“It doesn’t have to end here.” So claimed the PowerPoint slide at the end of my professional development classes in the past. With this statement, along with my contact information and a hopeful sales pitch, I attempted to communicate to teachers that I was poised and eager to support their implementation of a new concept. Usually it worked. The participants would file out of the room, and one or two teachers would stay behind, expressing an interest in coaching around the topic taught in the class.
“They like me!” Sally Field’s famous line would ring in my head. “They really like me!” Any opportunity to provide coaching around content that I’ve taught in professional development makes me a little giddy.
Only one problem . . . I started to notice that the same colleagues were taking me up on my offer. I found myself in the same classrooms over and over again. Those ongoing coaching relationships have always been rewarding, but I wondered whom I might not be reaching. In my experience as a coach, teachers who engage in embedded classroom support tend to not only implement newly learned strategies, but do so with greater fidelity and longevity than those who do not. Now in my fourth year of coaching, I have had numerous opportunities to provide that type of support with the “goers.” I was looking to work with teachers who hadn’t opted to collaborate with a coach in the past. A subtle shift in how I chose to end a recent class helped me do just that.
Exit Slips for Classroom Entry
Exit slips usually mark the end of my professional development classes. I value the feedback I receive from participants, and consider it as I plan future classes. For this particular class, I shifted my purpose. Included in my exit slip were two questions that prompted participants to reflect on their new learning, typical of exit slips I’ve created in the past. This time, however, I added something new, hoping that I would reach my goal of providing embedded support with teachers new to coaching. Gone was the PowerPoint slide with contact information, gone was the perky “I’m here for you” spiel. At the bottom of the exit slip, I included a brief and direct survey. Participants were asked to check the box that best fit their need for support from a coach.
What I wrote:
I would like to support your implementation of this concept. Please check the box that fits for you:
- I would like to collaborate with a coach on this concept.
- I would like a coach to check in with me in a few weeks, so that I have time to decide what type of support fits for me.
- I will contact you when/if I am interested in collaborating around this concept.
This simple addition generated the results I had hoped for. In a class of 20 people, I had four teachers ask for coaching connected to the content right away. Three more asked me to contact them after they had had an opportunity to try on the concept for a week or two. With the exception of one person, all of these respondents were teachers I’d be working with for the first time.
In contacting those teachers via email, I found that their interest in deepening their content understanding through coaching was genuine. Since then, I have found myself in classrooms new to me, engaged in purposeful and meaningful coaching.
Although my offer of support delivered through PowerPoint and smiles was genuine, it wasn’t doing enough to generate relationships that resulted in increased student learning through effective implementation. Coaching in my district is, and will remain, optional. This simple addition to an exit slip opened doors for a new group of teachers to take advantage of that option, proving that it really “doesn’t have to end here.”
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Click here to download an exit slip to use after your next professional learning session.
