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November 2019 | Volume 77 | Number 3
A Culture of Coaching Pages 22-28

Elena Aguilar

I know a school's coaching culture is flimsy when coaches say things like:

"I want to coach, but I don't have time to meet with teachers."

"I don't really know what I'm supposed to do as a coach."

"Teachers won't meet with me."

"I don't know whether my coaching makes any difference. Maybe I should go back to the classroom."

Likewise, I know a school lacks a coaching model when I hear administrators say things like, "How can I know whether coaching is helping a struggling teacher? I don't know whether it's worth the expense." Or "I need our coach to step in for a teacher out on leave and manage testing."

When I hear such comments, I respond, "How is coaching defined in your school or district? Who came up with that definition and how has it been communicated?" I'm usually met with a blank stare until a realization sinks in: Without a definition, we're hamstrung. The problem isn't that teachers don't want to meet with coaches; the problem is that teachers don't know why they need to meet with a coach-or what to expect. The problem isn't that a principal doesn't know whether coaching is worth the investment; the problem is that there's no agreement on what the school's coaches are supposed to do. The root of the problem is lack of structure for a coaching program.

Elements of the "Skeleton"

What constitutes the "skeleton" of a coaching program? What lets a healthy culture of coaching flourish in a school? When I consult with leaders committed to coaching, I focus on 10 key elements of a coaching program. Let's look at these elements, each an essential facet of the coaching structure, in depth.

1. Articulate a Definition and Vision

At the very least, a school needs a simple, memorable statement that defines coaching. Without this, coaching endeavors will struggle. Imagine a marriage without an understanding about what its boundaries are, how it works, or its purpose. At its core, coaching is a relationship between two people for a particular purpose. Relationships thrive when each participant has a clear understanding of what they're doing together and why-and of the rules.

Here's how I define coaching: "Coaching is a form of professional development with a person who willingly engages in reflection and learning."

Let's unpack this. Coaching is one form of professional development that's ideally part of a robust approach to PD. It's a particularly effective form of PD because it's generally ongoing, job-embedded, and personalized by nature. But coaching is not a way to fix people. It's not something that's done to those who aren't meeting professional standards. Ideally, coaching is for the willing, and ideally, every educator would work with a coach throughout their career. A true learning organization encourages and commends those who seek out opportunities to grow and doesn't coerce or mandate anyone into coaching.

How a definition of coaching is articulated, and by whom, is key to building a culture of coaching. Without a process that's anchored in students' needs, and without recognizing organizational conditions, a definition's impact can be weak at best, problematic at worst. And the definition of coaching needs to be clearly communicated to teachers, site administrators, and (of course) coaches. A definition buried in a Google Doc does more damage than good.

Before crafting this definition, leaders may want to develop a vision statement for the program. Definitions often emerge from and feed visions. A vision statement articulates "what will be true" as a result of our efforts; it answers the question, "Why do we need a coaching program?"

Here's an example of a vision for coaching: "Coaching supports teachers to improve their instructional practices, implement a new curriculum, develop trusting relationships with colleagues, refine their reflective capacities, build their emotional resilience, and improve student outcomes."

2. Consider the Context

Coaching needs to fit into a broader plan for professional development. Districts or schools often use three structures as vehicles for teachers' learning: Professional learning communities that use an inquiry cycle to examine problems of practice; whole-staff PD sessions facilitated by instructional leadership team members or consultants on topics relevant to all teachers; and individual coaching, through which a teacher focuses on refining two or three areas of professional practice.

Often, however, these three structures aren't strategically aligned. There are too many initiatives and areas of focus, and what's happening in the classroom doesn't really change. Professional development programs need one person to oversee, coordinate, and lead them and to ensure alignment between different PD structures. A director of PD could, for example, guide teachers to set a goal with their coach that emerges from a district's curriculum or instructional practice focus.

Individual coaching can't be responsible for building all the skills and knowledge teachers need-as it's often expected to. There's just too much to learn. And if, for example, five teachers need to develop skill with engagement strategies, it makes sense to bring them together for learning rather than to have each one coached individually. When we can see where coaching lives as part of a broader plan for development, we can zero in on what coaching can and can't do-and what learning needs to happen within other structures.

3. Choose a Coaching Model

The term coaching model refers to the broad parameters of how a coaching program works and what it focuses on. Naming the coaching model an organization will use is an act of messaging values and theoretical underpinnings. Coaching is a way to foster change in individual behavior, and different models emphasize different ways to prompt change. For instance, one district might use an "instructional coaching" model-which promotes change by focusing on behavioral practices-and another a "cognitive coaching" model-which prompts change by focusing on thinking.

I practice and train educators in "transformational coaching." This model is a holistic approach to leading change on an individual, team, and institutional level. Transformational coaching focuses on an educator's behaviors, beliefs, and ways of being, and posits that transformation happens when the root causes of problems are revealed and addressed, root causes that often lie in our beliefs and ways of being. We can't separate a teacher's instructional practices, ability to build relationships with kids, or ability to design lessons from what he or she believes, because every action people take emerges from a belief. Transformational coaches use a systems-thinking approach; look closely at context, power, and identity; address and explore emotions; coach for changes in behavior; and facilitate reflection on beliefs.

When a coaching program's designers name the coaching model they'll use, they should also name the texts and authors who have influenced their thinking. This helps communicate to everyone what the program will be about.

4. Set Program Goals

After determining a vision and definition of coaching and naming the model, leaders must determine the goals of a coaching program. Here are some sample goals from one school's coaching program:

This year, 95 percent of participants will make at least one level of growth, in at least two areas, on their evaluation.

This year, 95 percent of participants will report that coaching was a positive experience, that they trusted their coach, and that their coach helped them reflect on their beliefs and ways of being.

This year, 95 percent of participants will indicate that coaching helped them build resilience in at least 6 of 12 habits. In turn, teacher responses to the annual wellness survey will improve.

This year, 85 percent of effective teachers will be retained.

A good goal is SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Beyond that, a good goal is motivating and inspiring. Programs without specific goals have a hard time demonstrating effectiveness. If you want to prove you're doing something good, set up the goal posts before you start playing.

5. Hire the Right Coaches

A good coach is an expert on adult learning. A coach guides adults who work in schools to examine their practice, reflect, and make changes-to learn. The complex skill set required to do all this surpasses expertise on any content area or subject matter. Many coaching programs fall short of their potential because coaches often aren't hired with the right criteria in mind. They aren't given training in coaching or don't have the 10,000 hours of practice needed to become a master at it. I've observed many coaches who knew their stuff-how to teach English language learners or how to incorporate technology-but had no idea how to help other adults understand that stuff.

If a good coach is at the center of an effective coaching program, who is that coach? What will they do? What must they know? These questions have implications for hiring, evaluation, and development. A coaching program's directors must name the skills and knowledge their coaches will need and determine which skills can be developed in someone and which must be evident at the time of hiring. It's critical to delineate and name this criteria.

I'd argue (endlessly) that social-emotional intelligence is the foundational skill set for coaches. Coaches need to recognize and manage their own emotions, recognize and manage the emotions of others, and be able to build relationships across lines of difference. You can teach a coach to ask good questions or analyze data; it's really hard to teach a coach to manage his or her emotional triggers and not fly off the handle when a teacher says something provocative. It's hard to teach a coach to listen well if they are consumed by judgmental thoughts. When I hire coaches, I look for many criteria, but to start with, I look for indicators that they know themselves; have strategies to respond to strong emotions when they arise; and are reflective, humble, and eager to improve their own practice.

6. Build the Coaching Relationship

For coaching to be effective, the person being coached must feel psychologically safe. For a teacher to reflect on the aspects of his practice where he feels most uncertain, he must feel that his coach will suspend judgment, maintain unconditional positive regard for him, see his potential, and keep conversations in confidence. Above all, the coaching relationship must be characterized by deep trust-especially if coaching explores beliefs and ways of being.

For trust to be built, coaching must be kept separate from evaluation. Strict boundaries around confidentiality must be maintained. And when coaches are recruited, hired, and trained, rather than focusing on technical skills, we should focus on the personal dispositions that will most influence the coaching relationship. Dispositions are attitudes and ways of being; they are how you "show up." I've identified six dispositions that enable a coach to develop a trusting relationship that leads to transformational change: compassion, curiosity, trust in the coaching process, humility and mutuality, appreciation, and a learner orientation.

Dispositions can be strengthened and cultivated, but they're also hard to develop. It's best to seek coaches who already demonstrate the essential characteristics to some extent.

7. Understand How Coaching Works

Here's what happens in coaching: A teacher recognizes aspects of her practice that she wants to improve and agrees to coaching. Her coach gets to know her-to understand her core values, sense of purpose as an educator, and experiences-and then the two determine a focus. The coach and teacher create goals-aligned to programmatic goals and perhaps to school or district goals-to work on together. (For example, "I will use three kinds of formative assessment every week to track student growth in standard ___." Or "I will develop more positive relationships with my African American female students.")

Once goals are established, the coach engages the teacher in such activities as planning lessons, practicing specific strategies, analyzing student work, and seeking out additional resources. Observations and conversations between coach and teacher are integrated into these activities, because coaching happens in conversation. This is why a coach needs refined skills in facilitating effective conversations, in listening, and in asking powerful questions. When conversation strategies are strong, a 15-minute coaching session can be transformative.

After perhaps 8 or 12 weeks, the coach guides the teacher to reflect on what she's learning and on her progress toward goals. This is an opportunity to recalibrate those goals, if necessary, reflect on the coaching process, and make any changes to that process.

8. Protect Confidential Communication

A breach in confidentiality can deal a death blow to a coaching relationship. Let's start with the obvious: A coach must never speak to a teacher's evaluator about the details of coaching work or the teacher's performance.

The coach should try to outline the parameters of communication from day one. While a principal may want updates on the specifics of coaching, the coach can explain that for a teacher to feel safe to learn, strict confidentiality is required. To share the basics, create a Google Doc, accessible to the principal and the coachee, on which the time and date of coaching sessions and the broad area of practice discussed are logged. A coach should also proactively address communication with the teacher being coached, saying something like, "I will never speak to your supervisor about you or our work together unless you are present or included in the email."

If a principal does ask, "How's Mr. ___ doing?," I usually give a lighthearted response like, "You know I can't share any observations or opinions on Mr. ___! I encourage you to observe him and form your own opinions."

Confidentiality should be observed on all fronts. If a coach talks to colleagues or other teachers about a client, that can also destroy the relationship.

9. Evaluate Your Efforts

Of all the elements discussed in this article, evaluation of coaches shows up as the weakest in districts I've worked in. I suspect some of this has to do with educators' general fear of evaluation, while some is because we don't know how to evaluate coaching. But both the coaching program and coaches need to be evaluated regularly, to see where to make programmatic adjustments that will enable you to meet goals.

In my work consulting and training coaches, I use three rubrics for evaluation: one for coaching programs, which allows me to assess the context in which a coach works; a second for coaching as a practice, the counterpart to a rubric for teaching; and the third for coaching conversations, which focuses on a key slice of a coach's skill set. The data that emerges from using these rubrics can reveal strengths and obstacles in the coaching program, which helps leaders prioritize PD for coaches. (Note that evaluation can't be done well if you haven't articulated clear goals for your program.)

Coaching can also be evaluated on the basis of various outcomes, including a teacher's professional growth, well-being, and resilience, and students' performance. When I led a coaching program in the Oakland Unified School District, we measured improvement in teacher performance, job satisfaction, retention, and attendance; in student reading and use of academic discourse; and in amount of office referrals and suspensions of black and Latino males. While the many variables made it challenging to draw a direct connection between coaching and improvements in these areas, we saw undeniable trends in the data that suggested the positive influence of coaching.

Evaluation allows you to tell your story and make the impact of coaching-on teachers, students, and culture-visible. Compiling data that proves the value-or ineffectiveness-of coaching can be challenging. The question of whether coaching is having an effect can seem subjective; some will question whether coaching can really be tied to measurable changes. But I know it can, and I've found organizational leaders appreciate the trends that can be uncovered and the narratives that can be crafted from evaluating coaching programs.

10. Establish Professional Development for Coaches

Coaches may be among the least professionally trained educators working in schools. They need no certificate or credential to coach, and rarely get PD on working with adult learners. Yet to realize their potential, coaches need training. Just as the classroom teacher has the greatest impact on a student's learning, the coach-and the coach's level of expertise-will have the greatest impact on a teacher's growth.

