Ground Rules for Peer Coaching Sessions

As discussed on September 28th, the following ground rules for Peer Coaching sessions will ensure best use of time, development of trust and comfort with the process, most promising outcomes for professional growth.

There are two roles in each session, the coach and the teacher.

#1. The teacher is ALWAYS in charge of what happens in the session
#2. The coach is there to reflect back to the teacher what they have asked you to observe or note.
#3. The teacher, during a pre-conference, determines what they want the coach to do. It may be strictly observational with a checklist to follow, observational for specified anecdotal feedback, or open to a back and forth conversation, but it is up to the teacher.
#4. The format of coaching for a lesson must not stray from what was planned by teacher and coach
#5. Privacy is essential and non negotiable, even pats on the back can add pressure in public, so keep it professional and between collaborators.
#6. Pre & Post conferences, unless otherwise arranged, should never exceed 15 minutes.
#7. Focus on an area to start with that makes you comfortable like "101 components" ie) low key responses, active participation, high response strategies, etc.
#8. This is not evaluative in any way. This is an opportunity for professional reflection and growth

Spend this term focusing on mirroring techniques to begin. SOme of you may wish to move to collaborative techniques at some point, but it is not expected this early in our journey. Chapters 2-4 from Pam Robbins', How to plan and implement a peer coaching program will help you kick start the process. Check in with Jan or Erin at any time with questions - or better yet, post them here!

Peer Coaching Collaborations

To get us started, let's get term 1 partnerships underway! In the interests of privacy, I am using only first names and grades for you same name folks:

Lindsay (gr2) & Lynda (Ka)
Meghan (gr1) & Lindsey (gr4) & Angel (PE)
Jan (Mu) & Janet (gr3) & Leah (PE)
Anne-Marie (Kb) & Tannis (LE) & Margaret (Resource)
Michelle (JK) & Rebecca (Fr)
Michelle (UE) & Andrew (gr6)
Brenna (LE) & Jyoti (UE)

Connect with your partners and try to commit to one session each before our next Development Meeting on October 26th. This is coming a little late, so if you only get one side of your team done in that period we will manage, just make sure both are booked in your calendar.

Welcome Exceptional Educators at RVS

Hi all - so after our last (and first) Development Meeting, let us begin our first official blog! We will be learning together, not just about Peer Coaching, but also how to make this format useful and meaningful to us all.

If anyone has ideas about a better blog name, etc throw 'em in and we'll vote on it. For now, let's just get talking!


Posts to come will include the ground rules for peer coaching and a summary of what we discussed from chapters 1 & 2 from our group "manual",  How to plan and implement a peer coaching program by Pam Robbins.

Thanks eveyone - this is very 21st Century... How far we've come ;)