Summer Job AWESOMENESS!

The past two years I have lucked out in having the BEST summer job! Last summer, I worked as a nanny for two super well-behaved children that loved to learn, travel, and soak up the sunshine. This summer, I am working for TNTP through TEACH Charlotte with career changing adults helping them gain teaching skills in a summer school environment so that they can get hired full-time in the Fall. Okay, so my job this summer might not seem like a piece of cake full of R n R like last summer, but it still is the BEST summer job:

1) I am making a difference

2) I can affect students in 11 classrooms instead of 1

3) I LOVE TEACHING & LEADING!

4) I am helping my own school district become its best

5) My colleagues are supportive, friendly, and funny!

6) Surprisingly 7am-7pm flies by when you do what you love

7) I get to meet lots of decision makers in my district

8) I get to work “behind the scenes” and better understand what makes a school successful

9) I have fallen in love with mi-fi and hotspots 🙂

10) I feel like I have arrived…doing what I love and getting paid to do it

Can you see now why its the BEST summer job? It’s a different kind of BEST, but nonetheless its the BEST. I have always commented on my third graders coming in as babies and leaving as mini adults. I feel the same transformation happening with my adult participants this summer. They come in educated in another field, I give them the techniques to implement into the classroom, and then coach them in a live classroom setting (summer school) to ensure their success in the Fall. It’s a fantastic way to shorten the learning curve!

There are 5 Teacher Development Coaches with anywhere from 12-14 participants each. As a coach, I have 11 participants who work with a buddy in a classroom (one participant is working solo due to her buddy deciding this fast paced program was not for her). They trade-off and on with teaching time and learn from a Cooperating teaching (CT) as well as each other. We strategically place participants together in a classroom for support and have found it is well received by both participants and CT’s. During the school day participants teach lessons, meet in a peer collaborative group to plan, practice teaching techniques in a simulated environment with one another, reflect and analyze student data as well as their own performance data, and observe one of their peers lead teaching. We utilize Google calendars to keep track of where each participant is throughout the day. This allows us coaches to not only observe but dive in to model a technique, explain data trends, offer resource support with lesson plans, etc. After summer school gets out, participants go to skill building sessions to learn additional teaching techniques from Instructors. We believe heavily in practice and ensure participants are not just learning about great teaching techniques but trying them out over and over to build muscle memory.

Are you now seeing why my day lasts from 7am-7pm?! But because it is jam-packed, it goes buy so quickly. I have learned to eat cereal while driving, plan bathroom breaks based on classroom observation locations, used speech to text while sprinting down hallways, increase knowledge base of outlet locations for my laptop, change up how I sit so as not to have a sore bottom at the end of the day, look super cute in flats that double as roller skates, and still find time to catch up with my coaching buddy and manager. Whew, I’m exhausted just thinking about it!

But seriously, I have become a better teacher by teaching teachers. TEACH LIKE A CHAMPION by Doug Lemov has changed my teaching forever. This resource is chock full of the techniques we teach our participants. Go buy this book now! It will change you too! I wish I had stumbled upon Doug much earlier in my career, but I appreciate the journey nonetheless. I enjoy watching participants hone their teaching craft as it brings back memories of my early days. I love waking up knowing each day we are better teachers than the day before because we increased our knowledge base of best practices and then we practiced them until they became automatic. Their excited energy turns into my joy. I absolutely love watching them grow, knowing I am growing too.

What are you up to this summer?