Interview with Andi Webb

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we focus on an outstanding teacher, Andi Webb, who has been recognized in the past by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and we’ll see what impact that recognition has had on her career, her teaching, and her life.

Transcription of “Interview with Andi Webb”

00;00;02;20 – 00;00;28;28
Ernie Hood
Welcome to Focus In Sound, the podcast series from the Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of Focus In Sound, we focus on an outstanding teacher who has been recognized in the past by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and we’ll see what impact that recognition has had on her career, her teaching and her life.

00;00;29;21 – 00;01;07;08
Ernie Hood
Andi Webb is a math coach at Alderman Road Elementary School in Fayetteville, North Carolina. She has 19 years of experience in the classroom with a proven track record of leadership at many grade levels and in different subject areas. She is an instructional coach and mentor for other teachers and has led professional development opportunities for teachers. Andi was born and raised in North Carolina and received her education in the Cumberland County schools and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington with a double major in elementary education and English.

00;01;07;25 – 00;01;32;13
Ernie Hood
She earned a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in education with a focus on K through eight science education. As we go here, she has traveled all over the world pursuing her passion for teaching science and math. Among the many honors Andi has won for her teaching achievements. She is a national board certified teacher.

00;01;33;01 – 00;01;53;21
Ernie Hood
In 2015, she was honored with a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Science and Mathematics Teachers. The career award provides $175,000 in support over five years to eligible teachers in the North Carolina public school system. Andi Webb, welcome to Focus In Sound.

00;01;53;27 – 00;01;55;00
Andi Webb
Thank you for having me.

00;01;55;22 – 00;02;06;14
Ernie Hood
Andi, you’re roughly halfway through your five year career award funding. What has the career award allowed you to do that you would otherwise have been unable to do?

00;02;07;08 – 00;02;29;21
Andi Webb
The career award has provided opportunities for high quality professional development, not only for myself, but for my colleagues on our Singapore team. The career award has also provided instructional materials for the teachers throughout my school. Kindergarten through fifth grade, as well as put instruction materials in the hands of our students that they did not have previously.

00;02;30;00 – 00;02;39;01
Ernie Hood
Well, you have certainly been quite the world traveler over the past several years. Tell us a bit about some of the places you’ve visited and experience as you’ve had.

00;02;40;03 – 00;03;17;17
Andi Webb
I’ve had the privilege to travel to six out of seven continents and approximately 40 countries. One of my favorite countries to travel is Indonesia. I’ve been there three times now and have hopes to return again. I worked there through a program that partnered American teachers with schools in predominantly Muslim areas. The school where I worked was formed for displaced children after the 2000 forced Toonami and I feel that the people there are what I call my Chinese family because the school is for Kola Soup, my bank, the school in Aceh, Indonesia.

00;03;18;23 – 00;03;21;29
Ernie Hood
How have these many travels affected you as an educator?

00;03;23;05 – 00;03;44;26
Andi Webb
The travels have affected me as an educator by making me much more open minded. I don’t think that I was closed minded prior to my travels, but I do believe that I am much more open minded than I was previously. I also think that my travels have enabled me to better relate to our students who come from different areas of the world and have very different backgrounds than what we may be familiar with.

00;03;46;07 – 00;03;54;27
Ernie Hood
As an educator in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which is known for being the home of Fort Bragg, I’m sure your student population is quite diverse.

00;03;55;04 – 00;04;24;27
Andi Webb
It is diverse. We actually, at our school had the highest number of English language learners of all elementary schools in Cumberland County. But in the last few years, we’ve had students that have come from Russia and even from Yemen. We have a student in our school now who is from Yemen, and he speaks Arabic. He and I have a very good rapport with each other, and I don’t think that I would have had that without my travels in the Middle East and my attempt at learning at least a few phrases in Arabic.

00;04;26;02 – 00;04;34;08
Ernie Hood
You mentioned already that you’re a practitioner of the Singapore math teaching method and you’ve been to Singapore.

