On October 28, the Houston A+ Challenge hosted a CFG Follow-Up Session for the new coaches who were trained this summer. It was the second in a series of follow-up events that are designed to support and encourage new CFG coaches in their first year of coaching.

After a welcome and Connections, we decorated notebook covers. Each coach could personalize a cover with a variety of scrapbooking papers, stickers, etc. The facilitators' hope was that this would encourage the new coaches to document the CFG work that they are doing--no matter what form that work takes. The notebook is a place to collect meeting agendas, protocols used, reflections, etc. Click on the thumbnail photos to see some of the creative notebooks.

After sharing notebook covers, we surveyed who had brought work or dilemmas and chose to look at student work. One member shared three student journals from her ART I class. We used the Collaborative Assessment Conference Protocol to examine the work and respond to the questions "What do you see?" "What questions does this work raise for you?" and "What do you think the child is working on?"

The presenting teacher had chosen 3 notebooks from the same class period. The notebooks belonged to a special needs (autistic) child, a recent immigrant, and a high achieving student. It was interesting to examine the notebooks as evidence of teaching and learning and make connections to our own individual practice. We could see skills and growth in each student journal. During the debrief, we made the connection that our own CFG Coaching notebooks should show growth and learning throughout the year, too.

After a short break, we helped a school team with a dilemma. To respect our norm of "Vegas Rules," I will not describe the exact dilemma. However, going through the process helped our group surface questions such as
Who should be in charge of CFG agendas?
Should groups be voluntary or picked according to some criteria?
How do you build trust?
How do you explain what a CFG is?

I wrote in my own journal that I learned that people need to be able to articulate what they value and that teacher/practitioner empowerment is important.

The next CFG Support Session is scheduled for December 2, 2006.

All Reflections from October 28, 2006, are in the extended entry.

Our new Facilitator CFG met for the second time on November 15 at Grady Middle School. Present were Linn, Natalie, Debbie, Donna, Tim, Michaelann, Mike, Brandi, Lynn, Mary, Marcela, Janet, Carol, Linda, and Sharon.

During opening moves, Tim led the group in developing norms for our work together. Click on the thumbnail to read our norms.

Next we engaged in a Table Top Chalk Talk around these questions:
What do you hope to get from this group?
What do you hope to learn/improve about your facilitation?
What do you hope to learn/improve about your coaching?
Click on the thumbnails to examine our Chalk Talk. Dizziness alert! some of the writing is upside down since we worked on round tabletops.

The themes that emerged in the Chalk Talk and in our debrief included
1) Friendship--new and maintaining
2) Eagerness to learn and improve
3) Refreshing and refining
4) Practicing
5) New/more/improving knowledge
6) Connection to the 'core'