New Year Excitement

We are nearing the Eve of a new year of school. The school is shiny, the rooms are welcoming, and the staff and students are nervous, but excited. I am also facing some new responsibilities this year...

I was part of a coaching grant that began to study the effects of coaching on growing staff & on raising student achievement. I worked very hard with two other coaches to propose a new position in our district. We began by reflecting on our current needs and what could make the most impact on our students. We discovered that although our district just approved a full time math interventionist, this was not going to cover the needs of our middle school students. Also, we have worked hard to grow coaching, but continuing to expect this to be done before school/after school, on prep time and lunch time was not sustainable. Therefore, we developed a plan to propose a 1/2 time math interventionist, 1/2 time instructional coach position.

We began by pitching our idea to our Director of Instruction, who suggested some changes. We then brought it to our Superintendent, who also suggested some changes, but who recommended we bring it to our Curriculum & Assessment board committee. We brought it to our board committee, who approved bringing this position to our full school board.  I will save the rest of the details, but it went back and forth between committees with more work being done by administrators and the team of coaches I was working with. In the end, the school board approved the position!!!

I am very excited to say I was given three hours of my day to coach. I am thrilled to use the knowledge I have gained through attending coaching professional development opportunities, participating in coaching practice, and also participating in book studies to include the #educoach book study for...

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I have used coaching as the focal point of my SLO the last two years, trying to support teachers the best I could outside of my full-time teaching responsibilities. Having the ability to be more available throughout the teaching day to co-teach, co-plan, co-reflect and observe and demonstrate as needed, is something I have been striving for the last few years. I should have to say, "No," less often.