that this year, my role is taking on curriculum building for some of our district taking on building opportunities for students to access their own understanding of themselves or building in opportunities to audit for equity, and sometimes for inequity, leading professional development for our district around what is culture responsive teaching and why does it matter right now even though we’re in a pandemic, I think all of those things have really been centered around the core value that I hold really dear which is this idea that equity does mean believing in the competence of all students, and I think some might say to a fault, but I would say as a string. I have a really dogged optimism about students being capable, and I would say that that drives all of the times I say yes to any role at all of the times that I step into something new, even in the midst of a pandemic and a challenge because I think it’s hard to be in an educational space of any sort, and to not be optimistic that your work matters, and that students are impacted by it.
Danika Pfeiffer
Absolutely. Sounds like you’ve taken on so many roles, especially in the last year, but all of this work is going to be so meaningful for the students that are in your school, and it sounds like the teachers as well that will be learning and are learning from you, and how then they can take what they’ve learned into their own classrooms. So I think that’s wonderful. What do you wish that other educators knew about being a teacher,
Marian Dorsey
so many things. I wish that other educators knew that teaching is not just hard work or hard work, it’s both. And that is, it’s been interesting this year to be recognized as a hard working teacher and as a passionate teacher and it’s interesting when people recognize that because sometimes they seem surprised that that is what teaching has been, I would hope that other educators are able to recognize not only that hard work and hard work are a part of teaching but that really essential to doing that kind of work is collaboration. For me I think I would want other educators to recognize the thing that I had such a hard time grappling with, As someone who would consider themselves to be pretty independent in my first year of teaching, this idea that no man is an island, time and time again, I have noticed growth and success with my students and I often have to remind myself as an educator to pause and consider all of the educators that have collaborated with me to make that. Because I think that, again, I have dogged optimism and I believe in the outcome that like really great outcomes that are possible for all students, whether that’s social, emotional, whether that’s academic, whether that’s relational, which I guess is related to social, emotional, and I recognize that sometimes teachers can really say, oh my gosh, I did it, I made it, and not recognize the collaboration and work that goes into making it erodes I think for me I would want educators to know that no man is an island because there’s so much to learn, and there’s so many ways to develop other than going to professional development conferences,
Danika Pfeiffer
the best way I’ve developed is by hearing other educational practitioners talk about their work and talk about why they do what they do and talk about how it impacts kids because then I have a lens that says, a new way to talk about how this happens with kids, I would never have language like I do or have the success that I’ve had, if I didn’t collaborate with other educators and I think that’s the biggest thing I want educators to know is that as you’re building a road to whatever success looks like to you or whatever it looks like to your students. You have to collaborate, essentially, with so many people and recognize the work that’s being put in and the value that’s being placed on students because that’s how outcomes change, that’s how we develop and grow and build something that’s more than just a successful individual but really a successful system. Absolutely, absolutely. And a lot of my research has been on interprofessional collaboration. Collaboration between these different disciplines that are in the school, and a lot of the common barriers that speech language pathologists talk about are, there’s not enough time, there’s not, you know, we have all these different schedules and we can’t be in the same place at the same time. And sometimes it’s support they don’t have enough support from their administration or from others in the school to collaborate, what advice do you have, since you have been able to find these opportunities to collaborate. What advice do you have for speech language pathologists that really want to collaborate with teachers but maybe haven’t done it yet. How can they start to do that. I,
Marian Dorsey
I love that question because I do think scarcity of time is one of the biggest obstacles and I don’t mean scarcity of time in terms of not having time, I mean that’s like a big mentality in education, and I think that for SLPs that want to collaborate speech language pathologists that want to collaborate with teachers, the best way to do that is by intentionally building that relationship I have a speech language pathologist, a couple of years ago who would come in and do check ins with us during what she knew was our planning time or what she knew was our lunchtime, which to some teachers is a hard thing you know some teachers really don’t love that so I would advise just looking at a schedule and saying, within the first six weeks of school, what’s the time that I can meet with you and just intentionally talk about this student, on my caseload or this student I’m curious about because I think teachers really want to collaborate, but often it’s just a matter of not having enough space in their brain to consider when the timing would be for that what the structures are for that so if you give those teachers a structure, a set time that you’re going to meet with them and you’re going to collaborate and you are persistent and saying, let’s talk about these things that I’ve noticed or let’s talk about the progress that’s a really good time. I would also say, if you can advocate with administrators or with as a collective group of teachers to be a part of different meetings that would be valuable where your voice would be really highly regarded like, I’m thinking of a parent teacher conference instead of doing it separately. Doing that collaboratively with that classroom teacher, and having people in your corner to do that would be a great idea, and I always think to starting with the teacher who is most excited, because if you start with the teacher who is most excited to collaborate with you. It’ll spread like wildfire that that collaboration has really been successful and really been working and it will open other teachers who might not yet know how to collaborate with you, up to being more open and more.
