Mid-Year Review

I am nearing the point in our school year where we begin to reflect and evaluate where we are in our Educator Effectiveness process.  One of my Student Learning Objectives revolves around coaching.  Instructional Coaching is a new idea for our district.  Being a reading teacher, my content expertise is in literacy, however Instructional Coaching focuses on all areas of instruction.

I have attended some great workshops around coaching this year, which have really shifted my idea about what coaching is.  Coaching centers around a capable model, in which growth can occur.  The client, NOT the coach, has the answers.  It is up to the coach to ask the questions that help guide the client to the answers that they already have inside of them.

One session I attended recently was held by our Department of Instruction, hosted by Barb Novak, and involved 120 literacy coaches from around the state.  Laura Gleisner is an *ICF certified executive coach; she demonstrated a coaching session for us and then shared some coaching wheels with us to use with our clients

After she demonstrated for us, we were tasked with working in triads to practice coaching using one of the coaching wheels.  One person coached, one person was coached and one person was the observer.  We then took turns in each role.  It was powerful to partake in each role and was affirmation of the kinds of interactions I have been having in my school.

As I look at my SLO, I see that I have met with my targeted goal amount of teachers.  However, I want to improve the depth of conversations with these teachers, not just add teachers to my "total".  I know that I have to promote my role and continue to have meaningful conversations with teachers.