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Are you an instructional coach? As part of your work, do you demonstrate minilessons, conferring, or small group work in classrooms? If yes, then this post is for YOU!

As a literacy coach, my preference is to visit on any given regular day to be a part of what is authentically happening, and to have genuine, in-the-moment conversations in the classroom. At the same time, it is helpful to have some structure around how a given classroom visit might go--so that people know what to expect. Conferring with teachers and co-teaching makes this possible.

Are you a literacy coach? Here are three ideas to try next year.

Do you ever have the feeling that every time you come near a partnership, they stop what they were really doing? Here are ten tips for coaching into partnerships, without taking over.

This month, interspersed with the Slice of Life Story Challenge, my colleagues and I are writing about professional development possibilities. Many of our readers are literacy coaches, team leaders, administrators, professors, and classroom teachers… Continue reading →

Many years ago, one of my first jobs was as a ski instructor at a local ski resort. During our instructor training, we were taught a technique called "strength identification and enhancement."

Here’s something fun. Due to popular demand and encouragement from a few early clients, I’m launching a one-on-one writing coaching service to my roster of freelance offerings. This article from Writer Unboxed really helped nudge me in this direction, and if you’re at all curious, it’s worth a read. Normally, writers have been contacting me with completed manuscripts to review. Or questions that fill up a 30-minute phone consultation. Writers ready to submit have requested query and synopsis edits, or my most popular service, the Submission Package Edit, which is a comprehensive look at what agents and editors want to see: the first ten pages, your query, and your synopsis.

Things have been going really well and I’ve gotten to know hundreds of writers from all around the world. Several have gotten agented, and there has even been a publishing deal for a project where I’ve edited a partial. It’s been a terrific almost-two-years! Except I’ve discovered that I’m leaving out a whole group of writers: those with an idea or those in the early drafting stages.

This is where coaching comes in. I’ve developed and tested two tracks, and I’m ready to get some clients in the pipeline!

One option is for writers who need help with deadlines and motivation: we check in over the phone, I read some of your materials and see where you’re getting stuck, we set some goals, and you check in with me up to several times a week to report on progress, rant about a place you’re getting stuck, and otherwise stay accountable to someone while you try to meet your deadlines. I try to suss out your style, whether you want a task master or understanding guide, and we stay in touch during your writing process. Lots of writers thrive with a source of external pressure (gentle, of course!), and it’s a comfort knowing there’s someone to turn to if you need help.

My second coaching option is to work with you at the earliest stages of idea and manuscript development. Is your concept worth putting a year of your life into? Does your story have legs and enough substance to make a compelling manuscript? I will ask you to create a long outline, chapter-by-chapter, and think about character and plot in as much detail as you can. This gives us a map. I do a developmental edit on this, working to suss out your theme, make sure you have enough cohesive elements, point out things that have potential to the story and market (and things that don’t), and otherwise pressure check your idea.

The worst thing someone can say upon reading your manuscript is, “And? So? So what?” This second type of coaching will help you think about your idea in a bigger way, and help you brainstorm things to add (or take away) before you really start the long, hard work of writing. There’s a lot of brainstorming and back-and-forth involved with me.

Both types of coaching include a 30-minute consultation to start, review of your query and synopsis, and a glimpse at any writing samples you have so that I can know what your strengths and opportunities for growth are. Then we dig into the project at hand. You can add editorial services of additional phone check-ins. Because I keep strange hours, most of our work will be email-based, or we can layer in more calls.

It all comes down to what you need. “Mary, I want a taskmaster.” “Mary, I want a cheerleader who’s realistic but kind.” “Mary, look at this and tell me if I’m crazy.” This is the sort of highly customized and deeply personal stuff that coaching is about.

Because it’s time-intensive, I can only take on a few clients per quarter (ideally, the back-and-forth part of the relationship will last for two or three months, especially in deadline-based coaching). The price will be $599 for the services outline above, with add-on or a custom quote available depending on the length and breadth of your project.

I’m just starting this service, so it may change or morph in the next few months. For the first five clients who are ready to dive in and be very pampered guinea pigs, I’ll offer 15% off for mentioning this post. I’ll do some initial coaching and see how my workload changes. The price may change in the future. Check out my website for a full description of coaching. Let me know what you think in an email or the comments!

It’s January, at the top of a mountain in Vermont. Ten six and seven year olds are lined up on the side of a ski trail. Their skis all pointing toward me, ready… Read More →

Who coaches the coach? This question was posed at the Choice Literacy Coaching the Common Core workshop. It’s one that is sticking with Deb and me. Instructional coaches (and I think this is… Read More →

The second portion of the Choice Literacy workshop, Coaching the Common Core was led by Heather Rader. Heather is the author of Side By Side: Short Takes on Best Practice for Teachers and… Read More →

Recently Deb Gaby and I attended a Choice Literacy Workshop called Coaching the Common Core. It was one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended (and I’ve attended a lot of really great… Read More →

Last week I spent a day at Southbury Elementary School in Illinois. (Hello Southbury!) They had students for half a day and the afternoon was a time for us to come together for… Read More →

We were at a family reunion last weekend and had too-few minutes to visit with one of my favorite cousins who I only get to see once a year at the reunion. She… Read More →

An elevator ride that’s too short?

Who ever heard of that? We all stare at the numbers on the panel waiting for our floor # to flash and then push out the doors rapid-fire. No matter how few floors, elevators always seem too slow, like watching a pot of water come to boil.

But today the elevator ride was too short. Too quick for me to act.

I’m in Denver, in the midst of some of the tallest young ladies under 20 I’ve ever seen. It is the US national volleyball tournaments and I’ve been surrounded by these impressive teens everywhere I go.  Healthy, clean cut, pleasantly mannered, each having lots of fun with family & friends.

Except one, who looked about 16.

She followed me into the elevator, then her parents. They stood in front of us with their back to her. Their daughter. Dad started saying she had her worse day ever, clearly talking about her performance in the day’s match. She said her serves were bad but her total day wasn’t bad. Not everything she did was bad. Her mom scoffed, glancing at her and made some cutting wisecrack. They stomped out of the elevator deriding her, and she following in their dust saying Fine, be that way.

When it first started, I waited to see how she reacted to them. Amazingly competent. Clearly hurt and hurting badly, yet maintained composure and didn’t lash out at them.  They couldn’t see how hurt she was BECAUSE THEY WOULDN’T LOOK AT HER OTHER THAN TO GIVE HER PARTING GLARES, but surely, as parents, they knew it in their hearts. I tried to open my mouth, to tell her how honored I was to be next to one of the best in the entire country regardless of how lousy her day was.  The doors opened and they left before I could croak out a sound.

She shuffled behind them with her head hanging down. Isn’t it bad enough to know her teammates will likely rib her too? That, in her eyes, the whole world saw her lousy serves? That she needed their hugs more than anything today and instead they ganged up on her like bullies? With parents like that, who needs enemies?

The elevator ride was just too short.

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With Mike Tomlin on his way to his second Super Bowl in three years and with Black History Month upon us, this is an ideal time to examine the movement that broke down the color barrier at the top of National Football League’s coaching hierarchy and transformed the NFL into an unlikely equal opportunity trailblazer.  Moreover, as American institutions of all sorts, from the Association of Art Museum Directors to the National Urban League, contemplate the merits of emulating the NFL’s Rooney Rule, it is important to investigate what the NFL’s equal opportunity progress means to us as a nation. N. Jeremi Duru, author of Advancing the Ball: Race, Reformation, and the Quest for Equal Coaching Opportunity in the NFL, explores this concept of a post-racial NFL.

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