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Are you working with a teacher who is frozen in old practices?  Being stationary is never sufficient when it comes to teacher learning.  “Teacher preparation” in universities is merely the beginning of a career-long journey in instructional improvement.  Once in the classroom, our “texts” expand beyond books and articles on a required reading list.  Our students’ responses become texts that we “read” every day, along with other professional resources. When confronted with a teacher who is immobile in the cycle of continuous improvement, we can “turn up the heat” in ways that warm, rather than burn, those with whom we are working.  One way we can warm the teacher to new ideas is by using a strength or a positive observation as a point of departure.  For example, if we find one question the teacher posed that invoked thoughtful responses from her students, we can lift this question from the lesson and hold it up for examination.  Warming in the glow of t...

If you are a mentor or coach, have you modeled failure lately? Movies and popular media are replete with Super-Teachers:  Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, Pat Carroll in Freedom Writers, Edward Olmos in Stand and Deliver.  These caricatured teachers present a polished, uncracked model of teaching and teachers that is not only unachievable but disheartening.  It promotes feelings of inadequacy.  Failure, however, is part of the real-life of teaching, and those we mentor and coach deserve to see us working through this process.  They deserve to see us model the ambiguity and risk-taking that is part of teaching.  They deserve to see that sometimes taking risks ends in mistakes, in debacles, in failure.  And that learning from failure isn’t a quick and easy process.  If we don’t show them this side of teaching, we create a false ideal.  If we hide our struggles from our mentees, we perpetuate the feelings of inadequacy these false ideals cr...

As doors open for another academic year, schools are welcoming not just new students, but also new teachers, into their classrooms.  About 322,000 new teachers were hired this year,* and mentors and instructional coaches play an important role in keeping these new teachers in the profession and in helping them achieve success in their first year and beyond. How do these novice teachers’ needs differ from others you are coaching? As you support early-career teachers, developing empathy is key.  Take a trip down memory lane and revisit your own first years as a teacher.  What were your own struggles and successes?  How did those early experiences lead you to the teacher you are today?  I found that writing a Letter to My First-Year Teacher Self helped me remember and understand what these new teachers may be going through. Teaching is mentally, physically, and emotionally-demanding – even more so in the early years.  Reminding ourselves of our own previous ...

I’ve spent this week working with a wise and wonderful group of teachers in a Writing Project Summer Institute.  This morning we paused to ponder what makes professional learning experiences effective.  After reflecting on their best and worst memories of PD and reading a couple of articles, we generated a list that included the following: ·          Teach as you are telling teachers to teach (interactive, not passive learning) ·          Take an inquiry stance ·          Ask effective questions to engage participants ·          Model new practices ·          Allow time for teachers to safely practice new skills ·          Put teachers in the learners’ shoes ·          Listen to teachers; value partici...

In No More Phonics and Spelling Worksheets , Marcia Invernizzi describes how important it is for learners to have the opportunity to examine and analyze words, to reflect on their observations, to orally discuss, and to test their hypotheses.  These processes, Invernizzi claims, support learning about phonics and spelling and transfer of knowledge to new contexts.  Inverness describes the teacher’s role in providing these opportunities as centered on a knowledge of each students’ stage of development.  Teachers focus students’ attention on critical contrasts and fundamental principles that they are ready to learn.  What’s critical, Invernizzi points out, is the active role of the learner.  The teacher facilitates the learning by analyzing students’ readiness, by providing appropriate learning opportunities, and by probing and questioning.  Rather than “telling” students what they need to know (by giving students spelling rules to memorize, for example), the...

Many coaches find that working with grade-level or content-area teams boosts their impact.  The structure provided by Lesson Study can be an effective support for team work.  Lesson Study is practice-based professional learning that works directly on developing home-grown, contextualized knowledge and improving instruction. In the Lesson Study model, teachers, usually of the same grade level or course, meet regularly to collaborate and plan lessons that become the focus of inquiry for effective teaching practices. As part of the Lesson Study process, a lesson is crafted and then one teacher teaches the lesson while other members of the group observe. The lesson is then collaboratively revised and taught by other members of the group.  During Lesson Study, teachers have the opportunity to try out new instructional routines and refine and recalibrate their teaching as effective practices are identified within specific lessons and become generalized.  By starting with ...

If I rubbed a lamp and was granted one work-related wish from a genie, I’d wish for the chance to spend more time in classes.  Not only is it energizing and a learning experience for me, my most productive coaching comes after observing a lesson. I don’t have a magic lamp to rub, however, so I’ve settled for the next-best thing: video reflection.  If you, too, are wishing for a way to observe more lessons next year, you might consider the power of video for those times when you wish you could be there but can’t.  Video is a pretty good stand in for an observation. And I’ve found it offers effective opportunities for self-reflection. I ask teachers to record a lesson and then reflect by selecting excerpts to share with me.  Here are the things I ask teachers to consider and be ready to share before we meet to debrief: *What was the main objective of the lesson? *How did you measure the lesson’s objective? What were the results? *What was an effective aspect of this le...