Relationships 101

A recent conversation with a couple of dear friends/trusted colleagues has me thinking (again) about the importance of relationships in our professional learning communities.

Of course, as a coach, I know that most of my work hinges on establishing and actively sustaining positive working relationships with staff members.  But how important to successful coaching are the relationships between colleagues?  I'm thinking they are critical.

My friends pointed out to me that they were able to accept scaffolding to independence with their coaching/new learning because they work directly with supportive colleagues who encouraged them and understood that mistakes are part of learning and becoming even better.

This caused me to pause and think about the inverse; indeed, those who take longer to build independence do seem to lack a support system with trusted colleagues.  (I'm hitting myself on the forehead with my palm.)  I think the result is, at times, a desire to work together longer so that the coach provides the extra support that leads to independence--support that, in the best or luckiest learning communities, comes from a network of colleagues.

Now I am revisiting my quest of helping teachers find, build, and sustain their own learning communities.  This is a process; I think this is especially true because the nature of our day-to-day work involves working in isolation with 20-40 students--no other adults in sight.  We are amazing, self-sufficient workers with an intrinsic motivation for work that often requires working alone to do our amazing teaching... Colleagues who are doing the same thing never really see each other in action, not to mention providing intentional feedback and learning from each other.

I have begun facilitating Roundtable discussions, short-term instructional learning and coaching cycles, staff book studies, and other collaborative sessions for large and small groups of teachers. In addition, I continue to offer longer-term coaching cycles for individual teachers with particular instructional goals.  I think all of these help with building learning communities for safe risk taking for our educators seeking job-embedded opportunities to practice new teaching strategies.

Now I'm thinking about ways to add colleagues to these coaching opportunities.  Perhaps we should add classroom visitations to short and longer-term cycles?  Could we get teachers to make professional videos to share with colleagues?  Could we Skype into a classroom, watching and listening from another location?  What other ideas do you have?