Module 1 of 6 · ~10 min

Welcome + Meet Your Student

Welcome.

Before you do anything else, take a breath. The next two hours are going to give you a skill that almost no teacher learns in their education program — and it's the skill that separates the teachers who change lives from the teachers who don't.

You're going to learn how to look at a class of 32 students and see what's actually happening. Not the test averages. Not the report card summary. What's actually happening — including for the kids who are slipping in plain sight.

Let me tell you about a student.

Last year, somewhere in this country, a 7th grader was getting A's in math. Quiz after quiz, all A's.

Then around week 5 of the semester, she started missing days.

Her teacher didn't notice — her grades still looked fine, because the A's from earlier were carrying her average. By week 8, she had stopped coming entirely.

Her semester GPA: 2.9.

Not bad. Not alarming either. Just… invisible.

She was failing in plain sight, and nobody saw her.

That student is in every classroom in America. Probably in your future classroom. Today, you're going to learn how to find her.

Meet your student.

For the next two hours, you're going to follow one specific student through this workshop. Every chart you build, every analysis you run — you'll be doing it about this student.

Ready to meet them?

Gender:

English Language Learner:

Has an IEP:

Receives free or reduced lunch:

We'll show you their grades in just a minute. For now — what would you want to know about them before you started teaching them?

Here's where your student lives.

This is your class. 32 students, three class periods, 8 weeks of data. Every column is something a real teacher tracks: attendance, homework, weekly participation, quiz scores, unit tests.

Take 60 seconds. Scroll. Find your student's row — it's highlighted. Don't try to understand it all. Just get a feel for what's in front of you.

Look at your student's four quiz scores (Quiz 1 through Quiz 4). What pattern do you see?

Scores climb over the quarter — they're improving Scores drop over the quarter — they're slipping Scores stay about the same — flat line Scores are all over the place — no clear direction One or more quiz scores are missing

Quick check before we move on.

Module 1 complete.

You've met your student. You've seen the gradebook. You know what data is in front of you.

In the next module, you'll do something every teacher does on day one of every quarter: clean the data. Because the gradebook you just looked at? Some of it is messy. Some of it is missing. And some of those blanks tell stories.

Continue to Module 2