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Tough Nuts

A teacher who refuses to work with her grade-level team to design new units. A principal who is always upending your schedule with new responsibilities. A literacy coach who is in tears because she feels so isolated.  A participant who continually interrupts an in-service session with “Yeah but . . .” Tough Nuts are not easily defined, but you know one when you see it. They are the challenges that sit at the center of your forehead in the dead of night, robbing you of sleep. The stories of how we’ve dealt with these ongoing and immediate challenges are here.

Latest Content
Managing the Email Load

Jennifer Schwanke explains how she categorizes her emails and streamlines the time she spends reading them.

Always “On”: Reconsidering Connectivity

Gretchen Taylor writes about the promise and peril of new tech tools that allow teachers, students, and coaches to always be connected. She shares some questions to help teachers make wise choices about how they will use these tools in classrooms.

Advice for New Literacy Coaches: An Interview with Susan Avis

Susan Avis chats with Brenda Power about the delicate work of honoring the strengths of teachers while still pushing them beyond their comfort zones to improve skills.

A Test Run for Difficult Decisions

Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan describe a four-part protocol they use for working through their most challenging decisions.

Conflict: A Coach’s Perspective

Julie Johnson gives a coach's perspective on conflict with a teacher and how it was resolved.

Conflict: A Teacher’s Perspective

Scott Jones shares his experience of being in conflict with a coach. After an uncomfortable 24 hours, he ends up with some insights about the value of the teacher-coach relationship.

Persevere

Ruth Ayres realizes that sometimes the most important advice coaches can give to teachers is to just hang in there when things don't go as planned in reading workshops.

Bounce-Back Spirit

Ruth Ayres shares the "bounce-back spirit" all educators need through the inspiring story and video of Heather Dorniden.

From Worksheets to Workshops

A teacher asks first-year literacy coach Gretchen Taylor to observe and help with a disengaged student. Gretchen discovers in her observation that the issue may be that the literacy curriculum needs an update.

Helping with Management Challenges in First Grade

Melanie Meehan is coaching a first-grade teacher struggling with management. She shares her top four strategies for focusing students during minilessons.

Always Another Choice

Ruth Shagoury finds herself checking out during dysfunctional staff meetings. A mentor shares an anecdote and advice that helps her rethink her role with colleagues.

Honesty, Ignorance, and Building Relationships

How are leaders supposed to provide thoughtful insights when they don’t know much about what they are observing? Jennifer Schwanke shares how she builds her knowledge base and rapport with teachers when faced with gaps in her expertise.

Coaching Relationships: Move Closer

Melanie Quinn has a poor start in her coaching relationship with a teacher. She begins again by going against her natural instincts, and is surprised by the results.

Because It’s the Right Thing to Do

The staff at Melanie Quinn's school realizes they have created a monster with positive reinforcement through extrinsic rewards. Here is how they changed behaviors and expectations over a two-year period.

Leading a Demonstration Lesson: When It Doesn’t Go Well

In this brief video, Jennifer Allen talks in a leadership team meeting about the unsettling but valuable feedback she received from a principal and teacher on a demonstration lesson that didn't go well, and the reflection the feedback sparked.

Sign-In Sheets, Professionalism, and Being Human

Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan explain why they will not take responsibility for one record-keeping tool: the sign-in sheet for professional development sessions.

Breaking Away from the Team

Literacy coach Gretchen Taylor is stymied by a grade-level team with one dominant member. She needs to find creative ways to separate individual teachers from the "group-think" herd to guide and collaborate effectively.

Struggling Teachers? Don’t Force It

Melanie Quinn confronts the dilemma that vexes many coaches: how to support struggling teachers who are required to receive coaching, whether they want the help or not.

Failure to Norm

Gretchen Taylor watches her coaching unravel with a teacher, and slowly comes to realize that the problem is a lack of shared expectations.

Coaching Minute: Videos in the Selfie Age

In this quick video, Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher share an alarming experience: young teachers pulling out phones and other devices to take videos of instruction without permission. They discuss the need for school leaders to develop policies that tackle issues of privacy and permission.

What I Know for Sure: Reflection and Core Beliefs

Stella Villalba shares a reflection activity that centers her coaching and relationships with teachers and children.

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