my blogs
Find a shorter version of my Making the Most Out of Professional Development blog at Teaching Channel.com “Professional development is a continuous, connected and unique journey of sharing, learning, creating, implementing, reflecting and revising, that is fueled by your passion, purpose and whys, and grounded in the core beliefs of uniqueness, confidence, and the ability to continuously use and share new learning effectively and meaningfully to authentically meet and impact the unique needs of learners and the workplace” ~ Cherry-Anne Gildharry. In education, our ultimate target group is our students. To meet their unique needs, educators must gain authentic and evolving skills to impact learning way beyond the face-to-face or virtual classroom. Therefore, professional development in education is the medium for gaining the knowledge and skills needed to develop our students into lifelong innovative and adaptive learners by providing them with enduring, rigorous, applicable, and real-world learning experiences so they can make a unique impact in our world. Whether you are a leader of students or educators, this blog will provide you with some insightful ideas for making professional development a continuous, connected, and unique journey that you get the most out of. Here are some thought provoking questions that might provide a purpose before or as you read this blog.
Find a shorter version of my Personalized Coaching blog at Teaching Channel.com Personalized Coaching to Address Teacher Shortage, Close Learning Gaps and Disrupt InequityA SAGE Personalized Coaching Model
Personalize is defined as "design or produce something to meet someone’s individual requirement~ Wikipedia. When we personalize coaching, we provide support aligned to the coachees’ learning styles, experiences, and their needs. Personalized coaching is a new paradigm in education, if not, then it is a model educators need to implement. Too often we adopt a one-size-fits all, an all-too-harmful approach that is hard to deviate from. There is a strong positive correlation between a one-size-fits-all approach and teacher shortage, learning gaps and inequity; the more we adopt a one-size-fits-all approach, the greater the problem. If we want to close learning gaps, retain teachers and disrupt inequity, we need to immediately work on steering away from a one-size-fits all approach and implement personalized coaching with fidelity and consistency. We need to capitalize on our educators’ unique styles and strengths through personalized coaching. I define personalized coaching as, “authentic ongoing actions and processes that support and allow for personalized products and strategies aligned to the coachee’s needs, talents and styles to powerfully impact teaching and learning and eliminate the inequities that result from a one-size-fits all approach ~ Cherry-Anne Gildharry. This SAGE personalized coaching model explores areas we need to focus on and models we need to authentically implement. Find a shorter version of my Strengths-Based coaching blog at Teaching Channel.com Strengths-Based Coaching- A SAGE Approach Now more than ever, educators need genuine support and a deep focus on honoring their strengths. So, how do we authentically coach and support educators in achieving their goals and helping them become even better than they were yesterday, while focusing on their talents? How do we encourage buy-in to profound strategies while still honoring the coachee’s experience and uniqueness? The answer is simple; through strengths-based coaching. We must start with and focus on coachees’ strengths if we want to impact change and be genuine change agents. This is not to say that we do not focus on areas for growth, but when we take a genuine and SAGE approach to strengths-based coaching we inspire educators to acquire growth. I define strengths-based coaching as, “an unwavering and genuine partnership of support and belief that focuses on identifying and using coaches' authentic strengths to help them build confidence and competence, heighten intrinsic motivation, achieve success and acquire growth in reaching their fullest potential.” Being a leader is an honorable, dignified and impactful role, so it is extremely important that we take this role seriously and always lead with dignity, class and professionalism. To do this, you have to be fair, just, honest, genuine, confident, open-minded, transparent, and more. Do not just talk about these leadership traits, instead you have to epitomize them in your every action. To lead coaches or anyone with dignity, class and professionalism, you have to be willing to engage in brutally honest self-reflection on a regular basis and transition your honest reflective thoughts into genuine actions. Never ever should your actions be those of creating division among your coaches, teachers, district personnel and other educators. This type of leadership is referred to as a Divide and Conquer leadership style and is generally adopted by leaders who lack confidence in their abilities. While I was serving as a full-time teacher, I shared a tweet in 2016 in regards to divide and conquer. The day after, some of my leaders (who weren't even my Twitter followers) started throwing remarks about divide and conquer. Clearly my message had an impact! I also got to see the true characters of these leaders. Here is an article relating to the divide and conquer leadership approach that was shared with a group of coaches I worked with by leaders who I believed divided and conquered in so many ways. When you listen to the stories of administrators, directors and other leaders, you may hear that some of them got into fights, played lots of mind games and went down the wrong paths when they were younger, but they changed their paths and had the determination to become leaders. To these leaders, I say I admire your persistence, determination, mindset change and achievements in becoming better leaders. However, genuine change never ever brings previous negative behaviors into leadership positions. If