The Power of Efficacy

Resources our leadership program has used for PD and training at Linn-Mar.

Our teacher leaders engage in a variety of professional development.  Cognitive Coaching, the work of Pete Hall, Growth Mindset, Visible Learning—just to name a few.  The concepts often touch on the toes of each other. With all these resources at coaches’ and teachers’ fingertips, it can be overwhelming.  This week we took the opportunity to dive deeper into the connections that collective teacher efficacy has with Cognitive Coaching, Growth Mindset, Visible Learning, and the work we are doing in our schools at Linn-Mar.

To help promote discussion among our coaches we implemented a strategy known at chat stations.  This strategy is credited to the Cult of Pedagogy and an in depth explanation of how to use this strategy in your classrooms and schools can be found here.  At each of our chat stations coaches were given the opportunity to think and reflect on their own efficacy and the efficacy in our Linn-Mar Schools.  They answered such questions as:

What does efficacy look like and sound like? 

Who are the efficacious people in our lives? 

What might be the behaviors he/she exemplify that has impacted us in our work? 

What types of questions might help produce efficacious thinking in our schools?          

A final piece of the experience was to discuss this article, by Jenni Donohoo.

Some of the discussion that stemmed from this article was the belief that teachers have about how students learn and how teacher provide intervention.  We discussed the Six Enabling Conditions (Donohoo, 2017) presented in this article.

Six Enabling Conditions of Collective Efficacy

1.      Advance Teacher Influence

2.      Goal Consensus

3.      Teachers’ Knowledge about One Another Work

4.      Cohesive Staff

5.      Responsiveness of Leadership

6.      Effective Systems of Intervention

Our final question to our coaches was:  Which of these conditions do you have the

greatest influence over in your role as a teacher leader?  The responses varied from the

types of coaches and depending on the work they do in each of our ten buildings. 

This is a reflective question I plan to ask myself often, as a Program Coordinator.

If you have not read this article it is a short read and we highly recommend it.  The bottom line in all of this is:  Do you believe you have the power and willingness to make a difference in your students’ learning?  Because this article says Hattie’s research shows that CTE (Collective Teacher Efficacy) has three times more influence on student achievement.  It’s a no-brainer.  The way we believe and think about how we teach and how students can learn becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy—either positive or negative. 

Collaborative Coaches

Have you ever had a lesson go differently than you had planned?  Almost every teacher I know would answer, “YES” to that question.  Having an occasional lesson that flops isn’t a bad thing.  It can provide opportunity for reflection, feedback, and new learning.  Just ask Katie Schafer, first grade teacher at Linn-Grove Elementary. 

Katie had a successful implementation with Seesaw in the spring of last year, so in the fall she contacted both Jessica Zimmerman (Technology Integration Coach) and Tiffany Kinzenbaw (Instructional Coach) to implement iPads during reading rotations. With continued coaching interactions, Jessica and Tiffany were able to support the integration of more technology into Katie’s everyday routines.  Rather than work in isolation, the three professionals collaborated together during their coaching cycles, capitalizing on collective intelligence.  They truly were stronger together. 

Katie was eager to learn about more technology, so she attended a TQSA class for coding and robots, taught by Jessica, which is where she learned about Bee-Bot. She was able to explore Bee-Bot in the class and then proceeded to further explore Bee-Bot on her own time.  When searching for curriculum connections, she realized it would be a great tool to enhance her next writing lesson.  What she found was that Bee-Bot was a catalyst to many things:

“What started out as an experiment in programming has resulted in a springboard/explosion for the students’ enthusiasm and engagement during writing.  Every single student in my class was engaged in writing, revising, and sharing a sequential story that involved Bee-Bot. Their enthusiasm for writing has amazed me and I am more than excited for my near daily collaborating mini-sessions with my Instructional Coach about the next steps in guiding their learning.”

Another key piece to the successful coaching conversations was the impact on teacher reflection, teacher practice, and student learning.  Katie was eager to receive feedback from students, which flowed over into students accepting feedback from their peers in regards to their writing and how they could make it better.  




Giving constructive and timely feedback takes time.  Once teachers make small tweaks to direct instruction and daily practice the payoff can be tenfold.  In this case, Katie’s increased reflection impacted the learning environment for all students in her classroom.

 "The students are willing to let their classmates make mistakes without pointing them out. I can then guide them to give and receive appropriate and helpful feedback." 

 

The above quote is a great connection to the work Linn-Grove has also been doing with Growth Mindset.  Getting feedback and using it in a positive way is a healthy way for students to continue learning even with mistakes, or bumps in the road.

Throughout this entire process, Katie has been open to the coaching cycles while being reflective on her own learning. “After teaming with my Instruction Coach and Technology Integration Coach for an extended amount of time I find myself trying to coach myself through my lesson planning. They both have a direct but helpful way of questioning what the purpose of each aspect of the lesson or plan is."

The bottom line for educators here is that Coaching really can impact everything we do with and for students.  We often hold the answers we need to be more successful in our classrooms.  Coaching helped Katie be a self-directed learner, build her efficacy, and be more mindful of what work makes the greatest impact on students.