But training in what and by whom? Here's what I found in my work in Oakland: The coaches I hired needed training in coaching skills, including listening, facilitating conversations, managing their own judgments and emotions, planning for coaching conversations, and responding to the emotions of teachers. These coaches also delivered PD and facilitated team meetings, so they needed training on how to create and deliver powerful professional development sessions, manage group dynamics, and just show up as a humble, confident team leader.

Our coaches engaged in PD weekly. We learned about and practiced coaching skills and planned meetings and teacher professional development sessions. While I designed the scope and sequence of learning for coaches at the beginning of the year, I left space to respond to needs that arose. We discovered a clear connection between this PD for coaches and the outcomes we saw in schools. For example, I knew that for coaches to have successful conversations with teachers about how they managed student behavior-and about the role of race, class, and gender in their responses to behavior-coaches needed training in having such conversations. They needed space to unpack their beliefs about the role identity plays in the classroom. After we provided such PD, we saw a reduction in office referrals and suspensions for African American and Latino boys.

Effective coaching programs have a scope and sequence for the coaches' professional development, one that aligns to the program's goals, emerges from the criteria for coaches, and responds to coaches' needs. A master coach-someone who can model the skill set needed for working with adult learners-should design, implement, and monitor this plan.

Designing a Coaching Program

Besides planning for these 10 components, program designers must consider who needs to be involved in creating a coaching initiative and how the final product (the program itself) will be shared with stakeholders. Without careful thought about process, even a beautifully designed program attending to these 10 elements may fail.

It helps to stay anchored in the potential of coaching, to remember that good coaching supports educators in the myriad ways necessary so they can serve the social-emotional and academic needs of children. When we keep that potential in mind, we can amass the resources, capacities, and courage required to design effective coaching programs.

Endnote

A mission statement can also answer this question, but a vision statement is critical. A mission statement is responsive to current and past realities, whereas vision statements are about the future, about what will be true. An organization can create both a mission statement and a vision statement.

Elena Aguilar is president of Bright Morning Consulting, a sought-after speaker and presenter, and author of many books, including The Art of Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and, with Jessie Cordova, the forthcoming Equity By Design (Jossey-Bass, anticipated publication date 2020). Follow her on Twitter.

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You Can't Have a Coaching Culture Without a Structure

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November 2019 | Volume 77 | Number 3 A Culture of Coaching Pages 22-28 Elena Aguilar I know a school's coaching culture is flimsy when coaches say things like: "I want to coach, but I don't have time to meet with teachers." "I don't really know what I'm supposed to do as a coach."

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Opinion

Alignment of policy and educational practices is critical

The pandemic shines an intense light on inequities that have long existed in our education system: long lines for food pick-up by school families, lack of devices and Wi-Fi for remote learning, and unfair funding formulas that allocate less to schools with the most students of color and those from low-income families.

These inequalities undergird the protests demanding racial justice that are convulsing our country. How we choose to respond will impact the rising generation, and the fabric of our whole society, for years to come.

Policymakers and education leaders need a shared set of principles for developing and evaluating responses to the COVID-19 crisis that advance positive change for students and reckon with systemic racism in public schools. As the director of the Education & Society Program at the Aspen Institute, I developed a framework of five principles and related actions for leading public education from recovery to renewal last month.

With the nation's focus now on achieving racial justice, these principles are even more urgent:

1. Equity & Agency: Policymakers must be cleareyed that schools reflect the inequities that plague society at-large. Every powerful driver of learning-safe and nurturing learning environments; rigorous and relevant academic content; teachers who see and value students' cultures and communities; voice and choice in important decisions-is provided to white and affluent students more than students of color and students from low-income families. Leadership in this moment must correct inequitable funding and cede decisionmaking power to those most directly affected.

Take Action: (1) Governors and legislators must prioritize funding for schools educating students of color and students from low-income families. (2) For states to receive additional federal funds, which they will need to avoid layoffs, they should be required to address inequity in education funding. (3) State leaders should seek out the most vulnerable students and families to understand what they most need to feel safe, supported, and engaged-and respond with action.

2. Coherence: Education leaders will be juggling many issues just to start the new school year, in the context of immense strain on state budgets and rising needs among vulnerable children and families. Policymakers need a holistic frame for addressing the needs of students and families so each decision is related to the whole. If every issue is treated serially, by the assumed level of urgency, decisions made by different agencies and state vs. local leaders won't be aligned, and school leaders will be left to sort out the confusion.

Take Action: (1) Governors should prioritize cross-agency coordination to address the needs of children and families, avoid duplication of efforts, and keep turf battles from slowing down delivery. (2) Within education, coherence calls for integrating social-emotional dimensions of learning into academic instruction so these reinforce each other in students' experience of school. Schooling next year in particular needs to become a place of healing and processing what's happened, or students will experience the disconnect and hypocrisy viscerally.

3. Science of Learning and Development: Breakthroughs in neuroscience, epigenetics, and research have created a new understanding about how people learn. We know student safety, belonging, and connectedness to school are foundational to resilience and engagement that then enable academic success and thriving in life. Focusing too narrowly on making up for lost instructional time will compound inequity and depress long-term achievement if done without adequately resourcing psychological safety, relationships, and a sense of belonging.

Take Action: (1) Prioritize school climate and relationships. Assigning every adult to mentor a manageable number of students and instituting advisories are two aspects of relationship-rich schools that will be especially valuable. (2) State agencies can commission appropriate online, interactive courses to provide teacher professional development and offer micro-credentials. (3) Modest investments in community service for near-peer mentors and tutors, both high school juniors and seniors and recent graduates, could imbue learning with greater purpose, while at the same time providing needed mentorship and tutoring for younger students.

4. Long-Term Success: Even before the crisis, profound questions were on the table about the role of education in society and the education outcomes that are essential for students to be ready to thrive as adults. Changes will be accelerated and intensified by the pandemic, the economic upheaval it is provoking, and the widespread political awakening on systemic racism in our society.

Take Action: (1) Policymakers must identify competencies that are needed to navigate the future of work; to build a new, anti-racist pluralism; and to support a healthy democracy. (2) Education agencies and state school boards should pilot assessments of critical skills for the modern workplace like working on teams, communicating in diverse settings, and evaluating the credibility and relevance of information from multiple sources.

5. Innovation: Many new online instruction and student-engagement practices are being rapidly designed and implemented. For instance, teachers as well as students have developed facility with digital-learning platforms. The challenge is to understand the reality of what's being tried (rather than what was planned) and to learn what worked to improve practice long term.

Take Action: (1) States should track emergency- response measures, both official decisions and emerging practice. (2) State education agencies can help organize working groups to collect data, learn quickly, and adapt policy and practice decisions. Empanel students and parents as part of these efforts, compensate them for their time, and start by asking what they experienced and what's most important to them going forward. (3) Publish and share what is learned.

The challenge-and opportunity-of returning to school calls on all of us to clarify the principles and enduring values we want to live by and to use these to build common ground where we can. Just as some work routines and home-life dynamics will be indelibly altered even when the crisis recedes, the social contract that public schools represent is overdue for renewal. We must re-envision public education to meet this emergency while also setting a course that improves on the status quo, or policies that had outlived their usefulness will be extended in a rush to "return to normal" as quickly as possible.

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The Five Guiding Principles to Combat Inequities Before Schools Reopen

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Opinion The pandemic shines an intense light on inequities that have long existed in our education system: long lines for food pick-up by school families, lack of devices and Wi-Fi for remote learning, and unfair funding formulas that allocate less to schools with the most students of color and those from low-income families.

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by Valentina Gonzalez

All of you advocates and educational leaders are doing amazing work on campuses and in districts to support English learners. And because of that, great things are happening in classrooms across the state and the nation. You are planning instruction that is based on student needs. You are delivering quality lessons that invite and empower students. You are coordinating professional development opportunities and instructional coaching cycles that truly affect instructional practices. You are engaging parents and including them in their children's education. And this is just the beginning.

It's time to share with others in the field the phenomenal work that YOU are doing! And we may be biased, but we're pretty sure there's no better place to share that work than at Seidlitz's annual conference, What's Working for English Learners: Success Stories from the Field. We're accepting proposals now through September 1, and we'd love to hear from you!

Why should you consider submitting a proposal to share your accomplishments at the conference?

When we leave our comfort zones, we especially have an opportunity to grow. And whether you are a teacher, a coach, a facilitator, or an administrator, you can grow in your role. What you do on the daily is probably a breeze to you by now. But trying something beyond takes things up a level. Take what you do on a normal basis and analyze it, research it, film it, create a presentation for it, and share it with colleagues and peers. Teach it to others. You'll be amazed at what you can learn when you step out of your comfort zone. After all, that's where the magic begins.

It's never been more important than now to share the great things that are happening in our classrooms, campuses, and districts concerning English learners. One of the best ways to advocate for our students is to share in public forums even the smallest of celebrations about their growth and learning! Amplifying the successes of our students and staff shows everyone the power we have to make a difference.

You deserve a spotlight! Yes, you! Don't underestimate yourself and the little things you do that make a difference. I remember the first time I was nudged to present on my campus. I thought to myself that I didn't have anything to share. I didn't know what I'd have to offer. But a colleague kept on pushing me. Little by little, the idea grew in my mind. After presenting, I realized that I did deserve to shine my light. I shared and yes, it was a little scary but it was also empowering! It moved me to begin empowering others to do the same.
"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."
- The Teaching of Buddha

People need to hear about the ideas you have so they can turn around and implement them too. When we collaborate - sharing ideas and teaching each other what has worked for us - we each gain new, great ideas that build off one another's practices. Practical ideas that are tried and true are the best ones! If a strategy, program, or concept is working well for you, don't hide it. Light someone else's candle.

Now that you have the WHY, here's the HOW!

Step 1: Ponder
Start thinking about one idea you feel passionate about - an aspect of your role that you've had success with in promoting English learner achievement. Is it a great vocabulary strategy? A strong co-teaching practice you have developed? An effective instructional coaching cycle you have lead? Consider something that has made an impact on students and/or staff. It doesn't have to be anything huge. Even the smallest things can make a big impact. I've found success with topics that I enjoy talking a lot about. If I can carry a lengthy, deep conversation about it, it's usually something that I know well and feel strongly about.

Step 2: Practice
Share it with your campus at a grade level or faculty meeting. Doing a mock trial or practice to test the water will help you see if this is a presentation that is well received and if there are parts that need adjusting. Sometimes people skip this step, but I'll tell you from experience that my best presentations were the ones that I practiced for.

Step 3: Propose
Submit a proposal to present at the 6th Annual What's Working for English Learners! This is a remarkable conference that showcases great ideas from all over the country. Administrators, coaches, and teachers have shared their work year after year and inspired one another to make change.

Step 4: Present
Present at the 6 th Annual What's Working for English Learners ! In February 2020, we will gather together to celebrate, collaborate, and learn from one another in Houston, Texas. It will be a magnificent conference, especially if you present!
Leader /lee-der/ n. one who inspires and motivates action; having a can-do personality Advocate /ad-vuh-keyt/ n. a person who speaks or writes in support or defense of a person, cause, etc.
Sometimes people hear the words "leader" or "advocate" and think, oh that's not me. Don't sell yourself short. You are both. No matter your role, you can motivate others by speaking in support of ELs! Here's your chance!
Click here for the proposal submission form.

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Leading the Way! What's Working for English Learners: Call for Proposals

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by Valentina Gonzalez All of you advocates and educational leaders are doing amazing work on campuses and in districts to support English learners. And because of that, great things are happening in classrooms across the state and the nation. You are planning instruction that is based on student needs.

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Allyson Apsey, principal of Quincy Elementary School in Zeeland, Michigan, was looking forward to the second Friday in March. It was to be a half-day for students so she and her teachers could spend the afternoon collaborating on spring lesson plans and planning the next academic year.

Then, at 11 p.m. the night before, Michigan announced that all school buildings would close after Friday to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Rumors of a closure had been swirling for days, but the announcement still came as a shock.

Apsey and her staff dismissed students at noon as planned, then huddled for an hour to eat and share their worries before heading home to tend to their own needs. To try to lighten the mood, someone decorated the dessert table with rolls of toilet paper. They left the building that day thinking they would see each other again after spring break.

It didn't play out that way. Michigan, following other states, shuttered schools for the rest of the year, presenting principals like Apsey with a host of challenges that no leadership course could have adequately prepared them for. Chief among them: How to effectively support teachers from afar as they adjust to a new way of teaching at such an uncertain and scary time.

