Making the Rounds: Visiting Everyone
Jan Miller Burkins
Anyone who knows me would say that I have a "Type A" personality. In some situations this has served me well, in others it has made life complicated. I am constantly trying to balance my need to be too systematic in an effort to avoid being too rigid. However, being systematic has its benefits.
For example, dentists tell us that when we brush our teeth, we should be systematic about it. We should start at the lower back on one side, moving to the other side, then moving up and across the top teeth. Also, we should attend to all the surfaces of our teeth (front, back, top, and sides) in a systematic way. If we don't, the eventual state of our teeth will betray our inadvertent brushing patterns. Brushers who are not systematic will unintentionally brush in the same pattern daily and, consequently, miss the same spots every time. This is analogous to teachers unwittingly calling on children sitting in certain areas of the classroom more than others.
Developing systems to prevent leaving something or someone out is insurance against our natural inclination to work in patterns. For example, I have a plan for getting around to all the classrooms in my school. In the past, I have made detailed schedules to make sure I get into every classroom to see every component of the literacy framework. However, this year I have used a much simpler system. I just have a form with teacher names on the top and framework elements down the side, as illustrated in the attached form. Then I simply write the date in the box when I observe a particular instructional model in a classroom. Here is what my form looks like as I fill it in over days, weeks, and months:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/visitationrecord.pdf
Getting Into Classrooms
Coaches may find that keeping a record of the classrooms they have visited may be much easier than getting into those classrooms in the first place. Getting invited into a classroom is a lot like getting invited (or not getting invited) to a party, and sometimes it's just as awkward and stressful. There are basically three ways to get through classroom doors to watch lessons. I don't think that a coach should use one of these methods exclusively - it is the combination of the three that rounds out our work in classrooms.
Crashing the party. The first and worst method for getting into a party without an invitation is "crashing." Visiting someone's classroom without an invitation is analogous to crashing a party. Most coaches have the option of just dropping into a teacher's classroom unannounced. However, there are implications to this that we need to consider. When I began coaching, the field was in its infancy. I was whittling the shape of my work. At the time, however, there weren't many resources on coaching to support my work. I began my classroom observations by dropping into classrooms unannounced. Unannounced visits to classrooms imbue us with the power that is inherent in having the authority to walk into someone else's classroom without telling or asking them, staying in the room and observing for as long as we want, and then responding to what we have seen and interpreted as a priority. Barkley and Bianco (2005) write, "in a school setting if a 'coach' walks in to observe a classroom unannounced and uninvited, it's not coaching. It's evaluation or supervision" (p. 105).
Unannounced visits give teachers little or no choice, and the degree of choice is a measure of power. Coaches have the choice to go into any classroom at any time, and teachers have little choice once we get there. I am speaking in the extreme; I certainly honor a teacher who says, "Today is just a really bad day." But no matter how we look at it, dropping in on teachers places coaches in a power role.
Without fully realizing what I was doing, I used this expression of authority for a couple of years before I even learned of other options. I'm still not really comfortable with drop-in visits; however, district and school administrators expect me to do this. The teachers and I have been able to make this system work, as well as I think we can, by keeping the lines of communication open and by honoring each other as people. However, there are at least two other ways for a coach to get into classrooms, and both are probably better than dropping in uninvited.
Receiving an invitation. The best way to be included in a party is to receive a sincere, legitimate invitation. In parallel, the best way to get into a classroom is for a teacher to invite you. After two years of coaching, I was officially "trained" to be a coach, and I learned of the coaching model described by Lyons and Pinnell in Systems for Change in Literacy Education: A Guide to Professional Development (2001). As I researched this book, I learned that this model is not new and has been used in a number of contexts (DuFour, 2002; Garmston, Linder, & Whittaker, 2003; McAllister & Neubert, 1995). Partly out of my continued discomfort with dropping in on teachers and partly out of my obligation to complete my assignments for my own professional learning, I began utilizing this system.
