Mentoring and Coaching - Building foundations - Reflection

In your context, what difference could effective mentoring have on teacher retention?

Looking at the teachers I work with, the 1:1 support offered each week has the potential to decrease the leaving rate as the teachers are supported in class each week. This support helps ensure the teachers in their first year of a 1:1 digital level have support in their learning and creation of structures and systems to prepare them for effective use and the ability to maximise the affordances of digital technology.

Part of my role is also to transition these teachers into their second year when my support ends to ensure they still feel connected or supported at an appropriate level.

In your context, what difference could effective mentoring/ coaching have for priority learners?

The impact on priority learners is large with engagement in their learning increasing due to the access of technology and the authenticity through Learn Create Share and Blogging.  For me, it is to move into being a high effect facilitator to get a more significant shift of teachers in the year I am with them. It is also to ensure that ownership remains always with the principals, SLT and teachers and not with me which limits buy-in and shift. There is a fine line between supporting to stop overloading and having it being done to them.

What difference could effective mentoring / coaching have in your context for building teacher agency and leadership capacity?

The teacher's capabilities in a digital world increase, giving them the skills and knowledge to apply their pedagogical knowledge to students using the affordances of technology to increase student achievement, well being and engagement. In the second year, opportunities could arise to take a leadership role in the school around Manaiakalani Outreach and Learn Create Share. The new confidence and leadership opportunities also can lead to more agency as they then become the drivers of Learn Create Share.

What does a coach/mentor ‘look’ like and what do they do? Is it the same across cultures?

The coach/mentor needs to be highly adaptive and able to change to meet the needs of the mentees. If they cannot then they need to recognise this and suggest alternatives. They need to be able to build relationships and make connections quickly with the mentee to enable relational trust which ties in nicely with Five Dysfunctions of Team learning I have done in the past.

My definition of Mentor and Coach (developing)

Mentor = Guide - Greater use of questioning and learning talk to get the mentee to set a goal and then work towards it? Educative mentoring represents a shift away from advice and guidance / pastoral care to the facilitation of “evidence-informed reflective learning conversations.”

Coach = Support - Goal is preset, and then the coach is there to support the mentee to get there?

Learning conversations are crucial for both.

Listening to Manu and Anaru's Podcast and thinking in my own context it does seem there are synergies between cultures with knowing your learner being at the centre. Maori may prefer a group mentoring model to a 1:1 model.

Where do you think your current mentoring / coaching relationship sits in relation to these definitions and the ‘Situational coach-mentoring continuum visual diagram’? How do the definitions/continuum approach shape your expectations of this relationship?

My role possibly has me sitting in the middle of performance and potential on the continuum as it is context driven around Cybersmart and Learn Create Share, is a medium-term and focuses on roles and competencies. Somehow I need to be able to move this into the Personal Space for leadership as they are long term and have a more complex and evolving landscape to the teachers. There needs to be a partnership where the leaders to take more ownership in the strategic direction of the school in relation to Outreach and the cluster and requires me to facilitate this rather than do it to them.

While you read through these principles consider why they might be significant for you in a mentoring / coaching relationship and how they might influence the way you work with your current mentee/coachee.

Adult problem solving

• Watching and feeling
• Watching and thinking
• Doing and feeling
• Doing and thinking

What other practical applications of these adult learning principles can you see?

What’s on top for the mentee? Need to know this first before we can move forward and ensure the discussion is actually supporting the mentee and relevant to them.

In our model of Learn Create Share the opportunities for Watching and feeling, Watching and thinking, Doing and feeling, Doing and thinking are amplified as the mentees go through the process of learning. By accessing some new knowledge/information and then either creating or watching someone else produce a learning object is really going to support their education. The sharing of the new knowledge also gives opportunities for Watching and feeling, Watching and thinking, Doing and feeling, Doing and thinking as they interact with the blog post and potentially comment.

I guess in a 1:1 session there is going to need to be times when I am modelling in order to give the mentee an opportunity for Watching and feeling or  Watching and thinking or giving the mentee opportunities to do the Doing and feeling, Doing and thinking and being able to talk through this if they so desire.

