During this harvest season, images of
pumpkins are everywhere, looking golden and ripe. Some of these round beauties met their demise
yesterday, turning into Jack-o-Lanterns.
I was reminded of this makeover in an advertising email with the
heading, “Not all pumpkins turn into coaches!”
That got me thinking about the Cinderella story and her
magically-transformed pumpkin-coach – the coach that carried her to the
fortuitous ball.
Coaches of the Cinderella variety are
conveyances that carry people to where they want to go. Costa & Garmston use this as a metaphor
for instructional coaching, saying, “To coach means to convey a valued
colleague from where he or she is to where he or she wants to be.” It’s a useful metaphor, but, like all
metaphors, it’s faulty if we take it too far.
I don’t like the carriage image that implies carrying someone
along. When coaching, I hope to support
teachers as they refine perceptions and processes so that they are carrying
themselves.
How do we turn into the kind of coach
who invites, moves, and empowers teachers?
For me, it’s an ongoing transformation.
I’m moving, too, trying to get better at my craft while I help teachers
improve theirs.
Something I’m continually thinking
about is how to offer the right amount of support – not too little, not too
much…just right! The GIR
model creates a kind of path for this, for
thinking about how to build capacity by making sure teachers have ownership for
the process.
I’ve had enough experience to know
that sometimes a recommendation
is just what is needed – I take a consulting role. But I’ve noticed that sometimes my
recommendations are perceived as directives.
It’s difficult, when sitting in the coach’s seat, to ensure that the
teacher maintains ownership for instructional decisions. I don’t want my suggestions to curb others’
thinking. I don’t want to save the day;
I want to make sure they do.
Through recommendations, I want to
invest in teachers, not divest them. I
want to infuse ideas that build their genius, not rob them of the opportunity
to use and extend their own intelligence. I want my recommendations to encourage
teachers to use their talent, expertise, and experience. I want to support a teacher’s ability to solve
and avoid problems. I want to contribute
a relevant insight that will move the teacher forward. All this while acknowledging that the teacher
knows his students and their needs, that he has insights gained from first-hand
experience that will help him make good decisions. I want to get involved in the details in
appropriate ways while keeping the ownership with the teacher. It is sometimes hard to know when to talk and
when to stop.
For me, a writer’s workshop analogy
helps me remember about positions of power.
As I confer with students, I have to resist the urge to put a mark to
the child’s page. If I really want to
support her writing growth, the pencil has to stay in her hand. We can talk about craft, but she is the one
who will choose how to use it in her writing.
Similarly, as a coach, I sometimes recommend, but the pen must stay in
the teachers’ hand (metaphorically) if I want her to convey herself to where
she wants to be as a teacher. She
decides how to apply the craft.
As the harvest season moves on and I
see more images for pumpkin transformations (pie, anyone?), I’ll use that as a
cue to do a coaching self-check: Who has the pen? Who has the power? Is my coaching helping the teacher move along
a path she has chosen? I hope you’ll
join me in the magical transformation of becoming a better coach.
This
week, you might want to take a look at:
This
post is about more than classroom management; consider how the conversation
with teachers was facilitated (they include their agenda at the end):
Showing
appreciation for peers’ contributions:
Free,
online, non-fiction text sets:
Structures
to create a coaching culture:
Try 6 Ed Tech tools recommended in
this Cult of Pedagogy podcast episode:
That’s
it for this week. Happy Coaching!
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