Some
of the most well-worn books on my shelf are about coaching. Cognitive Coaching, Talk About Teaching, Student Centered Coaching, and Sit and Get Won’t Grow Dendrites have all
been helpful in my work. But sometimes,
a non-education book illuminates new insights about coaching. Drive, by
Daniel Pink, did that for me.
In
Drive, Pink describes his findings
about motivation. He learned that
external motivation (pay, prizes, etc.) actually inhibits success on cognitively difficult tasks. Pink makes the case that internal motivation
is needed for success on work that requires creativity or higher-level thinking. Employees tasked with such work are motivated
by autonomy, purpose, and mastery. They
do best when they have some choice over their activities, tasks that directly
connect to their world, and opportunities for success. I like to think of these elements as the motivational
C’s: control, choice, challenge, connection,
and construction of meaning.
Giving
the teacher control in coaching means,
first and foremost, she determines whether she will participate in the coaching
process. At some schools that’s
non-negotiable. There’s an all-in
policy, meaning everyone participates in coaching cycles at some point during
the year (yay!), or sometimes the principal specifies that a teacher will be
coached, possibly as part of an evaluation process (boo!). Control can also be offered by opening up the
whens and wheres. When will you
meet? When will you observe? Where will you meet? What other classrooms would she like to
observe?
Choice goes along
with control. Let the teacher choose the
focus for coaching. Will it be writer’s
workshop, annotation, or cognitively-guided instruction? Will you create units together? Revise lessons? Focus on assessment? The more choice the teacher has in the
coaching process, the more motivated she will be and the more likely her
instruction will change.
Creating
an appropriate level of challenge is
where the GIR Coaching Model comes in.
The amount of support you provide changes the challenge of the
task. If you keep recommending when your
colleague needs you to thoughtfully question her practice and push her
thinking, the challenge is low and thus the motivation is low. However, recommending a specific strategy
could provide just the right level of challenge if she is ready to try something
that isn’t in her instructional repertoire.
Connection is built
into coaching work. In contrast to the
hit-and-miss nature of whole group professional development, where some teachers
will be able to immediately apply the learning to the classroom and others won’t,
coaching should always have a direct connection to what is currently happening
in that teacher’s class. Giving the
teacher choice and control within the coaching scenario further enhances
connections to her day-to-day experiences.
The
final C is construction of meaning. Constructivism argues that humans generate
understanding through interactions between their experiences and their
ideas. Coaching creates opportunities
for those interactions, as you and the teacher reflect together on
teaching.
Reading
Daniel Pink’s ideas about motivation helped me make connections between what I
knew about student motivation and what I’d experienced with teachers. Whether in the classroom or in a coaching
conference, I’ve found success as I’ve kept these 5 Cs in mind.
This week,
you might want to take a look at:
This video about classroom
that are over-decorated and over-stimulating:
How
summer and a personal writing notebook changed this teacher’s life:
And yet another summer reading list
of professional books for teachers:
This
blog about the effective vertical team meetings:
In
this video presentation, Arne Duncan talks about the importance of offering
leadership opportunities to classroom teachers:
That’s it
for this week. Happy Summer!
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