Instructional Coaches attend CoachFest24 and Color of Education to Improve their Skills

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Author: Jackie Aponte

As educators, lifelong learning is key to personal development and student success. This past September, New Teacher Support Program coaches attended professional learning experiences that fostered collaboration, community, and inspiration. Coaches participated in engaging workshops at CoachFest, an annual national conference for instructional coaches in Charlotte, NC. They also participated in thought-provoking sessions at The Dudley Flood Center’s annual Color of Education Summit at NC State University in Raleigh, NC, which brings together educators, researchers, policymakers, students, and other stakeholders to work toward eliminating disparities in education. Each event offered valuable insights and strategies to inform our practice, while also providing opportunities to grow our professional network and community. 

Here are a few highlights and key takeaways from the events:

CoachFest 2024

Coaching for Gold: Creating the Climate for Coaching Success 

1. Connection, Community, and Collaboration

At CoachFest, one session that offered valuable insights was led by Erinn Edwards, an experienced and thoughtful educator from Charlotte, NC. The session focused on cultivating relationships and trust within teams to support growth and efficacy. One key concept was the idea of social contracts. Unlike rules or norms, social contracts encourage team members to express how they want to be treated and how they can best support one another. This collaborative approach fosters a more open and trusting environment, which is essential for effective teamwork.

Key Takeaway: Facilitating connection, community, and collaboration within a team setting requires deliberate, thoughtful, and ongoing effort. It is, however, important and necessary work to build a successful team.

2. Supporting Teachers as Learners and Leaders

Another impactful session was facilitated by the Appalachian State regional team of the NC New Teacher Support Program, led by Caroline Beam and Ike Smith. This session,  "Supporting Teachers as Learners and Leaders," emphasized the use of protocols to facilitate meaningful conversations within teams. The use of protocols allows a leader to shift from managing discussions to facilitating them, empowering participants to take ownership of conversations and outcomes of them. Through the use of structured protocols, discussion participants are able to construct shared understandings of concepts and focus on intended outcomes, rather than what to say or how to respond.

Key Takeaway: Explore different protocols for team discussions in your professional learning communities. These user-friendly tools help adult learners construct shared meaning and have better conversations.

3. Servant Leadership: The Key that Ignites Teacher Effectiveness

The closing keynote by Jamal Maxsam offered thoughtful insights on servant leadership, and how instructional leaders might utilize this concept to support teachers in their growth and development. Maxsam framed servant leaders as "igniters”; leaders who facilitate change or accelerate growth to make things better for others and the community. Servant leadership includes three key components: listening, empathy, and healing. This perspective emphasizes the importance of building a culture of care and support, positioning leadership as a way of being rather than a set of strategies to execute.

Key Takeaway: To accelerate teacher growth and cultivate environments where teachers can be effective, pay attention to the way you show up for teachers. Embrace the principles of servant leadership, listening, empathy, and healing, into your practice.

 

2024 Color of Education Summit 

Collective Action: People and the Arc of Justice

The 2024 Color of Education Summit, an annual conference hosted by the Dudley Flood Center in Raleigh, NC, also provided meaningful opportunities for learning, collaboration, and growth.

4. When “Nice” Hinders Justice

In a session facilitated by NC New Teacher Support Coaches Jackie Aponte and Kathleen Harrell, from UNC-Chapel Hill, participants reflected on real-world examples of students’ experiences in classrooms, and collaborated to think about ways to best support their students. Participants discussed ways to create school and classroom environments where all students feel valued, supported, and capable of success by exploring research-based pedagogical frameworks that highlight students' identities, abilities, and strengths.

Key Takeaway: Consider how your classroom environment can better support all students. Engage in reflective practices that prioritize equity and inclusion in your teaching. Look for resources that highlight culturally responsive and culturally sustaining practices, as well as those that support teachers in identifying the strengths and assets their students bring into the classroom with them.

5. Keynote by Eddie Glaude Jr.

Opening the summit, Eddie Glaude Jr.'s keynote address served as a highlight. The New York Times bestselling author of Begin Again and We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, Glaude emphasized the importance of everyday people embracing the responsibility of leadership that true democracies require, rather than outsourcing responsibility to others. His speech highlighted the work and leadership of Ella Baker, and her commitment to organizing, community care, and fighting “close to the ground”. Glaude’s vision for democracy, informed by the ideas and work of Baker, is one where the experiences, insight, and work of everyday people are highlighted in service of working toward a true democratic community. Through his speech, Glaude emphasized several ideas, including that politics should be informed by the people involved, that democracy carries with it the notion that every individual is capable of intelligent action, that it requires a "politics of tending", a commitment to treating people justly, and that for our democracy to succeed, we must become the leaders we have been looking for. 

Key Takeaway: If we are to truly lead within a democratic society, we must uplift those around us and share in the responsibility of leadership. The work of democracy requires building an inclusive community, full of self-actualized individuals, rooted in love and care, that works for all of us. 

Conclusion

September was a month filled with inspiration and growth. Each of these professional learning experiences served as opportunities to think deeply, connect with others, and grow as educators while fostering a sense of community and collaboration. While the fall season can often be a busy one, filled with assessments, planning, parent conferences, and many to-do list items, finding ways to connect with and learn alongside and from others can be a restorative way to build community, gain inspiration, and facilitate growth, for our students and ourselves.

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