SECONDARY READING COACHES

While attending the recent SREB High Schools That Work summer professional development conference, I received a copy of their new report, A Critical Mission: Making Adolescent Reading an Immediate Priority in SREB States. (Read the entire report here.)

In the introduction, Virginia Governor Timothy M Kane states,"Nationwide, students in the middle grades and high school are failing to develop the reading and writing skills they need in order to meet higher academic standards later in their educational careers.”

“Research shows that poor reading and writing skills prevent many students from graduating from high school, completing college and contributing in the workplace.”

SREB’s study found that secondary students need direct, explicit instruction in how to read, learn, and analyze information in key fields of math, science, social studies, and career/tech studies. Mastering these skills prepares students for reading they will need to do in college, at work, and in managing their personal lives. Subject area teachers might be the best qualified to help their students develop critical strategies and skills to master text in each area of study (pg 5).
The report findings recommend that secondary teachers receive professional development and course work on effective reading strategies within each content area and that literacy coaches provide job-embedded professional development to help teachers plan lessons, try new strategies and apply effective practices. Literacy coaches should model good reading instruction, and plan and critique lessons with teachers.(pg 19)

I just completed a four day institute with Secondary Reading Coaches in Hillsborough County (Tampa) Florida under the direction of Lynn Underwood Dougherty (Lynn.Dougherty-Underwood@sdhc.k12.fl.us). We covered topics ranging from verbal skills of coaching, questioning skills for facilitation, and feedback strategies for differentiating professional development and working effectively with school leadership.

One of the specifics that we explored was the conversations that coaches should have with administrators as they planned the start of the year, especially important for new coaches or those working with new administrations.

Leadership and coaches being on the same page in visioning the next step and assessing where we are at is crucial for the staff to get a clear understanding of desired direction.

We prepared the following questions to guide these discussions. (Those of you not focused on reading, should be able to change a few words and use a similar structure.)

- In your mind, observe an effective teacher working with struggling readers. What do you see/hear students doing? What do you see/hear teachers doing?

-Observe an ineffective teacher with struggling students. What do you see/hear?

-Observe an effective teacher with on level readers. What do you see/hear?

-Observe an ineffective teacher with on level readers. What do you see/hear?

-How is the staff distributed along this continuum?
ineffective?…little?…some?…effective?

-How are grade levels or departments similar and different?

-Which two groups of teachers should be my (the coaches) initial focus in order to have maximum impact on student learning?

-Summarize the resistance from teachers you imagine I’ll meet.

-How much effort do you believe you want to expend on getting these two groups of teachers to change? Why?

-What ways can we create time for these two groups of teachers to be PLCs focusing on student reading achievement?

-How might these teachers respond to our idea?

Coaches or administrators can instigate the conversation with these questions. If you have a Reading Leadership Team, they could respond as well. Certainly an administrative team should be brought into the conversation.

Consider sharing the “what would you see” responses with the entire staff at faculty, department, grade level or vertical team meetings. If people disagree, you’ve identified critical next steps in training and coaching.

STUDIO LEARNING FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS

I have finished reading David Perkins’ Making Learning Whole: How 7 Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education. I’ve mentioned my earlier reading in a previous post. The seven principles align well with the work I have done through Performance Learning Systems in Live Event Learning. Live Events (real life learning experiences with real consequences) create situations for learning to be whole.

Perkins identifies strategies to support each of his seven principles.
One of the strategies that Perkins mentions under the principle he calls “learn from the team” is Studio Learning. Citing the work of his colleagues in Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Arts Education, Perkins identifies how this “arts approach” has value for all learners. (Perkins, pages 177-181)

Three structures of studio learning are:

Demonstration-lecture- where the instructor usually takes a short time to introduce an idea or technique, often with some modeling and then a studio assignment, The shortness of this component allows time for immediate learner work and practice.

Students–at-Work- The instructor now circulates providing individualized guidance. In addition to responding to the “just presented concept,” the instructor can nudge, prod, and cajole each learner. During this time students can also see each other work and learn from others’ approaches.

Critique- The students are now showing and explaining their work; watching listening learning from each other. These student/instructor conversations lead to what has been called “studio habits of mind” which include persistence, envisioning, expression, observation, reflection, and exploration.

Perkins suggests that this arts approach could be expanded into many other content areas with modification of classroom practices creating more students to experience whole learning. I agree.

Studio learning makes a great approach for instructional coaches to look at their work in teacher development. Coaches initial presentations to teachers can be short (brown bag lunch) lectures or demonstrations. Teachers can leave the presentations and begin experimentation as the coaches and other teachers are available for support, scaffolding, feedback, and encouragement. Eventually bringing teacher videos and/or student products for critique would provide input on the next learning goals. Studio learning fits well with professional learning communities.

