- Be intentional in building capacity in others: I think that administrators use a lot of time and resource monitoring, evaluating, and (sometimes) being overly critical of teachers who need support. However, principals and assistant principals could multiply their influence by providing the stronger teachers in their school with the professional learning and the resource to mentor those teachers who are struggling. Peer assistance and coaching can be dynamic opportunities to grow the mentor and the mentee. And, because it is so organic, it can a save a lot of time.
- Be intentional with planning time: So often when I sit in on instructional planning meetings, true collaboration is not taking place. We bicker over details. We dismiss ideas. After an hour, ultimately, like Routman articulated, teachers simply come together and “cooperate” around what will be taught: We reach a feigned consensus, just for everyone to leave the table and do what they are going to do any way in their own classrooms. True collaboration takes time on the front end. Teachers need to have studied the unit, digested the content, and determined how it is going to fit into their literacy program before coming to the table to collaborate. Then, when we come together, we should be brainstorming what instructional strategies we would like to bring to the unit of study. Finally, we decide upon which strategies, in sequence, we would like to implement that fit our greater vision for literacy instruction.
- Be intentional with instructional walks: Instructional walks can be intimidating to the classroom teacher whose classroom you are walking into. It is usually an entourage of people with clipboards seemingly coming to critique every little thing that the teacher is doing. Instructional walks should validate, celebrate, and support teachers. The feedback should be positive and immediate. Otherwise, they are a waste of time and destroy trust.
- Be intentional with connecting instruction, assessment, and professional learning: As teachers we know that instruction, professional development, and assessment (not necessarily standardized tests) is a cycle. When one of the links is broken, a lot of time can be wasted. I think that a school's instruction should be guided by formative assessments (running records, comprehension tests, etc.), and the the professional learning for teachers should be based upon the needs of improvement on the assessments. Too often we fail to teach with intentionality because we do not have a sense of what our students know, and we participate in professional learning opportunities that simply waste our time because we do not know what we need to learn to move our students forward. School-based leaders should be intentional in preserving the link between instruction, assessment, and professional learning, or it will seem as though they are spinning their wheels.
Time. As a teacher, I always want more of this seemingly illusive resource. After reading Chapter 5 Read, Write, Lead by Regie Routman, it is clear that the time you are given as a school-based leader can be maximized if you are more intentional with the minutes! Here are some of my reflections after reading:
1 Comment
2/13/2016 09:15:56 am
Hi Matthew,
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