Four of five teachers surveyed by Education Week in April said their job is more stressful than before the pandemic (Kurtz & Herold, 2020). "Teachers' underlying fear is that they're not doing enough," says Apsey. "They don't have a picture of what great instruction looks like virtually, so when they see other teachers doing something, they're wondering, 'Should I be doing that, too?' ''

Principals from across the country share their strategies for effectively supporting #teachers as they adjust to #distancelearning amidst COVID-19. #LearnFwdTLP Click To Tweet

Apsey, like other principals, has adopted several strategies to support her school's 33 teachers during the shutdown. One is the Monday morning staff check-in, a one-question Google survey that she sends teachers to gauge how they're feeling about the week ahead. Apsey actually started doing this earlier in the year after a teacher suggested that faculty members could benefit from routine check-ins as much as students.

When the pandemic struck, she tweaked the multiple choice answers to reflect teachers' new reality. Responses now include: "We have sick family members, but we are doing OK" and "Please tag me in to remotely work on a project. I'm going stir-crazy." Apsey tracks responses and flags those needing follow-up.

When a few teachers expressed interest in taking an online class about helping kids cope with trauma, for example, Apsey gave recommendations. The weekly staff check-in has been so useful that Apsey launched a similar one for school families so she could to respond to their needs, too. Roughly 40% of Quincy's families routinely answer.

When Quincy teachers meet with their classes on Zoom, the focus is as much on connecting as teaching. The school's 550 students all receive weekly remote learning plans prepared by the district's curriculum team and are free to ask questions during the virtual class, but Apsey doesn't expect teachers to hammer on multiplication drills and grammar rules. Instead, she loves seeing them get creative in building community online.

One 4th-grade teacher asked students to give 30-second reviews of books they're reading, while in another Zoom room, 3rd graders introduced their dogs and stuffed animals to classmates. These simple interactions, she believes, give kids the social and emotional support they crave right now. Many apparently can't get enough: One 5th-grade teacher, new to Zoom, told Apsey that his class lasted 90 minutes. The suggested time is 30.

Lead with learning
The rapid shift to remote learning has come with a steep learning curve for many teachers. Ryan Daniel is the principal of Chillum Elementary School in Hyattsville, Maryland. Some of her school's 17 classroom teachers, particularly in the lower grades, had no experience using tools like Google Classroom.

While her school district, Prince George's County Public Schools, offered some training, Daniel supplemented it with videos of herself using different features in Zoom and Google Classroom to help her staff get up to speed faster. Based on district guidelines, Chillum's 389 students have two virtual lessons daily in core subjects with assignments due at the end of each week. On Sunday night, teachers send Daniel their lesson plans, which are based on topics set by the district, and she maps out which classes she's going to visit.

Daniel is also a co-teacher in Chillum's virtual classrooms so she can see the assignments teachers post and the work students submit - things she would easily see if she walked into their classroom at school. Knowing such details has come in handy: Once or twice during informal Zoom observations, Daniel has had to take over a lesson when the teacher's internet connection dropped.

She averages two to three observations a day and sends digital postcards to tell her teachers how great they're doing. She picks two staff members a day to call or text, just to see how they're coping with all the changes and commiserate about life on the home front - Daniel and her husband, an essential worker, have two school-age children and a six-month-old. "I don't feel like I'm the instructional leader I'm used to being, but I'm giving myself grace, the same grace that I'm giving my teachers," she says.

Show patience and compassion
Indeed, principals stress that this is no time for extra meetings or to hold teachers to impossible standards. After all, teachers, like everyone else, are facing enormous stresses in their personal lives, too. They may have a sick loved one, a partner who lost his or her job, or children who need support with their own schooling.

At Elk Grove High School in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, principal Paul Kelly has kept staff meetings to a minimum since the closure. He carved out time in the schedule for his school's professional learning communities to meet weekly on Zoom but did not make attendance mandatory because he recognizes that the time may not work with everyone's home life.

''Every communication a teacher has with kids should start with patience and compassion, even more so now. It's a lot easier for staff to do that if their boss takes the same approach.'' @EGPrinciPaul Click To Tweet

"I need to lead in a way that I want our teachers to treat our kids," he says. "Every communication a teacher has with kids should start with patience and compassion, even more so now. It's a lot easier for staff to do that if their boss takes the same approach."

Many principals also have a newfound appreciation for their own professional learning circles. The National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) produced a six-part virtual town hall series for school leaders to share their experiences about leading through the crisis. Within weeks, the series garnered nearly 90,000 views; a video from NASSP typically gets a couple hundred.

"Principals need their own community to share best practices, discuss their most pressing challenges, and be open and vulnerable," says Beverly Hutton, NASSP's deputy executive director of programs and services. "The more they're able to share and reflect, the better they'll get at this."

Stay connected
When Pilar Perossio, principal of Bancroft Middle School in Long Beach, California, feels tapped out, she taps her phone for some encouragement. She and the seven other middle school principals in the Long Beach Unified School District created a group on WhatsApp to stay connected. Calling themselves the Survival Group, they've brainstormed ideas for end-of-year 8th-grade activities, suggested ways to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week, discussed platforms for making a faculty video, and shared concerns about students who've gone missing since the closure.

''If we look at this crisis as a prolonged interruption until we get back to the way things used to be, we're missing the opportunity.'' @HuttonBeverly Click To Tweet

About 85% of Bancroft's 1,000 students log in regularly, and Perossio's support team follows up with calls and emails to the rest. Working with district curriculum leaders, Perossio and her teachers have modified learning plans to focus on the most essential standards so students are ready for the fall. Like principals across the country, she wonders what school may look like then. Will schools have to limit the number of students in a class? Will they have to rethink how kids move between classrooms?

While there are many unknowns, Hutton believes there will be a silver lining to the school closures. For one, the pandemic shined a light on inequalities in student access to technology at home and ways to remedy it. Teachers who once balked at using online tools are now proficient, or at least more comfortable, with them. Principals have discovered new ways of communicating with key stakeholders.

One school leader told Hutton that in the prepandemic days of in-person community meetings, she was lucky if 25 people attended. When she hosted a Zoom call after the school closure, 150 parents joined. The strong turnout may have stemmed from the uncertainty surrounding the shutdown, but Hutton is hopeful that newly forged connections like this stick.

After all, educators tell students all the time that they're teaching them to be lifelong learners. Now the field has a chance to model that practice for them. "If we look at this crisis as a prolonged interruption until we get back to the way things used to be, we're missing the opportunity," she says.

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Long distance leadership - Learning Forward

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Allyson Apsey, principal of Quincy Elementary School in Zeeland, Michigan, was looking forward to the second Friday in March. It was to be a half-day for students so she and her teachers could spend the afternoon collaborating on spring lesson plans and planning the next academic year. Then, at 11 p.m.

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10 Tips for New Instructional Coaches - Fresh Ideas for Teaching

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"If you're thinking about becoming an instructional coach here are ten tips that I can offer based on my own experience." - Liz Janusz

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Distance learning can feel impersonal and inaccessible, but there are ways to help students feel a sense of connection and access academic material.

As education adapted to the pandemic, teachers scrambled to create sustainable virtual spaces. Online instruction may never feel quite the same as live instruction, but it's likely we'll be doing it in the fall, and there are many simple ways we can create virtual classrooms that inspire and accommodate all learners.

Create a Welcoming Virtual Space

We can't high-five our kids on their way into virtual classrooms, but there are other things we can do to give our virtual spaces some personality.

Start class with a greeting: And let students see your face. It adds a personal touch that makes students feel good about coming to your class.

Pose a question: Try asking, "How are you feeling today?" before jumping into content for the day. If you notice that a student has submitted a concerning response, send them a message to show you care.

Set an agenda: Include a learning target so that students know what to expect from the lesson. (I always provide at least one opportunity to take a break.)

Develop a Reward System

Believe it or not, there are viable reward systems you can use in your virtual space.

Develop goals that respond specifically to your students' struggles: For instance, one struggle I've had since switching to virtual learning is getting my students to attend my optional office hours. To address this, I developed a system: Each day that a student comes to office hours and completes the assignment, they get a raffle ticket. Then, at the end of the week, I collect all the tickets, draw a name, and send a pizza to that student's house. They love it, and I consistently have great attendance at my office hours.

Other rewards might include unlocking a fun extra credit opportunity, mailing a certificate home, sending a positive message to parents, giving virtual homework passes, or earning a virtual dance party.

Maintain High Expectations

As always, the first step to preventing distracting behavior is setting clear expectations.

Create a procedure for each virtual feature of your classroom: When are students allowed to be in these virtual spaces? Does an adult need to be present? When should students use the chat feature? Should the microphone be muted? Should they use the chat to ask questions?

Communicate your expectations before starting the lesson every day: Focus on behaviors that directly impact your virtual learning space, like "Only use the chat to type questions related to the lesson" or "Make sure your microphone is muted during the video."

Remember that you control the virtual learning space: When students intentionally defy expectations in a way that disrupts learning (such as using profanity in the chat, repeatedly yelling, or playing loud music when their mic should be muted), remove them from the virtual learning environment if you can, and contact their parent or guardian to ensure that everyone is clear on the expectations.

Reach Out to and Support Families

Consider the challenges that students and their families face. Is the student home alone while the parent works, perhaps taking care of other siblings in the home? Does the student have reliable access to technology? Does the student have a quiet space available where they can go to focus?

Reach out to families at least once a week: Learn what their struggles are, offer solutions when you can, and update them on student progress. Some students may need more frequent check-ins at first to stay accountable, so set aside time each day to make these contacts. Share accommodations that parents can try at home, such as using timers and allowing frequent breaks.

You will likely have to provide tech support to parents and students, so be patient and prepared to answer tech questions about your learning platform. You might make a Frequently Asked Questions flyer available.

Always reach out from a place of support: Phrase your communication positively and offer support. For example: "I noticed that Jasmine has not submitted her assignment today-what can I do to support her? Do you have everything you need for virtual learning?"

Offer Scaffolds Throughout the Lesson

If students are typing a free response, offer sentence starters beneath the prompt.

If you teach a class that requires students to read, record yourself reading the chapter and offer a read-along option.

If your class requires students to solve problems, provide extra video examples.

Offer exemplar answers after giving students a chance to try on their own. It might seem counterintuitive to give kids the answers, but unless you're assessing their understanding, it will do more good than harm.

Expect that each activity may have students who need extra guidance. Provide a scaffold for each part of your lesson:

Use Engagement Techniques

Prompt students to respond to a classmate's thinking over chat.

Call on students to read out loud to each other.

Share your screen to highlight exemplary answers, shout out to students, or play videos.

Allow students to share their screen to show their thinking.

Explore the features of your learning platform, and consider how they could be used to engage students:

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Distance learning can feel impersonal and inaccessible, but there are ways to help students feel a sense of connection and access academic material.

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We are all grappling with what to expect when school returns. One thing we know is that this school year won't be normal. This means that coaching won't be normal either. If we fail to acknowledge this simple fact, then we fail to be responsive to what's right in front of us...a pandemic that is shaking the very fabric of our lives.

In the first few weeks of school, whether it's virtual or in person, teachers will be focused on building community in the classroom, supporting students with technology, setting norms with classrooms and families, and ensuring that all students have access to learning. While much of this occurs in a normal school year, it will be even more important as schools revamp their structures and procedures to maintain the safety of the community. Given this new reality, many coaches are wondering when and how to launch their first round of coaching cycles.

We anticipate that some teachers will be eager to start coaching cycles as the year begins. If this is the case, we'd say to go for it. Yet we also expect that others won't be quite ready for this type of work right off the bat. In these cases, it may feel like you are in a holding pattern, circling an airport and waiting to land.

While we aren't giving up on the importance of coaching cycles, we want to acknowledge that this year, it may take a bit longer to get there. In the same way that high quality teaching means being responsive to the needs of the learner, we know that our coaching must be responsive to teachers as well.

What Else Can I Be Doing?
The following list includes four ways that we can engage as a student-centered coach while waiting to formally launch coaching cycles.

1. Engaging in mini coaching cycles

2. Engaging in co-planning and co-teaching, just without the coaching cycle

3. Attending PLCs, department meetings, etc.

4. Planning units of study that will be taught virtually, in a blended fashion, or in person

Mini Coaching Cycles
Mini coaching cycles are a great way to stay student-centered without jumping into a 4-6 week long coaching cycle. A mini coaching cycle usually takes about two weeks and includes the following steps; 1) choose a learning target to focus on, 2) collect evidence of student learning related to the target, 3) use the evidence to co-plan a lesson, 4) co-teach the lesson, and 5) reflect on whether the students met the target and plan next steps.

