Our coaching team has been doing some professional development around Impact Cycles. We’ve been learning to use video to help teachers get a clear picture of reality and ultimately set clear, measurable goals to impact instruction for kids. Honestly, I’ve found it difficult to jump into this work. It’s not that I don’t see the value, I’ve just struggled to find the time and to put another thing on teachers. It’s on my to-do list. I know that there will never be an optimal time, I just need to do it.

But, just because I haven’t, yet, jumped into an impact cycle, doesn’t mean I am not seeing the impact of my work.

In October, we had a session with our staff developer from Teachers College. She demoed some small groups using decodable texts. We knew the shift to more decodable work was coming. We’ve all been reading the news, studies, opinions, and books being published related to the “shifts” in teaching reading.

Our teams nodded their heads, but when they went back to their classrooms, I didn’t see the work take off. I knew they were wondering where decodable books fit into the work they were already doing. Was it necessary? After all, the majority of our kids were already hitting benchmarks and doing just fine.

Around December, I decided to launch a coaching cycle with our kindergarten team and make the decodable work the focus. I had already been dabbling with one of our new teachers and I was seeing such great things happen. Didn’t we want this for more kids?

Our team was phenomenal. They committed to the work, sitting side by side, as we experimented, incorporated familiar strategies in new ways, and together we saw what kids could do. There was a lot of celebration as we implemented more strategic phonemic awareness work that supported the work that was happening in phonics. We watched kids have to really rely on their foundational skills to read words, rather than just rely on pictures or initial sounds. In one decodable text, every single student, no matter what their reading level was, initially read the word Pat as pig, because the picture showed a picture of a pig (named Pat). Kids quickly realized the importance of looking through the word. We also layered in reciprocal work around writing, teaching kids to use the Elkonin boxes they were using to hear more sounds, to write more sounds in words. Through that process we coached into letter formation and other work around conventions.

Last week, I had nearly three full days in our grade level conference room for RTI (response to intervention) meetings. It was here that the impact of the work teachers were doing in their classrooms really shined. Sure, I had seen what kids could do, but to hear the way teachers spoke about what kids were doing showed that there had been a shift in our thinking. They too had seen the impact.

Our reading team made a pact at the beginning of the school year, never to look or discuss a child’s writing without also looking at their writing. We’ve held onto that promise. As a result, not only are our students reading on grade level, the transfer across the board is undeniable.

There is always more room to grow and more to learn. Today, I’m just proud of the teachers I get to work with and what their openness and their own learning means for kids.