The Power of “Yet”

Do you know about the power of the simple word, yet?  This word is powerful because it is full of potential!  Consider these comments:

       *   “The classroom climate isn’t yet what it needs to be.” 

      *  “Your questioning strategies don’t require enough higher-level thinking yet.” 

When we tack the word yet onto a sentence, we are saying, “I know you can do this!  You will get there soon!”

As coaches, we do a disservice to teachers if we only acknowledge the things they are doing well.  Growing and learning require risk, and as teachers take risks, they will make mistakes and experience occasional failure.  Yet allows for negative feedback while also showing confidence that they will get there! 

Yet helps to create what Carol Dweck has called a growth mindset.*   Those with a growth mindset are willing to work through difficulties because they feel that, with effort, they will achieve success.  Honest feedback, coupled with faith that continued work will make a difference, creates progress and improvement.   With a growth mindset, teachers see success as within their control, recognizing that focused practice will make a difference.  They have attitudes that are more positive and have more confidence in difficult situations.

Teachers can handle – and actually benefit from – feedback that focuses on areas where they need growth.  Adding the word yet softens the critique and opens the door for a recommendation to be well-received.  The cumulative effect of working through difficulties is long-term success.  The power of yet suggests improvement and mastery.  Using this little word can make a big difference in your work with teachers!

* Dweck, C.S. (2006). Mindset. New York: Random House.

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

This interview with Charlotte Danielson (author of Framework for Teaching) about teaching with the CCSS:

http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2013/03/13/ccio_danielson_teaching.html

Got a family vacation planned as we wrap up the summer months?  Check out this list of the best audio books for long family car rides (they also make great read-alouds!):

http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2014/jul/21/best-audio-books-for-the-car-book-doctor?utm_source=20856091&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=High+Road

Still looking for a good teacher book for summer reading?  Check out this list:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/06/17/summer-reading-list-for-and-by-teachers/?utm_source=19619952&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=High+Road

This video about the power of common language (click the second link):

http://www.marzanoevaluation.com/evaluation/free_video_resources/

“App Smashing” ideas to combine the power of multiple apps in lessons:

http://technologytools4teaching.blogspot.com/2013/12/five-ways-to-apps-smash.htm

Combining Shakespeare and Technology?  Watch this YouTube video, “Remixing Shakespeare”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-y2QuAokdo&feature=youtu.be

That’s it for this week!

Getting Motivated!

Some of the most well-worn books on my shelf are about coaching.  Cognitive Coaching, Talk About Teaching, Student Centered Coaching, and Sit and Get Won’t Grow Dendrites have all been helpful in my work.  But sometimes, a non-education book illuminates new insights about coaching.  Drive, by Daniel Pink, did that for me. 

In Drive, Pink describes his findings about motivation.  He learned that external motivation (pay, prizes, etc.) actually inhibits success on cognitively difficult tasks.  Pink makes the case that internal motivation is needed for success on work that requires creativity or higher-level thinking.  Employees tasked with such work are motivated by autonomy, purpose, and mastery.  They do best when they have some choice over their activities, tasks that directly connect to their world, and opportunities for success.  I like to think of these elements as the motivational C’s:  control, choice, challenge, connection, and construction of meaning. 

Giving the teacher control in coaching means, first and foremost, she determines whether she will participate in the coaching process.  At some schools that’s non-negotiable.  There’s an all-in policy, meaning everyone participates in coaching cycles at some point during the year (yay!), or sometimes the principal specifies that a teacher will be coached, possibly as part of an evaluation process (boo!).  Control can also be offered by opening up the whens and wheres.  When will you meet?  When will you observe?  Where will you meet?  What other classrooms would she like to observe? 

Choice goes along with control.  Let the teacher choose the focus for coaching.  Will it be writer’s workshop, annotation, or cognitively-guided instruction?  Will you create units together?  Revise lessons?  Focus on assessment?  The more choice the teacher has in the coaching process, the more motivated she will be and the more likely her instruction will change.

Creating an appropriate level of challenge is where the GIR Coaching Model comes in.  The amount of support you provide changes the challenge of the task.  If you keep recommending when your colleague needs you to thoughtfully question her practice and push her thinking, the challenge is low and thus the motivation is low.  However, recommending a specific strategy could provide just the right level of challenge if she is ready to try something that isn’t in her instructional repertoire.

Connection is built into coaching work.  In contrast to the hit-and-miss nature of whole group professional development, where some teachers will be able to immediately apply the learning to the classroom and others won’t, coaching should always have a direct connection to what is currently happening in that teacher’s class.  Giving the teacher choice and control within the coaching scenario further enhances connections to her day-to-day experiences. 

The final C is construction of meaning.  Constructivism argues that humans generate understanding through interactions between their experiences and their ideas.  Coaching creates opportunities for those interactions, as you and the teacher reflect together on teaching.   

Reading Daniel Pink’s ideas about motivation helped me make connections between what I knew about student motivation and what I’d experienced with teachers.  Whether in the classroom or in a coaching conference, I’ve found success as I’ve kept these 5 Cs in mind.

