Lead Lit Article Type: Try It
Results
Mini (But Mighty) Ways to Connect with Teachers
Communication, the human connection, is the key to personal and career success. —Paul J. Meyer Maintaining consistent contact and connection with teachers is essential for a strong relationship between teachers...
Coaching Connections: Morning Rounds
“I feel like I haven’t seen you in a while.” This phrase strikes fear into my coaching heart. It means that I need to make more of an effort to...
Coaching Connections: Drop-In Visits
At the start of my first year as a literacy coach, I was more than a little overwhelmed by my new role. I needed to quickly build relationships with teachers,...
Using Photographs for Coaching Conversations
When beginning a coaching cycle, I typically start the conversation with student achievement goals. As I work side by side with a teacher, we start with a goal where we...
Using a Filtering Process to Make Data-Driven Intervention Decisions
In response to early literacy screening legislation, as well as a desire to better know all of our students, I advocated for our district to screen all our grade 3-5...
And I Quote: Coaching Through Quotes and Sayings
I excitedly grabbed my phone to capture the image of this sign while doing a little retail therapy one Saturday morning. Although my shopping cart and purse could not handle...
What Does Your Feedback Say About Your Coaching Relationships?
Walking out of Emily’s room, I had that post-coaching high. It had been the kind of meeting you leave knowing that you’ve pushed practice and impacted students all while sharing...
Crafting Coaching Conversations
“You know, I didn’t think the tool you shared with us at professional development last week was anything my class needed. I thought that by fourth grade, they had reading...
A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Screening Team
To effectively teach our students, we need to know their strengths and areas to grow. Our school, like all schools, gives a suite of assessments at various benchmark intervals during...
It’s Time to Pause: A PD Session to Reconnect with Core Values
Whatever things you go through, you stay true to who you are and your core values. —Sophie Gregoire Trudeau Being called to yet another meeting, with an already full to-do...
Goals Are Greater than Nice Conversations
If there’s no goal, it’s just a nice conversation. —John Campbell, Growth Coaching International I am still grappling with this quote. It hit me hard. Was I just having nice...
Aiming for a 5 on a Scale of 1–10
To help our schools gather fast, formative data to guide instructional steps, determine which students qualify for intervention services, and meet the requirement of our state's new dyslexia screening law,...
A Sense of Accomplishment: Four Strategies for Making Students’ Literacy Learning Visible
One of my first public social activities in 2020 was participating in a summer volunteer project. My city’s local arts school was offering a weekend course to learn how to...
Critical Questions that Lead to Powerful Change
“Does this practice, policy, or decision help or harm students from marginalized communities?” This is one of the questions that Alex Shrevin Venet wrote in her book Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education...
Bite-Sized PD
As an instructional coach, I sometimes worry how I’m going to continue to meaningfully share the aspects of new resources to support our frameworks. Recently we've been learning to add...
Affirm, Acknowledge, Ask: A Simple Protocol for Communicating Feedback
How do we let people know how they might improve if they are not ready to hear it? There are many situations in which the signals are clear that feedback...
Finding Reliable Digital Resources
One of the things I love about education is that it is always evolving. When tablets first became the rage all those years ago, I looked for ways to incorporate...
Coaching Minute: Find a Network of Coaches
Inga Omondi encourages instructional coaches to curate a network of others who are doing similar work.
One Powerful Way to Improve Your Strategic Plan
What would I eliminate if I had a magic wand? Overconfidence. —Daniel Kahneman, psychologist, Nobel Laureate, and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow Strategic plans are as common in schools...
And Other Duties As Assigned…
One of my favorite lines in my own and many other instructional coaches’ job description is “and other duties as assigned.” It is the gateway and loophole that both expands...
Encouraging Instructional Confidence
Teachers are teachers because they know everything . . . right? Teachers have all the answers. But what happens if we do not? What can you do as an instructional...
