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4 Ways to Organize Your Coaching Life Using Google Drive

On my way into school this morning, I grabbed myself a Pumpkin Latte with almond milk to celebrate my favorite season of the year, Fall(!!), officially being here. The leaves are starting to turn and the temps have dropped just enough for me to be able to break out my new, navy J-Crew puffy vest. (just wore it today btw and it looks super cute!)

On the school front, my first round of coaching cycles are wrapping up and fall break is next week.

Around this time of year, every year usually, I get a bad case of the organizing/cleaning/purging bug. Old notes, computer files, my planner, the windows and carpets at home…watch out. I’m coming to get you.

One of those disorganized, I’m coming to get you items on my radar this year was my Google Drive.

I love my paper planner, my erasable Frixion pens, and my washi tape file folders, but I also have a few go to digital tools I love and use often. One of them being Google Drive.

I love me some Google Drive.

It’s my favorite tool and secret weapon for bridging the world of paper and tech in an organized and efficient way.

As I was sorting, purging, and organizing my Drive earlier this week, I thought it might be helpful to share four ways you can get more organized using this online tool.

1. Create Folders and Subfolders

First, get your folders set-up. How you structure your folders will be the backbone of your whole system.

No folders = random documents everywhere = BAH!!

Here’s a peek into how I structure mine.

In case you’re wondering, what goes in my planning kit and what goes online…I like to keep my coaching log online so it can be easily shared with my coachee (more about sharing in a bit…). I also keep an online observation and debrief tool for each coachee ready to go in their folder, as I sometimes prefer to record notes on my computer, based on the complexity and length of the lesson I observe. For grade levels, I upload major planning documents I may need for shared planning and a log of agendas.

2. Color Code

I color code my calendar, my planner, and pretty much everything else in my life, so of course I’m going to color code my Drive!

Color coding is a great way to visually organize your folders and sub-folders. Just right-click your folder of choice and select the option “Change Color.” You can select one of 24 different options.

3. Take Advantage of Google Sheets, Forms and Sites…Oh My!

There’s a whole wide world of cool tools beyond the standard Google Doc, just waiting for you to take advantage of.

To start, I use Google Sheets as my go-to tool for collecting and organizing data from teachers. For example, I currently have a spreadsheet set-up to help me gather student info from teachers so I can quickly add student names and info to our district assessment system. When a student needs to be added, teachers fill out their info using the shareable link, and I can then get it sent into the district…super quick and easy!

And Google Forms are a super cool way to collect feedback after PD sessions. I just create an Exit Ticket Form which teachers fill out immediately after PD, then I can organize and view all the responses using a Google Sheet to determine what teachers appreciated, their commitments to next steps, and what we can do to improve. Boom!

Oh, and if you’re feeling like you’re really up for having some fun, you can work on creating a whole SITE for your school! How cool would that be?!?

4. Share!!

This one got a double exclamation mark because it’s one of my favorite features of Google Drive, and what really got me hooked in the first place. I love sharing! It supports collaboration, communication, and efficiency for coaches, teachers, principals, husbands and wives…everyone!

Here are a few ways I take advantage of the share feature on Google Drive:

coaching logs shared with coachees
goal setting forms shared with coachees
- NOTE** If you use any of the planning forms in the Simplified Coaching Planning Kit, you can easily upload them to Google Drive
observation and debrief notes
planning agendas
planning meeting notes
curriculum planning forms
spreadsheets to collect info

And lot’s more!

When sharing, you can either enter the names of people you want to share the doc with, or send folks a “shareable link.”

And that’s that! Hopefully you picked up a few good tips that will help you get your digital life a bit more organized.

Sometimes it’s just the small step of choosing one thing/place to sort, purge, and organize that can help you feel way better and more in control.

Thanks for reading, and if you happen to have fall break coming up, enjoy!

P.S. If you liked this post, I’d GREATLY appreciate it if you’d use the buttons below to share it with your buddies!

Growth Mindset – What Does this Mean for Coaches?

Teaching Tips

I’ve been thinking a lot about growth mindset lately and what this means for us coaches.

