Friday, March 26, 2021

Encouraging Energizing Stretch

You could probably make a long list of reasons why teaching is a challenging activity. Among the challenges is the fact that no two days are ever the same, no two classes are ever the same, no two lessons are ever the same. Both students and teachers bring varied knowledge and experiences with them when they step into the classroom each day. The infinite possible combinations make teaching a challenging, problem-solving activity.
 
Reflective conversations and assessment analyses provide a process of discovery that Invites teachers to uncover needs. One of the roles a coach can play is to make a challenge concrete. When we name a challenge clearly, we open a problem-solving conversation and define an opportunity for growth. These challenges require stretch between what we currently know or can do and what needs to be known or done. After clearly naming the opportunity, coaches can generate questions to be grappled with together – questions so hard that answering them requires learning. Curiosity creates change.
 
This year, some districts have turned to scripted curricula they felt would allow for easier pivots between face-to-face and remote learning. Prescribed, whole-class phonics lessons created a challenge in Katie’s first-grade classroom because some students had already mastered the prescribed skill while others weren’t yet ready for it. Katie executed the lesson plan well, but as we reflected, I asked questions about individual student’s responses that illuminated their differing abilities. I made the challenge concrete by saying, “These scripted lessons are meeting the needs of some students, but other students’ needs aren’t being met.” Then I asked, “How could these phonics lessons be differentiated in simple ways?”
 
The conversation that ensured included brainstorming and then choosing specific strategies that would fit seamlessly into upcoming lessons without disrupting the pacing of the lesson or causing too much extra work for Katie, who is already carrying extra responsibilities during this pandemical year. It was a comfortable stretch.
 
To encourage stretch that is energizing, coaches reframe challenges as opportunities and demonstrate confidence. Asking questions is an assurance of faith in a teacher’s capacity. When teachers engage their brainpower and generate answers, they are invigorated and motivated. Powerful work is done when teachers stretch in response to the opportunity presented by a challenge.

This week, you might want to take a look at:
 
Ideas for 1-minute PD:
 
https://blog.teachboost.com/one-minute-pd
 
 
Positioning diversity as a strength:
 
https://ncte.org/blog/2020/02/working-toward-culturally-responsive-assessment-practices/
 
When teachers share “small moment” stories, so do students:
 
https://ccira.blog/2021/02/23/share-small-moments-priming-students-to-tell-their-stories/
 
 
5 stages of implementation:
 
https://instructionalcoaching.com/article-moving-from-talk-to-action-in-professional-learning/
 
 
Best tips for celebrating student writing:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/sharing-writing-in-a-class-celebration/

That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!

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Saturday, March 20, 2021

Seeding Ideas

Today is the first day of spring – that time of newness and growth, of birth and planting. As tree buds begin to burst, I’ve been thinking of how coaching is like planting seeds. We seed recommendations, questions, and opportunities. We provide starting points.

For teachers to be invested in the work of change, they have to want it. Change is an inside job. If we simply state what the change should be and how it should occur, there may be little investment on the part of the teacher. To become engaged, there needs to be investment. Once there is investment, the teacher will want to see return on that investment. Planting seeds of ideas is better than transplanting fully-developed plans.

Seeding Recommendations

When we seed ideas by recommending, it helps to drop a few seeds in the ground and see which ones take root. When I talked this week with a teacher who wants to improve classroom management, I asked her to list some of the things that work for her students. Since we were having a standing-up conversation in her room, I stepped toward the whiteboard and quickly jotted down her ideas as she spoke, occasionally prompting, “And what else?” Once she had a pretty good list, I added a few more ideas that I thought might be useful. Then I asked, “Which of these do you think would be most helpful to focus on?” She selected one, and it is already beginning to take root.

Seeding ideas and then seeing which will grow can be a valuable coaching approach. The process of exploration and discovery sparks curiosity and the teacher begins to develop the will and the energy for the challenge. Rather than pointing out a gap, the space between the now and the new creates a stretch that initiates intrigue and draws the teacher in.

Seeding Questions

When we seed ideas, we provide a starting point but not a complete solution. We generate more questions than answers. Because answers aren’t yet clear, there is work for the teacher to do, and the work creates buy-in. Teachers feel motivated to take up the challenge. My recent conversation with Angela about student engagement was seeded with the question, “What might be some of the reasons why students seemed less enthusiastic by the end of the lesson?” Angela generated several ideas and decided to focus on pacing, especially paying attention to how much modelling or explanation is needed before moving on. Planting one question and then opening space for thinking and response encouraged Angela to stretch her intellectual muscles and take up the challenge.

