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
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...
Literacy Day
My suburban Ohio city is lucky enough to have excellent snow-removal crews, so my district leaders are typically able to avoid canceling school for inclement weather. Not so this year....
Celebration Charts
Ruth Ayers, a Lead 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....
Coaching Minute: Waiting to Respond
Heather Rader explains the WAIT strategy for responding to challenging email in this quick video tip. Email can be both a connector and a disconnector. Some colleagues...
Coaching Minute: Professional Development
Deb Gaby talks about the importance of professional development mirroring best practices in this quick video.
Changing Focus with New Teachers
I push together two tables, set resources out, and adjust a dish of seasonal treats in the center of the table. Soon six “new” teachers will hustle in for our...
Coaching Minute: Lunch Tip
Trying to build relationships with teachers? Heather Rader suggests informal lunches in this quick video tip. Whether you are a building-based or district-based coach, try to schedule a common...
Coaching Conversations: Collaborating and Celebrating Small Victories
Natasha Axelson shares some of the surprises and challenges of coaching, as well as the importance of celebrating small victories with Brenda Power in this audio interview. A full transcript...
Forming a Partnership with a New Coach
My first years of coaching came at a time when our district began a five-year literacy initiative which brought the workshop model into every classroom for reading and writing. In...
Leading a Multi-Day Curriculum Meeting
Twenty-four people. Six and a half hours a day. Four days. Two curricula to write. One coordinator to facilitate it all: me. All school year, I heard other coordinators...