A few years back we read the book “Mindset” by Carol Dweck with our staff and did some really great learning around it’s central message: it’s not just our abilities or talent that brings us success – but whether we approach our goals and work with a fixed or growth mindset. If you haven’t read the book, here are a few of my favorite excerpts to help give you some more background:

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone — the fixed mindset — creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character — well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.

There’s another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you’re dealt and have to live with, always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you’re secretly worried it’s a pair of tens. In this mindset, the hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way — in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments — everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

As you begin to understand the fixed and growth mindsets, you will see exactly how one thing leads to another—how a belief that your qualities are carved in stone leads to a host of thoughts and actions, and how a belief that your qualities can be cultivated leads to a host of different thoughts and actions, taking you down an entirely different road.

At the time of reading the book, I was totally pumped up and inspired to work on my own growth mindset, but I haven’t honestly thought about it for a long time. Then last week I happened to hear a really terrific podcast with Carol Dweck as the guest, and I got to thinking about it all over again.

After listening to the podcast that morning and heading into school, I found myself much more aware of different fixed vs. growth mindset thoughts that came up in my head that day. And when the fixed thoughts came up, I was bugged with myself, because “Hey! I’m a coach! I should be radiating a growth mindset!!”

But the truth is, I’m not always growth mindset perfect. I get down on myself and can be hard on myself. I can sometimes be harsh in my judgment of teachers qualities and abilities.

Now do I need to be perfect? Maybe not. But I can certainly be more aware, and take steps to get better.

So what’s a helpful first step in this growth mindset building process? How about changing your thoughts and words. Check out the infographic below for ideas on what this might sound like.

And how about some specific ideas for how to foster a growth mindset at your school and in your coaching?

Read the book “Mindset” as a staff and facilitate discussion circles.
Embrace the idea and word “YET”
Develop and use growth mindset statements with staff consistently as part of school culture.
Make the connection between “process” and “achievement” in your feedback.
Incorporate growth mindset activities for PD icebreakers.
Emphasize learning as a process.
Create a growth mindset language wall in the PD room – help teachers recognize when they are having a fixed or growth mindset
Highlight mistakes as an opportunity for learning.
Work with teachers to develop a bank of language for feedback that can foster a growth mindset in students.
Read “How Children Succeed” with staff, and watch the Angela Duckworth Tedx video.

YOUR TURN

In the comments below, I’d love to hear:

What are YOUR hidden fixed mindset thoughts? How can you adjust this to a growth mindset?

What’s one thing you can do to foster a growth mindset at your school?

Thanks for spending some time with me. Happy Friday and I”ll talk to you soon!

Back to School Checklist. And a Little Catching Up.

Teaching Tips

After I published last week’s post, I realized I hadn’t even stopped to say “Hi!” or catch up a bit after not chatting with you all summer. Sorry! So how has your summer been?? Mine was an amazing whirlwind of goals accomplished, new goals set, and oh, a wedding! Luke and I were married on July 18th, and it was picture perfect. All our friends and family were there, and the sun came out after a ton of rain, right before the ceremony. We don’t have our photos back yet, but here are a few pics captured by our friends.

In addition to all of the craziness and fun that goes into a wedding, I was also hard at work towards other goals. The first one was wrapping up my first product launch for the Time & ToDo Planner. This has been A LOT of work {packing up 200 planners just a few days before our wedding!}. My sister thought I was totally crazy, but it was work that I was and am so happy to be doing. Stepping into the world of ecommerce was a big and at times challenging first step for me. I had some setbacks, but I learned a ton in the process, am grateful for how far I’ve come, and super excited for some revisions and additions I have planned moving forward!

Headed to school with planners to ship!

I also decided it was time to update the style of MsHouser.com. We kept the foundation of the design, but updated the color layout and revised the organization a bit. I was excited to get this goal accomplished this summer, and I’m hopeful you like the updates!

Alright, enough about me. How about you?! I wish I could shuttle you over here to catch me up on your summer over a refreshing glass of iced coffee, but alas, I cannot. So the next best option is to shoot me an email or share in the comments below!

