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Virtual, Collaborative Word Search Collection

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Virtual, Collaborative Word Search Collection

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Grab my ever-growing-collection of virtual, collaborative word search Jamboards to make them your own!

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Look no further! This is the perfect way to invite teachers into a virtual session with a themed word search that sparks content AND fun!

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Create a Coaching Personal Learning Network!

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Create a Coaching Personal Learning Network!

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Harness the power of social media to build a more meaningful, inspired & connected coaching community for yourself! Don't forget to sign up for my FREE 21-Day Coaching PLN Challenge to boost your coaching community!

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My very first position as an instructional coach was actually a coach of the coaches....and it was almost twenty years ago when no one was quite sure exactly what a coach was and what he/she did let alone what a coach of the coach did. So, what's a new coach to do? Find support.

I started with those around me. I reached out to the other coaches in my area, completed graduate classes on literacy leadership and sought out every workshop and learning experience I could find.

But it wasn't enough.

I needed more. I needed to talk with other coaches in my position. I needed someone to inspire me so I could inspire my coaches. I needed someone to show me the ropes, so I could show others, too. And since the things I needed weren't geographically close, I had to lead my own learning in other ways.

So, I started cultivating a personal learning network to lead my own learning with the help of technology and social media. A personal learning network (PLN) is a vibrant ever-changing group of connections where teachers both share and learn, reflecting their own values, passions and areas of expertise (Crowley, 2014). And almost twenty years later, I'm still growing my PLN and have dedicated my entire career to supporting those who lead the learning of others to help them do the same.

Crowley (2014) likens a PLN to the waves that ripple out when dropping a rock into a body of water:

The smallest inner ring represents the educators we work with on a daily, and often in-person, basis. They understand our teaching contexts, work alongside us and provide the day-to-day support and camaraderie that only close colleagues provide.

The middle ring represents those we connect with that have the same passions and interests as we do. These connections might be found in our own schools, but often, are those that we meet and connect with because of our professional interests: educators we meet at book clubs, professional conferences or workshops. These opportunities and educators fuel our passions and motivate our continued work.

The outer layer comprises the professionals and researchers we look up to and learn from. While physically the farthest away, with the help of technology and digital tools, we can easily connect and learn from those that are leading our field.

If we consciously spend time cultivating those three layers of a PLN, then we can take control of our own learning community and fuel our coaching in ways we might not have thought possible. Here's how you can boost your own coaching PLN in three easy steps: Step 1: Create Your Social Media Bio and Audit Your Feed
The first step is to carefully create or refresh your biography on your favorite social media platform. What does it say about who you are as an educator and who you might like to connect with and learn from? Here are a few things you might include to ensure your bio has to better connect with others who could broaden your PLN:

Your role in education

Your passions and interests

Your message about your work

Keywords from your niche in education

Links to learn more about you

Now remember, you only have 160 characters to create your bio, so think carefully about what you want to say and how you can say it quickly.
Next, it's time to audit your social media feed. Head to your favorite social media platform and browse the accounts you have previously chosen to follow. First, unfollow any accounts that will not support your mission of being a healthy, happy, productive lifelong learner. And don't feel guilty about it, either, because we need space to grow, even in our social media feeds.

Then, find at least ten new accounts to follow that have similar roles and interests in education. Simply type your chosen keywords into the search bar and happily browse potential new virtual connections.

After that, find at least ten new accounts to follow that do NOT have similar roles and interests in education. Why? It's important to surround ourselves with like-minded people to fuel our work, but it's just as important to surround ourselves with people who can help us think differently and from a new perspective, too.
Step 2: Develop Your Passions and Interests
Now, it's time to cultivate our PLN around the things that matter most to each of us. To start, follow the professional organizations in your field on your favorite social media platform. Here are a few that I follow to support my literacy coaching:

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)

The International Literacy Association

National Council of Teachers of English

National Association for the Education of Young Children

Learning Forward

No matter what content you coach for, we all have professional organizations that can fuel our work. Having a membership to these organizations is ideal, but simply following their social media feeds yields rich content and information to boost our own learning and ultimately share with teachers.
Facebook groups also hold incredible potential for boosting our PLN. Today, I invite you to join my own Facebook group for instructional coaches: Leading by Learning. It's a special space for instructional coaches who understand that in order to lead well, we must remain lifelong learners ourselves. Just answer the 3 quick membership questions and then I'll let you right in!

Lastly, it's time to explore Pinterest through the lens of a coach. As your first step, I invite you to take a look at my Pinterest coaching boards. I've got a board for every aspect of my coaching and I link to all of my related blogs posts, podcasts and tips, tools and hacks. Take a look here!
Step 3: Connect with Mentors and Leaders
Finally, it's time to connect with the mentors and leaders who could inspire our work. And I have two favorite ways to do just that: with Bloglovin' and podcasts.

Bloglovin' is a blog curation tool. Each morning when I wake up, Bloglovin' sends me a personalized email with all the recent posts from my favorite blogs. Rather than remembering to check my favorite sites, I simply open my email with a cup of coffee and see what's new. It's the perfect way to stay up-to-date AND broaden our coaching circles with a simple click of a button. So, if you don't have an account head, make that your mission today.

Next, it's time for my second secret weapon in keeping my motivation high and feeling more connected than ever: podcasts. If you had yet to get bitten by the podcast bug, here is your chance. =) Here are my favorite coaching education podcasts to listen to:
The Coaching Sketchnote Book (that's mine!)
Buzzing with Mrs. B
The Heinemann Podcast Are you looking for more coaching inspiration? Get my newest blog posts, podcasts, special events and more delivered straight to your Inbox. Sign up here!
The Cult of Pedagogy
The 10 Minute Teacher Podcast
The Truth for Teachers Podcast
Open the podcast app on your phone and add a few that look promising to you. Now, don't think you have to stick to coaching/education podcasts either....growing your PLN means honoring ALL interests you have. So if a podcast about fashion, cooking, reading or true crime piques your interest....subscribe to it!

Well, there you have it! Three ways to boost your coaching PLN this summer to return to school refreshed, refueled and ready to coach with joy in your coaching heart.

But there's one more thing!

I've created a 21-day Coaching PLN Challenge to personally coach you through each step of the way. All you have to do is sign up to receive a daily email for 21 days with one little thing to accomplish to build your coaching connections. It's FREE for the entire summer. What better way to spend the summer than connecting with other coaches who could inspire your work?

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Cultivate Your Coaching Personal Learning Network (PLN)

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My very first position as an instructional coach was actually a coach of the coaches....and it was almost twenty years ago when no one was quite sure exactly what a coach was and what he/she did let alone what a coach of the coach did. So, what's a new coach to do?

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This is the perfect way to wrap up the end of the year....or file the idea away for next year, too. An awe walk can INSTANTLY change the energy in a school. Just stand, walk with wonder and celebrate together....and then do the same in your digital teaching spaces!

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One of my favorite inspirational videos comes from Kid President. It's called A Pep Talk From Kid President to You and in it, Kid President gives us the kick-in-the-pants we need to reframe our thinking and brighten our spirits.

Kid President's opening line is: I think we all need a pep talk.

My opening line for this blog post is: I think we all need an awe walk. =)

An awe walk is exactly what it sounds like: a walk with the sole intention of experiencing awe in the world around us. Originally created to help older adults experience the vastness of the natural world and elicit more positive emotions, an awe walk can be used in many aspects of life, especially in our coaching, and can give us a needed perspective-shift:

What if we walked through the hallways of our school EXPECTING to see evidence of joyful learning?

What if we arrived at school LOOKING for positive connection and collaboration with colleagues?

What if we browsed our digital teaching spaces KNOWING we'd find evidence of authentic learning?

Here's the thing: we find what we are looking for. So, why not find things that focus on positive learning, growth, connection and collaboration? Now, that does not mean the rest of our challenges fall away, but it does mean we might tackle them with a more renewed sense of energy and determination because we've focused on what's going well, first.
So, the first step in taking an awe walk is to literally get your own feet moving with a positive purpose. Start walking through your school hallways with a sense of awe. Work through your coaching cycles with a sense of inquiry and wonder. Expect teacher learning experiences to be a raving success. The bottom line? Look for the good. And see how that changes your mindset.

Then, bring that same experience to your teachers. Borrow some time from one of your professional learning sessions or team meetings and take an awe walk through the school hallways. Encourage teachers to snap pictures of the awe-inspiring things they find and share them to a Padlet wall. Teachers can even dip in and out of each other's classrooms in an after-school awe walk with the sole purpose of finding awe in each other's classrooms. And my recent favorite? Take an awe walk through a virtual classroom space, finding the time and space to celebrate all the innovation we've experienced over the past year.

That's it! There's no special presentation, template or tool needed to make this a success, just some time, an open-mind and a willingness to find the good. But, if you'd like, you can record those awe-inspiring experiences with your camera, on sticky notes or simply celebrate them in a conversation to boost the culture of the community.

Try an awe walk this week...and let me know what you find in the comments!
Are you looking for more coaching inspiration? Get my newest blog posts, podcasts, special events and more delivered straight to your Inbox. Sign up here!

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One of my favorite inspirational videos comes from Kid President. It's called A Pep Talk From Kid President to You and in it, Kid President gives us the kick-in-the-pants we need to reframe our thinking and brighten our spirits. Kid President's opening line is: I think we all need a pep talk.

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The Ta-Da list is the perfect way to build a positive school culture and learning community....not to mention it makes us feel good, too! It's the perfect way to find some stillness during a busy time of the year....like now. Try it today to shift perspectives, mindsets and attitudes either in-person or online!

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I don't know about you, but I am a list person. In fact, I adore lists in all their splendor: lists on sticky notes, on notebook paper, on whiteboards, and even on digital devices. Why do I love them so? For me, lists provide a sense of purpose for my days. My list of tasks might be long, but acknowledging them and their importance to my day inspires me to complete them. Crossing the items off my list when they are completed gives me a sense of satisfaction. In fact, when I complete activities that were not on my list, I have been known to write them down just so I can cross them off. I imagine many of you can relate.

But To-Do lists do bring a certain level of stress with them: things we must do, tasks we must complete and items on the horizon that will need our attention. No matter how good it feels to cross the items off the list, it is still a list and sometimes, simply looking at the list can cause anxiety. And given the amount of tasks that teachers must complete in a given day or week, our to-do lists are long and typically, thankless. So why not introduce teachers to the Ta-Da list instead?

The Ta-Da list is the opposite of the To-Do list. Instead of creating lists of things we must do to ensure we are productive, the Ta-Da list celebrates what we have already done to shift our mindset from one of lack to one of accomplishment. And who wouldn't appreciate a bit of accolades for the work we do?

Try it for yourself and then invite your teachers to do the same. It's a simple one-step process:

Grab a piece of paper and write down everything you have accomplished today from arriving at school on time, to sending 17 emails, to tying 20 pairs of shoes, to completing 3 coaching cycles, to finishing paperwork, to making a teacher/student smile and more. Then, reread your list and marvel at what you've accomplished. That's it!

I love doing this when I've had the kind of day that flies by, but I feel like I've gotten nothing accomplished. I'll challenge that thought with a Ta-Da list and realize that I DID do many, many things after all....I just needed to change my mindset instead. And once I do that, the rest of the day gets better and better.

So, be sure to celebrate all you do and accomplish in a given day and invite your teachers to do the same. In fact, try this as an opening move in your next session with teachers and see how it shifts the perspective and whole feel of the room. But don't limit this practice to opening moves in a professional development session. This activity is great for ANY small or whole group meeting, works well at those 'taking stock' kind of moments and is great for individual classroom coaching to keep a focus on the positive, too.

One more thing: you can vary the Ta-Da list any way you'd like! Create a Ta-Da list of all the teachers you've connected with recently, all the books you've read, all the coaching cycles you've completed and more! It's an instant mood-booster.

So, what's on your Ta-Da list today?

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I don't know about you, but I am a list person. In fact, I adore lists in all their splendor: lists on sticky notes, on notebook paper, on whiteboards, and even on digital devices. Why do I love them so? For me, lists provide a sense of purpose for my days.

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A Tool for Planning Professional Learning with Reflection in Mind

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A Tool for Planning Professional Learning with Reflection in Mind

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There are many moving parts that go into designing professional learning experiences for teachers. Today, I share a helpful planning tool to plan for teacher learning with reflection in mind and ensure an entry point for EVERY teacher you work with.

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A Tool for Planning Teacher Learning with Reflection in Mind

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I love planning professional learning for teachers. It is my absolute favorite part of coaching. Now, that wasn’t always the case, but once ...

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A #BetterTogether Board is the perfect way to give your teacher learning community a little boost. Grab chart paper, markers, sticky notes and you are ready to connect and collaborate! Learn more here!

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If you are reading this post at the original date of publication, then you’re likely nearing the end-of-the-year stretch and might be in nee...

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Here's a fun opening move for professional learning that's sure to not only spark interaction and conversation, but it's a great way to celebrate National Poetry Month, too!

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Let’s begin with a question: Did you ever have a magnetic poetry set on your refrigerator? You know, the hundreds of little magnets that you...

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Need a new ice-breaker to get to know teachers better and raise a lot of laughter? Try What's Your Equation? It's the perfect activity for RIGHT NOW as we try to shake up our sessions as the pandemic continues on.

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I love a good ice-breaker, especially one that helps us get to know each other on a personal level. Sure, content-related opening moves are ...

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These are the perfect way to entice teachers into book clubs, in-person or virtually!

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I love reading. And I especially love sharing my reading with others. That's why I love professional (and personal!) book clubs and book study groups so much: they invite me into a community of readers that always expands my thinking and furthers my learning.

But here's the thing: teachers are busy. Sure, we might want to take part in book clubs, but we might hesitate because of our busy schedules, wondering if we will REALLY get something out of participating that we wouldn't get reading the book alone.

As a coach, we need to connect teachers to the right book, convince them the content is worth reading and ensure their time spent discussing the book will be worth it. In short, we need to show them the value of the book club. And we can do that with book bits.

Book bits are short phrases and bits of information about a text. Originally coined by Molly Ness in her article in The Reading Teacher and later shared on The Margin Notes blog, book bits capture curiosity, activate background knowledge and set a purpose for reading. Designed to hook students into personal reading selections, book bits are the perfect way to invite teachers into professional book clubs, too.

Here's how they work:

First, you'll need to select a professional book for your book club. You might choose a newly published text, a book focused on an upcoming unit of study or a text based on a topic you know teachers are interested in learning more about. Be sure that you're choosing books with the teachers' (and students) interests and wishes in mind so they feel like the book was especially chosen for them. Better yet, offer multiple books for teachers to choose from to guarantee a good match.

