S4 E25 BONUS: Coaching, Teaching, & Classroom Management Strategies Sparked From My Conversation with Dr. Towanda Harris (❤️Olivia Wahl)

The RIGHT TOOLS for Effective Teacher Teams | A Collaboration Masterclass

In this bonus episode, I highlight Chapter 5 of Dr. Towanda Harris's book, The Right Tools: A Guide to Selecting, Evaluating, and Implementing Classroom Resources and Practices. Building on my previous conversation with Dr. Harris about nurturing teacher candidates, I explore the essential elements of effective collaboration among education professionals.

Learn why:

• 💡purposeful collaboration requires clear focus and structure, 
• 💡how bringing diverse educational perspectives to the planning table  strengthens instructional approaches, 
• 💡and why individual reflection is a necessary complement to collaborative work. 

Discover practical strategies for:

• ✨ identifying the right collaborators, 
• ✨ establishing meaningful focus areas for teamwork, 
• ✨ and implementing conversation starters that drive productive professional discussions.

Whether you're a classroom teacher navigating boxed curricula, an instructional coach supporting teacher teams, or an administrator building collaborative school culture, this episode offers valuable insights on harnessing the power of intentional collaboration to better serve all students.

00:00 Introduction 

01:00 Overview of The Right Tools 

02:00 Dr. Harris's journey to valuing collaboration 

04:00 Who to invite to the collaborative planning table 

06:00 Serving diverse student populations through collaboration 

08:00 Focus areas for effective collaboration 

10:00 Different planning structures 

11:00 Powerful conversation starters 

12:00 Putting collaborative practices into action

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When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi there. I'm so happy you're here. Your time is precious. And because of that, I want to let you know right away what you'll gain by listening to the very last second of this bonus episode. My conversation with Dr. Towanda Harris focused on her work with teacher candidates as an assistant professor at Clark Atlanta University.

In this bonus episode, I lean into Chapter 5 of Dr. Harris's book, The Right Tools: A Guide to Selecting, Evaluating, and Implementing Classroom Resources and Practices. Dr. Harris beautifully writes about why effective collaboration among education professionals is essential for student success. From this episode, you'll learn why purposeful collaboration requires clear focus and structure, how diverse educational perspectives strengthen instructional planning, and how individual reflection complements collaborative work.

Stay with me. I'm so happy to have you as a [00:01:00] listener today. This is Schoolutions: Coaching and Teaching Strategies, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom, a show that offers educators and caregivers strategies to try right away and ensure every student receives the inspiration and support they need to thrive. I am Olivia Wahl and this is a bonus episode. It's an accompaniment to my conversation with Dr. Towanda Harris. My conversation with Dr. Harris, Season 4, Episode 25, focused on the power of nurturing teacher candidates who are curious, who are excited to think outside of the box. Who know why they are excited to teach and to continue to grow as learners themselves.

What our conversation did not focus on heavily was Dr. Harris's brilliant book, [00:02:00] The Right Tools: A Guide to Selecting, Evaluating, and Implementing Classroom Resources and Practices. I will have, you know, I have already had a conversation with Dr. Harris about doing a follow up episode focused heavily on her book.

And yet I think it's important to highlight one particular chapter that goes so beautifully with our conversation around teacher expertise and collaboration. And with that said, I'm going to jump to Chapter 5 of the right tools. And just give you a bit of a sneak preview about some of the strategies that Dr. Harris offers for collaborating with colleagues and continuing your learning. Dr. Harris begins the chapter speaking to her experience and how her college program encouraged her to work on her own and work as quickly as possible. 

And yet, in her words, it's on page 80 of The Right Tools, “In my first year in the classroom, however, I learned [00:03:00] that pedagogy and personal drive alone were not enough. I was very fortunate that in my first year of teaching, I was recruited by a supportive principal to a school with a strong culture of collaboration. This was an adjustment for me. I had always worked alone, but it gave me an opportunity to be reflective and to work through strategies and resources that would most benefit my students during each lesson. During that time, I learned a great deal from planning with my grade level team.”

And what I love is what Dr. Harris highlights. It's not that we need to collaborate with everyone all the time, but she points out the first step in effective collaboration is figuring out who to collaborate with. And there's a beautiful chart - you have to have this book in your hands to see, page 81, figure 5.1, Who's Invited to the Planning Table. And she outlines all different educators [00:04:00] and roles that could support the work, and how those different educators and roles can support and help in the planning process. Some of those roles would be the general education teacher, special education teacher, ENL teachers or English as a New Language teachers, early intervention program teachers or EIP teachers, specialty teachers (art, music, physical education), reading specialists, coaches, administrators.

These are all people with different roles that can offer multiple perspectives when it comes to the planning process. And, of course, Dr. Harris also points out “collaborating with others can give us insights about our students that we could not gain on our own. And then, in turn, collaborating can also help us to better serve entire groups of students.”

And there's one paragraph I went back and read after my conversation with Dr. Harris because [00:05:00] after reading her book multiple times over the years, something she said about the teacher candidates that she's supporting and serving reminded me of this paragraph and I was so excited to go back and highlight and annotate in a different way after speaking with her.

Dr. Harris says, “For a few years, my school had an ongoing problem. Students who were performing above grade level were not testing into the gifted program. These students were out of the box thinkers, but they had limited experience with project-based learning that tested their critical thinking skills. As a result, my principal developed a team to provide staff with additional resources and professional learning to better equip students that were identified as candidates for this program. Not only the gifted education teacher, but also a specialty teacher. In this case, it was our physical education teacher.