Now. Moving onto the checklist. As I was putting my Simplified Coaching Planning Kit together last night, my mind was racing a hundred miles an hour about everything I needed to do and wanted to do next week when I officially head back to school. And with all the racing thoughts, I kept worrying that I would forget something. You know that feeling, right?

So to make sure I have all of my ducks in a row, I put together a handy back to school checklist. And I wanted to share it with you in case you also have a case of the back to school racing thoughts going on.

I designed the checklist to coordinate with your planning kit, so you can just pop it into your planning section!

I also left some blank spaces, in case I forgot anything or there is any work specific to your role you’d like to add to your list.

Download Here

Oh, and here’s a blank one in case you’d like to start fresh.

Download Here

Alright, now your homework is to print out this checklist, pop it into your planner, and get after it!

For those of you heading back to school next week, I hope you have a terrific start to the year.

ps – am I missing any big back to school to-dos? Let me know in the comments below!

2015-2016 Simplified Coaching Planning Kit – It’s Here!

Teaching Tips

I couldn’t be more excited that The Simplified Coaching Planning Kit for the 2015-2016 school year is now available in my coaching shop!

This is the second edition of the planning kit and I’m super excited about some of the changes and additions I’ve made this year. It has many of the same great planning tools as last year’s version, however, has evolved with a new design and new planning tools.

This year’s version has five new cover options for you to choose from.

One of the big changes I made this year was color coding the entire planning kit! I thought I’d give you a bit of a brain break on how to set-up your planning kit, by organizing it for you.

Using the table of contents as a guide, you can divide your planning kit into six different sections: Planning, Observations, Debriefs, Meetings, Projects, Reference. You could also color code your dividers to match the planning pages if you wanted to get really fancy.

The planning kit is editable again this year, so you can fill in your planning tools directly on your computer then pop them into your planner, or just print and write!

The planning kit has everything you need to organize and centralize all of your important coaching materials.

And with all of the different tools that I personally use to plan and implement coaching cycles, you’ll be totally on top of it!

This year’s planning kit does not include a calendar, as I’ve designed an even better option…The Time & ToDo Planner! This Kickstarter project recently reached it’s funding goal within 12 short days and the project is officially a GO! It’s not too late to pre-order this planner either. If you prefer to have your calendar within your planning kit, there is digital version available for you to print on your own {includes June and July for you to get a head start on planning this summer}.

I intentionally designed the Time & ToDo Planner to compliment The Simplified Coaching Planning Kit, in both functionality and style. The weekly planner is lightweight and ultra-portable, which will allow you to easily carry it with you wherever you go. At times you may need your weekly planner and your planning kit, or just your planner…now you have stylish options, without the bulk.

I’m confident The Simplified Coaching Planning Kit will help you achieve your goals as an instructional coach.

And with the planning kit available earlier this year, you’ll have plenty of time this summer to get set-up and ready to rock it next year!

Keep me updated!

PURCHASE HERE

Planner FAQs:

I print on standard letter size, 8.5 x 11″ paper {98 bright, 32 lb}
I use the discbound notebook system. A three hole binder would also work well though!
The Levenger punch works for the discbound system. This one is a bit less expensive than the one offered though Levenger.
This is the label maker I use.
I love the Pilot G2 pens.

5 New Books to Add to Your Reading List

Instructional Coaching, Teaching Tips

I’m always on the hunt for new books to help sharpen my saw and I’ve recently found a few worth sharing.

Here is a list of 5 books I’ve found myself digging back into on a regular basis to help me answer questions, guide my coaching, and just work smarter.

Leverage Leadership, by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo

A Practical Guide to Building Exceptional Schools

I heard about this one through the Coaching Teachers course I took on Coursera. As soon as I saw Orin {course facilitator} had recommended it, I jumped right on Amazon to purchase it! The chapter of the book that I’ve gravitated the most towards, is on Observation and Feedback. Reading through this chapter, in conjunction with the Coaching Teachers course, gave me a new way to frame my debrief conversations: probing questions to ask, examples of bite sized and high leverage action steps and building in time for practice/implementation.

It’s been super motivating for me to continue to push myself in the area of effective feedback. With each coaching conversation, I feel like I’m getting a little better, and this book has been helpful with that. Oh, and it comes with videos of coaching conversations which I’ve watched and rewatched.

