Poetry PD

If you are beginning to ponder opening activities for the school year, consider including poetry. Poetry distills meaning, filtering the extraneous and crystalizing the essential. Poetry with a specific focus related to teaching and learning can clarify thoughts about important ideas and give voice to feelings that might otherwise be left unsaid. PD poetry can include a blend of opportunities for both collaboration and individual composing. Finding just the right words, as required by poetry, can set the stage for deep conversation.
 
I tried this idea as a way to think about coaching, What are its essential characteristics? 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
 
Whether your focus is classroom discussion, differentiation, the standards, or some other important idea, including poetry could be just the unexpected twist to get a professional development day off on the right foot and get innovative ideas flowing.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

The importance of teacher reflection:
 
https://www.thoughtco.com/importance-of-teacher-reflection-8322
 
 
Using checklists and guiding questions in coaching:
 
https://www.schoolstatus.com/blog/using-checklists-and-guiding-questions-in-coaching
 
 
Summer professional growth ideas for instructional coaches:
 
https://simplycoachingandteaching.com/blog/2021/06/16/summer-professional-development/
 
 
Build trust with teachers through clear expectations:
 
https://barkleypd.com/blog/building-trust-with-expectations/
 
 
Coaching teachers’ mindsets:
 
http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol16/num10/mindset-coaching-for-mental-health.aspx
 
That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!

Want more coaching tips? Check out my book, Differentiated Mentoring & Coaching in Education: From Preservice Teacher to Expert Practitioner, available from Teachers College Press!  I’m so excited to share it with you! TODAY you can still use the code: JUN2024 for 20% off. Click  here  and I’ll email you the free Book Group Study Guide that includes questions, prompts, and activities you can use as you share the book with colleagues.  I hope you’ll love this book as much as I loved making it for you!

No More Teaching in the Shallow End

It’s easy to teach in the shallow end. Your feet touch the bottom. You can navigate with ease. But you aren’t fully immersed. You can’t dive in deep. And neither can your students.
 
Teaching in the shallow end might look like workbooks and photocopies. It might look like desks in rows. It might be pushing start on a video and letting it play all the way through. Let’s be honest: It might look like sustained silent reading. Book reading and film clips and the right handout could all lead to learning – but only if we get out of the shallow end.
 
When teachers get out of the shallow end, things get messy. Kids talk to each other, and that can be hard to monitor and control. Students move around the room, and that can cause chaos. Students have agency, and that makes teachers vulnerable. It can be very uncomfortable.
 
Instructional coaches can be a floaty in the deep end, offering support, making sure the teacher doesn’t drown in the details. Don’t push a teacher off the high-dive. Just encourage the jump and be there to tow her to the edge of the pool if needed. Or lull her gradually deeper, treading water alongside. Sometimes you have to get used to the temperature.
 
In my coaching right now, I’m challenging one teacher to go deeper by differentiating instruction. It’s complicated and requires a steadying hand. Another teacher wants to use small-groups more effectively; she’s going to try assigning roles. Someone else is adding conferring to silent reading time. Another I’m nudging to use different seating arrangements. I think she’s ready to dive in. I talked with another about handing out a blank sheet of paper instead of that worksheet. A scary thought. She’d rather have her feet on the bottom.
 
Which teachers at your school are swimming in the shallow end? What are some shallow-end practices you’ve wanted to change? (Please comment below – I want to know!) As instructional coaches, we encourage deep dives and are there when teachers come up for air.
 

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

6 benefits of play:
 
https://thegeniusofplay.org/tgop/benefits/genius/benefits-of-play/benefits-of-play-home.aspx
 
 
Have teachers design the PD calendar:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/when-teachers-design-the-professional-development-calendar/
 
 
Increasing engagement through choice, differentiation, and including students’ interests:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/giving-students-choice-classroom-increases-engagement
 
 
How to slow down the teaching treadmill (especially great to share with new teachers!):
 
http://roxannaelden.com/2017/10/how-to-turn-down-your-teaching-treadmill/#more-2869
 
 
Restore the JOY in teaching:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/restoring-joy-teaching/
 
 
That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!
 
