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It has been fun working with Sally during Amanda's absence. She wanted to pilot Seesaw with one of her classes. The kindergartners recorded a partner jumping rope on 2 separate days. On the 2nd day, we noticed that 6 parents had already seen their child's post and responded within 5 minutes of Sally confirming the post.
I have enjoyed observing both Keri and Stephanie in some meetings in the past couple of weeks.

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I want to celebrate the incredible learning experience I participated in this year at The Jim Knight Intensive Instructional Coaching Workshop. I am grateful to have been able to attend (thank you, Becky) and have found my learning to be quite valuable both professionally and personally.

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It has been exciting working with/coaching Stephanie S. We had a classroom goal we were working on and a goal to create a Breakout EDU. We ran the first breakout last week and it went really well. Stephanie has been updating me on how she has been using cooperative strategies in her classes and feels good about the changes she has made.

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I feel so fortunate to be a member of a team with such supportive, informed, and skilled educators. I appreciate the team's feedback and suggestions for a recent presentation and found Annie's comments about praxis to be particularly helpful and insightful.

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I am excited and nervous about a live on air google hangout that the 5th will be hosting on Monday the 17th. They will be revealing the winner of their #tournamentofbooks.

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5/15/2017
My partner is back! Yea! I was able to set a goal with a teacher. It came about so unexpectedly that it surprised me when it happened.

3/1/2017
It is so exciting to hear the conversations at B&C meetings. Teams are talking about assessment questions, assessments as a whole,  rubrics, proficiency scales, etc. We are headed in the right direction and it's fun to be a part of the journey.
12/9/2016
I am so excited for my colleague, Stephanie. The work she is doing at Middleton is ground breaking. Teams that have never discussed assessments before are now realizing that they're not even assessing their grade level standards. Other previously unreachable teams are now trying to use her as much as possible before she goes on maternity leave. It is so great to see!

10/29/16
I am about to engage in an actual coaching cycle with a new teacher. We've taken video and collected data. We need to meet, discuss observations and set a goal. Super exciting!

9/30/2016
After our township instructional coaches meeting in early Sept., I've been working on being quiet during my coaching meetings, and I like it. I'm also excited to be gradually giving more control of Mystery Location to the teachers. I used to set up the activities with other classes, but this year I've shown teachers how to find and make their own connections through Google+ communities.

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October 28th - ELL has a goal of increased parent communication and student ownership of learning. She began using SeeSaw and likes it. She has also started using Thrively, as suggested by Lisa, and this is helping the students get a stronger understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.  She also has them setting a goal using SeeSaw.

Sept. 30th - PE teacher reached out to talk about videos and tools to use for sharing videos with students and formatively assessing them. We worked together on EdPuzzle. He is now wanting to share informational text with Fitness class and formatively assess. We talked today about Google Classroom, Google forms and Flubaroo. I am very excited to work with the PE department this year.

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10/28/2016 It is exciting to work with teachers again this year and see the growth they have made. Sometimes it is hard to see growth with adults, but comparing coaching cycles last year to coaching cycles with the same teachers this year allows better insight into this growth.

9/30/2016 I want to celebrate the 6th grade ELA department for their reflection, teamwork, and dedication to developing a common understanding of proficiency of their prioritized standards. I commend their effort in creating and analyzing more effective assessments.

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12/9/2016 Several teachers have started to use OTUS for assessments. The new interface was introduced this week and it is going to be even more powerful. Exciting! There will be a huge learning curve on this one.

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12/09/2016 A teacher and I had our "improve" meeting of our coaching cycle today. The teacher chose to use the number of students requiring reteaching after a unit as evidence of success. In the previous unit (baseline data) 34% of her students required reteaching. With this unit and applied learning from the coaching cycle 0.081% required reteaching!

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1/20/2017 I am proud of a teacher for taking actions to ensure she achieves her goals. We have worked together to co-create a data collection tool that best captures progress toward her goal and have used the gradual release model in our work together. Midpoint data is showing an improvement and the teacher is feeling confident. :)

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I am excited about a couple of things. I have been checking in with our OTUS pilot participants and all are using the new assessment module for some formatives. Diane M. and I are going to a workshop next Thurs to learn more and develop additional assessments with OTUS representatives helping us. I am also excited about watching Kimberly D use the Breakout edu concept in her classroom. I hope that some McCracken teachers get excited about it after the training and try it out.

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3/1/2017
I am excited to present at two conferences in the next few months:. I am presenting on differentiation at ASCD at the end of March, and Becky and I are presenting on instructional coaching to build teacher efficacy at The Visible Learning Annual Conference in July.

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3/1/2017
I just attended a great session on Breakout EDU. I was able to remix/create a session for one of my teachers. I shared some of it with her today and she is very excited about it.  I feel like I have lots of new resources to help in the creation and organization of future games.  I am also very excited to be presenting at Niles Township with 4 other teachers. I think this will be a good experience for them.

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9.30.16
Working on "backing up the train" to identify student-centered goals if I'm presented with a project/activity that a teacher would like to do with their students. This is a work in progress, but documenting it publicly will help me maintain progress toward my goal!

