Walking the Talk

Is she judging me? What if she thinks my ideas are stupid? What if she asks me a question and I truly don’t know the answer? What if she goes back to other people she works with and talks poorly about me? What if I totally mess up while she observes me?

Being coached by someone can be a bit nerve wracking. Honestly, I can now say I get it because I am engaging in my own ongoing job embedded professional development by being coached this year on a regular basis by Nicole Patten, Instructional Coach for Heartland AEA. Each and every one of the above thoughts has run through my brain at some point in time this year.  However, I strongly believe in having a collaborative partner who can push my thinking, guide me through planning and reflection, collect data while I’m facilitating learning and model different skills for me. An Instructional Coach is an invaluable resource that I’ve long been missing in my professional life.

Why do I, the Teacher Leader Coordinator for the District, use an Instructional Coach? I believe anyone can benefit from a partner who can walk beside them in their journey to grow professionally.  As I am working to meet the needs of a variety of individuals across the District, just like every teacher does in their own classroom, my thinking sometimes gets muddy. I can get overwhelmed by all there is to do, and I benefit greatly from using Nicole as a coach to help me untangle all of the ideas floating around in my brain and keep me focused on my goals.  

In addition to keeping me focused, she connects me to other individuals who are working on the same things I am, thereby creating new resources for me. When I need to share ideas or work through issues, I now have a group of people to support me. Building my professional toolbox was something I expected from working with a coach but building my professional connections is an added bonus!  

Another area I’m continuing to refine is my delivery of professional development. Nicole is a great help to me not only during planning but also during the actual delivery.  She observes me facilitating professional learning in order to collect data and provides me with constructive feedback. She’s also taken the risk herself and facilitated learning for our group of Instructional Coaches so that I can see things from a different perspective.  She always follows up any observation with a reflecting conversation that leaves me with a feeling of renewed focus on my goal.

It’s a bit embarrassing to admit that even though I’ve been an Instructional Coach, I truly did not know how beneficial using one is until I took the plunge myself. Coaches are the critical friends that each of us needs in order to grow professionally.  They are there to listen, encourage, plan and reflect, provide feedback, model and help educators connect with one another. Elena Aguilar explains it well in her blog post Why Coaches Need Coaches. If you haven’t yet worked with a coach, I truly encourage you to give it a try.  It may feel awkward at first.  Give it some time.  Professionally, you deserve it and so do your students.

Professional Learning for Educators

Inquiring minds want to know what really happens on a full day of professional learning across the District. Monday, January 18 was chocked full of differentiated professional learning for all educators in the Ames Community School District.  Here’s a little insight as to what happened with several of the different groups.

Northwood

Our day of learning at Northwood was spent expanding our understanding of the components of a Quality Early Childhood Literacy program. Principal, Brandon Schrauth, began the day by modeling the different Intentional Teaching Structures for Early Literacy in Reading, Writing and Oral Language. Mentor teacher, Kendra Wuestenberg, spoke on the topic of Phonological Awareness and how to increase our understanding and teaching of the vast array of skills that encompass it. Model teacher, Nichole McCrady, taught us about Alphabetic Principle and different ways to infuse alphabet work into our half-day programs. Instructional Coach, Johanna Hicks, lead a discussion around comprehension and how we can teach our students how to think within, about and beyond text that is read to them. Model teacher, Alicia Ortner, finished each presentation by fostering conversations about we can engage ALL learners by embedding these strategies into our regular classroom activities. Each presenter ended their discussions with a make and take time for teachers to use the knowledge they learned to prepare items for use in their classroom.

Make and Take time!         Alicia Ortner explaining Nichole McCrady explaining 
modifications for the classroom       Alphabetic Principle

Elementary

Calibrating understanding of how endurance, leverage and readiness play into determining what standards are most essential to teach until mastery for our students was the hot topic of the morning for all K-5 teachers.  The Teachers on Special Assignment for the District led the different grade levels and started the discussion by sharing the history of Essential Standard work in the past and the vision for this work in the future.  Grade level teams reflected on data around the number of reading and math essential standards currently chosen as well as whether or not we had alignment in which standards are being taught in the classrooms.

A portion of text from Common Formative Assessments by Kim Bailey and Chris Jakicic was used to ground us in what the experts say on this topic.  Following that learning, teams of teachers practiced using a rubric to force rank selected reading and math CCSS standards by looking at the amounts of endurance, leverage, and readiness they have. The morning ended with PLCs using their new learning and common language to re-examine their essential standards.  This work will be instrumental in moving us down the road towards creating District Level Essential Standards.

Middle School

Our professional learning opportunities for middle school staff began with a Rare Birds activity to kick off a morning of collegiality and learning.  Staff learning in the areas of digital citizenship, common formative assessment, rubric creation, and analyzing data followed. One of the highlights of the morning was the opportunity to watch and reflect on John Hattie’s Ted Talk, Why are So Many of our Teachers and Schools so Successful?. 

This video provided staff with insight as to why when we work together in a collective effort, our students respond with greater academic success and growth. We continued our learning with a refresher on the PLC flow chart and broke out into one of three differentiated sessions:  

• Creating a focused and reasonable, common formative assessment
• Creating a quality rubric to describe proficient student work
• Analyzing and responding to common formative assessment data

 

PLC’s came together in the afternoon to share their takeaways from the morning, and continue down the path of collaborative work. There are some truly great things happening at Ames Middle School. The staff is passionate about the work they are doing. The continued development and growth of PLC’s at Ames Middle School is evident in the conversations amongst teaching staff. It is an exciting time at AMS!

