March 12, 2023
Every weekday morning I meet with a teacher or teacher pair at 7:30 am. This has been my habit for over a decade. I arrive at work earlier, settle in, consider my plans for these coaching meetings and interventions for the day and then off I go.
Most of the time these meetings are literacy curriculum related. Planning, data mining, collaboration, the usual things over a course of one half hour. Two days a week are sometimes an exception to this: Monday and Friday.
It makes sense. Monday and Fridays are reentries and exits to the week. People have other things on their minds. On Monday, things are ramping up. On Friday, hopefully, they are winding down. My loose coaching on these days was once a worry for me. I didn’t really help them with anything. What about their phonics, their struggling learners, their planning?
Truthfully, I’m not sure either of these educators require any coaching. They are long standing educators who I co-taught with on and off for years. They are carefully planners. They understand the reading/writing curriculum well. They are responsive to their students. Occasionally, they indulge me by showing me their student work. We shuffle through them, enjoying the writing, making some decisions about next steps. Sometimes we discuss the plan for their upcoming teaching: timing, structure, small group work. Sometimes we talk about how I can be helpful, stopping by to observe, teaching a lesson that we have talked about, teaching a different lesson so teachers can kid-watch.
Often… we talk about other things. Deeper things and also lighter things. We… share. We talk about books we have read, are reading, want to read. We talk about bad tv and amazing movies. We tell funny or crazy or worrisome stories about our teaching lives… and our personal ones. We problem solve and commiserate, encourage and tease our ways into and out of the week. There is much less coaching and much more collaboration.
I called all these meetings collaborations. These teachers,my Monday and Friday teachers and my Tuesday- Thursday teachers, are traveling along in our learning community together. As I often recommend something from my own toolkit, I might recommend a teacher talk to another teacher about something I’ve seen or heard.
This last Friday, a former colleague dropped into my regular Friday and we all hugged, talked and laughed well past the scheduled half hour. Those moments fill our tanks and our hearts.
These relationships are the glue that holds our learning community together and the fuel that keeps me going. Most of the time I feel like a fellow traveler, offering tips for survival and getting some too.
Book I’m reading with my Monday friend:
Reflections from a Coach 
The companionship is what I miss so much. Those early morning meetings, scheduled and spontaneous before days filled with students. Your post describes it all so well.
These relationships are the glue for sure.
Over. A. Decade. That’s a lot of collaboration, a lot of company, so much glue. Your commitment always humbles and inspires me.