Category Archives: Lesley Schooler

What is the Dean of Faculty?

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I am excited to have taken on the new role of Dean of Faculty. Since this is a new role to our school, I thought it might be helpful to explain more about what I will be doing in this position. 

Official Version

I am going to start with what might sound like a more “job description” explanation… As Dean of Faculty, I work with Department Chairs and serve as an instructional leader for fellow faculty members in their respective disciplines. I will play a key role in stewarding instruction and learning across departments and will actively seek cross-curricular and interdisciplinary approaches. I also am responsible for ensuring that best instructional practices are being used by faculty and that innovative, student-centered, project-based approaches are being emphasized. 

My interpretation

I think what is MORE important is the spirit and philosophy I want to bring to this role.  I like to think of my position as being an instructional coach. I hope that by collaborating with teachers, I can help create an environment that will support teachers in reaching their goals in a fulfilling manner. I want to help teachers explore language, nonverbal communication, and emotions, and how these affect relationships, performance, and results. I look forward to visiting classrooms and spending time this year getting to know each department’s teachers and curriculum. 

I’ve been inspired by Elena Aguilar’s Art of Coaching online course and as a result I hope to model how I will work with teachers based on her model of transformational coaching. One thing that I do want everyone to understand is that I cannot be a coach to others if we do not have a relationship of trust. I want people to feel comfortable sharing areas they are struggling with or beliefs that might be holding them back and I understand that this can only happen if there is trust between us. I will not be reporting back to the Vice Principal or Principal the details that are discussed in my coaching sessions. I will share, if asked, who I am working with and general areas we are working on but that is it. I hope this creates an environment where teachers feel comfortable being vulnerable and working on growing as educators. 

With our new crew professional development model, I am excited to be a crew facilitator for our New and Newish Crews to help them acclimate to working at Carondelet and provide additional support during their first year(s) at our school. 

If you are interested in working with me this year, please do not hesitate to reach out. My office is located in the senior hallway next to Maggie’s office. Drop-in anytime to chat or send me an email to set up an appointment. I look forward to working with you.


¿Cómo Se Dice, “Maths” en Español?: A Collaborative Vlog

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WATCH THIS VIDEO, YOUR WORLD WILL CHANGE….(probably not, but just watch because I put work into it) 🙂


So I don’t like math. 
I never have. I like being competitive and getting points on Alludo though,
which is why I ended up signing myself up for an online maths course for math
teachers. (Yes, I said “maths”). I really didn’t have any intention of getting anything out of this
course and I really did just take it to get more Alludo points, because who
needs sleep? I also wanted to know what my students go through on a regular
basis to see if I can adjust my curriculum according to their needs and how
they learn, so I gave maths a whirl.


 Much to my surprise, it wasn’t really a course about math,
(maths) in the videos that I watched (on double speed to save time), but rather
a philosophy on teaching and learning that can be applied to various realms and
curricula. While I watched the videos I noticed language pertaining to “fixed
mindset” and “growth mindset”, and the concept of “yet.”
 Students in these
videos stated “I’m not good at math” “I’m just not a math person” “This isn’t
how my brain works”, and I began to make some connections: I noticed many of my
own students in Spanish saying similar things “I’m just no good at languages” “My
parents weren’t good at language, so neither am I” “I had bad teachers in middle
school, so I’m not very good”. I started to create a correlation between
Spanish teaching and learning and math, and when I approached Lesley Schooler
about this connection, she agreed that there might be some similarities. Like
math, students in Spanish are afraid to make mistakes, they put an obtrusive
filter on producing and speaking the language because they’re afraid they will
make mistakes and not be precise, so they just don’t speak. I found the
neurological studies in the math online course through Stanford to be
fascinating with the connections that I could make with my students in Spanish
class. I realized that the material needs to be slower and more attainable for
students, and not penalize mistakes, but point out mistakes, and allow students
to correct them (this is where the brain grows) and they shouldn’t be marked
down for making mistakes, but they should fix them so that they enjoy the process
of learning. The videos present the idea of the journey and process in learning. Students try and think aloud and defend and explain their findings rather than simply right and wrong and they move on. I am inspired to incorporate more of this style into my classes. The conundrum that I’m having is, while this is a great way to encourage learning and brain growth, I want to know that I am preparing students for college, and upper level learning where there might still be an institutionalized, systematic fixed mindset that they also need to be able to navigate. Would I be doing my students a disservice if I don’t require precision as well? I’m not sure. 
I shared these thoughts with Lesley and we made other
insights and connections as well. I think this is a good course to take, even
if you don’t teach math because a lot of the principles can be applied in many
fields of study. Also I actually learned some math, and I don’t hate it as much
as before. Yay!

