Starting your year as an instructional coach can be overwhelming. For me, the beginning of the year looks something like this:1. Present at two days of district training.
2. Attend nine days of district training.
3. Get my room set up.
4. Meet with the Leadership Team.
5. Distribute materials to teachers.
6. Plan campus professional development.
7. Deliver that campus professional development.
8. Do whatever my principal tells me to do.
Some of these decisions are obviously out of my control. I don't get to choose what the district decides to focus on, for example, and if my principal has some new thoughts to share during Leadership, we're going to roll with it. But the most essential first step, before I do any of those steps above, is setting goals for myself for the school year.
Here are a few things I've learned about setting goals for the school year.
Connect to what's already in place.
A good goal starts with what's already happening and moves it forward a few steps. Instead of throwing something completely foreign at teachers at the beginning of the year, it can help to take stock in what your teachers already do well.
Maybe they have some strong writing practices in place. You can grow this by working on writing in the content areas. Maybe the shared reading practices are consistent, but need some work. There you go! Work on adding engagement and strategies to shared reading! No matter how amazing the campus is, there is always something that can be done to push it forward.
Usually, the goals I create for myself are based on teacher feedback (a survey we made on SurveyMonkey) from the end of the year, conversations with teachers, and classroom visits. However, you might sometimes find that certain practices need to be completely replaced because they are actually detrimental to student learning. In that case, make sure that you are prepared to address the issues with the current practice through research.
Consider the impact on student learning.
A goal is only important if it will have an impact on student learning. Ideally, you want to work towards goals that will support student learning for years to come. We're playing a long game here, folks. No band-aids for us! We want sustainable growth for all of the students who attend our campus and those who are served by our teachers in the future.
Growing the instructional practices on a campus is your number one responsibility (unless your district or campus admin tells you otherwise!). Choose some essential pieces that will make a real difference in how well students are prepared to embark on their future academic and professional careers!
In order to ensure that the goals will reach students, you have to have some sort of plan to roll them out. Will teachers plan one lesson a week using the strategies? Will the materials be provided for teachers and discussed during PLC? Will you look for the goals during your classroom visits, or will the principal look for them during her walk-throughs? That's how a goal becomes reality for students.
Focus!
As you consider your goals, make them specific enough so that you will know when you've achieved them. It's also important because a broad goal results in floundering! Believe me, I know. Instead of stating that you want to improve reading practices on your campus, choose a specific spot to focus on. Is it shared reading? Read aloud? Guided reading? Independent reading? Reading stations? Homework? That's a big category! Focus on the mode of instruction and the exact strategies you'd like to explore, such as rigor, engagement, etc.
As far as how many specific goals you'd like to focus on, I would say somewhere around 4-5 goals are reasonable, especially if you are differentiating goals for different grade levels. Too many goals means you'll be crazy and unable to focus your support to teachers. Teachers will be crazy, too. Learning takes time and repetition, and if you're all over the place, no one will understand the big picture or the point of what you're trying to accomplish.
When possible, team up!
Great goals include other members of support staff. Consider your colleagues. Can you work with the librarian to create some awesome reading programs in the library? Will the technology coordinator support your goals to integrate technology lessons? Can you work with the math and science coach to facilitate teacher-leader capacity through planning a teacher conference (like we're doing this fall)? You're all support team members: support each other and the teachers effectively by making it a team effort!
Try to add a human goal, too.
Teachers are people, and coaches are, too. Think about a challenge you have in working with a specific colleague or grade level. Do you have trouble relating to a certain person? Do you find yourself anxious at the thought of working with a specific grade level? There's your goal! What can you do to change this situation and become more effective in that area?
These are my goals for 2016-2017.
1. Support teachers' use of mentor texts in narrative and expository writing through planning with an aligned set of materials for each teacher. This happens during PLC.
2. Integrate technology seamlessly into our reading and writing planning, rather than planning technology extensions or projects.
3. For grades 2-5, provide training and follow-up to teachers in supporting students in quality responses to reading.
4. For grades K-2, focus training and follow-up support on refining our explicit teaching and modeling practices of reading strategies in read aloud and guided reading.
5. Focus on building capacity in our teachers. Provide opportunities for them to share strategies, model lessons, visit other classrooms, and lead meetings and professional development.
Obviously, this isn't everything I intend to do next year. There are a hundred smaller initiatives and trainings, meetings and plans that must be done. But these are the big ideas that I will try to achieve through ongoing training and support throughout the year.
Check out the complete set of posts in the Starting the Year as an Instructional Coach Series!
And be sure to check out the rest of the posts in the series:
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