Teaching/Learning: What does good coaching look like?

Good coaching is question/vision driven.

Good coaching is not talking at people or expert-driven, but instead good coaching begins with a transparent collective vision and then is driven by questions.

For example, in short time, I will coach a small group of students online to help them complete a standards-based tech program that all fifth graders in our district engage in. While I coach, each child will take turns putting their problem on the screen and leading my coaching with questions. I will guide the students with more questions and enlist the help of the other students at the meeting too. While I am coaching one student, the others will work on their own learning efforts as well as helping out with the coaching. The coaching group has a positive, can-do attitude and we're all reaching for the same goal which is to complete this program in an effective, beneficial way.

So, the first step to good coaching is to outline a common vision for the team. This vision needs to be transparent, overarching, and agreed upon. When the vision is murky, the coaching will never be successful.

The next step to good coaching is to know the people you are coaching well with regard to the vision. For example, I've had coaches who know nothing about me project time and again what I should be doing, but they've never made the time to really get to know me with regard to the vision we are working towards together. There needs to be a thoughtful, targeted discussion about the vision with questions such as the following:

• Do you agree with the vision statement? Why or why not?
• How do you approach meeting this vision? What do you do?
• How can I help you with your efforts to meet the vision statement? Where do you need help?

Too often coaches jump in to check boxes before going deep to understand the people they coach with regard to the vision statement. Too often, coaches are not clear about the vision statement either. 

As a coach and one who is coached, I think it is very important to think deeply about the vision, mission, relationships, and questions before diving into the work--that makes the learning/teaching so much richer. I'll definitely have more to say about this later on, but these are my thoughts now as I enter into a lengthy coaching session with a number of enthusiastic math students. Onward. 

2019-2020 School Year: The Final Weeks

As a teaching team, we choreograph the school year to make it engaging, meaningful, and positive for students. Now that we are at the final three weeks of the year, we are completing the end-of-the-year big projects and moving into special days and celebrations.

Week of June 8th
Students will complete their biography projects this week. Each child's project included a detailed imaginary interview with a famous global changemaker, a digital poster, and a video report about one aspect of the individual's life. To complete the interviews, students researched the facts of individual's lives including why they are famous, who their main influences were, their struggles, and their accomplishments. Students will also complete their STEAM projects and enjoy the fruits of their creative labor with a day of play. The final day of this week is DREAM Day--a day of creative and enjoyable physical fitness activities sponsored by our physical education and adaptive physical education teachers.

Each child's report included a digital poster, video presentation, and a link to their written imaginary interview with the global changemaker they studied.

Week of June 15th

During this week students will engage in a special focus each day including a grade-level meeting and follow-up activities. Special days will include Future Day, 5th Grade Readathon, Virtual Freedom Trail Field Trip, Gratitude Day, and a Virtual Nature Field Study. 

The week will also include an author visit and a cultural enrichment event. 

Week of June 22nd

The final week of the school year is a three-day week that will include the premiere of the fifth grade play, The Show Must Go Online. Every child has a short self-selected video performance during this play. We will also host Move-Up Day, a time for students to visit with next year's teachers, final class meetings to discuss our memories of the year, and the traditional fifth grade clap-out which is going virtual this year. 

Teacher Tasks

In addition to the curriculum planning and response to students' project work, teachers will be busy packing up the classrooms, ordering supplies for next year, completing report cards, applying for summer work projects, attending virtual IEP meetings, and responding to student/family/colleague needs. 

What's most important at the end of the school year is staying the course with positive energy and endeavor. As far as conflicts or confusion that happen at this time of year, if possible, it's best to put those issues on hold until a few weeks after school ends when you are rested and ready to begin tackling deeper issues again. For now, though, it's all about ending the year with positivity and a positive, steady focus on what's best for the children. Onward. 

Spring 2020: Remote Teaching and Learning Week of June 15

It was a super busy week of remote learning and teaching this week. Students overall were very positive. Clearly they have gained some good skills with regard to virtual learning, sharing, and presenting in the past two months. They've also maintained a good, can-do attitude.

Next week we'll continue to focus on STEAM projects by coaching each other ahead with regard to students' personal and family- or friend-team creative projects. We'll share what people are making, troubleshoot where there are challenges, and cheer each other on. Students will also complete their Global Changemaker projects with videos, posters, and written reports. Teachers will take each student's biography collection and add them to a timeline slideshow of Global Changemakers from way back when to current times. In the end, they will have created a terrific tool for learning about important people throughout history--people who have truly made a difference despite their struggles and thanks, in part, to the positive influences in their lives.

Students will also join me for Symphony Math and Khan Academy Clubs to practice their math skills as they work to complete the fifth grade goals for Symphony Math and get started with their Khan Academy summer study. Virtual meetings will also include final biography project coaching meetings too.

As far as teaching duties outside of meeting with students, I'll be busy attending IEP meetings, prepping for the virtual field trip and move-up day in the final weeks of school, and preparing a final end-of-the-year video for fifth graders. It has been a busy, busy and very unusual last three months of school this year, but, our learning community including students, family members, colleagues, and community members really rose to the challenge and have done as good or even better a job than one might expect.

This has been a terrific lesson for all of us related to perseverance, creativity, collaboration, and positivity. Onward.

Today's Teaching Agenda: June 5, 2020

In an effort to coach myself forward and to capture what remote teaching/learning days are like, I offer a list of the day's activities.

