Are you Ready to Try Virtual Learning Communities?
With schools closing and social distancing from COVID19, we have received several questions around collaborating across distance. We have a few resources we are putting together and we would like your input.
Facilitating Virtual Learning Communities Webinar
We fast-tracked our signature webinar on virtual collaboration to offer another session next week. You can read more about it below.
What Other Webinars Should We Offer?
Now that there may be time for new learning, but restrictions on travel, what kinds of webinars should we offer to help meet your needs? Please email suggestions to Deirdre, deirdre@schoolreforminitiative.org.
Blog Post Around Virtual Collaboration
We are working to put together a post that has tips and suggestions for collaborating online that should be ready to share next week.
Virtual Connections
Would you be interested in drop-in times to meet with colleagues in the SRI community while we are all working at distance? Please email Chris, chris@schoolreforminitiative.org your interest and we will schedule some times based on interest.
Facilitating Virtual Learning Communities Webinar
Starts Next Week! – March 24, 26, 31, April 2, 2020
Participants in these sessions will engage in a variety of SRI protocols and practices to explore how SRI critical friendship can foster and sustain transformational learning communities in a virtual space. Ample time will be reserved to debrief the virtual experience, examine implications for our work, and develop next steps in using virtual transformational learning communities to engage more teachers and students in SRI’s Mission and Guiding Principles.
More Information and Registration
Book of the Month – Cultivating Coaching Mindsets
We are introducting a monthly highlight of a book by SRI authors, a Book of the Month. We are kicking it off with Cultivating Coaching Mindsets: An Action Guide for Literacy Leadersby Rita M. Bean and Jacy Ippolito. We asked them to write a bit about their book:
Creating Cultivating Coaching Mindsets was a labor of love for us (Jacy and Rita), and we are thrilled that the School Reform Initiative has highlighted and endorsed the book over the past few years.
In writing CCM, we (Jacy and Rita) pooled our knowledge and experience about coaching work to share with readers the various ways that instructional coaches can support authentic teacher and student learning in schools. The book is based on our own research, our experiences as coaches and working with coaches, and our review of the wider fields of educational leadership, adult learning/development, and organizational and school change theory. The book describes our framework for effective coaching that considers both individuals and systems in schools, school culture, differentiating professional learning for adult educators, and the various mindsets that coaches hold as they go about their work (e.g., the mindsets of leader, facilitator, designer, and advocate). While the book zooms-in on literacy coaching specifically, the research and practices in the book pertain to all educators who work as teacher leaders guiding adult learning and reflection. This is a book for all those who coach other adult educators, regardless of job title!
The work of the School Reform Initiative heavily influenced our thinking and writing in the creation of Cultivating Coaching Mindsets. Quite simply, this book would not have taken the shape it did without the work of SRI. The book includes a number of suggestions for and stories about how coaches and teacher leaders employ specific discussion-based protocols (with many references to classic protocols from the SRI catalog). Moreover, the underlying research, theories, and practices highlighted in the book bolster the argument for why discussion-based protocols and intentional learning communities are key levers for reflection and change in schools. For example, we briefly review the work of Breidenstein, Fahey, Glickman, & Hensley (2012) and discuss how their notions of adult development connect to a differentiated coaching model for teachers who are seeking instrumental, socializing, or self-authoring professional learning experiences. We highlight the research and practice literature suggesting that leaders at all levels (and coaches specifically) find success when adopting the mindset of facilitators, with examples from our own work with coaches about designing and facilitating professional learning agendas. Furthermore, the book highlights the importance of school leadership as a collective responsibility that functions most effectively in a culture of collaboration as described in the newly-released edited volume Best Practices of Literacy Leaders: Keys to School Improvement (Dagen & Bean, 2020).
Our CCM book also foreshadows some of the larger ideas about how informal and formal school leaders can reinvent schools, ideas highlighted in the latest Fahey, Breidenstein, Ippolito, & Hensley (2019) book An UnCommon Theory of School Change. And of course, CCM certainly influenced Jacy’s recent TEDx Talk on transforming schools by thinking like a coach. In so many ways, CCM has been a cornerstone of Jacy’s and Rita’s professional work over the past handful of years, and we are delighted with SRI’s support of our work.
If you have leadership responsibilities and are working as an instructional coach or with instructional coaches in preK-12 settings, this is a book that might very well support your adult learning and coaching work! Moreover, we are always eager to talk with educators across the United States and beyond who are wrestling with ways to improve coaching, facilitation, and leadership in schools. If you would like to connect with us, please don’t hesitate to reach out via Twitter or email (@Jippolito or jippolito@salemstate.edu / @rita_bean or ritabean@pitt.edu).
Cultivating Coaching Mindsets: An Action Guide for Literacy Leaders
by Rita M. Bean and Jacy Ippolito
Fall Meeting Pre-Conference Call for Proposals
Pre-conference sessions take place on Wednesday, the day before the start of Fall Meeting and provide an opportunity for participants to extend their learning while in Memphis.
Do you have an idea for a pre-conference session for the 2020 Fall Meeting that you would like to offer? Are you using SRI tools and practices in exciting ways that you’d like to share with others? Pre-conference sessions may be full or half-day and can be on-site in one of our conference rooms or off-site at a school or other location within the city.
All pre-conference proposals are due by March 27, 2020
If you are interested in proposing a pre-conference session, please utilize the pre-conference proposal form, and submit it no later than March 27, 2020. Have a request for a pre-conference that you would like to attend? Email Deirdre Williams, deirdre@schoolreforminitiative.org, and she will try to find facilitators to prepare a pre-conference session that meets your needs!
#10forSRI
Our goal for 2020 is to help educators remember why they became educators, and to do whatever we can to not only help them to ‘feel’ supported, but to actually ‘be’ supported, and work together to create the schools our students deserve. I hope you will join me and continue to support SRI!
SRI is fiercely committed to educational equity and excellence, and we cannot do this work without your support!
Thank you for your commitment to students, families and communities!
Do you have news to share? Interesting things happening in your area? Please let us know so we can share with our community! Email Chris Jones, chris@schoolreforminitiative.org.
Thank you,
Deirdre Williams and Chris Jones
On behalf of School Reform Initiative