00;04;34;14 – 00;04;56;26
Andi Webb
Yes, I and the coach for our Singapore math team. Until this year, we’ve had eight members, including myself of our Singapore math team. We lost one of our members to a neighboring school to further her career as an instructional coach, and she is now serving as the Singapore math coach at her new school. And then our principal retired.

00;04;57;07 – 00;05;04;28
Andi Webb
But I was able to travel to Singapore and live and study there for three and a half months through the Fulbright Distinguished Awards and Teaching program.

00;05;05;08 – 00;05;10;26
Ernie Hood
For the benefit of our listeners who may not be familiar with it. Briefly, tell us about the Singapore method.

00;05;11;03 – 00;05;33;29
Andi Webb
Absolutely. What I think predominantly is best to say about the Singapore math method, it’s it’s really just best practices that as teachers we know we should do anyway. Singapore is a small country, so they’re they’re able to be much more consistent than sometimes we can be in such a large country. But one of the components of Singapore math is what we call CPA.

00;05;34;08 – 00;05;53;17
Andi Webb
The C is for concrete. The P is for pictorial and the A is for abstract. So the thought process behind that is when you’re teaching children a new skill or math standard, you start with the concrete and you have manipulatives that they can use in their hands. And then you move to the pictorial level where they can draw pictures.

00;05;53;25 – 00;06;22;06
Andi Webb
And then the final stage should be the abstract stage or the algorithm. And if they struggle when they get to the abstract stage, then you should back up and go back to the concrete or pictorial stages. It’s very effective in teaching, especially for struggling learners. Another concept of Singapore math is the why before the how. So typically in math we tend to teach children the how of solving an algorithm, but like in reading comprehension is very important.

00;06;22;14 – 00;06;45;15
Andi Webb
So in mathematics, comprehension and understanding the why children are doing something and not just the how is extremely important and as a part of Singapore math. So children need to be able to rationalize how they came up with the solution. We also need to be able to accept multiple ways to solve a problem and have children talk about that and explain it to us so that we better understand their thought processes and how they learn.

00;06;45;24 – 00;06;55;08
Andi Webb
Another component of Singapore math is called model drawing. Some people call it bar modeling. It’s very effective for word problems and it’s extremely effective for struggling learners.

00;06;56;16 – 00;07;03;12
Ernie Hood
I understand that when you were studying in Singapore, the math teachers actually didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

00;07;03;22 – 00;07;27;09
Andi Webb
They didn’t. They call mathematics and what we call Singapore math. They say maths. And at one of the schools that I was assigned to the principal had asked me to explain what my research was focused upon, and I told her it was Singapore math. And she said, What is Singapore math? And she’s a Singaporean. And so I explained how we view it and she thought it was hilarious.

00;07;27;19 – 00;07;42;09
Andi Webb
She asked me to explain to the staff at a staff meeting what Singapore Math was. So I did and the entire staff laughed because I thought it was funny that everyone else in the world besides Singapore, calls it Singapore math. They simply call it maths.

00;07;43;24 – 00;07;52;02
Ernie Hood
And the overall. Do you think the career award has empowered you to become a better educator? And if so, how so?

00;07;53;06 – 00;08;13;18
Andi Webb
I absolutely do. I think that it has made me feel respected as an educator, much more so than I ever had felt prior to becoming a career award winner through Burroughs Wellcome Fund. It has allowed me to attend high quality professional development at the national and international levels that I would not have been able to participate in otherwise.

00;08;14;03 – 00;08;38;04
Andi Webb
It’s allowed me to purchase very strategic instructional materials that our school needed for our teachers and our students. I am also completing my second year of my work in my Doctor of Education and Educational Leadership for East Carolina. So there’s numerous opportunities that Burroughs Wellcome Fund has provided me I would not have had otherwise. Most importantly, the respect that I feel as an educator.

