Assignment D

Facilitating a Learning-Focused Conversation

Cindy Dick

Brandon University

881649

01.757 Supervisory Policy and Practice

Dr. Cathryn Smith

My Learning Focused Conversation was held on November 22, 2016 with Darlene Keith.

Mrs Keith is a Literacy Coach for Western School Division in Morden, Manitoba. She is 60%

teacher and she works with Kindergarten to Grade 4 teachers in two schools in Morden, Maple

Leaf and Minnewasta. Mrs. Keith has more than 15 years of teaching experience. The plan of

the conversation was to discuss her role as Literacy coach in the area of literacy and how she as-

sists teachers to infuse literacy into classrooms. My goals for the discussion were to find out

strategic areas of coaching and how to work with teachers effectively. I also wanted to find out

how Mrs. Keith uses her expertise in literacy and how she works with teachers on teaching liter-

acy skills at a high level in order for students to learn best. My goals also involved using the

skills that we have learned from Lipton and Wellman about how to conduct professional conver-

sations including paraphrasing, inquiry questions and listening techniques. Our conversation

lasted for 32 minutes in duration.

Inquiry Questions:

1. Given your expertise with reading, how do you support teachers in the area of comprehen-

sion and inferencing?

2. Given your expertise with writing, how do you support teachers in the area of comprehen-

sion in their writing?

3. You have an interest in Project Based Learning and you are aware of the benefits for stu-

dents using this approach. Can you explain your goals in regards to supporting and imple-

menting PBL (Genius Hour) projects with teachers?

4. You worked with a literacy mentor on developing a writing continuum in our division. As

you reflect on your work with this mentor and the teachers, how do ensure that teachers are

using the writing continuum you developed together effectively?

5. Congratulations on your recent Innovation Grant that you were recently awarded. You are

aware of the benefits of Innovating learning time (Free Little Library Project), how will you

plan for success with this new project?

After concluding the self-assessment, I found that I scored myself at the full integration

level with the ability to differentiate based on the dialogue in the following areas: coaching, con-

sulting, changing stance, listening, allowing time/space, paraphrasing and summarizing. The fol-

lowing verbatim quotes explain how I used these skills during our conversation.

Coaching - During our discussion on Project Based learning, Mrs. Keith and I discussed

the elements of PBL and how they are effective and how they benefit students. She explained

that there were two reasons for implementing PBL effectively; student voice and real life appli-

cation. As we discussed the positive reasons, she also explained the frustrations that teachers are

having as they are trying to implement this new approach to their teaching. I asked her questions

and clarified the problems that she was having with doing PBL with teachers and tried to stretch

her thinking. My question was an attempt on having her think of how she could approach the

frustrations; how she could plan some specific goals to help teachers.

“You’re saying Project based learning is valuable for teachers to go through because it

gives students choice and students can decide what they want, whatever they are interested in. It

is also cross-curricular, and there is lots of that real world application which we talked about in

the reading and writing, which makes the learning more authentic. You also talked about the

frustration, the difficult pieces of PBL, there is no right or wrong, where teachers don’t see the

end. But your point is that there is no end, and that the learning should keep on going. Makes

me think of how do you support the teachers in this frustrating shift of thinking in PBL

projects?”

Consulting - As we discussed how she could approach the problems of introducing PBL,

Mrs. Keith talked about an idea of having teachers experience an inquiry or PBL themselves, so

that they could experience what their students experience. I then consulted with her on how she

felt this would help solve the problem:

“So, once teachers have experienced this discomfort, how do you see this being more successful

with PBL? Will they be more successful now?”

“So, that is what your role is, you would now go in and co-teach with that teacher to help with

PBL projects?”

The principle of practice that was discussed here was teacher experiential learning and real life

application. I consulted with Mrs. Keith on how she could set teacher actions or goals on this is-

sue. She agreed that once the teachers had experienced their own PBL they would be more ef-

fective with their teaching, but they would still need guidance and support along the way. This

support and guidance would involve herself as the literacy coach as she would go into class-

rooms and co-teach and mentor with the teachers.

Shift down AND asked for examples Mrs. Keith was discussing the frustrations with

implementing PBL projects. She was discussing the frustrating pieces of introducing a new idea

as a shift of thinking, more open ended teaching, and inquiry based teaching. I wanted to shift

down the thinking and try to get her to think of a specific example of how she would approach

this shift in thinking. She started to discuss having teachers actually experiencing a PBL with

her as the teacher. I wanted to get a clearer picture of what she was talking about. “Can you

give an example of what that would look like?” (talked about teachers going through a PBL

themselves)

Summarize and organize - To conclude this discussion of PBL, I wanted to summarize

and organize what Mrs. Keith was saying. I was trying to paraphrase her thoughts and organize

them so that we could collectively understand the ideas. “Teachers need to feel what the dis-

comfort is like. So you are saying, if teachers are experiencing this themselves, this will help

teachers understand the discomfort that students go through?”

