• Communicating with a colleague in a coaching role

  • Speaking in a non-evaluative way with a focus on student performance

  • Sharing my observations and demonstrating active listening skills

• The art of classroom observations and how to be effective in this regard

  • Understanding the learning target, what the classroom should look like, and speak to colleague about focus areas

• Clearly identifying barriers to learning and action planning around them

  • Open, honest conversations with colleague about barriers and finding resources/tools to address them

• Identifying and applying the "behind the scenes" aspect of instructional coaching

  • Creating a calendar for a coaching cycle, reflecting on data, meeting with colleagues, having a list of resources, note catchers/reflection sheets

Why is this my most remarkable artifact?

This artifact was my most remarkable one from my time here at Viterbo because instructional coaching was an area of education that was new to me prior to a few years ago. With my newfound knowledge through several courses, I was able to learn more about the art of instructional coaching and apply it to a real-life class setting.

I found the real-life application (my field experience work) to be extremely beneficial and gave me a better understanding of the work of an instructional coach and how the process of a coaching cycle unfolds.

In simple terms, I feel like this artifact helped me go from little league to the pros.

At its simplest form, instructional coaching should be about classroom experiences and opportunities designed to increase student achievement. Therefore, my field experience as an instructional coach was designed with this in mind. Melissa (classroom teacher) and I designed a coaching cycle around the goal of increasing critical thinking and scientific data analysis among her sixth grade class (nine students). We implemented specific learning targets like identifying and labeling parts of a graph, creating a graph based on a set of scientific data, and analyzing that data of a visual source to determine its impact on themselves, their community, and the world. A pre-assessment was used to give us a baseline, lessons were created to follow through with our learning targets , and a post-assessment was used to measure growth. This created more agency for students as the lessons designed were very hands-on (graphing data sets individually and with a partner, reading and watching about wolf/moose populations, and whole group presentations). This also gave students more agency by tackling a topic that can be difficult for middle school students, but is necessary to be a successful scientist in the future (high school, college, career applications).

Impact on Colleague:

Having a strong working relationship with Melissa was key to making this coaching cycle successful. Melissa trusted my professional integrity and passion for growth to make this coaching cycle worthwhile for all involved. Melissa was open about struggles with specific students and lessons that fell short and she was willing to listen to my feedback and dig deeper into strategies she used in the classroom. She recognized student groupings and instructional activities that worked well and looked for real-life examples to help connect the lessons and skills to her students.

• An instructional coach is never "above" a teacher. Trust that the teacher is knowledgeable in their content and provide resources and feedback as needed. In no way is your job to evaluate the teacher. A coaching cycle should be a partnership, not a hierarchy with the coach on top.

• Look for ways to build trust with your colleagues- get to know them, listen to them, observe their personality, discuss common goals, provide resources when you say you are going to do it

• Always create a partnership agreement with the teacher you are working with. This lays out expectations on communication, meeting time, confidentiality, and the roles of each involved.

• Coaching cycle goals and learning targets should always be student-centered. Feedback and reflection from the coach and teacher can be self-reflection, but always keeping how any changes will help students in mind.

Resources:

• Diane Sweeney Student-Centered Coaching: https://www.dianesweeney.com/our-resources-materials/

• Coaching Tools (Partnership Agreements, Coaching Log, Noticing and Naming): https://www.dianesweeney.com/coachingtools/

• Partnership Agreement: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10mzVMSp_5j9PLoUxdVCwQ1hq4_9PRskv/view?usp=sharing

• Coaching Classroom Strategies: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1udQdlbq1WtvFUtAc-moKmMfK1BHvntpVIEH-ySN8JPI/edit?usp=sharing

• Teacher Reflection of Coaching Cycle:

  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o4ChNfyLwXL2V6MZjtizUcFwd2poBoA-VGQTnYt3nKE/edit?usp=sharing