Lead Lit Topic: Tough Nuts
A teacher who refuses to work with her grade-level team to design new units. A principal who is always upending your schedule with new responsibilities. A literacy coach who is in tears because she feels so isolated. A participant who continually interrupts an in-service session with “Yeah but . . .”
Tough Nuts are not easily defined, but you know one when you see it. They are the challenges that sit at the center of your forehead in the dead of night, robbing you of sleep. The stories of how we’ve dealt with these ongoing and immediate challenges are here.
Results
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...
Honesty, Ignorance, and Building Relationships
Being a leader of literacy instruction can feel like a daunting job. There are so many excellent instructional practices being used by teachers that it seems impossible to know everything...
Coaching Relationships: Move Closer
When I was in graduate school working on my degree in educational leadership, I had a professor admonish us to “Move closest to the person you feel the least closest...
Because It’s the Right Thing to Do
As a school that focuses on positive behavior, we used to have a token jar that was prominently displayed in the front hall. As classes passed, they could see how...
Leading a Demonstration Lesson: When It Doesn’t Go Well
Jennifer Allen talks in a leadership team meeting about the experience of being observed when a demonstration lesson isn't going well.
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...
Breaking Away from the Team
Since the start of my teaching career, the professional learning emphasis has been on collaborative teamwork, ideally centered on student work, with the purposes of developing teaching teams’ shared expectations...
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...
Failure to Norm
As I developed relationships with 36 teachers this year, I was careful to watch and try to understand the dynamics that would help me as a coach. It’s easy (and...
Coaching Minute: Videos in the Selfie Age
In this quick video, Kathy Provost and Heather Fisher share an alarming experience: young teachers pulling out phones and other devices to take videos of instruction without permission. They discuss...
What I Know for Sure: Reflection and Core Beliefs
Last summer, I read this tiny book by Oprah Winfrey called What I Know for Sure. As she writes in the first chapter, she reflects on all the lessons she...
Coaching Conversations: Carry the Water
In this audio interview, Susan Kennedy chats with Brenda Power about the challenges of starting a new coaching position in a different part of the country, and building relationships with...
Apps in Perspective
I sighed after opening an email requesting “tablet support” from a group of teachers. I dropped my head into my hands and groaned. I stared at the screen. Then I...
Staying Focused: How Leaders Can Keep Their Passion for Literacy Alive
Becoming a building principal changed me as a thinker, a reader, and a writer. It’s not that I’m better or worse—I'm just different from how I used to be. The...
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...
When Is Coaching a Waste of Time?
I met Lisa, a new literacy coach, for dinner early in the fall. She’d just come from an afternoon meeting with Mary, a fifth-grade teacher. They had discussed designing a...
Above the Clouds
The few days before my trip to Boston had been stormy, dreary, and overcast. I knew the forecast predicted rain at my destination, but as I was leaving for the...
Drop the Rope
Change is hard. Coaching change is even harder. Those moments of tension we experience can be brutal. We feel defensive, hurt, or even useless. How do we find the strength...
Leadership 101: Knowing When to Step Back
My school literacy team met last week. The literacy team includes specialists and grade-level team leaders. The agenda was a typical one: Our media specialist shared new books available in...
Find the Common Ground
I knew I was going to fail. It was inevitable. The school was going through a state-sanctioned improvement process, and part of their plan for improvement was for grade-level teams...
Coaching Conversations: Defining Your Role
In this audio interview, Brenda Power chats with Kathleen Collaro about the challenges of carving out time for coaching when teachers are clamoring for additional instruction support for struggling learners....
