12 minute read
Teaching the Teachers
Kim Radostits ’14 MA is spending her year as Illinois’ top teacher advocating for the profession she loves.
AS THE 2022 Illinois Teacher of the Year, Kim Radostits ’14 MA spends much of her time traveling around the state speaking to college students about the trials and joys of being a teacher.
What she has discovered along the way surprised her.
“One question that keeps coming from teaching candidates is, ‘How do you avoid teacher burnout?’” said Radostits. “It made me wonder why that’s on the radar of someone who hasn’t even started teaching yet.”
This past fall, as children went back to school, media coverage warned of a national teacher shortage reaching crisis level. Terms like “catastrophic” and “looming crisis” and “five-alarm fire” dominated the headlines.
The reality is more nuanced. America’s national teacher shortage isn’t national, and certainly not new, according to education experts. There are struggles to find teachers in rural school districts, and in certain subject areas including special education, languages, mathematics, and science. But that has long been the case in education.
“There are hardships in teaching,” said Radostits. “I believe teacher burnout is real. But, for the vast majority of us, there is so much joy that comes from this job. We have an ability to make an impact on society on an even greater scale than we realize, especially in rural school districts. We can make students feel known and valued. All those things are real too.”
Ms. Rad, as her students call her, has taught Spanish at Oregon High School in Oregon, Illinois, for the past 15 years. After receiving the state’s highest teaching honor in March, she began an ambassadorship to share her knowledge and expertise with other educators around Illinois as part of a yearlong state-funded sabbatical.
Her goal is to advocate for the profession she loves. She wants to spread the techniques she helped develop at Oregon High School to motivate at-risk children. She wants to demonstrate how those practices can be applied to uplifting all students. And she wants to share with other teachers how supporting each other and measuring incremental successes can help them stay engaged and passionate even when facing challenges.
Since 1970, the Illinois State Board of Education has sponsored the Teacher of the Year program to honor educators who have made significant contributions to the state’s public and nonpublic elementary and secondary schools.
It is easy to see why Radostits rose to the top of her profession. She is passionate about the children she teaches and the troubles they face, and effective at motivating them to do better.
It wasn’t always that way.
Hawks Take Flight
It was 2012, and Radostits was in her fourth year of teaching at Oregon High School. She had played a key role in the development of the school’s highly acclaimed Hawks Take Flight program, which provides freshman students at risk of falling behind in school with out-of-the-classroom mentoring to ensure they stay on track to graduate.
The program was receiving a lot of attention and praise for its success, and Radostits was feeling at the top of her game—when a freshman boy who was failing his classes stopped her in her tracks. He hated school. He wanted no part of the Hawks Take Flight program. And he certainly didn’t want her help.
“It was a pivotal moment,” she said. “I started to look at school through his eyes and see what some of the shortcomings are for students like him. He was by far my biggest challenge, and the experience changed the trajectory of my career.”
Radostits dedicated herself over the next four years to getting him through school. The student became Radostits’ teaching assistant his junior and senior years, succeeded in graduating, and landed a full-time job.
The effort led Radostits to dig deeper into how to teach students who have adverse childhood experiences that result in trauma. She worked with administrators to develop an Early Warning System program to identify junior high school students in need of extra support, and intervene before they start their freshman year of high school.
The more she learned, the more she realized that the same tools she was using for her at-risk students apply to all students, and she began to incorporate those teaching techniques in her Spanish classroom every day.
Deep Pockets
Radostits’ favorite teaching tool came about by happenstance. She needed a place to keep close at hand all of the items she uses while working with her students. So she tried a waitress apron, and it worked. She first donned it during the Hawks Take Flight after-school program. Now she wears it in her Spanish class as well.
“I get more questions about my apron,” said Radostits, who often brings it on the road when speaking to groups of teachers. “It’s one of my favorite items. I’m as effective as I am because of all the things I carry inside.”
Her “teaching apron” has eight pockets and ties around her waist. In it she stows dozens of pencils, whiteboard markers, Post-it notes, paper squares, flashcards, her phone, her daily schedule, keys for classrooms, a remote for PowerPoint presentations, and a doorbell to get students’ attention when they need to stop what they’re doing and listen to directions.
“One of the things that escalates a student’s mood is coming unprepared,” she said. “So if a kid comes to class and doesn’t have a pencil, I don’t even ask. I just give them one.”
The Post-it notes come in handy as hall passes, notes of praise, and class reminders. If a student comes into class in a bad mood or is tired, she will write, “Are you OK?” and ask the student to circle yes or no.
“If you use the notes in multiple ways, the kids won’t know why you are handing them out, their peers won’t know what it says, and it doesn’t have a negative stigma,” she said.
In the midst of Radostits’ development as a classroom teacher, she enrolled in Aurora University, at the urging of her then-principal P.J. Caposey, who was an AU adjunct professor at the time. The AU graduate program built her confidence and gave her a new perspective on taking what she learned in the classroom and sharing it with other teachers and outside institutions.
Radostits earned her MA in Educational Leadership from AU in 2014, after graduating from Northern Illinois University in 2007 with a BA in Spanish Language and Literature. She keeps in touch with Caposey today and continues to rely on him as her mentor.
Indeed, Caposey was one of the first people she called when she found out she had won the Illinois Teacher of the Year Award.
“I told Kim that the job of leadership is to see people in ways greater than they see themselves and to help them imagine that picture,” said Caposey, who is currently superintendent of the Meridian School District in Stillman Valley, Illinois. “I continued to paint that picture for Kim, that she already had more influence and was more dynamic than she imagined.”
