Creating a Think Tank: Coaching for Collaboration

One of my favorite things about coaching is the chance to collaborate. With some teachers, my primary role as a coach is that of thinking partner. Many of the teachers I work with have a lot of experience and expertise; they are just looking for a thinking partner to brainstorm with and bounce ideas off of. Even for less confident teachers, this is our goal as we near the end of a coaching cycle. We are leading toward collaboration and interdependence.

Recently, I was Karen’s thinking partner as she planned a writing project for the end of the year. She wanted the project to be both fun and meaningful. She already had ideas about having students create a memoir of sorts – an opportunity to reminisce about their time in fifth grade. We brainstormed together a list of prompts to start students thinking. What was their funniest memory from the year? Their proudest moment? Their favorite book? Then we generated sentence starters to get anyone unstuck in the event of writer’s block. The coaching conversation was a creative and productive time together.

I love the idea that coaching creates think tanks. Whether I’m collaborating with one teacher, a team, or the whole faculty, a lot of good thinking gets done when we put our heads together. Before next school year starts, I think I’ll hang a sign outside my door:

This idea of thinking together and the movement from coaching to collaborating is demonstrated in the GIR coaching model. Whether we work through all the phases to get there or are collaborating right from the start, coaching conversations foster a healthy interdependence that keeps the good thinking going!

“Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.”

~Mahatma Gandhi

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

A video example of coaching for collaboration:

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/elementary-school-math-teacher-collaboration-sbac

Get students started with the art of memoir:

http://portable-teacher.blogspot.com/2015/08/blueprints-of-lifetime.html

Ending the year by planning for next year’s reading workshop:

https://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=1968

If you are helping teachers beef up their nonfiction libraries, the Nonfiction Detectives blog is a good resource:

http://www.nonfictiondetectives.com/

Food for thought about reading in the disciplines:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=1091

That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!

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Avoid “Random Acts of Coaching”

Random acts of kindness are good. Random acts of coaching are not.

In their book, Coaching Toward the Common Core, Elish-Piper and Allier describe how coaches are often frantically busy doing things like organizing book rooms, running from meeting to meeting, and managing assessments. They call these “random acts of coaching” and suggest that having a clear purpose statement will help to alleviate this haphazardness.

Even after coaches have clearly defined their purpose, however, they can increase their effectiveness by being more intentional about how they turn responsibility over to teachers. That’s what is described in the Gradual Increase of Responsibility Coaching Model. This blog explores the decreasingly-supportive scaffolds of modeling, recommending, questioning, affirming, and praising that coaches can choose and use with deliberation so that teachers’ instructional proficiency increases, reflection is internalized, and collaboration is ongoing.

As an instructional coach, you have many demands on your time and many teachers with whom you could be working. Beginning each coaching cycle with a clear purpose, gradually increasing expectations for what the teacher will do on her own, and then moving toward a collaborative stance will enable you to shift your attention to other teachers, making your work more impactful.

Coaches have told me that filling out the GIR Conference Plan (below) before coaching meetings helps them shift their coaching approach to encourage increased teacher autonomy.

If the length of your to-do list has you racing around performing random acts of coaching, you might consider using the GIR Conference Plan and testing this out for yourself. If you’d like a Word version of the document, just email me at collet@uark.edu and I'll send it your way.

Taking a planned approach to scaffolding teachers reduces randomness and improves results!

Elish-Piper, L. & Allier, S.K. (2014). Coaching toward the Common Core: Strategies to help teachers address the K-5 ELA Standards. New York: Guilford Press.

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

Teacher books for summer reading:

https://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/readthese/

Whack it: Place value math game that incorporates movement (take a look at the video):

http://creeksidelearning.com/how-to-teach-place-value/

End-of-Year Projects:

http://christine-readingisthinking.blogspot.com/2011/07/end-of-year-projects.html

http://k6educators.about.com/od/junelessonplans/a/Wrap-Up-The-End-Of-The-School-Year-With-Fun-Projects.htm

http://www.teachingheart.net/endoftheyearpage.html

Putting a positive spin on “rigor”:

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/webbs-depth-knowledge-increase-rigor-gerald-aungst

That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!

