Peer Coaching Reflection

11/24/19
Heather Hillman
TE 807 - Oviatt
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While my 7th grade Advanced World Geography class is a very bright group of

students, the majority of the class struggles to stay focused during work time, and

complete assignments. I wanted to take advantage of this peer coaching session to

restructure this class so that my students were more engaged and focused. Therefore

my goal for this session was to design a lesson that did three things: set a clear learning

objective, kept students engaged, and evaluated students learning at the end of the

lesson to see if the learning objective was met.

The learning objective for the lesson was: Students can explain why ancient

Mesopotamia is considered to be a civilization, and why their major accomplishments

helped advance human life. During the lesson, students learned about their

accomplishments by creating a “Mesopotamia Madness” bracket - similar to “March

Madness”. Students worked together to read about different accomplishments, and

discuss and debate which ones were most influential and why. As a class, we then

focused specifically on the accomplishments of writing (cuneiform) and laws (Code of

Hammurabi). At the end of the lesson, I had students individually answer two questions

that directly assessed the learning objectives. I had my peer coaching mentor Kelly

Houle observe the lesson to assess student engagement, and help me evaluate student

responses to the learning objective questions.

In order to evaluate if my goals were met, I asked Kelly two specific questions

during our meeting. First, I asked Kelly, “Did my lesson keep all of the students in my

class engaged in learning? Why or why not?” to which she responded, “Yes, you were

able to keep all students engaged during your lesson. I was intentionally looking for
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students who were not paying attention, however, your lesson was interesting and

well-prepared. Your pacing was appropriate, and you allowed for student feedback.”

Next, I asked Kelly, “Do student’s answers to the questions demonstrate that

students met the learning objective? Why or why not?” to which she responded, “Yes, of

course. It seems that students had a strong understanding based on their responses.

The activity was an excellent way to ensure understanding of the topic and to go deeper

into Bloom’s by ranking the inventions.”

While I felt that the lesson went well, I was so excited to get positive feedback

from a peer that I trusted to confirm my own observations. For this reason, I felt that the

experience was extremely valuable. Teaching can unfortunately be very isolated

sometimes. Pam Robbins stated that two of the major benefits of peer coaching are,

“Increased conversation about improving teaching and learning, (and) Increased

collaboration among teams within and across schools” (Robbins, 2015, p. 7). I felt that I

got both of these benefits - I was able to think reflectively about my own teaching,

receive feedback, and work collaboratively with another member of my department.

After participating in peer coaching, I am planning on revising my stance on high

quality teaching to include the following: high quality teachers reflect about their own

teaching through professional development practices. In Preparing Teachers to Learn

from Teaching, the authors talked extensively about the importance of helping

“...prospective teachers learn how to teach from studying teaching” (Hiebert, etc., 2007,

p. 2). Especially within the first few years of teaching, there is so much to learn. High

quality teachers must be willing to be reflective about the effectiveness of their own
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teaching on student learning, and peer coaching (when done correctly) can be a tool to

achieve this.

Since I had such a positive experience with peer coaching, my “Now What?” is to

bring the practice to my administration as a possible professional development

opportunity for our entire staff. Unfortunately in many professional development

trainings, “There are few opportunities to practice and refine strategies. Teachers are

left to apply their learning in isolation” (Dolci-Grimm, etc., 2014, p. 24). When teachers

have the opportunity to work together, the quality of teaching and student learning

improves, as does overall job satisfaction. By engaging in more peer coaching, I believe

that my school will be “...activating the voice too often absent in professional

development efforts - the teachers” (Dolci-Grimm,] etc., 2014, p. 29).

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References

Dolci-Grimm, E., Kaufman, T., & Doty, D. (2014). RETHINKING: Classroom

Observations. Educational Leadership, 71(8), 24–29.

Hiebert, J., Morris, A. K., Berk, D., & Jansen, A. (2007). Preparing Teachers to Learn

from Teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 58(1), 1–17.

Robbins, P. (2015). Peer coaching: to enrich professional practice, school culture, and

student learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.