A special education teacher, general education teacher, and ENL teacher. An instructional coach and me, a teacher with a [00:06:00] gifted endorsement. We met each month to discuss ways to incorporate gifted and talent development, teaching strategies, and resources that could provide additional opportunities for all students to be better equipped for success when testing into the program. Because of our intentional efforts and collaborative efforts, the number of gifted and talented development students increased within a year.”

And the reason I went back and read that paragraph again was because the idea that our teacher candidates need to be out of the box thinkers; it's so important that we also offer them the tailored support to know how to harness that thinking when they're going into classrooms and school districts often that have a boxed curricula or a program.

And that's what this book, The Right Tools, is meant to do. How can we be responsive to the learners in our classrooms [00:07:00] when we're utilizing tools that are mandated by a school or district? And then the chapter shifts to considering what we can accomplish with collaboration. And Dr. Harris's words are just so true. She says, “Collaboration is about working with individuals to produce, create, or share something. The work must have a focus. Collaboration can be a gift. It can take a heavy load off of one person. And it can bring together individuals with unique expertise. However, without a clear focus, attempts at collaboration can feel purposeless.”

So I want to pause there because I know myself as a learner. I need time to read by myself, write by myself, reflect before often I'm able to collaborate with others around a given focus. So as a teacher, I would need to know what the focus of the meeting is, or what the focus of the collaboration is, before I'm meeting, and so that I [00:08:00] bring the most to that collaboration.

And I love how Dr. Harris outlines different ways that we can focus collaboration with colleagues. She gives us those focus lenses. “We could analyze progressions of a skill or a standard. We could consider options for remediation of skills. We could do deeper dives into student work. We could preview and try out resources, strategies, and manipulatives. We could review assessment data.”

All of these are different ways that we can ensure we're collaborating for a purpose. We've all been in meetings that are lacking focus, that are lacking an agenda, and it's maddening. And so think of who's at the table, what's the purpose of the collaboration, and how are we planning that agenda with outcomes and targets in mind, so we leave explicitly understanding how we grew from that collaborative experience. [00:09:00] 

Think of what are we going to be building or creating together that will impact the learning of our students? These are all considerations that we need to be considering for our students. When our students are collaborating, are we clear on the outcomes and the targets for them before they move into the collaboration?

Do our students have time to reflect and read and write by themselves before they move into partners or before they receive feedback? Are we giving them enough time to practice? After they receive feedback, are they able to go back and revise their thinking? And how are we measuring learning? How are we knowing what our teachers are getting out of collaborative experiences?

How are we understanding what our students are getting out of collaborative experiences? I serve different schools where at times teachers will have children working together on group projects. [00:10:00] And my question often is, how are you able to assess each child's understanding or what each child is contributing in that collaboration as well as what the group presentation shows as far as levels of understanding?

And then Dr. Harris moves on in the chapter to remind us to collaborate with the right team for our purpose. She offers different planning structures and highlights who the collaborators would be and some advantages and limitations. She speaks to vertical planning, that would be teachers across multiple grade levels. Grade level planning, teachers on the same grade level, subject alike planning, teachers of the same content area. And Dr. Harris reminds us that when we collaborate with a team, it gives us access to more resources. One of my favorite pages in this chapter is page 91.

It's a photograph of a yellow legal pad, and at the [00:11:00] top it says Conversation Starters. I love these conversation starters. I've used them, and I find them so powerful. Dr. Harris says, “colleagues, instructional coaches, and administrators can be valuable resources for ideas and feedback as you plan how you'll use these new resources and approaches.”

A few questions might lead to helpful discussions. And she has four different bullet points with examples of questions. The first bullet point, “how have you seen the use of collaborative planning support teachers with improving student performance?” 

The next, “How might the ENL, special education, and gifted teachers be a resource to provide additional support in my classroom?”

The third bullet, “What are the aims of our school based and district based professional learning opportunities? What other opportunities for professional learning are available? What funding for additional professional learning is available?” [00:12:00] 

And the fourth bullet, “how does our schools or district's current professional growth focus align with my work in my classroom? How does it benefit my students?”

Dr. Harris wraps the chapter, putting it into practice. She says, “While writing this book, I reflected back on the progression of learning in my own journey as an educator.”

And she goes on to say, “Every opportunity that we have with our students is an opportunity to stretch their thinking. Providing research based resources and best practices aligned with what our students need from us fosters an environment for real learning in which students are doing the heavy lifting. Because as we know, when we do most of the talking, then we, not our students, do most of the learning.”

Every conversation I have with Dr. Harris makes me a better practitioner. And what a gift it is that she is currently serving as [00:13:00] an assistant professor at Clark Atlanta University, where teacher candidates can benefit from her expertise and her believing in them that they will give all students a fighting chance in education. Thank you for listening, and I'm excited to have you join the conversation on Monday. Take care. 

Schoolutions: Coaching and Teaching Strategies is created, produced, and edited by me, Olivia Wahl. Thank you to my older son, Benjamin, who created the music playing in the background. You can follow and listen to Schoolutions wherever you get your podcasts or subscribe to never miss an episode and watch on YouTube. Now I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email at schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com. Let me know what resonated most with you from this bonus episode. How do you collaborate with your school, with your district, with your colleagues? Tune in every Monday for the best research backed coaching and teaching strategies you can apply right away to better the lives of [00:14:00] the children in your care. And stay tuned for my bonus episodes every Friday where I'll reflect and share connections to what I learned from the guests that week. See you then.