Note the connections with the findings from National Staff Development Council, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards:

“Teachers can also use videotapes of teaching to make aspects of their practice public and open to peer critique, learn new practices and pedagogical strategies, and analyze aspects of teaching practices that may be difficult to capture otherwise. Recent research on teachers undertaking certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards—which involves them in producing and analyzing their own classroom videotapes in relation to professional standards, and often discussing them with colleagues- has found that the experience can lead teachers to change how they teach, increase their knowledge of various approaches, and enable them to engage in more effective teaching practices in the classroom.”
(footnote: Professional Learning in the Learning Profession)

Teaching and Learning need to be public activities! Coaches, teachers, and principals….lets work to increase our studio learning!

RESPONSIVENESS

Someone forwarded me an interesting post from the Providence Journal, written by Julia Steiny (April 26,2009) titled School Revolution is a New Responsiveness to Kids.

Here are some of her statements that caught my attention:

American schools will improve when they’re designed to be engaging to the humans inside of them, and to nourish their abundant creativity. Responsiveness will save us.
Responsive parents give kids a strong foundation for bright futures — assuming the kids’ lives continue to be filled with responsive adults, such as teachers.
So at this point, there are really only two kinds of schools — those that are fundamentally responsive and those that aren’t. Responsive schools are the “whatever-it-takes” kind.
Connections with our children will become stronger and easier when the connections between the adults are also more attuned.

Stiney shares an awesome example for understanding responsiveness. She describes a video of a mother and baby at play. The mother’s responsiveness to the baby is evident in her facial expressions. The mother then drops all the responsiveness and the baby repeats earlier behaviors trying to get the reaction to return. When it doesn’t, the baby screams in frustration until mom relents and returns the positive facial responses.
You can watch the baby experiment video. You may want to share this with your staff as it is quite compelling.
I found a great example of “what it takes” in Chick Moorman’s Response-Able Educator Newsletter #82.
Chick Moorman is the author of Spirit Whisperers: Teachers Who Nourish a Child’s Spirit. He is one of the world's foremost authorities on raising responsible, caring, confident children. For more information on how he can help you achieve your staff development goals, visit www.chickmoorman.com. Chick is also the author of PLS’s graduate level course, Successful Teaching for Acceptance of Responsibility.

The following story was shared with me at a workshop somewhere on the West Coast. The name of the school and the storyteller went through the wash in the pocket of my pants and are gone forever unless the teacher reads this and contacts me. The incident is real and happened in a middle school building that educated sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. Let's call it Washington Middle School.

A year ago the staff at Washington Middle School set a school goal of improving relationships between teachers and students. The teachers hold high expectations for their students academically. They expect them to achieve, and they know that demanding rigor from students without having them feel connected to teachers is folly. So they set out to improve the relationship portion of the relationship/rigor connection.
At the beginning of the year all the seventh graders were surveyed in an effort to find out how many students felt they were in a positive relationship with a teacher and how many felt they were not. The students were supplied with a list of teachers' names and were asked to circle the ones they felt they had a positive relationship with. Having a positive relationship was defined as being able to talk to the teacher and feeling comfortable asking for their help. It also included a feeling that the teacher liked them based on the interest the teacher showed in the student.
One hundred and twenty-one students filled out the forms. Some students listed several teachers. Others mentioned one or two. Twenty-five middle schoolers listed no teacher they felt they had a positive relationship with.
The information gleaned from the survey was tabulated and shared with the teachers. The teachers were provided with two sheets of information. One had a list of the twenty-five students who listed no teacher. The other sheet had the teacher’s name at the top and listed the students who identified them as someone they felt they had a positive relationship with.
"So some teachers got a page that showed that no student selected them?" I asked. "Yes," the storyteller informed me. "We thought every teacher needed to know how they were perceived by the students. We simply gave them the information."
At this point each professional staff member was asked to select one student from the list who had indicated no relationship with a teacher. Care was taken to make sure each student was selected by someone. Throughout the year teachers were asked to reach out in special ways to this student. Their efforts included:
1. Send three "I noticed…." statements a week.
2. Give one eye-hug a day (sustained eye contact ending with a smile).
3. Give two physical touches a week (high-five, pat on the back, shoulder squeeze, handshake).
4. Use the person's name every day.
5. Be in their proximity three times a week (other than in the classroom).
6. Ask them for help once a week
7. Ask their opinion about something once a week.
This process went on for an entire year. The following year, students completed the survey again. Now, as eighth graders, EVERY STUDENT indicated that he or she was in a positive relationship with at least one teacher. Many listed more than one teacher. In addition, EVERY TEACHER was named by one or more students. Every student and every teacher was on someone else's list. Congratulations Washington Middle School staff! Rigor now has a better chance of having an impact on these young people, thanks to you and your understanding of the important connection between rigor and relationship. Take a bow.
Thanks, Chick.

