Internal Support Strategies
Peer Observation Days
We encourage you to visit all staff on internal observation days, even those who may have just one or two Catalyst Approach strategies in place so far. This will have a positive impact on group dynamics. As you visit classrooms, consider: during which phases of the lesson a student’s behavior is such that they appear as an outlier, and during which phases is their behavior matching the group?
Contact eva@managingtheclassroom.com to request additional Peer Observation Labelling Sheets.
Resident Catalyst Coach Co-Coaching
Organize with another Catalyst Coach in the district to co-coach at each other’s schools. The host coach should always be present when someone else is in their teachers’ classrooms. The host coach should give most or all of the feedback until a relationship is developed between the visiting coach and the teacher being observed.
Shadowing MEC Coaching Days
Schools hosting MEC for an external coaching day are welcome to invite coaches from other schools to shadow. Visiting coaches, please be cognizant that the host school is paying for the service and graciously sharing with you. Principals may want to work out a cost share in these cases.
Video Library
There are many important protections in place that limit our ability to share videos of students online. We encourage Rochester to set up an internal video library to share footage with one another. MEC uses swivl to film. Here is a LINK to the swivl website.
Instructional Rounds
If you are going on instructional rounds and visiting for other learning, pointing out and labelling the Catalyst Approach skills will support increased implementation.
Demonstration Teacher Visits
At the Catalyst Coach meetings, you heard about the option to organize visits to Demonstration teachers with the host coaches at their schools. We are very excited about this new step. After thinking through how implementation of this process would look, MEC would like to confirm willingness with the Demonstration team, resident coaches, and principals before this begins. We will create a framework and more information to help this new process run smoothly. As soon as MEC has that confirmed, we will send you a list of contacts.