my blogs
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. Shape the Systems To engage in personalized coaching in education we must first focus on shaping the systems that govern teaching and learning. Personalized coaching is a mindset that starts at the top. Unlike strengths-based coaching, the personalized coaching culture is shaped at the district or organization level by leaders who are in power. If this culture is not shaped at the top level, coaches are faced with much resistance. So, how do we shape and structure the systems to focus on personalized coaching? To do this, we need to revamp many foundational systems, such as curriculum design and implementation, technology integration, lesson plans, professional development, and professional learning communities, just to name a few. We also need to provide leaders with meaningful training opportunities that will help them understand the extensive and powerful benefits of personalized coaching for teachers, other educators, and students. As a coach, I understand the need at times for standardization, but this does not mean we should not allow for personalization. Standardization does not mean we implement a one-size- fits all approach. Personalizing district curriculum, tools and strategies is often viewed as going against or not following district’s initiatives. This is not the case; it is quite the contrary. When we allow for personalized lesson designs, we are encouraging teachers to interact with the districts or school’s curriculum and other products at a deeper level and use other deep rooted pedagogical strategies aligned to their experiences that are not always included in purchased curriculum. For example, authentic project-based learning, profound levels of representing learning strategies, culturally responsive teaching and more. Professional development needs to be personalized to meet educators’ needs, and coaches must have the opportunity to support the personalization of products. Teachers should be given choice in attending training that meets their styles and needs. Of course, with high expectations for learning! Professional development should also be asynchronous eLearning sessions. “eLearning PD is one of the best practices for personalizing teachers' learning to meet diverse needs and different schedules. It is an important factor for personalized PD that teachers can learn at their own pace.” ~Helen. Insight Advance focuses on video coaching to personalize learning for teachers, this is such a great form of eLearning and personalized coaching. Actively Support All Styles and Adult Learning Principles To engage in personalized coaching authentically and meaningfully, leaders and organizations must implement systems and structures that focus on getting to know and actively supporting educators’ unique learning, designing, working and implementation styles, and their talents and needs. Some steps and structures that organizations can use for determining your coachees’ styles, talents, and strengths for meaningful and ongoing use are as follows:
Give in and Guide the Personalization of Products and Strategies As the old adage goes, “the more you give the more you get”. When we want frameworks, strategies, and protocols to be implemented with fidelity and consistency and meaningfully used, we have to give in to what educators want and guide the personalization of products and strategies. Give is defined as “freely transfer the possession of something to someone”. This is exactly what we need to do, we must freely transfer the possession of curriculum, technology, data analysis and all other pedagogical areas. We must give in to the ways the coachee wants to design and implement ideas gained and guide the personalization of their products to get meaningful buy-in and be impactful change agents. Of course, we always keep products and strategies at high levels! How do we guide the personalization of products and genuinely engage in personalized coaching? How do we allow educators to customize district’s and organization’s products to meet their styles, talents and experiences? The steps to customization and personalization are very simple and outlined as follows: · Step 1: The coach creates a synthesized personalized product aligned to ideas stated in the district’s curriculum, ideas shared during a workshop or training, or from any other learning experiences. · Step 2: The coach meets with coachees to understand and determine if support is needed to create personalized products and strategies. Some teachers may not need support as they are very creative and love to create their own products. This is okay!
Examine, Encourage and Endorse Products and Strategies Ongoing follow-up, communication, discussions, authentic collaboration, reflection, revision, and highlighting are key elements in ensuring that we are examining, encouraging, and endorsing personalized products and strategies. Personalized coaching is only successful and impactful when we collaborate with our coachees continuously to examine the effectiveness of their personalized products. Products are examined through respectful and genuine student-focused coach and coachee partnership and collaboration, guided by quantitative and more qualitative data to discuss, revise, and enhance coachees’ personalized products to meet the needs of our students. Using qualitative and quantitative data simultaneously helps determine the effectiveness of the personalized products that were created to impact teaching and learning. It is important to make sure that the structures and systems for personalized coaching place a greater focus on analyzing qualitative data. The best way to authentically gauge student learning, creativity and the depth of knowledge when refining our personalized teaching and learning products is through the analysis of qualitative data. Examine, encourage, and endorse those personalized ideas that teachers gained from research, their educational journey, colleagues, district frameworks and PDs they attended and aligned to their strengths. Give educators the autonomy to implement ideas gained and allow coaches to support teachers’ personalized ideas. In an authentic personalized coaching setting, teachers are given the opportunities to co-facilitate and facilitate PD sessions to share their personalized ideas. Very importantly, find ways to highlight teachers' personalized products and strategies and very importantly students unique and creative rich experiences and products for others to gain and personalize ideas. We are in an era where STEM is a paradigm shift in education. STEM is more than constructing a model, a machine, performing an experiment or coding, etc. STEM is the development of authentic skills such as creativity, inquiry, critical thinking, innovation, and more that can be applied anytime to solve problems and create solutions. More specifically outlined, STEM is an engineering-design thinking process that focuses on identifying the problem, building the prototype, testing-redesigning and testing again to create a well-defined and functional solution. When we engage in authentic personalized coaching, we identify, create, test, reflect on, redesign and test until we have products and strategies that meet our educators’ and students’ individual needs. If we want to profoundly impact teaching and learning, close the student achievement gaps that have widened way before COVID and address the teacher shortage in our country, we must do whatever it takes to eliminate the one-size-fits all approach and implement personalized coaching. Starting now, we need to engage in personalized coaching that incorporates, “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 ~ Cherry-Anne Gildharry References
AB Tasty. (2014). Everything You Need to Know about Personalization. https://www.abtasty.com/personalization-guide Digital Promise. (2012). How can coaches provide personalized support to teachers? https://digitalpromise.org/initiative/instructional-coaching/effective-coach-teacher-collaboration/personalization Flick, T. (2023). The Benefits of Personalized Coaching. https://tomflick.com/2021/06/23/the-benefits-of-personalized-coaching Gong, H. (2020). What Best Practices that Should be Included in Personalized Professional Development? Helen’s. https://helengong.com/iste-coaching/what-is-the-best-practices-should-be-included-in-personalized-professional-development Hanover Research. (2013). Professional Development for Personalized Learning Practices. https://www.hanoverresearch.com/media/Professional-Development-for-Personalized-Learning-Practices.pdf Lee, D. (2020, September 02). How Personalized Coaching Can Kick-Start Your School’s PD. EdSurge.https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-09-02-how-personalized-coaching-can-kick-start-your-school-s-pd Martinez, L. (2021). 4 Reasons Why Personalized Teacher Coaching Matters. Engage2learn. https://engage2learn.org/blog/2021/03/08/4-reasons-why-personalized-coaching-matters So Coach. (2020). Personalized Coaching. https://www.so-coach.me/en/individual/personalized-coaching.html Teacher Shortage is a Threat To Our Schools. (2019, June 5). The Virginia Journal of Education.https://www.veanea.org/teacher-shortage-is-a-threat-to-our-schools OxfordLanguages.Personalize.https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/ Comments are closed.
|
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
April 2024
Categories |