Prerequisite: Cognitive Coaching Foundation Seminar Days 1-4

Course Description

The mission of Cognitive CoachingSM is to develop cognitive capacities for selfdirectedness independently and in community. Research indicates that teaching is a complex intellectual activity and that teachers who think at higher levels produce students who are higher achieving, more cooperative, and better problem solvers. It is the invisible skills of teaching, the thinking processes that underlie instructional decisions, which produce superior instruction. Cognitive CoachingSM is a research-based model which capitalizes upon and enhances teachers’ cognitive processes.

Once learned, the skills of Cognitive CoachingSM transfer into a variety of professional settings, such as mentoring new teachers, peer coaching and formative supervision by administrators. The knowledge and skills of Cognitive CoachingSM can be used to enhance the capabilities of mentors and supervisors within existing school models.

In Cognitive CoachingSM, the teacher, not the coach, evaluates what is good or poor, appropriate or inappropriate, effective or ineffective about the lesson and makes suggestions for improvement. This powerful approach to enhancing instructional practices and building learning organizations focuses on the intellectual skills, perceptions and decisions that underlie effective teaching and communication. Cognitive CoachingSM supports informed teacher decision-making through strategies that not only enhance teachers’ intellectual capacities, but increase their capacity to modify themselves.

In the eight-day Foundation training, participants learn how to:

• build trust by developing physical and verbal rapport
• utilize three mediative maps for planning, refl ecting and problem resolving
• facilitate self-directed learning through refl ective questioning
• develop teachers’ autonomy and sense of community
• develop higher levels of efficacy, consciousness, craftsmanship, flexibility and interdependence
• distinguish four support functions: coaching, evaluating, consulting, collaborating
• practice coaching interactions to differentiate for individual needs
• apply coaching skills which enhance the intellectual processes of instruction
  

Cognitive CoachingSM training focuses on the maps and tools needed to mediate another’s thinking. The metaphor of maps and tools is used to indicate the dynamic, individualized way in which coaching takes place. A coach is equipped with maps and tools which s/he uses to assist the person being coached in “navigating” the territory of his/her thinking. Each coach uses the maps and tools in slightly different ways, but always focuses on mediating thinking toward selfdirected learning.

About the Instructor

Lynn Sawyer is Director of Professional Development for the Washoe County School District in Reno, Nevada, a district of 83 K-12 schools and 3,700 teachers. She is also the Director of the Northwest Regional Professional Development Program, established by the Nevada State Legislature to provide intensive professional development for teachers and administrators in three counties in implementing the Nevada Student Academic Standards.

Evaluations

Last summer, this course received an average course rating of 4.88 and an average instructor rating of 4.92!

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