Coaching Currents

How do you spell coaching?  What are its essential characteristics? I pondered this question through poetry, hoping for insights, because poetry distills meaning, filtering the extraneous and crystalizing the essential.  Acrostic poetry, simple as it is, forces a focus on essential characteristics.  Here are my essential characteristics of coaching, acrostic style:

Collaborative

Open

Approachable

Collegial

Honors expertise

Invitational

Non-evaluative

Growth mindset

Or take a look at coaching through Haiku:

Listening harder

Real concerns swirl and surface

We make the current

If you are beginning to plan for opening activities for the school year, consider including poetry with a focus on teaching and learning.  Blend opportunities for both collaboration and individual composing.  Finding just the right words to describe these important processes can set the stage for deep conversation. 

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

Goal setting and Google spreadsheets:

https://leadliteracy.com/articles/398

When is off-task looking behavior really on-task:

https://www.edutopia.org/article/tyranny-of-on-task-andrew-miller

Lesson plan ideas for bringing poetry into K-5 classrooms:

http://www.nea.org/tools/lessons/bringing-poetry-to-the-classroom-grades-K-5.html

Recommit to reading (during the more leisurely summer months):

https://bookwhisperer.com/2016/05/24/the-eighth-annual-bookaday-challenge/

The importance of teacher reflection:

https://www.thoughtco.com/importance-of-teacher-reflection-8322

That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!

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