Friday, August 12, 2016

Coaching Lessons from Haiti

This week I am in Haiti with 30 amazing educators who are part of a teaching exchange. It is my second experience participating in a professional learning experience with Haitian educators, and, like last year, I will be going home with new insights and more humility.

One memorable experience happened on the day we asked teachers to chart questions or challenges related to classroom management, since that was an area they said they wanted to address during the exchange. Working with grade-level peers, each group wrote three questions about challenges they were facing. Then we asked them to come up with two possible solutions for each challenge. At first, many of them looked at us with bewilderment. “You thought someone else would be providing these solutions, didn’t you?” I asked, reading the surprise on their faces. There were many nodding heads. “Well,” I continued, “the very best people for solving these problems are sitting around the table with you. You know your students, you know your situation. You can come up with solutions. Be creative. Think of the impossible solution and it might lead you to the possible.”

As these teachers collaborated, I realized some coaching truths. Often, the best answers will come from the teacher herself, or from the teacher in collaboration with her team. I can ask questions to support their problem-solving, but they know their own context best. They also know their own capabilities, what factors are within their control, and what they are actually willing to try. Often, I can best support a teacher by reflecting her own thinking back to her as she becomes clearer and clearer about solutions.

When my Haitian friends were working, the group of first- and second-grade teachers  identified a problem of “students who don’t want to write.” When I stopped by their table, they were sure they could not come up with a solution. “We’ve tried everything, we don’t know what to do,” they said. “Let me ask you a question,” I responded. “Can any of you think of a time when you’ve ever been successful with getting even one student to write who didn’t want to?” After a thoughtful pause, one of the teachers said, “I started out by writing with them, and then they were ready to go on their own.” “You have one possible solution!” I said. Asking questions had moved this group beyond their stuck spot.

I also realized that sometimes we have to explore the extreme and be willing to dream before we can pull back to the realms of the possible. Only when we consider factors that might be outside of our control do we realize how much power we really have. As the Haitian fourth- and fifth-grade teachers consider problems of absenteeism, some of the solutions they listed might be beyond the realm of possibility (like providing health care for students whose illnesses kept them away from school), but others (like forming a committee to check in with students who were absent twice in a row) seemed more feasible.

Listening to teachers in a country so close to the United States but distant in so many ways, I heard them problem-solve about some of the same issues discussed in faculty lounges in the U.S.: unmotivated students, tardies, students who talk too much, lack of resources. Although the causes of these challenges are different and more heart-breaking, solutions can be found in the same way: thoughtful support and collaboration.

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

This Jim Knight video about creating relationships to build classroom culture:



Podcasts from a variety of education experts:



Using Twitter in 5th grade reading workshop:


If you are fretting about the piles of student writing you’ll have to grade once school begins, here’s an idea to improve the feedback process and get rid of the piles!



Pinterest ideas for beginning the school year:



That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!

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