We want to give you a peek inside our Coach Certificate & Mentorship Program. Coaches taking part in this academic-year-long journey have graciously given us permission to post some of their learning and reflections from the private coursework they are undertaking during this program. Where possible, we have shared the course and the action task to give context for the guest post.
Follow AbbyThe Topic: Cultivating a Culture of Learning
The Task: Reflect on a learning walk process you took
When I joined the K-12 team at my school, there was already a procedure in place for learning walks. With the switch to virtual schools, we took a while to find a way to make it work in our current setting.
In the past, learning walks were a group of 2-3 people walking around to classes. The people on learning walks were usually members of the K-12 team, which includes the Curriculum Director, Instructional Coaches, and Librarians. Sometimes other members of admin and leadership would join. There were other occasions where coaches would take a teacher on a learning walk to see what something they are focusing on looks in other classes. During the learning walk, the group would spend about 5 minutes in the classroom. They didn’t interrupt the learning and only talked to students if they were working in small groups or independently. After leaving the classroom, the group would discuss positive things they saw happening in the classroom. Sometimes there was a focus on a school initiative, but the sharing was always on the positives. Following the learning walk, teachers that were visited received a thank you note with something positive the team noticed.
I am new to the position of Instructional Coach this year, so I had not participated in a learning walk before. Our team created a spreadsheet for teachers to add their meeting links, so admin and leadership (including the K-12 team) have access to the links. The K-12 team started the learning walks in a meeting with just our team. We split into 3 groups, so there were 2-3 people going into each virtual class. The groups then followed the link to join the class. We stayed for 5 minutes before rejoining the K-12 meeting. We took turns sharing warm feedback about what we saw in each of the classes. During the reflection, we also discussed any commonalities we saw across the classes. The final piece of the learning walks is to write a thank you note. Each teacher that was visited received a thank you note from the team with something positive we noticed.
During one of our learning walk sessions, we visited 3 different high school Math classes. During our reflection, we realized that all of the teachers were doing a great job of using the technology they had to make student thinking visible. The class I visited, was using a whiteboard-like tool to write out student responses to a math problem. Students had to be specific in what they did, so the teacher could write it out for the rest of the class to see. The teacher also avoided saying if students were right or wrong. He often asked “How do you know?” Students would say they know it is wrong and the teacher would ask “How can you fix it?” These types of questions and demonstration was common in the other Math classes. Our team could tell the whole department had been working hard to do this together. We wrote an additional thank you note to the HOD to share what we saw and congratulate the team on their efforts.
Read more from The Coach participants as they share their learning from the certificate & mentorship program…
Sandra: Coaching for School-Wide Change
Ashley: Seeing Yourself as a Leader
Ready to Cultivate a Culture of Learning?
If you’re ready to contribute to a culture of learning at your school and thinking about how you can be more intentional in your coaching practice, join us for one of our courses for coaches!
One of the things we’re most proud of here at Eduro is that there’s no one-size-fits-all learning – you always have choice and voice in how you learn with us. This highlights one of the key themes that you’ll find in all of our courses for coaches, and if you’re curious to take your learning deeper, we have two great options for you.
New Coaches:
If you’re just getting started as a coach, and you want to learn how to make these mindset and skillset shifts, watch our New to Coaching Workshop, which will also tell you all about our brand new course, Getting Started as a Coach, which is open for registration RIGHT now – so don’t wait if this sounds like it’s right for you! This course is specifically designed for classroom teachers that are moving into a coaching role. It’s focused on exactly the skillset & mindset shifts you need to make to be successful as an instructional Coach.
Experienced Coaches:
If you’re already a coach & you want to think about being more intentional & strategic in your practice, watch our workshop on the Thrive Model for Coaching Success which will help you evaluate your program to see where you may have room to grow – and help you decide if our year-long mentorship and certification program, The Coach, is right for you, right now. This program is designed for current coaches who are focused on building a coaching culture through intentional and strategic coaching work at all levels – with teachers and school leaders.
Recent Comments