Building and Growing Friendships

Today's post is brought to you by Heather Zimmerman.

I remember the first (and only time) I was ever sent to the principal’s office.  I was in second grade.  A fellow classmate was missing his hat.  This happened to be the same hat that me and my friends thought we would take and play a game of keep-away with.  We were not trying to be mean to the kid.  We actually just thought this was the best way to get his attention and show him we wanted to play with him.  I think we even tried to see if the hat would stick to the brick wall.  Our teacher called out each of our names and told us to “march to the principal office.”  I remember trying to hide how nervous and embarrassed I was by picking up my feet in a sassy, eight-year-old way to actually march out of the classroom.  I do not recall exactly what the principal said to us.  I am sure though, she found out the main cause of the problem, and taught us how to actually show someone we wanted to be friends with them.

Learning how to build and grow friendships as a child is something that follows us into adulthood.   I am lucky that my eight-year-old self learned that a good ol’ game of keep-away is not the best way to show people you are interested in getting to know them.

As my first year in my literacy coach role, I am fortunate because I still work with people who I taught with.  Some of these teachers I have known and collaborated with for the past six years.  There are other teachers though, who I am just getting to know.  I am a people-person, so when it comes to building relationships with other people it just happens for me.  Since this is a new role, I know I will continue to learn, experience, read, and learn some more.  But, when thinking about what I would share in this post, I decided to share what I naturally started to do as I began this role.  

• Defining my role: I started off the year defining my role as a literacy coach.  I wanted to make sure everyone knew what my role is and all the different ways we can work together.  

• Being involved: I am very excited to see what is going on in classrooms.  I want to be apart of the classroom life as a literacy coach.   I look forward to visiting classrooms, so I can get ideas I can share with teachers.  When I was teaching, I appreciated resources that were ready to use the next day in my classroom.  I plan to offer resources that are relevant and applicable.  I also want teachers to feel that I am a resource that they can come to.  By having ideas and being knowledgeable about their classes, I can offer useful tools.  Also, by being apart of the classroom we can easily plan lessons where I can be a co-teacher or be apart of small groups with their classes.

• Follow-through: I am a very organized person.  Timely follow-through and follow-up is important.  I found this calendar I think will help organize that process.  http://www.literacycoachingonline.org/briefs/tools/tool_weekly_calendar_1.11.09.pdf

• Listening: The people-person in me loves to get to know people.  I truly care about how other people feel.  I am also a positive person.  I like to listen to what others have to say.  I find myself usually asking questions too, so I can make sure I correctly understand what they are sharing.  I do feel the need to throw in the obvious here, by saying that maintaining confidentiality is critical.  I know people feel they know this one, but it’s too important to not include.  I made sure to stress in my intro letter that I am not an evaluator or a reporter back to the principal.  

Building relationships with teachers is the most important part of a literacy coach’s job.  Without relationships with the staff, the literacy coach will not be a useful resource.  A big part of building relationships with teachers has to be what works naturally for you.  But, what will certainly help in the process is sharing with teachers how you can help them, being aware and involved with what is going on inside the classroom, timely follow-through, and listening.  One thing I can tell you for sure is though, taking their hat did not work in elementary school and it certainly will not work now.