Coaching 2

Strategy 13: This section was really helpful for me. I had heard of SMART goals before, but I liked getting to see them within the context of the coaching cycle. I learned from the "strategy in action" section that it's important to have follow-up questions prepared when asking questions to guide the teacher toward goals. I was concerned about how to guide the pre-observation conference in terms of goal-setting, but the SMART goal format really helped me. Question - How can you best support a teacher who is unsure about how to achieve his/her goal?

Strategy 14: One thing I learned about modeling from this section was that it is important to explain to the students what's going on so that they know how to behave and know with whom they should interact. I would have been hesitant in terms of the students being disrespectful about the idea of their teacher learning from someone, but I liked the way the book framed it. I also liked the observation form in the section; I think it's important to help break the lesson down into sections and strategies so that the teacher can more easily make specific notes while observing the lesson.

Strategy 15: I learned that during the planning process, it is important to know what the purpose of the co-teaching session is, since some teachers want to use it to demonstrate a lesson for support and feedback, whereas other teachers will want more guidance. I also thought that it was very useful to see the specific details that need to be covered in the co-planning session. It's important to set a learning goal for students, as well as to discuss the academic vocabulary they will need to know. Question - Many aspects of co-teaching/teaching that were discussed in this section, such as modeling and explicitly discussing the learning goal, are practices that many teachers don't often utilize in their teaching. I think some teachers would be reluctant about them. How would you handle a situation in which a teacher claims that those things don't fit into their teaching style when you encourage them to include those strategies in the co-taught lesson?

Strategy 16: I would have originally thought that the purpose of co-teaching would be to "build teacher capacity by supporting the teacher in trying something he or she would not be willing to try independently" (160). However, I thought it was interesting that you could also choose to co-teach for the sake of giving students "evidence-based instruction," as well as to further gather data about the teaching and learning situation (160). I think that all of these are important, especially since I didn't originally think about all of those goals, and a co-teaching session could also have multiple purposes. I'm also glad that this section listed specific things to keep in mind with co-teaching, such as classroom arrangement, co-teaching styles, explicitly explaining the situation to students, etc. That list will be very useful. Question - What do you think would be an effective way to allow for taking "real-time" reflective notes without taking time and attention away from the actual lesson?

Strategy 17: I'm glad that this section provided specific language that coaches can use during the pre-observation conference and the post-observation conference. I need all of the support and examples I can get! I definitely will need to be conscious of using objective language rather than evaluative language; I have a feeling it's going to be a challenge to avoid telling them what I thought they did well, but I think I can handle avoiding critical evaluative language. Question - How do you think you could best approach the "possible actions" during the post-observation conference while maintaining a collaborative or facilitative structure and tone?