Co-Planning and Co-Teaching
Another option is to engage in co-planning and co-teaching sessions either virtually or in person. This is a way to take the work deeper by identifying what the teacher would like the students to know and do, and then create a path to get there. The following coaching moves and language stems are helpful frames for any student-centered coaching conversation, especially when co-planning and co-teaching.
Student-Centered Coaching Moves

Use student evidence to ground coaching conversations

Work with teachers to assess where their students are before deciding what to teach next

Help teachers differentiate learning based on students' needs

Craft student-friendly learning targets with teachers

Co-construct ideas with teachers, rather than telling them what to do

Maintain a learning stance and carry an asset-based mindset towards teachers and students

Language Stems for Student-Centered Coaching

What do you hope students will learn?

Let's look at the standards and see if we are on the right track.

What is the learning target for the lesson?

What might the formative assessment look like?

I'm wondering about...

What are you trying to accomplish and how can I help you get there?

PLCs and Department Meetings
When participating in PLCs and department meetings, the key is to stay student-centered. Rather than joining a PLC and taking the stance of a resource provider, you could take the stance of a student-centered coach. This means that instead of just offering help through resources and ideas, your support takes the form of asking probing questions to uncover what the students need to know and do, and what it will take for them to be successful in their learning.

Unit Planning
Coaches can collaborate with teachers to plan how they will deliver instruction through unit planning. This includes discussions around standards, technology, and assessments. In the blog post, How Hyperdocs Can Transform Your Teaching, Jennifer Gonzalez provides an example of a unit that is housed in a technology-based hub. This means students must be more independent as they move through the learning. Teachers can benefit from working with a coach to develop and teach using these types of systems.

Some Resource Providing is OK, But Don't Get Stuck There
With the sudden shift to remote learning this spring, many coaches spent their time serving as resource providers. This included helping teachers set up online libraries, figuring out the learning management system, and making sure that students had access to the necessary technology. At the time, it made sense given what teachers were facing, and it still may be necessary to play this role with a new set of challenges as the school year begins. The issue arises when this is the only role that a coach plays because it will diminish the impact of the coaching program as a whole.

A strategy to help us avoid getting stuck as resource providers is to allow ourselves a few weeks to serve in this role and then put a date on the calendar for when to shift to more student-centered work. This creates some accountability without too much pressure. Additionally, we recommend for coaches to closely analyze how they are spending their time. This can be achieved through time audits and calendar reviews. If a coach isn't doing work that impacts student and teacher learning, then it's time to make some adjustments.

It is also important to communicate what your day-to-day work will look like to teachers. Rachel Jenner, a coach on our team, has created two videos that will be shared with the teachers in her high school. The first will be used as the year begins. In it she introduces herself, shares her coaching beliefs, and offers a variety of ways that she can support teachers during the beginning of the school year. The second will come a month or two into the year when she is ready to share how she will take her coaching work deeper. The idea is that this two phased approach will help teachers understand how her role will shift away from mostly resource providing as they get further into the year.

In Closing
There is no question that coaches need to make a measurable impact on teaching and learning. Yet we must also be sensitive about the current situation and be prepared to respond to teachers needs in this challenging time. While we are providing options for how a coach may wait to kick off cycles, we hope that before too long, coaches will be back to making an impact in this way. In the meantime, they can still focus on working with teachers in ways that are student-centered and support everyone's learning.
This blog post is included in our new course, Launching Student-Centered Coaching. For more information about the course, please visit https://www.dianesweeney.com/online-courses/.
© Diane Sweeney Consulting

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When Should I Launch Coaching Cycles? - Diane Sweeney

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We are all grappling with what to expect when school returns. One thing we know is that this school year won't be normal. This means that coaching won't be normal either. If we fail to acknowledge this simple fact, then we fail to be responsive to what's right in front of us...a pandemic that is shaking the very fabric of our lives.

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Strategies for parental involvement and synchronous and asynchronous activities can help students with individualized education programs.

Distance learning isn't easy for most students, but it is particularly difficult for those with learning differences that require individualized education programs (IEPs).

This year, at the request of Merrimack College Institute for New Teacher Support (MINTS), I provided professional development for K-12 schools on teaching children with IEPs remotely. Quickly, I reached out to a handful of highly qualified teachers, administrators, and therapists working remotely with students who had been diagnosed with learning challenges. Through a quick survey, educators provided best practices and passed on the survey to their colleagues. Within five days, more than 90 educators had responded from more than 30 school districts across the Northeast.

The survey results can be broken down into three overarching themes: parent engagement along with synchronous and asynchronous strategies. The responses uncovered the following best practices to address the needs of students with learning differences.

Parent Engagement

Parents with children diagnosed with disabilities are an essential part of the IEP team, now more than ever. I list some strategies for parent engagement here.

Initial remote IEP meeting: Meeting with the parents to go over the IEP is critical. Present Levels of Educational Performance A (PLEP A) outlines accommodations that are useful in the classroom; such accommodations could include frequent breaks, flexible seating, sensory tools, fidgets to focus, reduced distractions, motor breaks, and chewing gum while working independently. Educators note the benefits of working with parents to replicate some of these accommodations at home.

Weekly check-ins: Once a mutual understanding among the IEP team is recognized and replications of accommodations are established, a weekly check-in has been useful in modifying the accommodation needs.

Goal setting: Pick an IEP objective or two each week to focus on with your students. Having too many goals, assignments, and expectations has led to failure and diminished student motivation.

Service delivery participation: Occupational therapists, physical therapists, and speech and language therapists shared that the most significant benefit to providing services remotely is parent involvement. Many are re-creating services to involve fun activities that parents can participate in while the therapist is watching virtually and making suggestions. The benefits have increased the reinforcement of IEP goals and parent engagement at home.

"Parents seem to be more invested as they take part in their child's programming," said Aimee Johnson, an occupational therapist in Auburn, New Hampshire. "It's a perfect opportunity for parent education and collaboration. Parents can see the skills their children are working on and can carry them over more effectively."

Synchronous Strategies

Another common theme of the survey is the importance of increasing engagement during live, virtual, synchronous meetings. My respondents shared the following specific ideas.

Mixing up preferred and nonpreferred activities: IEP goals and objectives may not be the student's preferred virtual learning activity. Mixing preferred and nonpreferred activities increases engagement. Individually tailoring the preferred activities to each student's interests has led to an increase in productivity.

For example, create Popsicle sticks with specific activities. Each Popsicle stick has either an activity to address an IEP objective or a preferred activity such as "Do a cartwheel" or "Show me your pet." During each virtual meeting, the educator blindly chooses a Popsicle stick until all of the activities are done. When you add some fun, students are more willing to do the nonpreferred activities. There are also websites to replicate this, such as Wheel Decide.

Virtual book clubs: Create book clubs based on students' reading levels and similar IEP goals. Treat the book clubs as a social event and suggest that students come to these meetings with snacks. Have students dress in character or act out parts while engaging in comprehension activities in addition to working on yearly IEP goals.

Start virtual meetings with a fun, engaging activity: Start each virtual meeting with an engaging event to motivate students to join before starting academics. For example, on Mondays have students wear a costume, on Tuesdays schedule a household scavenger hunt, on Wednesdays allow students to bring their favorite stuffed animal to class. Such activities have students looking forward to attending, boost engagement, and tend to increase participation.

Asynchronous Strategies

The third theme of the survey results is the importance of engagement during independent, asynchronous assignments and activities. Respondents shared the following ideas.

Visuals, routines, schedules: Provide students with daily visual schedules, and educate them on the use of timers to promote independence. Any deviations from the routine can create an opportunity to lose students and can cause frustration. Keep the day predictable.

"I create individualized weekly schedules for my students," said Kelli Alessandro, a special education teacher in Methuen, Massachusetts. "Included in these schedules are their assignments and expectations with links to documents, websites, or other materials in a centrally located document. These schedules assist the students and caregivers with pacing, planning, organization, and task completion, among other functional skills."

Movement breaks: Within the schedule, built-in movement breaks have been useful. Replicating the school's sensory paths with a DIY sensory motor path or creating one outside on a sidewalk or driveway with chalk is an excellent way to incorporate multiple movement breaks within the day.

Recorded videos: When providing students with asynchronous learning programs, recorded video instructions for students and parents to refer to have helped to reinforce IEP goals.

Accept all completed work: Students come from different environments, and not all students have equal access to computers and tablets. Learning what works best for the family and accepting completed work through various methods, such as electronic media, picture texts, and paper copies, has increased the frequency of completed work.

Be Yourself

In addition to the discussed themes, a reoccurring and nonspecific idea was the importance of having fun, acting silly, and creating a supportive environment in which to learn. When your students look back on the months of remote learning, they won't remember the incredible math lesson you spent hours preparing. They will remember the relationship you established with them. They will remember the silly hats you wore, the fun games you played, and the way you made them forget the scary realities of the world. Your students will remember you and your ability to make them feel safe and happy through this horrible global pandemic.

Thank you to all the educators who took time out of their hectic schedules to respond to the survey to help others. Educators are a selfless community of superstars. I can't thank you enough!

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How to Improve Distance Learning for Students With IEPs

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Strategies for parental involvement and synchronous and asynchronous activities can help students with individualized education programs. Distance learning isn't easy for most students, but it is particularly difficult for those with learning differences that require individualized education programs (IEPs).

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Work overload is a distraction. Many people struggle to find the willpower and energy to focus on what's really important.

Starting today, reclaim your ability to focus, be mindful of what you are doing, and you will create meaningful accomplishments every week.

The more focused you are, the higher the quality of work you'll do, and the more you'll get done.

Don't forget the human element of work.

Your energy reservoir diminishes as the day wears on, which is why it's so difficult to get to the hardest work late in the day.

We're designed to pulse between spending and renewing energy. If you know your peak times, you can do a lot more focused and deep work every day.

I get more important work done during the first 90 minutes of the morning than in the rest of the hours of the day put together. I make the most of sprintsin the morning.

Working in sprints with regular breaks leads to maximum productivity.

After every sprint comes the rest.

The human body operates on cycles called " ultradian rhythms." According to research, during each of these cycles, there is a peak when we are most energized and a period when we are exhausted. You are most active in the morning.

Your brain can only focus for 90 to 120 minutes at a time. Afterwards, a 20-30 minute break is required for you to get the renewal to achieve high performance for your next task again, according to research.

During a productive sprint, you focus only on one task at a time and avoid distractions. Each sprint has a specific goal, and the end of the sprint signals a break to relax and set up for the next sprint.

In a post on Zapier, Stephen Altrogge says:

"With the 90-minute focus technique, you take full advantage of the energy peaks and troughs that occur throughout your day: Work 90 minutes and then rest for 20-30 minutes.

Working in 90-minute bursts allows you to correlate your maximum energy levels with your task list, which then gives your productivity a major boost. You're working with your body instead of against it.

Tony Schwartz, wrote his book, "The Way We're Working Isn't Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance" in under six months by carving his workday into a trio of 90-minute chunks.

He wrote no more than four and a half hours a day, and finished the book in less than 6 months. Schwartz explains the 90 minutes cycle:

More than 50 years ago, the pioneering sleep researcher Nathan Kleitman discovered something he named the "basic rest-activity cycle" - the 90 minute periods at night during which we move progressively through five stages of sleep, from light to deep, and then out again.

Although it's much less well known, Kleitman also observed that our bodies operate by the same 90 minute rhythm during the day.

When we're awake, the movement is from higher to lower alertness. Other researchers have called this our "ultradian rhythm."

In his book, Schwartz writes:

"While working on The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci regularly took off from painting for several hours at a time and seemed to be daydreaming aimlessly. Urged by his patron, the prior of Santa Maria delle Grazie, to work more continuously, da Vinci is reported to have replied, immodestly but accurately,'The greatest geniuses accomplish more when they work less."

In his renowned 1993 study of young violinists, performance researcher Anders Ericsson found that the best ones all practiced the same way:

They practiced in the morning

They practiced for three sessions

Each sessions was 90 minutes or less

There was a break between each session

That same pattern is found in other top performers, Schwartz reports: focus then rest, focus then rest.

When you push the limits of your ability and give yourself a goal, you're apt to enter into what positive psychologists call flow.

In positive psychology, flow, also known as the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist who has studied the relationship between attention and work, has written extensively about Flow. Mihaly enourages us to muster enough energy to do what we know we should do. "We create ourselves by how we use this energy", he says.

In "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience", he writes:

"Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times - although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.

For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last blockon a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves."

Starting and maintaining a positive daily routine is an investment and a way to do your best work everyday.

It also gives you structure, building forward-moving habits, and creating momentum for the rest of the day.

It helps you establish priorities, limit procrastination, keep track of your goals and do your best work when you are most active.

Once you establish a routine, it ceases to be a struggle to get in productivity mode everyday because the habit becomes part of you.

Many people pay little attention to the natural rhythms of their body. But once you know what times in the morning you can work better, use it your advantage and your body can deliver at its peak.

