The Reflection Guide to Better Conversations: Coaching Ourselves and Each Other to Be More Credible, Caring, and Connected

Every worthwhile book has a deeply held belief, and for Jim Knight's Better Conversations and this worktext, The Reflection Guide to Better Conversations, here it is:

"Effective communication is an essential skill for a fulfilled life, and we can't teach it to students if we don't know how to do it ourselves."

Instructional coaches, administrators, teachers . . . really everyone: the royal we is you. In this Reflection Guide, Jim delivers a framework for improving professional dialogue that is so clearly signposted, you might as well call it a day planner.

Here's how The Reflection Guide to Better Conversations works:

1. In Part One, you and your peers engage in surveys, take stock, and record video in order to get real about your current beliefs and abilities. How do you measure up when it comes to empathy, asking better questions? Finding common ground?
2. In Part Two, learn about the 10 habits of being an effective communicator, and put them into practice. Are your conversations focused on others 50 percent of the time? What things typically distract you from being fully present?

In Better Conversations, Jim Knight reveals why true dialogue improves professional performance, job satisfaction, and classroom instruction. Together with this Reflection Guide, the two books provide a brilliant, scaffolded professional learning experience on a topic central to learning, central to life.

This is the district-wide solution you need--are you ready?

Jim Knight has spent more than two decades studying professional learning, effective teaching, and instructional coaching. He is a Research Associate at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning and the President of the Instructional Coaching Group.

Jim wrote the first article on the topic of instructional coaching for The Journal of Staff Development, and his book Instructional Coaching: A Partnership Approach to Improving Instruction (Corwin, 2007) popularized the idea. Jim edited Coaching: Approaches and Perspectives (Corwin, 2009) and co-authored Coaching Classroom Management (Pacific Northwest Publishing, 2010). Jim's other books include Unmistakable Impact: A Partnership Approach to Dramatically Improving Instruction (Corwin, 2011), High-Impact Instruction: A Framework or Great Teaching (Corwin, 2013), and Focus on Teaching: Using Video for High-Impact Instruction (Corwin, 2014).

Jim's articles on professional learning, teaching, and instructional coaching have appeared in journals such as The Journal of Staff Development, Principal Leadership, The School Administrator, Kappan, and Educational Leadership.

Frequently asked to lead professional learning, Jim has presented to more than 30,000 educators from six continents. He has a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Kansas and has won several university teaching, innovation, and service awards. Jim also writes the Radical Learners blog.