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

This video about classroom that are over-decorated and over-stimulating:

http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2014/may/may27_decoratedclassrooms.html

How summer and a personal writing notebook changed this teacher’s life:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=52

And yet another summer reading list of professional books for teachers:

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/ultimate-summer-reading-list-teachers?utm_source=19619952&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=High+Road

This blog about the effective vertical team meetings:

http://www.literacyinlearningexchange.org/vignette/something-talk-about-teacher-led-vertical-teams-work

In this video presentation, Arne Duncan talks about the importance of offering leadership opportunities to classroom teachers:

http://vimeo.com/98670258

That’s it for this week.  Happy Summer!

Facilitating Decisions by Consensus

Many instructional coaches play the role of facilitator.  A facilitator, by definition, is one who helps to bring about an outcome by providing indirect assistance.  In other words, they don’t do it themselves, but they help to make it happen.  One of the things facilitators enable is the making of collaborative instructional decisions.  Although some decisions are appropriately made by the principal after consulting with others, most instructional decisions are enriched through a consensus-building process.   

Decisions made by consensus are not a winner-takes-all approach.  Consensus is not a voting-based method with two or more discrete solutions proposed and each individual siding with one or another of those solutions.  Rather, consensus-building involves bringing together the best of all ideas in a solution that all can endorse. 

Consensus decision-making seeks to avoid winners and losers by creating agreement among all participants.  The outcome of consensus is a result that is acceptable to all involved, a decision that is a satisfactory resolution even if it isn’t the favorite of every individual.  Consensus can be reached only if each person feels their opinions and concerns have been adequately heard and addressed.  And that is the role of the facilitator. 

A facilitator creates or guides the creation of processes that will lead to a collaborative solution.  What steps need to be taken in order to generate a successful outcome?  Who needs to be involved?  How will the relevant information be sought and shared?  Both the facilitator and the involved stakeholders should consider these questions. 

A facilitator creates norms, both spoken and unspoken, for how group members listen to one another.  She encourages open-mindedness and ensures that although ideas may conflict, discourse is not aggressive; proposals can be challenged without hostility.  In well-facilitated conversations, differing ideas stimulate creative solutions rather than being confrontation.   A facilitator calls out the “silent somebodies,” ensuring that a few opinionated individuals don’t dominate the conversation.  An important role of the facilitator in consensus decision-making is to ensure that pertinent information is shared and that all opinions and the rationale behind them are understood by the group. 

Making decisions by consensus may feel like a roller-coaster ride!  The process is full of ups and downs; It is difficult and time-consuming, but worth the effort!  Decisions reached by consensus reflect the best thinking of the group.  Such proposals better address all potential concerns.  Consensus decisions are usually better implemented than those made by vote or unilateral decision, because having as much agreement as possible sets the stage for cooperation.  Importantly, reaching consensus decisions can enhance group dynamics, fostering greater cohesion and interpersonal connections. 

When I’ve facilitated decisions by consensus, I’ve often been happily surprised by the outcome, which I knew was a better decision than I could have made on my own.  For example, when facilitating a textbook selection committee, I helped that group build criteria by which possible selections would be judged.  Then, we created processes that enabled groups to apply these criteria.  When facilitating a group making formative assessment decisions, I brought some assessments to the table and encouraged others to do the same. Then, I enabled brainstorming that further enlarged the pool of ideas before they narrowed the list to those that could be used for documenting the RtI process.

Although your curriculum expertise will play a role when you are facilitating decisions by consensus, more important will be your skill in creating a comfortable climate, your expertise as a listener, and your ability to support the evaluation and synthesis of disparate ideas.  As you consider the outcomes of consensus-building experiences, you might find it to be some of the most fulfilling work you do as an instructional facilitator. 

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

A video showing interdisciplinary learning through collaborative teams:

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/collaborative-teaching-ntn?utm_campaign=digest&utm_medium=email&utm_source=digest

Use collaboration time effectively to create flipped classrooms:

http://www.districtadministration.com/article/maximizing-plc-time-flip-your-class


A video that shows Data Carousels in action:

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/data-carousels-improve-instruction?utm_campaign=digest&utm_medium=email&utm_source=digest

A survey you can share with teams to help them self-assess their collaborative work:

http://www.literacyinlearningexchange.org/sites/default/files/asset_inventory_august2012_0.pdf

Bookcover creator, an interactive online tool from readwritethink (includes lessons for using this tool):

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/book-cover-creator-30058.html

Middle and high school teachers are invited to submit works of creative nonfiction.  One winner will receive a $5,000 cash prize along with travel and lodging to attend the Norman Mailer Center's Annual Gala in New York City during the fall of 2014. Submissions are due by noon CST, Wednesday, July 23.  Find out more at:

http://www.ncte.org/awards/nmwa?roi=echo4-27133700004-42242608-e1b0c33747bccc299025c3e3e5d687c0&utm_source=20253856&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=High+Road