Acknowledge and clarify - Mrs. Keith was involved in developing a writing continuum

for our division with a mentor from another school division. After this development, the writing

continuum was expected to be fully implemented by teachers this year. My inquiry question

about this initiative was asking how she will support the teachers with this continuum. She

talked about how the implementation was running into some problems. She found that teachers

were asking why they were doing it? Why did they pick the specific genres? How do we teach

it? She discovered that some teachers were telling her that they had not taught the steps of writ-

ing regarding some of the topics that were decided last year. I wanted to acknowledge the short-

falls and clarify what the next steps she would be taking to tackle this problem.

“So, you have this writing continuum, but have you really gone through the steps on how it is

taught? How to get there?”

Choosing Stance - As we discussed the occurrences since the beginning of this year

with this implementation of the writing continuum, I wanted to find out what her role will be

specifically, on her support for teachers; what her planning decisions were going to be based on

teachers’ interpretation of the writing continuum.

“Have you had opportunities to have collaborative dialogue with teachers on why we chose

these genres of writing?”

“So, is it more of a review of the discussions from last year to remind teachers or is there more

work to do with the decisions that were made?”

Cause and effect - As Mrs. Keith talked about the approach that she would take, having

discussions about the conversations she had with teachers, I wanted to probe and find out the de-

cisions that were made and how it would effect her role. She talked about having discussions

with teachers about their own personal experiences of writing and how often they found them-

selves writing fiction. They clarified as a team, that they needed to identify the writing genres

according to real life applications in our world and the students’ world.

“Would you say when teachers reflect on own their life experiences with writing, did that give

them moments of clarity when they talked about what why we are teaching these aspects of writ-

ing?”

Shift up - As our conversation came to a close, we started to talk about reflection in

teachers practice. We discussed how important all these changes are and how teachers need to

take time on a regular basis to reflect on their work. She emphasized that change cannot happen

effectively if teachers do not think about how they are doing.

“Teachers reflecting on what they're teaching is very important. And thinking about how they

are teaching it and if it fits in the plans. You want teachers to continue to question themselves

on their teaching practice.”

As I reflect on my learning focused conversation, I realize that I am able to listen atten-

tively for understanding without interrupting. I used pauses and breaks during the conversation

to allow for Mrs.Keith to describe her ideas. I was well aware of personal, detail and certainty

listening during the dialogue. I was able to paraphrase and organize while clarifying the ideas

that Mrs. Keith presented. After I reviewed the videotape, I thought that my voice was ap-

proachable and sounded non-threatening but inviting. I found that I was able to coach and con-

sult Mrs. Keith on the topics of the writing continuum and PBL projects.

Some areas that I feel that I need to improve on are collaborating and calibrating. It sur-

prised me that collaboration was not at a higher level. I feel that I am very collaborative and

thrive on working together with other teachers. However, during this conversation, I did not of-

fer many opportunities to help Mrs. Keith with her goals. I did not make suggestions such as,

“How might we approach this?” For some reason, I kept myself out of the conversation and I

am unable to explain how this happened. Also, calibrating with a data question would have also

helped support Mrs. Keith. I could have asked a question about what data she could use to help

teachers implement the writing continuum. I also find shifting up/down are difficult questioning

strategies. I was able to attempt a couple of shifting comments during our conversations, but I

do not feel they were very powerful. Shifting comments require a great deal of quick thinking

and analyzing in the moment, which is a goal that I would like to work towards. The other goal

that I would like to work on is asking questions for new insights. Mrs. Keith is a very experi-

enced teacher with more than 15 years teaching. I found that our conversation flowed very well,

she was very easy to talk to especially due to the fact that we already have a close working rela-

tionship with each other. She is very knowledgeable and discusses her ideas very succinctly and

completely that I found asking for new insights from her was very difficult for me. This doesn't

mean that this should be left out of a learning focused conversation, it just means that I need to

work on higher level, inquiry questions that will push her thinking. Our conversation was valu-

able and I found that I learned a great deal from Mrs. Keith about her role as a literacy coach and

how she approaches teaching teachers, how to teach reading and writing, and PBL projects.

Our conversation was natural and I felt that my questions were on topic and kept the dialogue

going. We found that we did not have enough time for the last question, however, the thirty min-

utes of professional dialogue was full of interesting pedagogy, how students read/write and how

adults learn. I am motivated to continue to sharpen my skills during future learning focused con-

versations.

References

Lipton, L. & Wellman, B. (2015). Learning-focused supervision: Developing professional

expertise in standards-driven systems. Charlotte, VT: MiraVia.