Isabel McLeans's Blog
2 days 5 hours ago
from Isabel McLean
I have spent some time reflecting on my first year as a Lead Instructional Coach in Albemarle County Schools. Here is what I wrote about my transition at the beginning of the school year:
It has helped that folks are checking in making sure I am doing OK, understanding that August is a crazy time of the school year. It has helped to have some...
(2) 13 weeks 5 hours ago
from Isabel McLean
Penny Kittle’s Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina and Passion in Adolescent Readers asks us to:
"Consider the reading we need to balance during a yearlong English class:
We need to study literature (whole texts).
We need to read short mentor texts (in all genres) to understand the writer’s craft and create a vision for what...
16 weeks 2 days ago
from Isabel McLean
By age 3, when many children enter early preschool, youngsters from well-to-do families have a working vocabulary of 1,116 words, compared to 749 words for children in working-class families and 525 words for children on welfare, according to a seminal 2003 longitudinal study by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, authors of the 1995 book Meaningful...
23 weeks 10 hours ago
from Isabel McLean
Thank goodness for puppy school!
I have learned a lot about my puppy and, consequently, a lot about life and schooling from puppy school.
I recently adopted a very sweet, very active puppy named Duke from the SPCA. We have started to call him Marmaduke, as he is growing much more quickly than we expected. One night he began...
27 weeks 1 day ago
from Isabel McLean
I was doing learning walks several weeks ago in an Albemarle County Elementary School. As a part of the walks we were visiting the fifth-grade classrooms during writing instruction. I must share what I experienced during my visit to Mrs. Grogan’s classroom.
I walked in and immediately noticed that children all over the room were...
32 weeks 1 day ago
from Isabel McLean
"The role of a teacher is to design and guide students through engaging learning opportunities."
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree?
At our Instructional Leadership Team meeting last week, we had the chance to voice our opinions on the statement above. We examined the role of a teacher through a "Philosophical...
(3) 35 weeks 1 day ago
from Isabel McLean
Recently, I discovered two new-to-me social networking sites: Pinterest and Goodreads. Playing around with these tools made me curious—how do you use these sites? How do you use social networking to support your work and your learning?
Because we have been doing some professional development on learning spaces, I found some interesting...
36 weeks 11 hours ago
from Isabel McLean
One of the new process tools (or protocols) that I am learning to use as a coach in Albemarle County Public Schools is the Plan, Do, Study, Act model. The PDSA model is a simple, but effective protocol for teams of teachers to use to explore instructional strategies over time.
PLAN
The first stage is to plan some sort of instructional change. As...
37 weeks 2 days ago
from Isabel McLean
I have been discovering a lot about learning spaces lately—one of our school board’s areas of focus this year. My first foray into figuring out what our board meant by learning spaces was to visit Walton Middle School. The principal there, Alison Dwier-Selden, spent a lot of energy this summer on two important spaces in her building...
42 weeks 1 day ago
from Isabel McLean
Thinking about an activity to highlight the BIG picture for your staff? Try a CHALK TALK.
I was recently at an elementary school for a faculty meeting designed to get the teachers thinking about the bigger picture—curriculum, instruction, and assessment. In my district we have Lifelong Learner Standards that teachers are charged with...
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Isabel McLean is back in schools — serving Albemarle County Public Schools in Virginia as a Lead Instructional Coach for Language Arts. Before accepting the position in Albemarle, Isabel was a national education consultant with the Developmental Studies Center, presenting keynotes, workshops, presentations, and professional development for teachers, literacy coaches, and administrators across the country.
Previously, Isabel served as the Director of Elementary Education and Instructional Coordinator for school districts in Virginia. Her role in both of these positions was to coordinate curriculum and to provide focused, high quality professional development for teachers. Isabel has also been a middle school literacy teacher and a teacher of at-risk students in grades 1-4. Isabel has also served as an instructor at the University of Virginia, James Madison University, and Longwood College.
Isabel holds her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. Her doctorate examined gender and literacy acquisition in emergent readers and writers. She has presented at local, state, and national conferences and worked with schools across the country as an independent consultant. Isabel has authored several articles and been published in the National Reading Conference Yearbook. She also trained as a Reading Recovery teacher.