Leverage Leadership by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo

Transformational Literacy

Making the Common Core Shift with Work that Matters

I’ve been trying to get my hands on as much information as I can related to the Common Core and close reading of complex texts. And this book nails both areas on the head! The information it’s provided on the instructional sequence of close reading {in text and on video} has been super helpful for a current coaching cycle I have going with a 4^th grade teacher. We started by watching the video provided, doing some reading, and then thought about what parts would make sense to apply in the context of our work.

If you’re studying Common Core instruction at your school the book includes a professional development guide you can use. It’s more aligned to upper grades, so if you’re looking for primary Common Core, this one probably won’t be the most helpful.

Transformational Literacy by Ron Berger, Libby Woodfin

Great Habits Great Readers

A Practical Guide for K-4 Reading in the Light of the Common Core

Speaking of Common Core in primary, this book has been a great resource for me in this area. It’s the first, and so far only book I’ve found that speaks specifically to reading instruction as it relates to the CC standards.

The section on guided reading is especially good and I’ve been referring to it frequently through my coaching with teachers. What I think I’ve especially appreciated in the book is the emphasis it places on identifying next steps and choosing texts for students based on Lexile levels or bands. We’ve relied on the traditional Fountas & Pinnell leveling system for so long, it’s a push to think about text selection differently, but a good push I think. And I’ve got a lot more to learn in this area.

Great Habits Great Readers by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo, Aja Settles, Juliana Worrell

Leaders of their Own Learning

Transforming Schools Through Student Engaged Assessment

If you’re interested in learning more about student engaged assessment, this is your book. Using data consistently and effectively with students is huge! Yet, this is an approach to assessment that many of us aren’t taking advantage of. I did some work with this book at the beginning of the year when I was teaching half-day, and I wished I’d had more time to put my learning into practice, as I had only just started to dip my toes into what could be done.

If you’re coaching and working with a more advanced teacher, this book would serve as a good push in learning, maybe for you both!

Leaders of their Own Learning by Ron Berger, Leah Rugen, Libby Woodfin

The Miracle Morning

The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8am)

I love routines {yep, sure do} and I’m a total early bird, so this book was right up my alley. Although I’ve always had some kind of morning routine going on, this book presented a new framework for taking full advantage of your AM time. Since reading it, I’ve done some shaking up of my own morning ritual and am working on being more consistent with it. Each morning I try to include time to work on my blog, exercise, journal, and have even started doing some visualizing of my goals.

I kind of want to write a book called “The Miracle Morning for Teachers” because I really believe it’s such an important daily ritual that supports your success and happiness in lots of different ways.

As teachers and coaches we’re giving so much of ourselves to others during the day, my vote is we give a little time to ourselves as well.

The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod

Do you have a book you would add to this list? Let me know in the comments below!

A Peek Inside a Coaching Kick Off Meeting. And the Tools I Used to Do It

Goals and Motivation, Instructional Coaching

A few weeks back, I was asked to record a video of myself conducting a coaching Kick-Off Meeting.

First thought…eh. I was complimented by the ask, but I get a little squeamish about being recorded on video. Not just because I feel like my voice sounds weird and I’ll usually catch myself saying or doing something that I want to go back and erase, but also because showing your work to others can be scary.

There’s this feeling that you have to be perfect and if it’s not you’ll be judged. Whenever that fearful feeling comes up for me though, I’ll acknowledge it, but then kick it to the curb quick.

Stepping outside of your comfort zone and showing your work to others whether it’s modeling a lesson, interviewing for that coaching position, blogging about your work, or sharing a video of your coaching, is one of the best ways to grow and get better.

So I responded “Yes! I can help” and off I went to grab the video camera and tripod.

Thanks a million to my coachee Tyler for his willingness to take part in this video. He’s a super star teacher, always looking to learn, and an all around real cool guy.

So as an initial coaching meeting goes, this was the very first time I met with Tyler to kick off our coaching cycle. The primary purpose of this meeting is to identify a focus for your coaching work together, familiarize your coachee with the logistics of the cycle and give them the opportunity to ask questions. It’s also your chance to hash out any potential concerns, challenges or anxious feelings the teacher may have about going into coaching.

