Leadership Cycle 3

Reflective Narrative Template

Step 4: Reflect
Reflective Narrative Template
Directions: Reflect on your learning and leadership development in Leadership Cycle 3 by responding to the
following prompts (up to 3 pages) in terms of your leadership capacity to support teacher growth within the
professional learning context of the school. Type your responses within the brackets following each prompt.
Do not delete or alter the prompts.

1. Evaluate your strengths and areas for improvement for coaching and observing a teacher’s
practice in relation to selected CSTP. Based on this experience, what professional learning
needs in relation to coaching a teacher to improve instruction and meet student needs have
you identified for yourself and explain why you think you should work on them.
[Observing Ms. Clark has allowed me to grow as an instructional leader. This process has given
me a wonderful opportunity to reflect on both my strengths and areas for growth as I seek to
help teachers be the best they possibly can in the classroom. I believe one significant strength I
possess and was able to utilize in this process, was my own experience as a teacher. Having
taught all grade levels in high school and all levels of English (from a reading resource class all
the way up to AP Literature and Composition), I have gathered over the years quite a bit of
experience teaching many different types of students and many different types of content. This
gave me a much better foundation for critiquing Ms. Clark and her lesson; it gave me a good
basis for what to expect in the classroom with respect to Ms. Clark’s skill in teaching and the
content being delivered. For myself, I have experienced quite a bit of success in the classroom;
I consider myself a good teacher (although there is always room for improvement). As a result, I
know what good teaching looks like and this allowed me to give Ms. Clark some of the critical
feedback she asked expected from me.

One significant area for growth, is in the way I ask questions during the post-observation
meeting. I tend to be very direct and matter of fact when asking these types of questions,
probably because that is what I would like myself in a post-observation meeting. I do need to
recognized, however, that not all teachers are as direct as me and may be a little more
sensitive. My opening question to Ms. Clark was “what was the point of your lesson?” I did not
ask this question because I didn’t think there was a point to her lesson, but rather because I
wanted a little clarification as to what exactly her goals were in order to better shape my
feedback. That being said, I could have phrased it much better and said something like “could
you please clarify what were your goals for your students during this lesson?” That alternate
phrasing would have directed the question more towards the results expected from the students
and Ms. Clark probably wouldn’t have been so surprised or taken aback by my question (which I
could tell she was from the expression on her face). I’ve been learning more and more through
this process that choosing one’s phrasing is very critical as an administrator. People are
constantly watching you and judging what you say. I don’t believe I should be completely self-
conscious about everything but adding an extra measure of sensitivity to what I say can
certainly help my position as a leader.
2. Reflect on and cite evidence of how effectively during this cycle of coaching and observation
you maintained a high standard of professionalism, integrity, and equity during your
coaching interactions with the volunteer teacher.

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 Leadership Cycle 3
Reflective Narrative Template

[A significant piece of evidence that demonstrates my professionalism, integrity, and equity

during my coaching interaction was the way in which I conversed with Ms. Clark regarding her
teaching. Our conversation was very much a reflective experience for Ms. Clark, rather than me
directly coaching her and telling her what to do. Most of the dialogue that came from me was in
the form of questions, instead of directives. Ms. Clark is, in fact, a good teacher. Her
instructional goal as a teacher should now be fine-tuning her craft. She has the basics down that
every good teacher needs (good classroom management, thoughtful planning, and a good
awareness of the demographic she is teaching) and now it’s a matter of perfecting what she
does. This perfection can only be done through self-reflection as this provides an opportunity for
her to discover herself what small adjustments can be made to how she teaches. If I just tell her
what to do, she will not take as much ownership over these suggestions since they will be mine
and not hers.

