I facilitated a coaches' clinic on Thursday with Mary and Carolyn. Here are some notes and reflections about the evening.
Icebreaker--Participants selected a book with a title that reverberated with their own lives, their own teaching, or their own coaching. I was struck with how deeply personal some of the comments were. For example, the teacher that chose "The Importance of Being Earnest" talked about how her CFG was a sort of island of honesty at her campus and that she wished more of the faculty were more authentic with each other. I have done a similar icebreaker with postcards, but I think that the book titles led to more immediate connecting. Maybe Mary, Carolyn, and I just have better books than postcards!
Constructivist Protocol--The meatiest part of the agenda was a constructivist protocol that started with this idea: Write about your best learning experience using a protocol. The participants wrote, pair-shared, and then shared in groups of 4-6. In groups, they identified the "working conditions" that made that experience with a protocol powerful. Click on the thumbnail photos to see the group thinking.
After each group recorded their thinking on a poster, we walked around to look for commonalities and differences and ask questions with post-it notes. One coach referred to this as "reading each other's minds." I love that image. To me, it shows that one of the strengths of CFG work is the ability to build on and benefit from each other's thinking.
Midway through the protocol, Mary noticed that we had not allowed time in the original plan for groups to address the questions and comments that other participants posted. We tweeked the timing and added a step for a group spokesperson to respond to the post-it notes. Being flexible really improved the overall results of the new protocol.
Our wish was that participants would leave the clinic with the confidence to create or modify protocols to meet the specific needs of their campuses. I'd like to find out exactly how coaches translate the clinic's activities to meet their needs.
Other notes--
It really helped the evening flow smoothly to have a facilitator (Catherine) designated to sit by the door and take care of the latecomers. She could catch them up to speed while the rest of us continued with the scheduled activities.