YAWN!
Today was parent teacher/ student led conferences at our school. I am an instructional coach and curriculum specialist so I use this time to catch up on documentation, particularly revising, cleaning up, determining next steps for curricular areas and grade level teams.
While it's wonderful to have the feeling of "getting shit done" and streamlining and standardizing stuff so that it's easy for teachers to read if there is turnover or movement between teams, it is also tiring.
Typically, I try to spend at least 3 hours of my day with students. It keeps me in the know about what "learning" really looks like. We can make the lesson plans but it might not mean they (students) are learning. It also energizes me to be surrounded by kiddos and makes me critically think about how we can best deliver learning opportunities to them to allow them to get messy with experimenting, reading, writing, questioning, showing not telling and much more. Finally, I do believe that teachers are the ones who make the magic happen and since I do not have my own "class" anymore I need to be surrounded by them and their learning engagements to spark other ideas. If I am not able to participate in what the learning may look like, how am I to imagine strategy groups for highly abled learners or a choice performance task assessment to demonstrate understanding of the unit? As educators, no matter what role we are in; we have to be vulnerable and let ourselves open up to new learning, whatever that means. We can make our own meaning of what we learn but we have to be willing to take risks just as we encourage our students to do regularly.
#TWTblog #sliceoflife #SOL18 .
We must be 
So true!! When Tammy and I became district administrators, our first decision what to move our office from Central Office to a school. There were 3 elementary schools and we rotated our office each year to be housed in a difference school. Best decision we ever made!! You will be a better coach if you keep a schedule that gets you into classrooms.
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"Typically, I try to spend at least 3 hours of my day with students. It keeps me in the know about what "learning" really looks like."
ReplyDeleteAs a teacher, I truly appreciate what a sacrifice this must be time-wise, but how much I respect you for doing it! Your teachers are lucky to have you!
Thanks for the glimpse of your life during conferences. As I transition to full time coaching next year a slice like this helps me think of what my days might look like. I appreciate your goal to spend three hours a day with students. I'm adding to my list of considerations.
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