April's Coaching Fellowship Reflections

Hey all, Guess what?!?!?!!? It's the Friday before Fall Break!!!!! Yes, cue the confetti people!! Now, what that really means for a lot of educators (me included), is that I now have a week to catch up on all the things I am behind on for school. If that is the case for you, take at least one day to disconnect and have some non work related fun! This week, one of the things I plan to catch up on are all the resources that I want to make for the teachers on my cycle. They will kind of be "Welcome Back" gifts for the first day back to school after the break. In my school, many teachers have had to really work to get behavior and instructional procedures down before feeling that they could integrate some technology into their daily lessons. No, I know that integration of tech and behavior and instructional procedures can be taught at the same time, but every one is in a different place on the tech integration continuum. With my teachers who are ready, I started ...

So......, just when I thought things were getting back to normal, WHAM! Nope, nope, not a normal week! We had our first round of Scantron Performance Series testing this week. Which means, everybody's schedule is out of wack! On top of that, the internet wasn't working for the first day (the entire test is online)! Teachers and students are exactly the same when their schedules are disrupted. They just seem to get a little nutty. We reconfigured our testing plan and Tuesday and Wednesday went just fine. We tried to do make-ups today and.....the students laptops would not connect to the internet!!! On top of the fact that today was a half day for students. I said all that to say, this week while meeting with teachers, I talked about the importance of being flexible and always having a back up to your back up. There have been times that I have come in to my classroom and the internet is out all over the building, or there's a "pop up"assembly, or I have to cov...

Well, this has been a rough week! Why is it ALWAYS so hard to come back from an extended weekend!?!? It's not like we don't know that the day is coming when we have to go back to work. On top of that, I've felt a bit under the weather this week. I do expect to make a full recover and return to my video blogging soon. Last week, I talked about my need to be a better manager of my time. This week, I decided to do two things more diligently. One, carry my schedule EVERYWHERE! Two, when ever I begin the next task on my schedule, I set my timer on my phone for the time I have allotted on my paper schedule. Whether it's working with teachers during their planning, observing, or working on other DLP things, I set my timer. I have to say that together, both of these changes helped me to stick to my schedule and my time much better this week. So, I think I will keep it up. This week, I want to work on goal setting for myself. I already know what I want my goal to be for next...

So......my biggest challenge for this week has been managing my time (as evidenced by this extremely late post!). There are so many things that happen in a day that threaten to drain my time or kill my perfectly color coded schedule! One of the suggestions I received from my mentor coach was to use the items from the weekly newsletter as my absolute must does for the week when creating my schedule with teachers. Making sure to build these pieces in my schedule each week and making them a priority. Really blocking off time for them each and every week. Another suggestion that I thought about was to share my schedule with more than just the teachers that I am working with this cycle. This way, they can see that I, like them, am pretty busy too! Maybe seeing where or what I am supposed to me moving on to next on my schedule will help them be more conscience of my time. I have a few who will also "check me" if I'm not where I am supposed to be! Some times I have teacher...