Embedded Coaching and Professional Learning {Change in Schools}
Good Morning!
Something near and dear to my heart is the embedded coaching initiative that we are currently involved in at Bert Church High School. I have worked extensively on this project from its inception, and it has become essentially linked in many ways to my Masters program and research base. So, it’s easy enough to say ‘coaching works,’ or ‘the best professional learning is one on one,’ but how does it actually function?
Our philosophy of peer coaching is that it must impact student learning, and as such we must be in teacher classrooms observing practice. However, this does not mean we are entering classes with a clipboard. Once a teacher is being ranked or rated, practice changes and the coaching interaction becomes far less effective. Teachers don’t like to be ‘graded’ (might cause us to think about what we do to our students) so we walk the line of trying to find relevant connections to the classroom and engage in dialogues about practice, but not alienating or denigrating the teacher. The solution to this concern is simple; be useful. When the coaches at our school enter a classroom, it is not to take notes or videotape lessons, it is to join the classroom environment. Once we are in a teacher’s class, we make ourselves useful in any way we can. We are no longer a foreign element, but an active (and positive) member of the classroom. We engage with students (to the extent the teacher is comfortable with) and enjoy the classroom process. Often this is quite instructive to me as an English teacher as I have little experience in Fine Arts or Math, and yet get to see learning in these areas.
Once we have spent time interacting with a classroom, we engage in a forward-thinking discussion about the classroom, again focused on what the teacher wants or needs. We are not prescriptive, instead we ask thoughtful questions, and attempt to help the teacher clarify their own needs and teaching. Questioning is a very effective method of creating understanding as we know from teaching practice, and teachers benefit as much as students from thoughtful questioning.
Whether you are a coach or not, strategies such as positive interaction in the classroom, dialogues about practice and sharing of ideas with a peer are some of the most valuable professional learning experiences teachers can involve themselves in. Find someone to partner with and start talking!
Have a great day, thanks for reading!
Technorati Tags: action research, coaching, Education, embedded coach, learning, professional development, professional learning, Teaching, tips and tricks
January 17th, 2010
This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 8:12 am and is filed under Bert Church, Masters, professional development, professional learning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
A Teacher’s Lessons from Writing, Part 2 » Edurati Review on February 12th, 2010
[...] As a teacher, I know that letting others see our work in the classroom can be intimidating. Many of us have experienced the administrator and clipboard fly-by described by Alan Sitomer, which was most likely followed by a brief discussion in the administrator’s office with the ceremonial placement of the evaluation in our personnel files. But, as I learned, there is value in having someone else redirect our perspective—not with a clipboard and brief observation. Instead, we need “editors,” coaches who come along side us and help us do what we do better, perhaps with more of the learner’s perspective in mind. We need professional relationships like those described by Derek Keenan in his excellent blog post. [...]