 Questions create a vacuum between the known and the needs-to-be-known, a motivating tension that needs resolution. The weight of the thinking is on the teacher, as she is expected to fill in the blanks. By asking, “Why?” and “What would it take…” coaches ask questions that let teachers take ownership, find answers, and become intellectually engaged. Questions generate possibilities. As teachers develop a serious case of curiosity, they build energy and will for the task.

Seeding Opportunities

Whether through recommendations or questions, coaches seed opportunities for instructional growth.  Recommendations and questions may shine a light that illuminates a need. Full effort comes when teachers see a need, discover an opportunity, and challenge themselves.

When coaches provide a starting point but not a complete solution, teachers create their own openings and define their plans for growth. When coaches provoke thinking, teachers see the opportunity for themselves. The process of discovery creates a forward pull. Seeding ideas nurtures instructional growth.

This week, you might want to take a look at:
 
Daily practices that bring culture into instruction:
 
https://ncte.org/blog/2018/01/culturally-responsive-teaching-todays-classrooms/
 

Or listen to this podcast about PLC conversations that increase collective responsibility:
 
https://barkleypd.com/blog/creating-plc-converstions-that-increase-collective-responsibility/
 

Research-based reading instruction – what every child needs every day:
 
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar12/vol69/num06/Every-Child,-Every-Day.aspx
 

Steps to personalized mindfulness in schools:
 
http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol13/1310-mosca.aspx
 

That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!

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Follow on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch or Twitter @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com 


Saturday, March 13, 2021

Stepping Back: The Cha-Cha of Coaching

Cha-cha!
In the water cycle, H2O moves from liquid to vapor to liquid again in ongoing iterations, be it rain or sleet or snow or hail. The rhythm of coaching repeats in much the same way, hopefully as an upward spiral with new content or processes as the next focus. The GIR model circles through modelling, recommending, questioning, affirming, and praising progressively as needed (see the GIR model, below).
 
I reminded myself of this idea as I worked with Annie this week.  In the past, coaching conversations have included lots of questions and affirming as Annie focused on more-regularly including student-to-student discussion in her lessons. I had asked about prompts for whole-class discussion and applauded her frequent use of short turn-and-talk opportunities, especially as a pre-writing activity. Now we were moving on to focus on responsive teaching. Annie wants to keep a tight focus on individual student needs while continuing to move forward with the required standards. She wondered what this balancing act might look like in practice.
 
Modeling didn’t seem necessary, but I did make some recommendations based on an observation of a social studies lesson. I looked to my notes for a positive example of Annie’s responsiveness. When Annie had asked about the different branches of the government, a student said, “Congress makes laws.” Annie prompted, emphasizing the word “branches.” She continued with follow-up questions and information until the student was able to list all of the branches. This is the kind of responsive teaching Annie was going for, and she already had an example of it from her own teaching!
 
But Annie wanted to improve, and responsive teaching that is adaptive to students’ needs is a worthy goal! So together we talked through the more-recent math lesson until we identified a time when teaching was less responsive, an opportunity for improvement. It seemed her monitoring of the class during independent work time had been somewhat superficial. When I mentioned this example, Annie chalked it up to lack of time: “There’s never enough time to check in with as many students as I’d like to,” she said.
 
“Time is always an issue,” I affirmed, but I felt that digging deeper would be helpful.  For example, during the lesson a student had raised her hand to say she had finished the fraction problems she was working on, Annie perused the paper quickly and gave her a new problem to work on the back of the paper, without noticing that the student had incorrectly labeled figures on the work she had completed. This was a lost learning opportunity!
 
confer effectively and efficiently during students’ independent work time.
To help Annie confer effectively and efficiently during students’ independent work time,  I recommended that Annie might want to have a mental checklist in mind as she perused the room during independent work time. Having clarity about what she was looking for would help Annie
 
As this new coaching cycle began, our focus on responsive teaching took Annie and I through various coaching moves. Sometimes I stepped backward to recommend, even when there was a lot to affirm in the teaching.
 
Robert Brault defined an optimist as “someone who knows that taking a step backward after taking a step forward is not a disaster, it’s a cha-cha.” The GIR model can guide coaching moves as we cha-cha our way forward!


