Coaching and Mentoring Project

This project is an example of a complete coaching cycle with a first year teacher teaching 3rd grade. This coaching cycle highlights my work in supporting teachers, and specifically in this example new teachers, in developing their practice through planning and providing feedback on emerging practices (III.v.f).  It also demonstrates my focus on centering students and student achievement in how I use coaching to make sure we improve outcomes for all of our students (III.v.a). 

Students are central in my coaching discussions and planning, and this project highlights that.  The majority of students in this particular class need intensive support to develop their math skills, and are also students that have been historically undeserved.  It is key to equitable outcomes to focus on this. This project completes a full cycle of centering the students as we plan, gather data, and reflect on the effectiveness of a particular lesson. We use the reflection to consider next steps for planning (III.v.a.). 

One way this project strengthened my coaching skills was by having me be more mindful of how to gather data for coaching conversations. After engaging in this cycle, I now include a specific question about gathering data in every planning coaching cycle now. I ask teachers what data they would like to gather to reflect on whether their lesson was successful. Depending on the focus of a coaching cycle this could differ. For example, recently one teacher working on planning questions asked me to record questions and students responses within a lesson so that we could analyze them after. It is important to gather data  so that teachers will think about how their planning and intentional teacher moves has impact in their classroom (III.v.b.).