#ObserveMe

Shifting Culture: a reflection on being an instructional coach and week 1 of the #IMMOOC

How do you create an innovative environment in your school? As an Instructional Coach, this is something I think about often. How can I help teachers try new things, reflect on their teaching, experience new professional learning, and grow in their craft??

Everyday is an opportunity to get better. Don’t waste it! And of course, a favorite quote from George Couros, Chapter 1 of The Innovator’s Mindset:

Change is difficult and sometimes when we are looking for change, we expect it to happen all at once. But in reality, change comes in small opportunities. The important thing in shifting culture it to take advantage of those small opportunities.

In Instructional Coaching, those small opportunities come by finding a few educators who are willing try new things, to reflect, and to grow. The energy of success and excitement from those few educators will spread around the school. An excellent example is #ObserveMe!

Change is a great thing if you look at it as an opportunity. Take a moment and think…what transformational things you have seen around you? Those started out as a change. How can you embrace those? How can you use what you teach to enable the students to be ready for the real world? Many teachers are already working with students in transformational ways. I see teachers working hard everyday to individualize instruction for each student, getting to know each student, finding their strengths and thus preparing them for success!

Everyone has their strengths. How can you find small opportunities and use your strengths to make great change? To innovate in education? Start small…you might surprise yourself! Shift the Culture of your department, your school, your community!

Have you heard about the #ObserveMe idea? It started about a month ago, posted on a blog from Robert Kaplinsky. I saw it on twitter and retweeted it to the other Instructional Coaches on my campus. I’m at a high school and we have 4 instructional coaches: Math, Science, ELA, and Social Studies. Other Instructional Coaches around the district started tweeting and emailing about it as well and it has grown!

I could not be more excited about teachers being vulnerable, opening their doors, taking risks, and working on goals to improve their teaching!

Here are a few examples:

observe-me-example2 observe-me-example1

So far, a lot of teachers are putting their goals as the instructional focus for our campus, which I think is great! We have a strong campus instructional focus this year on:

Small Group Purposeful Talk
Writing Critically
Framing the Lesson (we took the phrasing/terminology from the Fundamental Five).

For me, in Social Studies, this means there is more time for the students to interact with their learning (to analyze, think, process, question, create, and more) and less time for the teacher to be the giver of information. Many of the teachers on my campus are already working well with more student focused lessons. Physically writing their goals and displaying them on the #ObserveMe sign outside their classroom door is enabling more opportunities to grow and practice. It is also giving them more feedback from others on those goals and growth.

I am so excited that teachers are embracing #ObserveMe. I love that they are making goals on what they are working on improving! If you follow any Steve Barkley, you have probably heard him say that Teaching is a team sport and Teaching needs to be a public act. I think #ObserveMe helps connect both of those!

Tag: #ObserveMe

Shifting Culture

What about you? Have you opened your door?