My Coaching Journey

I have been working to promote the things I am doing for my school district.  I do not sell myself well.  I like to be the behind the scenes person who riles everyone up and sits back to watch the mayhem.  So now, I am shifting to letting others know what I am doing and how I am doing it in a much more intentional way.  I created the slide below for my new superintendent who started in late December 2015.  I also selfishly wanted to track all of the coaching I had done so far this year:

Instructional Coaching Slide

If you click on the link it will take you to the Interactive Slide I created (a format I love to use to share information and/or curate information)

I began this school year adding an instructional coaching piece to my job as Curriculum Coordinator to get myself back into the classroom.  I started with three multi-age classrooms and we did/do STEAM time for around 100 minutes each week.  I am now on sites four days a week and only in the office on Wednesday (which I also sneak in a couple of classes I can't get to on the other days).  

To make sure I am not going crazy I have some specific focus areas as you can see above that fit into three categories:

• Maker Activities
• Coding
• Curating Content and Accessing Curriculum for All (Universal Design Learning Tools)

I am having an incredible time working with the classroom teachers in our district and watching them as they see their students engaged and teaching each other.  I remind them that the technology and other tools will never replace a teacher who can masterfully curate content and facilitate the learning environment of his/her classroom.

I am modeling "I don't know, let's try it!"  Just this week one of my STEAM teachers emailed me and told me she had created the Google Maps activity for her first and second graders during our STEAM time.  In 5 short months she has shifted her pedagogy and instruction!  In one of the other STEAM classes, the students reminded me that I was being "VERY ISH" as I was trying to get our Spheros going.  

We had a parent STEAM day in Chelsea's class on October 23 where 22 parent came and did STEAM time with us.  This trimester our parent STEAM day is February 26, we have 32 "parents" attending for 23 students and that is not counting the board members, superintendent, assistant superintendent, principal... 

I'll keep you posted on how that goes!