Lead Lit Topic: Coaching Support Structures
Some literacy leaders receive extensive training for working with adult learners, but most of us do not. As you move between the stances of coach, collaborator and consultant, you’ll need support structures in place for defining your role, communicating with administrators, advocating for your position with a school board and more. Here you’ll find reflections and how-tos that respond to the question, “Who coaches the coach?”
Results
Revising Bookrooms to Support Engagement and Instruction
When we think about the school bookroom, the first word that comes to mind is options. Bookrooms can include texts for all aspects of reading and writing workshop so we as...
Reflections on the First Six Weeks Coaching
Samantha Munnecke chats with Heather Rader about learning and surprises from her first six weeks as a literacy coach.
Advocating for English Language Learners
I recently worked with a team of teachers on a committee to interview candidates for an open position working with English language learners. We all gathered around a large conference...
Hiring Teachers for English Language Learners
As our schools become more and more diverse, educators have had to prioritize the needs of students who have limited skills with speaking, reading, and writing in English. As a...
Back-to-School PowerPoints
I remember my husband gently grabbing my arm as I started to raise my hand to ask a question at my daughter’s Back-to-School Night. We had clearly been instructed that...
Coaching Minute: Working with New Coaches
In this brief video, Amanda Adrian talks about the importance of considering how to integrate new coaches into ongoing study groups and teams that have worked together for years.
Coaching New Teachers
Coaching is an opportunity to be a "thought partner" in a challenging and rewarding profession. The majority of educators with whom I connect on a daily basis understand my role...
Coaching Minute: Supporting New Coaches
Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher share tips for how veteran coaches can support new colleagues in this short video.
Developing Coaching Skills Together
We have a small group of literacy coaches in my district. There are four of us, and we have become a rather tight-knit group. We meet together monthly to discuss...
Changing Two Words
Teachers can position children as competitors or collaborators, and themselves as referees, resources, or judges, or in many other arrangements. A teacher’s choice of words, phrases, metaphors, and interaction sequences...
Empowering the Reading Team
One of our district goals this year is to give our paraprofessionals more in-depth training in some of the work we are asking them to do with our learners who...
Hiring for Literacy: The Big Picture
Spring is an exciting time. The playgrounds are once again full of gleeful shouts from children, the promise of summer is in the air, and we, as educators, are seeing...
Hiring for Literacy: The Interview
When given the opportunity to interview candidates for a teacher or literacy support opening, it is easy for an interviewer or interview team to fall back on standard teacher interview...
Wild Reading: A Coach’s Perspective
I just finished reading Donalyn Miller's book Reading in the Wild. I know her path to creating wild readers is an important one. She believes that reading should be a regular part...
Coaching Minute: Dividing Responsibilities Among Coaches
Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher explain how they worked to divide responsibilities fairly and efficiently over time.
Coaching Minute: Building a Coaching Rapport
Coaches Deb Gaby, Ruth Ayres, and second-grade teacher Cathy Laker chat about building a rapport between coaches and teachers.
Tips for Conducting Demonstration Lessons, or How to Avoid the “Am I Doing This Right?” Question
Teachers spend most of their day alone with their class, and each day they are required to make hundreds of “in-the-moment” instructional decisions. Here are just a few of the...
Coaching Letter to Jo
Jo is a fifth-grade teacher in Harlem. Although she has many responsibilities, Jo and I are working primarily on enhancing curriculum, instruction, and assessment related to her instructional reading block....
Coaching Minute: Read to Every Class
Principal Jennifer Schwanke has a simple strategy for building connections to every reader in her school: she regularly reads to every class.
Secrets of Coaching Revisited
Listen First Teach by Example Be Patient I first read these words of the late Juli Kendell back in 2007 in an article she wrote on the secrets of school-based...
Celebration Charts
Ruth Ayres, a Choice Literacy contributor, hosts a weekly meme on the web called Celebrate. We have been trying to share the spirit of celebration in our staff development sessions....
