The theme running through my work
yesterday was that of the “different” teacher.
It started in the morning when a mentor teacher described the
soft-spoken student teacher she’s working with.
“At first, I thought she was just too quiet,” Ruth (the mentor)
said. “But then I watched how she waited
for students to pay attention. I saw how
the kids settled into her quiet tone. I
realized she didn’t have to be like me.”
Another mentor chimed in, “I have to keep telling myself, ‘She doesn’t
have to be a mini me. She can do things
her own way.”
In the evening, I was talking with Jeff,
a teacher who reminisced about his own experiences as a secondary student. He described the direct-instruction teacher
he had in middle school who stayed in his mind because of the skills that were
developed through that teacher’s insistence.
Jeff contrasted that impactful teacher with another whose teaching took
a more social approach, including lots of discussion and small-group work. He described how both teachers, with such
different instructional methods, were ones he remembered as effective. They lived on in his mind because of their
impact on him as a learner.
Later, I opened Ralph Fletcher’s book,
What A Writer Needs, and read about
characteristics of a teacher as writing mentor.
He talked about what a writing teacher does when he encounters a student
whose writing is drastically different from his own. “A true mentor will not
try to penalize the student or clone a duplicate of himself,” Fletcher says (p.
16). Let’s translate that into coaching
terms:
As coaches, we may encounter a teacher
whose approach is dramatically different from our own, and different from the “species
of excellence” that we believe in.
Should we try to remake that teacher to become more like ourselves? Or, can we be open to the possibility of
something new that works equally well?
We’ve all heard of the “reading wars” –
a supposed debate between one way of teaching reading and another. It turns out there’s more myth than truth in
that battle, once you look at research and expert opinion. Ronna Flippo, in her book, Reading
Researchers in Search of Common Ground, found that experts from
divergent perspectives agreed on many common best practices, and that these practices
are supported by a substantive body of research. Similarly, if we strip away differences in
style, we may find that, hidden underneath, the same best practices are used by
different kinds of teachers.
Fletcher says writing mentors need to
be “forever alive to the possibility of something new and distinctly original.” Similarly, as coaches, we can be curious
about a teacher who seems different, pay close attention, as Ruth did, to
students’ responses, and help teachers uncover the best practices in their own
instruction so that they can use them with more intention.
This week, you
might want to take a look at:
Planning
to include collaborative learning – mix-pair-share and jot thoughts:
It’s
not the end of the year yet, but teachers might be ready to start thinking
about these ideas:
I’ve
always thought we should have mentors, not
just mentor texts, for our writing,
and this post gives some great suggestions for making that happen:
If
you are in a dual role (coaching and teaching), you might find some helpful
insights here:
Only
a teacher understands the absolute boredom that ensues when monitoring
standardized tests. Here are a few
things to do during those hours: J
and
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