Notes
During a personal check-in, Allen said that his family is well and the meeting regarding care for his mother-in-law went well yesterday (the reason for rescheduling our call).
He reported that he taught two lessons on r-controlled vowels. He reflected that he didn’t know the students, which made it harder, and that he hasn’t had to plan and teach a lesson in a long time! In watching his tapes, he saw some things he did that he recognizes as not best practices (for example, the ways he gave feedback). I shared that I find it comforting to remember that it’s a process moving from Unconscious Incompetence (you don’t know that you don’t know) to Conscious Incompetence (where he was in recognizing that his feedback wasn’t good corrective feedback) to Conscious Competence (you do it well, but you have to consciously plan for it) to Unconscious Competence (you automatically and unconsciously do it well because it has been ingrained into your practice). He is working on Module 7. He hopes to email the other class participants and get their discussions scheduled.
I stated that our primary purpose today was to focus and finalize his goal. I repeated back to him my notes about what he shared during our last call and asked what his thinking had been since then. He still wants to focus on explicit instruction in foundational grades in the areas of phonological/phonemic awareness and phonics, supported by work in PLCs. We discussed some slides Dr. Carlson shared about explicit instruction, immediate corrective feed back, observable checks for understanding, opportunities to respond, and the self-assessment for inclusion in his support for teachers.
We got a draft of his goal down on paper and identified the levels of attainment. He will critically reflect and get back to me with any additions/subtractions/substitutions.
I followed up on his stated desire to improve his coaching skills with a reminder that two calls ago I offered him asking invitational, non-dichotomous questions. Today I offered stems for paraphrasing to confirm or clarify understanding. He spoke of meeting with teachers, and I asked if his Cognitive Coaching training had included a “template” for what Lipton and Wells call, “a learning-focused conversation.” It has three phases: Activating and Engaging, Exploring and Discussing, and Organizing and Integrating. He said he would be glad for me to offer that, so I sent it to him as an attachment after the coaching call.
We are scheduled to meet again on July 2 at 9:00 a.m.