Hi Cris,

I am one of those practitioners who would be very grateful if you
developed that guidebook!  I recently took on a new position overseeing
professional development in a program that has over 400 teachers,
working in 150 different sites throughout New York City.  While some of
our teachers work in large learning centers, where up to two dozen
classes take place at any given time, others work in church basements or
CBOs, where they may be the sole instructor.  What every one of the
teachers I've spoken to has said is that they want more opportunities to
share questions and ideas with their colleagues.  I think that having a
tool and a structure to guide that process would be invaluable.

I'm wondering if you, or anyone else on the list, has seen the K12
literature on Descriptive Review?  I am only familiar with it from
discussion with friends who work in elementary education, but I'm
curious if it may be an approach that could guide the kind of embedded,
practitioner-led PD that you've described.  Any thoughts on this?

Thanks,
Ira


Ira Yankwitt
Director of Program Initiatives
Office of Adult and Continuing Education
NYC Department of Education

-----
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:06:32 -0400
From: "Cristine Smith" <cristinesmith at comcast.net>
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 1362] Re: from Cris,	job-embedded
	professional development
To: "'The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List'"
	<professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov>
Message-ID: <002a01c7c314$aaabda60$bc797780 at provost.ads.umass.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Susan:  Great questions!  Job-embedded PD is a little different than the
practicum idea, I think, because job-embedded PD assumes a group of
teachers
working together; the facilitator's job is not to know anything
necessarily
about the content but just to set up the group's activities ("OK, now
let's
share artifacts.what if we now work on a new lesson plan", etc.)  Having
said that, while mentoring or coaching is usually one-to-one, NCSALL
experimented with a model of PD called "mentor teacher groups", where
one
experienced teacher was trained to be a "mentor" to five teachers, and
the
teachers all met BOTH with each other in a group and one-on-one with the
mentor.  If you want more information about this type of PD, see the
Mentor
Teacher Group guide at:  http://www.ncsall.net/?id=1015

As for your questions, here are some of my thoughts:

 
o        How would the mentor/coaching teachers be chosen? K-12 seems to
just assume that more experienced teachers will mentor newer ones.

In my experience, there has to be an affinity between the two
participants
(practitioner and mentor or coach).  Assigning people has its dangers
because what if you just don't respect the person who has been
"allocated"
as your mentor or coach?  The best way, I think, is to let teachers
choose
who they want to mentor and coach them.  However, this isn't always
possible
because of funding and job constraints.  The best we can do sometimes is
to
give people some choice either to be mentored or coached by a particular
person.or not.  But for job-embedded PD, the group of teachers can
choose
themselves whether they want someone from their midst to facilitate
(hence,
the need for a guidebook for job-embedded PD facilitators.I really do
need
to write this, I think!), or whether they want to ask someone from the
state
or district or program PD system to help them.  But again, the
facilitator
of job-embedded PD is not supposed to have all the "content" answers but
rather a facilitator of the group to work together to figure out itself
what
it wants to do
 

o        How would we keep supervision and evaluation out of
mentoring/coaching? Barkley had really solid ideas about what language
to
use to distinguish the two, but some of the program directors I've
spoken
with want it to serve both purposes.

Partly, I think we just need to say over and over again that PD is PD
and it
is NOT supervision and evaluation.  It can NEVER be both at the same
time
because the nature of PD itself (at least GOOD PD) is such that a
teacher
has to feel free to express their needs, areas of difficulty, etc., and
that
is the antithesis of what teachers want to do when evaluated.  Keeping
PD
(whether it is mentoring, coaching, job-embedded, workshops, whatever)
separate from supervision really hinges, I think, on the mechanism and
activities of the PD.  For example, peer coaching has a particular
protocol
for observation and feedback.  The coach or observer doesn't just come
in to
your classroom, sit in the back and watch for any little thing you do
wrong
or right (that IS supervision).  Peer observation requires that the
coach
and teacher meet beforehand, and that the TEACHER gets to tell the
coach/observer what particular feature of teaching or learning s/he
wants
the coach to observe and collect data on.  Then, there has to be actual
data
collected, not just subjective opinions.  So, for example, a teacher
might
ask a coach, before the observation, to count the number of times that
the
students ask to have the instructions repeated (to gauge how well the
teacher is delivering instructions).  Or a coach might count the number
of
minutes that particular students are waiting for the teacher to come
around
and correct their work.  Then, after the observation, the coach and
teacher
sit down and the coach describes the data s/he collected about THAT
particular question, and the teacher and coach analyze it, debrief,
think of
options for new strategies for improvement, etc.  The one thing the
coach
does NOT do is just say any old thing s/he thinks she saw in the
person's
teaching.  In this way, teachers know what is being observed, they
define
the problem or issue, they get real data (not just opinions) about what
happened in the class, and they get help thinking of alternative
strategies.
It also goes without saying that no report or official documentation is
written for inclusion in someone's personnel file (another difference
between mentoring/coaching and evaluation).

 
o        How might this work in a community college setting where there
is
little tradition of mentoring teachers?

I haven't ever worked in a community college setting, so I'm not sure
about
this, but I would guess that there's as little tradition in
community-based
or LEA adult ed programs for mentoring OR job-embedded PD as there is in
any
community college.  The answer is that the program/school/college
leadership
has to be supportive to alternative PD, and figure out how to change
structures so that teachers can meet with each other and in groups.


o        Has anyone had experience with paying coaches and coachees?

Like all PD, both the coach and the "coachee"/participant should be paid
for
their time, by getting paid PD release time.  It's no different than any
other PD:  teachers should be paid for their time,
facilitators/trainers/mentors/coaches should be paid for their time,
including prep time to organize and plan the PD.  I can't imagine that
there
would be any reason why coaching or mentoring should be any different
than
what we advocate for any other PD.  (Easier said than done, but we have
to
keep pushing on this until all policymakers "get it").  

Hope this helps.  Best.Cris

Cristine Smith
Assistant Professor
Center for International Education
University of Massachusetts
285 Hills House South
Amherst, MA 01003
413-545-2731
cristine at educ.umass.edu