Hello colleague,
I wrote this post at my city’s local laundry mat. Our dryer decided to stop working on Memorial Day weekend. Perfect timing with our two teenagers navigating between friends’ houses, end-of-year school events, soccer games, and trail biking. The dirty clothes pile up quickly.
Anyway, this is a good time to a) review what this space is about for new subscribers, and b) talk about the upcoming summer book study.
This Space
In 2012, I started a blog on Wordpress titled “Reading by Example”. It can still be found at readingbyexample.com. The goal was to chronicle my journey as a new elementary principal and emerging literacy leader. Previously I taught in the classroom for seven years and served as an assistant principal/athletic director for four years at a secondary school. I quickly learned as an administrator how complex this work was, and that writing about it helped me make sense of the complexity.
In 2018, I started using Substack as a newsletter tool in addition to the blog. I found it to be a better writing platform, so I started writing posts here and retired the original blog. For a while, I offered a paid version of this space but ended up pausing it. I didn’t feel like I could offer enough value for what was being charged. Maybe someday I will restart it, but the circumstances would need to be just right.
In 2020, I migrated all of the content from the original blog to this space. The former still serves as an archive for all of the past articles, including curated lists of posts written by contributors for previous book studies. Other teachers’ and leaders’ writings around a common professional resource have always been the most popular posts. It’s an honor to host their reflections; they provide a sorely needed perspective within today’s dialogue around teaching readers and writers in ways that affirm students for who they are and who they might become.
This Year’s Book Study
With that, I am happy to announce that this year’s book study selection is…Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H.: Five Strategies for Supporting Teaching and Learning.
Yes…my book. It came out this past March through Corwin. I admit that it felt a bit odd to position it as the subject for our study this summer. Yet after talking with a few colleagues and contributors, they were very supportive of putting it front and center for people to read and respond to in July.
The core of the book is: formal leaders do not need to accept their current roles as they are presently constructed. More specifically, principals, district administrators, department heads, and educators in any leadership role can expand their positions to include a coaching stance within it when working with teachers.
I am not the first person to recommend a more mindful approach to school leadership. Regie Routman wrote about it in 2014 within the context of literacy in her book Read, Write, Lead: Breakthrough Strategies for Schoolwide Literacy Success. (By the way, Regie’s book is a key influence in Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H., and it’s not a coincidence that she wrote the foreword for my book.) What I offer is a theory of practice for integrating coaching skills within our more formal positions. If I have learned anything in my fifteen years as an educational administrator, it is that there is a direct correlation between student success and teacher empowerment. They need supportive and present leadership that goes beyond traditional supervision and evaluation, including the development of their capacity to lead in the school.
To help clarify these ideas, I created a framework with the word “coach” to help leaders remember the key strategies for success and to provide a clear pathway for engaging in this work:
Create Confidence through Trust
Organize Around a Priority
Affirm Promising Practices
Communicate Feedback
Help Teachers Become Leaders and Learners
It is these ideas in which practicing educators – teachers, leaders, coaches, and consultants – will write about this summer here. I’ve asked them to center their reflections around their own work first, and then use the ideas from the book to help validate their thinking they so generously offer to us.
As readers of this site, you can also participate in a variety of ways:
Read contributors’ posts and support their efforts with a like.
Write a comment around their articles to validate their thinking and extend the conversation.
Share these reflections on social media so more people can participate in this discussion.
Post your own writings on your blog or newsletter related to the book.
Let me know what you’re sharing and writing through #leadinglikeacoach and tagging me @ReadByExample.
However you decide to engage in this space, please know that your readership is appreciated. We look forward to learning with you!
Take care,
Matt
Newsletter Update: A brief history of this space, plus the 2022 summer book study choice