You can think of these books as guides to help accomplish your goals. The ideas presented were field tested in my 20+ years as a public school teacher and building administrator. Follow more of my work on Twitter, LinkedIn, and by subscribing to the Read by Example Newsletter.
Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H
All schools have the capacity for schoolwide instructional excellence. Schools with leaders who adopt a coaching stance as part of their practice are more likely to realize this success. Leaders achieve success with their teachers, their students, and their families, not alone.
Leading like a C.O.A.C.H. reframes the approach to schoolwide change from a leader acting alone to a leader working with a community in which each member contributes their strengths and ideas to improving instruction. Renwick, a well-known blogger and writer on literacy and leadership, encourages school leaders to embody five practices:
1. Create confidence through trust; 2. Organize around a priority; 3. Affirm promising practices; 4. Communicate feedback; and 5. Help teachers become leaders and learners. Throughout this practical guide, readers will find
Digital Portfolios in the Classroom
Assessment is messy. Day-to-day, in-the-moment assessments not only reveal information that drives future instruction but also offer a comprehensive picture of students’ abilities and dispositions toward learning. As teachers, we might know what this looks and feels like, yet it can be hard to put into action—hence the messiness.
Matt Renwick’s Digital Portfolios in the Classroom is a guide to help teachers sort through, capture, and make sense of the messiness associated with assessment. By shining a spotlight on three types of student portfolios—performance, process, and progress—and how they can be used to assess student work, Renwick helps educators navigate the maze of digital tools and implement the results to drive instruction.
5 Myths About Classroom Technology
What’s keeping your school behind the technology curve? Is it a fear of the unfamiliar? Expenses? Or some other myth? Have you considered how students with special needs or students learning a second language may benefit from using digital tools?
Educator Matt Renwick debunks five common myths about technology and helps you consider how to fund and manage the devices and create a supportive, schoolwide program. Renwick uses his school’s experiences and examples as a foundation to explain how you can assess and answer your students’ technology needs in terms of access, purpose, and audience—and why you and your school cannot afford to keep students from using technology in their education.
“Matt Renwick is the principal we all wish we had and the one we all want to be. His ideas about walking alongside teachers to grow them in the same ways we want them to grow students are just-right advice. He brings the research on trust and collective efficacy to life through concrete ways to operationalize rituals and routines of observation, goal setting, and planning with teachers”
– Samantha Bennett, Learning Design Specialist, Instructional Coach and Education Consultant
“Matt Renwick offers readers a rich, practical how-to book supported by current research. This book should be within easy arm’s reach of school administrators wishing to increase their skills of performing their major responsibility: increasing student learning.”
– Arthur L. Costa & Robert J. Garmston, Professors Emeriti, California State University, Sacramento, Co-Authors of Cognitive Coaching