We have only 17 days remaining of our inital year as Sumner County's 1st Instructional Coaches.....what a journey! In thinking back to our first day on the job in July 2009, we all eagerly boarded the big yellow bus for a crash course of ALL 42 of our county's communities and schools, through which I still believe to have been some type of "boot camp" strategy to weed out the car sick folks! Afterwards, we axiously soaked up weeks of training with Steve Barkley and other most wise gurus in their resepective fields. And finally, feeling as if we had grown from fledglings to full feathered avians ready to take flight, we entered the hallways of the schools! As I type this, the feelings still reasonate of that first day..... eager, ambitous, willing, nervous, alone, questioning...any of these sound familiar? We spent each day from that point working diligently to build relationships, trust, bring comfort, provide support, etc... each school's environment evolving at variant rates. Then, in a blink of an eye, here we are ONLY 17 days remaining! This sudden time warp brought many questions to mind, "what has been accomplished?...."where have we been, where are we going?..... "will we get there before time is up?"
I have revisited these questions for a couple of weeks now. Being the overly ambitious person I am, I wished I could have done more. But then, in an ever so simple statement, those notions were calmed. A wise woman said..... "Coaches, you have been the wave of change." "AHHA... I said and the realization came....
"The WAVE of change is just as important as the CHANGE itself!"
Taking that notion to application through Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, we as a coaching group were provided with an extroidanary series of opportunities, seized those opportunities, widen our knowledge, refined our personal strengths and exercised our practical intelliegences. However, we have merely logged 1,222 hours and 30 mins of PRACTICE in being Instructional Coaches...... thus being only a ripple in the 10,000 hours rule! My hope over the next few weeks of this journey is to STOP, reflect on where we have been and how the simple laying of the tracks will effect future travels.... not everyone in the village will ride the first train leaving the station......

"Yea...My 1st Ever Blog Posting!"

I have to share with everyone what a teacher here at Vena Stuart who also has a child in 3rd grade told me this morning. I've been going in her little girls class for about 3 wks. now and doing a 4 Square lesson to model the process for the teacher. I personally have loved doing this, but didn't know how much the children did til today. She said she just had to tell me what her daughter had said. She said she'd been loving Mrs. Watson coming in each week. I was teaching her exciting things!!! I almost cried, because I miss having a class that loves me. So, I got to get that goose bumpy feeling again! Yea! So, what we're doing ladies, does make an impact on the children.