While sharing is a great start for building relationships that can lead to teaming, it is far from the shared responsibility of a real team.

Instructional Coaches play the part of the critical friend for teachers.  Someone to bounce ideas off and reshape the way we look at our classrooms.  They allow us to move away from the isolated box of teaching to a more visible model of instruction where we can critically assess what works best for the students in our care.  We want our students to collaborate and grow, what better way to show them it works then to model it through Instructional Coaches.  Although I still am caught up in the term “coach”, I love the model.

•Leaning In—When we are engaged, we are learning forward, not slouching back. •Who’s Doing the Work?—Students are working and learning, not sitting back listening to the teacher. •Everybody Has a Job—All students are working all the time, listening and taking notes/annotating; asking questions; reading, etc. •Tools of the Scholar—Pen, pencil, highlighter… The vast majority of the time, students have a writing tool in hand. •Multiple Touches on Text—No "light" touches—we read the same text multiple times in different ways to deepen our understanding. •Changing Trajectories—So you can read, do, or be what you want. We work hard so that students can accomplish their visions and dreams.

It takes tremendous practice to manage our distractible minds, and while I strongly encourage all of us to make efforts towards quieting our minds, I also know that it's a long journey to a Buddha-like mind.

I use active listening because it reminds me that while someone else is talking, and while my own mind is wandering around, after that person stops talking I will need to respond with some kind of statement that indicates that I non-judgmentally heard what they were saying.

Every time I ask coaches to spend 20-30 minutes planning a conversation, they come out of it with almost visible light bulbs above their heads, with epiphanous smiles on their faces. Yes, it is that powerful of an experience. It makes you feel confident and prepared, it deepens your empathy for your client, it warms up your mental pathways so that the words have already coursed through them and are primed to come out in the moment.

He had seen enough coaching to break even their performance down into its components. Good coaches, he said, speak with credibility, make a personal connection, and focus little on themselves. Hobson and Harding “listened more than they talked,” Knight said. “They were one hundred per cent present in the conversation.” They also parcelled out their observations carefully. “It’s not a normal way of communicating—watching what your words are doing,” he said. They had discomfiting information to convey, and they did it directly but respectfully.

Here are a couple of apps that give students the opportunity to showcase, share and then reflect on their learning. Enjoy, some of these double up as my favourite apps too.