Working in 90-minute bursts allows you to correlate your maximum energy levels with your most important task, which then gives your productivity a major boost.

It's only when you come to appreciate and accept the ebbs and flows of your body that you can really start to deliver maximum results.

A focused work rule is important for peak performance.

Join my Thinking in Models community and upgrade your thinking habits. Join smart and curious people on a mission to think clearly, work better, solve problems at multiple levels of depths, and make complex decisions with confidence! Click here for details.

You can also subscribe to Postanly Weekly(my free weekly digest of the best posts about behaviour change that affect health, wealth, and productivity). Join over 46,000 people on a mission to build a better life.

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Sprints: The Secret Productivity Technique to Getting More Done in Less Time

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Work overload is a distraction. Many people struggle to find the willpower and energy to focus on what's really important. Starting today, reclaim your ability to focus, be mindful of what you are doing, and you will create meaningful accomplishments every week.

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Online June 2020 | Volume 77
Time Well-Managed Pages 12-18

Chris Gabrieli and Colleen Beaudoin

Further, we know too little time is available for a well-rounded education that includes "untested" subjects such as social studies, history, and languages, as well as the arts, sports, and myriad "extracurriculars." Upper middle-class families spend lots of time and money to supplement what schools offer, while disadvantaged students are more likely to be bored or unsupported during expanses of out-of-school time. For many families, the mismatch between children's school schedules and the work requirements of parents poses heavy challenges. And for communities, disengaged adolescents can spell potential trouble-from drug use to gangs to teenage pregnancy. Finally, the short school day and year mean too little time for teachers to flourish as professionals with opportunities to look at data to inform instruction, develop their teaching skills, collaborate together, and so on.

Forays into Extended Learning

While the overwhelming majority of districts and schools stick to last year's schedule because it would be hard to change, we see evidence that time use in schools could be improved. Nearly all highly successful charter schools have considerably more time in their school day (typically 30 percent more) than comparable regular public schools. Careful quantitative research (Dobbie & Fryer, 2013) shows that this expanded time-specifically using it to individualize learning for students and to support teachers-is a primary driver of good charters' success.

At the same time, hundreds of district schools across the country enjoy the flexibility to set schedules that work best for students and teachers-and that offer more learning time. Most of them exist in a dozen "empowerment zones" or under other experimental structures that give school leaders greater autonomy, including over scheduling decisions (Kim, Field, & Hassel, 2019). Across the country, the best after-school and summer programs show what's possible in extending learning time. But such programs often rely on either parental ability to pay or philanthropic largesse, leaving the majority of students without such opportunities.

So why don't more schools change to extend learning time? Because it would upset expectations. Because it would mean new contracts and possibly higher costs. Because of culture and traditions. A quote from our Declaration of Independence seems appropriate here: "All experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

Insights from the Pandemic

Now, however, the novel coronavirus pandemic has disturbed this holding pattern. In a flash-out of dire necessity and under legal mandate-all conventions of learning time have been abandoned. Students are now home and potentially learning all the time-or not much at all. They are never in school, but they can always be learning, and they are (mostly) connected to school-based and other digital learning platforms and content.

From 100 years of following approximately the same learning system, based on being at school and learning in allotted amounts of time, we've gone into a model previously only charted in crises and by the sliver of American students who are homeschooled. With brick-and-mortar schools shuttered, everyone has been forced into some form of home and remote learning. Parents and educators have struggled to do their best. It's been difficult-but we can, and should, learn about and from this experience.

We're writing this article in late April to be published in June. It's risky to predict or advise about what schools will or should do for the fall because the situation is evolving rapidly and much is fundamentally uncertain. But we can still consider two fundamental questions regarding learning-time reform: What can we learn from this spring's mad scramble? And what should educators do about the coming school year?

What Can We Learn?

In thinking about how the pandemic has upended learning time and what we might learn from this, we are inspired by this John Dewey (1938) quote: "We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future."

Why-in terms of doing school remotely and keeping learning time flexible-do we need to "prepare for doing the same thing in the future"? Isn't this a one-time case? Maybe. But while nearly everyone pines for a return to "normal," we believe we must learn from what has worked while being forced to teach in this way-and what hasn't. We must be ready to do this better in the future, for two reasons.

First, we need to learn to do remote learning well as an alternative way to provide learning time because we will have more interruptions in schooling, as we always have had, from things like snow days and floods-though hopefully not for this long or universally. Climate scientists say we are likely to experience more severe weather events in coming years. Remote learning, done well, will set us up to keep students' learning from lagging in such events in the future.

Meanwhile, for too many students, schooling is often disrupted because of family mobility, frequently tied to housing and economic insecurity. Other students encounter health problems, involvement with youth corrections, or other outside factors that impact their learning time just as a flood or even pandemic might. While it's crucial to reduce these kinds of circumstances and inequities, well-designed remote learning could help these students sustain their learning time, and thus better overcome their disadvantage and flourish.

And of course, this pandemic and its impact on school operations may not be over by the end of this school year. Let's learn from recent months to improve teaching and learning this coming semester.

Second, we need to use innovative learning tools and strategies far more effectively if and when we return to a more traditional version of schooling, both to expand learning time and better personalize learning. Online, adaptive tools and videoconference-enabled groupings of students (and teachers) permit a more flexible set of approaches that can be deployed both during a typical in-building school day and beyond-in ways that can benefit students, teachers, and families. Online adaptive tools allow for greater personalization of learning, whether nested in the school day or outside it. While some of the current emergency remote learning involves little more than worksheets distributed to homes, many schools and districts are trying more promising and cutting-edge tools, as well as innovating on the fly. Once mandatory remote learning is over, we should capture the best of these efforts and incorporate them into our instructional repertoire.

For example, nine middle schools across the Springfield Empowerment Zone in Massachusetts are switching to an approach where lessons on the highest priority core skills in math will be refined and recorded for students to watch. These lessons will be designed and presented by master teachers and shown to students across all the schools. Then all teachers will be able to provide tier 2 and tier 3 supports (in RTI terms) to students in smaller and more personalized groupings. This moves away from a paradigm where each teacher has to teach every topic and support every student to a smarter, better use of talent that allows targeted support time to students who need it.

The bottom line: We need to learn how to do remote learning right and well. We must focus on spots where the most success is achieved as well as on the hardest challenges, like how to ensure special populations, such as students with disabilities, are fully served. We should gather examples, but also data. While states won't be gathering annual summative data this year, many schools and districts already use formative assessments, such as NWEA's MAP, which are administered online and offer large comparative databases. This data should be collected widely at the end of this school year, not for accountability, but to support planning well for next year and inform our understanding about what has worked.

The Road Ahead-Starting from Behind

Some of what we're learning about remote education and learning time can also be used to better support students during the transition to the upcoming school year-which will be unlike any in the past. Some initial data analyses indicate that this spring's closures will have significant negative effects on students' academic skill levels. Researchers at NWEA, for instance, created projections based on their large-scale datasets combined with historical "summer slide" trajectories (Kuhfeld & Tarasawa, 2020). If those prove true, students might start the next school year having gained only about 70 percent of what they would've in reading in a typical year and-alarmingly-having accrued less than 50 percent of typical math gains, with students in some grades likely to start next year already a full year behind. These are projections, of course, which don't assume growth after schools were closed to face-to-face learning-of which we certainly hope there will be some.

With this data in mind, here are five bold suggestions for what schools and educators should do differently as they look beyond this school year. They all involve changing our conceptions of learning time.

1. Switch to Continuous Learning This Summer

Why end school at all this academic year? A fundamental design error in our school system is that it is what process engineers call a batch system, not a continuous process. We run a batch of 6th graders through whatever the 6th grade process is, and then we stop for about 10 weeks before moving them into the 7th grade batch. Whatever didn't get completed in 6th grade is forsaken, and the further summer learning loss of the 10-week hiatus has been well documented.

This is the year we should just keep going. Students, teachers, and families will be already converted to distance learning and increasingly comfortable with it. It's likely our 2020 summers will be different anyway, with travel plans, summer camps, and other opportunities cancelled or restricted.

A lot would have to be figured out about how to properly structure the summer term (including providing some time off, of course). Leaders would have to determine whether to include all students, target those most in need, or make it optional, and how to fairly compensate participating teachers. But since we are able to further support the most challenged students and challenge the most advanced, let's not stop learning just because schools used to end on an arbitrary date.

The payoffs would be short-term and potentially long-term. For now, we would help students make up for lost time and offer more structure-especially for those who may still be learning remotely amid social distancing. Parents would welcome this change as well. Longer-term, we may develop a model that could permanently shift us away from the antiquated idea that learning stops and school systems close for long stretches of the year.

2. Create a "Smart Ramp" into the Next School Year

The start of every school year is a bit chaotic. But even if fall of 2020, allows for resumption of traditional schooling with some face-to-face interaction, it will be more challenging than ever. Over the past few years, many schools have developed transition "academies" for new 6th and 9th graders as they enter the next level of schooling. That approach should be taken for all students this year.

Let's assume students will not be as ready as usual for the start of the school year, academically or emotionally. Nor will teachers. So let's have teachers and students show up a couple weeks before the official start of the in-school school year for a sort of reorientation, to reintroduce structure and rhythm into the lives of students and schools-and to make sure everyone feels safe and connected. During this period, let's gather baseline data on student academic levels and preparedness as the school year starts through adaptive, well-aligned assessments.

But let's also make a record investment in social-emotional and mental health and well-being benchmarking and support. Schools and systems should use (with students and teachers) relevant surveys they already deploy to gain the benefit of baseline comparisons of well-being from before the pandemic and after students return-or use validated, nationally normed surveys that focus on measures of mental health and well-being. Having such data will be crucial to understanding the scale and nature of the challenges students and teachers are facing. In addition, schools should also be ready with schoolwide activities like advisory groups and circles, as well as high-intensity interventions with psychologists and social workers for students and teachers at highest risk. Everyone has been through a lot. Some people will be suffering more than others. It's crucial we understand where we are and identify students and educators who need immediate support.

3. Switch Permanently to Mastery-Based Learning

This is the moment to take a leap forward on how we allocate and use learning time, moving from an assembly line model, where time is fixed and results vary, to a mastery-based approach that allows students and teachers the time they need to succeed. This will require structural and pedagogical changes-and even more so, a philosophical shift.

This shift would benefit from allowing more learning time every day-but much can be done within the current schedule. More time in the school schedule devoted to small-group and one-on-one support for students, targeting skills where data shows students are lagging, is far more effective than traditional whole-group instruction. This approach ensures that all students get the same grade-level content and each student gets the added support they need without using problematic approaches like tracking. Using the most effective online tools and flipped classroom strategies can allow more kids to learn and practice at their appropriate level, while freeing up teachers to work directly with students who need it most.

Schools should also use time beyond the conventional schedule. In Massachusetts, "acceleration academies" held during spring break have been shown to be effective in multiple studies, including a randomized trial in Springfield (Schueler, 2020). These vacation academies are targeted to students most likely to benefit and are taught in small groups, typically in a 10:1 ratio. Other innovations such as Saturday sessions for particular groups of students, like English language learners, also show promise.

These new approaches to scheduling involve multiple, immediately feasible tactics, but also a sea change in perspective from seat time accounting to mastery-oriented thinking that allows students to progress at the best rate they can, not to the arbitrary metronome of grade progressions.

4. Remember-Teachers' Learning Matters, Too

While our top focus should be on students, support for teachers' learning must be considered as well. This summer and fall will offer unique opportunities to pursue approaches not normally possible in the traditional school structure. For example, leaders and teachers in the Springfield Empowerment Zone schools in Springfield, Massachusetts, are experimenting with videoconference-based "triad collaborative planning" for teachers whose schedules normally make it hard for them to collaborate. Middle school content experts are able to work with ELL and special education experts to chart joint approaches to ensure vulnerable students are well served by new lesson plans in remote learning. Similarly, school systems will have unprecedented opportunities for novice teachers to work with experts and with online professional development tools to focus on their greatest needs.

5. Engage Parents More

Most parents will be glad to see their "crisis deployment" to remote learning come to an end, and they'll likely have gained a greater appreciation for how much goes into successful schooling. But educators should also seek to sustain and refine much higher parent engagement. Parents have always been an underutilized partner in schools, with parent engagement usually limited chiefly to attendance at school events and conferences. Remote learning shows that parents can be much more engaged partners in students' actual learning. Let's seize this moment to consider how newly made online connections can help parents better partner with teachers-and understand and support their children's learning.

