Transcription of Talya Edlund for the show Engaging in Education #256
Dr. Lisa. My next guest is one of our 50 Mainers who we feature every year in Maine Magazine. This is Talya Edlund. She is a former third grade teacher at Pond Cove Elementary School in Cape Elizabeth who is named 2016 Maine Teacher of the Year. This year, she will be teaching fifth grade at Cape Elizabeth Middle School. She lives in Cape Elizabeth with her husband and two sons. It’s really great to see you today.
Talya: Yeah. Hi. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Lisa: We’re interviewing you in the summer which is probably one of the rare times you’re actually able to be out in the middle of the day doing things.
Talya: Yes, it feels really nice to be able to just move around, and go where I want to go, get a coffee.
Dr. Lisa: Think about that with teaching. It’s very intense. It’s intense, I think, throughout the year, but particularly, when you’re actually with students.
Talya: It is. It’s a really consuming job. I’m lucky because I love it and I’m very passionate about it but it certainly is very consuming, and there are days that I go in about 7am and there until about 5:30 or 6:00.
Dr. Lisa: It’s very energy-intense.
Talya: It is. It takes a lot of energy and moving on my feet all day. Sometimes, I find myself surprised if I’m sitting down.
Dr. Lisa: When I talked to my mother who has been teaching for, I don’t know, a few decades now, and she also has the long hours, especially during the winter time, and she still seems to be continually energized. In the summer, she is always studying new things to teach, and how to teach, and how to reach her students. I am guessing you’re probably the same way.
Talya: Definitely. I think that one of the great things about teaching is that it offers the opportunity to continually be creative and to seek out new things to learn. I think just that thrive and ability to be curious all the time is what really keeps me energized. I think it does the same for my colleagues.
Dr. Lisa: Tell me about your background. Where are you from and why did you decide that teaching was what you wanted to do?
Talya: I am originally from Chicago. In high school, I actually read a book called Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol. It’s a narrative of a few kids that grow up in Intercity Chicago, just maybe 15 to 20 miles away from where I grew up. I’ve always been someone that’s been very interested in differences, and social inequalities, and social justice. The book really resonated with me. I ended up cofounding with an English teacher of mine in high school a chapter of the organization, Future Educators of America. What we did was go on some fieldtrips and visit other schools.
At that time, I really didn’t know I wanted to be a teacher but one of the trips we went on was to a school that served kids that lived in the Dousauble Housing Projects. I don’t think those projects are there anymore but the school was so vastly different from mine on many levels. When I went there, I really thought, “My gosh. Schools look so different depending on where you live.” That launched me into a pathway of figuring out how I could make an impact and how I could make some changes for systems like education.
In college, I volunteered with an organization that worked with prisoners and prisoner rights. Through that, I ended up volunteering at a juvenile detention facility, and I facilitated theater and writing workshops right there. Just the individuals, the young men and individuals that I worked with taught me so much about resiliency and courage. Also, really had me thinking a lot about, again, where the systems, where schools, and what systems failed them along the way. I think, really, that’s why I became a teacher.
Dr. Lisa: What are some of the inequalities that you read about, and then you eventually witnessed yourself that you hoped to make a difference with as a teacher?
Talya: I think that what I noticed even when I was 18 in high school was just the culture and the climate of the schools. I walked into that school and there was just high level security and just everyone seemed on edge. I remember sitting in the classroom, and the students were shocked because the other student and I that were sitting observing were both white, and we were the only white people in the school which is truly a terrible thing. That school still exists. That was one thing. Then, the students in the classroom are waiting for a teacher. Their teacher was not there. They were waiting for yet another substitute teacher. There was just a lot of confusion, I think. I remember that.
Then, I did teach in Brooklyn in Bed-Stuy for three years. It was very similar. Ten to fifteen years later, some of the same inequalities existed. My students were incredible but the things that they were facing in their lives were just really difficult. Students who were living in shelters, students who had faced different kinds of traumas, students who didn’t have any acute trauma in their lives but they just dealt with the day-to-day stresses of being poor and not sure where they were going to sleep that night. It made things really difficult in the classrooms at times.
