Notes
Whitney is a 2nd grade teacher at Indian Creek.
I shared that we had three purposes today:Â to get to know one another, both personally and professionally, to discuss our work together, and to identify some successes and challenges she is seeing in her classroom in literacy instruction.
Whitney’s high school sweetheart became her husband 23 years ago. They have three children: RaeEllen (3) Gordon (5), and LK (8). She has lived in Olathe her whole life. She actually started out in sales with a degree from WU, but realized that money was not making her happy. She then turned to teaching. She has been at Indian Creek for five years in 3rd grade, and three years in 2nd. She has been part of piloting “a ton of things,” as she put it: Eureka, Wit & Wisdom, Units of Study, and now Audio Enhancement. Two of her teammates are taking the courses, too.
We discussed our work together – what coaching is and what it isn’t.
When asked what content areas from Course I she felt most knowledgeable about and confident in instructing, she named Assessment and Phonics. When asked about least, she named Science of Reading, Fluency, and Phonological and Phonemic Awareness.
Some successes with literacy instruction include most of her students being very good at comprehension, retelling, and sound-mapping. Some challenges she is facing is a student or two having trouble with Fluency/Grit and Spelling/Encoding. She has already identified a group for whom she has concerns: Aylane, Juan, Hudson, and Raven. They struggle with the phonics checks and with reading. They could become the group she builds her goal around. If so, she will gather data for current level of performance.