Reading Specialist/Coach
Our reading specialist/coach is a dedicated student and expert related to the teaching of reading and writing. She has a deep understanding of children's literature and how to work with developing readers of all levels. My team is also made up of two grade-level teachers that are reading specialists too so we have tremendous depth when it comes to this instructional area. When working with these specialists next year, I have the following questions I want to understand well and work on:
- How can we create a schedule that maximizes reading instruction in effective ways?
- What kinds of reading times will we include in the schedule and how can I support those focus areas?
- What is the year's timeline when it comes to reading instruction, assessment, reflection, analysis, and program enrichment and revision?
- What areas of reading instruction do we hope to develop based on data collected in the past year?
- What is my role with regard to read aloud and where can we fit that in?
Math Coach
Unlike the reading specialist/coach, our math coach unfortunately is not allowed to work regularly with students. To me, this is a great loss since like the reading specialist, the math coach is a skilled expert who has tremendous skills and abilities to help our most challenged math learners. When working with the math coach next year, I want to understand the following:
- What are the expectations of the math program?
- What is the timeline associated with those expectations?
- Is there a time that the math coach can help students?
- How does the coach want to develop the math program?
- Where does the coach see the teaching/learning priorities to be in terms of developing the program?
Naturalist Coach
Our naturalist coach was provided via a grant. She worked with us monthly with the students to develop our knowledge and skill related to river studies, climate change, and environmental education. Her mentoring and example were very helpful. I learned a lot. We'll be meeting soon to discuss how this effort will grow in ways that build upon where we left off last year. I imagine that we will discuss the following:
- What worked in the past year? What could be better?
- How did students translate their knowledge to state assessments and school survey? How did they apply the study to project work? What did they think about work we did?
- How did we reflect the standards? How can we reflect the standards more?
- How will we arrange the study in place, time, structure?
- How can we better teach the "soft skills" like teamwork, reflection, and perseverance as we work on this?
The naturalist coach leads a true team effort so we will grow this together.
Cultural Proficiency/Diversity Coach
This is a new role. I think it would be helpful to ask for some time from this coach related to specific project work that our team works on. We will listen to the ways that this role is utilized in the system and match that role to our work benefit.