Mathematical Mindsets Conference

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One of the exciting benefits of our new math program is the relationship we’ve developed with Jo Boaler and the staff at YouCubed.org.  It’s been wonderful to get their validation of what we are doing and to have the opportunity to present at their Mathematical Mindsets conferences.  Kristina Levesque and I were invited back this past September to share out at their leadership conference about the changes we are making in how we teach our girls math.

While it is always wonderful to connect with other math educators, the best part of presenting at this conference is being able to take advantage of this professional development without having to pay the $1,000 per person fee.  😁  Every time we’ve attended this conference we have been able to take away something else that we can implement in our program.

This past conference we had the opportunity to play with a math problem involving a series of four figures of different dots.

With all YouCubed problems we were asked what do we wonder about each figure shown and what conjectures can we make for the the number of dots in figure 100.  Kristina and I loved playing around with the dots and developing an equation to determine what figure 100 would look like (without drawing that figure!).  We knew this would fit well into Topic 9 of our Algebra curriculum.  We added it in as a Topic Challenge and love that it shows students a visual representation of a quadratic equation.  One of the main takeaways from this conference was that engaging with math in multiple ways is so important for learning.  When we can add in the visual representation it can become a status equalizer.  Students at different levels can contribute and engage with the problem which is so important.  Our goal is to incorporate more visual representations in our math program and one of our plans moving forward is to find a visual for as many units as possible.

Now it’s your turn.  How many dots do you think will be in figure 100?  What would the figure look like?

Math Program version 2.0

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Last year was an exciting and exhausting year for the math department.  We implemented a huge change to how we teach Algebra and it resulted in moments of happiness and frustration.  While we are extremely proud of the first version of the program, we always knew it was only the first iteration.  We knew we would go back and reflect on what worked and add modifications for the next version.

On Wednesday we had the opportunity to share out about our program to faculty and staff who wanted to learn more.  It was wonderful to see almost every department represented and many staff members as well.  Here is a link to the presentation we shared if you were unable to attend our session but would like to learn more. 

We initially started out with 3 goals for our program: 

  • de-track students
  • increase student agency
  • encourage collaboration and communication
Our program overall was successful in implementing these goals and we are continually refining what we’ve created.  We’ve created more opportunities for break out direct instruction every week.  We are tracking students’ progress more than ever through exit tickets, goal setting meetings, check ins with their lead teacher, and attendance at Math Power Hour.  In addition we’ve modified our Algebra Challenge Exam for incoming freshmen to make it mastery based.  Freshmen also had the opportunity to come in over the summer and get a head start on the Algebra curriculum and over 50 took advantage of this.  As a result we have over half of the freshmen already into the Algebra curriculum which will increase the likelihood of them beginning Geometry this year or give them the opportunity to slow down and focus on depth if needed.  
There are a lot of misconceptions about our program and I think they can be summarized here.  
It was wonderful to have the opportunity to share out with our community something we are really proud of and I hope other departments will do the same.  I would love to have the chance to learn more in depth about some of our other classes and programs.  

Twitter for Professional Development

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Back in October the Algebra team was invited to present at a Taste of TMC (Twitter Math Chat) mini conference hosted at Seven Hills School.  I was excited to have a “dress rehearsal” for our presentation that we would be doing at the California Mathematics Council in December.  What I didn’t realize was that in addition to practicing our presentation, I also learned about a whole world of professional development amongst math teachers on Twitter. The two teachers who put on this conference were active participants in Twitter education chats and many participants of the conference knew each other virtually and were meeting in person for the first time.   