Dr. Lisa: When I hear you talking, I think about my own situation as a doctor and how I’m trying to help people get to the next level of health, but sometimes, there are things that they are dealing with that are so elemental that I have not that much control over. Maybe they don’t have enough food to eat, or they lost their job, or they are homeless. It’s tough to be in that place whether you’re a teacher, or a doctor, or another professional who is trying to be a part of the situation. How did you work with that?
Talya: I think really the first and foremost avenue towards addressing those kinds of challenges really is building relationships. I think there’s a lot of research of that shows that building relationships is really what makes the strongest impact and having this long-term relationship with students certainly plays a part in changing their narrative or can play a part in changing their narrative. I think that that really is the first place.
I think then, the more you learn and the more research and well-read you are on different strategies and approaches to helping kids and helping communities overcome some of those challenges, the more capable you’re going to be and the more equipped you’re going to be to deal with those things. Really, at the end of the day though, it comes down to relationships.
Dr. Lisa: You’re from Chicago and you taught in New York City. Here, you’re in Maine. How did that play out?
Talya: After college, I took a roundabout course to teaching. I lived in Hawaii for a little bit. Then, I led trail cruise in New Hampshire but always, my heart was being pulled towards the classroom. After living and teaching in New York City for a while, my husband and I decided to travel for a bit. When we came back, we just wanted to find a community where we could maybe start a family and feel that things were a little bit more manageable than they were in New York City. We just liked what Portland had to offer. We liked the diversity that Portland had. We liked just the community feel that Portland had. We had some friends who lived here and encouraged us to move here. That’s where we ended up, and we just fell in love, and stayed.
Dr. Lisa: Your husband is also a teacher.
Talya: He is.
Dr. Lisa: Did that help bring you together in some way?
Talya: Absolutely. Something that I always admired in my husband before we were married was just his passion for education. A lot of our early conversations were about really the impacts of teaching and classroom practices. I think, through that, we ended up finding some common ground that we still have.
Dr. Lisa: You lived in Cape Elizabeth then. You teach in Cape Elizabeth.
Talya: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: Your boys are how old?
Talya: I have a five-year-old about to start kindergarten and an eight-year-old that’s about to start second grade.
Dr. Lisa: What has that been like for you to teach within the system that your children are part of?
Talya: I was nervous about it at first but as it turns out, it’s been really great because I love the school that I teach at. I love the school that they go to. The teachers just care so much for them. Every day, my son who is in second grade now, he’ll come home and he has some story about some individual just making him feel like a million dollars. That’s priceless.
Dr. Lisa: It is funny, as you’re saying that, I think about my own children, and more of the interactions that they described are about their friends or about how someone made them feel. They’re older now but even so, they’re not always coming home saying, “Guess what we learned about World War II Germany.” It’s not as much about the ideas sometimes as it is about the milieu, I think.
Talya: Yeah. I heard someone say once that people, they don’t always remember what you say but they almost always remember how you make them feel. I think that’s really true and I’ve seen that with my kids.
Dr. Lisa: You are moving up. You’ve taught second grade and third grade, at least, in Cape Elizabeth, and you’re moving up to fifth grade. As your son is getting older, he’s going into second grade, do you feel like you’re just continuing to move up the track a little bit?
Talya: There are times where I feel like what I’ve been doing all day during the school hours mirrors what’s happening at home. Moving on to older kids that are older than my son I think will be a little bit of a break from that. That’s nice.
Dr. Lisa: Tell me, as a third grade teacher, and just what does your day actually look like? What are you doing with the kids and how does that interaction play out?
Talya: The kids start rolling in about 8:00 in the morning, and some of them have breakfast, and some of them don’t. In third grade at my school, they go right to an Allied Arts. They either go to art, music, gym. Then, when we come back to the classroom, we’ll have a class meeting. Then, really, as the year progresses, what we do during the day becomes driven by what they are doing and how they interact with one another. There’s a lot of group work, a lot of building, a lot of creating in my classroom. It’s pretty noisy in there. There’s a lot of group work. That’s something that I’ve had to let go of a little bit because it’s different when I first started teaching. I thought I was doing well with my kids and my students were sitting very quietly, and being very productive with their pencils and their paper. Now, I think that that, for me, is a sign that a lot of learning is not happening.
Dr. Lisa: My mom, when my kids are growing up, she would always say that the quiet children were the ones that she worried about. The noisy ones, she didn’t worry quite so much about. That actually makes me feel a little bit better that you’re talking about the noise levels in the classroom and how that’s a germination of creativity and learning.