The kick-off meeting is a key piece in setting up a successful coaching cycle.

You’ll see this video is made up of two different meetings, as we had a few next steps to follow up on before we were able to narrow down a focus. I also did quite a bit of editing as I didn’t want to make you sit through a 45 minute video. Although that’s about the average time for an initial coaching meeting.

So here it goes:

And for the tools I used:

We got into defining our goal a bit, so this tool was partially used, but we completed it further at a later session.

I also brought along a few resources I thought would be helpful for us in narrowing down a focus, such as a list of the Common Core Standards for Kindergarten and the 2nd Quarter report card.

Beyond that, the conversation could go in any direction, and you’ll just have to use your coaching prowess to support the teacher in landing on a meaningful and high leverage focus area and goal. There will be some on the spot thinking to do to get there, but don’t worry, you can totally do that.

If you have any questions or thoughts, definitely let me know in the comments below.

Cheers to kicking off successful coaching cycles!

Coaching Teachers-Promoting Changes That Stick: What I Learned

Goals and Motivation, Instructional Coaching

I recently finished my first MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) offered on Coursera and man oh man, am I glad I signed up! Talk about a saw sharpening experience. I had never even heard of Coursera or knew that MOOC’s existed, before a friendly reader {thanks, Deb!} notified me of the course Coaching Teachers: Promoting Changes that Stick. First of all, it’s FREE, which is pretty sweet. The teacher, Orin, is super engaging and fun to learn from. It’s packed with great videos, visuals, readings, and sample coaching sessions to observe. This recent session just wrapped up, but you can add the course to your “Add to Watchlist” so you’ll be notified of upcoming sessions. If you’re a new or experienced coach looking to improve your practice, I would highly recommend this course.

Because I really thought the learning was valuable, I wanted to share some of my big takeaways with you so you can get in on some of the learning action until the course becomes available again. And since I love a good visual and haven’t done an infographic in awhile, I thought this was a good opportunity to put one together. Take a look!

So you see, lots of learning to get excited about. I definitely did a lot of reflecting on the question: “Am I a good coach or am I an effective coach?” and I’m pumped to improve and refine aspects of my own coaching practice to be more consistently on the effective side. Need a teacher companion for better results? Good teachers use tried and tested instructional techniques. They hone their craft through professional development, try new pedagogical methods, reflect carefully on their teaching and seek to improve through lesson observations and feedback

One area I’m going to work on is the quality of my feedback. I realize that I have a tendency to talk too fast {I just get excited!} and can rattle off too many focus areas in a debrief, rather than really zooming in on one bite size, high leverage area/skill at a time.

What about you? What area do you struggle with or would like to improve in your own coaching practice? Let me know in the comments below, and please share this infographic if you like!

Coaching on Classroom Management

Instructional Coaching

These first weeks of school, my coaching work has been focused on supporting our new teachers in creating a positive classroom culture. This was an intentional decision made on the part of our leadership team since, as you likely know, classroom management and creating a learner friendly environment is so super important in the overall success of a teacher, her kids, and their growth and learning. So we really wanted to help teachers hit the ground running.

Now, I know how to manage a classroom. It was always one of those things I could just kind of do. However, coaching teachers on classroom management is a different story. I’m not totally sure why…maybe it’s because there are some aspects of classroom management that aren’t really tangible or measurable. Like your overall presence or ability to build rapport with kids. Then there are some things that can be kind of sticky to talk about with teachers. Like, “Hey, your room is a bit out of order which is probably contributing to your kids acting a bit out of order.” Whatever it is, coaching on classroom management can be tricky.

Luckily, I was able to do some team planning with two of my coaching colleagues this summer for how we were going to tackle supporting our new teachers in this area. I think we made some smart decisions, and we’ve seen pretty good progress and success with the teachers we worked with as a result.

Here are five planning and implementing steps we took.

1. Start with Clear Targets

We decided we would coach new teachers only during the first 6 weeks of school, then narrowed down what we wanted them to know and be able to do at the end of those 6 weeks. Two of our goals were strategically tied to the Colorado Teacher Quality Standards so that our work was aligned with the criteria teachers would be evaluated on.