Want more coaching tips? Check out my book, Differentiated Mentoring & Coaching in Education: From Preservice Teacher to Expert Practitioner, available from Teachers College Press!  I’m so excited to share it with you! TODAY you can still use the code: JUN2024 for 20% off. Click  here  and I’ll email you the free Book Group Study Guide that includes questions, prompts, and activities you can use as you share the book with colleagues.  I hope you’ll love this book as much as I loved making it for you!
---------------------------------
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Want to know about new posts? Click “Follow” (bottom right)
Follow on Instagram @Vicki_Collet_Educator, on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch and Twitter @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com

Big Reflection

At the end of the school year, teachers often pause to think back, reflecting on the year just past. To provide context, it can also be helpful to zoom out – to consider how this year fits with previous ones. Seeing the bigger picture offers perspective. How does this year track with others?
 
Looking at the long run bridges the past and the future, helping us to see patterns of change that might offer hope to help us weather the next storm. Understanding how this year fits within our career trajectory might help us stay the course.
 
I recently read about a career reflection process that could prompt useful discussions at an end-of-year or beginning-of-year faculty meeting.* Here’s how it goes: Each teacher will need their own piece of chart paper or a similarly-sized piece of bulletin board paper (turning it sideways works well). Draw a vertical line near the left edge for your y axis. Draw a horizontal line near the bottom edge for your x axis. Label the x axis with tick marks representing each year of teaching/education experience (novice teachers might look more closely, labeling semesters, quarters, or months). Label the y axis with tick marks for rating how well you think you did as a teacher/educator. Now, take some time to plot a point for each year. Next, annotate the graph with brief explanations (teachers with a long teaching history may choose to mark and annotate just those years that stand out). Annotations might include circumstances, mentors, new curricula, students, etc. (Creating your own graph in advance so that you can show it as a model might be helpful.)
 
Next it’s time for a gallery walk. The group walks the walls, visiting the charts and offering questions and noticings on added sticky notes. After the walk, give teachers some time to ponder their own poster again, with the ideas of others added. Then ask what they noticed about teaching’s low points. Were there commonalities? End by thinking together about patterns noted in the peaks. What made the high points high? How could we recreate those highs as we move forward?
 
This timeline is like an EKG that shows the heartbeat of your teaching life. The peaks and valleys tell a story with a plotline that will continue as the new year gets underway. Whether you are ending the year or thinking about how to start the next one, this look in the rearview mirror offers opportunities for big-picture reflection and panoramic insight.  
 
* https://triciaebarvia.org/2017/07/11/slice-of-life-embarrassment/

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

A word cloud generator to summarize teachers’ reflective responses:
 
https://www.freewordcloudgenerator.com/
 
 
Transitioning from teacher to coach:
 
https://blog.teachboost.com/establishing-trust-transitioning-from-teacher-to-coach
 
 
This video about high-quality discussions:
 
https://www.teachingchannel.com/free-videos/
 
 
Sidewalk Chalk math arouses curiosity:
 
https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/55961/how-sidewalk-math-cultivates-a-playful-curious-attitude-towards-math
 
 
A 10-minute podcast on engaging teenage learners:
 
http://www.coolcatteacher.com/beat-boredom-engaging-tired-teenagers-critical-thinking/
 
That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!
 
Want more coaching tips? Check out my book, Differentiated Mentoring & Coaching in Education: From Preservice Teacher to Expert Practitioner, available from Teachers College Press!  I’m so excited to share it with you! TODAY you can still use the code: JUN2024 for 20% off. Click  here  and I’ll email you the free Book Group Study Guide that includes questions, prompts, and activities you can use as you share the book with colleagues.  I hope you’ll love this book as much as I loved making it for you!
---------------------------------
Was this helpful?  Please share!
Want to know about new posts? Click “Follow” (bottom right)
Follow on Instagram @Vicki_Collet_Educator, on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch and Twitter @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com