You might also want to take a look at:
 
A podcast on the positive potential of social media in education:
 
https://www.baAmradionetwork.com/track/social-media-in-education-is-still-evolving-how-can-we-maximize-its-positive-potential/
 
 
A short video on student engagement:
 
https://studysites.corwin.com/highimpactinstruction/videos/v12.2.htm
 
Steps to personalizing mindfulness in schools?
 
http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol13/1310-mosca.aspx
 
 
Time to celebrate:  Publishing parties for authentic writing purpose:
 
http://wonderteacher.com/8-tips-for-a-great-publishing-party/
 
 
NCTE’s position statement on diversity as a strength:
 
https://ncte.org/blog/2020/02/working-toward-culturally-responsive-assessment-practices/
 
That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!
 
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Follow on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch or Twitter @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com

Saturday, March 6, 2021

Coaching for Power


As instructional decisionmakers, teachers are given the responsibility to respond to the specific needs of their students. Even when following a tight curriculum, there is maneuver between the words on a curriculum resource and their enactment in the classroom. Helping teachers recognize the purpose, power, and impact of those maneuvers increases their efficacy and improves their practice.
 
In a district where I am coaching, the district has adopted new curriculum resources this year and expects them to be followed.  Because of the pandemic, district leaders decided it was important to have everyone literally on the same page, ready to pivot as needed to online instruction. There have been challenges as teachers work to fit the curriculum to their students. Illuminating the value of the decisions teachers are making about implementation has been helpful.
 
I talked with Penni this week about a scripted phonics lesson in her first-grade classroom.  They were learning about r-controlled vowels. I first asked Penni to list all the things she did during the lesson that were not in the curriculum resource. She thought of a couple quickly: She had added a picture of a shark to start off the lesson. She explained that her kids love animals, and since the word “shark” includes the targeted /ar/ sound, she thought it would get their attention, give them a chance to feel the /ar/ sound in their mouths, and get the lesson off to a good start. She was right!
 
Penni also described the sticky-note exit ticket she added at the end of the lesson, where students spelled words with the target r-controlled vowels they had discussed in the lesson. She talked about what good information that quick closure had given her. She had a better sense of who still needed support.
 
I prompted Penni about a couple of other self-initiated steps she had taken along the way. For example, rather than using choral response for all of the phonemic awareness activities (“Say store. Now say it again, but don’t say /t/”), Penni had occasionally called on individual Ss. This gave her the chance to differentiate (using harder examples with those who were ready for them), and it also kept students more focused.
 
After reading a poem chorally, rather than asking for students to raise their hands and tell her the words they could find that contained r-controlled vowels, she had students come to the Smart Board and point them out. Penni asked the other students, who were still in their seats, to point or give hints about where to find the words. These opportunities, which included movement, were important for first-graders.
 
The examples above were mostly planned for. Penni had decided in advance what would work best for her students. There were also in-the-moment decisions that went beyond the directions provided in the curriculum resource. For example, the lesson included a Smart Board word sort with different spellings for the /er/ sound. Penni quickly realized that students were having difficulty deciding which of the three pictures (spur, bird, fern) the words belonged under because they didn’t know the spelling pattern for the /er/ sound in these words. Once she labelled the columns by writing the word under the image, the sort proceeded smoothly. Penni used what she knew about students’ background knowledge to make an adjustment on the fly.
 
After talking about a few more examples, I asked Penni, “What impact do you think these extra touches had?” She described how frequent opportunities to talk with partners helped kids process the information and how overall she felt her adjustments increased student engagement, allowed her to differentiate the lesson, and gave her more information about students’ abilities.
 
Whether a teacher is using a scripted curriculum or creating lessons from scratch, conversations about instructional decision-making support their agency as they define and refine best practices for their students.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:
 
Inviting the voice of all students into the classroom:
 
https://www.teachingchannel.com/blog/english-learners-voice
 
 
A podcast with strategies to help students develop self-reflection skills:
 
https://jackstreet.com/jackstreet/WASCD.EL.ventura.cfm
 
 
Using the reading notebook cover:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/using-reading-notebook-covers-for-reflection-and-goal-setting/
 
 
Caring for colleagues in crises:
 
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec20/vol78/num04/Caring-for-Colleagues-in-Crisis.aspx
 
 
Short video clips about using coaching in performance development:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XK_VTGJ12E
 
That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!
 
Was this helpful?  Please share!
Want to know about new posts? Click “Follow” (bottom right)
Follow on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch or Twitter @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com