High School

Professional development has focused on core area teachers planning a mental model to share with their students of how they construct meaning “when the text is difficult and the task matters.” The learning outcome for this mental model was for students to observe their teacher constructing meaning from a passage of which they had little to no background knowledge.

While all teachers engage in explaining, analyzing, and/or interpreting complex text for students, we acknowledge that we do not always show students how we think about the text to reach these explanations, analyses, and/or interpretations. Through observing an expert reader in their particular subject area, students should be able to “see” the invisible process of creating meaning from complex text.

Prior to Monday, model teachers Ginny Seibert, Leah Stearns, Instructional Coach Katie Gustafson, and Ben Matthies provided a model for teachers in their respective departments of what a mental model looked and sounded like. On Monday, teachers worked in large, departmental groups to discuss necessary background information about modeling for students; individual teachers then set up times to meet one-on-one with the Instructional Coaches to work collaboratively in constructing a thorough mental model. These mental models were then presented to students in their core classes on the Tuesday and Wednesday prior to the start of the Iowa Assessment tests.

Speciality Areas

Music

Music educators in Ames gathered as a K-12 team in order to strengthen their common vision for music education in Ames. After spending time outlining the skills students need in order to be successful in band, orchestra, general music and choir, teachers worked together to outline the benchmarks at for elementary, middle and high school students. Moving forward, teachers will be revising their grade and course level expectations, revising assessments, and exploring new materials to use with student musicians. These teachers’ passion and dedication to serving students is truly inspiring.

Family and Consumer Sciences

The Ames Middle School and Ames High School teachers of family and consumer sciences met together to share some learning and strengthen the alignment of their programs.  They spent time reading the Financial Literacy Work Team Report from 2014 and studying the 21st Century Skills for Financial Literacy. They shared essential standards and activities for teaching financial literacy. They are passionate about educating all students in the Ames Community Schools in the financial skills necessary for living and working in the 21st Century.

Art 

Submitted by Susan “Coach” Norris

Art teachers met as a K-12 PLC and were lead by TOSA Mary Morton. Mary divided us into groups with elementary, middle school and high school teachers in each group. We began group work by sharing one portfolio item and process with each other. High school art teacher Lindsay Wede shared examples of photo essays created by Photography 1 students followed by Sara Knutson sharing watercolor landscape works by 6th graders. Laurie Olk presented examples of self-portraits created by K-5. I shared a Powerpoint created for grades 3-5 to introduce a TAB (Teaching Artistic Behaviors) concept. Mary then presented a rubric to help compare the Iowa Core Companion document and the National Core Arts Standards with our current course level expectations for elementary, middle school and high school levels of learning. We considered the purpose, level of alignment to best practice, as well as positives and negatives for each document. Working on and discussing the rubric allowed the K-12 art PLC to formulate a recommendation we can share with the School Board regarding ongoing work with curriculum. Each level has scheduled work days over the next three months to formulate Curriculum Review Action Plans.

PE

Physical Education teachers met for the second time on Monday to continue to align their work with students to a K-12 vision.  The discussion began with a review of the essential components of physical education, policy / environment, curriculum, instruction, and assessment.  Studying the National Standards for Physical Education collaboratively in mixed and PLC teams fostered great conversations that ranged from assessment and grading practices to student behaviors.  Always an enthusiastic group, the PE teachers showed dedication, passion, and commitment to their students and each other.  These teachers are now in the process of creating PLC level action plans to channel that work for Ames students.

Putting Students First - The Power of Vertical Conversations

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then you are a leader.” - John Quincy Adams 

Teacher leadership can take many different forms. At Kate Mitchell, all teachers are joining together to become leaders for each other and for their students as they work to strengthen their PLCs through vertical conversations.

 

Four years ago, the spirit of PLCs and collaboration began to invade the hallways at Mitchell. Since then, teachers have aligned their understanding of the Common Core within grade level teams. Over the past four years, teachers have taken professional days with coaches, collaborated over the summer, and reflected as PLCs to refine their understanding of the rigor of the essential standards they are teaching.

With clear horizontal articulation of essential standards and assessments in each PLC, this year Mitchell teachers began to have vertical conversations. Using a format similar to one that was found on Steve Barkley's Blog, Kate Mitchell staff began processing, sharing and reflecting in groups with grade levels above and below. Conversations were guided by essential questions. Teachers shared grade level essential standards and examples of an assessments.  Deep thinking across grade levels ensued as they negotiated, found similarities, and extended their thinking on their practices as a result of sharing and reflection.

As a result of these conversations, teachers came to powerful realizations. Some teachers recognized the great work their peers are doing. “Shout out to second grade about all the differentiation they are providing for their kids,” said third grade teacher Amanda Kabrick. Second grade teacher Marie Shipley added, “I didn’t know third grade was using power points as a part of their lesson, and I want to try that.”

In addition to this recognition, the direction of future conversations also became clear. Fifth grade teacher Elaina Soulek wants “to continue meeting so we can look at rubrics and the standards to continue building off of the fourth grade skills.” Aligning work to other grade levels allows teachers to better understand the rigor of the standards at their own grade levels.

Another teacher, first grade teacher Heather Spalding, also realized the value in working vertically: “The fact that kindergarten is using the term ten frames is making the world of difference this year.”

Charlyn Mason, a kindergarten teacher, also sees value in continuing to meet. She reflected: “Both times we have met, I have walked away thinking of the importance of using the same language. That’s the next step we need to go schoolwide.”

The passion each of these teachers demonstrated throughout these vertical conversations inspired colleagues to learn more, to do more, and to become more so that all students can be successful. The leadership these teachers demonstrated during these conversations is a springboard for the future. As the year progresses, these conversations will continue. So will the spirit of collaboration, cooperation, and leadership that reminds us that all kids are our kids.