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Protecting Your Coaching Time
It was 3:00 p.m. when the dismissal bell rang. Some students bolted from the building to head for home, and others chatted loudly in the bus line. I emerged from...
Culture for Coaching Part 4: Schoolwide Coaching Cycles
This is the final article in a series of four articles about creating a culture for effective coaching. After a base of common expectations, trust, and skills have been established,...
Using Stories to Launch Writers’ Notebooks
Twenty-two fourth graders are gathered on our blue carpet framed by bookshelves. One of us is perched on our stool, Fireflies! by Julie Brinckloe in hand, scanning the faces in...
Is Writing Essential?
Sam, my son, writes with me every Saturday morning. It’s a long-standing tradition. One day he asked, “May I use your phone? I want to figure out the word for...
School-to-Home Journals
I love school-to-home journals. I’m talking about the type where a student writes a letter to someone at home once or twice a week, and that someone—a parent, usually, but...
Starting a Coaching Cycle: The First Meeting
First impressions are everything. As an instructional coach, half the battle is getting teachers interested in coaching cycles. The other half of the battle is making a good first impression....
Dabbling: Reviving a Focus on Play
It was April, and we were beginning our final unit of study in writing workshop—narrative nonfiction. Coincidentally, my own National Poetry Month poem-a-day project was narrative nonfiction—poems inspired by the...
Planning for a Narrative Writing Unit of Study
When we take a vacation to Disney World, our family has almost as much fun planning the trip as we do going on it. Once we decide how we’ll get...
Humor Writing with Teens
I love seeing funny people perform. I regularly watch Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, Inside Amy Schumer, and Saturday Night Live. Although it takes a talented performer to get...
Authentically Curious
When I first received the note from a member of the staff, my initial reaction was shock. "I feel like I don't really know you, nor do you really know...
Culture for Coaching Part 2: Resistance to Cycles
This is the second in a series of four articles about creating a culture for effective coaching. Working together as a principal and instructional coach, we took steps to build...
Culture for Coaching Part 3: Baby Steps for Launching Cycles
This is the third article in a series of four articles about creating a culture for effective coaching. After small and patient steps, coaching cycles are implemented. As the middle...
Creating a Manifesto
The better you know yourself, the better your relationship with the rest of the world. —Toni Collette The words rattled around my ears and tapped the low beat of...
My Five Objectives for the Start of the School Year
As a high school teacher with a short 42-minute period in which to teach all of the standards, I find it hard not to feel the pressure to get things...
The Awkward Chair
A colleague of mine recently presented an excellent professional development session about how school leaders can become experts in facilitating effective IEP or RTI meetings. These types of meetings are...
Culture for Coaching Part 1: Introduction
This is the first in a series of four articles about creating a culture for effective coaching. It begins with a problem and a brave, counterintuitive response from a principal...
Professional Reboot
Last year, my assistant principal and I had a conversation in which we talked about ways we could both grow as administrators. I recommended that he seek out a way...
Summer Quiet and the Three Rs
There are two types of quiet in schools: school-is-in-session quiet and summer quiet. School-is-in-session quiet is when students are in their classrooms, working on their personal reading and writing projects...
Reading Workshop Non-Negotiables
For the first time in my 15-year teaching career, I have taken on the opportunity of having a student teacher. So far, this experience has been wonderful, and it has...
Joy
The minilesson ended, and 23 first-grade writers launched into their stories—a flurry of paper and possibilities—as one sat paralyzed on his carpet square. Shoulders hunched, face flushed, head resting heavily...
Reconsidering Reading Workshop Routines
Scheduling and the game of Jenga have a lot in common . . . This is something my building principal says when launching a scheduling meeting with classroom and support...
