Introvert English Teacher Meets Extrovert Math Teacher

Jill & Lindsey: As we come to the close of our first full month of the 2018-2019 school year, we could not be more excited about all of the phenomenal things happening in classrooms and in PLCs, and we could not be more grateful for all of the amazing people that we work with. We are particularly appreciative of the chance we've had to talk with teachers individually about how we can best support each of you with the type of feedback that works best for you, the resources you need, and the strengths you are willing to share with other teachers at our school.

Image used courtesy ProProfs.com

Jill: Lindsey and I are also learning a lot about each other's individual strengths and how we can build on our different backgrounds as we work to support you as coaches. For example, I am an introvert with a background as an English teacher. Lindsey is clearly more extroverted than I am, and it's been so much fun to have her energy and humor nearby as we bounce around ideas.

Lindsey:  Yes, I am an extroverted prior Math teacher. Apparently, Jill believes that apostrophes and grammar are important. I have no concept of why we would spend a whole slew of time editing when we could be manipulating data. My whole goal right now is actually to screw up as much grammar as possible.  So, if you have read this far, get ready for a whole bunch of awful English. No judgment necessary - I know I'm terrible at it!

Jill & Lindsey: One of the things we heard from many teachers in our initial conversations with you was a desire to more easily keep track of resources, tools, and strategies that we share. To help organize all of the materials we might find, we've created this website where you can read through our coaching blog posts or skip straight to sections that are more relevant to what you're looking for, whether that is technology, instructional strategies, or resources specific to your content area. We'd love your feedback on this format -- we're always looking for ways to improve as coaches and how we communicate with you.

THIS COOL THING THAT WE FOUND:

Jill & Lindsey: We have posted our first tool available to you under the instructional strategies section, a post from Alice Keeler on writing essays and giving feedback on Google Slides.

This resource is cool because it shows how you can give students feedback on specific sections of their writing while they work. For instance, if a student is working on their conclusion, that is the only section they share with you. You can give them video feedback, drag bitmojis, add pictures, etc. Then when the student is done with all of their sections, they can send their work to a Google Doc with the click of a button.

We'll cross-post cool things that we find on the other resources pages on this site so that they will be there in perpetuity (this is Jill's word, but you already knew that). 

TEACHER FEATURE: Kaylee Grote

We decided to feature Kaylee in this post because of the great work she's been doing in matching her formative assessments to her biology learning targets. Kaylee realizes that before giving a summative assessment, she wants to make sure she has had a chance to do a quick formative check of her students' understanding for each learning target and that she can provide an opportunity for feedback and reteaching if she needs to. She is a perfect example of a teacher putting the PLC process into action -- well done, Kaylee!!

TEACHER FEATURE: Ben Henson

Ben's also been doing some fantastic things with his orchestra students that we wanted to feature. He has been working hard to help his students draw connections from the music they play to art, literature, and history. For example, one piece has a clear link to the Edgar Allan Poe short story "The Tell-Tale Heart." After examining a series of rhythms together as a class, Ben helped his students see how their increasing tempo mimics the quickening beating of the narrator's heart as he becomes more and more panicked and paranoid. In another example Ben led his students in a discussion of a work of medieval art and connected music history to their current piece as they learned how different musical intervals historically conveyed different ideas and emotions. The students realized that the intervals and themes from the work of art they were discussing were present in the piece they were playing. Ben is collaborating with Jane Dupuis and her students to help make the connections they draw even stronger throughout the semester.