Then, it's time to create the book bits. Think of this book bit as an invitation to jump into the book...and the book club. You can create the book bit in any format you'd like: a Google Slide, a Google Doc, a digital Smore, a Canva graphic, a paper handout or even an old-fashioned index card. Here's a sampling of what you might include:

Book title and author

A sampling of chapter titles

Compelling quotes

A question or two the book addresses

The name of an important chart of graphic

A list of lesson ideas or resources

Sample resources from the Appendix

A link to a website included in the book

Basically, you want to offer teachers important bits of information to entice them into reading the book, give them some background information on what's included and leave them wanting to know more.

All that's left is to share it with teachers! You might feature the book bits at a faculty meeting as you get ready to launch the book club, leave printed copies in teachers' mailboxes or send it off in an email. Need some inspiration? You'll find a simple book bit I created for my newest book, Leading Literate Lives: Habits and Mindsets for Reimagining Classroom Practice below:

It only takes a bit of time (get it?!) to create the book bit, but teachers will likely appreciate having this information at their fingertips so they can see the benefit of joining in the book club. And not only that, the book bits act as perfect conversation starters for your first session together. You might talk about what convinced teachers to attend, which book bits piqued their professional curiosity and which bits they can't wait to jump into conversation about.

One last thing: Save your book bits and curate them together on your website to easily invite teachers into future book clubs and celebrate completed book clubs, too!
Are you looking for more coaching inspiration? Get my newest blog posts, podcasts, special events and more delivered straight to your Inbox. Sign up here!

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I love reading. And I especially love sharing my reading with others. That's why I love professional (and personal!) book clubs and book study groups so much: they invite me into a community of readers that always expands my thinking and furthers my learning. But here's the thing: teachers are busy.

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Instructional coaches need to provide teachers with options to fit how, why and where they learn best, models so they can do the same for their teachers. The Grab & Go inspired by @LisaLitCoach is one option to do just that!

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I really dislike the term 'professional development'. If you look through my blog posts, you'll see I barely say it. Instead, I say 'professional learning'. And that difference of one word makes a big difference. As coaches, we are not here to 'develop' teachers, we are here to learn alongside them. We learn so we can lead the learning of others in ways that matter most to them.

So, that means professional learning can look very different from one teacher to the next. Some might prefer live professional learning sessions. Others might prefer on-demand versions so they can learn when the time is right for them. Others learn best reading and experimenting in the classroom. And others prefer coaching cycles with intense support.

So, what's a coach to do? We need to provide teachers with options to fit how, why and where they learn best, models so they can do the same for their students: live professional learning, on-demand sessions, classroom coaching cycles, content coaching cycles and blog hops, coaching through email, coaching through Twitter Lists and other digital tools, like Voxer, innovative ideas like Pam Hubler's Potty PD, and the subject of today's coaching tool: Grab and Go.

Grab and Go is inspired by Lisa Parrish, a literacy coach in New Jersey. Lisa and I have worked together over the past year and I've come to love and look forward to her weekly Grab and Go content. So, what is Grab and Go? Grab and Go is just what it sounds like: ready to go content for teachers to explore and support their classroom teaching, conveniently packed into an appealing Google Slide for easy access and archiving. Lisa shares the Grab and Go through email and then curates them on her launching pad (aka her website!) for on-demand use later on.

Here's an example of one of Lisa's Grab and Go slides created especially for World Read Aloud Day. It has information on how and why the day came to be, links to diverse read alouds, classroom activities and discussion ideas, printable bookmarks and even a ready-to-go jamboard for teachers to copy and make their own version of. Essentially, it's a mini professional-learning session neatly packed into one convenient and appealing slide:

Think for a minute about your own coaching and the teachers you work with. What topic might be especially appropriate for a Grab and Go? An upcoming author visit or birthday? A national holiday or special month? A professional learning topic on the horizon, like small group virtual instruction or writing notebooks? A reminder for teacher self-care? Whatever the topic is, you can create a simple, yet appealing, Google Slide and link teachers to information, ideas and resources to support their learning and teaching in new ways.

You can create a simple template that suits your Grab and Go topic, but if you'd like a starting point, I've created a simple collection of backgrounds perfect for Grab and Go templates and Lisa has graciously shared the Grab and Go section of her website as inspiration. You'll definitely want to take a look!

The Grab and Go is the perfect addition to the on-demand learning section of your coaching website and launching pad. Give it a try and see how it might support your teachers!
Are you looking for more coaching inspiration? Get my newest blog posts, podcasts, special events and more delivered straight to your Inbox. Sign up here!

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I really dislike the term 'professional development'. If you look through my blog posts, you'll see I barely say it. Instead, I say 'professional learning'. And that difference of one word makes a big difference. As coaches, we are not here to 'develop' teachers, we are here to learn alongside them.

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This may traditionally be done in person, but we could easily create book brackets for digital books, too!

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I am always looking for ways to introduce teachers to new books to read aloud to their students. I have given book talks, displayed titles, ...

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A digital coaching card is an important coaching tool. It tells our story, articulates our coaching role, prompts us to think who we are as coaches and helps us connect and collaborate with others. Create one today!

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Some might consider them old fashioned, but business cards are still a thing. Really. But, gone are the days of the simple white, rectangular-shaped stock paper with black ink. Uh uh. Today, business cards are a work of art, a true representation of a person, business or brand. I love collecting them and have a stack of business cards in my desk drawer. They represent the people I meet, the places I go and the incredible projects others are bringing into the world. I think they're inspiring.

But now, I don't always get a chance to meet colleagues in person. In fact, some of my most treasured edu-friends are those I've only met virtually! But that doesn't mean the old-fashioned business card is obsolete. Not at all. It's just shifted a bit digitally. And I think we all need one: a digital coaching card.

A digital coaching card represents who and what you are as an educator. It honors the journey that you have taken, the journey you are currently on and even your hopes for the future. It represents your story as an educator and shares that story with others to spark connection, collaboration and inspiration. That's why I think having a digital coaching card is so important. It tells our story, articulates our coaching role, prompts us to think who we are as coaches and helps us connect and collaborate with others. You'll find my current digital coaching card below:

Once you choose your platform, start imagining your layout. Select a theme or start from scratch with a blank slide. Then, choose a background color or image that suits your personality. Add text boxes to capture what matters most and be sure to include the following elements:

Your name and position

A brief biography

A photograph of yourself or your favorite bitmoji

Certifications, recognitions and achievements

Social media contact information

Special interests and hopes for collaboration

A background and image to represent the work you do

Themes and colors to match your work and personality

Don't be afraid to play with font types and colors, borders and images and embellish as desired. Personalize your digital card to your coaching just as a business card might personalize a brand.

Then, it's time to share! You can add it to your email signature, include it in your presentations, post it on your website and include it on your social media profiles. This way, new connections can easily see who you are and the work you do, just as they might if you handed them a card in person. Digital coaching cards foster connection, spark collaboration and most importantly, celebrate the profession.

Have you created a digital coaching card? Share it in the comments below or tag me on social media using @AffinitoLit. Let's start a beautiful collection of coaching cards together!
Are you looking for more coaching inspiration? Get my newest blog posts, podcasts, special events and more delivered straight to your Inbox. Sign up here!

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Some might consider them old fashioned, but business cards are still a thing. Really. But, gone are the days of the simple white, rectangular-shaped stock paper with black ink. Uh uh. Today, business cards are a work of art, a true representation of a person, business or brand.

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Coaching conversation hearts are the perfect way to bring delight to teachers during the Valentine season. Either in-person or digitally, this opening move sure to bring a smile to teachers' faces!

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I am a holiday junkie. When I was little, I lived for the holidays, ALL of the holidays, and I still do. One of the holidays holds a special...

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Innovate Discussion with Hexagonal Thinking

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Innovate Discussion with Hexagonal Thinking

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Hexagonal thinking is a fun way to launch discussion around a core set of topics, concepts or themes. It invites rich discussion, deep thinking, collaboration and perspective-taking. Perfect, right?! Right. Find it here!

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It's no secret how much I love designing professional learning experiences for teachers. Notice I did not say 'create' or 'make' or 'plan' professional learning experiences. I said DESIGN professional learning experiences. As in an art form. A careful dance of content and pedagogy, outcomes and process. So when I stumbled on the idea of Hexagonal Thinking from Betsy Potash, I was hooked. Not only was it based on solid content and artful pedagogy, it was carefully designed in both process and product. And better yet, it's the perfect model for teachers to then bring to their students.

So, what is hexagonal thinking? It's a fun way to launch discussion around a core set of topics, concepts or themes. It invites rich discussion, deep thinking, collaboration and perspective-taking. Perfect, right?! Right.

Imagine this: It's time for your in-personal professional learning session. Teachers arrive at their table to find a colorful stack of hexagons labeled with topics, concepts and themes connected to the topic of your session. As the session begins, you invite teachers to examine the hexagons and connect them together based on the relationships they see among the different terms. There is no single right answer, just a beautiful showcase of thinking among members of a particular group.

Now, imagine the same scenario as a virtual professional learning session instead. Rather than finding tables of colorful hexagons, they find a beautifully designed slide full of them to move around digitally in whole groups or small breakout rooms instead.

Now, you might be wondering what terms, concepts and ideas the hexagons are labeled with. And that depends on the content you're exploring with teachers. Let's say you're exploring guided reading with primary grade teachers. Your terms might include some of the following:

Book choice

Book introduction

Strategy teaching

Running records

Small groups

Reading strategies

Word work

Re-reading

Comprehension

Writing

Or, maybe you're exploring digital literacy with upper elementary teachers instead. Some of your labels might include:

Teachers examine the terms and spend a bit of time reflecting independently. Then, working in teams, they arrange the hexagons in such a way that represents their thinking and the connections they are making. So, there is no one right way to complete this activity, it's simply a creative starting point for discussion.

But that's not all.

You could take the thinking one step further and ask teachers to write about their connections and rationale for the ultimate shape they created. If you're working digitally, teachers can insert arrows pointing to specific locations of their design and edit them to include their rationale, literally layering their thinking on the design. Then, groups can compare their shapes as a launching point for whole group discussion. And in the process, you gain clear insight into teachers' understandings, insights that will support your future coaching.

So, what do you need to get started? If coaching in person, you'll want to download Betsy Potash's hexagonal thinking templates or create your own using the HookED SOLO Hexagon Generator instead. If working digitally, Betsy has a beautiful template for that, too. It's the one I use and I love it.

Next, identify the topic you want to explore and brainstorm a list of terms that come to mind. Label your printed hexagons with those terms or list them on the digital slide instead.

When your teachers are ready, they examine the hexagons in small groups and arrange them based on their shared understandings of the terms, either in person or digitally. The only difference is that teachers are moving the actual hexagons in person, but moving the labels for them online.

Lastly, if you choose, you can ask teachers to spend a moment writing about their thinking and what they learned in the process of sharing their thinking with others. Be sure to take a picture of the final creations and use those images as starting points for whole group debriefing.

There you go! A fun and engaging activity that not only launches deep discussion with teachers, it provides a great model for teachers to do their same with their own students, too!

If you'd like to dive into hexagonal thinking as a learner, join me on January 28th at 7pm EST to give it a try! I'm opening my monthly coaching sessions to anyone interested in giving this a try and thinking through our understandings of coaching together! Sign up here and I'll see you then!
Are you looking for more coaching inspiration? Get my newest blog posts, podcasts, special events and more delivered straight to your Inbox. Sign up here!

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Innovate Discussion with Hexagonal Thinking

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It's no secret how much I love designing professional learning experiences for teachers. Notice I did not say 'create' or 'make' or 'plan' professional learning experiences. I said DESIGN professional learning experiences. As in an art form. A careful dance of content and pedagogy, outcomes and process.

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We all need a command center for our work as coaches, especially as we work remotely and online. Here's one simple way to create one and help shift your coaching from reactive moves to proactive practices!

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Welcome to 2021! The new year brings a new section of my coaching notebook: For the Coach! You'll find ideas and activities to nurture your own learning and lift your coaching spirits in the process. Watch for regular additions all year long!

It's safe to say that 2020 has been a complex, challenging, and innovative year. At the beginning of the pandemic, we focused on how we could best support teachers and students as they found themselves in new teaching and learning scenarios. Without warning, we quickly left our traditional coaching positions behind to support teachers wherever and however we were needed. We asked questions like: What do they need? How can we help? What can we do? Then, we curated resources, searched for new tech tools, helped put out instructional fires and in some cases, even returned to the classroom ourselves. We reacted to whatever situation we found ourselves in and tried to make the best of it, never imagining we'd still find ourselves coaching through a global pandemic nine months later.

Now, as the year comes to a close, I'm finding that the conversations I have with other instructional coaches are changing. Yes, we want to support teachers however we can, but we also want to shift back into the more proactive coaching roles we used to have. The ones where we invite teachers into professional learning and coaching cycles that fuel teaching and learning in a school. But how can we do this, especially since we are still in the midst of the pandemic? My suggestion: coaching launching pads.

A coaching launching pad is an online space that invites teachers into your digital learning community, links them to resources they need, and plants the seeds for future coaching cycles. Creating a central spot for all of your coaching materials makes it easy for teachers to access what they need when they need it most. If your launching pad is created strategically to include multiple invitations to continue learning, you can use it to shift the focus from reactive to proactive coaching!

Let me give you an example: Let's say a teacher sends you an email asking for suggested websites with digital texts for her students. You respond with a link to a Padlet wall on your launching pad. She heads to your link and browses your resources. While she's there, she sees your 5-minute on-demand video on how to create a virtual classroom library and reaches out to you to help her create one! What could have been a simple exchange around a collection of websites reacting to a current need becomes a more proactive conversation around instructional practice as a result of your launching pad.

Your launchpad can be anything that successfully curates and organizes your coaching resources: a website, a shared Google Drive, a Smore, a Padlet wall, a Wakelet collection or any other platform that works well for you and your teachers. Just as you would fill your in-person coaching spaces with professional books, anchor charts, teaching resources and spaces for collaboration, you can do the same with your virtual launching pad too.

Here are some examples of what you might include:

A coaching menu with invitations to partner together.

Curated resources for teaching and learning, like this Padletwall of websites for digital texts.

Materials and resources from past professional learning sessions.

Important curriculum and district documents.

Downloadable lessons and materials to support teaching and learning.

Assessment calendars and materials.

Coaching cycle resources.

On-demand professional learning sessions.

Pictures and videos celebrating teaching and learning.

As you create your launchpad, it's important to keep the following in mind:

Easy to access. Choose a platform that integrates with what you already use in your district. Make accessing your launching pad quick and easy: consider linking to it in your email signature.

Inviting. The colors, pictures, and layout of your site are all important elements to consider. You want this space to be just as inviting as your in-person coaching space so that teachers want to 'drop by' digitally.

