Last night, we shared a dinner table with a diverse group of incredibly nice folks. Compass House, our local Safe Place, was hosting their annual dinner and my family had a wonderful time hanging out with some of the incredible people behind this organization. We’ve made a few friends there this year, and last night, we became acquainted with some of their friends. Anyway. One of the gentlemen at our table struck up a conversation…
Yesterday was a coaching day, and I had an awful lot of fun hanging out with sixth grade students for the better part of the morning. I began the day in Danielle Cobb’s classroom, who has begun differentiating reading instruction and making use of formative assessment. Danielle knows that her kids struggle to identify main idea as they read, and yesterday’s demo lesson aimed to address that. I’m sharing that lesson here for two reasons:…
This week, I had the opportunity to present literacy coaching as a professional development model, and in preparing to do so, I realized that like all good things in education, much of its value rises out of the fact that it simply makes sense. When I think about how I learn, it often looks a bit like this: The process seems to work the same way whether I’m attempting to teach myself how to cook a meal worth eating (I…
In her book Literacy Coaching: The Essentials, Katherine Casey shares her experiences and the wisdom gained from her work as a school-based literacy coach. Casey was fortunate enough to find herself mentored by teacher-leader Lucy West. The second chapter of her book highlights the important ways in which her relationship with West enabled her to grow into her role as a coach: “During our teacher-leader training sessions, whenever we complained about teachers who were, in…