Staff meeting implications - Adult Education

• let learners know why something is important to learn,
• show learners how to direct themselves through information,
• relate the topic to the learner's experiences,
• help ensure that people are at the stage where they are ready and motivated to learn, and
• help learners overcome inhibitions, behaviours and preconceived beliefs about learning.

This is an excellent framework to use when planning staff meetings and would complement the use of a site rather than a slideshow. I would need to know my learners well to relate the topic back to their experiences.

• Following a formal process
• Getting to know your coachee/ mentee
• Setting aside a time for the session
• Protecting the time from other responsibilities or keeping the different roles clearly separated
• Taking the meeting off-site

When thinking about your current mentoring/coaching relationship, which approach do you think you presently take in your mentoring relationship? Why? What outcomes are you trying to achieve? When might you need to use a variety of approaches with the same mentee/coachee?

At the stage when working with teachers, the approach I take is Directive  - Control to Directive - Informational. This is due to teachers not feeling empowered to direct the learning and move into the collaborative space where I would much prefer to work. This is possibly due to many reasons

• Lack of planning time with the teacher - need to book in time with each teacher at the end of the term to plan the following term
• Lack of buy-in that they can drive the learning - make time to discuss this and use active listening. I may move to problem-solving before hearing all the message?
• A structured context of cyber smart making them feel like they have no choice - I have tried giving options in the past to choose from still found little buy-in.
• Poor communication of expectations and opportunities for engagement of my support - School leadership taking some role in here as well as my part especially at the start of the year.
• Busy teachers overloaded - working Cybersmart into what they are already doing.

Coaching and Mentoring to Develop Practice

Sometimes being a reflective practitioner really sucks, all these ideas formulating and getting chewed to bits inside my head. I have been thinking about my inquiry for 2018 and have been lucky enough to be mentored by Sarah Whiting as a Whānau lead. Going in for my first session in 2018 my head was definitely full of ideas and reflections that Sarah skillfully drew out into a concrete substance. This allowed me to then group the themes together which had led to the formulation of my inquiry and my new learning for 2018.

Busy - this is part of a new cluster and will slow down as we move into Year 2.
Relationships - This has been very good in some classes however I have possibly not invested enough time in some classes to build these. The lack of a day at the start of 2018 to set expectations etc for the year has contributed to this. I need to reflect on “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” and remember relational trust is the first part to build.

• Expectations of Learners - Sometimes the expectations on learners completing work is not very high. This has been noticed in other cluster schools as well and even measures have been put in place to support learners with learning how to finish task. How can I support teachers in setting expectations for their students?
• Accountability - Who are the teachers I work with accountable to? Do the teachers understand the expectations of the programme and their leader's expectations?
• Value Added - What is the value-add to the teachers from my work, I see the value with the students. How could I measure the value-add with staff?
• Frustration - The risk of the above themes developing into frustration on my part and then this impacting on the relationships with staff and schools.

My inquiry is going to focus on the use of coaching and mentoring to facilitate better practice. I am interested to learn the skills and knowledge of coaching and mentoring and then see if this can be utilised in the Manaiakalani Outreach Programme implementation. I am intrigued to know how I could use coaching and mentoring in the programme.

Next step is to do some new learning around coaching and mentoring as part of a CORE Education Tātai Aho Rau Empower Course on Coaching and Mentoring.

Engagement – visibility = mischief

Check out my latest blog post on Mischief and Visibility

http://blog.core-ed.org/blog/2018/07/engagement-visibility-mischief.html

Impact Stories - Uru Mānuka

Leaving to learn - the Big Four and Deeper Four

I am currently reading Leaving to Learn - How out of school learning increases student engagement and reduces dropout rates by Elliot Washor and Charles Mojkowski.

I am blogging as I continue to make my way through this book. At the very start the authors talk about the Big Four warning signs for dropping out of school. They are

• Academic failure
• Behaviour
• Life events
• Disinterest

Academic failure is an obvious one, if you are not succeeding at something then why would you wish to continue the pattern and stay in school. My son intrigued me tonight as he is learning the Ukulele and has had a change of teacher this term. All of a sudden his anxiety around his Ukulele practices has increased as the new teacher tests the learners to ensure they are making adequate progress to stay in the group. It is interesting and I am sure the original teacher did not tolerate students who did not practise and had consequences in place to deal with this. However the mention of tests has changed the whole dynamic for my son and added in a possibility of academic failure.

