Happy Teacher Appreciation Week! 👩‍🏫 We started off May by learning how to use Jamboard to promote positive reflection, a few ways ICs can address their emotions when working with teachers, how to celebrate successes through virtual or physical documentation panels, and more. Enjoy!

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Using Jamboard to Share and Celebrate Success

Violet Christensen shares three ways to use Google Jamboard to promote positive reflection and celebrate successes with her teachers.

" I've found that a key part of my job as an instructional coach is to pull out optimism in educators as best I can. When we start by talking about what is working, or what breakthroughs we've had recently, the entire conversation flows more smoothly. . . . By asking everyone to share their coaching win since our last meeting, the digital room became energized immediately. Sharing out also brought great coaching concepts to the forefront of others' minds."

Recognizing Your Feelings

Joseph Kanke explores three response situations ICs face when addressing their emotions.

"In the past I have viewed emotions as a chink in a coaches armor, an Achilles heel if you will. There is no denying they will show up, humans are emotional beings, and coaches are human. The question is how you will react. . . . There are essentially three options of WHEN: In the moment when speaking with the client, at a future session, or individually through reflection/journaling."

Evaluation, Feedback, and Coaching

Elena Aguilar covers a few characteristics that both successful ICs and managers possess.

" Coaching requires a tremendous amount of skill. . . . There are very few things that just will or won't work. The key is almost always in how they are done. Here's what matters most: purpose, transparency and readiness."

Focusing on Professional Learning

Matt Kelly believes effective PD leads to professional learning but only when applied to daily life.

"In the context of instructional coaching, PD opportunities can simply open the door for profoundly impactful PL. A coach up against strong teacher resistance may seek PD to address their challenges, but PD alone will not solve the issue. PD provides tools and knowledge, but ultimately, the coach will need to successfully modify and apply the content of the PD to fit their needs."

Celebrating Growth

Stephanie Affinito highlights three ways ICs can use physical or virtual documentation panels to celebrate teaching, learning, and inquiry in their organization.

" The mere process of creating the panel facilitates reflection and research into the teaching and learning in our classrooms. We make choices on the artifacts we collect and choose, we make hypotheses about the teaching and learning in our classrooms and we ask questions about the discoveries we uncover, noting our learning publicly along the way. I like to think of these panels as a multi-modal learning portfolio of sorts, but it goes far beyond that and offers a platform to not only document learning, but to tell the story behind it, why it matters and become curious about our practices."

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