Organized. Make it easy for teachers to find your coaching materials and instructional resources right when they need them. Experience your launchpad as a teacher to ensure it's intuitive to navigate, and that the links are working correctly.

Celebratory. Inspire teachers by sharing images-and even video clips-of innovative practices their colleagues are exploring.

We all need a command center for our work, especially as we are all teaching and coaching in new ways. And this launchpad has the potential to shift our coaching from reactive coaching supports to more proactive coaching innovations over time. Share your launching pads in the comments to inspire others!

Note: This post was originally featured on TeachBoost. You'll find even more of my posts there, along with MANY others perfect to support your instructional coaching.
Are you looking for more coaching inspiration? Get my newest blog posts, podcasts, special events and more delivered straight to your Inbox. Sign up here!

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From Reactive to Proactive Coaching with Launching Pads

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Welcome to 2021! The new year brings a new section of my coaching notebook: For the Coach! You'll find ideas and activities to nurture your own learning and lift your coaching spirits in the process. Watch for regular additions all year long! It's safe to say that 2020 has been a complex, challenging, and innovative year.

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How do you ensure that your sessions focus on what teachers NEED to know as well as what they WANT to know, but still fit it all in? The FAQ document!

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If there's one thing I know for sure, it's this: There is never enough time in the day to accomplish all that I hope to do, both personally and professionally. I always feel like I'm trying to beat the clock and I'll often joke in a professional learning session that the clocks must be broken because they continually move too quickly.

As someone who truly loves designing professional learning, I tend to want to include too much into each of my sessions. It's such a fine line between planning too much and overwhelming teachers and doing too little and boring them. So, how do you ensure that your sessions focus on what they NEED to know as well as what they WANT to know, but still fit it all in? The FAQ document.

As you likely know, FAQ standards for frequently asked questions and FAQ's can come in many different forms: a printed handout, a section on a website, even a playlist of videos. These FAQ documents cover typical questions a user might have about a topic to ensure that all questions are answered right when users are asking them.

I started thinking about how a FAQ document could support professional learning, especially the challenge I have in fighting the clock, and I've started collaboratively creating FAQ documents in the professional development sessions I'm leading. Let me explain:

Before a session begins, I send out a shared document asking teachers to document their most pressing questions about the topic at hand. If I can, I send this document out well in advance of the session so I can use teachers' responses to help design the session. But if not, I ask teachers to spend some time adding their questions as an opening move to the session instead. This gives teachers time to settle into the session, get their mind focused on the content of the session and even help set an intention for learning. Here's a sample of a FAQ document I created for a session on virtual instructional coaching:

Next, I invite teachers to keep this FAQ document open on a tab of their device to refer to throughout our time together. Sometimes, teachers' questions are answered during the session. In those cases, teachers jot down a quick response to their own question to acknowledge it was explored during our time together and add their own contributions to the other questions posted, too.

Other questions might not be answered in that particular session, which is where the beauty of the FAQ document shines through. Once the session is over, I return to the document to view the questions that remain and add in responses to ensure teachers' questions are honored and answered, tagging the particular teacher who posted it. I might quickly write a text response right in the document, link teachers to an online blog, article or resource or even create an on-demand screencast exploring the question instead. Either way, returning to this FAQ document ensures teachers' questions are heard and the session ultimately met their wishes and needs.

But here's the thing: Not only is the FAQ document a pretty terrific way to ensure all teachers' needs are met during a professional learning session (even if the clock is ticking by too quickly), it's the perfect way to archive learning and provide on-demand resources for teachers to refer back to. Curate all of your FAQ documents over time on a special segment of your website for easy access.

Now, not every professional learning session needs to have a FAQ page, so you might reserve this coaching tool for sessions when you know you have a lot of content, but little time. Or, save it for sessions that launch a new topic of study so you can see what's on teachers' mind right from the start, cultivating the document over multiple sessions. As with any coaching tool, use the FAQ strategically so that it meets your needs and offers teachers a new idea for doing the same with their own students.

If you've tried co-creating FAQ documents with teachers, I'd love to hear how it went! Share your experience and any great FAQ templates you've tried!
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If there's one thing I know for sure, it's this: There is never enough time in the day to accomplish all that I hope to do, both personally and professionally. I always feel like I'm trying to beat the clock and I'll often joke in a professional learning session that the clocks must be broken because they continually move too quickly.

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Initially, I turned to Jamboard as an alternative to Padlet so I could offer teachers a free way to curate resources, share thinking, and cultivate collaborative learning. But now that I’ve been using Jamboard in my coaching, I realize this tool can do so much more. And the best part, I've included a collection of Opening Moves using Jamboard just for you to download and start using in your coaching. You'll find it in the post!

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My personal policy for using technology in teaching and coaching can be condensed down to a short phrase: privilege pedagogy over technology. Those four little words have served me well, ensuring I use my purpose for learning to choose technology tools and not the other way around. As I've continued coaching virtually, I've refined my personal policy further to include guidelines like these:

Is it intuitive and easy to use?

Can I use the tools flexibly in different ways?

Is it free?

These personal guidelines have pointed me to consider a newer tool for virtual instructional coaching: Google Jamboard. Jamboard is a collaborative, digital whiteboard to create and collaborate in real time. It's a digital version of a large pad of chart paper that allows us to use colorful markers and sticky notes online. The beauty of Jamboard is that it comes with unlimited pages. You can curate thinking on one slide alone or assign grade level teams and small groups to individual pages that contribute to a larger flipboard of thinking. And, while I prefer to have teachers share their thinking on the moveable colorful sticky notes, teachers can easily write their thinking using their touch-screen devices instead.

Initially, I turned to Jamboard as an alternative to Padlet so I could offer teachers a free way to curate resources, share thinking, and cultivate collaborative learning. But now that I've been using Jamboard in my coaching, I realize this tool can do so much more. Here are three powerful ways that I've been using it in my coaching recently, and how you can too.
Build Connection and Community
The challenges of quarantine have highlighted our need for human connection and community. While we can no longer pop into each other's classrooms for a quick hello or gather together for social experiences, Jamboard offers a quick and easy way to bring the spirit of collaboration to any learning session.

I like to open up a professional learning session with a fun slide that brings a smile to teachers' faces and gives them a moment to simply breathe and connect. Here's my favorite so far:

Teachers add a sticky note with their name and move it to the location on the image that best represents their preferences. Not only is it engaging for teachers, It's also easy, fun, and flexible, too. There are many other options for creating slides like these: Which meme do you identify with most? Which dinner option represents you most? What's your favorite dessert?

My top tip? Keep a running collection of these images so you can easily copy and paste one into your presentation when you need it. Here's a simple collection I've started that works great for students, too!
Create Entrance and Exit Tickets
While I love starting sessions with connection and community, I also want to find out about teachers' knowledge, interests, and needs before we get started with the session. Jamboards's sticky notes and textboxes are a great way to do this.

Here's one I created to elicit teachers' thinking on running records to guide our session. Notice how teachers can share their thinking on a sticky note, move their note around to the appropriate column, and view their colleagues' thinking as well. Jamboard keeps teachers' thinking anonymous, yet offers a window into the shared understandings of the group. It's also something that can be archived and saved to illustrate teacher learning over time.

You can also use Jamboard at the end of PD sessions as an exit slip to archive teacher learning over time. Here's a simple one I created to invite teachers to share their thinking at the end of book club session:
Curate Collaborative Thinking
Our virtual sessions with teachers should be just as interactive and engaging as our in-person ones. We might be on opposite sides of a virtual screen, but we can stillcollaborate and curate our shared thinking.

I like to use Jamboard to ask teachers to share their own independent thinking, document their conversations in breakout rooms, contribute a resource to share, and more. Here's an example of a Jamboard asking what teachers felt mattered most in virtual instruction:

If you haven't given Jamboard a try to support your virtual coaching, I hope this offers a few ways you can do just that. There's one more reason to consider: it offers teachers a powerful model to bring Jamboard into their own virtual classrooms, too!

Note: This post was originally featured on TeachBoost. You'll find even more of my posts there, along with MANY others perfect to support your instructional coaching.
Are you looking for more coaching inspiration? Get my newest blog posts, podcasts, special events and more delivered straight to your Inbox. Sign up here!

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My personal policy for using technology in teaching and coaching can be condensed down to a short phrase: privilege pedagogy over technology. Those four little words have served me well, ensuring I use my purpose for learning to choose technology tools and not the other way around.

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Here's a page of my coaching notebook PERFECT to launch virtual professional learning: See. Think. Wonder. It's a great way to ease into a session, generate conversation and lead into the content of the day.

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A great deal of my coaching occurs through my literacy teacher education coursework, a balance between seminars, practicum teaching and online collaboration. We read research and professional literature, learn about effective practices and explore the theory behind them. But since many may not have extensive classroom experience, it can be difficult to truly understand the complexities of literacy teaching. That is why I rely on images and videos of actual classrooms to guide our learning together, something that ALL teachers can benefit from, too.

One of my favorite activities is to project an image representing some aspect of teaching for teachers to analyze. This might be a picture of the classroom overall, an image of a specific classroom location, a picture of students engaging in small group instruction or anything else you want to draw teachers attention to. Then, I ask teachers to silently explore the image and answer three questions:

What do you see?

What do you wonder about?

What does the image say about the story of learning in the classroom?

These three questions yield rich conversation about classrooms, instructional practices and student learning and usually spark an interest in the content we will explore together. For example, I might project an image of an effective word wall at the start of a professional learning session to spark conversation. We then spend the rest of our time exploring what makes word walls effective and how we can create one in our classrooms. Let's say you are planning to explore a new instructional practice with teachers. Project an image that captures that practice in action and see where teachers take the conversation. This grounds the conversation in actual classroom practices and prepares teachers for the new information you'll explore in your session too.

Here are some of the images I've used recently in my coaching:

Now, keep in mind these images do NOT need to be perfect exemplars. In fact, the See. Think. Wonder protocol seems to work better when they are not. This way, you can have richer conversations about the practices in the image to deepen the conversation. I have a Favorites folder on my browser so I can easily save images that might work for upcoming sessions with teachers, but you could easily create a Pinterest board instead. This way, when I see a great image online or on social media, I can easily save it for later use.

While I often use online photos from literacy organizations and teacher blogs to project, I recommend mining your own school to take snapshots of teachers' current classrooms to help them celebrate what they are already doing and positively validate teachers' efforts. Always.

If you think your teachers are up for it, you could take it a step further and challenge them to capture images of their classroom that are working well or that are examples of innovations other teachers might also want to try. Ask teachers to send you those photos to use as showcase pieces for your upcoming sessions or simply project them during breaks to celebrate teachers' practices. You might even compile them together on your website or a shared Padlet wall to cultivate a positive culture for teacher innovation.

The bottom line? Images play a pivotal role in our work as coaches, both as conversation starters and celebrations. They're fun to gather, easy to project and sure to launch learning in your next professional learning session.
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See. Think. Wonder: Using Images in Coaching

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A great deal of my coaching occurs through my literacy teacher education coursework, a balance between seminars, practicum teaching and online collaboration. We read research and professional literature, learn about effective practices and explore the theory behind them. But since many may not have extensive classroom experience, it can be difficult to truly understand the complexities of literacy teaching.

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Have you tried using Twitter lists as a coaching tool yet? Find out why and how they are the perfect coaching tool, especially as soft starts for virtual sessions!

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As a mother of teenagers, I often learn new words that did not exist when I was younger. Did you know that if something 'slaps' it's pretty amazing and if something is 'cap', it's a lie? Neither did I. But recently, I stumbled upon a word that I didn't know existed but already had a place in my heart: listicle. A listicle is any piece of writing that is in list form and is my new favorite genre because I am a list-maker. I have to-do lists for each day of the week on Google Keep and even have a Radar list for things on the horizon. I keep grocery lists, packing lists, memory lists and more. So it made sense to me when I started shifting the way I used Twitter to include lists, too.

Twitter is an online social networking and micro-blogging platform where users send and read short posts up to 280 characters, or tweets. I love Twitter, but if I am completely honest, it can be overwhelming to keep up with the sheer amount of tweets posted on any given day. And I don't want to miss any important tweets from those I follow, so I find myself logging onto Twitter far too often, usually wasting time scrolling through my feed. Until Twitter lists.

A Twitter list is a curated group of Twitter accounts. You can personally create your own lists or you can subscribe to those that others created, too. I've started using Twitter lists so I can manage the sheer amount of information in my feed and focus my attention on what matters most: the tweets of those that I follow for inspiration and to push my thinking. Here are just a few of the lists I've created:

Children's Literature Authors: This list curates my treasured authors into one beautiful feed. With just one click, I can see what they're up to, find new book titles for my TBR stack and usually, grab some writing inspiration, too.

Literacy Coaches: On this list, I've curated all of the literacy coaches that I've connected with on Twitter. I head here to see what they've been working on, what's fueling their work and how I might learn from each of them.

Coaching Through COVID: This list curates some of my favorite people together: instructional coaches working to push the boundaries of their coaching through authentic use of digital tools and technology. One glance at this feed brings INSTANT inspiration.

I found so much success in managing Twitter with lists for my own professional use that I started bringing it into my work with teachers, too. And the beauty of it? Teachers do NOT need to have an account to view the lists and learn from them. They can simply click on the direct links to your lists, favorite them on their browser and visit them whenever they choose. Here's how to get started:

Create the list. Click on the three dots on the left-hand side of your Twitter homepage and then click on the Lists icon (it actually looks like a list written on a piece of paper). Click on the plus sign on the top right of the page. Label your new list with a name and description. Here are a few lists you might create: favorite authors, mentor texts for writing, researchers to learn from, classroom accounts to learn from, faculty on Twitter to follow, accounts with helpful technology resources and more. Then, you can choose to make your list private. But if you do, that means your teachers will not be able to view your list.

Curate the list. You can search for accounts you want to add to your list or see which accounts are recommended from Twitter based on your user history. You can also add accounts from user homepages, too. Simply head to a specific account, click on the three dots and then add the user to your chosen list.

Share the list. Once your list is ready to share, click on the list, then click on the arrow at the top right of the screen and copy the direct link to the list. You can then send the list in an email, add it to your email signature, link to it on your website or embed it in an upcoming presentation. Remember, teachers do not need to have an account to browse, so EVERYONE can access your lists with a simple Internet connection.

Use the list. I love creating lists that perfectly capture the theme of a professional topic I'm exploring with teachers. Once I create the list, I link it to a QR code and then post the QR code for teachers to scan and scroll while they wait for the session to begin. It's a great way to get teachers instantly hooked into the content of the session, see a wide range of perspectives on the topic and find other educators to connect and collaborate with, too. Other ways to use your lists? Share them with teachers as part of a coaching cycle or as a way to easily link teachers to helpful resources.

