1. Slower is always faster.
2. Less is more.
3. Stick with the attainable.
This past semester was a tremendous learning experience for me as a math coach. I've done my best to provide the best support possible to my teachers, while growing in the process. A couple of times, I would get distracted with additions to my "to do" list, but overall, I believe that I have done a better job of keeping what is truly important (teacher empowerment and student achievement) at the forefront. I have consistently supported teachers through collaborative planning, instructional updates, job-embedded professional learning, achievement-driven student initiatives, and just plain old coaching. I have been blessed to be able to attend many professional learning sessions myself. Some of my major accomplishments were:
- Becoming fully credentialed with the GloSS and IKAN assessment, while facilitating this effort at me school
- Developing a "Coaches' Cohort" support group for new teachers
- Completed a professional learning module on Cognitively Guided Instruction
- Found an effective way to offer teacher teams instructional updates through my "Coaches' Corner"
- Facilitated job-embedded professional learning efforts to allow teachers to observe one another's instruction
- Worked on the Georgia Formative Assessment Item/Data Review
- Made meaningful upgrades to our school's math assessment, and calibrated these efforts
- Continued with Math Corner, Math Minute, First in Math promotions, etc.
- Started this blog!
This semester, I hope to keep learning and growing as an instructional coach, offer consistent mad meaningful professional learning to teachers, continue to empower teachers, and FINALLY defend my dissertation (which happens to be about instructional coaching). I am proud of the strides we have made at my school, and I look forward to seeing what lies on the horizon.