I learned about popular hashtags math teachers use on Twitter when they are sharing lesson plans, questions they have for other math educators, or problems they are trying to solve in class.  I started devoting 10 minutes a day to professional development on Twitter.  I would follow certain hashtags and engage in discussions with other teachers.  I would get so many ideas for how I could improve my teaching and lessons I could try.  I never would have thought Twitter could provide so much (free!) professional development.

A lot of our Algebra program is based on research done by Jo Boaler so I was excited to follow her.  When I would post about something we have done in Algebra that was inspired by her work or one of her suggested lessons I always tagged her, never expecting her to read all of the posts she’s tagged in every day.  I also followed YouCubed.org which is the nonprofit she co-created with Cathy Williams at Stanford University to “inspire, educate, and empower teachers of mathematics” while also sharing out the latest research on how students learn mathematics.

After tagging both Jo and YouCubed quite a few times on Twitter I finally got their attention!  Jo emailed me (!!!!) and asked me to fill out a survey providing more information on what we are doing at Carondelet.  I immediately filled it out but then didn’t hear anything in response.  I soon forgot about the survey.  In January I got another email from Jo and Cathy asking if Cathy could come observe our program.  Cathy’s visit provided us with some much needed validation that we are on the right track with our Algebra program and despite the resistance we should keep moving forward.

Cathy went back and shared with Jo what she observed and we were invited to be members of a panel discussion at their Mathematics Leadership Summit at Stanford University this past month.  Cathy shared out with the participants from all over the United States, Canada, Australia, and Scotland about our program and then invited myself and Kristina Levesque up to the stage to answer questions about our program.

After our panel discussion we were able to make connections with other educators who are also on a similar journey to improving math instruction for their students and schools.  We heard a lot of encouragement and excitement about our program and that while it sounds different from what other schools are doing, it could be adapted to meet the individual needs of other schools who are wanting to create a change.  Jo is also wanting to learn more about our program and will be visiting us in April.  

What amazes me is that all of these connections are from using social media for a few minutes a day to connect with others.  It has made me realize that there are so many resources available to us and it doesn’t have to be through a conference (although those are great too!).

Algebra – Initial Thoughts

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Now that we have survived the first 5 weeks of our new Algebra program, I thought it would be helpful to write down some initial thoughts on how things are going.  It has been really exciting to see something that was just a crazy idea last year morph into a real program that we are already really proud of now.  There have been some adjustments already and there are some things we are still trying to figure out but overall the feedback from our students and the teachers involved has been positive.  