‘Never a Dull Day’
AU has been teaching teachers for almost a century. In 1930, Aurora College, which later became AU, received Illinois state authority to train elementary and secondary teachers, marking the beginning of one of the institution’s most successful and longest-standing academic programs.
Today, AU offers more than two dozen programs and endorsements in education at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels. More than 4,500 AU graduates are making a difference in schools throughout the state as teachers, principals, and superintendents.
“When we train educators and send them out into the field, we are making long-term investments in the community as a whole,” said AU Professor Deborah Stevens, with elementary education student Casey Hettinger ’23.
“I told Kim that the job of leadership is to see people in ways greater than they see themselves,” said P.J. Caposey, Radostits’ mentor and an adjunct professor at AU when she earned her degree.
The things she carries
Aprons aren’t just for cooks, waitresses, and hardware clerks. High school Spanish teacher Kim Radostits ’14 MA (Ms. Rad to her students) wears an apron in her classroom to allow her to move about and improvise with her students. The “teaching apron” has made her a better teacher, she said.
Here are some of the things in Ms. Rad’s apron: vocabulary flashcards, schedule for the day, keys for the classrooms, dozens of pencils, Post-it notes, paper squares, remote for PowerPoints, doorbell, Band-aids.
AU is the Illinois state model for Educators Rising, a national organization that cultivates teachers by working with high school students interested in education careers.
The university has taken a lead in identifying where the biggest needs are for teaching positions in Illinois and working to recruit and train teachers to fill those posts.
In 2020, AU received a grant from the National Science Foundation Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program to help increase the recruitment of high school and transfer students to the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The goal is to create a pipeline of math and science teachers to work at Illinois high schools serving Hispanic students.
The university is also working with local high schools to recruit more teacher candidates to earn their English as a Second Language/Bilingual endorsements.
“When we train educators and send them out into the field, we are making long-term investments in the community as a whole,” said Deborah Stevens, professor of education and chair of the Initial Licensure and Early Childhood Education with ESL/Bilingual programs. “We have become adept at adjusting to the needs of the surrounding community.”
Another way AU is developing teachers is through Educators Rising, a national organization that cultivates educators by working with high school students interested in a teaching career. AU is the Illinois state model for Educators Rising.
Originally founded as Future Teachers of America in 1937 by the National Education Association, the organization relaunched in 2015 as Educators Rising supporting grow-your-own teacher programs across the country. The group reports that 60 percent of teachers teach within 20 miles of where they went to high school, making the work AU is doing locally that much more meaningful.
Training New Teachers in One Year
In the university’s most recent effort, AU created a new program for students who have graduated in a field other than education to return to school to earn their degree in teaching in just one year. The first cohort of the new Master of Arts in Teaching graduated from AU in May.
The first cohort of the new Master of Arts in Teaching graduated from AU in May.
Jennifer Aguilar ’20, ’22 MAT was a Biology and Health Sciences major working as a government lab technician when she returned to AU to earn her teaching degree in hopes of encouraging more diversity in the science professions. Today, she is a science teacher at Aurora West High School.
“As a woman of color in STEM, I have the power to set an example for my students and to expose them to the many STEM careers.”
—JENNIFER AGUILAR ’20, ’22 MAT
“As a woman of color in STEM, I have the power to set an example for my students and to expose them to the many STEM careers,” Aguilar said.
Cooper Smith ’22 MAT took a job teaching history and social studies at the Lake County Regional Safe School in Vernon Hills, Illinois, where he works with students who have been expelled or are facing expulsion from their home high schools. He came to AU after earning his bachelor’s degree in history at Washington State University.
“Working with these kids is challenging but also rewarding when progress is made.”
—COOPER SMITH ’22 MAT
“I didn’t go searching for a behavioral school, but when I found it something clicked,” said Smith. “The people I work with are very passionate and driven, and we talk about how working with these kids is challenging but also rewarding when progress is made. Working is never a dull day.”
Rachel Metcalf ’18, ’22 MAT is a sixth grade English and science teacher at Kaneland Harter Middle School in Sugar Grove, Illinois. An AU English major, she worked as a social media marketing specialist, a stage manager at a local theatre, and an assistant manager of a clothing store chain, when some soul-searching led her to education.
“I wanted to inspire children who don’t believe in themselves or maybe need a push in the right direction.”
—RACHEL METCALF ’18, ’22 MAT
“I came back to be a teacher because I wanted to inspire children who don’t believe in themselves or maybe need a push in the right direction,” said Metcalf.
As for Radostits, now that she has a platform as the Illinois Teacher of the Year she is working to get the Hawks Take Flight intervention program and Early Warning System out to as many schools as possible.
“I want to get this to a lot of rural school districts,” she said. “I’m hoping to go statewide and even bigger.”
She is also putting together a lesson plan of her own for teachers on how they can avoid teacher burnout. Her secret: metrics.
Although teachers are mandated to collect data for accountability purposes, they can also collect data for themselves to measure progress in the classroom. Sharing those measurements with fellow teachers and even with students helps keep perspective when it feels like you’re stuck, or just having a terrible day, she said.
Radostits measures student progress in all sorts of ways: attendance, completed assignments, scoring a C or higher on a test, and going to a sports event or after-school activity.
“When I see a student get four F’s instead of five, that’s something to celebrate,” she said. “That’s a student that was likely spiraling out of control, and we’ve done something to bring the student closer to being on track. It may seem like a small win, but we’ll take what we can and build on that,” Radostits said.
“Though these situations require a lot of energy, the students renew me,” she added. “If you’re able to step back and see the bigger picture, you can connect with your bigger purpose and see that you’re making progress, and that fuels you to do better.”
