How Peer Coaching Helps in a Teachers Career or Development - Essay Example

The ancillary aim is to recruit a group of teachers as volunteers for the clinical cycle in the actual program to be notified. All logistics tie-up for the briefing are to be arranged before this timeline. Program briefing for all teachers: 2 handouts namely: Briefing Handout and Peer Coaching Program Handout are to be given out to all teachers to be signed up and returned. The Powerpoint slide presentation on the Briefing handout is to include:    

Introduction to peer coaching describing the following:

• Define peer coaching.
• How and where it helps in a teacher’s career/development.
• How and where it can benefit the students.
• Testimonials of peer coaching.

The Peer Coaching Program Handout is to include the schedule of the Peer Coaching   Program.

Recruitment of Volunteers in the Clinical Cycle: Teachers are to sign up or be asked to base their capabilities and talents on the actual day itself. The deadline will be reminded on the next day.

• Training a volunteer group of teachers in the clinical cycles:

This is a one-day workshop that involves and equips the volunteers with peer coaching on the following content:

Define peer coaching and identify volunteers’ skills and concerns:

The volunteers will brainstorm what skills and concerns are involved with coaching, each taking the role of coach and coachee in turn and tabulated.     

• Educate the 3 principles underpinning coaching - mutual respect, collaboration, and constructive feedback.

• Explain the need to build trust and respect confidentiality as the common foundation of a credible and strongly fostered relationship.
• Touching the core of teachers by valuing teaching skills through acknowledging the peak highlights of the teaching milestone. Explaining the power of questioning to solve problems, giving and receiving feedback from peer coaches, using reflection tools to build learning and experience, educate and implementing the Peer Coaching Observation process. With a worksheet, the observer will note their behavior, analyze and interpret them, and educate and implement the Peer Coaching Feedback process.                                    

3)  Selecting teams (matching teachers)

    Teachers are matched accordingly to the following criteria:

• same areas of the subject,
• same gender preferences,
• good fit of schedule,
• complementary/ reinforcing personality traits,
• common agreement to be matched,
• the same set of beliefs,
• same intellectual level,
• the fit of skills and
• same work attitudes

   These fields are tabulated and matched with mutual approvals of the coach and 

   coachee. 

4) Scheduling an initial round of clinical cycles 

On a non-teaching day, a 4-hour workshop will be implemented with the teamed volunteers who will note down what they observed from the participating teachers. A follow-up will be made one week later with the observation analyzed and interpreted. This process of observation, analysis, and interpretation will be passed on to the participating teachers. They will then do their analysis and interpretation and checked by the respective volunteers as evaluation.

5) Monitoring the peer-coaching program

A centralized hierarchical system will be implemented where monthly, all teachers will submit their data to the volunteering teachers and then to the HODs or sub-heads and meet in person every quarterly year. At all times inquiries and feedback can be made informally through emails or physical meet points. All monitored activities will be complied with in the school’s database. Every quarterly year, a mass meeting by departments will be conducted where question and answer sessions will be conducted to refine or revise the peer coaching program.

References:

Quinn, David. (2008). Introducing and Implementing Peer Coaching. Australia Council for Educational Research. (2008). Retrieved May 2, 2009, from http://www.acer.edu.au/leadership-centre/tlc07.html

Microsoft. (2004). Peer Coaching Program. (2004). Retrieved May 2, 2009, from

http://pc.innovativeteachers.com/mpc_web/PeerCoaching/pc_glance.aspx

Beverly Showers, Bruce Joyce. (1996). The Evolution of Peer Coaching. Educational

Leadership, 53. Retrieved May 2, 2009, from

http://www.eggplant.org/pamphlets/pdf/joyce_showers_peer_coaching.pdf