Reacting by Rethinking

No one could have wished for this pandemic-and silver linings only come with storm clouds. But educators can respond constructively by rethinking, in light of what we've learned since February, how school time might be better used. We can re-evaluate archaic structures and approaches and move boldly toward mastery-based approaches that leverage both online tools and the unique human touch of teachers across expanded schedules and forms for learning.

References

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Kappa Delta Pi.

Dobbie, W., & Fryer, R. G. (2013). Getting beneath the veil of effective schools: Evidence from New York City. American Economics Journal: Applied Economics, 5(4), 28-60.

Farbman, D. (2015). The case for improving and expanding time in school: A review of key research and practice (Updated and revised). Boston, MA: National Center on Time and Learning.

Kim, J., Field, T., & Hassel, B. C. (2019). Autonomous district schools: A new path to growing high-quality, innovative public schools. Chapel Hill, NC: Public Impact.

Kuhfeld, M., & Tarasawa, B. (2020). The COVID-19 slide: What summer learning loss can tell us about the potential impact of school closures on student academic achievement. NWEA.

National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk. Washington, D.C.: Author.

National Education Commission on Time and Learning. (1994). Prisoners of time. Washington, D.C.: Author.

Schueler, B. E. (2020). Making the most of school vacation: A field experiment of small group math instruction. Education Finance and Policy, 15(2), 310-331.

Chris Gabrieli is chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, the CEO of Empower Schools, and a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is the author of Time to Learn (Jossey Bass, 2008). Colleen Beaudoin, a former teacher and school administrator, is co-executive director of the Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership in Springfield, Massachusetts.

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In a Time of Crisis, What Can We Learn About Learning Time?

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Online June 2020 | Volume 77 Time Well-Managed Pages 12-18 Chris Gabrieli and Colleen Beaudoin Further, we know too little time is available for a well-rounded education that includes "untested" subjects such as social studies, history, and languages, as well as the arts, sports, and myriad "extracurriculars."

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Idea in Brief

The Challenge

Managers today are bombarded with calls to give feedback-constantly, directly, and critically. But it turns out that telling people what we think of their performance and how they can do better is not the best way to help them excel and, in fact, can hinder development.

The Reality

Research shows that, first, we aren't the reliable raters of other people's performance that we think we are; second, criticism inhibits the brain's ability to learn; and, third, excellence is idiosyncratic, can't be defined in advance, and isn't the opposite of failure. Managers can't "correct" a person's way to excellence.

The Solution

Managers need to help their team members see what's working, stopping them with a "Yes! That!" and sharing their experience of what the person did well.

The debate about feedback at work isn't new. Since at least the middle of the last century, the question of how to get employees to improve has generated a good deal of opinion and research. But recently the discussion has taken on new intensity. The ongoing experiment in "radical transparency" at Bridgewater Associates and the culture at Netflix, which the Wall Street Journal recently described as "encouraging harsh feedback" and subjecting workers to "intense and awkward" real-time 360s, are but two examples of the overriding belief that the way to increase performance in companies is through rigorous, frequent, candid, pervasive, and often critical feedback.

A version of this article appeared in the March-April 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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Why Feedback Rarely Does What It's Meant To

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For years managers have been encouraged to candidly praise and criticize just about everything workers do. But it turns out that feedback does not help employees thrive. First, research shows that people can't reliably rate the performance of others: More than 50% of your rating of someone reflects your characteristics, not hers.

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Opinion

Alignment of policy and educational practices is critical

The pandemic shines an intense light on inequities that have long existed in our education system: long lines for food pick-up by school families, lack of devices and Wi-Fi for remote learning, and unfair funding formulas that allocate less to schools with the most students of color and those from low-income families.

These inequalities undergird the protests demanding racial justice that are convulsing our country. How we choose to respond will impact the rising generation, and the fabric of our whole society, for years to come.

Policymakers and education leaders need a shared set of principles for developing and evaluating responses to the COVID-19 crisis that advance positive change for students and reckon with systemic racism in public schools. As the director of the Education & Society Program at the Aspen Institute, I developed a framework of five principles and related actions for leading public education from recovery to renewal last month.

With the nation's focus now on achieving racial justice, these principles are even more urgent:

1. Equity & Agency: Policymakers must be cleareyed that schools reflect the inequities that plague society at-large. Every powerful driver of learning-safe and nurturing learning environments; rigorous and relevant academic content; teachers who see and value students' cultures and communities; voice and choice in important decisions-is provided to white and affluent students more than students of color and students from low-income families. Leadership in this moment must correct inequitable funding and cede decisionmaking power to those most directly affected.

Take Action: (1) Governors and legislators must prioritize funding for schools educating students of color and students from low-income families. (2) For states to receive additional federal funds, which they will need to avoid layoffs, they should be required to address inequity in education funding. (3) State leaders should seek out the most vulnerable students and families to understand what they most need to feel safe, supported, and engaged-and respond with action.

2. Coherence: Education leaders will be juggling many issues just to start the new school year, in the context of immense strain on state budgets and rising needs among vulnerable children and families. Policymakers need a holistic frame for addressing the needs of students and families so each decision is related to the whole. If every issue is treated serially, by the assumed level of urgency, decisions made by different agencies and state vs. local leaders won't be aligned, and school leaders will be left to sort out the confusion.

Take Action: (1) Governors should prioritize cross-agency coordination to address the needs of children and families, avoid duplication of efforts, and keep turf battles from slowing down delivery. (2) Within education, coherence calls for integrating social-emotional dimensions of learning into academic instruction so these reinforce each other in students' experience of school. Schooling next year in particular needs to become a place of healing and processing what's happened, or students will experience the disconnect and hypocrisy viscerally.

3. Science of Learning and Development: Breakthroughs in neuroscience, epigenetics, and research have created a new understanding about how people learn. We know student safety, belonging, and connectedness to school are foundational to resilience and engagement that then enable academic success and thriving in life. Focusing too narrowly on making up for lost instructional time will compound inequity and depress long-term achievement if done without adequately resourcing psychological safety, relationships, and a sense of belonging.

Take Action: (1) Prioritize school climate and relationships. Assigning every adult to mentor a manageable number of students and instituting advisories are two aspects of relationship-rich schools that will be especially valuable. (2) State agencies can commission appropriate online, interactive courses to provide teacher professional development and offer micro-credentials. (3) Modest investments in community service for near-peer mentors and tutors, both high school juniors and seniors and recent graduates, could imbue learning with greater purpose, while at the same time providing needed mentorship and tutoring for younger students.

4. Long-Term Success: Even before the crisis, profound questions were on the table about the role of education in society and the education outcomes that are essential for students to be ready to thrive as adults. Changes will be accelerated and intensified by the pandemic, the economic upheaval it is provoking, and the widespread political awakening on systemic racism in our society.

Take Action: (1) Policymakers must identify competencies that are needed to navigate the future of work; to build a new, anti-racist pluralism; and to support a healthy democracy. (2) Education agencies and state school boards should pilot assessments of critical skills for the modern workplace like working on teams, communicating in diverse settings, and evaluating the credibility and relevance of information from multiple sources.

5. Innovation: Many new online instruction and student-engagement practices are being rapidly designed and implemented. For instance, teachers as well as students have developed facility with digital-learning platforms. The challenge is to understand the reality of what's being tried (rather than what was planned) and to learn what worked to improve practice long term.

Take Action: (1) States should track emergency- response measures, both official decisions and emerging practice. (2) State education agencies can help organize working groups to collect data, learn quickly, and adapt policy and practice decisions. Empanel students and parents as part of these efforts, compensate them for their time, and start by asking what they experienced and what's most important to them going forward. (3) Publish and share what is learned.

The challenge-and opportunity-of returning to school calls on all of us to clarify the principles and enduring values we want to live by and to use these to build common ground where we can. Just as some work routines and home-life dynamics will be indelibly altered even when the crisis recedes, the social contract that public schools represent is overdue for renewal. We must re-envision public education to meet this emergency while also setting a course that improves on the status quo, or policies that had outlived their usefulness will be extended in a rush to "return to normal" as quickly as possible.

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The Five Guiding Principles to Combat Inequities Before Schools Reopen

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Opinion The pandemic shines an intense light on inequities that have long existed in our education system: long lines for food pick-up by school families, lack of devices and Wi-Fi for remote learning, and unfair funding formulas that allocate less to schools with the most students of color and those from low-income families.

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February 2020 | Volume 77 | Number 5
Rooted in Reading Pages 16-22

Benjamin Riley

Something remarkable is happening throughout the U.S. education system. Educators at all levels, from university faculty to early childhood-education teachers, are clamoring to learn more about the science of reading.

As the founder of Deans for Impact, a nonprofit that has long championed the need for teachers to understand learning science, I find this new wave of interest something to celebrate. From a scientific perspective, we know a great deal about how children learn to read. Yet, for too long, we haven't done enough to ensure that new teachers-in particular, teachers of children from ages 0-8-are familiar with this science as they start their careers.

Veteran educators reading this essay may be feeling skeptical about my optimism-and with good reason. After all, it wasn't long ago that the U.S. education system was engaged in what many refer to as the "Reading Wars." Those so-called wars pitted advocates for explicit phonics instruction against "whole language" partisans. The fighting was fierce. Both sides claimed to have science on their side, and neither won an outright victory. Advocates for phonics-based instruction took comfort in the authoritative findings of the National Reading Panel in the year 2000, which affirmed the importance of developing phonological awareness in young readers. For their part, whole-language supporters largely shifted to supporting "balanced literacy," which, to summarize briefly, ostensibly blends phonics and other reading-skills instruction with time for children to read complete texts. (Whether teachers who use balanced literacy actually keep these components in balance is the subject of ongoing debate that I won't explore in this essay.)

After some pitched battles in the early 2000s, things seemed to settle into an uneasy truce among reading experts. But perhaps lost in the fog of the first Reading Wars was an important question: Were (and are) teachers actually using evidence-informed approaches to help students learn to read? Empirical evidence suggests the answer is, sadly, no (Kretlow & Helf, 2013). And over the past two years, driven in part by hard-hitting reporting by American Public Media's Emily Hanford (2018), the education community has been forced to confront the question: If there's a science related to learning to read, why aren't all teachers employing that science in their practice? And if they aren't, who bears responsibility for changing that reality?

Or, as master educator Yoda might ask, "Begun again, the Reading Wars have?"

In what follows, I'll explain why I think the answer is no, and why I believe the recent surge of interest in the science of reading is poised to take deeper root in K-12 education practice. At the same time, I'll offer some strategic advice to advocates for applying findings from reading science to how we teach kids to read-advice that may help limit the potential for backlash that may arise again as this movement grows.

The Science of Reading: A Quick Summary

Reading is an unnatural act.

There is an enormous amount of complexity buried in that sentence, complexity that ties into issues that strike at the core of public education, so I'm going to spend a little time unpacking what it means. As I do, bear in mind that this is meant to be an (embarrassingly) quick summary of reading science.

There are certain things we learn "naturally," that is, as the result of millions of years of human evolution. The most obvious example is understanding spoken language. Absent cognitive or hearing impairment, virtually all human children will learn what words mean simply by being around and listening to other humans.

Reading is another matter entirely. Anthropological records suggest the oldest use of a written alphabet emerged approximately 6,000-8,000 years ago -a mere blip on an evolutionary timescale (McCarter, 1974). This is why it's not accurate to call reading, and the process by which we learn to read, "natural." It's a modern human innovation-arguably the most powerful in our species' history.

But the cost of that innovation is high in terms of brainwork. As cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham (2009) has observed, although humans are naturally curious, we aren't naturally good thinkers. In fact, because thinking is hard work, our minds are wired to avoid thinking. Readers of Daniel Kahneman's 2011 book Thinking Fast and Slow should be nodding along here. Put simply, learning to read imposes significant cognitive burdens-and at an age when cognition is only beginning to take form.

Now for some joyous news: Virtually all children can learn to read through formal education (again, absent some cognitive or physical impairment). What's more, the process by which humans learn to read has been well-researched, to the point that we can describe our knowledge of this process as a science. Here are just a few reading-science principles that aren't in dispute among English-language literacy experts:

Children can learn to understand how written letters relate to sounds-to decode text-through explicit phonics instruction (Castles, Rastle, & Nation, 2018). They should receive explicit instruction that teaches the sounds that letters and combinations of letters represent, and the relationships of spelling patterns and pronunciations. Teachers need to be explicit in such instructing; this isn't the place for being a "guide on the side."

The key factor in helping young children transition from decoding text to becoming fluent readers is lots of reading practice with varied texts (Stanovich & West, 1989). Teachers should make books and other texts readily available in different parts of the classroom. But "independent reading" shouldn't supplant direct reading instruction.