Reflection
I begin the day reading emails, social media posts, and reflecting on the long term efforts and day's efforts.

Student Meeting
At 7:30 I'll meet with a service team to discuss one students' needs and how to proceed to best support that child.

STEAM Lessons
From 8 - 10 a.m. I will lead two STEAM lessons with colleagues. During the lessons we'll review the elements of optimal teamwork and work together to practice planning for the creation of an imaginary summer play space. During these lessons we'll review strategies for good project planning including identifying and focusing on the overarching goal, research, planning with big ideas first, and creating a plan with images and labels.

Biography Research Team
From 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. I'll work with my small biography research team to film each member of the team reading their poster or presenting the global changemaker they studied as the person or as a reporter. To get good videos virtually takes time so I've scheduled a couple of hours. While I'm working with one student the others will help and/or work on their other study efforts. After I film each child, I'll edit the films and place those films on the project slideshow.

IEP Meeting
At 1 p.m. I'll attend an IEP meeting

Week's End Planning and Review
After the IEP meeting, I'll review the week's efforts and student work. Then I'll update my part of the grade-level teaching/learning menu with next week's assignments, meetings, and announcements. I'll update the planning/review list for next week too, and then begin the weekend as I usually would during the late Friday afternoon.

Remote teaching/learning has morphed into a full day of professional efforts to support student learning. So far, the results of this work have been good. Students' recent math assessment demonstrates good growth for the group as a whole and almost every student. Students' biography reports are terrific. Students' learning in other areas as evidenced by project share is good too. For the few students who have not made as much progress as we would like, we are looking deeply at these cases to see what we have learned about how to change the work we do to better teach children like this. These children represent a mix of the following elements:

• Less family support due to a myriad of situations.
• Less at-home materials and spaces for optimal learning.
• Less ability to use the tools and attend meetings due to organizational issues, ability to understand/use the online tools.
• Less ability to meet curriculum standards due, in part, for some to curriculum standards that are not a right match for the child
• Less student will to be involved for a myriad of other reasons we need to explore more

How do we best offer counseling and support to students and families who are having difficulty staying involved with school during remote teaching and learning. In some cases, I believe that these families should have the opportunity to use the state's emergency child care and, in other cases, I believe that we need to enlist the support of social workers and psychologists to help the children and families. At school we have good services to help out in cases like these, but with remote learning and teaching, we have to rethink how these supports work.

We won't give up, however, we want every child to succeed and will continue to work for that result. 

Teaching Spring 2020: Responding to Change

The end of the school year is a mere two and a half weeks away. Change is in the air. There is the change of one class rising to the next grade and a new class coming to fifth grade. There are some staffing changes, and there will inevitably more curriculum and program changes given the unpredictable pandemic we are facing. How will I deal with all these changes?

Student Rising
The fact that students are rising to the next grade is a call for celebration. These young children and their families have been extraordinary during this pandemic. While school was not what they expected, we covered the same curriculum via multiple new venues and learning experiences. We all missed being together in real time for field studies, outdoor explorations, science experiments, the fifth grade play, and the creative Global Cardboard Challenge, but nevertheless we've been able to replicate those events virtually. I'll miss these young, dynamic students, but I feel satisfied that our team provided them with a top notch learning program this year--we were a strong team.

We've learned a lot in the past three months about what is important when it comes to the unpredictable learning stage we are teaching from, and we'll welcome the new students at move-up day with that knowledge. We revised our move-up letter to reflect the fact that while we don't know exactly what fifth grade will be like for them, we do know that we will be there to guide them with care and attention to the fifth grade learning standards with the goal to help them become strong, flexible, dynamic lifelong learners. We will greet the learners as a team, then meet with our homerooms for a more personal exchange of questions and expressions.

Staff Changes
There are a few staffing changes for the year ahead. Staff changes have been a mainstay of schools in the last few years, and new people and new roles bring both new opportunities and change. My focus on staff changes is to stay the course with the work I am tasked to do and to be open minded. There's always an adjustment period with new staff and new roles. In the past, I've sometimes reacted too soon during that adjustment period rather than just focus on my own work and recognize that during the adjustment periods of change there are sometimes uncomfortable, unexpected, and unreasonable decisions and changes, yet with time and communication there is typically greater movement towards camaraderie and collective decision making instead.

Teaching Changes
We will change what we do and how we do it somewhat. For example, we'll introduce students to expected learning protocols for blended learning with greater explicit instruction and practice. We've learned over the past three months that it is essential that children show up, participate, show their faces, and do the expected assignments. We've also learned that it is essential that we coach optimal mindsets and learning behaviors as well as teach the blended learning tools well. We've had a blended learning environment for a long time, but sometimes we didn't teach the tools as explicitly since we were right there and able to help a child, and because we're not right there when it comes to virtual learning and teaching, we have to be more explicit when we teach the tools--students need to know how to use those tools well.

We also have to include family members even more. We've worked hard to build a strong student-family-teacher team and now it is even more important to include family members in the learning community because with remote learning and teaching, they are our partners with even greater commitment and support.

Priorities will change too. Our team has already discussed front loading the year with the curriculum areas that lend themselves the best to blended learning and leaving the more hands-on, collaborative activities and field studies for the second half of the year.

All in all, if we are clear about our priorities which are to support students well and guide meaningful and engaging learning of the identified standards, we will transition into this unpredictable year with success and care.