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The Importance of Encouragement
Like many school districts around the country, we have been cultivating a learning culture, and instructional coaches are playing an increasingly important role. In our district, instructional coaches make up...
The Evolution of Data Meetings
Years ago as a reading specialist in one building, I began the data-wall journey with a giant data wall made out of pegboard with hooks and different-colored shapes for each...
Helping with Management Challenges in First Grade
One of the first-grade classrooms I have been working in is particularly challenging because of the students' overall attention span. It's one of those classrooms where it's hard to complete...
A Coach’s Toolbox: Transcribing Talk
Most of my time in classrooms is spent coteaching or teaching a demonstration lesson. My role as a literacy coach is a nonevaluative one, so I aim to be actively...
Professional Development Planning
Many times after a professional development session, I find myself playing a rewind game in my head—thinking about what I would have done differently, what I forgot to do, or...
Coaching Teachers to Support Gifted Learners
When I sit down with my colleagues to plan for reading workshop, the inputs can be overwhelming. In addition to the assessments we use in our own classrooms, and the...
Always Another Choice
Faculty meetings can be tough for me. Over the past year, I made a new commitment to try to contribute to the community without vying for power or inadvertently bumping...
No Cookies: Reflection and Celebration
At the beginning of the year, I started a coaching cycle right away with one of our district’s fourth-grade teachers. We had studied the data of the cohort heading her...
A Complicated Relationship with Standards
I have a complicated relationship with the Common Core State Standards. As our district’s writing specialist, I have come to terms with them for the most part, and I think...
Goal Setting with Google Spreadsheets
Early in the school year I was contacted by a fifth-grade teacher asking for a way to help her students keep track of their own learning and to set goals...
Why I Love Having a Coach
This year, our district put literacy and math coaches in place at the elementary level. I knew I’d love having a coach, but I had no idea how much I...
See Their Stories, Not Their Misbehaviors
Picture a glass jar filled with your favorite pens. Imagine every color of pen inside the jar. Red and turquoise, ocean blue and fuchsia, sunshine yellow and neon orange. There...
Implementing New Mandated Initiatives
An emotionally positive learning environment encourages learning by mitigating the big learning inhibitors: fear, ego, defenses, complacency, and arrogance. Edward Hess With a new school year come new initiatives...
Study Groups That Nourish the Soul
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed. Carl Jung Steven Wozniak was part of a...
Sign-In Sheets, Professionalism, and Being Human
You could feel the tension in the air as she quietly slipped in, trying to find her place without disrupting the session. Many of the professional development sessions we facilitate...
A Good Coach Is a Good Wingman
During World War I, the US Air Force started using a wingman pattern for their fighter jets. The wingman flies off the right wing and slightly behind the lead. The...
Struggling Teachers? Don’t Force It
Instructional coaches can find themselves in a difficult position when their supervisor, the building principal, requires a struggling teacher to access coaching. The circumstances become even more complicated when accessing...
Assessment and Response to Intervention
Lisa is a third grader who has been in intervention for two years. She was placed in intervention based on the results of a universal screener. This screener determined her...
Math, Literacy, and RTI
For several years, I’ve been lucky enough to work with the brilliant Amy Simmons, an instructional support teacher and “administrative intern” (a fancy name to describe an assistant principal). Part...
Repertoire: A Coach’s Perspective
In my writer’s notebook, I keep a list of words I love. One of my favorites is repertoire. I love spelling it. I love the way it sounds. And I...
Listening and Storytelling
Every spring I spend a few months working with a group of new teachers. And every spring, the image of a bridge returns to me. This mental picture of a...
