Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Brain Drain


Do you ever take a step back from your busy life and wonder what the heck you've done to yourself?  I'm having one of those weeks.  I managed to completely over-schedule myself, and now I'm paying for it.

Yesterday, I had the first meeting of an after school book study and today I held the morning session.  Each was an hour long, and while I was tired for the 4-5pm session, I was super tired for my 7-8AM session.  I was moving slowly this morning and realized just as I was about to cut and toast my English muffin for my egg & toast breakfast that I really needed to be at school in 10 minutes.  Cue me inhaling my sliced mango and quickly mixing my coffee in my travel mug and then dashing out the door.  I was half way to school when I realized I didn't have my keys & fob to get into the building.  I had to turn around and go back home.  (This was not a tragedy, as I live super close to my school and luckily was not stopped by a train.)

The book study group was pretty good for 7AM, especially considering we were having some pre-reading discussions around the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts.  We're prepping to read Pathways to the Common Core by Calkins, Ehrenworth, & Lehman, and I'm actually excited to have people to talk with about this book.  Though many of the participants were not quite awake, we had some good discussion around two wordles I created from the anchor standards.  Not a bad way to start a morning.

This was followed by two data meetings where we identified students for the next round of literacy interventions.  Data and I do not get along well.  When I agreed to change roles and take on the job of literacy coach in my building, I knew that analyzing data and leading these decision-making meetings would be part of my job.  I figured I would not like it, and I was right.  I'm hoping as I get more comfortable with looking at trends and thinking about what the data tells us, I'll feel better about leading these meetings.  I am lucky that I have colleagues who are willing to help me and to ask the questions that put students first.

By lunch time, I was pretty much a zombie.  My afternoon was less than productive.

So this isn't an earth-shattering slice tonight.  In fact, it's a pretty run of the mill slice about a run of the mill day in my crazy life.

How many more days until spring break?

5 comments:

  1. Time to slow down a bit and pace yourself. It's far easier, however, to SAY than to DO! Hope your spring break is soon!

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  2. So there with you, push, push, push. I am looking toward spring break. Enjoy yours.

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  3. I think I should read your posts more Mindi, since we both have the job title of literacy coach, but from reading today, we do such different things. I mostly meet with individual teachers and help them make personal goals for liateracy learning, sometimes working with math and science teachers in literacy. I think your day was very full, as you've said, but talking about data sounds challenging. I hope you like the Calkins book. I saw her speak at a conference in Feb. & she was certainly excited about the CC, which surprised me. Thanks for sharing!

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    1. Linda, that is mostly what I do, too. About 95% of my job is working with individual teachers or teacher teams. I also teach one literacy intervention group. In our district, the literacy coaches coordinate and analyze data from our school's literacy benchmarks and share with the staff. I only do this about 6 days a year, but those six days wipe me out!

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