NCTM DAY 2

Steve Leinwand

Today had some pretty slow presentations but one AMAZING presentation. The amazing presentation was about coaching and was presented by Steve Leinwand who is a genius when it comes to coaching. I took five pages of notes in a 45 minute session. I couldn't keep up with the guy. You can check out his site at www.steveleinwand.com. 

His basic premise is that we as coaches need to take risks. Co teach with the teacher while you are observing. Then you can have conversations later about what they did and what you did etc. This makes so much sense. Why not show teachers exemplary mathematics lessons by demonstrating them. Why waste time by filling out a bunch of papers and then tell them what was right and wrong later. Do it in the classroom and let the teacher guide the talk afterwards. And if the teacher gets mad and is perturbed that you interrupted with this assertive style of coaching, so be it. "Do you care about egos or do you care about the kids". He said a ton of powerful quotes like this. "Without coaches, the common core doesn't stand a chance". Just gets me giddy.

​Other than that, he had the typical stuff of praising the teacher first and then moving on to changes that need to be made etc. 

Ti Nspire Math Navigator Software

This stuff was pretty good. I'll update this blog with some pictures later. There were a ton of great stem lessons that could be used with them. But it is expensive. With a class set of thirty Ti Nspires (3500) Navigators (2500) and probes (who knows) you are looking at a huge expense. The outcome definitely justified this expense though. (Update this later Jimmy)