Talya: Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: I don’t know. How long have you been teaching now?
Talya: Sixteen years now.
Dr. Lisa: Have you noticed a shift with the learning results and all the standardized testing that’s taking place from a pretty early age?
Talya: Yeah. I think that there’s been a lot of pendulum swings back and forth in terms of testing. When I first came to Maine, I walked into a system of local assessments. What those were were curriculum-based assessments that grade levels would come up with on their own. It was a bit unwieldy and confusing.
I remember one of the assessments that I needed to give to my second graders had to do with melting chocolate bars. We would give each student a piece of chocolate bar. Then, we would all run out into the parking lot, and put it on the roof of or the inside dashboard of a car. Then, come back later in the day to see if it had melted or not. Then, the students had to write down their observations which, to me, seemed somewhat silly.
Eventually, we got rid of those assessments and moved on to something a lot more standardized. I think we’re still trying to find a happy ground for where assessments really measure learning and also guide instruction.
Dr. Lisa: Not to mentioned the fact that how many cars would you need to actually have dashboards full of chocolate.
Talya: It was pretty ridiculous. We were using, I think, two or three cars, and teachers would leave their cars unlocked. It was short lived.
Dr. Lisa: That sounds strange but I don’t want to judge because we do weird things in the medical profession too, but there is an interesting question. That is, what is it that we actually hope for a second grader to know, and how do we figure out whether they know that or not, and why is it important? I don’t know who even comes up with these things.
Talya: Yeah. I think, right now, what we have, the system that we have, the Common Core is a really good guiding map for where we want kids to get to and what kinds of thinking skills of depth of knowledge we want them to have but I think it’s important that we remember to honor that learning is a process and all kids are going to learn at different paces. Someone gave me the example a few weeks ago of when kids learn how to walk. There is an exact set date and time where a child learns how to walk. I think the same thing happens with reading, math, and writing. I think it really is a process and I think really an important part of that process is to make sure that students are highly engaged and feel ownership over their learning, and frankly feel excited about their learning.
Dr. Lisa: I want to go on record in saying I am not trying to suggest that people who create standardized tests are doing silly things. I think that it is important to be able to have some ideas to what you’re doing actually is having an impact on the kids but I think you’re right, especially in the younger grades, it seems like there’s such a broad variation in what we can expect the kids will be able to do.
Talya: Yeah. I think it’s also important to remember that there are a lot of things that, a lot of skills that can’t be measured by standardized tests. Those skills are really important. If we put too much pressure and too much stock into standardized tests, I think kids start to hear those messages that they have to do well on this kind of exam to be worth something, and that simply is not the case. I don’t think a lot of teachers think that.
Dr. Lisa: I think about some of the more successful people that I’ve ever worked with, and I think they have a very high level of social and emotional awareness and intellect. How do we measure that? How do you measure someone’s social skills effectively? If we were to measure them, then how do we give that feedback to a second grader?
Talya: Yeah. I think that just giving them opportunities to use those strengths to be social, to communicate in a way that works best for them, and to celebrate that with them as often as possible gives them the feedback that I think they deserve.
Dr. Lisa: You’re excited to go into the fifth grade next year.
Talya: I am.
Dr. Lisa: One of the things that you like is that the literature is just a different level.
Talya: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: Tell me about that. Tell me about the fifth grade years, and what is it that is so appealing to you.
Talya: I think that what’s neat about third graders who I’ve been with for the past few years is that they’re just starting to develop those critical thinking skills where they can really analyze the situation and form their own theories and judgments about them, but I think you have to be very mindful about the choices and content that you have third graders read or that you offer third graders because I think that they’re understanding of the world is not as layered or complex as fourth or fifth graders.
I don’t know. I’ve always been someone who loves books and loves literature. When I think about the books that I want my students to read and truly be able to have good conversations about, and lots of theories and ideas about, I like the idea of some of the things that fifth graders are able to read about. Things like kids in the foster care system or love and loss. Those are things that are hard for third graders to really grasp with a level of sophistication that I think fifth graders can.
Dr. Lisa: What are some of your favorite books from that era?