Disinterest is also at the forefront of many school's as they begin to collect student voice and look to ways to engage their learners in learning. The affordances of digital technologies, when integrated with a quality pedagogy can really reduce the disinterest of learners.

The Deeper Four are very interesting and I think drive the Big Four for our learners.

• Not mattering
• Not fitting in
• Unrecognised talents and interests
• Restrictions

I would think this is why well being is beginning to come to the fore front in education and the job place. I guess the challenge is how do we change a traditional education system to address these deeper four?

Collaborative Leadership

Growing Leadership in Collaborative Environments

CORE Education Empower Course

Challenge 2

My colleagues and I have been involved in an Empower Course through CORE Education for the last few months. As part of this learning we have been required to complete challenges. The latest challenge is below

Module 2 - Intentional Acts of Leadership Challenge

Making the case for collaborative leadership. Develop a 2-4 page model that shows how you see collaborative leadership working in your context. Include a rationale, risks and opportunities, possible implementation strategy/practice, roles and responsibilities. Also Include any challenges you identify and how you envisage overcoming them. 

The purpose of this challenge is to: 

• Formulate a model for leading within a collaborative setting and leading in a way that fosters a culture of collaboration and inclusivity. 
• Describe the dispositions or qualities and style of a collaborative leader and the deliberate acts of leadership required to build and support a collaborative, inclusive learning culture within your context 
• Justify, reflect on and defend your collaborative leadership model.

Here is our team, made up of Chris Bell, Maria Krause and James Hopkins, combined thoughts and new learnings. 

Reflection

This Empower Course has been very beneficial to my knowledge and development of leadership. The very collaborative nature of my colleagues has really enhanced my learning through powerful discussions as we decided to do challenges as a collaborative project. This has been really interesting as it is decreased our workload immensely while increase our understanding and learning much more than if we were working individually.  

I have been really impressed with the way conversations happened, with a group of people that are comfortable with collaboration, and also comfortable with conflict. On a number of occasions our online meetings have been ones where we have come in with no real idea of where we going to head with our learning and challenge, definitely times we were well and truly in the “pit”.  Once we got used to the fact that there's going to be silence in these meeting and you get comfortable with that silence. While we were processing the information or latest discussion, we came up with some really good unpacking of what we had to do.

It was very interesting because we would start with the four of us looking for someone to take a leadership role and quite often no one was really in the position of a good enough understanding of the task to do this. So as a result there was a lot of uncomfortable silence, until someone might have just said or sparked an idea which then developed with the rest of the group until a more tangible idea that we could latch ahold of and move forward.

I think this is something that we as teachers often forget about, the uncomfortableness of new learning, of taking a risk. I suppose putting yourself out there and allowing others to know that you do not really know what you're talking about. I guess part of this blog post and our presentation is that that we were putting it out there, that we may not necessarily be right on the money as to our understanding of the new knowledge, however there was very good learning from this and we continued growing and learning as we move through the challenges.

I think that messy learning is good for others to see you as well, often we produce and share a final product that you do not get to see all that messiness in behind. I know that in the past teachers have said to me ‘we go to a conference and see that amazing presenter up on stage and they think OK well that's awesome but how do I get to there"?  I often have to stop and inform them that the awesome presenter has got there by experiencing the warts and all and learning from them.

I think that is a part in our education system that we miss as leaders, showing the process and learning the person has gone through in order to get where they are now.

As our sector embraces Teaching as Inquiry and the affordances of digital technologies I wonder if this messy learning will become more visible.

My Brain is in my Bum

It is funny, but the most powerful statement I have ever heard about Innovative learning spaces was from a year 8 boy at an intermediate school, who, when I asked why he was standing to do his maths, told me, “For reading, I like to sit, but when I do maths, it is like my brain is in my bum, and when I sit on my brain I cannot do my maths”.

Check out my latest post on the CORE Education Blog
http://blog.core-ed.org/blog/2016/04/my-brain-is-in-my-bum.html