Administrators…. How about showing the mother/baby video and sharing Chick’s story during your back to school session with teachers? Then, have groups identify where your school could be more responsive and develop plans go implement.
P.S. If your staff were asked to list ways that the administration and staff are responsive to each other, what do you imagine you’d find? Want to ask? Want to be purposeful with some new behaviors?

COACHING AND LEADERSHIP

I received a request from a new instructional coach and am writing this post as a response:

I was wondering if I could ask you one more question for my paper and presentation. I was hoping you could make some correlations between teacher leadership and instructional coaches.
Do you feel that instructional coaches are teacher leaders? What leadership qualities must an instructional coach possess? What leadership strategies should instructional coaches utilize?
Again, thank you very much for your time!


For instructional coaches to be successful they must be seen as teacher leaders… from my earlier post “natural leaders”… the kind of leaders that teachers would seek out without the coach having an official title.

Teachers will learn the most from coaches when they become vulnerable. Coaches’ leadership skills that communicate trust building will increase teacher vulnerability and therefore teacher growth. For coaches to be most successful, the principal must make him/herself vulnerable to the coach. Principals who model vulnerability for staff will create the greatest amount of risk taking and thus growth among the staff. Principals must therefore trust their coaches. As principal, I need to know that the coach will strengthen not threaten my leadership status with staff. As teacher, I need to know that the coach will strengthen not threaten my leadership with students. At the same time the coach should be strengthening relationships among staff and with staff and administration. Coaches play key leadership roles within the school needing to take a rather egoless role. The coach seen to be “building a powerbase” will be threatening to many, if not all key stakeholders.

I am currently working with two new instructional coach programs where the coaches are hired by the district and serving more than one school. These positions require increased leadership skills from the coach as they are now seen as being connected to central office and may need to work harder to show principals that they are “working for them” while convincing teachers they are “working for them” while getting direction from central office “on the need to implement a program with fidelity”. Quality coaches integrate the agendas of teachers, principals, and central office staff to bring the best learning opportunities to the students.

One of the key leadership skills of coaches is to identify the common vision of student achievement that drives the work of all stakeholders. Since coaches motivate those they work with to change, a common vision of the achievement outcome can greatly decrease the resistance to change. Coaches’ input to teachers and principals does not need to be evaluative, challenging right or wrong, but can instead focus on “is there a way to get closer to the vision of achievement that we have?”

Coaches also need to build the leadership skills of the teachers and principals that they serve. There is insufficient time in a coach’s schedule for enough one-on-one coaching of staff to bring about the desired growth. Effective coaches create partnerships, teams, and professional learning communities that provide coaching to each other in the coach’s absence. I often describe instructional coaches as “plate spinners at the circus”. Tthey start a plate spinning (a group of staff working on a common skill or problem) and then pull back to start another group and then another. From time to time they must return to a group to keep it “spinning”(producing). Sometimes finding a “broken plate”, they start a new learning activity or a new grouping of staff. By building the leadership capacity of teachers in the groups, the groups can be producing longer without the coach’s effort present.

Here are a few strategies I’ve seen coaches utilize:

Use mentors who are working with new teachers to be members of the coach’s team. An early in the year meeting of mentors and mentees with the coach can add building or district goals to the mentor/mentee’s working agenda.

Partner with grade level leaders and department heads. Meet with these leaders individually to identify the needs of their departments. Find connections between their needs and the coach’s agenda. Ask these leaders to request your coaching and to make themselves vulnerable with their members. Doing a coaching session with the leader at a team meeting is a great introduction of coaching to the staff. Getting the department to do some coaching of each other spreads the coach’s impact.

Create opportunities for the principal to model skills that you are looking for staff to practice. One reading coach provides the principal with books to read aloud at each grade level. The books come with suggested questions for the principal to use with the students (model for the teacher). One high school instructional coach provides the principal with articles to send out to staff and discussion questions for a faculty meeting. I started a peer coaching program in a high school by getting the principal to video tape a lesson and then allow me to coach him at a faculty meeting. After discussing a change he could make in the lesson to gain increased student effort, he offered to reteach the lesson and video for the next faculty meeting.

Building the leadership capacity of school based staff should be seen as an important part of a coach’s role. Coaches should keep a mindset that if the coaching program were not available in the future, the coaching culture that they created would live on!

Here is a slide from a Tom Peter’s presentation that does a pretty good job of summing up an instructional coach’s leadership task.