Lead Lit Article Type: Try It
Results
Incorporating Kids into Professional Development for Adults
Working in a diverse district, I’m thoughtful about the videos I use with educators. I’ve learned that if the students don’t look like the kids in our classrooms, the learning...
Collecting PLC Data with Google Forms
Like so many others, my district has adopted the professional learning communities (PLCs) model as one of our main sources for professional development. In doing so, we give teachers the...
Quick Check-ins: Touching Base Before Coaching Sessions
Coaching places teachers’ self-esteem and professional respect on the line, because it exposes how teachers teach, how they think about teaching, and how they plan for teaching to the scrutiny...
A Small Group Coaching Cycle in Action
Success! That’s the word that comes to mind as I reflect on a recently wrapped up small group coaching cycle. This particular group consisted of two kindergarten teachers, both new...
Something to Talk (and Write) About
Amy, a literacy coach, invited me to sit in on a first-grade team meeting. She had had a breakthrough with the group and wanted some input for next steps with...
Exploring Themes in the Intermediate Grades
At a recent third-grade team meeting we unpacked Common Core Standard #2. We looked at the standard, asking ourselves what it means and how might we teach it: R.L....
Video and the Thoughtful Coach
Three years ago I began video-recording teachers during lessons. It seemed like a win-win. The teacher would reflect on what went well and what needed tweaking inside their lessons, and...
Clarity and Connection: The Language of Change
Effective leaders are able to articulate their most important ideas with clarity, and they use language that emotionally connects with their audience. Connection creates meaning, and change will not occur...
Days of Magic and Wonder: Generating Research Topics with First Graders
mag·ic (noun) -- Encarta Dictionary conjuring tricks -- conjuring tricks and illusions that make apparently impossible things seem to happen, usually performed as entertainment inexplicable things -- a special, mysterious,...
Assessing Students: Many Hands for a Lighter Load
Many of our informative assessments are administered individually. The benefit of these assessments is the opportunity they provide to notice which reading strategies each student uses, what the child comprehends,...
10 Steps to a Literacy Vision
Being forward-looking—envisioning exciting possibilities and enlisting others in a shared view of the future—is the attribute that most distinguishes leaders from non-leaders. ...
Alignment and Community: Planning a Year of Professional Development Opportunities
The role of the leader is to enable, facilitate, and cause peers to interact in a focused manner. Peer interaction is the social glue of focus and cohesion. Michael Fullan...
Coaching Minute: Writing Objectives
Heather Rader explains why it is important to write an objective before any professional development meeting, and shares a succinct example. While I’m comfortable writing objectives for the classrooms...
Speaking to Adults Through Books
When I had a child who worried about being different from her playmates, I curled up and read The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. Maya summed up the story...
Reading to Students
Three times a year, I offer to be a guest reader in each of the 25 classrooms in our K-5 elementary school where I am the principal. I am quite...
Coaching the Coach
I believe “Every teacher deserves a coach.” I believe that every teacher deserves to work in warm collaboration with a trusted colleague, looking closely at her practice or thinking deeply...
Introducing the Writing Common Core Standards: Planning for Professional Development
When I began to plan for how introducing the Common Core State Standards in Writing with a key group of leaders in our district, I kept these words of wisdom...
Introducing the Common Core Standards in Writing (Part 2)
Facilitating big-picture professional development in writing for teacher leaders takes careful time and planning to make the best use of everyone’s time. We began our morning with this objective: “We...
Building Community Protocols
When we plan professional development sessions, inservice courses, and literacy team meetings, we are always on the lookout for new ways to build community within the group so that everyone...
Walk-Arounds: Gathering Data to Test Assumptions
As an instructional leader, I am subjected to tattling. You are probably assuming I mean tattling on the part of children, but you'd be surprised. I am referring to teachers...
Tips for More Effective Debriefing Sessions
We do a lot of demonstration lessons in our coaching work. Lately we have been reflecting on how we structure these sessions. We find the debriefing of the lesson to...