00;08;39;00 – 00;08;48;20
Ernie Hood
Andi What kind of effect has the career award had on your colleagues and your school district? What is the division in the career awards funding Distribution?

00;08;49;20 – 00;09;18;03
Andi Webb
The division is $10,000 per year for professional development, $10,000 per year for instruction materials, $10,000 per year for salary stipend and $5,000 per year that is saved for the awardee. At the end of the five year time frame, if you complete the entire five years of the career award than the awardee is provided with $25,000 that they can use at their discretion.

00;09;19;08 – 00;09;52;03
Andi Webb
For my colleagues and my school, we have a Singapore math team that has been comprised of eight members previously, including myself. This year we have six members because one of our members is now the instructional coach and the Singapore math coach at her new school, which is a part of the Phase two Singapore math grant Burroughs Wellcome Fund has increased our funding for our school and for two neighboring schools, one being a Singapore math pilot school and one being a school that was not previously doing Singapore math.

00;09;52;12 – 00;10;21;29
Andi Webb
So we now have a district wide effort to implement Singapore math, which has not been done before, and we’re really excited about being able to do that. But also the career award has significantly affected not only my colleagues in our district but me personally. When I look back at where I was prior to the award and where our school was in 2014, we received our end of grade test scores for third, fourth and fifth grade.

00;10;22;08 – 00;10;49;03
Andi Webb
We had declined an overall 10% in our mathematics scores. That was also the year that the levels for testing changed from levels one, three four to levels 135. Had the levels not changed, it would have been an even more significant decrease. My principal and I knew that we needed to do something different than what we were doing previously, and I decided that I would apply for a second time for the career award because I did not get accepted the first time.

00;10;49;14 – 00;11;16;06
Andi Webb
That’s usually the case with me. I just have to keep persevering. But then I applied for the award and I was privileged enough to be accepted for it. Since then, over the past three years, we have been able to implement Singapore math very effectively in our school. In the last two years, we have seen an increase of 14% in our math standards test scores, including the first year when the grant was just beginning, we increased 6%.

00;11;16;06 – 00;11;42;28
Andi Webb
So we’ve had an increase of an overall 20% in our math scores over the last three years. Looking back, I think to the 2014 year where my principal and I were trying to figure out what we can do differently to help our school, and we’ve come so far with our mathematics instruction. And then I was able to live in Singapore through the Fulbright program that I never imagined I would be able to do while living in Singapore.

00;11;42;28 – 00;12;02;07
Andi Webb
I became friends with the teacher that we have remained in contact and she knew I was personal friends with Dr. Yap Bonner, who is known across the world as a Singapore math guru. So while I was in Singapore, because of the friend that I made, I was able to hang out on a personal level with Dr. Yap on her.

00;12;02;15 – 00;12;21;07
Andi Webb
And so I think it’s been an amazing process to see where our school was when we had such a decline to where we are now with our professional development, our instructional materials. I had the opportunity to live in Singapore and personally spend time with Dr. Yap on heart. None of that would have been possible without Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

00;12;22;13 – 00;12;29;01
Ernie Hood
So would you encourage your peers to apply for the career award and other professional funding opportunities?

00;12;29;17 – 00;12;38;25
Andi Webb
Absolutely. The career award is life changing. I highly recommend it. There’s nothing that I can say in my career that has been more impactful.

00;12;39;08 – 00;12;55;29
Ernie Hood
Well, India, I’m sure you’re an inspiration to your students and your colleagues. And I know I can speak for the fund when I tell you how proud they are of your achievements and your sound use of the career award resources. Thanks for joining us here on Focus In Sound.

00;12;56;02 – 00;12;57;05
Andi Webb
Thank you for having me.

00;12;57;22 – 00;13;31;01
Ernie Hood
We hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of the Focus In Sound podcast. Until next time. This is really good. Thanks for listening.