Sharing Our Best Practices

Can you see it? The light that is at the end of the tunnel? The end of the school year is quickly approaching. Out here in Arizona, most of our state's high school seniors will be graduating May 25 or 26.

And it's this time of year, that I think that it's the perfect time to try something new! Hopefully, most of your curriculum has been taught and now you're in review mode for state testing or district benchmarking or maybe you're giving previews for what students can anticipate for the next school year. If you try something new now, it's not going to set you back a week or two if it doesn't work out. But if it does work out...look out! You'll be ready to rock and roll! 

If you're jazzed about this permission that I am granting you, maybe you already have something in mind to try out. But what if you're excited, but not sure what to experiment with? I have a suggestion that will foster conversations with the entire staff at the school. And it works. And you want to know how I know it works? I tried it...at the end of last year. 

This could be done several ways, but the teachers at my school just used a simple Google Document that was shared out to all teaching staff. The document had spaces for teachers to record their name, the teaching strategy or technology tool/app that they wanted to share, and why the strategy or tool was so awesome and worth sharing.This document was shared out a week before a staff meeting with the expectation that all would share at least one idea. 

Once at the staff meeting, teachers could review what had been shared and time was given for teachers to ask each other questions and brainstorm how a great idea that was used in the journalism class could be implemented into a science class, or something like that. 

Why was this 45 minutes time well spent?

1. Teachers left that staff meeting feeling both inspired because of the new ideas and validated because others found value in what they done.
2. This time of collaboration fostered communication when it's most tempting for teachers to hide out in their own classroom because there is so much grading, contacting parents, organizing files, etc, to do in the last weeks of school. 
3. This staff meeting was just-in-time professional development. And it required very little planning and was kept short and sweet. 

This is what worked for us. I hope that it will encourage you to do something similar before the last bell rings.

Offering my BEST to you!

Bethany

Would you say that you are more or less likely to try something new at the end of the school year? How does your staff share out practical teaching strategies or technology tools with each other?

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Collaborative Coaching Murmerations

Six years ago, our school district introduced a Peer Coaching program (based off the work of @lfoltos). At the time, the district was beginning a systematic approach to becoming a 1-to-1 learning community. Having teachers trained in the art of coaching collaboratively in an effort to integrate technology into daily instruction was, and still is, crucial.

I was in the first batch of teachers who were trained to be a Peer Collaboration Coach. Through the years, as teachers have become more and more comfortable with using technology and working collaboratively with one another, the effort that was once required, is second nature to many. 

We've had some leadership changes in the last year and now I'm the one working with our Technology Director (@jcastelhano) to facilitate the wonderful group of educators who are designated as Collaboration Coaches. And for the very first time, we had the opportunity to get all 40 of us in the same room. Teachers of Kindergartners to high school chemistry all met to share the best of what we know about collaborating with our peers.

I had three major goals for our time together:

• to recall the roles that a coach plays with his/her peers
• to connect with coaches from other sites
• to gather resources to use as a coach

To make this happen, I decided that it would be fun to have a Speed Dating session for coaches to share their ideas. I found my idea HERE. I provided the teachers with discussion prompts to get the dialog flowing. 

• What resources have you utilized while coaching or collaborating with others?
• What does successful collaboration look like? How does it make you feel?
• Tell of a successful coaching experience. To what do you attribute the success?
• What are the two most important skills needed to coach or collaborate successfully?
• Are you looking to collaborate with someone on something? Describe your dream project.

I'm sure that teachers would have appreciated more than the three minutes I allotted for a conversation before they had to move on to their next "date". It was pretty exciting to hear these teachers share their thinking. 

Photo by @BethanyLigon (2015)

Photo by @jcastelhano (2015)

Once the Speed Dating session had ended, I encouraged the group to send an email or two to the teachers who had an impact on their thinking - I referred to this a "second date". I look forward to seeing the fruit of these conversations in the near future.

Photo by @jcastelhano (2015)

To close our time together I chose to show THIS VIDEO of starlings creating beautiful formations. According to THIS ARTICLE, starlings' movements are usually in response to predators or other stimuli in the immediate environment. The birds communicate most closely with the seven birds around them, but can respond to other individuals across the flock. And contrary to popular belief, there isn't a single leader in the group. 

To me, this is what collaboration coaching is all about. We aren't experts - we realize that we have various strengths and weaknesses and we are dependent upon one another. This is why it is so important that we are in very close communication with one another, assisting the whole group to respond to needs in our school environment. The conversations that we have where we reflect and plan and strategize are like the starlings' mezmerizing murmerations - we shift and adapt and hopefully at the end of the day, make learning a beautiful experience to be a part of.  

Offering my BEST to you,
Bethany


Directions for posting a comment:

1) Choose "Comment As" first. If you don't have a Google/Blogger account, you can choose Name/URL and type in your name, then place the web site that best describes you in the URL (i.e. www.ajusd.org). Or, you can choose "Anonymous".

2) You may need to press "Post Comment" more than one time.

It is always wise to copy your comment before pressing "Post Comment" just in case something happens. 

3) Type in the word verification.

4) If you did everything correctly, it will state, "Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval." If you do not get that message, please try again. 

5) Many thanks to Tracy Watanabe for these directions to post. 

And thank you for commenting!