Collaboration and Instructional Coaching

Over the past two years I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to collaborate with many fabulous educators and expand my PLN. As a teacher and coach, this has stretched my skills and influenced the way I teach in my classroom. My PLN now stretches from my school to the far ends of the globe. I have been able to do this through many different avenues such as conferences, collaborative meetings, social media like diigo, blogs and twitter, and face to face reflective conversations. I truly feel blessed with the people I have been able to work with and collaborate with, not only in the past couple of years, but throughout my whole teaching career.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege to collaborate with colleagues and present at the AISI Symposium. Our Division spans a good geographical distance so the coaching experience has allowed me to get to know other coaches around our division and share our experiences, hopefully to better our skills as coaches. As we discussed our roles in our schools, we realized that there were common key concepts that were in all of our schools:
- Alignment of goals - division, school, learning team, and individual
- Coach as a staff member
- Support of administration and division office
- Supporting learning for teachers
- Differentiated approach for supporting teachers
As we have developed our relationships and trust within our schools, these five concepts were vital to the success of coaching. Check out our presentation below about different ways we reached our staff.

Help! How Do I Reach My Staff? on Prezi

At the Heart of the Matter - Engagement

Recently we have been working through a sequence on engagement in our learning teams. It is a very interesting conversation as there are many interpretations of what engagement looks like in the classroom. In learning teams we did research using "What Did You Do in School Today" to give us common language of three types of engagement - social, academic, and intellectual engagement. We then did instructional rounds thinking about engagement in our own classrooms and what we could do to improve our own practice in an area of engagement. Finally we came back together and reflected on our practice and examples of each type of engagement we see in our school each day. Conclusions seemed to be that all three types of engagement were needed for students to be deeply and truly engaged in their work. If one of the pieces was missing, full engagement would be difficult. To add to this, if students had intellectual engagement, both social and academic engagement pieces were intact.
Click on the link to see a summary webpage of our learning teams on engagement:
www.wix.com/kwedman/Engagement

Learning is at the Heart of What We Do

I recently had the privilege of seeing Jim Knight present around his new book "Unmistakable Impact". I always learn so much from him regarding the role of coaching but also in his teaching and delivery style. I really reflected on his comment about learning being at the heart of what we do. As teachers we are constantly planning, assessing, and changing to support the needs of our students. I often think we forget how much of the day we spend learning from our students and each other. Whether it is a conversation first thing in the morning with a student that has something to tell you, and informal conversation in the hallway with a colleague, or a formal conversation you might have on your learning team, we are constantly learning and trying to improve our craft of teaching to improve our instruction for today's learners.

In learning teams, you develop partnership principles with the other parties which Jim Knight discusses in his book that create an atmosphere that you can truly engage and learn from (Jim Knight, 2011). The first is equality where you see yourselves as equal contributing partners. The next principle is choice. Through learning teams, the facilitator gives choice within a structure giving the group more ownership of their learning. The third principle is voice. All members must feel that they have input and their contributions are being heard. Reflection is the next principle that is a very important part of our practice. In the hectic pace of the day it is extremely difficult to take the time to slow down and reflect on our practices. The culture needs to make a shift from the culture of doing to a culture of learning and doing (p.180 Unmistakable Impact). Embedded professional learning teams set this structure up for professionals to be able to take a step back and reflect and talk about what is best for today's learners. Principle five talks about dialogue being shared inquiry (William Isaacs, 1999) and should not take the form of threatening or one sided conversations. Everyone should feel they are working toward a common goal. Praxis is having relevance to the work you are doing in the team, this will lead to engagement of the learner. Finally, reciprocity is needed for professionals to gain the full experience of the team. Through learning, give and take, and sharing people feel energized, valued, and alive (Wheatley, 2002). When professionals engage in meaningful, deep conversation they are able to reflect on their own practice and how they can improve. I am very fortunate to be able to engage in a variety of reflective conversations throughout my day which has a positive impact on my instruction. How do you engage in reflective conversations in your day to improve your practice?

Are Learning Spaces in Schools Conducive Environments for the Learning of Today's Learners?

Happy New Year! As we enter into a New Year, it is important to take a step back and examine the perspectives we have in our daily lives. Dewitt Jones, who I have mentioned earlier has a great video on Creativity. As a photographer he talks about looking at daily life through different lens and that most things have more than one right answer.
So what about the learning spaces in our schools? As we look at school reform for today's learners, are there things that we should look at changing to enhance the opportunities we create for the best learning situation for students? We want our spaces to be active, collaborative, places to create and challenge our students to maximize their learning potential.
We were discussing this as a group this week and reflected on learning spaces of 20-25 years ago with open space classrooms. Some people in the conversation had taught in these classrooms, some had been students in these classrooms, but the general consensus was the same - traditional classroom teaching styles had still been in place without walls. This was the only difference.
As we worked through an activity this week, creating the ideal learning spaces for our students, there were many common themes - more space, many spaces for multiple intelligences to be developed, natural light, places to collaborate, and technology. Realistically, we know we cannot do all that we would like to create these learning spaces, but how about one or two things? The key to this is to also reflect on our pedagogy through a different lens and reach today's learners.
What innovative ideas have you implemented or thought about to create learning spaces for today's learners?

Encourage the Blossoming Flower

“Find the seed at the bottom of your heart and bring forth a flower” (Shigenori Kameoka)
Jim Knight recently wrote about hope and the powerful combination: high expectations + effective instruction in the classroom. Educators are passionate about their teaching and want the best for their students. As we open our classrooms for more collaboration and learning opportunities such as Learning Rounds, as teachers we learn and build capacity within each other and strengthen our instruction to be more effective. This combined with our high expectations for our students and belief in each of their unique talents allows each student to blossom into the flower that they are.
What stories do you have about how high expectations and effective instruction have allowed your students to blossom?

Appreciative Inquiry to Peak Performance

As we work through the coaching journey, I realize how important it is to make connections with people. As the coach /coachee makes connections they are able to work through a process together that can help to reach their goals at a deeper level. As you develop those relationships as a coach, you learn about strengths that the coachee has and are able to build upon the strengths to support them to get to their peak performance.

Dewitt Jones, a brilliant photographer with National Geographic made a film called “Celebrate What is Right with the World”. Through this video, he had the ability to use perspective to show the strength within an image. This can transfer to coaching as well when you build on the strengths of professionals you work with and give them the capacity for continued growth. (Soar to Your Potential, 2010)

This weekend I was fortunate to have made many connections with a great group of people. As we worked through situations, both as being the coach and coachee this quote resonated with the whole weekend “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you will help them to become what they are capable of being.” (Goethe)

In what ways have you been impacted by someone who believed you were capable of more then you ever dreamed possible?

Get Your iPod Touch Groove On - Assistive Technology in the Classroom

Get you i pod touch groove on1

View more presentations from Kim Wedman.

What a great professional development day we had last week! I was fortunate to get the opportunity to work with two lovely Speech Pathologists to present about the use of iPod touches in the classroom to meet the needs of specific students. We had a very diverse group both in areas of teaching expertise and in technology experience.
As presenters our goal was to make the presentation as engaging and interactive as possible while meeting the needs of each person in attendance. Just as our students require differentiation so do the talented people that work with them.
The feedback given was terrific. Meaningful and purposeful questions were asked throughout and at the end. Many in attendance were asking for more regarding how they could help their students in more ways to become as successful as they possibly could.
Thank you to all who attended and how lucky I feel to work in such dedicated professionals that are trying to meet the needs of all students in the best way that they can!