I hope I've piqued your interest in using Twitter lists for coaching. What ideas are you considering for your next Twitter list? Comment below or tag me on Twitter using @AffinitoLit!
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As a mother of teenagers, I often learn new words that did not exist when I was younger. Did you know that if something 'slaps' it's pretty amazing and if something is 'cap', it's a lie? Neither did I. But recently, I stumbled upon a word that I didn't know existed but already had a place in my heart: listicle.

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From Four Corners to Four Breakout Rooms!

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From Four Corners to Four Breakout Rooms!

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The Four Corners activity has been around for quite some time, typically as an activity used with students to foster decision-making and opinion-generating skills, as well as communication and collaboration. Since my coaching philosophy rests on the idea that my design for teacher learning should align with the ultimate vision for student learning in the classroom, I like to engage teachers in activities that can immediately try with their own students. This activity is one of them and I've re-imagined it just a bit for virtual coaching.

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Four Corners (Or Four Breakout Room): Shifting an Old Favorite Online

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The Four Corners activity has been around for quite some time, typically as an activity used with students to foster decision-making and op...

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Creating Collaborative Playbooks with Teachers

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Creating Collaborative Playbooks with Teachers

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Today, I am featuring a page of my notebook that could just be exactly what we need to keep our spirits high and remind us what we are doing well, not the challenges we are facing. It's called Creating Collaborative Playbooks with Teachers and it's as easy as creating a shared Google Slides presentation. Really.

Creating a collaborative play book with teachers is an innovative way to celebrate teaching and learning and has roots in athletic coaching. Have you ever watched the sports news on television and saw clips celebrating the play of the week or something similar? This activity helps educators do the same in their own classrooms so they can celebrate their own instructional moves. I know you'll want to try it tomorrow!

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If I was forced to choose just one coaching sketchnote as my favorite (but please do not make me choose!), I would have to say that the Play of the Week would make my top 3. I stumbled upon this idea from Pam Hubler on the Shake Up Learning blog. While the post was geared toward students, Pam originally experienced this idea as an instructional coach. I read it, I loved it and I use it. Often. It's the perfect way to focus on what's working, over what's challenging, and re-energize our mindset for learning, something we can always use a bit more of.

Creating a collaborative play book with teachers is an innovative way to celebrate teaching and learning and has roots in athletic coaching. Have you ever watched the sports news on television and saw clips celebrating the play of the week or something similar? This activity helps educators do the same in their own classrooms so they can celebrate their own instructional moves.

Before I get into how it works, you might like to browsethis example created by our think tank of literacy coaches in upstate New York. We create one every month to celebrate and share our coaching practices.

Now, here's how it works:

Create a Google Slides presentation and share it with teachers, giving everyone editing access. Send the template to teachers before an upcoming learning session with the following request: Create a slide that represents something that went well in your classroom, a 'play' you could highlight for your colleagues to celebrate and learn from. Start the slides off with an example of your own for teachers to use as a model and be sure to offer technical support if needed.

When you meet next, whether in person or virtually, project the playbook and play it on a loop for teachers to admire as they wait for your session to begin. Give teachers easy access to the slides by linking it to a QR code on the screen or give them a moment to access it on their own devices. Then, open your session by asking teachers to browse through the slides with you and give a one-minute celebration of their chosen play.

There are a few variations that you can try as you decide how this coaching idea can work best for you. If a Play of the Week seems a bit too overwhelming, how about a Play of the Month or a Play of the Quarter? Or, if you'd rather follow a unit of study, rather than the calendar, try create a playbook based on the topic your exploring together, like a playbook of effective word walls, reading workshop mini-lessons or small group strategy instruction.

While it might initially feel like another task to complete, once teachers see the power in sharing their successes with others and learn new ideas from their colleagues, I bet this routine will be welcomed. Over time, teachers will start to look for the plays they can celebrate with others as your learning community adopts this routine and develops a celebratory habit. I know I did.

How might you use collaborative playbooks in your coaching? I'd love to hear your ideas and better yet, hope you'll share your playbook with me to celebrate!
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Collaborative Playbooks to Celebrate Teaching

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If I was forced to choose just one coaching sketchnote as my favorite (but please do not make me choose!), I would have to say that the Play of the Week would make my top 3. I stumbled upon this idea from Pam Hubler on the Shake Up Learning blog.

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Virtual Professional Learning Slides Template

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Virtual Professional Learning Slides Template

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Find yourself planning a lot of virtual PD, but always feel like you're starting from scratch, forgetting something or simply taking far too long to create your session slides? Here's a free professional learning slides template to support your planning!

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When I first started coaching, I considered professional development my nemesis. It took me more hours to plan for a session with teachers than it did to actually facilitate the session. And what seemed to work well with one group of teachers completely flopped with the next. I just couldn't seem to figure out how to successfully AND efficiently plan for professional learning sessions that actually were effective AND enjoyable for all. Until I started notebooking. If you're reading this, you already know about my Coaching Sketchnote book and how I use the design thinking process to craft my coaching role and plan professional learning sessions for teachers. And that was a game-changer for me, taking professional learning from my nemesis to hands-down my favorite coaching activity.

I felt comfortable and confident working with teachers in person and while I was certainly comfortable working with technology, it still required a shift in thinking and a whole lot of learning. I captured most of my learning along the way in my virtual coaching toolkit, a Padlet of ideas, resources, tips, hacks and more for virtual instructional coaching and even created a virtual professional learning checklist to guide planning my online sessions with teachers. But I needed more. I needed a template for professional learning sessions that would prompt me to design virtual sessions around what mattered most. Sessions that would honor teachers' busy schedules, focus on key content to support their teaching and still incorporate connection, conversation, collaboration and especially, community.

So I took a hard look at the virtual sessions I was creating, compared them to my checklist for virtual professional learning and created a template of sorts to guide my planning. Here are the slides I always include in each virtual professional learning session I facilitate:

: These first slides offer teachers something to look at and browse while we wait for the virtual session to begin.

Press Record and Sign In: This slide is a tongue-in-cheek reminder to have teachers sign into the session and to record the session for those that cannot attend, something I typically forgot to do at the start of my virtual journey.

Opening Move and Personal Check-In: I always start my sessions with a bit of community and connection. We might play 'Screens On Screens Off', contribute to a Google Jamboard, laugh with a fun meme or even play digital word games together.

Content Burst: This collection of 4 slides prompts me to focus on the content of the session in a way that honors teachers' time and gets right to the point:

Name the goal/objective of the session.

Give a short content burst of what matters most.

Provide a live model, demonstration and/or collaborate together.

Invite teachers to make learning visible and share it with others.

Discussions and Questions: Here, we connect and collaborate. We might have a whole group conversation, use the chat box, head to breakout rooms, share our thinking on Padlet or contribute to shared Google documents or slides.

A Look Forward: I end each session with a look forward: what's next for our professional learning, what take-aways and look-forwards can we extract from the session and what do we need next?

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Depending on the purpose and the length of the session, I might add more content burst slides or extend our work together. But, if I do so, I always add in additional opportunities for interaction or a short break to re-adjust our tired Zoom eyes. If you're looking for additional guidance on this very topic, you might be interested in my series of 5 on-demand sessions on designing teacher learning. We explore all things PD and I hand over my most treasured templates so you can make them your own!

How do you plan for virtual professional learning? Share your ideas in the comments below!

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Virtual Professional Learning Session Template

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When I first started coaching, I considered professional development my nemesis. It took me more hours to plan for a session with teachers than it did to actually facilitate the session. And what seemed to work well with one group of teachers completely flopped with the next.

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I think we could all use a few instructional coaching easy buttons right now and I'll give you some of my favorite easy buttons to use with teachers inside this post.

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Do you know what one of my favorite coaching tools are? Easy buttons. As a fellow coach, I know there are things you find yourself saying over and over again or things you demonstrate over and over again and wish there was a better way. There is! Easy buttons. Easy buttons are handouts, recordings or videos of the things you say, do and demonstrate over and over again to streamline your work and create a collection of on-demand resources for your teachers.

Stop and think for a moment. What are the things you find yourself saying to teachers over and over? What questions do you answer again and again? Which resources do you continually share email after email? What do you consistently need to demonstrate with multiple teachers?

Your answers to these questions will lead you directly to the easy buttons you need to create. Here are some possible easy buttons you might consider:

An easy button on how to use a particular technology tool for instruction, like how to use Padlet to create virtual classroom libraries.

An easy button demonstrating key instructional practices in your content area, like ways to make a word wall more interactive or how to plan for guided reading groups.

An easy button for how to contribute to shared curriculum documents or complete Response to Intervention paperwork.

An easy button offering your favorite websites to share, like my Padlet collection of digital texts.

An easy button compiling videos of best practices and instruction, like effective classroom routines and transitions or how to use digital tools for reading response. Take a look at my collection below:

Easy buttons for how to navigate a curriculum or assessment learning management system.

Since our coaching is unique to our school, teachers and students, our easy buttons will be, too, ensuring that coaching is responsive and personalized, even if on-demand. And easy buttons are perfect for virtual coaching, too.

Now, I am not saying there is anything easy about our work, but providing clear, explicit examples and explanations for teachers when they need them most can certainly make everyone's work a bit easier, more enjoyable and certainly more effective.

Since you may find yourself with a collection of these flipped coaching resources, you'll need to house your creations in an easy-to-access space. It does no good to create these resources if teachers cannot easily access them when they need them most. Curate your resources in an easily shareable format (Padlet, Wakelet, Google Drive, or YouTube Channel) to encourage personalized teacher learning, just as teachers might for their own students. In fact, you might encourage teachers to create their own easy buttons for students as well!

One last thing: I've created a special collection of Easy buttons just for you to support your virtual instructional coaching. There are 20 carefully-sequenced videos to show you how to ease into virtual coaching, step-by-step-by-step. Join me! But hurry...I'm retiring this course at the end of 2021, so you can get it now for only $20!

What easy buttons have you created? Or, what easy button do you need? Share your thinking in the comments below!
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Do you know what one of my favorite coaching tools are? Easy buttons. As a fellow coach, I know there are things you find yourself saying over and over again or things you demonstrate over and over again and wish there was a better way. There is! Easy buttons.

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Create Collaborative Look-Fors to Evaluate Coaching Cycles for Shared Learning

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Create Collaborative Look-Fors to Evaluate Coaching Cycles for Shared Learning

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I've added a new page to my notebook to support classroom coaching cycles, especially virtual ones. It's all about co-creating how the cycle will be evaluated, something that often removes coaches and teachers from the process. Until now.

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Let's start with a question: Who is in charge of a coaching cycle? That's a trick question, right?! Right. A coaching cycle is a cycle of intense collaboration around a shared goal of professional growth or classroom life. It is collegial, non-evaluative and co-constructed every step of the way. Together with teachers, we create a shared vision for our work, engage in co-learning and/or co-teaching and end with collaborative conversations.

But.

There's one part of the coaching cycle that doesn't feel nearly as collaborative. In fact, it often removes the coach and the teacher from the equation completely and delivers pre-determined content instead: the observation rubric or checklist. Think about it. We work so hard to connect and collaborate within a coaching cycle, but then often evaluate our shared efforts using an arbitrary document that doesn't account for our unique coaching contexts. But how does an outside company, curriculum or organization understand our particular coaching partnerships, materials and resources we have, the length of our cycle and more. It doesn't.

But we can change that. Enter the 'Creating Collaborative Look-Fors' activity. It is based on another one of my coaching sketchnotes from my Coaching Sketchnote Book called The Sticky Note Idea Sort. And it's the perfect way to collaboratively create a set of 'look-fors' to guide our work and evaluate learning throughout a coaching cycle. This works well to create look-fors with the whole faculty, grade level teams, small groups of teachers and even individual teachers.

Here's how it works:

First, you need to launch your coaching partnership and decide on a shared vision for your work together. After that, it's time to think about how you'll evaluate your work together, what you'll look for during instruction or how you'll document your learning. Let's work through what the process might look like if deciding what to look for to evaluate virtual reading instruction.

Invite teachers to imagine the kind of readers they want to have at the end of remote instruction, the end of the quarter or even the end of the year. They can sit quietly to visualize in their mind, briefly draw an image of what they hope for or even create a bulleted list.

Then, ask teachers: What practices does your classroom need to get there? Provide teachers with plenty of sticky notes and invite them to represent each practice on a separate sticky note. Compile these sticky notes together on chart paper or on the wall and examine them. Or, if you are working virtually, try using Padlet or Jamboard instead. You'll find an image of a Padlet brainstorming session below:

Next, it is time to sort. Examine all the sticky notes and reflect: What seems to matter most to everyone? Literally move your sticky notes around to group them together based on the categories that are emerging. What practices, instructional routines, materials and mind-shifts are needed? After that, look at the categories and label them accordingly.

Now, supplement teachers' brainstorming with clear-cut connections to the research. Provide summaries of the research, checklists for best practices, articles and posts to consider, websites to browse, and/or standards documents and more. Give teachers time to revise and add to their groupings as needed. This way, we ensure we are combining what we personally know we want with what professional literature and research offers us, too.

Finally, use the collected information to collaboratively choose 'Look-Fors' to guide learning in future coaching cycles, look-fors that all teachers can feel comfortable using since they had a voice in creating them. You'll find an example of a set of look-fors for virtual literacy instruction that I co-created with my community of literacy coaches below. Click on the image for the full document, but keep this in mind: It's pretty comprehensive, so your set of look-fors is likely to be smaller and intricately connected to your coaching content.

Can't you just envision how the entire feel of a coaching cycle can change if teachers were completely involved in the co-creation of how it would be evaluated? Me too. So, grab some sticky notes, a few willing teachers and get started! And then, share your successes and tips in the comments below!

One last thing: If you'd like to hear me talk through this to the coaches in my Virtual Coaching Roadmap course, click here!
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Create Collaborative Look-Fors in Coaching Cycles

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Let's start with a question: Who is in charge of a coaching cycle? That's a trick question, right?! Right. A coaching cycle is a cycle of in...

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This self-paced course is built around my Virtual Coaching Roadmap: a carefully constructed set of 6 steps to launch virtual coaching in your school. Learn more here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdvMqlD53tzsk5k7Q9diW3Cl_2bW45bDb

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Share Our Reading, Writing & Learning Lives

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Share Our Reading, Writing & Learning Lives

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The best way to cultivate teacher learning communities is by sharing your own reading, writing and learning first! Read more in my blog post.

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Instructional coaches are the lead learners in a school. As leaders, we must remain lifelong learners and share that learning with others. When we share and connect with others around our learning in very public ways, we invite connections with others based on our learning habits, interests and inquiries.