Explicit strategies designed to improve reading comprehension cannot, on their own, compensate for lack of vocabulary or content knowledge on a particular subject (Willingham, 2009). It's fine for teachers to teach a few comprehension strategies (like making predictions) to students, but they shouldn't overdo it.

These principles and others related to fostering early literacy are summarized in "The Science of Early Learning," a guide that Deans for Impact published in early 2019. This document explores the practical implications of these principles for teaching children to read.

So if the basic principles of the science of reading are well-established, why do some think we're at risk of a second Reading War? Probably because both sides tend to dig in. In an insightful op-ed for the Washington Post in 2018, Rachael Gabriel of the University of Connecticut commented on the tribal-like behavior of both advocates of phonics and advocates of whole-language approaches:

Like different denominations of a single religion, different approaches to reading instruction often have significant assumptions in common, but some core disagreements that each believes is the fatal flaw of the other and the reason to dismiss it completely. Distrust and misinformation on both sides perpetuates dramatic pendulum swings back and forth between contrasting approaches. These rob educators of the continuity needed to master and innovate in any direction and eliminate the possibility of meaningful integration of ideas.

Like the polarization infecting American politics currently, polarization around reading science threatens to undermine reasoned deliberation and uptake. But there's reason for optimism.

Bringing Reading Science into Teaching

If elementary teachers aren't using reading science to the degree we might hope, whose fault is that? For many, blame lies with teacher-preparation programs. Some critics have gone so far as to suggest that university faculty are the education equivalent of climate-change deniers and guilty of malpractice for failing to teach the science of reading (Walsh, 2019).

Not only is this rhetoric unhelpful-if you're trying to persuade people to change their behavior, it's rarely effective to insult them-it's belied by the fact that many programs that prepare teachers are already working hard to integrate the science of reading into their courses and clinical training.

For example, over the past year, teams of teacher educators from five diverse schools of education in North Carolina have been exploring how to integrate reading-science principles into the coursework and practical training they provide to their teacher candidates. With the support of Deans for Impact, this effort-called the NC Early Learning & Literacy Impact Coalition-is focused on ensuring that future teachers understand how to teach young children to recognize and write the letters of the alphabet, and to explicitly and systematically connect letters and sounds.

Faculty at these programs use a "learning cycle diagnostic" to assess how they introduce the principles of reading science to their teacher candidates, and what sort of activities teacher candidates should engage in to understand how these principles can inform effective teaching. For example, do teacher candidates have the opportunity to observe teacher educators modeling effective pedagogy using principles of reading science? And to rehearse their own teaching using these same principles prior to instructing young children?

The result of that inquiry revealed some interesting challenges. Most of these five programs studied reported that a majority of their teacher candidates (60-80 percent) had chances to think about and draw on reading science principles as part of their training by reading research and lesson planning. But when it came to employing these principles through practice-based training, the programs provided few such opportunities to their teacher candidates. In fact, 50-60 percent of these pre-service teachers received no practical training that was explicitly tied to principles of reading science.

To be sure, this is self-reported data, but that's my point: A group of educator-preparation programs have voluntarily joined together to figure out how to integrate reading science into the preparation process. What's more, participating programs are now starting to align coursework for both pre-kindergarten and early elementary grades using the principles identified in "The Science of Early Learning"; developing curriculum maps to see whether and how principles of reading science are explained to teacher candidates; and working with cooperating mentor teachers to ensure they too are familiar with key principles. While a great deal of hard work lies ahead for this coalition, its very existence is evidence that, with the right support and motivation, change is possible.

A Nuanced Approach

So what will it take to drive change across the broader education system? What strategies should advocates for the science of reading use to foster uptake of its principles?

One way to drive systemic change is through policy. The renewed interest in incorporating reading science into teaching has caught the attention of lawmakers across the United States. States as diverse as Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Mississippi have recently passed laws to promote reading science, largely through teacher-licensure exams that have beefed up questions related to phonics and other evidence-supported practices.

I'm encouraged by this development, but caution is warranted. As an education advocate for more than a decade, time and again I've seen well-intentioned education policy be translated into questionable (at best) education practice. Put simply, passing laws that demand change is not enough. There needs to be a meaningful plan in place to support improvement to drive real behavior change.

Indeed, it's worth ruminating briefly on why many educators resist teaching phonics explicitly. My hunch is that many educators have been asked to teach phonics "explicitly" without learning the empirically supported theories that explain why phonological awareness is essential to developing literacy. What's more, teaching is an applied science; understanding the science of reading does not in and of itself lead to effective pedagogy. I strongly suspect that some teachers are hostile to phonics because phonics-based instruction, when done poorly, can be mind-numbing for students to sit through. Teachers who've seen this happen are (rightfully) concerned.

To again quote Rachael Gabriel's piece in the Washington Post:

Poor instruction, jumbled instruction, and unbalanced instruction do not occur because of Balanced Literacy, schools of education, or the vestiges of a whole-language movement. Poor, jumbled, and unbalanced instruction is just as likely to exist in settings where explicit, systematic phonics instruction is mandated in schools and teacher preparation programs. (2018)

So how can we advance understanding of the science of reading and support teachers to use effective, thoughtful pedagogical practices that draw from that science? Here are three principles of advocacy that I hope reading science enthusiasts will employ going forward:

Be nuanced. Yes, there is a strong scientific consensus that supports the use of phonics in the early stages of learning to read. But it is equally true, scientifically, that "reading comprehension clearly entails more than identification of individual words: Children are not literate if they cannot understand text" (Castles et al., 2018). Learning to read is a progression from decoding text to fluent reading to deeper inference and comprehension. In advocating for reading science, we should recognize this nuanced progression rather than fall into the trap of stridently demanding (on its own) "more explicit phonics instruction."

Remember, science should inform-not dictate-practice. Broadly, the science of reading offers insights from a cognitive perspective into how we develop as readers-that is, how our minds make sense of written symbols. But, to quote Willingham (2017), "seeking to make a reader out of a child who does not read is an educational goal, not a scientific one." Scientific insights should inform education practice by adding to a teacher's "mental model" of how their students make meaning of text. That still leaves a great deal of space for educators to decide which pedagogical techniques they'll use to help students learn to read.

Focus on encouraging instead of shaming. For the past five years, Deans for Impact has worked closely with more than 50 educator-preparation programs across the country that want to improve teacher preparation, including the programs in North Carolina that are focusing on reading science. While the programs that choose to work with us may be a minority now, they are growing in number. Fostering that growth will be greatly enhanced by celebrating the fact that many programs are taking on the hard work of changing how they prepare teachers, with learning science at the center. It's time to move past stereotypical critiques and the strategy of shame, and instead offer support and encouragement to those who are helping to grow this movement.

Scientific ideas, no matter their usefulness, don't spread of their own accord. Let's work together to foster the science of reading while also striving, in Tolstoy-esque fashion, to go from war to peace.

References

Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19, 5-51.

Deans for Impact. (2019). The science of early learning. Austin, TX: Deans for Impact.

Gabriel, R., & Strauss, V. (2018, September 25). The straw man in the new round of the reading wars. Washington Post.

Hanford, E. (2018, September 10). Hard words: Why aren't our kids being taught to read? American Public Media.

Kretlow, A., & Helf, S. (2013). Teacher implementation of evidence-based practices in Tier 1: A national survey. Teacher Education and Special Education, 36(3), 167-185.

McCarter, P. K. (1974). The early diffusion of the alphabet. The Biblical Archaeologist, 37(3), 54.

Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (1989). Exposure to print and orthographic processing. Reading Research Quarterly, 24, 402-433.

Walsh, K. (July 2019). Case closed. [Blog post] NCTQ. Retrieved from https://nctq.org/blog/Case-closed

Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why don't students like school? San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Willingham, D. T. (2017). The reading mind: A cognitive approach to understanding how the mind reads. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Benjamin Riley is founder and executive director of Deans for Impact. Follow him on Twitter.

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Drawing on Reading Science Without Starting a War

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February 2020 | Volume 77 | Number 5 Rooted in Reading Pages 16-22 Benjamin Riley Something remarkable is happening throughout the U.S. education system. Educators at all levels, from university faculty to early childhood-education teachers, are clamoring to learn more about the science of reading.

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April 2020 | Volume 77 | Number 7
Deeper Discussions Pages 45-50

Zaretta Hammond

When I taught expository writing as a classroom teacher, I found the fastest path to improving my students' writing was to build their capacity to engage in deep discussions so they were able to work through their thesis or arguments-testing their claims and hearing their peers' perspectives. This pushed them to revise their own thinking. John Hattie's research around academic conversation and discussion confirms what I learned by direct experience: Academic conversation is one of the most powerful practices we can bring to our classrooms to promote higher achievement (Hattie, 2012).

So now, as a consultant, when I go into classrooms as part of an equity audit or as a coach supporting school teams to incorporate more culturally responsive practices, one of the first things I look for is who is doing most of the talking during instruction. As the old adage has it: "Whoever is doing the talking is doing the learning." This notion is supported by the growing evidence from researchers such as Aida Walqui and colleagues and their work with English learners at WestEd (2019), and Ron Ritchhart and his work around the cultures of thinking out of Harvard's Project Zero (2015). This body of research highlights that talking in all its forms- conversing, discussing, debating, and dialoguing -helps increase students' brain power so that they are able to take on more rigorous work and engage in deeper learning down the road.

But to grow students' brain power using academic conversation as a strategy, we need robust talk structures that allow more students to join in the conversation confidently, especially English learners, introverted students, disengaged students, and historically marginalized students. These are all students whose communication styles and funds of knowledge are not typically leveraged in classrooms.

For the most part, schools have limited the range of everyday talk structures and processes in our classrooms. I often see teachers only using turn and talk as a discussion strategy, sometimes alternating it with think, pair, share. These two strategies have become instructional staples. But while useful, they are not sturdy enough for deeper discussions that facilitate deep thinking or what I call "cognitive chewing."

Free-Flowing Structure

In addition to adding more robust discussion practices, we also want to make these practices more culturally responsive by centering them around the principles of youth culture and collectivist practice. I encourage teachers to find talk structures and tools that:

Honor the funds of knowledge each student brings to the conversation.

Give marginalized students greater access to the flow of the discussion.

Give students more agency in directing the conversation.

Give students a more robust cognitive workout by leveraging their everyday modes of communication.

That's why I suggest that a good starting point for facilitating deeper, more equitable discussions is to use structured protocols. Protocols are more than a fancy word for strategies. Made popular in the early 1990's by the Coalition of Essential Schools and promoted by the National School Reform Faculty, discussion protocols are rules or procedures that provide a structure and process so everyone has time to think, talk, and listen.

Protocols are now widely used in adult learning communities and a growing number of classrooms across the country. They come in a variety of formats, from techniques to gather focused feedback on a project or piece of writing before revising-like a tuning protocol-to interactive processes like the gallery walk protocol, in which students build on each other's knowledge about a topic or content to promote higher-order thinking through cooperative learning. The good thing about protocols is that they can be modified to suit multiple purposes and different types of discussions. Despite their variety, they have common features: There is structured turn taking during a discussion, and speaking and listening are usually timed so more students can participate.

The overly structured nature of protocols might seem counterintuitive to the goal of encouraging a free-flowing discussion that welcomes all students. In reality, it is just the opposite. Protocols create ways into the discussion for students typically left out. We often see the same students talking in class, namely those who are comfortable conversing in English, have mainstream background knowledge, or are more extroverted.

Five Steps to Support Protocols

The following five steps will enable you to begin creating the conditions for incorporating protocols into your classroom to increase engagement and access for all students:

1. Offer structures and time for small talk that paves the way for social-emotional safety later in academic conversations. Building a culture of academic conversation begins with building a culture of connection. Creating opportunities for students to talk to each other and get to know each other sets the social-emotional stage for them to engage collaboratively during academic discussions.

Protocols such as dyads can offer a container for a social-emotional grounding to the school day or beginning of the class period. Made popular by math equity educator Julian Weissglass and community organizer Ana Becerra (2004), a dyad is a listening and talking exchange between two people that provides a structure for constructivist listening-a process in which the speaker is listened to for a dedicated amount of time without being interrupted.

For more interactive group protocols try the tea party, which can be used with quotes and images that students help curate, or diversity rounds, which explores personal identity. Both of these protocols provide students a fun but structured way to learn more about each other and build relational trust.

2. Use protocols to shake up inequitable participation patterns during academic discussions. One of the dynamics I often see in classrooms is unequal participation. Even when we use powerful strategies and structures such as Socratic seminars, we see the same students doing much of the talking. This leads to inequitable outcomes for English learners, introverted, or struggling students who don't feel confident enough to actively engage in free-flowing class discussions.

