On Saturday, September 9, the newly trained coaches from this summer's cohort gathered at the U of H Hilton for our first on-going training session. This is a departure from support events that we've held in years past. Instead of hosting stand alone clinics, we are treating the new coaches like their own CFG and trying to build ongoing relationships and model CFG practices throughout the year.

During breakfast, the participants and facilitators responded to this Chalk Talk question: What have you done to start a group?
Obed volunteered to facilitate Connections and we did a new icebreaker called "Finding Commonalities." All the winners got a book, compliments of the Houston A+ Challenge, for their own professional libraries.

We then got to the "meat" of the day. The four facilitators had picked 4 different articles or sets of articles and 4 different protocols to use. The participants could pick the article that most appealed to them.
Mary facilitated a discussion of "Through the Lens of a Critical Friend" by Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick. Using the "Marvin's Model" protocol Donna's group discussed a series of personal essays by John Pieper: "Into the Light--Reflections from a New Coach," "Apples and CFGs in Harmony: A 'Core' Curriculum," and "Serendipity." Michaelann's group read "Seventeen Reasons Why Football Is Better Than High School" by Herb Childress, and Carolyn's group read "Taking Time to Tend to the 'Good'" by Betty Bisplinghoff. Of course, each group learned something different, and I learned that people really appreciate choices.

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.