Mike is an Instructional Coach with Orange County Public Schools. Based out of Orlando, Florida, Mike is responsible for helping teachers find way to improve their strategies either as a whole or for acute needs or specific children. When not observing or counseling with a teacher, Mike can be found leading bi-weekly learning workshops, moderating monthly feedback forums for all teachers, and even helping kids safely get off buses and out of cars at 8:15 AM.
Transcript
My name is Mike Reese, I'm an instructional coach at Baldwin Park Elementary. It's a school within the Orange County Public School System. My job mainly pertains to working with teachers' issues that arise in the classroom. If a teacher asks for my help, first they would normally email me or see me in the hallway and say, "Hey Mike, you know, can you help me with X, Y, and Z?" So I'll look at my calendar and I'll set up a conference with them, and see exactly what is going on, what are their needs, and how can I help support them? And then, I will go into their classroom and observe their teaching for one day, and observe what they're asking for help in. And then, the next day I will come and we'll have a little conference, and then I will have, you know, a list of different items to help, for suggestions for teachers. Say hey, maybe you can try this with this student, or maybe when you're teaching this lesson in math, you know, try this instructional strategy to help engage some certain students. I also work with teachers on best practices within the classroom. I also work with teachers on just little tips and hints, and also, how to use data in the right way to guide their instruction. I'm basically their guide, if they need help or anything, they know how to call me and how to reach for me. I'm in classrooms a lot, and I also model teaching for those teachers, as well. Well, I wear many different hats within the school. My school day usually starts about 8:15, I am out at car duty. After car duty, which lasts till 8:45, I'm watching for the safety of the students. We have a PLC, I usually stay down in the fifth grade PLC, which is a professional learning community. We talk about different, we talk about the upcoming events that are coming within the classroom. We also talk about the next lessons that are coming up, what standards are weak within our students, and that we can help push our students toward mastery in. And then from there, I'm either in classrooms observing, or I am doing, I'm returning emails to other teachers, setting up conferences, looking up some instructional strategies for different teachers. I meet once a month with our teachers, and we just have, it's a very low-keyed, it's no stress. It's just, hey, let's have a nice little forum, and let's talk about what's going on in your classrooms, and is there anything that, you know, any problem arises, how can we fix that? But it's good, we get a lot of good feedback. And there's also great ideas from other teachers, as well. So I do that once a month, as well.
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