2. Plan for PD

Now that we had our targets, it was time to plan for the learning we would do with teachers to support their progress towards the targets. We knew we wanted to go into some depth, so we planned for a full day PD. If you currently don’t have a full day PD option, you could break the learning up into four or five one hour sessions over the course of a month or so.

The anchor text we chose for our work was The First Six Weeks of School. A copy was purchased for each teacher and it served as a foundation for our learning.

3. Provide Areas of Focus and Examples

One of the best things we did was define clear “criteria for success” tied to each of our targets. Classroom management is a broad area, but we made the effort to maintain a narrowed focus on what we felt were the most critical components for the start of the year. We used a Classroom Environment Criteria list that our school designer shared with us to communicate these criteria to teachers. We then asked three veteran teachers to serve as model classrooms for new teachers to visit, in support of setting up their classroom space. They took along their Criteria List and recorded evidence they observed on their visits, tied to each one. I think this was helpful for teachers to really see what they were reading about on paper.

Created by Expeditionary Learning

4. Collect Data and Give Targeted Feedback

One of the hardest things for me is collecting data or clear evidence on classroom management. I’m just starting to try out a new coaching tool a fellow coach shared with me at a conference. I modified it a bit, but it’s based on the book Coaching Classroom Management which looks awesome and I totally need to read. Anyhow, I’m going to give it a go this week and see how I can use it.

Our leadership team also did a round of walkthroughs to collect data on how the learning we worked on with teachers was being implemented. We used this walkthrough tool to help us collect data and calibrate our looks-fors and feedback.

5. Model!

The majority of teachers will quickly take you up on your offer to model a lesson and thank you many times over. It can often be so much for impactful when a teacher has the opportunity to see the practices/strategies you’re describing in action in their classroom with their kids.

And lastly,

“Seek opportunities to show you care. The smallest gestures often make the biggest difference.”

This is a quote from one of the greatest coaches of all time, John Wooden
. And it’s really true, especially with classroom environment/management. Coaching teachers in this area takes time, patience, and lots of encouragement along the way.

I know it’s nearly October, but it’s definitely not too late to begin implementing any of these steps. Lots of teachers need support in creating and maintaining a beautiful classroom space that supports learning and engagement throughout the year.

If you’re an expert in or have some experience with coaching on classroom management, you for sure have to let me know. I need all the ideas I can get!

Getting Started with Instructional Coaching

Goals and Motivation, Instructional Coaching, Organization

I’m always super excited to hear from readers who are just getting started with their journey into instructional coaching. I send some email cheers (You rock! Go get em! You’re going to be awesome!) and good vibes, really wishing them all the best in their transition. It’s definitely an exciting time. But it can also be a little nerve-racking and overwhelming. Lots of us move from our classrooms, straight into coaching positions with little formal “training” or guidance to prepare us for our new roles. When I first moved into coaching, I can remember feeling very driven to be successful as a coach, but also wondering, “Where do I even start?!!”… “What can I do to ensure that I am successful?” Such are the feelings of one reader who recently wrote me:

Good afternoon,
I will be beginning my first year as an instructional coach at our alternative school. I have 16 years teaching experience in SPED. I am beginning to look around for instructional materials for myself, as the school year is nearing the beginning. I came across your blog near the top of my search and was wondering what you would suggest as the top things I should concentrate on, outside of establishing relationships with my fellow teachers. The great thing is that I have been in the same district for 16 years and many of my students have eventually attended our alternative school so I know quite a few of the teachers. Thank you for any guidance you can give me.
Tammy

So, let’s chat.

Here are a few beginning of the year pieces for you to consider, based on what I’ve learned these past few years.

Clarify Your Role

Instructional coaching can look very different district to district, or school to school. You may have been hired with a broad overview of what you’ll be doing, or maybe none at all. Either way, I think it would definitely be worth your time to write out a clear job description for yourself, really clarifying your roles and responsibilities. One idea is to get online and search “Instructional Coaching Jobs.” This will give you a list of different coaching job descriptions which may help you get some traction.