you are still bringing the "fights" and mind games, laughing at others, using others' hard work and ideas to climb the ladder and still bringing other negative actions that wreck culture into your leadership roles, you have not at all changed your path. Micromessages Administrative leaders, directors, and all other leaders must be aware of the subtle negative micromessages they send to teachers and other staff members when coaches introduce instructional strategies. Leaders need to ensure that their micromessages are positive and supportive of the role of the instructional coach. If as a leader you subtly or directly put down and suppress strategies your instructional coach brings to teachers, then you are doing a disservice to students and teachers by sending negative micromessages. My Leading Instructional Coaches Blog Series consists of 6 parts which focus on some of the foundational elements in leading instructional coaches. In some of these blogs, I have shared a bit of my personal experiences and stories as an instructional coach. These situations are not stated as callouts or what some may view as being negative, instead, they are genuinely shared to bring awareness for improving instructional coaching leadership and leadership as a whole. I believe being respectfully candid and honest about your experiences impacts change tremendously. As an instructional coach and a minority within minority groups in education, I have experienced poor leadership behaviors by a few leaders/bosses. Some of these experiences were me being called in to my bosses offices often to be reprimanded, laughed at, blocked from doing my work, wrongfully written up and more by poor leaders, even though I was one of the hardest working ICs who went above and beyond for students, teachers and leaders.
In my role as a coach, I have also worked with some extremely genuine, honest, professional and amazing leaders who were my support system and inspired me through it all. To impact change and ensure that all leaders strive to be as amazing leaders of instructional coaches or just amazing leaders, period, I believe we need to have a voice and share some of our challenging experiences. As a coach, I am also a leader, so my advice is also to make sure that I continue to reflect on my leadership style and continue to be a genuine leader. This blog was inspired by a CMC call for articles., an organization that I am a member of. It shares some of the visualizing mathematics strategies I used in my classroom to impact teaching and learning, a technique that is extremely powerful in deepening and extending learning. As a result of this technique and others, 100% of my students were successful in state tests for consecutive years. For me, it is not about the scores, but instead the profound and enduring learning experiences and connections to real-world situations that my students acquired, which translated to great scores. Visualization is defined as the “formation of mental visual images and the act or process of interpreting in visual terms or of putting into visible form” ~ Merriam Webster dictionary. In this definition, it is noted that visualization relates to mental and visible forms. In teaching mathematics to students, both forms of visualization are extremely important and are interconnected; the visible form is profoundly impacted by the mental visual form. Before we can create a visible form, we need to create a profound mental image in our mind. Visualizing mathematics has extensive benefits in teaching and learning mathematics. Some of the benefits explored in this article are those relating to and involving literacy skills, math research and labs, and math conversations. Students develop literacy skills and make deeper inferences and profound connections to cross-curricular and real-life situations when they engage in visualizing mathematics. Incorporating math tasks and math labs that require research deepens visualization in math and creates a plethora of connected mental and visible images. Math talk, student talk or student discussion, however termed, provides students with extensive opportunities to visualize mathematics and create profound visual products. Visualizing Mathematics to Develop Literacy Skills and Make Deeper Real-World Connections Mental Visual to Visible forms (word and pictures)
Visualizing mathematics helps students develop literacy skills when they engage in mental visuals to visible forms of words and pictures to make great inferences and profound connections to real-world concepts in word problems and text. When students engage in mental visualization before they add their thoughts on paper to create a visible product, they make extensive connections to their personal experiences and information becomes even more relevant, meaningful and enduring before it is transferred to a visible form. One technique that is used to help students create a mental visual image is to have them close their eyes after reading a word problem or text and visualize the content. This is a very simple yet powerful strategy that helps students create dynamic mental visual images which they then transfer to visible forms using pictures and words. Some of my students chose to keep their eyes open, and this was allowed as well. In the pictures below, you will see my students’ examples of visible forms, end products of mental visuals that consist of words and pictures. In order to get students to master picture and word visible visualization so it becomes a natural part of their learning, have them work on one word problem or text at a time. Initially, it may take an entire period for students to complete one task/word problem, but it is definitely worth going slow to go fast when developing students’ literacy skills using mental visual to visible forms of pictures and words. While instructional coaching has been a part of education for a while now, I believe the role of an instructional coach needs to be valued more in so many ways. I have served unofficially and officially in this role for a few