Well-defined protocols can make discussions more egalitarian by providing time for everyone to get practice talking about their ideas about the content. For example, the typical protocol is done in "rounds" with a small group of 3-5 students. Each protocol round has three important steps that foster equitable participation. First, the process begins with 3-5 minutes of uninterrupted time for one person ("the presenter") to talk. When that person is finished, the other members of the discussion group have a set amount of time to reflect on and respond to what the presenter shared. The presenter has a final moment to respond to on the advice given by his partners. Then a new presenter from the group is invited to share his or her thinking and is given the same 3-5 minutes to talk. This process continues until everyone in the group has had time to talk.

Two protocols that should be staples in classrooms are the tuning protocol to help students revise and improve on a piece of student work in preparation for larger group discussions and the text-rendering protocol, which can help students access grade-level text by starting with noticing and naming what is familiar or what sparks one's curiosity in the text.

3. Use the elements of hip-hop culture to modify protocols and make them more responsive to students' interests and knowledge base. Many of our middle and high school students are steeped in hip-hop culture, regardless of racial background or socioeconomic status. Hip-hop has grown up and become mainstream. Although widely considered a synonym for rap music, the term hip-hop actually refers to a complex culture organized around the values of social justice, respect, self-worth, community, and having fun.

While maintaining the integrity of the discussion protocols you choose to use, think about ways to include fun as a design principle in classroom discussion. As Chris Emdin (2013) reminds us, much of today's students' schema-the brain's network of knowledge, associations, allusions, references, and connections that give content meaning-is influenced by hip-hop culture. So why not leverage interactive hip-hop structures like the cipher and rap battles to help students access their existing funds of knowledge? These features of hip-hop culture have dialogic qualities that we can use to help students see that they are competent at deep thinking. How to do this? Consider a mash-up of a traditional protocol and one of the hip-hop structures:

Remix the fishbowl protocol as a cipher. The fishbowl protocol has a small number of students seated in an inner circle discussing a topic or text and using specific academic conversation skills the class is practicing, while the remaining students sit around them in an outer circle. The students in the outer circle listen to the discussion and take notes. At a designated point, the students in the inner circle rotate out, join the outer circle, and a new group of students comes into the inner circle. This has a lot in common with a hip-hop practice called cipher, in which a crowd of spectators and onlookers surrounds rappers engaged in "freestyling" as each rapper steps into the cipher to share their rhymes. In a remix or mash-up of these formats, you can introduce a more free-flowing type of fishbowl, building on collectivist, participatory elements common to hip-hop culture. For example, students in the outer circle can more actively engage and comment on what they're hearing from within the fishbowl with finger snaps. Or, you can make movement between the outer circle and inner circle more free flowing by letting students tap each other in.

Use a cipher-style protocol like the kiva to help students focus on "cognitive stitching" as they build on each other's ideas, In a kiva, rather than having an inner and outer circle, four students are positioned in a square, and four more seats are lined up behind each of them so that the pattern resembles a wheel spoke. The four speakers in the square discuss the topic and questions of the lesson. After some time passes, new students rotate from the seats behind the speaker into the center seats and continue the conversation, building on what's been said. The goal is seeing who can take the discussion deeper, make interesting text-based connections, or find real-life connections to academic concepts, depending on the subject area.

Reconfigure the chalk talk protocol as a graffiti tag billboard. Invite students to "tag" the "billboard" using elements of sketchnoting, doodling, collage, and written word to stimulate thinking before a discussion begins or to deepen it afterwards. The idea is to leverage students' comfort with multimodal expression as a way into dialogue, discussion, or debate.

4. Invoke performance elements of spoken word poetry for deeper thinking during discussions. Like hip-hop, spoken word is part of youth culture and flows out of the oral traditions of many indigenous communities and communities of color. Spoken word is a poetic performance art that is word-based, and it can center around either poetry or prose. It looks like fun, but the fluid use of word-play and metaphor makes it serious cognitive work. According to Rick Wormeli (2009), metaphor is a powerful tool for making meaningful connections and demonstrating understanding of complex concepts that changes the structure of our brain, allowing us to do more rigorous thinking as a result. The lyrical nature of spoken word techniques can give in-class discussions energy and flow, which increases engagement.

5. Give students the power to facilitate. Because culturally responsive teaching is about building student agency and brain power, it is important to train students to self-facilitate discussions. Protocols offer the needed structure and procedural "wireframe" to get them started.

Teach them to "hand off" the conversation to each other rather than have it always flow through the teacher.

Pick an MC for the discussion. In street parlance, MC stands for the "master of ceremonies." In hip-hop culture, when a number of rappers have gathered for a performance, the MC manages the energy of the crowd and the flow of the set. Help students channel their inner MC as facilitators in protocols. They need to focus not just on the procedural aspects, but also on the social-emotional climate of the discussion or debate to ensure norms are being following and a positive vibe is maintained.

Making It Work

Incorporating protocols into your classroom routines takes some planning and guided facilitation to build all students' capacity to engage in powerful discussions that lead to deeper learning. Here are a few additional tips to keep in mind:

Rethink how you use time. Discussions that go beyond the surface of a turn and talk take time. Do a time audit. How are you currently using instructional minutes? Maybe two to three days out of the week you can combine guided practice time and independent work time to make more room for academic conversations using protocols.

Be patient. Remember the rule of the first pancake. Recognize that, like the first pancake, deep discussions are going to be a bit messy in the beginning. But after making some adjustments, the pancakes will come off the griddle round and ready to eat. Similarly, over time students get used to using protocols to take their discussions deeper. This is where the design thinking principles of prototyping and iterating are important.

Teach the value of code switching. You need to have norms in place to effectively implement protocols. But resist the urge to police students' use of language, like slang, non-mainstream English like African American Vernacular English, pidgin, or creole dialects like "Spanglish."

Let students talk in the language most comfortable for thinking. Be aware of the number of different languages and dialects spoken in your classroom. As a culturally responsive educator, find ways to leverage this linguistic diversity. Early in the school year, talk with students about the positive connection between discussion, thinking, and their home languages. In addition, teach them to "code switch" across registers. A register is defined as the level of formality in language that's determined by the context in which it is spoken or written. We have three common registers-a social or community register, a "business" register, and a more formal "academic" register.

There is a big difference between moving back and forth across registers (code switching) and having to abandon one's language assets. This isn't about modulating. Rather, it is a matter of "both/and". Students should not feel like they have to abandon their home and community language when they come to school. It is actually one of their assets.

On Equal Footing

Protocols can be a powerful equity tool. Leveraging protocols in our classroom can ensure equal participation in discussions that grow understanding and brain power for all students, as well as help them access their funds of knowledge, using practices from youth culture to ignite engagement.

References

Becerra, A., & Weissglass, J. (2004). Take it up: Leading for educational equity. Santa Barbara, CA: National Coalition for Equity in Education.

Emdin, C. (2013). Pursuing the pedagogical potential of the pillars of hip-hop through sciencemindedness. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 4(3), 83-99.

Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Hattie, J. (2016). Visible learning for literacy: Implementing the practices that work best to accelerate student learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers. London: Routledge.

Ritchhart, R. (2015). Creating cultures of thinking: The eight forces we must master to truly transform our schools. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

Walqui, A., Bunch, G., et al (Eds.). (2019). Amplifying the curriculum: Designing quality learning opportunities for English learners (Language and Literacy Series). San Francisco, CA: WestEd.

Wormeli, R. (2009). Metaphors & analogies: Power tools for teaching any subject. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Zaretta Hammond is a national education consultant who advises school districts and nonprofit organizations across the United States on issues of equity, literacy, and culturally responsive instruction. She is a former high school and community college writing instructor and the author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain (Corwin, 2014). Follow her on Twitter.

KEYWORDS

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April 2020 | Volume 77 | Number 7 Deeper Discussions Pages 45-50 Zaretta Hammond When I taught expository writing as a classroom teacher, I found the fastest path to improving my students' writing was to build their capacity to engage in deep discussions so they were able to work through their thesis or arguments-testing their claims and hearing their peers' perspectives.

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Amy Klinger

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it's hard to imagine what the 2020-21 school year will bring. We don't have to simply return to the way schools used to be; we can seize the opportunity to make schools what they could be.

The flexibility and innovation needed to support a school's critical academic, social-emotional, and custodial functions requires school leaders to acquire and apply new knowledge, skills, and capacities in their planning and decision making.

Seize the Opportunity

Adopt a decision-making framework that is more than just solving superficial problems and crafting temporary "fixes." This situation provides an opportunity to focus on issues of equity and closing achievement gaps.

For the good of public health, many of the entrenched elements of failing educational systems (for example, large class sizes) cannot continue. With no choice but to re-imagine the system, we can tailor nearly every aspect of our school to individual students' academic needs, especially those for whom the "typical" school experience just did not work. Social distancing means smaller classes and the potential for a higher level of engagement and relationship building between supportive adults and the students who desperately need these interactions.

Prioritize Public Health

Understand the public health mandates your school must do as a result of the pandemic. These range from pivoting to remote learning to integrating social distancing and sanitation practices into the daily operations of the school.

Initiate Change

What are the opportunities for making your school what it could be in terms of academic performance, climate and culture, and safety? Imagine a typical cafeteria with 500 students jammed together and a couple harried teachers "supervising" while they grade papers. This not only creates a problem for social distancing, but also highlights challenges with supervision and emergency evacuation, makes it easier for students who are in crisis to get lost in the crowd, and perpetuates a rigid schedule with no time for students to meet with mentors and tutors or make up work.

Now, turn that lunch period on its head. An atypical, fluid schedule provides opportunities for smaller groups, more diverse interactions with adults and peers, more options for students' time, and a higher level of supervision for all students-all with social distancing in mind.

Facilitate Recovery

Assess the impact and trauma of spring 2020 on students and staff and provide targeted supports to assist in recovery. While everyone was in the same boat, the intensity of the storm varied. Students had vastly different academic experiences, creating even more significant achievement gaps. Home situations ranged from boredom to illness to tragedy and violence.

Reopen and Reimagine

Schools typically plan for a static and uninterrupted future. Administrators and athletic directors schedule five-year rotations of games. Principals schedule graduations, open houses, and other milestones years in advance. Teachers unions create master calendars with fixed vacation dates, parent conference days, and daily operations. The school year has a familiar structure that provides certainty, but it also creates a suffocating sameness that stifles innovation, prevents us from responding to ever-changing needs or conditions, and forces people into the same behavior patterns whether it works or not.

We must plan for the unplanned. Educators (and families) must be able to pivot based on evolving circumstances by altering duties, expectations, procedures, calendars, schedules, curricula, and operational practices. Improved communication, professional development, and technology integration will be necessary to shift schools to be more fluid and responsive. With this flexibility, we can fix problems and initiate improvements as they arise, not "next year."

We must keep our eyes on the prize-identify and safeguard the best of what school used to be and seize the opportunity to design an educational process that better serves the academic, social-emotional, safety, and public health needs of our post-pandemic students.

For information, resources, and PD, including practical tips and strategies to help you plan for a post-pandemic school year, visit the Educator's School Safety Netowrk.

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Navigating School Leadership in a Post-Pandemic World

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Amy Klinger In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it's hard to imagine what the 2020-21 school year will bring. We don't have to simply return to the way schools used to be; we can seize the opportunity to make schools what they could be.

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By Elena Aguilar

The more you understand resistance, the easier it'll be to respond to it. But many coaches struggle with teachers they perceive as resistant because they don't understand resistance. In addition, resistance is hard because it activates strong and often unpleasant emotions within us. The more we know ourselves, and understand our thoughts and emotions, the better we'll be at coaching resistance. Whenever you're uncertain, uncomfortable, in doubt, troubled, confused, or encountering resistance-start with yourself. Seek to better know yourself.

If you're looking for structure to help you better know yourself, consider this new group coaching program I'm starting. Understanding your purpose will help you coach resistant teachers.

And check out the infographic I created! My first infographic ever. I hope it'll help you remember these ideas. If you find this useful, please share it with a friend or colleague.

Read More On Resistance

Check out Jessie's post from the fall on working with resistance teachers.

Elena has this three-part series on coaching a resistant teachers. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Lori shared about coaching a friendly resister here. https://brightmorningteam.com/2019/11/the-friendly-resister/

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What are Resistant Teachers Hiding? - Bright Morning

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By Elena Aguilar The more you understand resistance, the easier it'll be to respond to it. But many coaches struggle with teachers they perceive as resistant because they don't understand resistance. In addition, resistance is hard because it activates strong and often unpleasant emotions within us.