“Simplicity is requisite for reliability.”
Edsger Dijkstra, Dutch Scientist
This year has started with the honor of working with several beginning coaches in South America and the Caribbean. As these new leaders consider and absorb the many aspects of their new role, they have a wide array of questions. One common refrain is some version of, “What kinds of tools can I use to help me as I get started?” So many options jump to mind instantly: your school’s standards, student assessment tools and rubrics, your coaching schedule, coaching sentence stems and starters, initial coaching conversation templates, and the list goes on.
Then, I engaged in live “fishbowl” style coaching conversations where these new coaches observed as I planned and/or reflected with a teacher. I’ve repeated this several times in the opening weeks of this year. Each time, I entered the conversation with tools I consider reliable and time-tested, knowing that they may or may not make their way out, depending on how the teacher and I focused the work. These fishbowl conversations covered a range of grade levels (grade 2, grade 3, grade 6, grade 8, and instructional coaches), content areas (reading, writing, math, instructional coaching work), and pedagogical moves (supporting ELL students, differentiating for extending learners, using formative assessment strategies, setting coaching priorities). Across these conversations, two things remained nearly constant. In almost every instance, after the teacher had developed a plan for work in the unit, I introduced a blank monthly calendar as a way to review and commit to the decisions that had been made. More importantly, however, is that when I asked the teachers I was working with to reflect upon the parts of the conversation that had been most helpful, they universally said the calendar was crucial.
Using the Calendar
I’ve been reflecting on the ways in which I used the blank calendar and have recognized a few things:
- I tended to introduce the calendar in the final quarter of the conversation. Using it later in the conversation proved to be a natural and purposeful way to review the plans the teacher had begun to settle upon.
- Prior to introducing the calendar, we had clarified unit standards/goals and student learning targets. We had looked at the work we were asking
of students from a wide angle lens. The calendar helped us view the work more telescopically, moving from the unit goals to the lesson activities. - In sharing the calendar, I was prepared to remind the teachers of schoolwide events impacting their upcoming schedules: planned professional growth opportunities that changed the schedule, schoolwide screening assessments, and host country holidays. It seemed somewhat insignificant
in the moment, but upon reflection, I realize that this helped to build rapport with the teachers. Instantly, each teacher knew that I was attentive and responsive to their classroom realities.
The Classroom Impact
Teachers also shared some of the reasons why the calendar proved to be helpful:
- When asked to reflect and provide feedback about what was helpful in our coaching conversation, the teachers I worked with universally named the calendar as a key support.
- Teachers clarified the most important student work and created more time for the big goals of the unit. When they recognized the parameters and limits of the time available, they prioritized more time for the most important concepts.
- Teachers planned more differentiated learning experiences for students, often with more professional collaboration. As the teachers identified the concepts that warranted the most time, they simultaneously reduced
time for others. They also recognized that these reductions could pose challenges for students with unique learning needs and began to plan for co-teaching with specialists, ways to utilize teaching assistants, students to invite for small group instruction, and strategies for providing individual student supports.
The Schoolwide Impact
In one case, I was working with a team of coaches and school leaders who are in their first implementation year for coaching. Talking through the calendar with them led to clarity in several areas:
- School leaders and coaches set goals for the number of coaching cycles for the first semester.
- Knowing how much time was available for coaching cycles enabled the coaches to articulate their “menu of services” for teachers in the school.
- Establishing a coaching cycle schedule and “menu of services” is helping the team identify their benchmarks and success indicators as they engage themselves and their colleagues in this work.
A blank calendar. A simple tool that can yield big, reliable results.
How do you use calendars in your coaching or leadership work? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Always learning,
Shannon