Coaching Lessons from Toy Story

As we continue to enjoy the more relaxed pace of summer, our cartoon break this week will be a look at Toy Story and the messages we can take from it to apply to our coaching.

You’ll remember that as Toy Story begins, the toys are concerned about the presents coming as their owner, Andy, celebrates his birthday.  The toys look to their leader, Woody the pull-string cowboy, to devise a plan for uncovering the identity of the new toys.  Parallel coaching story:  Groups look to a leader for problem solving.  As a coach, you can be a leader that teachers look to in times of crisis, devising plans that get teachers pulling together toward a common goal.

Another major theme near the beginning of Toy Story is the idea that everyone wants to be needed and loved.  Woody begins to feel like a second-class citizen once the razzle-dazzle toy Buzz Lightyear is on the scene.  He aches for Andy to remember the relationship they have had and the simple joys that can come from simple toys.  Similarly, teachers want to feel needed and be recognized for their unique contributions.  One of the benefits of being a coach is that you get to spend time with lots of teachers, watching them in action.  This gives you the opportunity to discover strengths.  As a coach, you can praise and highlight these strengths.  You’ll recall that affirmation and praise are important coaching moves in the GIR cycle when teachers are confident with instructional practices.  One way to spotlight a teacher’s assets is to take another teacher to her room so that she provides the modeling at the beginning of another’s coaching cycle.  Two cautions:  First, make sure both teachers are comfortable with this set up and that both will have a positive experience.  Second, don’t let this backfire by promoting a spirit of jealousy or competition – be sure many teachers serve as models for others if you choose to take this course.  As Toy Story illustrates, jealousy can be destructive!

In the animated movie, the destructive forces of jealousy and competition are illustrated as Woody and Buzz vie for the spot as Andy’s favorite toy.  Injuries occur and accusations fly because of these damaging attitudes.  In the story playing out in some schools across the country, new teacher evaluation systems threaten to cultivate a similar competitive spirit.  To guard against this negative response, coaches can focus on the end result of the GIR model:  collaboration and interdependence.  Coaches can support collaborative relationships with and among teachers, breaking out of the privatized practice and isolationism that have characterized the teaching profession.   As colleagues collaborate and cooperate, they gain strength from each other and plot a better course for their students’ learning journey.   When rivals unite, like Woody & Buzz working together on their journey home, the outcome is better for everyone involved. 

A hard lesson learned by Woody is that it’s okay not to be the center of attention.  Though he is important, he recognizes that he is part of a larger whole, and his involvement as a member of the group is important.  He does not need to be the star player.  Now the hard lesson for coaches:  Our role shifts as we move through a coaching cycle.  If we want teachers to be more interdependent, we need to back off the support we are providing and move to a more collaborative stance that shifts responsibility to teachers.  The teachers we work with should not continue to be dependent on us.  We build the capacity of teachers and move off of center stage. 

As we work through coaches cycles with individual teachers or PLCs, our role changes.  Like Woody and Buzz, we will certainly face challenges.  But both we and the teachers we work with will continue to carry on with our important work because of the benefit it brings to others.  Woody and Buzz carried on because of the joy that they could bring to Andy, and coaches and teachers carry on because they understand the influence that good teaching can have on the life of a child. 

 

This week, you might want to take a look at:

A video about the power of language in the classroom:

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/encouraging-language-for-students?utm_campaign=digest&utm_medium=email&utm_source=digest

 

At-home summer reading camp ideas:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=98

An interesting article about the funds of knowledge that students bring to the classroom:

http://www.reading.org/Libraries/inspire/rt-61-1-12-tapping-students-cultural-knowledge.pdf

 

Some fun technology so that you feel proficient by the time the school year roles around.  Upload an image and then animate it so it looks like you’re talking:

www.blabberize.com

An article about putting the “mini” back in mini-lessons:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=1017

That’s it for this week!  Happy summer!