Learning Coach Meeting May 17, 2013

Today’s Agenda  Sustaining the Learning Coach Program  Share an Experience  New Learning: Professional Learning Communities  Establishing our PLCs

Share a Meaningful Experience Criteria for a meaningful experience. The experience:  Is beneficial to others (others might learn an effective strategy, or a “what not to do”)  Helps explore your understanding of the role of a learning coach Tell which of the “commitment to inclusion” statements are championed through this experience, and articulate the alignment between the experience and the commitment statement.

PSD’s Commitments to Inclusion The idea of fixing students to the idea of improving environments Dependence on staff (teachers and EA’s) to a focus on independence “Special Ed” to ALL students being special A deficit model of thinking to a strength-based model of thinking Having high expectations for some to having high expectations for ALL Move from:

Professional Learning Communities o Why PLC s? o What is a PLC characterized by? o My experience this year with PLC work

Generate, Sort, Synthesize Purpose: Can be used to explore relationships between discrete pieces of information. Then the strategy can be used to organize the information into larger categorical or conceptual groupings. Groups at Work - Laura Lipton and Bruce Wellman (p. 66)

Generate Ideas  Individually record some “education” topics YOU would like to learn more about.  Write each idea on a separate sticky note. E.g. Techniques for overcoming difficulties in the classroom Specific pedagogy to better engage students Collaborative learning practices Particular subject Assessment practices…

RoundRobin Sharing  Take turns sharing one idea at a time; articulate a bit so team members understand your intent  Place your sticky note on the sheet in the middle of the table once your idea has been shared.  Continue until all ideas are shared.

RoundRobin Sorting  Take turns moving sticky notes around so similar ideas are grouped together.  When it’s your turn, if you don’t agree with a previous move, then move the sticky note where you think it should go.  Continue this process until all ideas are sorted into groups, and everyone is in agreement that this is the correct categorization.

“Big Idea” Label o Assign half of the categories to each pair of shoulder-partners. o Work with shoulder partner to create a “big idea” label for each set of ideas you are assigned to. o Ask the other pair for help if you are unable to come up with “big idea” labels for any of your assigned categories.

Recording all the Big Ideas 2 Big Ideas Recording Sheets per team o Team members 1 and 3 each need a Big Idea Recording Sheet, o Team members 1 and 3 each record all the big ideas that your group generated. o Team members 1 and 3, each travel with your shoulder partner to all the other tables, adding any big ideas that you do not have on your sheet. o If there is a similar big idea, but it has been given a different label, add that label to your sheet (in brackets beside your label.) o Go back to your table.

Revising Big Ideas  Share, with your other 2 team mates, what you now have on your Big Idea sheet.  If your sheets differ, come to concensus as to what the big ideas should be (it may involve revisiting the other tables again…)  Designate one of the Big Idea sheets as the “Final Big Idea Sheet”, and make all revisions on it.  Revise existing Big Idea sticky note labels so they are same as the Big Ideas you have on the “Final” sheet.  Bring your “Final” sheet AND the cardboard with sticky notes to me.

Determine PLCs  On index card, individually record the top 3 “Big Ideas” you are interested in.  Stand beside ONE of those top 3.  Select another topic if necessary.

Begin to Build Your Team  Informal conversation  RoundRobin response to one of:  If you were a vending machine, of all the items you would dispense, which items would be rated as your top 3? Elaborate  If you were an acronym, what would your letters be and what would they stand for? Elaborate

Develop Your PLC Vision…  State why you exist – what is the purpose of this group? (mission)  What does your team hope to achieve by coming together? (vision)  What specific goals or achievements are you striving to meet? ( goals)

Next Learning Coach Meeting June 21, 2013 We will be asking you to share: o How, or in what area, you have professionally grown the most this year, with respect to your role as a learning coach? o How did this growth come about? o How do you know/demonstrate that you have grown in this way?