Coaching Retrospective: What impact have we had in five years? A little over five years ago, I sat across the table from seven or eight of our school’s senior leadership team to be interviewed for a newly-created position: Teaching and Learning Coach. “Tell us about a time you helped others be reflective.” “What do you think about when you are planning instruction?” The questions weren’t hard to answer, but I had no idea what they thought of my responses. At the time, I really didn’t have a clear concept of what the role of Teaching & Learning Coach would entail or whether I would be a good fit. I went home thinking I had quite possibly embarrassed myself in front of the whole LLT. I guess I did okay in the interview though, because eventually I was offered the role, and became part of a cross-school team. The team has ebbed and flowed a bit over these five years, but one thing has been very consistent: the group of people I’ve been privileged to work with has been amazing. Th
The coaches have titled this blog ‘Here and Now’ and I have to confess that I am not teaching a class this year so the challenges of the hybrid situation some teachers are faced with is a step beyond my own experience. I did, however, reflect quite a bit about what was working (and not!) for my students in the online environment last year. The hardest thing? I think it was trying to continue teaching for understanding using a guided inquiry approach. Well, parts of that approach at least, were super difficult. Creating situations where students express their thinking, challenge each other’s thinking and negotiate meaning in real time is not as easy online. I tried to reserve the synchronous sessions to plan activities that would achieve this, but even then...as a teacher you can only be in one breakout room at a time, and can’t have your ear tuned to what is happening in the rest of the ‘classroom’. This makes probing student thinking in real time and identifying misconceptions very