Collaborative Coaching Conversations

It's been a whirlwind this week as our Practicum course moved from the first half of our time together, focused on PLCs, and into the second half, focused on Special Interest Groups (SIGs). The SIGs are a new approach to designing our course experience by providing more CHOICE and OWNERSHIP to our participants. Organized into 8 topical groups, participants have been engaging in relevant readings as they work to plan a facilitated discussion and create a coaching resource/tool for peers to utilize at their own sites. The tricky part about this process is remembering that it all takes place virtually-- the collaborative planning and the conversation itself. This would be tough enough for a group of my younger, millennial undergraduates. While experienced educators, many of our participants are embarking in the online learning milieu for the first time as they participate in our program. And here we are, asking them to design and lead their own virtual PD of sorts.

I'm really excited to engage in these conversations, explore the tools they create, and celebrate the success of pushing our work forward by taking on this risk. The next few weeks will present a number of challenges, no doubt, but I'm hoping that the final products will be a launching point to continue this work in the future.

​For more information and to join the conversation, visit us at 
https://uwcoachingcertificate.weebly.com/coaching-conversations.html

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