years and I feel very moved to share my story, my experience and my voice in advocating for valuing the role of an instructional coach. I am a strengths-based, personalizing learning and growth mindset coach and a lifelong learner, so I am always open to alternate and contradicting thoughts and ideas, which I also gain from research, articles, and others through collaboration discussions and networks. Instructional Coaching Job Description It is extremely important that the role of an instructional coach is properly defined. HR in connection with other leaders must ensure that they are defining and outlining the true role of a coach, if the job is being classified and advertised as an instructional coach, and being funded accordingly. Many times instructional coaching jobs are classified as an instructional coach, but the description aligns to that of an interventionist or purely a full time teacher. Do not get me wrong, I have the greatest respect for teachers, interventionists, and others who are in the classroom facilitating learning fulltime. I believe they are the most important people who provide our students with an education, and we need to do everything we can to support them; I was a teacher for 24 years. However, the role of an instructional coach entails different responsibilities and skillsets and as such should be outlined in ways that the coach will be supporting teachers. Some of these are co-planning lessons, co-teaching when needed, providing feedback, engaging in coaching cycles, engaging in coaching conversations, providing professional development, developing and supporting teacher's goals, using one's content knowledge and instructional coaching skillset to profoundly impact teaching and learning, and so much more. If a district/organization/school is in need of a teacher (teaching and coaching students), co-teacher, interventionist, then advertise accordingly. When we advertise for an instructional coach, but need another role, we minimize the role of a coach and we set this role up to be an "other duties as assigned" role. When the role of an administrator, director, supervisor, or others in higher roles in education are advertised, these are correctly outlined to honor the great duties that they serve, as they should. Why not do the same for instructional coaches? Also, do not advertise for a specific instructional coaching role and then unofficially change the job duties, responsibilities and conditions when the person accepts the job; this is not professional and is no longer aligned to the grant funding. We also need to think about whether "other duties as assigned" should be in an instructional coaching job description as this gives poor leaders the opportunity to dishonor the role of an instructional coach even more. Unit designs give teachers an overarching view of the learning goals, tasks and assessments needed to impact learning. The aim of pacing guides is to provide teachers with the general topics and length of time necessary to be spent on learning goals in order to help teachers stay on track. However, do pacing guides really help teachers? The reality and research of pacing guides are that these provide more pressure for teachers and make them feel even more overwhelmed before ever starting the course or unit. Very importantly, they fail to include the depth of tasks and learning for students, the most important focus and stakeholder in education. Therefore, the very critical question here is, are pacing guides truly benefiting teachers and students?
Culturally responsive teaching is a profound pedagogical shift in education that educators are continuously working on to gain more connections to its depth. Culturally responsive teaching has many dimensions with a foundational focus on providing each and every student from any cultural background a responsible, rigorous, relevant, and in-depth education connected to their lives, backgrounds and experiences. It capitalizes on the assets all students bring to the classroom and the belief that all students, despite their backgrounds and experiences, can achieve at high levels. In order to be masters of culturally responsive teaching, we need to constantly reflect on and re-define our teaching values and the components that relate to culturally responsive teaching.
Culture, Introspection and Awareness Wikipedia defines culture as “an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.” Therefore, whether you have a class full of students from different races and ethnic groups or whether you have a class full of students from the same race and ethnic group, you still have different cultures within your classroom and you still need to be a culturally responsive educator. In order to be culturally responsive educators, we first need to understand ourselves, our values, beliefs, and behaviors based on how we were socialized. To understand ourselves, we need to engage in ongoing transparent introspection in the way we view others, especially our students. Two questions to help guide introspections are: "Am I allowing my cultural experiences and socialization to cloud the way I see others and their abilities?" and "Am I truly accepting of other cultures and their valued place in this world or is this just something I project and make myself believe I do?” Genuine self-reflection allows us to be transparent and brutally honest with ourselves. You do not have to share these thoughts with anyone; all you have to do is reflect, acknowledge and be honestly aware of your beliefs, values, and outlook. Awareness is the first step to actively working on shifting your mindset and redefining culture in order to focus on being a more culturally responsive educator. |
Cherry-Anne GildharryOn this page, you will find blogs on educational connections and my life's experiences. Ideas, thoughts and views are my own and are not representative of my employers. References/sources used are public articles found on the internet to support my blogs. Archives
July 2023
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