Jeffrey Miller, Ed.D 12/27/11 Jeffrey Miller, Ed.D 12/27/11

Implementing Traffic Light Reflection

In a world of ever-increasing productivity, it is easy to feel the pressure to do more. I know many educators, including myself, have been forced to learn how to do more with less in this down economy and diminishing education budgets. I, in fact, have been reflecting more on my current realities and have been trying out different strategies for increasing my teachers' effectiveness. So far one of the most effective strategies has been helping teachers establish and follow through with a traffic light reflection. If you work in a coaching role with teachers, try these three strategies for helping increase teacher effectiveness.

1. Examine your practice. When I work with educators, I constantly try to help them make connections between their efforts and their desired results. Well, that involves two important steps: understand clearly what you are trying to achieve and recognize the actions you are taking to accomplish your goals. I believe it is essential that a coach have clarity in both before successfully helping an educator reach his goals. Basic questions like, what evidence should you see to inform you that you are reaching your goals, what would success look like for you, or what moves have you made as a result of these on to the next challenge, should become a regular part of a teacher's reflection and should be answered with clear measurable steps or actions for the coach.

2.Red Light, Yellow Light, Green Light. In everything a coach should strive to help a teacher take a structured approach toward reflection. As I mentioned earlier, it is easy to get into the routine of adding on more things to do or taking on more responsibilities. In my work I have found that more attention should be given to identifying the actions that are contributing to the goal as well as those that are not contributing. To do this I recommend using what I call a traffic light approach to reviewing action. If followed one should look at the actions that should be started - the "green light", the actions that should be continued - the "yellow light", as well as the actions that should be stopped - the "red light". I have personally found it easier to find the green and yellow light tasks that should be added or continued, while the red light tasks that need to be discontinued are sometimes less obvious.

3. Take a 30 day challenge. This step is simple. Now that you have clearly articulated the end goal and have applied a traffic light reflection to your actions, make a concerted effort to keep track of your efforts for 30 days. I have found that making this short-term goal allows you to ease into the new reflection habit while giving you enough time to measure a change in your effectiveness. With a new year right around the corner this could be a perfect fit.

Jeffrey Miller, Ed.D 6/22/11 Jeffrey Miller, Ed.D 6/22/11

Summer Professional Development Idea #1

Are you the type of teacher who looks forward to summer professional development, or are you trying to avoid anything related to learning until you absolutely have to go to a training seminar? Chances are you are somewhere in the middle. If you find yourself looking for a relaxing yet meaningful way to grow professionally this summer, try these quick and easy activities

Write a book or article review

How often do you get the chance to really get engulfed in academic reading? If you have ever had the urge to get to the heart of a troubling issue in education or simply have wanted to learn something new about your craft, the summer break is the perfect time to dive right in. Even during the summer, our lives can be busy, but without the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day classroom and school activities, we can really take the time to dissect an academic topic at your leisure. Make a list of the educational topics that pique your interest or get you on a soapbox the quickest. Then, search for relevant journals, books, or research articles, and strive to make the complex plain. Analyze the reading as though you were going to be responsible for supporting a new teacher on that topic. Before long, you will discover just how much you can grow professionally from simply researching topics of your choice during the summer break.

Jeffrey Miller, Ed.D 1/2/11 Jeffrey Miller, Ed.D 1/2/11

Remembering the Old in the New

Well, I can't believe 2010 has gone by so fast. What I have to show for it? Hmm. I have to be honest this year has not been my finest. Much of has to do we the amount of change that took place in my life during the year. I am not trying to make excuses for it but I need this year to realize a few things about myself. I would like to share a few of them with you in this blog so hopefully, you don't have to repeat my mistakes in 2011.

For starters, I realized that routines get you through the weird times. This past year I gradually became committed to framing my daily work with well worked out schedules. The more I stuck to it when things were good the more it will be useful to me when things weren't so great.

I also realized that not to do lists are just as important as to do list. I can't take all the credit for this one because I got the idea from a great article, but I did make it my own. It is very easy to become consumed by the need to do more. I learned the hard way that the ability to do more is not as good as the ability to do more quality work. It was hard, but forcing myself to identify the things that I needed to stop doing caused me to reflect more on the impact of my actions. As a result, I could recognize what were the true ingredients to successfully completing higher quality work.

Lastly, I realized that you have to always remember who you are and what you make you good at what you do. This may sound unpractical, but surprisingly it is very helpful when done correctly. Who doesn't have work-related stress, demanding clients, and looming deadlines? Well in all that it is easy to lose sight of what makes you successful or what do you actually do well. Both of which are needed when times are tough and the workload is piling up. It does not hurt to keep a record of your successes and acknowledgments. It could be as a simple as box or folder that you collect artifacts supporting your "genius". Maybe it would be easier for you to keep an electronic record, regardless of your preference, just do it. Now you can't stop there, you will have to review it from time to time to keep it fresh. After all, if you keep up with your successes who will?

Well, I know that I will have many more lessons this year and I look forward to learning them all! Try these out and hopefully you will be able to move on to bigger and better lessons this year. May you have a blessed 2011!