Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud

Start the Year with Reflections on Your Mission and Vision: What Actions Are Required?

The start of the school year is a great time to guide your school team in a reflection around the school’s and district’s mission and vision statement. Commit to the necessary actions that are needed to have the vision become an outcome rather than just an opportunity. Use high expectations to drive educator actions.

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Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Does your staff have a clear understanding of what it means for educators to work as a team? Do your teacher and administrator leaders have a common assessment of the current status of teaming? How are you planning to support the building of vulnerability and trust required for deep team collaboration?

Read the article on the benefits of teaming here. 
View the ASU Teachers College resources for teaming here.

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Introduce Students to Hypotheses as Part of Goal Setting Practice

Goal setting can help with classroom management and academic performance. It allows students to become more aware of expectations and concrete methods to achieve an outcome.  How might students forming hypotheses increase the success of their goal setting practices? Students sharing their hypotheses and their reflections can lead to learning from each other’s experiences and  empowerment from having skills in planning for desired outcomes.

Read Stephanie Toro's article, "Guiding Students to Set Academic Goals" here.

Watch Reggie Rivers Ted Talk, "If you want to achieve your goals, don't focus on them" here. 

Read Jeanne Ross' article, "Why Hypotheses Beat Goals" here.

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Every Child, Every Day, Every Way

Dr. Kevin McGowan, the National Superintendent of the year, shares how the Brighton Central School District in New York State made substantial increases in student success by focusing on every student, every day, in every way. He examines the roles of everyone connected to the school questioning their actions around the “every student” focus. Their teamwork has eliminated an achievement gap.

Learn more about Dr. McGowan here.

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What Are Teachers Experiencing in PLCs?

If you did walkthrough observations of PLC sessions in your school, what would you hear and see? To what extent does the learning environment for teacher during PLCs mirror the learning environment you want for students? Are projects, peers, passion, and play evident?

Listen to the podcast with Nancy Frey and Doug Fisher here. 

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

How Teachers Can Build Student Led Discussions

“Stop talking so much and make time for inquiry.” That’s the first of the six strategies that Alexis Wiggins and Tracy Hill share from their experiences as teachers and instructional coaches both nationally and internationally. They provide the "why" for empowering students to learn content deeper while developing critical success skills for life outside of school and specific strategies such as graphing discussions, rubrics, and peer coaching strategies. Implementing even just one or two of their tips will help you take your students and their thinking to the next level.

Email Tracy: tracyriyadh@gmail.com

Find Tracy on Twitter: twitter.com/tracyhillriyadh

Email Alexis: awiggins@ceelcenter.org

Find Alexis on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexiswiggins

Read Alexis & Tracy's article, "6 Strategies to Bolster Student Led Discussions"

Read Alexis's book, "The Best Class You Never Taught"

Find the Spider Web Discussion Core Resources here. 

Visit the CEEL Center website and find more resources here.

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

Instructional Coaching Impact

Donna Spangler, a past chair of district level coaches, describes the need for coaches to develop strategies to gather input that assesses the effectiveness of their coaching program. The collection of calendar and activity records tend to record activity; not impact. How does coaching enhance teacher professional growth, positive organizational change and most importantly student success?

Find Donna’s recommendations here:
Coaching for Impact Report. 
Jim Knight's, "Evaluating Instructional Coaching: People, Programs, and Partnership."
Contact Donna: donnaspangler@comcast.net or donnas@sibme.com 
Twitter: @spanglerdonna1

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

A Skill We All Need: Improving

George Wright, management consultant, explores why focusing on continuous improvement is a critical leadership purpose; improvement for your self and creating the needed support for your staff’s growth. He identifies the benefits of improvement as increased self-confidence, greater job satisfaction and more opportunities for growth. Improvement is not a one-time event, it’s an ongoing process. Making improvement a top priority will be the best investment you can make.

Read George's article, "The One Skill You Need for Success: Improving" here. 
Visit George's website here. 

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

Teachers and Parents: Empowering Mastery Oriented Learners

Mastery-oriented learners are motivated by building competency. They are intrinsically motivated rather than driven by extrinsic rewards or by fear of punishment. Mastery-oriented learners want to learn for the sake of learning rather than for grades or teacher or parent approval and believe that ability is changeable. Mastery-oriented learners believe that failure is part of success and persist when learning is difficult. How can parents and teacher guide learners in building mastery orientation.

Listen to the "Rough Draft Math" podcast with Dr. Amanda Jansen here. 

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

Foundations for Instructional Coaching: Episode III - The Four Learning States (Gordon’s Ladder)

All of us are at different stages in our learning of a new skill from being unconsciously or consciously unskilled to being conscious or unconsciously skilled. Tom Gordon, the originator of Parent Effectiveness Training and Teacher Effectiveness Training identified theses stages. They provide a helpful understanding for those of us coaching and being coached.

Read Tom Gordon's Bio here. 
Read the blog on the four stages here.

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!