I find it's especially important to cultivate our own reading and writing lives and then offer them like a beacon of light for other teachers and students to gain inspiration from, so here are a few ideas to consider trying with teachers to help them make their reading and writing lives visible, too:

Jazz up your ID badge. I first learned of an idea like this from John Schu, an Ambassador of School Libraries for Scholastic. He used to create stickers showcasing the books he was reading and literally stick them to his shirt each day so students would always have a new title to learn about. While you could certainly do this, tucking a small image of a book cover into your plastic ID badge could have the same effect. You could even simply write the name of the book you are reading on your ID card to launch conversation around books.

Grab a whiteboard and start sharing titles. Picture frames filled with glitter, rather than pictures, work well for this too. Simply grab a dry erase marker and jot the title you are currently reading on the whiteboard or picture frame. Keep it front and center in your coaching space and change the title often....an incentive to keep your own reading life going strong, too!

Create a 'What I'm Reading' wall. This can be as simple as writing the title you are currently reading on a sign outside of your classroom door. I like the one Amy Wabiszewski uses to highlight the different books she is reading across her reading life, in person and online. Or, you might jazz it up a bit and post the covers of the books you have read to celebrate your growing reading life. Take a look at this Reading Wall from @LitCoachConnect here:

And if you REALLY want to have some fun, add some emojis to the mix! Create a simple 'What I'm Reading' slide in Google Docs and add your personal emoji and the cover of the book you're reading. Here's a simple slide I recently created:

Print out the slide to post on your classroom door or simply insert it into your email signature, instead. It's also a great way to open virtual sessions with teachers as students as an invitation for teachers to share their own titles in the chat box. You might be surprised at the reading you inspire around you.

Create a digital reading wall. There are a few options here based on how you like to share your books with others. If you prefer sharing text covers, images or audio clips, then choose Padlet to showcase your titles. If you want to create short 'selfie-style' videos to share the books you are reading, then try Flipgrid instead. Take a look at my Padlet wall below for inspiration and then head to this Flipgrid page for video examples from authors' themselves!

Consider using social media to share your reading with the world. Goodreads is a social platform that encourages readers to connect with other readers. Readers share the books they are reading, find book recommendations and discuss their reading with others. Go ahead and browse the site and connect with me there! You might create a dedicated hashtag for your teachers to share their literate lives, like Jill Davidson and colleagues do using #ASDWReads and #ASDWWrites.

Or, you can head to Twitter or Instagram and browse your favorite hashtags for reading. Here are mine:

Looking for a way to bring teachers (and students!) into the reading celebration? Try a reading graffiti wall! Dedicate one wall of the faculty room (or the school, if inviting students to join) and keep a stack of sticky notes and colorful markers (which you know are my favorite tools!) close by. Encourage teachers to share a recommended title on a sticky note and post on the wall for others to literally steal as a reminder of what they could read next. It's a beautiful blend of reading give-and-take!

So, there you have it! What other ways do you help teachers make their reading lives visible?
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Sharing Our Reading (or Writing or Learning) Lives

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Instructional coaches are the lead learners in a school. As leaders, we must remain lifelong learners and share that learning with others. W...

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Try this sound board to spice things up a bit!

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Take a look at the MANY ways I open my PD sessions to encourage connection, community and collaboration.

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I have a pretty early and pretty strict morning routine: exercise, coffee, breakfast, reading and writing. All before I even take a shower to launch the day. How do you start your day? Do you head straight for the kitchen to enjoy that first cup of coffee? Do you grab your phone and start scrolling through your feed? Perhaps you hit 'snooze' and settle in for just a few more minutes? The way we start our day sets the tone for what is to come, our personal one and our professional one. And if you've ever taken a peek into my Coaching Sketchnote Book, you know that I have an entire section dedicated to opening moves for professional learning sessions. Those first greetings, slides, conversations and activities matter. A lot.

But what about virtual soft starts and opening moves? I'd argue that our opening moves online are just as, if not more, important than those completed in person. We need connection, community and collaboration and the way we open our virtual sessions sets the tone for the learning to come. Here are some of my favorite ways to launch virtual professional learning sessions:

A Bitmoji Office Slide: This is my FAVORITE way to begin an online session! It's welcoming, comforting and sparks conversation. I like to personalize the slide to the time of year, the books I'm currently reading and even the content of the session. I change it often and encourage teachers to spot those changes each time they join me online for a session. Here's my current slide at this moment in time:

PD Playlists: Play music as teachers enter the room to set the tone and vary the musical genre based on your content. Play relaxing music to help teachers unwind. Play upbeat tunes to get teachers energized. Play music students like to remind teachers of the importance of learning about student interests. Ask teachers to submit their favorites and create a personalized playlist just for this purpose!

Two Kinds of People: Use these slides or these slides as a fun way to open up personal conversations from Sara Knigge READ en Espanol, Inc. and Kim Knigge Joliet SD86. Just paste one into your opening slides and ask teachers to comment which they relate more to. Or, simply use the slides to start a conversation instead. Here's one of my favorites (I'm the one on the left!):

Screen Off? Screen On?: Start your next session with this fun game, the perfect way to model how teachers might do the same with their students. Have teachers turn off their video cameras. Ask a question. If it applies to them, they turn it back on and have some fun conversation. Here are some great questions to ask from Sara Knigge READ en Espanol, Inc. and Kim Knigge Joliet SD86 :

I cut my own hair during quarantine.

I wore "real pants" every day during quarantine.

I have less than 100 emails in my inbox.

I can remember the last movie I saw in a movie theater.

While You Wait Virtual Agenda Slides: Easily welcome teachers into your sessions with an agenda slide. Let teachers know what they need, what you'll explore and offer a question to launch reflection. Then, position your camera into the picture frame of the slide and literally pop into the session! Here's one of my slides below:

Caption This!: Display a popular meme and remove the caption. Encourage teachers to caption it in the chat box and reveal the actual post for a fun laugh. Here's my favorite shared by Frances L. Gonzalez-Garcia:

Pose a Challenge: Open a session by challenging teachers in some way and even offer a small treat, if you can, for the winner. My favorite? Decoding children's book titles from emoticons! Here are a couple of challenges offered by Anna Whitely on Medium. This one is my favorite:

Start with a Quote: Rotate the inspirational quotes on your screen as teachers enter professional learning sessions. My favorite quotes come from The Natural Life. They send out a Daily Chirp with a beautiful quote and image. I use them OFTEN in my work with teachers!

Choose a Background: While you wait for teachers to enter your virtual room, encourage teachers to head to Pixabay or Canva and choose a new background for the session to change things up a bit! They are sure to generate conversation around why certain images were chosen.

So, there you have it. My favorite ways to open virtual sessions with teachers....so far. If you'd like instant access to my collection, along with the other items in my PD Toolkit, join my Create a PD Toolkit workshop and download them instantly!

What are your favorite opening moves? Share them in the comments below!

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I have a pretty early and pretty strict morning routine: exercise, coffee, breakfast, reading and writing. All before I even take a shower t...

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Here’s a draft of an observation/feedback form to support coaching partnerships around virtual instruction!

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This is one of my all-time-favorite ways to engage teachers during professional learning and quickly find the pulse of thinking in the room!

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This sketchtivity is near and dear to my heart for a few reasons: it is fun, it is easy, it is colorful and it generates enthusiasm. But, the most important reason is because I first experienced it as a learner. We get ideas for coaching and leading from all sorts of places: reading books, browsing social media, finding them online, etc. But the most powerful activities are the ones that first moved us as learners and we were so compelled by the experience, we just had to share it with our teachers. This embodies my entire philosophy of coaching: we must live as learners to lead the learning of others.

I was attending a state conference on teacher education and the presenter started our session by asking us to capture our thinking on the topic on Menti.com. As we each entered our three words to guide the session, those words were immediately transformed into a collaborative word cloud right before our eyes. I was mesmerized. Not only could I gain multiple perspectives on the topic without any conversation at all, but the changing shapes and colors reminded me how our thinking must change as we encounter those new ideas. I was hooked and have been using collaborative word clouds in my coaching ever since.

As of right now, Mentimeter is my favorite tool for this work because it is quick, easy and free (although you can upgrade to a paid subscription for more bells and whistles). Head to Mentimeter to learn more, to create your account and create your first word cloud presentation. You can accomplish all of that in a few easy steps:

Log into Mentimeter.

Click new presentation.

Click the word cloud design.

Add your chosen prompt or question.

That's it! And next, it is so quick and easy to invite teachers to participate. Simply direct them to Menti.com and provide the code provided at the top of your presentation so teachers can access the page to enter their responses. Then, open your presentation and project it on the screen for all to see. Remind teachers to enter their information and then quickly look to the screen (or change tabs if working virtually) so they can see their contributions appear. Then, watch the magic happen! Use the results to talk about the topic at hand and inform your work together and guide future planning.

Here's how I like to use word clouds in my coaching:

As opening moves during professional learning sessions to elicit conversation on the topic.

As quick ways to capture the thinking of the group during a session or break.

As a tool to create shared visions for our work ahead. Print out the word cloud and keep it visible as a tangle reminder.

As exit tickets to share important learning after a session together.

Want to see a few? Take a look at these word clouds I've created with teachers:

There are many more possibilities for word clouds in coaching and I hope to explore them all. Share how you have used word clouds in the comments below!

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This sketchtivity is near and dear to my heart for a few reasons: it is fun, it is easy, it is colorful and it generates enthusiasm. But, t...

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Need to re-imagine coaching cycles? Try a content coaching cycle instead and start with a blog hop!

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Typically, when you hear the phrase ‘coaching cycle’, you might think of a classroom coaching cycle where teachers and coaches work together…

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Yes, you read that right! The Coaching Sketchnote Book is now a podcast! You can find it on your favorite platform and listen to bite-sized PD for coaches every Monday. Listen today and grab an idea or two!

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Summer if officially here! I have so enjoyed bringing you a new coaching tool, activity or idea every Monday for the entire 2020-2021 school year, a year like no other. But now, it's time for a collective rest, a but of downtime and a whole lot of reading, writing and connections with family and friends. So, I've decided to take the month of July off from blogging and podcasting on The Coaching Sketchnote Book to do just that.

But, just because I am not posting new posts throughout the month of July doesn't mean we still can't learn together. Here are three ways we can stay connected over the summer and boost our professional learning in the process:
Find a transcribed version of this podcast and links to all the resources mentioned here in this week's accompanying blog post.
And, if you want to a place to discuss the content from today's episode, join my Leading by Learning Facebook Community today and start a conversation.

If you'd like more information about the sponsors for this podcast, visit My Favorite Things page and get deals and discounts on Skillshare, Canva, Kajabi, Flodesk and more!

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The Coaching Sketchnote Book * A podcast on Spotify for Podcasters

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A weekly podcast celebrating instructional coaching pedagogy to empower teacher learning...all in under ten minutes or less!

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Learn how I combine my love of physical notebooks with digital technology sparks to create hyperdocs for teacher learning!

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If you know me, you know I LOVE notebooks and have them in all shapes and sizes: my personal notebook of my private most innermost thoughts,…

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Use these slides as a fun way to open up personal conversation in a live virtual meeting from Sara Knigge READ en Espanol, Inc. and Kim Knigge Joliet SD86. Here's a second one too: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1B0gPEkSj3sWhwpQIpFhUUp0pVY0Y1Z8GfGb8bQ8pr5Y/edit#slide=id.p

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Have teachers turn off their video cameras. Ask a question. If it applies to them, they turn it back on and have some fun. Here are some great questions to ask from Sara Knigge READ en Espanol, Inc. and Kim Knigge Joliet SD86 :

I cut my own hair during quarantine.

I wore “real pants” every day during quarantine.

I have less than 100 emails in my inbox.

I can remember the last movie I saw in a movie theater.

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Try a Content Coaching Cycle with a Blog Hop!

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Try a Content Coaching Cycle with a Blog Hop!

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Launch a new kind of cycle perfect for virtual learning: a blog hop!

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Typically, when you hear the phrase ‘coaching cycle’, you might think of a classroom coaching cycle where teachers and coaches work together…

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Coaching Through COVID: Virtual Coaching Boot Camp

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Coaching Through COVID: Virtual Coaching Boot Camp

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Join me all year long to explore digital tools and technology to re-imagine instructional coaching as we re-open schools! Gain instant access to ten hours of professional learning videos, a long listing of tools and resources and live monthly meetings all year long to support you when you need it most!

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Coaching Through COVID-19: Tools and Technology for Virtual Instructional Coaching

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As the events of our world continue to unfold, instructional coaches are re-imagining what coaching looks like in virtual spaces and are planning online units of study, gathering digital texts and activities, and compiling helpful links to support students' learning in new spaces.

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Connect, Collaborate and Coach with Voxer!

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Connect, Collaborate and Coach with Voxer!

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Read the post, listen to the podcast and then connect with me on Voxer to try it out!

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Above all, instructional coaching is responsive. Coaches design their positions in response to many factors, some within our control and some beyond it. And these positions can look drastically different from one school to the next, even one month to the next! But the common denominator across all of our positions seems to be this: relationships. Coaches strive to build professional relationships with teachers that support and extend the learning of all.

The basic ideas of building relationships with teachers remains the same no matter the context for coaching. My pact for learning with teachers in person directly parallels my work online:

Learning is never complete: We believe in life-long learning and deserve the same innovative and effective support we provide to our students.

We work better together: We believe in collaboration with all faculty to push our thinking and further our learning.

Everyone plays a part: Each of us are important to our collaborative learning process. We all have a voice to contribute.

We learn from practice: We vow to open our classroom doors and invite connections with others.

We are in charge of our own journey: We deserve personalized learning experiences that are meaningful, authentic and immediately applicable to our own classrooms.

While this kind of connection and collaboration is never an easy process, it becomes even more complicated when working remotely or virtually, so I rely on particular technology tools to support this important work. And Voxer is one of my go-to tools to connect, collaborate and coach.

Now, I use Voxer as part of my everyday coaching, even when working in person. But Voxer has been more important than ever as I shift to coaching remotely and virtually. So, if Voxer is new to you, be prepared to dive in headfirst to this game-changer of a coaching tool. Ready?

Voxer is a Walkie Talkie messaging app for your smartphone with live voice, text and photo. Once connected, you can send messages to individuals or groups that you have created. Since communication is asynchronous, you can leave messages for your listeners at any time to listen and respond at any time. I tend to vox on my commute, on daily walks and even when I'm folding the laundry! It is an easy, yet fantastic, way to connect, communicate, collaborate and even coach on our own schedules.

Here are some ways that I use Voxer to support my coaching:

Individual Conversations: I connect with other educators to simply connect, share ideas, pose questions and keep in touch. You can connect with your teachers on Voxer to check in, share ideas for your next coaching cycle or offer an idea or resource.

Individual Coaching Cycles: Voxer offers a unique way to hold pre and post coaching cycle conversations when scheduling (or pandemics!) make it hard to host in person. Simply talk through the coaching cycle asynchronously using Voxer for connected conversations over time.