Here’s what has worked well:
  • We spent the first two and a half weeks establishing a group culture of the class.  We discussed growth mindset and had all of our students take the “How to Learn Math for Students” course.  We spent time discussing the messages from this course with our students. 
  • There are a lot of moving parts to this course (online learning through Carnegie Learning, collaborative activities, how Schoology is organized, GoFormative exit tickets, topic guides, etc.) which can be overwhelming if everything was explained at once.  Instead we used the first two and a half weeks to chunk things out and explain each one separately before putting it all together. 
  • We had all of our students take the Mathematic Diagnostic Testing Project High School Readiness test.  We will also test them again when they complete the Algebra program.  This will be one way we measure the success of this program.  
  • Students are truly moving at their own pace.  Those who are familiar with the concepts in the first topic have moved quickly through it and already taken their first assessment.  We also have some students who need the extra time to really master the content and are moving at the right pace for them.  This wouldn’t happen in a traditional classroom.  
  • The four teachers who are implementing this program (shout out to Mary Beth Dittrich, Kristina Levesque, and Christy Marin!) work well together.  We communicate often with one another.  We are all flexible with what we need to do each class period (even when it’s decided 10 minutes before class).  We do not always agree with one another but we are comfortable speaking our thoughts.  We are able to discuss things openly and honestly to come to a solution that is best for our students.  
  • Carnegie Learning is a good tool for our online component of the program.  The problems are rich and require students to be engaged.  The reporting section allows us as teachers to determine where they are struggling and what the students need extra support with.  Students are also able to go back into the program in review mode without losing their saved data which is a huge plus. 
  • The new furniture is amazing.  This program would not be what it is now with the old desks.  The new furniture allows students to work well in groups, using their smaller white boards when needed.  The individual desks work well for the online learning or assessments.  Plus the colors of the chairs brighten up the room and change the learning environment.  
This is just a short list of what has worked well.  There are so many more including hearing students comment that they really understood something or watching them work well with their groups on collaborative activities.  
We do have some challenges:
  • We have 4 teachers for over 94 students in period 3.  Sometimes we need an additional teacher (or two!) in the classroom to work with students, particularly those who are struggling.  In the past these students would have had 2 periods of math in a smaller class setting.  One requirement we’ve established in our program is that a teacher signs off on the collaborative activities.  When doing so we ask each student in the group to explain to us what they have just learned.  This is a great way for us to gauge student understanding and to see that everyone is responsible for their own learning.  However at times multiple groups need to be signed off and we just don’t have enough teachers to get around to everyone.  
  • Space is an issue.  The new furniture is great but having separate classrooms isn’t as ideal.  As teachers sometimes we are in one classroom but can’t necessarily see what is going on in other classrooms.  We try and pop in and out of the classrooms during the period but it’s not always possible.  If we had a larger, open space we would be able to  spread ourselves out to help the students more.  
  • The 45 minute class periods are tough.  It’s not quite enough time for students to transition to more than one activity once you account for taking attendance in the beginning, explaining which classrooms are for each activity, and ending a few minutes early for the exit ticket. The block periods work better for this program.  
  • As teachers we need to find more time to meet to discuss how things are working and what adjustments we need to make.  It’s hard finding that time even with a common 7th period prep.  Teachers have other classes they are teaching and need to use this prep for those classes at times.  We also have so much to discuss that even if we used every 7th period, there’s still always more to talk about.  This collaboration is so important though.  Yesterday we graded our first topic assessment together and this was necessary to make sure we are all grading the same way.  But it takes time which has become a precious commodity.  
Despite the challenges I am so excited for what we are doing.  I am loving watching our students engage in mathematics in a totally different way.  I’m inspired by the dedication and commitment from my colleagues.  I know that we will continue to reflect on what we are doing and revise it to continuously improve as we strive to meet the needs of all of our students.  
We would love you to come visit the organized chaos of our Algebra program.  We meet periods 3 and 4 in rooms 2, 5, 6, and MacLab.  Come by anytime as we would love to hear your feedback on what you observe and any ideas you may have to improve on this program.  

Fun Friday in Math

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One of our goals in the math department this year is to foster a culture of math that is collaborative, accessible and most importantly, fun!  Several times throughout the year we have planned Fun Fridays with today being our first one.  During these days, students from different classes work together in small groups on one challenging problem during their usual class period.  Students are purposefully placed in mixed groups to help encourage students to leverage their unique skill-sets and perspectives to come together to solve a problem they may otherwise not be able to solve on their own.  We hope students experience the value of teamwork and problem-solving on these Fun Fridays and that they realize that math is much broader than what they might currently be studying in their current math class.  We also hope this gives them a chance to practice grit, resilience, and resourcefulness.  Our whole department is working hard to promote the growth mindset with our students and this is one way we are modeling it.

Today was our first Fun Friday.  Each group received a bag with 27 cubes in total – 9 different colors, 3 of each color.  They were instructed to create a 3x3x3 cube with each of the 9 colors represented on each face, similar to a 3-D Sudoku puzzle. 

 

This was a problem that had multiple ways to solve or strategies to implement.  It was so fun as teachers to watch students work together to try and solve this.  They would think they had it solved only to realize their last cube wouldn’t work.  Many students tried and tried again with some finding success in the end and others not being able to solve it. 

 





































As students were working you could hear teachers telling students that it was OK if they didn’t solve it.  Their brains were growing as they learned from their mistakes!  Synapses were firing!  

 It was great to listen to their different strategies and ways of approaching the problem.  
 
Mr. Cushing and Mr. Schooler stopped by to try their hand at solving it.

   


They were modeling to our students the struggle of working on a problem that they couldn’t immediate see the solution to and also the joy that comes when you finally solve it.  
  