Talya: I love Tulk Everlasting. Of course, Because of Winn Dixie. I am reading a book right now called Counting by 7s which is fairly new and it’s just fabulous about this little girl who is gifted but because of that, is very misunderstood, and she also loses her family, and she’s adopted. There’s all kinds of complexities in her life that reflect reality. I am really enjoying that.
Dr. Lisa: It’s true. As you’re talking, I am thinking about Tuck Everlasting which I read a few years ago and I am thinking about a lot of the books that I read right in the timeframe, and there was a lot. It was almost as if your world was opening up, and it was mostly through story.
Talya: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: There’s an excitement to that.
Talya: Yeah, I think stories have this way of connecting us and reflecting our realities but also have this way of opening our minds to what other people go through and what other people’s lives might be like. I think that’s really important. I think that is a way to really build empathy in kids and help kids become, I think, conscientious citizens.
Dr. Lisa: You’re named the Teacher of the Year for Maine …
Talya: I was.
Dr. Lisa: … in 2016.
Talya: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: What are the qualifications for that? Why do you think that they afforded you this honor?
Talya: I think that certainly there are incredible teachers at my school and throughout the state. I think that I just happened to have the strengths and relationships with the right group of students at the right time. It ended up being almost a yearlong process of essay writing, and interviews, and discussions, and getting to meet other people until I was finally named, but I think that the honor has just afforded me a new perspective, a broader perspective on what’s going on in our educational landscape, as well as what’s going on nationally with teachers.
Dr. Lisa: What have you learned?
Talya: I’ve learned that teachers across the country face the same challenges. I’ve learned a lot about rural poverty and the realities of living and growing up in a rural school because my experience has always been teaching and living in a more urban setting. I’ve also learned that we do a really good job for our students for the most part in our country. I think our biggest issue truly is poverty. Our biggest hurdle truly is addressing the challenges of poverty, and that’s true nationwide.
Dr. Lisa: I live in Yarmouth. I know in Yarmouth, not everybody is exceedingly wealthy. We definitely have a broad range of people. I think, sometimes that’s hard for people who maybe fall on the lower end of the income spectrum because Yarmouth, like Cape Elizabeth, there is more. There is more available to some but not to all. DO you see that that impacts the children in your classroom?
Talya: I do. I think the two communities are very similar. I think it can be really difficult especially as they get older and more aware of differences between their lifestyles. I think that can be really hard for some kids. I think that it can be really hard to make sure that we have the right services that catch the needs, that capture the needs of kids that might not have as fortunate of a situation.
Dr. Lisa: My observation of Maine, having lived here many years, having nine younger brothers and sisters who went through Maine schools, having three kids of my own going through Maine schools, and having my mother who is a teacher, as well as cousins, and uncles, and aunts is we do a really nice job with our educational system. Maybe we’re not perfect but we’re pretty good. I think we really want to be good. We really want our children to learn. Has that been your observation?
Talya: Absolutely. I think that there was such a difference when I came to Maine in terms of the culture and the attitudes that teachers have towards students. I think there’s just a level of respect for students and a level of caring for students that, for me, was very impressive. That wasn’t my experience in New York City. The other piece that I think we do a really good job with is having small class sizes so that there really are opportunities for individualized attention, and meeting kids’ needs on a one-to-one basis. That’s been really impressive.
I think we also have some pretty cutting edge ideas here. We have a strong network of very innovative teachers across the state, teachers who are really committing to integrating technology, and using technology not just for skill and drill experiences but really using technology to launch kids into 21st Century learning. There’s a lot of movement towards connecting classrooms across the state, and across the country, and even globally.
I think we have a very strong teacher leadership movement here as well. A lot of teachers that are understanding that their voices matter, and that they can speak to legislators, and that they can speak on behalf of their students and their profession. I think that that’s something that is fairly unique in Maine because we do have that small town feeling. People feel like they can know each other and talk to each other here.
Dr. Lisa: Talya, it’s been a pleasure to have you in today.
Talya: Yeah, thank you.
Dr. Lisa: I hope that people would take the time to read about you in Maine Magazine as one of your 50 Mainers, and maybe get to, I don’t know, stop in and say hello. You’re back in the classroom again in the fall. We’ve been speaking with Talya Edlund who is the 2016 Maine Teacher of the Year. I appreciate your coming in and taking the time to talk about this very important subject with me.
Talya: Yeah, thank you so much.