Marian Dorsey
to being more open and more excited about that as well.
Danika Pfeiffer
I love that advice I think that’s, that’s perfect. I think just starting small, with finding that one excited teacher who’s willing. And as you mentioned earlier, just all the growth that can happen for the children but also for you as a professional learning from each other. I think that’s great, just starting small with one and then showing others this is what we’ve been able to accomplish together and this is the growth that our kids have had because we are working so closely together. I agree I think that could really help others to see the value in it that maybe aren’t as brought in, during the pandemic, you have been very busy, it sounds like. And in addition to all the things you already talked about, you also started a virtual tutoring organization called tutor ish, can you tell us about that. Sure.
Marian Dorsey
So I was lucky enough to have connections with other black teachers in the Charlottesville area, and I was approached by them to help them start best, and really I think I just lucked into them explaining to me, this problem that we talked about continuously throughout the podcast if there is an opportunity gap for students specifically students of color, because there is a lack of resource, especially if you’re spending your year at home, you sometimes aren’t spending as much time on the things you need to work on or there’s not necessarily as great of a feedback loop and so I think that all of the educators that I work with I work with seven other black women, to provide services for students who are in kindergarten through eighth grade. In terms of reading and math instruction, and recently we’ve been building towards doing work on work with students about college prep essays and those kinds of things I think we really saw an opportunity gap in which students who didn’t have opportunities to continue participating in tutoring or who didn’t have the opportunity sometimes to be pre taught things so that they could be prepared for what was coming next, were floundering, and were not receiving the intervention that they needed, especially because in this year it became hard to offer interventions or enrichments for students specifically because so many people had to go back into the classroom and be the classroom teacher. And so, our goal was really to offer affordable tutoring services around, whatever it is that families were hoping their students would continue to grow in and to provide an opportunity that all students could participate in and all students could benefit and grow from. In this time, and now it’s kind of evolved into being a full fledged sub. I’ve been to being an organization in which we are hoping to continue offering the services and continue working to eradicate those gaps from where we are now we’ve had a variety of clients like it started out being something where we thought we were only going to have clients in Virginia but I ended up tutoring someone in Indiana this year and we’ve had a variety of people coming and asking the same questions had why, how do I help my case through what otherwise is a really large chasm of obstacles, and we view that as a part of our work, and this year I’ve gotten the opportunity to work with UVA as the equity fellow for them, working to provide those services and really benefiting from their funding and their professional development and partnering with them to to be an intentional community partner to people and families who exist here in the Charlottesville Albemarle and surrounding Virginia counties, Because I do think that that work is so important, and I’m actually passing that on to another one of the tutor ish members next year.
Danika Pfeiffer
That’s amazing. Congratulations. This is so exciting and I mean, you were talking earlier about teaching and how it’s not just hard work but it’s also hard work and I feel like this is just.
This is just seems like a really natural extension of your values and this heart work that you were mentioning earlier, and I just really see a lot of great potential that’s already taking place now that you’re an equity center community fellow, and I’m just so excited for you because I feel like this work will have such a big impact. Thank you so much. You’re welcome. All right. Wow, thank you again for sharing all of this amazing information I think this is really helpful for speech language pathologists as we think about going forward, and I want to wrap. up with a few rapid fire questions for you. The first one is what is one resource that you couldn’t live without a culture responsive teaching in the brain. Oh, amazing. What has been a defining moment in your teacher journey, building relationships with kids and their families. What is one thing on your professional bucket list, go to professional development about multicultural education. Great. And what is your favorite part of your job,
Marian Dorsey
probably seeing children smile and be excited about getting something that’s hard. Absolutely. And where can people connect with you or learn more about tutoring, and the work that you’re doing. They can find me on LinkedIn, I’m marrying makalah Dorsey, or they can look on our tutors Facebook that’s probably the most accessible we’re on Facebook and Instagram. If you look up, tutors, that’s tutor dot ish. Then, on Instagram you’ll find us and it’s pretty much the same on Facebook.
Danika Pfeiffer
Perfect. I will put links to all of these things in the show notes so people can find them. All right, thank you again so much for joining us today and giving us this a really amazing perspective on working in schools, and what it’s like to be a teacher. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for listening to this episode this conversation just left me feeling so inspired and just so in awe of all the amazing things that Marianne is doing and her passion for teaching and helping children. I really hope that you enjoyed this conversation as well. I encourage you to follow the podcast so you’ll be notified of new episodes as they come out please consider leaving a review of the podcast, I’d love to hear what you think, especially of these episodes with other professionals outside of speech language pathology, you can find the show notes and transcripts, about from, and with.com, and connect with me on Instagram at Danika Pfeiffer dot SLP. Until next time stay humble and kind.
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