Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas and 
Happy Holidays
After spending the last few days with family, celebrating and enjoying fellowship with cousins, nieces, and nephews I found myself repeatedly explaining, NO I didn't quite teaching.  Lots of questions on what does an instructional coach do?  Why did you change?  Do you enjoy it?

So I had lots of reflections and thoughts during this holiday season about the first semester of being an instructional coach.  I love my job, and I am thankful of the change.  It has brought new challenges and new joys into my teaching and learning.

Fantasy Football - Life Lessons

I’ll admit it.  I am a fantasy football fan.  It gives a whole new approach to how you watch a football game.  Cheering on players when they run for 10 yards, but getting mad at your favorite team for scoring a touchdown using the second string running back. 

Going into the weekend I had the number one seed in my leagues' playoff.  I was planning how I would be spending my winnings.  So come Monday morning, when I find myself trailing by 20 plus points and only a merger 12% chance of winning I thought it would be a good time to reflect on life lessons that I could learn through fantasy football.

#1) Consistent success takes INTENTIONAL strategy:  Starting from draft day (think our pre-service days in August) you have to set a plan and goals.  Then determine how we reach those goals.

#2) You have to take some RISKS:  Learning from mistakes, take some risks on some new young players (new teaching strategies) and being willing to make some mistakes.

#3) Plan for the FUTURE:  It’s a long season, you are thankful and happy about winning each week (formative assessments) but you need to focus on getting into the playoffs (Unit Assessments) and then playing for a championship game (Iowa Assessments).

#4) Get some coaching/advice:  Although there is some luck involved, to build a winning lineup it takes research, tips and advice from successful fantasy football champions (instructional coaches).

So what Life Lessons have you learned from Fantasy Football?

BEST LESSON EVER

I have always been amazed and inspired by how good of a sermon my Pastor gives each week.  He has me laughing so hard it brings tears to my eyes, deep in thought and reflecting on my life, and then building my understanding of the Bible.  This happens every week! His lessons are so good and have such an impact.  I have often thought, well if I only had to plan one teaching lesson a week I could have the BEST lesson in education.  But teachers have 5 days of instruction to plan for, and might even have several different classes.  I was at one point in my teaching career teaching 5 preps.  That's 25 lessons a week to plan for!
Well, during the past two weeks I have had the opportunity to co-teach and plan 2 lesson, spending several days in preparation for the ultimate lesson.  Working with the classroom teacher and building (stealing) upon the ideas and strategies that I have seen teachers using I feel as if those 2 lessons have been some of the best teaching that I have ever done.   I AM patting myself on the back, but the classroom teacher also played a big role in this.  This wasn't just me creating a lesson.  We worked as a team.  But the advantage was that I was able to work on creating and building the lesson while the teacher was able to focus on their regular everyday duties.  I was also able to take the quick write that was part of lesson number 2, and go through and write comments to all the students.  Something that if I was just teaching, I know I would have never had the time to sit down and do, especially at the end of the semester with test looming around the corner.

FULL Potential

Almost every great athlete has a coach.  Why?
Do they not know how to play the game?
Are they not capable of being successful without them?
 In order to reach their full potential they want someone watching every little move and critically analyzing it.  They want to be the best!  Now, the coach might not be a great athlete themselves, but they have the skills and vision to see how to get the most out of their athletes.
As an instructional coach, I am trying to do this same thing with teachers.  I know that teachers know how to teach.  I know that they can and probably have been successful before.  But I want to help them improve.  If you aren't moving forward, then you are falling behind.  By providing teachers with critical support and research-validated interventions, I can help teachers improvement student achievement and reach their maximum capabilities.

Lifelong Learner

It is my birthday today, which got me thinking about being a lifelong learner.  So the math geek in me ran some numbers.  I have spent around 24 years of my life (70%) as a STUDENT in a classroom.  But that is only part of my learning experience.  From the time I could walk I was following my father, learning to be like him.  I love it, but I am still trying to learn how to golf.  I am learning about new technology and learning how to be a blogger!  I can't stress it enough, we are continually learning.  If not, then as Albert suggests we are dying.  In my short time as an instructional coach I am amazed by the things I have learned.  My challenge is to pass as much learning as possible to others.  To be a model of what a lifelong learner is both to my colleagues and to students.

Facing Challenges

As I was looking through quotes I came upon this...which so well describes the feelings that I have had these first couple of months into my new position.  It is a challenge being an instructional coach.  I have had to break out of my shell and have some hard conversations that I would have rather just avoided.  However, at the same time, I am growing so much from this role.  I look back at these first couple month and I know that all the sweat and pain have been worth it.  We are just reaching the halfway point; I am excited about where this is going.