Campus Support• Curriculum & Instruction• Professional Development• Uncategorized

Year in Review

I am a firm believer in reflecting back and reviewing my year to ask myself whether I accomplished what I wanted and what I learned from everything that happened to help me decide what I want to do next year. To keep myself focused on gradual growth and have a purpose behind who I am as a coach, curriculum writer, and life-long learner, I created three goals to accomplish during the 2017-2018 school year.

GOAL 1: As an instructional coach, my priority was to support teachers in delivering engaged instruction aligned to TX standards. Relationships, relationships, relationships. Building a good relationship with others requires a lot of skills: good listener (cancel out all inner thoughts), focus on the whole person, ask the right questions without offering anecdotal support. Behind many simple questions, teachers asked me this year, I often found a larger question that went unasked. But once I tuned in to the message they wanted to convey, progress was made evidenced by teachers’ openness to a conversation at a deeper level followed by an invitation to take an active role in their learning community (classroom). For this first goal, I used data collected throughout the school year through a google form. The form shows 293 visits where I provided classroom support, but I only observed engaged instruction in 158 of the total number of visits (53%). A follow up was done 102 times via email, and a face-to-face meeting with the teacher to debrief the part of the lesson that was observed (34%).

GOAL 2: As a curriculum writer, I zeroed in re-evaluating and re-designing the 5th-grade curriculum. Writing curriculum for a large school district (47 elementary schools) takes the challenge to the next level. Instructional change requires reflecting, planning, communicating and going through the same cycle over and over again. The priority is to provide teachers with the flexibility to make sound decisions when choosing instructional activities to maximize learning opportunities in their classrooms. The work done to improve the 5th-grade Science curriculum for the 2018-19 school year was based on teachers’ feedback and the District’s initiative of implementing the UbD framework. 

GOAL 3: Demonstrate proficiency in Google tools. As a life-long learner who reflects upon my own practice, I search for ways to better myself to grow professionally and personally. Throughout the school year, I wore different hats: coach, friend, educator, communicator, presenter, technology facilitator – just to name a few. However, each one of those situations provided extraordinary opportunities to push myself out of my comfort zone and support others in their learning journey. One of the challenges I observed teachers juggling with was using and integrating technology. In order to support teachers, I got my Google Educator Certification Level 1, which I can use to demonstrate a certain level of proficiency in Google tools.

This year was about self-reflection and purpose, which provided the path for more learning to happen at a steady pace. Have I evolved more into myself this year? A number of challenging situations helped me harness strength within me which resulted in a mind-shift towards focusing on what I could control. When assessing situations through that specific lens, I made progress in reaching my goal as a coach, curriculum writer and most importantly life-long learner.

On June 4, 2018 • By
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