Group Sessions: Connect teams of teachers together on Voxer for sustained conversations. You could create a Voxer group for grade level teams, committees or educators interested in exploring a particular topic together.

Book Studies: This is one of my favorite ways to use Voxer. If you cannot meet live or want a way to continue the conversations in between sessions, create a Voxer group to keep the conversation going. Create a schedule and pose prompts related to the book content. Teachers can join in from wherever and whenever they can, ensuring professional learning fits into their own schedule.

Now, this is just a start to the possibilities of using Voxer for our coaching. I'm playing around with launching professional learning, hosting coaching communities and more! You're likely thinking of possibilities for your own coaching already, so here's how to get started:

Head to Voxer and create a free account on your mobile device. No need to upgrade to a professional account for now. Move the app to your home screen so you get used to using it regularly.

Scroll your contacts. You'll see who you already know on Voxer and who you might want to invite. But, you can always come back to this later after you feel a bit more comfortable with the app.

Send your first vox! I'd love to hear that you're jumping into Voxer, so send me a text or voice message to @AffinitoLit! I can answer any of your questions and share some tips and tricks, too.

One last thing: change your default setting so you do not have to hold the button down continuously to talk. Click on settings and then 'tap to talk'. You might also disable your location if you'd like to keep that private and can even speed up your listening time, too!

Well, there you have it! Don't try this tomorrow....get started today!
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Connect, Collaborate and Coach with Voxer

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Above all, instructional coaching is responsive. Coaches design their positions in response to many factors, some within our control and som...

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Have a bit of fun creating your virtual office space to welcome teachers in online learning spaces!

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I've spent a great deal of time in virtual meetings lately and am learning a great deal about facilitating online learning sessions for educators. I've compiled many of these tips in my virtual coaching Padlet, but one inspired by Jessica Young has been a game-changer for creating a comfortable presence online: Virtual Coaching Office Slides. This is a digital slide that acts as a window into your virtual coaching space and welcomes teachers online, just as your physical coaching space might do in person.

The slide is completely personalizable to your coaching, your personality and your purpose. Your slide might have any of the following elements:

Your office furniture

Bookshelves with the books you are reading.

Inspirational quotes on the wall

Reminders of upcoming important dates on a bulletin board

Links to needed session materials

And more!

Here is a picture of one of my own virtual coaching office slides. I created it in Google Slides and change them often based on the time of the year, the content I am coaching for and whatever I seem to be into at the time.

I start virtual meetings by sharing my screen for teachers to browse as they enter, just as they might in your physical coaching space. It brings the feel of an on-site coaching space to a virtual session and adds the bit of homeyness that helps foster a culture of learning.

So, how do you create your own? Follow these simple steps:

Create a new Google Slides presentation and choose the 'blank' layout.

Format the background with images and colors that suit your content and personality using the Insert dropdown menu.

Insert transparent images to create the various elements of your office space. Get creative: remember, you have an unlimited budget!

I found this tutorial from Jenn Scheffer incredibly helpful. She breaks down each step of the process with some helpful tips for easily creating your own.

With just a few easy steps, you can create a welcoming coaching office that invites teachers into your virtual sessions and sets the stage for professional collaboration. What elements would you include on your office slide? Share in the comments below!
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I've spent a great deal of time in virtual meetings lately and am learning a great deal about facilitating online learning sessions for educ...

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Digital Desktop Organizers for What Matters Most

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Digital Desktop Organizers for What Matters Most

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Carve out one hour and organize your outer desktop to bring inner calm to your work.

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Well, I've finally gone and done it.....After weeks and weeks of sly smiles, friendly snickers and outright joshing during virtual meetings, I've finally cleaned up my desktop. I sorted through oodles of files, recycled more than I could count, moved folders and documents and organized what was left in a snazzy desktop organizer I created with inspiration from Lexie Chapman on Facebook. To quote Gretchen Rubin, I created an outer order that led to inner calm in less than an hour. And I think you should, too.

Honestly, my desktop did not really bother me. More files meant more exciting projects to work on, right? In person, I am surrounded by piles of books and papers, so seeing piles of icons on my desktop was not really a big deal. It worked for me. But once I actually decided to take the time to sift through each one and then create an inspiring background to help organize them, I knew what I was missing. There is something quite satisfying about opening my laptop and seeing a newly organized desktop waiting for me, complete with an inspiring quote and bitmoji to make me smile. If your desktop could use a good Spring cleaning, then I highly recommend you give this a try. Here are some simple steps:

Think about the kinds of work you want to engage in when you head to your computer. Those are the categories that should be front and center on your desktop, reminding you to engage in them daily. For me, my categories were: family, writing, UA teaching, projects & ideas.

Choose a background. You can choose a cork board, a whiteboard, a colorful wall or any other background template you prefer.I started by creating a simple cork board to pin my icons to. I love sticky notes and have a cork board in my home office, so I figured it was a perfect fit. But honestly, I do not actually use and interact with my cork board at home....it simply houses 'stuff'. So, I decided to change the background into a whiteboard, something I do use when it is time to brainstorm. I went from boards and pinned sticky notes to a whiteboard with colorfully written categories. That worked for me.

Create your categories. You might designate each section as a sticky note, as a simple text box or any other element that makes you smile when you see it. Be sure to format those sections into colors that brighten your day, too.

Add it to your desktop. Since I use a PC laptop, I right click on my desktop, click properties and upload my image. Simple as that.

Organize! One by one, sort through the folders and files on your desktop. Recycle, rename and organize. The time it takes for this task will vary depending on how stacked your desktop is, but stick with it. The reward is worth it in the end. Once you have your set of folders and files that made the cut, move them around your desktop to the proper categories on your new organizer.

Admire your work! You'd be surprised just how much a clean desktop does for your piece of mind. I mean, we look at our desktop each and every day, so why not make it work in our favor?

Here was my finished product the first time I gave this a try:

It looks good, right?! Honestly, I never realized just how much a streamlined and beautiful desktop matters. But it does. A lot. It does something for my mind and the energy I bring to my work and I'm certain it can for you, too. Have you given this a try? I've love to hear about your experiences and see the kind of desktop organizer you created!
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A Digital Desktop Organizer for What Matters Most

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Well, I've finally gone and done it.....After weeks and weeks of sly smiles, friendly snickers and outright joshing during virtual meetings, I...

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Use your email signature to boost your virtual coaching!

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I am a firm believer that coaching happens in multiple contexts, in multiple ways and takes many forms. And since my coaching has shifted online in recent months, I've been paying particular attention on how to coach and lead digitally and remotely. While I've explored the obvious, like virtual professional learning sessions and coaching cycles, I've been incredibly interested in the little things that can go a long way....and the email signature is one of them.

An email signature is a block of text that is automatically inserted at the end of every email you send. In most typical email signatures, you'll find a name, email address, pertinent contact information and a website when readers can learn more. I've been paying careful attention to these signatures lately and have realized they can be an important coaching tool. I mean, we all read and answer email and see the signature on a daily basis. What if we used it to our advantage and updated it often to introduce teachers to new ideas and resources? I know! There is such potential and possibility.

Here are some of the ways I have used, and am planning to use, my email signature as a helpful coaching tool:

Share what I am currently reading: Add the title of the book yourself manually to your signature or you can link your Goodreads accounts to your email address so it updates automatically, like I do.

Share what I am currently writing: This is newer for me, but I think it is essential. We are also used to sharing our reading lives, but what about our writing lives?

Share a new website: Add a helpful website to your email for teachers to access. Rotate the resource each week so they can count on getting great new resources from your emails (this means they will open them faster, too!).

Ask a question: Ask a question of the week for teachers to consider. These could be big questions about their instruction or small questions about their daily lives. Even if they do not respond, they might take a moment of calm reflection to refuel after reading it.

Offer a challenge: Invite teachers to try something new with you: find ten minutes to read, smile at a stranger, tell one student why you love being his/her teachers, etc.

Share professional reading: Link a helpful blog post, article, podcast or YouTube video in your signature to connect teachers to ideas and inspiration to ponder.

Offer a writing prompt: Encourage teachers to fill the pages of their notebooks by providing a writing prompt, an image or a link to an article sure to get their pencil moving across the page.

These are just a few ideas, but I know there are more and I'm committed to thinking about how we can take regular old everyday tools and use them as another form of coaching. What ideas do you have for sparking learning through your email signature? Share them below!
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I am a firm believer that coaching happens in multiple contexts, in multiple ways and takes many forms. And since my coaching has shifted on...

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Organize, Collaborate and More with Google Keep!

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Organize, Collaborate and More with Google Keep!

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Learn more about my most indispensable coaching tool!

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I love all things Google, but there is one Google tool that I use every single day. Every. Single. Day. And that tool is Google Keep. Google Keep is a digital note-taking device that works across all of your digital devices for quick and easy access. Users create sticky notes to create to-do lists, set reminders, record voice notes, and even work collaboratively with others. And these sticky notes can be arranged, formatted and designed on a colorful digital board to brighten your day while also being productive.

Here is a glimpse of my Google Keep at one moment in time:

I use Google Keep for MANY reasons. Here are a few that matter most to my coaching:

I create my daily to-do lists to prioritize what matters most throughout the week. I now prefer daily lists over weekly because they feel shorter and more manageable. I color code them to bring a bit of brightness to them, too. It matters. Here are my current daily lists at this very moment:

I also create a Radar List for to-do list items that I know are looming ahead of me and I want to start thinking about. On this sticky note, I note upcoming events that do not need my immediate attention, but I know I'll need to start things about them soon.

I curate ideas and resources that I want to remember, share or use in my coaching. At first, I created one note with all my go-to sites, but now, I create multiple notes around a common theme: reading, writing, professional learning, coaching and more. By keeping them on a note, I can easily share them with others, too.

I collaborate on shared notes to connect with teachers. I learned this lesson from my oldest son. I was working and suddenly, "Buy Me Pencils" appeared on a colorful note.He realized the power of Google Keep collaboration long before I did! After creating a note, I can easily invite someone to collaborate on it with me to share resources, ask questions or just stay connected. You'll find one of my collaborative notes with Kris McGee below. We use it to share notes, add agenda items to a virtual session and just say hello. =)

Once you start creating multiple notes, you'll likely want to organize them with tags. I organize my notes by grouping them together: To Do Lists, Teaching, Professional Development, Collaborations, Classroom Coaching and more. This makes it easy to find the notes I need when I need them, rather than scrolling through them all and becoming distracted.

I also make use of color and images to brighten my Google Keep and offer a sense of creativity and happiness, even amidst my to-do lists. My colors are random, but you can assign certain colors to certain notes and labels, if you like. And if you want to go even farther, add images to your notes, too! Kasey Bell from Shake Up Learning offers step-by-step guidance and some examples I know you'll love.

So, how will you get started with Google Keep? Share your comments below and feel free to add a screenshot of your Google Keep page below for all of us to learn from!

Do you like this coaching sketchnote? Gain access to over 75 other coaching sketchnotes and sketchtivities in my FREE Coaching Sketchnote Book! Just enter your email to be added to my email list and join in!

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Organize, Collaborate and More with Google Keep

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I love all things Google, but there is one Google tool that I use every single day. Every. Single. Day. And that tool is Google Keep. Google...

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Join my virtual notebook collection of sketchnotes (ideas about coaching) and sketchtivities (activities for coaching) that illustrate coaching pedagogy, ideas, tools and resources to empower teacher learning!

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A virtual notebook collection of sketchnotes (ideas about coaching) & sketchtivities (activities for coaching) that illustrate coaching pedagogy, ideas, tools & resources to empower teacher learning.

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It can be hard to support small groups and keep the learning momentum going when you are not in the virtual room. Create a Google Doc with a space for each small group to record their notes, questions and top take-aways. You can literally see the doc grow as they work in their small groups, helping you decide which room to pop into next. Then, share the document on your screen and take a gallery walk around the content when you return, saving you from waiting for a volunteer to get the conversation started!

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The Zoom Breakout rooms are game-changers. After coming together as a whole group, divide into grade levels, vertical teams, jigsaw groups, interest groups and more. Rotate through the rooms as if you would mingle through the tables in person.

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Take a look at my video conversation with Cory from Sibme on facilitating virtual PD!

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S01E35  | Tips for Facilitating Online PD with Dr. Stephanie Affinito | Sibme Coach Replay Show

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Tend to teachers' social-emotional well-being and offer a tip of the day on your screen as teachers enter the meeting. Here's a slide @OnaFeinberg created on the SOAK Method I wrote about on my blog!

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You can't pass papers out, so you'll need a quick and easy way to link teachers to all the supplies, tools and links they'll need for the session. Create a simple Google Doc, get creative with a smore or even create a simple Google Site. You'll find one of mine with Kris McGee below!

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Tech Tools for Read Alouds
Dr. Kris McGee & Dr. Stephanie Affinito #NCTE19

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Rather than plan for content right until the end, save time for reflection and connection. Send teachers off feeling good about the session, not just full to the brim with content.

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Easily welcome teachers into your sessions and then literally pop into the slide!

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I'm all about the soft start opening for professional learning. Teachers deserve time to settle in, chat with colleagues and orient themselves to the learning ahead. I might ask teachers to ponder a quote, connect with a fellow table-mate, visit a website or even get hands-on with some arts and crafts for their classroom. And while some of these experiences might be more difficult to recreate online, I have found a few favorite ways to engage teachers as we slowly pop into our virtual meetings. This is one of them.

I like to open up my virtual meeting space a few minutes before the meeting begins to give teachers a chance to check in and mentally prepare for the session. I'll share my screen (but keep the video off) with a 'while you wait' activity and a promise to return to the screen. So when I saw this virtual agenda slide by Laura Cahill, I knew I wanted to create my own. Here's one of them:

I have a few core staples on my 'While You Wait' slide: the date, the materials teachers will need, a quote to ponder and a question to lead into the content of the session. Some days, I keep it simple and other days, I'll jazz up the slide with clip art. Regardless, the slides serve the same purpose: to welcome teachers, orient them to the session ahead and facilitate a learning state of mind.

When the session is about to begin, I turn on my video and make sure it is positioned within the picture frame. It adds a fun element to the session and is a great way to literally pop into the screen.

I use Google Slides to create my While You Wait slides in just a few easy steps:

Create a new Google Slides presentation and choose the 'blank' layout.

Format the background with colors that suit your content and personality.

Create text boxes and insert shapes to represent the various sections of your slide. Play around with colors and borders to make each section stand out.

I keep all of my While You Wait slides in a single presentation to easily make a copy and revise for a new session. Then, I can look back on my slides as a portfolio of learning, too. If you'd like a copy of my While You Wait slides, join my Create a PD Toolkit workshop and download them instantly!

