National School Reform Faculty

Coaches CFG
Date: November 3-7, 2005
Listserv: Coaches

Thursday, November 3, 2005 6:38 PM
A group of us coaches plan to create a CFG. What are some of the topics a Coaches CFG discusses? How often do you meet?
David, WA

Friday, November 4, 2005 12:11 AM
We try to meet once a month, and our topics vary based on the presenter's topic. During the month, we email each other asking who has something to present. We've explored a grant proposal for furthering the collaborative work of principals, the agenda for institutes, a principal's dilemma, and the list goes on. We just function as a CFG with someone presenting and a text-based discussions. We also eat, socialize, and drink wine :-) and grow together.
Stevi, CO

Friday, November 4, 2005 10:00 AM
This is our third year to meet as a coaches' group at the International School of the Americas (I'm a university professional development school liaison and help convene the coaches' group). We meet monthly or after every two CFG meetings -- approximately 3-4 times per semester. We've rotated between lunch meetings, "happy hour" meetings, and dinner meetings to meet diverse scheduling needs.

We share agendas, discuss coaching dilemmas, read text related to facilitation, discuss articles from Connections :), try new protocols, share winter meeting experiences, review participant feedback/evaluations. At our last meeting on Wednesday we noticed that our coaches' group has a different feel and agenda when we have coaches who are co-coaching v. coaches who are solo-coaching. When we had co-coaches, we used part of the time for the co-coaches to check in with each other and plan because we found that they were having a hard time doing that during the school day/week.

We've rotated agenda-setting & facilitation -- we do have someone who serves as the group convener who keeps her eye on the organization/big picture to make sure we're meeting -- she brings/arranges refreshments, location (often at the university away from school for happy hours and dinners) etc. Yet we want to share facilitation in order to refine that and also share the agenda-setting -- we try to operate as a CFG would.

We've also sought out support for our coaches in terms of finding funding for winter meeting attendance, money for dinners/food and beverages, etc. Our coaches also do presentations at other schools/conferences from time to time about our experiences and so we discuss/plan those as well.

There's also a coaching group at Lee High School, our other professional development school. Ileana Liberatore meets with the coaches there to share meeting agendas, discuss coaching dilemmas, see what support the coaches’ need/want, work out logistics and coordinate the initiative.

I think the first year we worked with CFGs at both schools the coaching groups were extremely important in sustaining our efforts. We encouraged our elementary PDS to develop a coaching group when they began CFGs as well. It means additional time and effort, on top of the time and effort of coaching a group (esp. for the first time), yet for solo-coaches especially we've found it's worth the effort if you can structure/schedule it feasibly.

Pat Norman and I along with our coaching groups have been collecting data in our coaching groups and hope to share that at a future point.
Angela, TX

Monday, November 7, 2005 1:39 PM
Our group meets once a month; we discuss issues related to student achievement; we look at student work; we also read professional articles and discuss them.
Ernestine, NM

Monday, November 7, 2005 1:54 PM
We have our national level facilitators run CFG sessions once a month for the school based coaches here in the district as Professional Development activities. Past agendas have included topics such as the following:
• Revisiting for more practice: facilitation skills
• Clarifying and probing questions, giving and receiving feedback
• Text discussions on equity, on Turning to One Another (Wheatley book), on standards & assessments, on differentiated instruction,
• Success Analysis Protocol, Peer Observation protocols, Joint agenda planning sessions,

Generally our agendas are run from the content of the reflections where in participants voice their needs, satisfaction/dissatisfaction, suggestions, etc.
Good Luck!
Jennifer, NM