Suzanne Jones

Date: September 17, 2026; 4:20 p.m.

Name: Suzanne (Suzie) Jones

Current Grade Level: Kindergarten

Next coaching session date/time: September 28, 2026; 4:15 p.m.

Coaching Session #1 – Verifying Perspectives

1. This or That

Movie first or book first? Likes emotional intelligence books.

Fiction or non-fiction?

Handwritten notes or emails to a close friend?

1. Learning about your background

Who or what influenced you to become a teacher? Suzie’s parents were both educators in Marysville, KS. Her dad was the band director at the high school, and her mother was a high school Spanish teacher. Her 4^th grade teacher also inspired her to become a teacher.

What experiences have you had as a teacher including districts, schools, grade levels? Suzie is in her 15^th year of teaching Kindergarten. She has also taught 1^st, 3^rd, and 4^th graders. She taught in Houston, Texas in addition to her work in Olathe.

1. Examining your professional beliefs

What is something you strongly believe in when it comes to educating children? Suzie believes she needs to develop relationships with her students. Students need positive experiences at school, especially for reading to learn. She focuses on kindness in her classroom and developing a love for learning. She thinks that social emotional growth is important.

What do you consider to be the single most important literacy strategy you use in your classroom? Suzie believes that routines, structures, and known transitions are critical to helping her students learn, no matter what the content. She noted text evidence, shared reading, noticing, wondering, asking questions as important work for her students. She believes that read aloud is critical to her students.

What do you want to gain from coaching related to literacy practices? Suzie wants to learn from her coach and is counting on the coaching relationship to give her ideas for her teaching and student learning.

How are the district’s curriculum materials helping or challenging for your students? Suzie thinks the 95% curriculum, especially the phonemic awareness skills, are critical to Kindergarten students. She said that she feels stifled by the scripted curriculums she is required to use by the district.

What are you leaning toward as far as an academic goal for your students during the coaching process? In her responses to the survey prior to coaching, Suzie identified application of science of reading to Kindergarten as a focus for her. We discussed working with a small group, perhaps the students that are lowest.

1. Work for next coaching session

Narrated tour of your classroom

Assigned classroom video

Ideas for goals based on challenges in the classroom and problems of practice from your Canvas course

• The Foundations of the Science of Reading
• Assessments
• Oral Language
• Phonological & Phonemic Awareness
• Phonics (Encoding and Decoding)
• Fluency

Write down the challenges you might face in working on implementing your goals for discussion at our next session.