MRL Spotlight

Tina Boogren

MRL highlights the work of our associates and their work in the field. This Spotlight will focus on Tina Boogren.

Throughout her eight years as a middle school teacher, Tina Boogren read many of Dr. Marzano’s books and regularly incorporated his instructional strategies into her lessons. In her subsequent roles of instructional coach and administrator, Tina continued to use Bob’s strategies and often recommended his books to the teachers that she coached and supervised. However, it was only upon meeting Tammy Heflebower, MRL’s current vice president, that she learned about Marzano Research Laboratory. MRL is located near Tina’s home in Denver, Colorado, and in 2010 she joined the company as a project manager for the What Works in Oklahoma Schools project.

The Oklahoma Project

Tina supervised the What Works in Oklahoma Schools project over the course of the 2010/2011 school year. This three-phase project, involving 61 schools in Oklahoma, used demographic information to match Oklahoma schools needing improvement (“improvement schools”) with similar schools in the state that were meeting expectations. The goal was to identify specific characteristics of successful schools and to highlight focus areas for improvement schools.

Phase 1
In the first phase of the project, MRL surveyed students, teachers, administrators, and parents at each of the 61 schools. The surveys were based on the design questions from Dr. Marzano’s book, The Art and Science of Teaching, and were aligned to Oklahoma’s nine criteria for school success.
Interestingly, the surveys revealed that in improvement schools, teachers’ and administrators’ responses often disagreed. “Each group identified different strengths and prioritized different needs,” Tina observes. Comparatively, in schools meeting expectations, teacher and administrator responses were more closely aligned. “In those schools [that were meeting expectations], teachers and administrators were on the same page,” says Tina. Student and parent survey data revealed that, in improvement schools, many students did not feel accepted and listened to at school. Among other things, MRL recommended that these schools should periodically survey their student bodies and use the data collected to inform school decision making.
           
Phase 2
In phase two, Tina and other MRL associates visited each of the 61 schools to interview administrators and conduct classroom observations. “Just getting on-site was amazing,” says Tina. She was inspired by many of the teachers she saw, especially those working with the Teach for America program. “They’re working their tails off,” Tina observes, “and they’re doing good stuff.” She feels that the targeted training these teachers receive (aimed at teaching students of poverty in urban areas) is paying big dividends in the classroom.
Tina’s most inspiring experience was her first site visit to an elementary school in Tulsa where administrators, teachers, students, and parents are “beating the odds,” according to Tina. She highlighted the principal’s dedication and described the school’s community garden project, designed to brighten up the neighborhood and provide food for families in need. “It was a school that you felt good being in,” she says.
Although not all of Tina’s experiences were positive, the site visits helped her understand that many improvement schools are fighting a difficult battle. As she visited schools and spoke with administrators and staff members, she realized that “they’re doing the best they can with what they have.” She observed that many improvement schools fear that their school is going to be shut down, and those fears can hinder efforts to improve.
Schools also videotaped instruction in several of their classrooms and submitted the footage to MRL for analysis. Tina, Dr. Marzano, and other MRL employees viewed and analyzed over 70 hours of video before reporting their results to the state of Oklahoma. In addition to reporting overall results for phase two, MRL sent school-specific reports to each school participating in the study. The results from this phase indicated that turnover and unfocused professional development may be contributing to low performance at improvement schools. “Often, the administrator would have a clear vision, but the teachers didn’t know about it,” says Tina. “The vision and focus wasn’t being communicated to teachers, so they perceived professional development as scattered.”
           
Phase 3
In the final phase of the project, MRL made recommendations for Oklahoma schools based on the findings from the study. Bob, Tina, and other MRL associates traveled to Oklahoma to lead two days of professional development for teachers and administrators. Tina and other MRL associates are continuing to provide follow-up training to individual schools in Oklahoma, and Tina encourages schools involved in the study to use their school-specific reports to pinpoint strengths and needs that could become the focus of improvement efforts. She encourages schools not to try to work on everything at once, but to “start with one need and focus on it."

Next Steps

Tina’s work with the Oklahoma project is finished, but she continues to work with MRL as a training associate while she completes her doctoral work. Tina especially enjoys working with teachers to improve their instructional strategies, and her upcoming work for her dissertation will examine teacher reflection. She observes, “When I was a coach, I noticed that many teachers didn’t take the time to think things through. They would just teach the curriculum and be done. I want to help them think back on their teaching and identify areas of strength and areas to focus on.” She is planning to gather qualitative data through interviews and observations in hopes of discovering why some teachers take the time to reflect while others neglect this important element of teacher growth.

Upcoming Work

Tina’s upcoming work as an MRL associate will involve training teachers to use strategies from The Art and Science of Teaching and the Classroom Strategies Series. While she enjoyed managing the Oklahoma project, Tina says that “my real passion is the training. I like traveling around the country and seeing the ways in which different schools and teachers are working on the same things.”

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This interview was written by Lindsay Carleton and Julia Simms, Marzano Research Laboratory.