As I enter my 4th year as insructional coach, so much of what we have discussed makes so much sense to me. I finished my teaching career in 2001, and although I had practiced many of the things we've discussed, it had happened through trial-and-error with no cohesive philosophy to bind the practices together or convenient language to address such practice by. I also felt very isolated in my practice as there was no time or way to share what I was doing with others to see if I was all alone in my thinking, or that others were seeing some of the same things I was seeing, or that I was very wrong about my conclusions. Yes, I was discovering that overriding themes should be driving learning, and that these themes should be in front of the students at all times every hour that I taught. I believed that students should explore ideas related to these themes at their own pace and with their own focus, and that it would be a very uneven journey for each of them. I found that when the final exam was structured so that each student could reflect on their own path to understanding, the quality of work was far superior to those that I had crafted even late into my career which were based on what I had decided was imporant for them to regurgitate. My experience in our 21st Century group, along with the training I continue to receive as instuctional coach, brings a more fluid coherence to the ideas I struggled with as a teacher, and I hope I can embed those philosophies into the coaching I do with our new staff.