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Jan Miller Burkins
Jan Miller Burkins just completed her fourth year as a full-time literacy coach at Chase Street Elementary School in Athens, Georgia. She has worked as a language arts consultant for a Regional Educational Service Agency, a district level literacy coordinator, a reading specialist, and an elementary classroom teacher.
Jan is on the Leadership Team of the Red Clay Writing Project, the Athens affiliate of the National Writing Project. Jan is currently teaching a literacy coaching course for the University of Georgia. She is a member of two writing communities and enjoys writing poetry, short stories, and memoir, as well as professional pieces. She is also a professional photographer. Her first book, Coaching for Balance, was published in April 2007 by the International Reading Association.
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The Art of Coaching
(From the "Connections" Photo Essay Series)
Jan Miller Burkins
My neighbor says, "Art is hard. It is personal and evaluating it is subjective." Similarly, coaching the art of teaching, encouraging independence, supporting rather than critiquing, and aligning our actions with our beliefs, can also be a challenge. While there are often times when a coach will serve as a more knowledgeable support and will capitalize on the teaching opportunities inherent in coaching, it is critical for us to recognize a teacher's ownership of his or her instructional compositions. . . . more
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Things May Not Be As They Appear
Jan Miller Burkins
My eleven-year-old twin sons do not brush their teeth. We have to ride, remind, monitor, and penalize. Perhaps their evolving interest in girls will soon motivate them. The challenge has, however, motivated my husband and I to explore various dental care tools. We have the blue liquid indicator they can swish to see the plaque on their teeth. We were certain that this exercise would catapult them into compulsive brushing, but they were uninspired. We buy them electric toothbrushes, flossing tools, glow-in-the-dark toothpaste. I'm sure we spend more than the national average on dental hygiene. . . . more
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"What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?"(Connections Photo Essay Series)
Jan Miller Burkins
Most of us have professional and personal goals; we look for ways to contribute and to grow, to leave our mark on the world. Perhaps this evidence of anticipated motion is our evidence of being alive. What would it mean if we didn't have goals, if we weren't anticipating our own progress? I was quite pleased that I was, in the opinion of this little girl, still growing. That I still had places to go, that I was still young enough to be at a point of just deciding what I was going to do with my life. . . . more
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Connections: Photo Essay Reflections for Literacy Coaches
Jan Miller Burkins
I am part of a group of coaches who meet weekly to engage in professional learning, plan for our schools, and explore district initiatives. During Connections we are silent for ten minutes while individuals share with the whole group randomly. We share celebrations, concerns, stories that are so present with us that sharing them will help us transition into the moment of our work. The point is to build a bridge from the world outside our workspace to that within. We want to think about the spaces from which we have come and connect them to where we want to go during our work together. . . . more
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I Think, I Wonder, I Understand: Making Sense of the Work of Literacy Coaches
Jan Miller Burkins
The "I Think I Wonder I Know" protocol was completed with colleagues at the beginning and end of a semester-long course on literacy coaching. It is a variation on KWLs that I created; it is a little more "open" than KWL - I prefer the language of it. The chart doesn't read across with parallel concepts. It is more of a snapshot of the thinking of my students at the beginning and the end of the class. The first two columns were completed in early January and the last column was completed in late May. . . . more
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Literacy Coaching Interview Rubric
The "Literacy Coaching Interview Rubric" was designed collaboratively with colleagues who are preparing to become literacy coaches. We talked through the different philosophies in school communities about the purposes and roles of literacy coaches, and how we could assess those differences in an interview situation. The rubric is designed not only for interview contexts, but for any situation where teachers, coaches, and administrators are working together to define relationships and roles with literacy coaches. We hope it sparks some in-depth conversations in your school. . . . more
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Letting Go and Holding On: Evaluating Our Work as Literacy Coaches
Jan Miller Burkins
As a literacy coach, I am very interested in the progress of our students and value that data as an indicator of the success of my work. I also solicit more direct and specific information about how the teachers felt about the job I am doing as their literacy coach. So, I developed a feedback form for teachers to complete and return to me anonymously. You can access it at this link . . . more
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Making the Rounds: Visiting Everyone
Jan Miller Burkins
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. . . . more
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The Language of Coaching Part II:
The Leading Edge
Jan Miller Burkins
Peter Johnston has written an entire book about the subtleties of our communications. In Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning (Stenhouse, 2004), Johnston explores the places where work is partially correct. He writes, "This leading edge is where the student has reached beyond herself, stretching what she knows just beyond its limit, producing something that is partly correct. This is the launching pad for new learning" (p. 13). . . . more
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The Language of Coaching Part I: Word Choices
Jan Miller Burkins
Giving written and spoken feedback is an opportunity to be very thoughtful about the words literacy coaches choose in communicating with teachers. This is a challenge. There are nuances to our word choices that we don't always catch because we are looking through a different lens than the teacher... . . . more
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Watching Teachers Teach: An Observation Form for Literacy Coaches
Jan Miller Burkins
Early in my first year as a literacy coach, I tried to go into classrooms to watch teachers teach. I wanted to know what was happening in classrooms, and I was receiving a fair amount of encouragement from the administration to do so. However, I was not always sure how to most appropriately share feedback with teachers. They inevitably wanted to know if they had "done it right." I wanted to give them written feedback, and I wanted to meet with them individually. However, I was not sure how to structure either of these contexts... . . . more
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