Saturday, September 28, 2013

Power of the Pause

In last week’s post, we talked about the value of having the teacher choose the focus of the coaching work you’ll do together.  Once a focus for coaching has been selected, the GIR coaching model (see below) can provide a guide for the work you do together, reminding you to gradually increase the teacher’s responsibility and ownership for the things she’d like to improve. 

Not all teachers will need the first (and most supportive) coaching practice – modeling.  With some teachers or focuses, Making Recommendations is the coaching move to lead with as you begin a coaching cycle.  As with choosing a focus, the recommendations you make will be most effective if they grow from the teacher’s specific concerns or comments.  This is why WAIT time is so important during a conversation.  We’ve all heard of wait time, but I like the reminder I read recently: WAIT stands for Why Am I Talking?  This little acronym encourages me to pause, hold my tongue, and really consider what the teacher has been saying before jumping in with a recommendation.  Waiting allows me to listen better, because while the teacher talks, my mind is not rushing ahead thinking about what I’m going to say in response – I know I’ll have time for that once she pauses.  My response is better because I’ve really listened, and because I’ve allowed myself a few seconds to think about what I’ve heard.  The pause pushes my own thinking to a higher level.  That thoughtful pause also sends the message that I value what the teacher has said. 

A children’s book, I Have a Little Problem, illustrates this concept well.  The book begins with a bear looking for a solution to a problem that we (as the reader) don’t know about.  After having unsatisfactory solutions posed by the shopkeeper, the shoemaker, the doctor, and various other townsmen, the bear dejectedly walks out of town and sits on a hill.  There he meets a friendly fly, who takes the time to listen and finds out the bear’s real problem:  he is alone and afraid.  As the fly and bear go off together, we recognize that listening provided a way for the bear’s problem to be solved. 

As with the bear, so with the teacher!  We have probably all been a victim, at one time or another, of a solution that was provided by someone who didn’t really understand the problem.  My goal is to avoid that situation by talking less and listening more during coaching conversations.   The pregnant pause – silence – sometimes makes us feel like no one is thinking.  But in actuality, that pause is usually when the highest-level thinking occurs, for both you and the teacher.  The pause works on both sides of a recommendation.  When we pause after making a recommendation, the pause becomes an opportunity for the teacher we’re coaching to thoughtfully consider how that suggestion might apply in her teaching, with her students.  It demonstrates our faith in the teacher’s own judgment and the insights she has about learning in her classroom.

As you make more space for silence during a coaching conversation, I think you’ll like the outcome.  Sandwiching a recommendation between thoughtful pauses is likely to increase the effectiveness of that recommendation and of your ongoing work as a coach.    


This week, you might want to take a look at a plethora of math resources and a bit about reading:

Here’s a free online game for developing number sense with fractions:



Here’s a video of a kindergarten math lesson using a game to develop number sense:



An interesting series of articles about the importance of math in the classroom:


(Explore the colored buttons on the top menu to find wonderful low- and high-tech math games for any grade.)


Ideas for helping students document their reading (and other great comprehension suggestions):



An article about the power of rereading:




That’s all for this week.  Happy Coaching!




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