I wrote up a summary of my role this past week to be shared with staff, since we have several new teachers this year. Here it is in case you need another resource:

As our Instructional Guide, my role involves serving as a facilitator and coach, working and communicating on an ongoing basis with our school designer, the leadership team, and of course teachers! On any given day you might find me doing any of the following:

Collaborating with teams to develop long term and short term instructional plans and quality assessments

Observing teachers and providing feedback based on our school work plan and individual teacher goals

Modeling lessons

Digging for or reading through resources current with best practice research

Facilitating groups visiting from other schools

Planning and facilitating professional development meetings

Or even designing and decorating the school hallways

This year I’m super excited to add another role to my work, which will be teaching literacy in (another teacher’s) room. I’m looking forward to applying what I’ve learned from visiting so many great classrooms, and continuing to improve my own craft as a teacher.

Share Your Role with Teachers

Some teachers have had great experiences with a coach, others not so much. While others have never been coached at all. If coaching is new to your school, it will be important for you to plan a beginning of the year PD to communicate your role, the purpose of instructional coaching at your school, and how coaching can act as a support structure for the important work teachers do every day. Here’s the agenda we used as an example:

Then, you can send a coaching interest survey to teachers asking if they’d be up for participating in a coaching cycle. It may be helpful to provide some areas of focus for them to consider in case they’re unfamiliar with how coaching can be a support structure.

Set Goals for Yourself

Continuing to learn and sharpening your saw will make you better at everything you do. So as we kick off the year, ask yourself what one or two areas you can really commit to working on and improving in your practice as an instructional coach. Here are some areas for goal setting to consider:

strategic questioning
listening
facilitating small or large groups
planning purposeful and action oriented meetings
goal setting for coaching cycles
use of student evidence as data in coaching cycles
labeling high leverage instruction and assessment practices

Set-Up a Coaching System

Figure out how you’ll collect and file your observation notes. Also how you’ll share and record notes during debriefs. On your computer? Paper? Will you email teachers the notes? You’ll likely be working with several teachers and taking lots of notes, so staying organized and prepared is important.

I use my planner, file folders (on my computer and by my desk), and Google Docs to help me with all of the above.

Visit Classrooms

Plan to visit classrooms the first few weeks back for about 20 minutes x classroom. You can let teachers know you’re coming, or just pop-in. But don’t cling to your clipboard! The last thing you want is to build a reputation of being “the clipboard coach.” You know the coach who sits in the back the whole time, clinging to their clipboard with a serious look on their face, furiously scribbling notes. Help teachers see you as a teaching partner right from the start. So sit down with kids if they’re in a whole group lesson, work alongside them if they’re working independently, smile and show kids and the teacher that you’re a learner too.

Build Relationships

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again. Building relationships with teachers is really critical to your success. There will be no successful coaching cycles happening if teachers don’t trust you and have no interest in working with you. If you’ve already established trusting relationships with teachers, that’s awesome. But don’t let this area be something you lose focus of. Building and maintaining relationships should always be one of your primary objectives, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

Instructional coaching can be challenging.

But it’s also so great in so many ways. You’ll be pushed outside of your comfort zone, but you’re going to learn so much. Everyday you’ll have the opportunity to positively impact a teacher by what you say, do, and model. And that’s pretty cool.

I believe in you, and you’re going to be great.

Keep me in the loop, and let me know how things are going. I’d love to hear.

My 2014-2015 Instructional Coaching Planner. And a Giveaway!

Goals and Motivation, Instructional Coaching, Organization, Time Management

As you guys know, I’m all about a good planner. Because once you find/put together one that you really jive with, she’ll become your new BFF. You’ll tell her everything, take her with you everywhere, and she’ll get you back on track when life gets crazy. So allow me to introduce you to my new BFF…The Simplified Coaching Planning Kit. I’m going with the word “simplified” because I’m hoping it will help do exactly that…help us plan, organize, record and overall simplify our work as coaches. While looking good in the process!

The Giveaway: Read more about it below! – The Giveaway is Now Closed

I designed it to be flexible in a couple of ways. First, you can print and write, type and print (all the text fields in the planner are editable), or just type and keep the forms on your computer. Or maybe a mix of everything! I also created and included every type of coaching or planning doc I’ve had success with in the past, so you can decide what you need and organize it in a way that makes sense to you.