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On Your Side

2016 5 13 On Your Side   24862 - 24225 = 637

Each coaching cycle is a journey. Often, it takes unexpected turns, but the hope is that each coaching excursion ends in a collaborative place. The GIR model begins with dependence – the teacher depends on the coach for ideas and advice. But over time, the relationship grows and changes to one of interdependence and collaboration. Offering praise can be an important final step in that journey.

When I talked this week with a teacher about the coaching she’d received, she mentioned that praise “encouraged me to keep trying harder.” Similarly, another teacher talked about how praise made her want to improve. “When you have someone who is on your side,” she said, “You are going to want to grow as a teacher and as a professional.”

When someone is “on your side” they are helping you when you are trying to achieve something. They support you. They believe in what you are doing. They are your champion and cheerleader. So, they are going to recognize and acknowledge what you are doing well. As a coach, you play that cheerleader role when you praise the good things that are happening.

Another aspect of having someone “on your side” is that they are there beside you, working with you. As a coaching cycle nears its end, you and the teacher are  pulling together as a team. Margaret Carty sums this up well: “The nice thing about teamwork,” she said, “is that you always have others on your side.”

When your coach is “on your side,” you feel supported in moving forward. When your coach is “by your side” you know you are not alone. Praise is a tool coaches can use intentionally so that teachers recognize they have companions on their journey for instructional improvement.

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

Suggestions for encouraging reluctant teachers to embrace innovative ways:

https://leadliteracy.com/articles/145

Offering effective feedback to students:

https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2015/11/18/hacking-feedback-the-bookends/

Use ideas in this article to revise your classroom library or share the link with a new teacher just creating her library:

https://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=758

Ten ideas to promote summer reading:

https://nerdybookclub.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/top-10-ideas-to-promote-summer-reading-by-clare-landrigan-and-tammy-mulligan/

Harnessing the power of the adolescent brain:

http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/12/21/harnessing-the-incredible-learning-potential-of-the-adolescent-brain/

That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!

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Reinforcing Emerging Practices

Because the end of the school year is approaching, some coaching cycles may be forced to an early close. Even where additional support might be warranted, affirming and praising can be effective in providing closure to a coaching cycle. When the inclination to recommend or question is still strong but time is running short, I encourage coaches to swallow the recommendation (which would not have time to take root) and instead consider newly-emerging practices they want to reinforce.

This week, I talked with Nicole’s coach, who had recommendations regarding a recent lesson she’d observed. Although the recommendations were well-founded, the fact that her upcoming coaching meeting would be the final one for the year meant that there would be little opportunity for uptake and follow-through with the recommendation. Instead, I encouraged the coach to consider areas Nicole had improved during recent lessons. “Nicole’s transitions have gotten so much better,” she exclaimed. “Why?” I asked. “Well, her instructions are more specific,” the coach replied.  I explained that affirming or praising this specific change would encourage the clear instructions to continue.

Another coach described her concern that Beth, a novice teacher, wasn’t really listening to students’ responses and building on their current understanding. This was a topic they’d discussed before, but it seemed hard for Beth to wrap her head around how this change would look. I wondered if there was any evidence of this kind of thinking in recent lessons. So together the coach and I looked over the lesson plan Beth had provided for a recent observation. I asked about a formative assessment that was included. Had Beth been responsive to students’ current level of understanding as reflected in that assessment? The coach felt there was some evidence that she had, and highlighted examples in her observational notes to share with Beth. By praising these actions, we hoped that Beth would be even more responsive in the future.

When coaching cycles end prematurely, affirming instructional practices that are just beginning to emerge can encourage their ongoing development.

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

Collaborative inquiry as professional development:

http://www.literacyinlearningexchange.org/collaborative-inquiry-differs

A Pinterest Board about technology learning:

https://www.pinterest.com/frankis/technology-learning/

Empowering students to try and read that which feels unreadable:

https://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=1789

Thoughts about conferring:

http://readwriteandreflect.blogspot.com/2013/08/lessons-on-conferring.html

What do you want to read about today? Googling as intervention:

http://languagemagazine.com/?page_id=124922

That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!

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