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Getting Organized

Getting Organized

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Time to Plan

When the school doors close for the summer, literacy coaches and school leaders face the landscape of a blank calendar for the new school year. Ruth Ayres thinks through how to prioritize time in a way that supports your beliefs and values.

Coaching Minute: Rethinking Time

Jennifer Schwanke finds that one of the biggest changes in moving from teaching to leadership is control (or lack of it) over her time.

Helping Teachers Develop Their Own Chartbooks

Melanie Meehan personalizes learning for teachers by helping them develop chartbooks to use in workshops.

Student Centered and Teacher Driven: Coaching and Instructional Assessment

David Pittman tackles the "third rail" of literacy coaching: assessing instructional quality.

Celebrate and Reflect

Have you paused yet to celebrate all you’ve accomplished with teachers this year? Literacy coaches Cathy Mere and Kelly Hoenie take a few minutes to reflect on what has gone well and the learning they will carry forward over the summer.

Peer Observations with a Purpose

Dana Murphy works with teachers to design a peer-observation checklist to ensure everyone shares the same expectations and understanding.

Reading Specialists: Using a Common Observation Form

Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher work with reading specialists who are observing individual students to study the transition of skills from targeted support to work in the classroom. The observation form everyone uses includes an engagement inventory and key questions.

Dropping In Versus Scheduling

Ruth Ayres explains why setting a coaching schedule is crucial for success, even if the work is mundane and challenging at the same time.

Developing a Principal and Coach Partnership

Matt Renwick explains how he works as a principal to build a relationship with the school's literacy coach, including scheduling weekly meetings and sharing responsibilities in whole-staff meetings.

How Principals Can Help Build Teacher and Coach Connections

Principal Lee Snider explains why it is important for coaches to schedule in-class time with every teacher, and how principals can help in supporting this work.

Breakthroughs and Barriers: Going Schoolwide with a Literacy Initiative

What’s going well with literacy in your teaching community? What’s getting in the way? Matt Renwick considers breakthroughs and barriers in making literacy instruction more of a priority in his school.

When Email Isn’t Enough

Jennifer Schwanke finds that sometimes email can't take the place of face-to-face interactions. She explains why she doesn't let a quest to save time override consideration of when meetings are needed.

Going Google as a Literacy Leader

Matt Renwick combines principles for productivity with Google tools to organize his work.

Next-Thing Thinking and Google Keep

Stephanie Affinito has learned to focus closely on one task at a time and use technology to keep track of all the other things on the horizon.

Professional Learning Beyond PLCs

Matt Renwick shares three alternatives to PLCs that are less time intensive and can be integrated into existing meetings and routines.

Learning and Leading Through Teaching

If you want to understand the real concerns of teachers, you have to teach children. Not only in demonstrations, and not only collaboratively, but solo with the constraints any teacher faces. Matt Renwick explains how these experiences are invaluable for his work as a literacy leader.

Using Digital Tools for Instructional Walks

Matt Renwick avoided using digital tools during classroom visits in order not to intimidate teachers. He shares how over time his practice changed when he saw the power of some tools for expanding and extending his communication with colleagues.

Evaluation Season

Jennifer Schwanke shares the challenges of having honest conversations with teachers during evaluative sessions, acknowledging that her performance is being judged as well.

Preparing Teachers for Reading Over Breaks

Stephanie Affinito shares strategies for helping teachers build plans and excitement for reading over holiday and summer breaks.

Coaching Minute: Case Study Observation Form

Literacy coaches Heather Fisher and Kathy Provost talk about how their work with reading specialists has evolved by having the specialists focus on case studies of individual students, rather than spending much of their time focused solely on big data. They share a form they use to help reading specialists hone their observation skills.

When Teachers Design the Professional Development Calendar

Melanie Meehan finds that a simple process early in the year that gives teachers more control over the professional development plan builds excitement for new learning.

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