Saturday, April 28, 2018

Power-Packed Coaching Verbs


The roles of an instructional coach are many and varied, depending on context and job description.  However, it’s safe to say that coaches, in their work with individual teachers and teams, will be expected to guide, challenge, and celebrate instruction.  Let’s think about each of those power-packed coaching verbs.

Guiding
A coach is a guide by the side who models and recommends to help teachers’ instructional practices rise.  Let’s consider a metaphor from vacation travel: Tour guides can provide some insight about how to magnify the role of instructional coach as guide.  Like me, you’ve probably taken a vacation tour or two with a guide who had memorized a script and could regurgitate it perfectly, with a litany of facts and timed pauses after jokes. Although informative, I haven’t left such tours more curious or inspired.  I can contrast those experiences with the expert guide we had on our tour of the ancient Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza or our brilliant guide through Old Jerusalem.  In Chichen Itza, the woman who guided us through the ruins took time to ask about our background and then personalized her presentation to help us make connections to our own experience.  In Jerusalem, our guide was a professor of ancient history from an Israeli university. He shared many insightful details that gave us a deeper sense of the place and left us curious to find out more. 

From these experiences I learned that, as an instructional guide, knowing about the curriculum is insufficient.  Coaches will be more impactful when they connect with teachers’ previous experiences and current goals, when their pedagogical and content knowledge is deep and broad, and when they come with their own curiosity as they seek to guide.

Challenging
Coaches challenge, not by arguing or being confrontational, but by pushing teachers to think in new ways and try new things. Think of someone who has challenged you in positive ways. For me, it was a principal who had enough faith in me to ask me to try something new (coaching), even though no one else in the district was doing it – yet.  Prior to this, he had given me opportunities for leadership in a variety of situations.  He asked me questions about how I thought something should be done and then he stepped out of my way and let me do it.  He trusted I would do it right.

My principal taught me that people accept and succeed with a challenge when they are prepared and trusted.  Coaches prepare teachers for new instructional challenges by posing questions that compel them to think critically before jumping in.  Issuing challenges in this way improves ongoing outcomes as the coach steps away and the teachers move forward.


Celebrating
We all need someone with whom to share small victories.  Perhaps that is part of the appeal of social media: When something turns out well, we can Pin it or share it and receive affirmation.  In a more personal way, coaches champion teachers’ successes, even the small ones.  The positive things we notice become ways to advocate for the practice and the teacher.  We’ve all heard  the phrase, “What gets tested gets taught.”  In a more positive vein, what gets celebrated gets taught.

As coaches guide, challenge, and celebrate, they lift and lead the teachers with whom they are working.  Instructional coaching isn’t just about content area and pedagogical expertise. It is about helping those around us rise in their practice.  

This week, you might want to take a look at:


Maximizing coaching in the month of May:



Entering a lesson on the right foot by focusing on now:



Building independence so teachers can confer during reading workshop:



Exploring propaganda through dystopian literature:



Highlighting mistakes as a grading practice:


That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!

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