After considering what worked and what didn’t work in my past planner set-ups, this year I’m combining my planner and coaching notebook. Last year I had my planner separate from my coaching notebook and I found it wasn’t really working for me because I kept going back and forth between two notebooks, which got to be a little annoying.

So my first step was to pick my notebook. I continue to love the discbound system for it’s ease of use and flexibility. I really liked the lighter color of my notebook last year, but it got scuffed up and dirty quickly. So this year I chose good old black. I spiffed it up a bit with some fancy disc rings from Levenger. They’re a little overpriced and totally unnecessary…but I decided to spoil myself and get them anyway. Hehe.

Next step…decide on the sections. You don’t want too many sections because then your planner gets crowded with dividers, but you want enough to keep it tidy. I decided on five main sections:

Action
Notes/In
Projects
Lists
Reference

My “Action” section includes my Daily Agenda, Peek at the Week, Monthly Goals and my Action Lists. This section is kind of like my compass. It guides me in my planning…my monthly goals guide my weekly goals, which guide my daily goals and to-do’s. I keep my monthly calendar on iCal, though the Planning Kit does include a monthly calendar for the year which you could print and include in this section.

I keep two main action lists: one for home and one for school. Anything that pops in my mind that will require just a single action, goes on my action list. I refer to these lists when planning my daily to-do’s. If I’m having a super productive day and cross off all my daily to-do’s, then I can take a peek at my action list and see if there is anything else I can take care of. If only two lists feels a little muddled, you can break them down even further…email, copies, errands, etc.

My “Notes/In” section has a few copies of my Meeting Notes form and some blank paper for planning and other notes.

In the “Projects” section, I have a separate Project Planner sheet printed for different projects I have going on. A project is anything that requires more than one action step or to-do. So for example, I had a project sheet for my coaching planner set-up. There is some blank space on the side to help me jot down ideas and notes, then on the right I capture all the different action steps I need to do in order to complete the project. I love planning projects this way. It’s so much more efficient than having to-do’s for different projects scrambled together. When a project is complete, I just slip it out of my planner and smile in victory.

Up next, is my “Lists” section. The Planning Kit includes a few different lists to help you get stuff off your mind and put them in a proper holding spot. You could also keep checklists in this section which are so cool for freeing up mental space. The Checklist Manifesto is an interesting book to read on this topic.

I obviously don’t currently have any coachees, but I set up an example section to show you what forms I plan to include. The first sheet is my Coaching Log which gives an overview of work I’ll have done with the teacher I’m coaching. Then I’ll have my Coaching Work Plan, followed by a few Coaching Observation Forms ready to go, and lastly a few printed Coaching Convo planning sheets {all of these forms are included in the Planning Kit}. In order to avoid my planner getting too full, I’ll also have a file folder for each of my coachees where I’ll archive past notes and planning sheets.

My last section is “Reference.” I bought a few sheet protectors to store forms I’ll be referencing frequently, such as my Coaching Schedule. You could also store your school’s Lunch/Specials schedule in this section, a Coaching Sentence Stems printout, or even your weekly meal plan! After the Reference section, I have a pocket folder/inbox to capture random papers or loose notes.

And that’s it! Keeping it all together and staying on top of your game as a coach can be challenging, so here’s to hoping this planner will act as our glue this year.

Cheers to a new school year and happy planning!

Planner FAQ’s:

I print on standard letter size, 8 1/2″ x 11. 98 bright & 32 lb from Staples.
Here is my notebook. I just removed the sheets and added my own.
The Levenger punch works for the discbound system. This one is a bit less expensive than the one offered at Staples.
Here are the dividers I used.
This is the label maker I use.
I love the Paper Mate Flair pens. These Pilot G2 pens are also great.

The Giveaway is Now Closed

Giveaway description…fill out the form below for a chance to win a free Simplified Coaching Planning Kit! With over 180 pages {read more about what pages are included here}, the Simplified Coaching Planning Kit will ensure you’ve got all your bases covered for the upcoming school year. The winner will be announced by August 1st.