I was lying awake one night and could not turn my mind off when a new instructional idea came to me. I had been wanting to freshen up a final assessment for a novel unit but could not pinpoint what I wanted in complete detail. After a day of thinking and brainstorming what my vision looked like in an end product, I realized I had less than a week to make the proper preparations (handouts, rubric, examples, instructional outline, etc.) necessary before instruction. This is when I approached Laurie Donald and Larry Carlson, MS/HS Instructional Coaches, to see if they had time to assist me in making my new idea come to life.
In the following days, Laurie and I met together in a last-minute coaching cycle in order to make my vision come to life. In the background, Laurie and Larry were creating numerous handouts from scratch, based on Laurie and my conversations, brainstorming questions and talking points for Laurie and my next meeting so we could maximize our time together and meet my instructional deadline, and creating their own example “My Hero Speech.”
Once instruction began, students had the opportunity to hear Larry’s sample hero speech in person during class, watch Laurie’s example speech from a prerecorded video, and listen to my version of the speech while in class. This allowed Larry and me the opportunity to share with students how we approached the assignment from brainstorming to planning and creating to perfecting using a completely different process. Larry and my team teaching was a great way for students to ask questions, critique our speeches while looking at the assessment rubric, and reflect through a class discussion. More importantly, the collaboration helped me make a more engaging opportunity for my students to take ownership in their learning while connecting their own life to the class novel.