As a coach, you spend a lot of time
making recommendations, and you want those recommendations to be meaningful and
powerful. For teachers who need a lot of
support with a new instructional approach, your recommendations will likely be
as effective as they are specific.
EFFECTIVENESS = SPECIFICITY
Recently, I coached a coach who was
feeling frustrated. “Her classroom
management just isn’t improving,” she said, bemoaning the stagnant state of
this novice teacher’s skill. “Every
lesson that I’ve observed, I’ve talked to her about it. I’ve told her that if she focuses on the
classroom management, the other pieces will fall into place.”
“What specific recommendations have
you made about classroom management?” I
asked. The coach quickly saw where I was
leading.
“I guess I haven’t really gotten
specific,” she said. We then talked
about specific recommendations she might make, including having a class discussion about how
misbehavior impacted learning for the whole class, dropping the pitch of her
voice to get students’ attention, and practicing her ‘teacher look’ in front of
the mirror. When the coach provided
these very specific recommendations, it made a difference quickly.
Specific recommendations also made a
difference with a teacher I was coaching.
Discussions in her classroom were falling flat; ineffective questioning
patterns produced student disengagement, and student-to-student talk was almost
non-existent. After observing this
teacher in action, I made a very specific recommendation: DO NOT REPEAT STUDENT ANSWERS. When I discussed this recommendation with the
teacher, she acknowledged that she had recognized this problem herself, but
found herself repeating all the time because students' voices were soft and didn’t
carry well in the room. I made another
specific recommendation: ENCOURAGE
STUDENTS TO SHARE THEIR ANSWERS ‘LOUD & PROUD.’ Using this catch-phrase, with a little
explanation, would help students feel ownership for their responses. As the teacher prompted loud and proud
responses and quit repeating students’ answers, dialogue in the classroom took
a turn for the better. Specific
recommendations had made a difference.
Very specific recommendations like
these can get a teacher pointed in a positive direction. Of course, when less support is needed,
recommendations can be more general, or another form of coaching, like asking
questions, may be more appropriate. When
teachers are looking to you for answers, however, a coach’s specific
recommendations can really hit the mark.
This
week, you might want to take a look at:
A
template for a pre-reading anticipation guide, useful in any content area:
A
podcast about working with English Language Learners and their families:
A
blog post about the power of collaboration:
National
Geograhic’s Photo of the Day – great for descriptive writing practice:
This
TED talk focuses on why and how some teachers are giving the math curriculum a
makeover:
That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!
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