Why not give it a try?! Share your slides and let me know how it goes!
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I'm all about the soft start opening for professional learning. Teachers deserve time to settle in, chat with colleagues and orient themselv...

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Create your own virtual coaching space to provide that same 'homey' feel to online learning. Learn more in my blog post. Warning: you might get addicted to creating one!

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Display a popular meme and remove the caption. Encourage teachers to caption it in the chat box and reveal the actual post for a fun laugh. Thank you Frances L. Gonzalez-Garcia for the idea! Here's my favorite so far!

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If you unexpectedly have tech troubles (and we all do!) and lose Internet access, then your entire meeting ends and teachers need to re-join the session. But, if you assign a co-host, if this happens, the meeting goes on and you can log back in as soon as you can.

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Coaching and leading remotely is a new challenge for most instructional coaches, and it requires a shift in the way we think and carry out our daily routines. Stephanie Affinito, literacy education professor at the University at Albany in New York, is back with some of her must-have attributes of ICs working remotely.

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s the events of the world swirl around us, our lives are changing every day in small and big ways. There are the challenges of social distancing, changing schedules, working-and teaching-from home, and unexpected roles and responsibilities. At first I tried to keep to the same schedule, coach the same content, and preserve the same learning activities as before, but "simply" shift it all online. That didn't work.

Over the past few weeks, I've realized that we can't make a direct shift from in-person coaching to virtual coaching-nor would we want to. Instructional coaching has always required us to be responsive to the teachers and students we work with.

In the current climate, we need to shift our coaching to fit our new ways of working, and that means we need to shift our mindsets for coaching as well. Below are four key mindsets I've found best support my work as I coach and lead online.

I've learned that furiously working to preserve normalcy during these times is futile because the world is no longer as we know it. Each day brings a new set of circumstances and emotions to grapple with-from the mundane to the world-changing-and we likely have little control over any of them.

Instead, we must embrace flexibility in all aspects of our work: our daily schedules, the ways we collaborate with teachers, how we share new content, and the techniques we use to coach virtually. Being more flexible is easier said than done, especially during a time of crisis. Here are a few tips to help:

Start your day by setting an intention, not a schedule: think about what you want to get done and then decide the best course of action for how to do it.

Be realistic about the work you can accomplish: write down all of the things you want to accomplish in a given day, then circle the three essential tasks and start there. Even if the rest of the list doesn't get checked off, you can rest easy knowing that you did the tasks that mattered most.

Give yourself a break: we can't think flexibly when we're stressed and rushed. Take deep breaths, change your scenery, or go for brief walks in the day to clear your head and gain new perspective.

Change your expectations: rather than worry about how your routine might be disrupted, wonder about how it might change positively. Work to find pockets of positivity in "plan b." We wouldn't have these opportunities to think outside the box, to better personalize our coaching, and to let teachers' voices and choices guide their learning without this pandemic experience. And we just might find that these new ways of coaching can lead the way for more authentic learning experiences when we emerge on the other side.

We are teaching and coaching under such unprecedented circumstances that we have to we get to (not have to!) coach and lead in ways we have never tried before. Grade-level meetings can shift online through video conferencing tools like Zoom, coaching conversations can come alive in Voxer, professional learning becomes self-paced and personalized through choice boards, and connections can be strengthened through social media.

Privilege pedagogy over technology: first think about what you want to accomplish and then choose the tools to help you get there. Your purpose for coaching should drive the choices you make to include digital tools and technology, not the other way around.

Focus on community and connection: use technology to sustain teachers' learning communities, not just create documents to prove that we're working from home. Provide spaces for teachers to come together with each other for support as they try new ways of teaching and learning. When we feel connected together, we think and work differently.

While working from home, we may or may not have the necessary spaces and supplies to coach well remotely, but both are essential to our success! You don't need a fancy home office, all you need is a small space to call your own-even if that space is portable. It's important to organize the surroundings we have and set ourselves up for successful coaching from home.

Choose your workspace: it might be an office, a corner of a room, the dining room table or even a portable tote. Gather your supplies-your digital devices, books and curriculum materials, notebooks, writing utensils and more-and keep them close to hand.

Organize your digital files: instructional coaches work with multiple curricula, assessment plans and teacher resources so working from home makes it even more important to organize them. Consider creating Google Drive folders to organize your coaching materials, even color coding them if you wish.

Live by your calendar and daily lists: we might not be thinking too far ahead ourselves right now, but our calendar and note-taking apps can help us feel more in control. Plan your day on your calendar, just as you would if you were in school, and create daily intentions to keep you focused.

Instructional coaches often have deep reserves of enthusiasm to support teachers and cheer them on from the sidelines. So how do we maintain this enthusiasm when our own is probably waning from time to time?

Start each day with a positive intention: think about the work ahead and vow to find at least one bright spot as you move through your day.

Make your environment a positive one: tape inspirational quotes to the side of your computer, leave sticky notes of encouragement on the wall, print graphics and memes that brighten your spirit and insert them into picture frames. Bring in nature, if you can: small air plants and succulents can brighten even the tiniest spaces.

Find a fellow coach for support: reach out to the other coaches in your district or connect on social media instead. Browse hashtags like #LiteracyCoaching, #educoach, #instructionalcoach, or #PD4uandMe.

While nothing can truly prepare us for coaching during a global pandemic, there are steps we can take and mind-shifts we can make to tackle the work ahead. The lessons we learn each day open up new possibilities for coaching when we return to school, a gift to appreciate as we search for gratitude in these challenging times.

Stephanie Affinito is a Staff Associate in the Department of Literacy Teaching and Learning at the University at Albany in New York. She has a deep love of literacy coaching and supporting teachers' learning through technology. Stephanie creates spaces for authentic teacher learning that build expertise, spark professional curiosity, and foster intentional reflection to re-imagine teaching and learning for students.

Additionally, she presents regularly at state and national conferences on literacy coaching, teacher collaboration and supporting teachers' reading, writing, and learning through innovative technology.

Be sure to check out her recently published book with Heinemann Publishing, Literacy Coaching: Teaching and Learning with Digital Tools and Technology.

Illustration by Ouch.pics.

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Coaching and leading remotely is a new challenge for most instructional coaches, and it requires a shift in the way we think and carry out our daily routines. Stephanie Affinito, literacy education professor at the University at Albany in New York, is back with some of her must-have attributes of ICs working remotely.

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Challenge teachers in some way. My favorite? Decoding children's book titles from emoticons! Here's the challenge posted by the Missouri Reading Association.

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I created this simple checklist to help myself plan virtual meetings and remember all the little logistics that are involved.

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Make use of your email signature to spark learning and connection. Update the book you are reading, add a fun writing prompt, share a helpful link and more.

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Send a daily email or better yet, a daily video, welcoming teachers to a new day. Think of it as a positive morning meeting for teachers, just as we might for our students.

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Create slow or fast Twitter chats using your school hashtag to come together as learners. Schedule it at a consistent place and time so teachers know when they can find you there. Need tips for getting teachers on twitter? Head to Heinemann's webinar below.

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Heinemann Publishing is thrilled to share Twitter for Educators, a free mini course on our Digital Campus.

Twitter is a social media tool for sharing experiences, but it's also an important professional development nexus for educators. In fact, educators are among the most frequent professional users of Twitter. As Heinemann author Christopher Lehman has said, "There is a great big conversation about the future of education happening on Twitter. If you're not participating, how will you contribute?"

For some, getting started on Twitter can be intimidating, but it's quite easy. If you can text, you can tweet! When you're connected to a Heinemann author on Twitter, she or he is right there in your pocket.

Brett Whitmarsh, Heinemann's social media manager, designed and teaches the Twitter for Educators course. Before joining Heinemann, Brett spent a number of years teaching journalists how to use social media as a tool for journalism. He also teaches a social media and journalism course at Lyndon State College, in Vermont.

Using Heinemann's authors and resources, Brett breaks down the Twitter terminology and points out its practical uses for educators. You'll learn how to get started, become more familiar with the platform, and see how it can be used as a professional development tool.
Topics covered include:

* Understanding Twitter terminology
* Being aware of the differences between public and private accounts
* Using Twitter handles
* Understanding and using hashtags (#) for educators
* Having an effective conversation on Twitter
* Identifying a mentor author to follow and chat with
* Participating in Twitter chats with other teachers and Heinemann authors

Take a look at a preview:

This free course is divided into eight parts and will take approximately 45 minutes to complete. All you have to do is sign up! To learn more about Heinemann's Twitter for Educators online course, as well as other on-demand PD courses, visit the Digital Campus at: http://www.heinemann.com/digitalcampus/default.aspx

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We might not be thinking too far ahead of ourselves, but our calendar and note-taking apps can help us feel more in control. Plan your day on your calendar, just as you would if you were in school, and create daily intentions to keep you focused.

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Instructional coaches work with multiple curriculums, assessment plans, teacher resources so working from home makes it even more important to organize them. Consider creating Google Drive folders to organize your coaching materials, even color coding them if you wish.

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It might be an office, a corner of a room, the dining room table or even a portable tote. Gather your supplies--digital devices, books and curriculum materials, notebooks, writing utensils and more--and keep them close to hand.

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Continue book studies and professional learning and create Flipgrids for teachers to share their thinking around a selected text.

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Use Padlet to create shelves of resources for teachers, to actively participate during professional learning and to help teachers stay sane and connected.

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Record all live sessions (with teacher permission) as an archive of your work and create a bank of these recordings for teachers to easily access if they could not attend the session or want to revisit the content.

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Design your live sessions as as model for teachers to use with students. Keep mini-lessons mini, screenshare mentor texts, provide digital access to texts and keep activities authentic. You might like Kristen Ziemke's digital mini-lesson model helpful below.

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We wouldn't have teachers sit and get in real life, so why would we for online sessions? Break your session into chunks: new content, collaboration with each other and brain breaks are even more important virtually.

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Learn more about this innovative idea here!

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I love when I stumble on an idea to support my coaching when I am least expecting it. I was in an airport waiting for a flight that had been delayed....and delayed again. It was around 2am and I was fighting to get the beverage I just paid for out of the vending machine. As I stood there, tired, hungry and thirsty, I wished the vending machine could give me what I really wanted: a good night's sleep, a warm blanket and a quick flight home to see my family. I smiled as I finally retrieved my beverage, thinking of the fun I could have with a magical vending machine that could grant me the self-care and inspiration I needed (I was a bit sleep deprived, but just go with it).

I waited for my plane and quickly sketched out an idea that I knew might bring a smile to teachers' faces: a vending machine for educators. Once I was back home, I created an outline of a vending machine on large chart paper and gave teachers a pile of sticky notes. I shared my airport experience and asked them to think about their own lives and what they wished the vending machine could give them at this point in the school year to made their days a bit more productive and a bit more enjoyable. They jotted their ideas down and stuck them onto our makeshift vending machine. Some ideas were grand, like changes to the school day, and others were small, like more time for collaboration and a new set of markers. We generated a lively conversation about what we need to do the work we do and how we can ensure that we get it, taking time to honor what we need to best serve students.

I shared the idea with other literacy coaches who eagerly gave it a try. Shelley Fenton, a literacy coach in upstate New York, decided to create a digital vending machine with her teachers. Teachers added their own items using Google Slides to create a collaborative product. Not only did it generate a productive conversation, but it gave Shelley the information she needed to support her teachers as they moved forward in their learning.

Why not give this a try? By asking teachers what they want and need to feel successful, we are ensuring their voices are heard and valued. Use the information to start an honest conversation about what teachers need to fuel their work and take that information to heart, using it to plan for upcoming professional learning experiences. You might even keep the vending machine visible for teachers and ask for their help in bringing the vending machine to life: donating supplies where supplies are needed, responding to a request for mentor text ideas, surprising a colleague with a favorite treat or simply offering to brainstorm together to solve teaching challenges.These simple acts can transform the culture of a school.
Are you looking for more coaching inspiration? Get my newest blog posts, podcasts, special events and more delivered straight to your Inbox. Sign up here!

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I love when I stumble on an idea to support my coaching when I am least expecting it. I was in an airport waiting for a flight that had been...

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Record your PD into an on-demand webinar for teachers to engage in whenever they can around their new, complex schedules. Here's a session on created on what matters most in reading communities.

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Affinito Remote Literacy Communities What Matters Most.mp4

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While my example is designed for graduate students to complete their studies, you'll get the idea behind it!

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Have links to help troubleshoot the tech platform you are using close by so you can easily copy and paste the links to teachers having difficulty.

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Schedule sessions for personal connections, not just professional ones. Talk about your lives, vent and celebrate the small moments.

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Now is the time to create 'easy buttons' for teachers: how to navigate tech tools, how-to-videos for setting up virtual learning spaces and more. Compile them together in an easy-to-access location!

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If you're using Zoom, encourage teachers to raise their hands and share their reactions to make the session as interactive as possible.

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Hyperdocs are perfect for self-paced and personalized learning. You'll find one I created on literacy and inquiry below.

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Use the chat box to share links, invite reflection and ask questions.

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Norms for in-person learning do not translate directly to online learning. Take time to set norms for this new normal of professional learning.

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I LOVE Voxer for coaching conversations. Set up grade level teams to connect anytime or create individual conversations with teachers on their own time at their own pace.

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Walkie Talkie App for Team Communication | Voxer

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Voxer is a Walkie Talkie messaging app for your smartphone with live voice (like a PTT walkie talkie), text, photo and location sharing. Download Voxer for iPhone, Android, or use Voxer for web

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I love using digital coaching invitations to invite teachers into coaching cycles. Why not do the same to check in virtually? Rather than a boring email, send a fun digital card to check in and collaborate. You'll find some I've made in the link below.

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Set a schedule for drop in office hours through your favorite platform. You could choose a theme for each session (ex: come with questions about hyperdocs) or open it for any questions/challenges teachers are facing.

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NYKids - University at Albany | Inform, Inspire, and Improve

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By Stephanie Affinito, Ph.D., Clinical Teaching Faculty, Department of Literacy Teaching and Learning, University at Albany; saffinito@albany.edu

Supporting Literacy Instruction Remotely

Educators everywhere are shifting their instruction to online spaces to support their students' learning remotely during these unprecedented times. While digital and virtual spaces cannot replace connected classroom communities, today's tools and technologies can invite students into reading, writing, and learning experiences that mitigate the loss of class time due to the Covid-19 closures. We can connect students to digital read-alouds and texts for reading, support daily writing at home, and use world events as a springboard for learning.

Connect Students to Online Texts

Since students will likely have limited access to libraries and bookstores, online and digital tools can easily connect students to hundreds of texts with the touch of the keyboard or swipe of the screen. Here are a few websites to easily connect students with recorded read-alouds and digital texts:

Storyline Online: Storyline Online invites celebrated actors to read children's books alongside creatively produced illustrations to bring animated read alouds directly to your students' homes.