Also, by helping her be self-reflective, I am encouraging the process of self-reflection. It is likely

through our interaction, as she hears the kinds of questions I pose, she will likely start asking
these questions when I am not around (humans are driven by a natural curiosity that drives us
to ask questions). Her growth as a teacher will happen more naturally and more consistently,
instead of only when she is up for evaluation. Questions, by nature, demand answers. If, as an
instructional leader, I can get my teachers to ask the questions I would normally be asking them,
a lot more growth will happen outside of the formal observation process.

The best way an educational leader can demonstrate professionalism, integrity, and equity is by
given teachers a voice. It is likely I will be coaching teachers who are older than me and taught
for much longer than me. It is likely I will be coaching teachers who are very sensitive anxious
about being critiqued. It is likely I will be coaching teachers who may feel hostile towards the
observation process. I can easily minimize a lot of the potential anxiety and conflict by simply
giving teachers the opportunity to speak for themselves. That being said, it is very important that
I provide a strong guiding voice in the post-observation meeting, citing specific evidence as to
what the teacher did or didn’t do. As an instructional coach, it is counterintuitive to talk in
generalities. Suggestions for how a teacher can improve are much more grounded if there are
specific actions, numbers, or facts I can tie into my suggestions.]
a. How were you able to facilitate a two-way conversation that encouraged teacher voice
and ownership of their strengths and areas for growth based on evidence of practice in
relation to the CSTP?
[As already stated, I was able to facilitate a two-way conversation primarily by asking questions
instead of giving statements. The best growth for a teacher happens when they are self-
reflective, when they spend time thinking about what they do and why they do it. When a
teacher cannot provide adequate justification to themselves for what and why they do
something, it pushes them to think about better ways of doing things, thus improving their
practice as a result. Teaching is a fine and nuanced art, there is no limit to how much a teacher
can grow in their practice, but after the basics are down, it is the process of self-reflection that is
going to help the most going forward.]
3. Informed by a continuous improvement mindset and focus on equitable leadership, what are
your next steps to coach and support this teacher to improve instruction and meet student
needs?
[Our post-observation conversation focused mostly on the fact that Ms. Clark’s students’ reading
level is really low. On top of that, she seems to have a class that is very timid about participating
and answering questions when asked. Add onto these difficulties the fact that Shakespeare can

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 Leadership Cycle 3
Reflective Narrative Template

be very difficult to read and understand if one is not accustomed to his language. All these
combined challenges made it very difficult for her students to understand Romeo and Juliet in
this lesson, a lesson placed early on in a unit on Shakespeare. These challenges and the
difficulty they difficulty they presented for the students was clearly evident in my observation of
her lesson. Students did not respond very often or very well to the questions she asked them
and it was unclear if they really got much learning out of the lesson. This challenge ended up
being the focus of our post-observation discussion and most of my questions focused on how
she could increase the learning in this lesson the next time she has an opportunity to teach it.

In her response to my questions and through self-reflection, Ms. Clark commented how next
time she would take at least a couple more days to prepare her students for reading
Shakespeare’s language. It is possible to go through a few smaller samples of Shakespeare’s
writing and discuss strategies for how to read them, in order to increase the chance of
succeeding in his more extensive pieces of literature. To that end, Ms. Clark also noted that
next time she would go slower through the reading of Romeo and Juliet, taking the time to break
down the more difficult pieces until students feel comfortable they understand what they are
seeing and reading.

In terms of how I could more immediately support her, she commented in her our discussion
that the more students are exposed to Shakespeare, the easier they understand his writing. In
fact, she commented on how students had already made big strides in this specific area already
(since I had last observed her). I would love to actually go back and visit her classroom, maybe
not formally but informally, to see for myself what kind of progress students have made. It would
also be worth noting what reading and comprehension strategies she has used since my initial
observation. Writing these down and talking with her about them might allow us the opportunity
to collaborate and discover how these strategies could be used sooner in the lesson and speed
up the process with which students adapt to Shakespeare’s language. The sooner they
understand what they are reading, the sooner it would allow for much deeper and meaningful
conversations beyond just the plot of the text.]

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