A "COACH" CAFE for Professional Development
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By Kei Pace
We love that you take the information we provide and tweak it to fit your style and meet your needs! We recently heard from literacy coach Kei Pace and her colleagues from Spring Hill, Tennessee, who took the CAFE Menu idea and added a twist. Thanks for sharing!!!
In Kei's own words... In the last few years as Literacy Coaches my colleagues and I have tried several approaches to documenting our work. Nevertheless at the end of each year we were left with feelings that what was documented really did not reflect the magnitude of our efforts.
This summer after attending our third workshop of the Sisters (can you tell we really believe in what you are modeling for us?) our conversations began to include statements around wishing we had a menu to lead our coaching efforts. We also began having more teachers wanting to use the Daily Five management and CAFE Menu. From that angle we were brainstorming ways to model these for them.
This lead us to create a very rough draft of a COACH menu and include items that our county has addressed in PD at some point during the last 6 years. Then we added "hot topics" that we read/ heard coming our way. This year as I met with teachers and had them choose a goal from the menu. I also created, in the literacy room, a COACH board and teachers actually put their name by their goal. In my Pensieve, I am documenting much like the teachers do with the conferencing sheets. These notes lead my conversations with them and keep us focused.
I feel like I really am documenting my efforts and our baby steps towards positive change. I know the teachers feel like they are more in charge of their growth. Plus, as teachers ask me about CAFE, my answers now include correlations to their own experiences with the COACH menu.
I may not be explaining our efforts as fluidly as I should, however I just wanted you to know about our excitement! Does our work need tweaking? OH! Yes! We are simply very excited and very grateful to your expertise!