Get Epic: Epic! is a digital library for readers under twelve years old with 35,000 of the best books, articles and learning videos. Teachers can create collections of books to share with students or students can browse based on their interests.

Unite for Literacy: Unite for Literacy provides digital access to an abundance of early digital books that celebrate languages and cultures and cultivate a lifelong love of reading. It will even narrate those books in multiple languages for an instant listening station at home.

Wonderopolis: Each day, this website poses an intriguing question-the Wonder of the Day®-and explores it in a variety of ways-perfect for piquing students' curiosity. Paired with short video clips and activities to try at home, this is the perfect site to launch learning at home.

These sites are excellent starting points, but if you are looking for more resources, especially for older readers, take a look at this curated collection of digital texts online.

Support Writing at Home

There is much for students to ponder, question and grapple with as each day brings new information and challenges to tackle. Writing can help students process their thoughts, feelings, and reactions to these world events. Educators, authors, and illustrators are sharing resources designed to help students put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) to capture their days of learning, spark new writing, and work through the emotions they may face. Here are a few worth checking out:

Lunch Doodle: Mo Willems, celebrated children's author, invites students into his studio every day for his LUNCH DOODLE. Each day, Mo invites students to draw, doodle, and explore new ways of writing by visiting his virtual studio daily at 1pm EST.

Courses for Young Writers: Angela Stockman, author of Make Writing, has graciously created online units of study inviting middle and high school writers to write personal narratives based on the daily events of their lives.

Jarrett Lerner and Josh Funk, children's authors, each provide resources and ideas to spark writing at home. From comic strips to character cards, they are sure to motivate young writers. Try searching for your favorite author and visit their website. You might be surprised at the resources you find for your young writers!

A Writer's Notebook: Ralph Fletcher has the perfect book to spark daily writing while learning from home, but you can still support daily writing without a copy through this hyperdoc instead. It walks students through Fletcher's (1996) text and offers prompts for students to explore in their notebook. Students can snap a picture of their pages and insert them into the hyperdoc, sharing them with you to build a writing habit from home.

Use World Events as Springboards for Learning

Students are naturally curious, so why not use the actual events of their daily lives to prompt learning? While we may still have content to cover and standards to teach, students are experiencing complex changes in their lives that can drive learning.

Here are a few resources to help students learn about what is going on around the world and how to proceed with their new normal:

Many educators have been called to quickly shift their instruction online with little time and few resources to do so. As we come together to support learning from home, let's remember what is most important during this challenging time. Let's invite students to read and write their way through these world events and stay connected to a learning community to not only fuel their minds, but their hearts as well.

NYKids will continue to highlight research and provide practical recommendations to help New York's children thrive during this national emergency. We also welcome comments and suggestions of topics you would like to read more about at nykids@albany.edu.

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Supporting Literacy Instruction Remotely | NYKids - University at Albany

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In this blog, guest writer, Dr. Stephanie Affinito, offers recommendations for family members and caregivers to encourage children's literacy learning during school closures due to Covid19 school closures.

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Coaching for Community: 4 Tips for Coaching in Unprecedented Times

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Coaching for Community: 4 Tips for Coaching in Unprecedented Times

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As the coronavirus pandemic forces states and districts to suspend instruction, leaders are adapting with a shift to distance learning. Stephanie Affinito, literacy education professor at the University at Albany in New York, offers four ways coaches can support teachers during their transition to a new reality: working remote.

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s the events of our world continue to unfold, educators everywhere are shifting their instruction to online spaces to support their students' learning remotely. Classroom teachers are working tirelessly to ensure everyone stays connected and that their students continue to learn amid COVID-19 school closures. They're gathering resources, connecting with students and other educators online, and rethinking what learning looks like in times of crisis.

Instructional coaches and leaders are also working alongside teachers to support the transition to online education and wade through the sheer quantity of resources shared online. We're planning online units of study, gathering digital texts and activities, and compiling helpful links to support students' learning in new spaces.

With all this change happening so suddenly, I've been pondering questions like:

What will instructional coaching look like as we face extended school closures?

How can we, as coaches, lead and support educators remotely?

I'd like to offer a few ideas that we can use to help sustain our teaching and learning communities from afar.

1) Reach out regularly

Educators are used to working with large social groups of colleagues and students. The sudden disruption of our communities of practice can add additional stress to our already taxing days, leaving us feeling isolated, lonely, and even scared.

During these times, coaches need to reach out to teachers to ensure they're still heard and seen. We can send weekly or daily emails asking a teacher how they're doing or how you might help from a distance, sending messages of support through our social feeds. In addition, we can offer our support, helpful resources, and even a dose of inspiration to brighten a teacher's day.

2) Create online PLCs

Although we might not be able to host in-person PLCs or team meetings, we can create opportunities for teachers to come together online. These channels can open the door for educators to talk about their new normal, collaborate with colleagues, and problem-solve challenges in a supportive community.

Coaches can facilitate these meetings by scheduling Google Hangouts, Zoom sessions, Twitter chats, or even creating Voxer groups for asynchronous sharing. If you're interested in joining my Voxer coaching group, send me a message and I'll add you in!

3) Reinvent coaching cycles

Typically, coaching cycles involve a series of coaching conversations and co-teaching to collaborate in the classroom. While in-person collaboration might not be possible in these times, we can partner with teachers through virtual coaching cycles. You might team up in Google Classroom, co-create instructional resources, or simply gather helpful instructional materials to support instruction for each teacher.

4) Lead as a learner

It's no surprise that many educators are feeling overwhelmed as they make the switch to instruction and learning online. As a coach, it's important to keep teachers focused on what matters most: authentic reading and writing, and learning that meets students' needs in our rapidly changing world.

You can give teachers permission to live as readers and writers in their new downtime by sharing your own. Post the books you're reading, snap pictures of your own writing and learning, and remind them that it's perfectly acceptable to give ourselves permission to simply be and reflect on things as they evolve.

Each passing day brings new events, challenges, and opportunities for growth. Let's team with teachers to re-imagine teaching and learning in these unprecedented times through empathy, compassion, and hope for the future!

Stephanie Affinito is a Staff Associate in the Department of Literacy Teaching and Learning at the University at Albany in New York. She has a deep love of literacy coaching and supporting teachers' learning through technology. Stephanie creates spaces for authentic teacher learning that build expertise, spark professional curiosity, and foster intentional reflection to re-imagine teaching and learning for students.

Additionally, she presents regularly at state and national conferences on literacy coaching, teacher collaboration and supporting teachers' reading, writing, and learning through innovative technology.

Be sure to check out her recently published book with Heinemann Publishing, Literacy Coaching: Teaching and Learning with Digital Tools and Technology.

Image courtesy of Vecteezy.

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Coaching for Community: 4 Tips for Coaching in Unprecedented Times

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As the coronavirus pandemic forces states and districts to suspend instruction, leaders are adapting with a shift to distance learning. Stephanie Affinito, literacy education professor at the University at Albany in New York, offers four ways coaches can support teachers during their transition to a new reality: working remote.

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Virtual Coaching for Anytime, Anywhere Teacher Development

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Virtual Coaching for Anytime, Anywhere Teacher Development

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Stephanie Affinito, literacy teacher educator at the University at Albany in New York, explains the benefits of a virtual coaching cycle and why those who don't have in-person coaching opportunities should explore online options.

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rofessional learning of the past looks drastically different than it does today. Rather than sit-and-get professional development confined by the boundaries of geography, technology has broadened what's possible for teacher learning: online learning communities offer connection and support, social media provides new outlets for learning (like Twitter chats and podcast PD), and digital tools create greater opportunities for collaboration. More than ever, teachers head online to transform their teaching and learning.

This same technology is also transforming the landscape for instructional coaching. Traditionally, instructional coaches physically work alongside teachers to observe pedagogy and instruction and then engage in coaching cycles based on specific goals to strengthen teaching and impact student performance. Technology has also broadened what is possible for coaching: video tools support observation and reflection, collaborative documents support co-teaching, and digital tools foster planning and collaboration around instructional practices.

With the help of virtual learning platforms, instructional coaching can be done online and offers educators a deeper level of support for their teaching. While virtual coaching shouldn't replace in-person coaching efforts wholesale and while there are many benefits to working with a coach in person, it can be used to complement current instructional practices or provide a new avenue to coaching when an in-person program or coach isn't available.

Virtual coaching is exactly what it sounds like: coaching translated to an online, digital, or virtual platform. Coaching conversations move online, classroom coaching shifts to video, and professional sharing happens digitally instead of in the hallways. Virtual coaching breaks down the walls of our classrooms and connects educators and coaches together in personalized ways unique to each partnership.

The virtual coaching cycle, however, is a little bit different compared to a standard in-person cycle and comes with a few minor considerations to keep in mind when practicing.

Pre-coaching conversations

Modeled after physical coaching cycles in schools, virtual coaching cycles include pre-coaching conferences, classroom observations, and post-coaching reflective conversations, but they're done virtually. How? Pre-coaching conversations help teacher and coach decide on the goal of the cycle and are typically completed using Google Hangouts, Skype, Zoom, or other video chat or conferencing tools. Collaborative documents are often used to create a vision for the work and create shared lesson plans and documents.

Classroom observation

Next, coaches observe classroom instruction through video recordings that are uploaded to a private platform and shared with the coach. The coach views these videos and gives specific, personal, and time-stamped feedback targeted to the goals of the partnership-often sharing articles, blog posts, and resources to support teaching.

Debrief conversations

The teacher and coach then come back together for another virtual visit. They discuss the recorded classroom instruction, celebrate successes, and go over problem-solve challenges. The coach might share articles, ideas, and other teaching resources to support the conversation and reflection. Often, the collaborative documents created in the pre-coaching conversation are revisited to support instructional reflection and create goals to move the coaching cycle forward.

Why go virtual, you ask? Virtual coaching offers unique opportunities for coaches and teachers to partner around teaching and learning in the comfort of their own classrooms and homes, still based on their individual goals as educators. There are numerous benefits to virtual coaching!

1) Broadened access to coaching

The most obvious benefit is access: access to instructional coaches that might not be physically present on school grounds and access to coaches with specific expertise that match teachers' professional goals. Schools can choose to contract with virtual coaching services and platforms to create coherent systems of support for teachers. Or, teachers might choose to work with a virtual coach on their own as part of their individual professional learning plans.

2) Teachers get ownership

Virtual coaching puts teachers in control of their own learning. While in-person coaching might be based on common school goals or initiatives, virtual coaching is based purely on teachers' own wishes for their teaching. They choose personalized goals for the coaching cycle, decide how and when to meet with their virtual coach, control what aspects of their teaching they share with their coach and determine their next steps.

For some teachers, inviting a coach into their classroom can feel unsettling, but in virtual coaching, teachers control the instruction they share with their coach, putting them more in control of the coaching process.

3) Removes distractions

School-based instructional coaches are sometimes forced to juggle multiple roles and responsibilities, and this can at times chip away at their bandwidth for getting into the classroom. Fortunately, virtual coaching can remove those obstacles and provides a laser-like focus on teaching and learning in the classroom. A virtual coach is specifically engaged to provide feedback on observed lessons and design personalized learning experiences for the teachers they work with and can be a great supplement to on-the-ground work for this reason.

4) Added personalization

Virtual coaching provides teachers with specific and concrete support inextricably connected to their classrooms. Coaches work one-to-one with teachers, ensuring coaching is highly responsive to teachers' individual needs and classrooms. Coaching partnerships might focus broadly on student engagement or might be very specific and explore small group teaching strategies. Regardless of the goal, teachers collaborate with a coach in tailored ways that instantly benefit their classroom teaching.

5) Neutral and confidential

While all coaching relationships are meant to be collegial and non-evaluative, in-person coaching relationships are just that-in-person-and can sometimes be scary or intimidating or create a host of other emotions. With virtual coaching, the coach is not employed by the school system and can come in as an independent or more neutral party, offering someone with whom to share things the teacher may not feel comfortable sharing with a school or district employee.. In more extreme cases, these relationships can even act as lifelines for teachers who may feel the stress of a less-than-optimal school culture.

While virtual instructional coaching could never replace the varied ways coaches support teachers as part of their in-person positions, it offers teachers an option for highly personalized coaching. Moreover, since virtual coaching is by necessity online it can add some communication challenges and nuance that is otherwise more easily conveyed in person, and it's important to keep this in mind when working with a teacher electronically.

By harnessing the power of technology, though, virtual coaching broadens the boundaries of professional learning and offers a promising way to support teachers' pedagogical practice.

Stephanie Affinito is a literacy teacher educator in the Department of Literacy Teaching and Learning at the University at Albany in New York. She has a deep love of literacy coaching and supporting teachers' learning through technology and creates spaces for authentic teacher learning that build expertise, spark professional curiosity, and foster intentional reflection to re-imagine teaching and learning for students.

Additionally, she presents regularly at state and national conferences on literacy coaching, teacher collaboration and supporting teachers' reading, writing, and learning through innovative technology.

Be sure to check out her recently published book with Heinemann Publishing titled, Literacy Coaching: Teaching and Learning with Digital Tools and Technology.

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Virtual Coaching for Anytime, Anywhere Teacher Development

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Stephanie Affinito, literacy teacher educator at the University at Albany in New York, explains the benefits of a virtual coaching cycle and why those who don't have in-person coaching opportunities should explore online options.

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Rotate the inspirational quotes on your screen as teachers enter professional learning. You'll find some of my favorites below and I'll keep adding!

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Virtual Coaching Soft Start Quotes for Teachers

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While you wait for teachers to enter your virtual room, encourage teachers to head to Pixabay and choose a new background for the session to change things up a bit!

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Hold up your beverage or snack of choice as you work together in professional learning. You might be surprised what fun conversations emerge!

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Open with a bit of fun and personal connection!

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Your quarantine name is the last thing you ate + the last name of the author of your current read. 

I am Peanut Butter Kondo.

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Your quarantine name is the last thing you ate + the last name of the author of your current read. 

I am Peanut Butter Kondo.

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Your quarantine name is the last thing you ate + the last name of the author of your current read. 

I am Peanut Butter Kondo.

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Your quarantine name is the last thing you ate + the last name of the author of your current read. 

I am Peanut Butter Kondo.

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Your quarantine name is the last thing you ate + the last name of the author of your current read. 

I am Peanut Butter Kondo.

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I LOVE using Menti for interactive word clouds, polls, quizzes and more. You'll find one I recently created with teachers below! www.mentimeter.com

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Have a fun playlist playing as teachers enter the virtual space. Invite them to share their favorites and add it to the list. Here's one of mine collaboratively created with my think tank of coaches! Then, don't forget to play it as they leave, just like the Oscars!

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