We would love to invite any faculty and staff members to come join us on our next Fun Friday October 5th.  It will take place in every period in rooms 2, 5, 6, 7, & 8.  Our first Fun Friday was a success and we are already excited about planning our next one!

A Number Talk Sparks Lots of Question About Student-Centered Learning

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As part of our online course, “How to Learn Math for Teachers” by Jo Boaler, he Math Department is learning about something called Number Talks.  In a number talk, more info here, students are presented with an open-ended problem and are encouraged to think of many ways to solve and many ways to represent their solution (including both numerical and visual representations).  A number talk might start with asking students how to multiply 36 x 5, for example, without a calculator and without pencil/paper (i.e. beyond the procedure traditionally taught).  These talks teach students about the flexibility of numbers, how strategy can be applied to numbers, the connections between numbers and other concepts, and the creative, artistic nature of numbers.   At the same time, it teaches them to expect multiple solutions to problems (i.e. Math is not about getting one right answers) and lets them practice explaining their ideas, methods and solutions.

I really love the idea of number talks and think that even doing a simple problem like 36 x 5 in a high school class has real benefits.  But, I’d rather find a way to change the way I’m teaching so that I use the idea of a number talk to talk about the more advanced topics that we teach in our classes.  And that’s why I was so excited when Lesley sent us a example of such a number talk that she had just played with as part of the Mindset Mathematics Leadership Conference.

It helped that I was just wrapping up a unit on radicals in Algebra 2 with Trigonometry and I was totally hooked on how to solve this visually.   I of course knew how to solve Algebraically/procedurally but this was asking for much more.  Did I really understand what a square root was?  It took me a good hour thinking hard about what a square root really is.  A finally settled on thinking of the square root as the side of one square.  But, even then it took me time to figure out what that meant, and what the expression x+15 meant.  I was thinking, not simply doing.  I was stretching my brain and it was exciting!

I finally came up with this solution and felt really satisfied with the experience:

Because we were just wrapping up this unit in Algebra 2, I decided to pose this problem to them as a number talk.  And, here’s where my failure began.  Because I was at the end of the unit, and a bit behind the other Algebra 2 class, I didn’t feel I could devote class time to actually do the number talk.  And if I’m being totally honest, I doubted that many of my students would have been able to handle it.  Instead, I put it on my board and asked students to think about it and contribute whenever they had an idea.  I told them it would live on my board for a couple of weeks and we’d see what gets filled in.  I had visions of some of my more motivated/math-interested students thinking about this as I did and using their free time to come to my room to make their contribution to my board.

Well, it’s been about two weeks and here’s what my board looks like:

Don’t be fooled.  The pictures you see have nothing to do with the problem.  That’s work by my Geometry students who needed some board space to work on their problems.  Not one student contributed to my number talk.  It’s not their fault.  To really have done this right, I needed to model it for them by using class time.  I chose not to, under pressure to stay on schedule, and perhaps missed out on a really deep Mathematical experience.

This is making me think a lot about much of the innovation we’ve been talking about both in our department and as a school.  In order to be truly student-centered, we as teachers need to be able to go off-schedule, right?  We need to have the flexibility to follow the curiosities of our students.  But, how does this work when we have a Scope & Sequence that dictates how long and which topics to cover?  Isn’t this teacher-centered?  If we are truly student-centered, are we comfortable if some sections of Algebra 2, for example, cover different topics than other sections?  How might this affect our sequential courses?  Or do we do enough re-teaching in our sequential courses that we could accommodate such a student-centered model?  Beyond sequential courses, would this compromise a student’s ability to do well on standardized tests, such as the SAT, if we go deep in one topic and miss another all together?

Sorry, that was a lot of questions but I am confused about how to do this.  Fortunately, our new Algebra 1 program will remove the timing pressure that the Scope & Sequence creates.  Students will self-pace through the material and we’re intentionally building in lots of opportunity for deep thinking activities, such as number talks.  The Scope (the curriculum), however, is still built by us, the teachers.  Might there be a way for us to make the scope more student-centered, so that students determine the concepts they cover?

