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How to Let Go of Outdated Literacy Practices

Matt Renwick shares research, experience, and practical application to disrupt outdated literacy practices and make room for new ways of teaching and learning.

Coaching Minute: Listen Deeply

Instructional coach Staci Revere shares a key mantra to use when working with teachers, especially those who do not want to work with an instructional coach.

Offer a Mirror: How Coaches Empower Reflection

David Pittman unfolds a coaching process to provide teachers with a mirror so they can reflect deeply and discover their next instructional moves.

Have Coach, Will Travel

Stephanie Affinito is a traveling coach, with no office to call her own. She shares tips and tools for organizing and streamlining materials when you are constantly on the go between classrooms and schools.

Competitive Comparisons

Jen Schwanke explores the insecurities and fear that can set in when teachers tackle distance learning, as well as how to overcome them.

Remote Learning for Our Youngest Students

Jen Schwanke reflects on the challenges of helping our youngest learners with distance learning, and shares examples of how teachers she works with are meeting them.

Professional Renewal: Facilitating Change Within Ourselves

If we want others to change, we first have to be open to change within ourselves. But what does that look like, and how can we embrace the tension that change brings? Matt Renwick explores change from within for literacy leaders.

You Don’t Write? No Worries

“You don’t have to write to teach writers.” Cathy Mere finds is shocked when she hears a literacy coach make this statement. But the more she allows her conventional wisdom to be challenged, the more insight she has into helping teachers who don’t see themselves as writers.

Where Confidence Begins

Learning new things is sometimes hard, if only because it brings out our vulnerabilities and insecurities. This is particularly true for leaders, who are already supposed to know everything. Matt Renwick uses the experience of learning to build a fence to model learning for teachers.

Equitable Coaching

David Pittman is asked about the needs of primary teachers in a leadership team meeting. He suddenly realizes he has spent more time with intermediate teachers. This experience sets him on a quest to be more equitable with his coaching time.

Rethinking Homework

Melanie Meehan explores research findings on homework, and provides a series of prompts for thinking through with teachers how to revise homework practices to be more relevant and helpful for students and families.

What Do We Mean by Coachable?

We think of teachers who are easy to persuade and work with as being the most “coachable.” Stephanie Affinito explains why the teachers who challenge us may teach literacy coaches more.

Field Notes: Stories and Courage

Ruth Ayres shares how a principal changed the literacy story of his school from failure to success by having the courage to cultivate “lone nut” leaders.

What Happens Next Is What Defines Us

Stephanie Affinito reminds us that we all face challenges and discouraging situations when guiding teachers. What happens next when you pause and reset defines who you are as a literacy coach.

Tackling Coaching Challenges

Stephanie Affinito shares a protocol with reflective questions to help literacy coaches make professional development opportunities more relevant for teachers.

Aligning Commercial Practices with Excellent Literacy Instruction

Matt Renwick explores how literacy leaders can help teachers stay true to a shared vision of instruction and learning as they explore commercial program options.

The Hole in Your Swing

The hole in your swing is your greatest weakness as a literacy leader. Matt Renwick explains how you can face your own vulnerability as a literacy leader and tackle it head-on.

Becoming More Strategic in Coaching Stressed Teachers

From shorter meetings to tapping data in creative ways, Ruth Ayres shares her best tips for supporting stressed teachers.

Clearing the Plate: Helping Teachers Feel Free, Not Full

David Pittman is stunned when a teacher he is coaching begs off from more work together. The experience helps him reassess how he collaborates with overwhelmed colleagues.

The Third Rail: Coaching and Instructional Assessment

David Pittman finishes a coaching cycle with a teacher and realizes his hesitancy to evaluate the teacher during his classroom visits hinders any celebration of the teacher's growth during their time together.

Ms. Perfectly Nice

Dana Murphy understands the quiet go-along teacher she meets in professional development settings, if only because she sometimes was that person in the past. She shares strategies for challenging those agreeable folks to speak up and reflect more deeply on their practice.

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