Coaching, Vulnerability, and the Growth Mindset

I love how as a staff we chose "having a growth mindset" as one of the expectations of ourselves.  Even though I had originally planned to look for examples of how our staff supports our community/family-oriented culture in for this week's blog post, I saw so many examples of staff members having a growth mindset during the week, that I had to focus on that.  I applaud you all for how you have displayed this in our PLC meetings, Kagan coaching, and in all the ways I don't see. I could go on and on about how cool it was to listen to you all discuss the standards during your PLCs, decide on something you wanted to learn together and the ways you were going to support each other, but I think I'll focus on the awesomeness of you all participating in Kagan Coaching.

Thank you for being willing to go out on a limb in the Kagan coaching.  I had several tell me, "I have never done this structure before..." and "I'm not really comfortable with this one."  THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! Thank you for being brave and vulnerable and trying something new.  That's EXACTLY what the coaching is for!  It's not supposed to be a showcase of your absolute best.  Save that for planned observations! lol. Coaching is a time for you to experiment...and get help and feedback...to see if a structure works they way you hope it will, but if it doesn't, you can get feedback for why and get ideas for how to tweak it instead of just abandoning the structure all together.

Coaching could also be time to get feedback on one of your "old standby" structures.  Ms. Coleman shared that sometimes when you do a structure so often with your class, your students might get almost "too comfortable" with it and leave parts out.  I hadn't thought about that either!  Coaching might bring to light those areas of the structure that are important, but might get over-looked by the students when they are used to do it often.

Doing a structure often is definitely not a bad thing, though! When I saw Mrs. Vance's class doing Quiz-Quiz-Trade it was apparent how perfect the structure was for them.  Since the students were familiar with the structure, they could focus on what they were working on within the structure like the peer coaching and interpersonal skills.

You will have to ask the Thompsons about their experiences with Talking Chips and Mrs. Fain about trying Find Someone Who! They all purposely tried something new! It was really cool to see, and I don't know about them, but I learned so much!  Check out this Find Someone Who form that Mrs. Fain found and personalized for her content!  So cool! I am really not sure who learns more from coaching, the teachers or me!

When I am coaching, I have to pay attention to all the specific nuances involved in each structure.  If I don't see the students doing a part of a structure, I begin to think of the purpose of that part and wonder if it's necessary or if it's okay to tweak that part of it.  Ultimately, I find that most parts have a specific purpose that is important, often unrelated to the content.  I have YET to find a better strategy than Kagan Cooperative Learning for hitting so many goals that we are trying to accomplish both academically and within the soft skills we are teaching.  Something as simple as a parting gambit teaches the kids how to communicate politely with peers, while the peer coaching part teaches the kids to be active listeners and to sift through the information they are hearing to see if the student is correct in their thinking.

So, thank you.  Thank you for trusting me with trying something new.  Thank you for being willing to put yourselves out there each month and for taking the time to teach skills that may or may not have anything to do with your academic content, but are so important for our students.