I’d like to argue that if we focus on deep thinking, we can move away from our current approach of covering concepts and move toward an approach that teachers math strategy/math flexibility so that when they are presented with a topic they’ve never seen (whether on the SAT or in a later math class) they can use their mathematical intuition to figure it out.  After all, all Math concepts can be derived from basic principles.

Growing brains in Algebra Honors

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My Algebra Honors students had a test last Friday on systems of equations in 2 variables.  We had done a lot of work on this chapter and I knew that I didn’t want to assign them more of the same types of problems on our review day Wednesday.  Instead I had the class work in groups of 3 and I gave each group a sheet of paper with two word problems written out.  I told them that they had 50 minutes to solve these two problems using any strategy they wanted.  They just had to justify their answer with math.  I told the class that they are expected to explain their problem to the class toward the end of the period.

What I didn’t tell the class was that the problems involved 3 variables (an Algebra 2 concept) and that we hadn’t learned how to solve systems of equations in 3 variables.  Instead I told them that I believed in them and I knew they would be able to solve them. 
The students got to work solving the problems.  As I walked around the groups I loved seeing all of the different strategies the students used.  One group solved their problems on the white boards and every time they got stuck or realized they made a mistake they would start solving it again without erasing their work.  They labeled each try as a “take” and would refer back to what they did before to help them figure out where they made mistakes.  Finally “take 6” was successful and they were so proud of themselves for figuring it out.  
They labeled their final, correct work as “Holy Ground” and they were so proud of themselves.  
As this group worked I would hear them say things like “we’ve never solved equations with 3 variables before…I’m not sure how to set this up but I know Mrs. Schooler wouldn’t give us a problem we couldn’t solve.”  I also heard a lot of comments about how their brain was growing from the mistakes they made!  The groups for the most part worked without my help.  At times if a group was really stuck I asked them some questions to get them thinking about the problem in a different way 
and that was usually sufficient to get them working again.
As students presented their answers it was fascinating to see how almost every group solved both problems but even better was that not one group solved them the same exact way.  

The students listened to each group present and they would exclaim that they hadn’t thought of solving it that way or telling another group they were impressed at how they approached the problem.  


I surveyed the students after class asking them what they thought of the two problems and what approaches they used when they got stuck.  Here were some of their responses:


“When we got stuck we would look back to see where we went wrong and we listened to each other’s advice.” 
“Whenever we got stuck we would try a new strategy but left the old strategy on the board in case it helped us.”

I also asked the students how they felt after class.  Here’s what they said:


“I felt accomplished and proud of myself because I got to figure out a hard problem without the teacher’s help.  I also felt proud of my group because we worked really hard together to solve it.”
“I felt very challenged but in a good way.”
“I felt like I understood the problems a lot more after hearing how each group solved it.” 

I was so proud of my students.  They were given challenging problems to solve and were successful in solving them.  They made connections to what they knew about systems of equations in 2 variables and applied it to 3 variables.  This is a reminder to me that I need to always remember that my students are capable of so much and that if I am to prepare them to be strong mathematics students I need to give them more problems like this so I can help their brains grow.

Debating Systems of Equations Methods

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My Algebra Honors students have been learning how to solve systems of equations.  We learned 3 methods:  graphing, substitution, and elimination.  While each method will always work, there usually is one method that is easier to use based on the two equations given.  

In groups of 3 I assigned my students one method to solve.  I then gave the class a system of equations.  I gave each group a few minutes to discuss why the method they were given was the best method to solve that system, even if it may not be their preferred method.  Each group then shared out with the class why their method was the best.  Groups could then engage in a friendly debate on which method was the best method to solve that specific system.  It was wonderful to hear the reasons students came up with for each method and how they tried to sell their method to the class.  The students got excited and were really advocating for their method.  After we debated which method was best students then had to solve the system of equations by all 3 methods, starting with their method first.  After everyone solved the system of equations we circled back to our debate and asked if anyone’s opinions were changed based on solving the systems.  We were able to repeat this process 4 times with students getting assigned a different method each time. 
This lesson reinforced that no matter what method you use to solve the system of equations you should end up with the same answer.  I hope it also got students to think about the benefits of each method so they can decide which method to use when presented with the equations.  I loved how it got students talking about math as well which is a skill we are working to develop in our department.