Sunday, September 21, 2008

Improving the capacity to support . . .


Well, it was a good football weekend, the Bears beat Kentwood on Thursday and the Seahawks got a win today. I was actually able to leave a little early from the game without fear of the outcome while walking to the car. That is not always the case. The Cougars also got their first win yesterday so that only leaves the Huskies to make it the perfect football weekend. I think I'll enjoy this one for a little while, because I may have to wait awhile for that outcome.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's opportunity to complete planning for our first teaching and learning meeting with our administrative team, the Educational Leadership Team or ELT. Our focus is on improving our individual and collective capacity to influence the Classroom 10 journey for an individual teacher and for a group of teachers. Much of this work for the year will be in math as we search for the strategies that support teacher understanding and capacity to create learning environments focused on process, Habits of Mind, thinking skills, and our Outcomes and Indicators.

We are asking each administrator to video a planning or feedback conference with a teacher for sharing with the ELT. Prior to sharing the video the administrator will share his/her personal goal for improving their ability to support teacher growth over time. The intent is to provide feedback to support individual and group reflection on the strategies that work for us in Tahoma. I'm sure this will bring its fair share of anxiety because we haven't done a video where the focus is on the administrator not the teacher. It only seems fair since that is what we are asking of teachers, to make their work transparent, to share with others, and to make the shift to Classroom 10.

In a sense, we are doing what winning coaches do; improving our coaching and consulting skills to support the work of each of us and all of us. It is going to be energizing and informative as we use interdependence to support a worthy learning goal.

1 comment:

Ethan Smith said...

This is one more example of what makes Tahoma different...we continue to narrow the beam of the laser that is our focus on improving student learning. I've only been to a couple of ELT meetings. Any meeting you remember in which we couldn't get our tech to work, chances are, I was there. I wasn't planing on attending any more if I could help it. Now, you've got me pulling out the meeting schedule to see if I can attend. Now that's something.