Reflections on 2007 Instructional Coaching Conference Learning Carousel: Chapter 7

2007 Instructional Coaching Conference Learning Carousel: Chapter 7

The Big 4

A way to find beginning points to help teachers.

How have you clarified your expectations to your students?

With expectations, you need to reteach the classroom management rituals through out the year.

Use tools to observe what students are doing in relationship to the teacher.  Then help the teachers set goals to have better student behaviors that support learning.

Instructional basics - offer ways to increase effectiveness of their instruction - I do it, we do it, you do it model. 

Work with teachers to increase skills at questioning. Make a list of all the questions a teacher asks in a class.  At what level of Blooms taxonomy do those questions fall?

Advance and post organizers - teachers often neglect to use them.

Content enhancement - routines that include unit and course organizer, framing routines, clarifying table, and formative assessment. 

Sometimes you just need to pick one and start there - management or instruction but sometimes a little bit of both is necessary. Observing what a teacher does that works and reinforce that teacher behavior to help students.

PLAN planning model

HALO - high, average, low, and other students

Teachers sometimes need more support than we think they need.

Sometimes you need to challenge expectations that teachers have of their students.

Reflections on 2007 Instructional Coaching Conference Learning Carousel: Chapter 5

2007 Instructional Coaching Conference Learning Carousel: Chapter 5

Getting teachers on board and finding a starting point

What does change look like? p. 87 spiral model of change
96% will fall back into old habits

Where is the person in the cycle of change? We are looking at transformation.

A school that is making progress is not a straight linear path.  We must keep going after regrouping and restrategizing.  How do we talk with teachers to get them involved?

Teachers will act differently alone than they would when they are in a group. Small groups are further.

If we are expecting resistance, get the smallest group of teachers possible. Sometimes we need to neutralize negativity.

We need to find out what the teachers care about.

Reflections on 2008 Instructional Coaching Conference with Jim Knight: An Overview fo Instructional Coaching

2008 Instructional Coaching Conference with Jim Knight: An Overview of Instructional Coaching

Four Big Goals for areas of growth through coaching
1. classroom management
2. content planning
3. instruction
4. assessment for learning

http://vimeo.com/16323658
#1 Time - need to spend more time coaching, rather than other things

Negotiate how my time will be spent with Mrs. Fuchs

Big Rocks First!
Think about roles and projects within those roles in a word document

Have a ritual of when we actually sit down to think about these roles and projects

Unfortunately this doesn't work, you have to cut something out in order to really do what is necessary. I have to learn how to say NO!

book "power of the positive NO!"

"I have to say no because I have made a commitment to something that is more important to me."

#2 Relationships
Affirmations - find a way that you can connect with them. Go into the situation expecting the good in someone.

Look for common denominators. Avoid common dividers.

Align yourself emotionally to connect, rather than judge when someone is hot from an issue.

#3 Walk-throughs
Must be tied to specific teaching practice
internal commitment precedes external commitment.

#4 Workshops
They make a difference even when there are people who get annoyed by them. It introduces things that are being introduced. Must have supported professional learning afterward.

Use practice, not just theory in th workshop.

#5 Reflection
They must have autonomy - someone else cannot do the thinking for other teachers. Teachers will resist this.

Reflection is having the chance to say NO!

#6 Trust
credibililty plus reliability plus intimacy (feel comfortable talking to them) divided by self-focus (the more it is about the other person or their students and the less it is about me, the better)

#7 Experience
People are not persuaded by talk ( the water pump story).
Want to try this out for yourself and then see what you want to use. Set up an experience for them to experiment for themselves and then they will be persuaded.

#8 Evaluating coaching programs.

#9 Teaching Practices

#10 Community
Teachers do not generally come to a workshop excited about professional learning. Conduct one to one interviews before whole group workshops. Some people are better not to be at the workshop because they would be destructive to the team.

Coaches are used to build the cohesiveness between teachers who come to the workshops with support to teachers after the workshop.

Intensive learning teams focused on practical teaching moves things forward.

A coach can't hold teachers accountable and provide support - it will backfire.

Don't keep meeting with people who don't want coaching support. It won't help the most kids by doing that.