Three Perspectives of Planning, Implementation, and Consistency in Instructional Coaching

School administrators are choosing or required to implement instructional coaching on their campuses to improve student-learning opportunities. The school community must be aware that effective instructional coaching is job embedded, encourages teachers to become reflective practitioners, and requires time to commit to the implementation. School administrators must support instructional coaches by ensuring there is significant time allotted to provide coaches time in the classroom to observe, provide feedback, and support classroom teachers in their practice and reflection. Instructional coaches build trust and rapport with the instructional staff by implementing best-practice protocols, providing feedback, and planning the next steps. The instructional staff must be disposed to take the feedback and be willing to implement best practices and reflect upon the process. This article reflects each author’s personal experiences in their roles as a school administrator, instructional coach, and classroom teacher with the distinct focus on instructional coaching from the practitioners’ diverse perspectives. Current research on instructional coaching is examined and discussed. Best practices for classroom implementation of instructional coaching are reviewed. The article concludes that implementing instructional coaching in a school setting requires the school administrator to engage all stakeholders to understand the diverse perspectives of the individuals involved in the process. Implementing instructional coaching in a school setting must include the instructional process and student achievement as priorities

Atubular glomeruli in a rat model of polycystic kidney disease

Atubular glomeruli in a rat model of polycystic kidney disease.BackgroundAutosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is associated with a progressive decline in glomerular filtration rate (GFR) that often leads to end-stage renal disease. The basis for this decline in GFR is poorly understood.MethodsGlomeruli in heterozygous Han:SPRD rats with ADPKD and their normal litter mates were studied by light microscopy, using serial sectioning techniques. The connections of the renal corpuscles to proximal tubules were classified as normal, atrophied, or absent (atubular glomerulus). Renal corpuscles also were examined by scanning electron microscopy. Single nephron glomerular blood flows were determined using microspheres.ResultsIn the kidneys of six-month-old rats with ADPKD, 50% of the glomeruli were atubular and another 26% were associated with atrophied neck segments; these glomeruli were most often smaller in size than normal. About 16% of the glomeruli were hypertrophied and had normal connections to proximal tubules. Sclerotic changes in cystic kidney glomeruli were usually mild or moderate, and belied the failure of glomerular function. Glomerular blood flow in the cystic kidneys averaged half of normal and was markedly heterogeneous; the majority of small glomeruli displayed very low blood flows and a few showed relatively high blood flows. Fewer glomerular abnormalities were found in rats treated for five months with potassium citrate in their drinking water.ConclusionsThe diminished GFR in the rat with ADPKD can be accounted for largely by the formation of atubular glomeruli. Compensatory glomerular hypertrophy also is present and may contribute to the progression of the renal disease

Surveillance of surgical site infection: more accurate definitions and more intensive recordings needed

Surgical site infection (SSI) continues to be a burden on systems that deliver healthcare and on patients who suffer morbidity, and mortality, associated with this complication of medical intervention. Surveillance of SSI is often an integral part of organizational infection prevention and control activities, but unless post-discharge surveillance is carried out in a robust manner the data may be inaccurate and misleading. Coupled with a lack of robust application of definitions, variations in methods of case-finding and incomplete follow-up, the results may lead to a false sense of security or conversely cause unnecessary anxieties. Data from national surveillance schemes that purport to be suitable for benchmarking are often at odds with published rates from well-designed studies and the reasons for this should be examined. If benchmarking is truly desirable and if clinicians are to have confidence in the outputs, surveillance schemes should ensure that participating organizations adopt a consistent approach to definitions, case-finding methodologies following discharge, and to robust follow-up, to ensure that every opportunity is taken to maximize the return rate and enhance data validity

Improving Patron Service in Interlibrary Borrowing, a Case Study

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Library ILL Borrowing Office is a high volume borrowing office. Over the past 5 years the office has implemented technological and workflow changes to improve the delivery of ILL borrowing services to patrons. Technological changes implemented in the office include: patron-initiated requesting in the CIC Virtual Electronic Library and WorldCat, tight links between patron-initiated requests and an external patron database, OCLC direct request service, OCLC custom holdings, OCLC ILL Fee Management Service, web-based request forms, using the integrated library system to manage circulation, ARIEL, and CLIO ILL management software. Other changes include expanding communication with patrons via email, offering fewer office hours, abolishment of all paper files, physical rearrangement of the office, only accepting requests via electronic means, and routing selected ILL requests to Acquisitions for rush purchase and processing. Request volume has increased over time. Staff levels have not changed significantly. Turnaround time has decreased significantly and patrons receive their requested materials much faster. The poster will present the changes made by the ILL Borrowing Office and the impact on patron service. Plans for the future will be presented

A perpetual switching system in pulmonary capillaries

Of the 300 billion capillaries in the human lung, a small fraction meet normal oxygen requirements at rest, with the remainder forming a large reserve. The maximum oxygen demands of the acute stress response require that the reserve capillaries are rapidly recruited. To remain primed for emergencies, the normal cardiac output must be parceled throughout the capillary bed to maintain low opening pressures. The flow-distributing system requires complex switching. Because the pulmonary microcirculation contains contractile machinery, one hypothesis posits an active switching system. The opposing hypothesis is based on passive switching that requires no regulation. Both hypotheses were tested ex vivo in canine lung lobes. The lobes were perfused first with autologous blood, and capillary switching patterns were recorded by videomicroscopy. Next, the vasculature of the lobes was saline flushed, fixed by glutaraldehyde perfusion, flushed again, and then reperfused with the original, unfixed blood. Flow patterns through the same capillaries were recorded again. The 16-min-long videos were divided into 4-s increments. Each capillary segment was recorded as being perfused if at least one red blood cell crossed the entire segment. Otherwise it was recorded as unperfused. These binary measurements were made manually for each segment during every 4 s throughout the 16-min recordings of the fresh and fixed capillaries (>60,000 measurements). Unexpectedly, the switching patterns did not change after fixation. We conclude that the pulmonary capillaries can remain primed for emergencies without requiring regulation: no detectors, no feedback loops, and no effectors-a rare system in biology. NEW & NOTEWORTHY The fluctuating flow patterns of red blood cells within the pulmonary capillary networks have been assumed to be actively controlled within the pulmonary microcirculation. Here we show that the capillary flow switching patterns in the same network are the same whether the lungs are fresh or fixed. This unexpected observation can be successfully explained by a new model of pulmonary capillary flow based on chaos theory and fractal mathematics