4.2b/c

Coaches model the ISTE Standards for Students and the ISTE Standard for Educators, and identify ways to improve their coaching practice. Coaches:

B. Actively participate in professional learning networks to enhance coaching practice and keep current with emerging technology and innovations in pedagogy and the learning sciences.
C. Establish shared goals with educators, reflect on successes and continually improve coaching and teaching practice.

Indicator B & C of the Connected Learner standard shines a spotlight on participating in relevant and current professional learning networks while also establishing and sharing goals with educators to improve coaching and teaching practices. This differs slightly from indicator 4.2a in the way that 4.2b and c encourage collaborative groups where 4.2a focuses on learning experiences as a whole. 

Working through this standard, my experience with professional growth plans fits well into all three indicators, but for differing reasons. While creating a PGP (professional growth plan), you can choose to work alone or in a community. Through my experience creating my post, Personalized Support Through Professional Growth Plans, my colleague and I created a proposal for a professional development experience that would give teachers a professional learning network that included a continual meeting process of sharing goals with their colleagues, applying new practices, and then coming back to reflect and improve their practice. This aspect of the experience speaks directly to indicators b and c. 

Another piece of this standard that was an exciting new opportunity for me to research was in b, “keep current with emerging technology and innovations in pedagogy and the learning sciences”. While not necessarily new, Twitter was an incredible platform that I found myself drawn towards while researching these indicators. Read about my experience here, Learning and Leading with Twitter. 
One more post that touches on my experience learning about the Connected Learner standard is Creating Positive Coaching Relationships Based on Collaborating and Communicating. This post focuses primarily on indicator c, and the opportunity educators have to reflect on successes and improve their coaching and teaching practices. Written as a comparison to Robert Fulghum’s, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”, I look at how successful teaching practices can be represented in the most basic aspects of learning.