I started to wait for teachers to invite me before I visited their classrooms. I put a sign-up schedule on my office door. I invited teachers to invite me into their classrooms. Then I waited. I applied some gentle pressure with e-mails like, "In order for you to get professional learning credit for this summer's writing workshop professional learning, you will need to have two classroom visits. So come see me if you would like me to take care of these for you." Needless to say, teachers weren't running over one another in a mad dash to my office door. The "sign-up" pen never ran out of ink.
There were some teachers who signed up. Some I believe needed, in all honesty, professional learning credit. Others really had areas they wanted support for changing. Some, I think, felt sorry for me.
Then, of course, there was the difficulty associated with having a calendar for signing up on my door and another calendar that I carried around with me. I began overextending myself and, sometimes, double-booking myself. I found myself sitting in the hall in front of my door copying times and names into my travel calendar. Eventually I e-mailed teachers that I was taking the sign-up sheet off my door but that I was still eager to be invited into their classrooms.
Meanwhile, I worked through the coaching cycles with those who, for one reason or another, had asked me to visit their classrooms. The preconference/observation/postconference cycle proved very gratifying for me and, based on their responses, for teachers. The cycle truly gives ownership of the process to teachers, which is where it should be. Teachers decide when we will visit, what we will see, why we are visiting, and what they want to hear from us. We limit the work to that which teachers expressly request. Overall, it is a sound, enriching, stretching process that I highly endorse.
The disadvantage of waiting to get invited into classrooms is that some, perhaps even many, teachers won't invite us in. This isn't necessarily because teachers don't like us or don't want us in their classrooms. It might just be a matter of time. Even when teachers are absolutely comfortable with us watching them teach, inviting us into their rooms involves examining their schedule, considering what they would be teaching, communicating with us, returning to the schedule, and so forth. What some might argue is a negligible amount of time, in the context of classrooms and relative to the "free time" teachers do have, is actually quite a lot. And after all the deliberation, most teachers who are truly comfortable with us in their rooms will say, "Just come in any time." Then we are back to dropping in again.
Inviting yourself. I once wanted to attend a party to which my best friend was invited, but I was not, and I asked my friend to get me invited. The coaching equivalent to this is planning our visits but letting the teachers know when we are coming and what we are interested in seeing. This affords coaches the opportunity to see the instructional areas they think most pressing, which is a challenge when we drop by unannounced. Planned visits also give teachers a say in decision making. If a teacher finds the time a coach has scheduled to visit his classroom inconvenient, he can let the coach know and they can reschedule the visit together.
As a happy medium, announced visits have worked for me. I feel less like I am intruding, I see a teacher's instructional best, and I make better use of my time in the classroom. One way I have scheduled these visits has been to select an instructional area, such as read-aloud. Then I communicate with teachers that I will be visiting everyone in the next two weeks to watch read-aloud, and I ask them if they have a time they would like me to visit their rooms. Finally, I develop and distribute a schedule. Teachers come to me with conflicts, and we work around them. I stick to the subject of the visit; I don't go in to watch read-aloud and then offer suggestions about writer's workshop. This system has proven effective, particularly as a complement to the other two visitation options.
References
Barkley, S.G. & Bianco, T. (Eds). (2005). Quality Teaching in a Culture of Coaching. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Education.
Dufour, R. (2002). "The Learning Centered Principal." Educational Leadership, 59 (8), 12-15.
Garmston, R., Linder, C., & Whitaker, J. (2003). "Reflections on Cognitive Coaching." Educational Leadership, 5 (2), 57-60.
Lyons, C., & Pinnell, G.S. (2001). Systems for Change in Literacy Education: A Guide to Professional Development. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
McAllister, E.A. & Neubert, G.A. (1995). New Teachers Helping New Teachers: Preservice Peer Coaching. Bloomington, IN: ERIC & Edinfo Press.
This is an excerpt from Coaching for Balance by Jan Miller Burkins, to be published later this year by the International Reading Association.
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