12-9-16
A happy "accident" has happened with learning progressions and math assessments in kindergarten! A teacher thought she wasn't getting the info she needed from her math pre-assessments (shout-out to Lisa for advocating so much for better assessments!), so she enlisted me to help her add items that bridge K application of skills to 1st grade skills. We've collaborated on two assessments, but want to do more so that teachers have the most useful data to plan instruction.

1-20-17: Creating and maintaining success criteria with a teacher for her professional growth has really helped focus our conversations and her plans with students. It is a great "3rd point" to refer to whenever I want to keep our conversation going in a way that promotes her growth. We have also used it as a way to track her growth and decide what's next for her. It is a great tool also to track how my coaching is impacting her learning.

3-1-17
I finally have had a late-in-the-game epiphany about what coaching goals are SUPPOSED to be. The different I have learned (with Becky's help and reflection on a coaching session that was really consulting) is that when thinking about a teacher's goal, it should be a goal in which they learn something new than can be applied in the future. What I was doing in this meeting was consulting because the goal was an achievement goal (to write 4 lessons of a unit).

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5.15.17
The Instructional Coaching Intensive with Jim Knight wrapped up last week. Friday's session was all about leadership and setting goals, new content and a great way to think about what I am doing now and planning for next year. We also learned more about what it'll take to become certified an "Impact School" (or district). This will provide the opportunity to have a more authentic way to measure the impact of our program and individual coaches.
4.11.17
At last week's NTICN meeting all of the discussion provided lots of opportunity to go around and listen to what other coaches are doing.  The exit survey also provided information reflecting where each district was at.  This information was a huge celebration for me because it helped solidify the progress our program has made.  We are implementing full coaching cycles!  Our team has a strong knowledge of what the coaching cycle entails!  It was great to have the local data to compare ourselves with.

3.1.17
My celebrations are centered around the Academics team. First I was able to share the work we've been doing related to instructional playbooks with Jim Knight for the purpose of getting feedback. I totally got COACHED...meaning he asked a bunch of questions before he'd provide any feedback.  It was a neat experience.  Also, we are on our way and have work to do.  He shared some specific ideas that I am pondering.  Second in admin we are discussing how to grow Academics members as instructional leaders.  There are some exciting things coming in that arena!
1.20.17
I applied to present at Diane Sweeney's national coaching conference and was accepted!  The session is "Coaching Coaches: Student-Focused Goals."
My learning as a coach of coaches has grown so much since joining the monthly coaching group with Jim Knight.  Over break Candice and I had a very productive Google Hangout chat with him about the best ways to approach required formal evaluation while also "coaching coaches."  I am looking forward to starting this on February 1 with each of you (or most of you!)

12.9.16
Although we didn't have enough staff enroll in the NU Intensive Coaching program at Jim's request I was able to join the coaching champions group!  This meant I was able to stay for a small dinner session and will receive support via Skype sessions.  I am very excited to use this amazing learning opportunity to help our team, and me, continue to grow.

10.28.16
Each member of the coaching team has shared information about  engaging in increasingly authentic coaching partnerships.  This is exciting because it feels like we are building upon the foundation of helping people understand the role of an instructional coach and the relationships established over the last few years.

9.30.16
It has been nice to begin the year with a team of returning coaches! Feels like we have been able to hit the ground running with "kick-offs," our meetings, mini-conference planning, dividing up PD, and each of you engaging in meaningful coaching partnerships. Proud that we have all been accepted to present at IETC!!! ROADTRIP

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5/15/17
It has been so great being welcomed back to such an amazing roommate and building! A huge thanks to Keri for letting me kick her out so often. :)
It's been fun getting back into the swing of things and helping to support Eureka again, planning professional learning, etc. Hooray for Becky's Starbucks coaching chats where PL becomes very individualized.

1/20/17
A huge thank you and shout out to Keri for taking on so many of my peeps while I'm gone!  :)  Eureka is not such a beast anymore! Questions remain but through collaboration, problem-solving, team sharing, vertical articulation, etc. we are all finding ways to handle new situations.

12/9/2016
We have the best team ever! Thanks for sharing in my excitement about Baby Larenas. :)
Awhile back, a team realized they were not teaching a standard to its fullest extent and changed their SLO to accommodate the change. In working with a team member, she realized yesterday that she didn't really have enough instructional information and so her lessons were falling short in her eyes. She wanted to design a new formative assessment, so we are drafting that and she will give it to her students next week to see if she gets new, useful information.

10/28/2016
Working on a coaching cycle for my SLO that will begin with classroom management and move toward instructional strategies. Turning into a cyclical process of goal-setting, data collection, tweaking, and trying new strategies.

9/30/2016
Eureka!, Kagan is a hit!
Trying to focus more on solidifying student goals.
Working with many new teachers. Pre-Assessment fun for Eureka as teams embrace it, matrices, data, and groupings. PD heaven - tons of planning for these.  Rally Coach video with reluctant teacher.