A New Year Emerges

Greetings from the beginning of 2014!

I hope that this January you are able to look on the landscape of your life and reflect proudly on the life you've created for yourself, look longingly towards the horizon where you would like to be, and take that first step on the journey that will become your story this year.

So, in my first post of 2014 I share with you a simple suggestion;
Move in the direction of your dreams.

Movement is something that we can each define, yet all can perceptibly feel. Movement may mean that you physically change the location of your life, a new neighborhood, a new state, a new country, a new language. Movement might mean that you move yourself with more intention towards better nutrition or health. Movement may mean that you finally move up and over that one thing that's been holding you back for so long. Movement might mean that you move to be close to some and more distant from others. Movement might be a giant leap of faith, or of knowledge that propels you to something you can't yet even imagine. The world is moving, in 2014 don't be caught standing still.

Words for thought

Pondering an article...
Education Week - Teacher Quality...

I have had years of experience in the making of standardized tests, and now work for a project that is attempting to gauge teacher effectiveness. Though we are employing multiple measures, the student achievement measure, in reality, will trump all others.

I wonder if I too have fallen into the mindset that the test is the "best" method for us to really know what represents a good teacher or not.

Does testing students really tell us what we need and want to know about teachers?
In my opinion, it's only a teeny part of the picture.

Falling into Fall

Each year in the fall, I begin my job anew. Somehow, it takes a month or two to catch my breath and stop feeling like I've fallen into an abyss of work and begin to balance my life again. This year was particularly exemplary of this cycle, as I turn around and see Thanksgiving on the calendar and feel as though things have really only just begun. 

It's funny, or perhaps ironic, how I know what I wish for my life to include, yet it's 2am on a Thursday and I'm writing a voluntary blog. To achieve balance I believe that sometimes you just have to do what is on your heart and so tonight, I write. 

The lack of balance might be caused by so many things I hate to attribute the blame to just one. Why not spread it out? Illness, both family and personal, changes in relationships and family, moving to a new state, pursuing a new career, pursuing a new title and degree, prioritizing hobbies rather than letting them happen just by chance. I really could go on and on but I won't. Because. 

Because, despite all of this, I still managed to fall in love with the fall. So, as I bustle about, buried in files and endless things to do, I revel in my warm Pumpkin Spice coffee, my wardrobe of somewhere between hot and cold clothes, the leaves that scatter, and enjoy the way the sun filters through branches as it sets in the early afternoon. 

Before it's cold and snowy, I will figure out what my new job is all about. I will begin to re-emerge from the abyss.  I will hope for renewal and in this moment in the fall, finally feel content with life again. If I'm lucky it'll happen, just in time to catch the first snowflakes of the season lightly falling on my tongue.

This is where a new story begins

This fall, for the first time in my career, I find myself without a classroom full of eager (and truthfully not so eager) students who I hope will come along on a journey of exploration and learning with me. Instead, this year, my charges are the teachers themselves as I am now an Instructional coach.  In this new role I find both challenges and celebrations, and wish to record, remember, and reflect on these as they occur. Turn the page... and come along.

FYI-
Instructional Coaching - A professional development model for teachers whereby student achievement is improved through the guided implementation of evidence based teaching practices and strategies. Coaches are paired to work with classroom teachers "on the job" to improve what they do.  The model of instructional coaching my job employs is loosely based on the research and design of Jim Knight.