In
last week’s post, I mentioned that I’d just attended the CCIRA Literacy
Conference where I had the opportunity to lead two workshops about
differentiated coaching. During those sessions, I began by discussing some shared
assumptions for successful coaching:
· We can
separate the teaching from the teacher.
· Practice is
something that can be changed, not an indelible part of a teacher’s personality.
· Professionals
have a common body of knowledge and practices.
I
described how crucial these assumptions are for two main reasons: 1) If the
focus is on the teacher rather than the teaching, the teacher you
are working with may feel personally attacked. 2) If
the focus is on the teacher, rather than the teaching, the
teacher may see his professional practice as a matter of personality or style,
rather than as an understanding of effective practices.
Those
sessions were on Thursday.
On
Friday, I attended a session on coaching new teachers, ready to gather
additional wisdom about coaching. I’ll
call the presenter Sandy. One of Sandy’s
first slides said this: “Coach to develop the teacher, not the teaching,” Of
course, that caught my attention. I knew
Sandy was a knowledgeable and experienced coach. Was she sending the exact opposite message from
what I’d preached the day before? I
listened intently, trying to grasp her rationale.
She
made an analogy: “Just like when you’re teaching
reading to students,” she said, “You want to teach the reader, not the reading.” That was all she said on the subject, but it
gave me food for thought.
As
a literacy coach, I have encouraged teachers not to simply teach the text (novel,
play, article, etc.). The goal is not only
to have students understand the themes of Tuck Everlasting, for
example. We also have goals about skills
and strategies the reader will develop while reading the book. Students will, we hope, take these skills and
strategies with them as they approach future texts. I think this is what Sandy meant when she
said,
When
we coach, it is not just about making a single lesson better. By focusing on practices in a specific
lesson, we hope to illuminate principles and practices that transcend that
single lesson, that will be generalizable to many contexts. We are not simply coaching for performance,
we are also coaching for development.
Coaching
for performance is about fixing a specific problem or building a specific
skill. It is urgent and important and
necessary. But our coaching doesn’t stop
there. When we coach for development, we
are cultivating understanding that leads to flexible use of practices and
principles. Coaching for development
calls a teacher forward to learn, improve, and grow, rather than simply sorting
out a specific situation. Such a
conversation is more rare, but it is also more significant.
When
I said, “We can separate the teaching from the teacher,” I was making the case
that there is a professional body of knowledge about instruction that guides
teachers’ decision-making. I think Sandy would agree. When Sandy said, “Coach to develop the teacher, not the teaching,” she was suggesting a coaching approach that transcends the specific situation. I would agree.
Although
our statements at first seemed contradictory, together they make an important
claim: By supporting teachers’ understanding of instructional principles and
practices, we encourage professional development in the true
sense of the word. That is why coaching
is powerful PD.
This
week, you might want to take a look at:
Reading
conferences that give you info. about the reading,
rather than the book he is holding:
Questions
for co-teachers (including coaches who co-teach):
Ask students to identify word gaps
(instead of teacher-selected vocabulary lists):
Three C’s to guide children’s use of
screen media (podcast):
How relatedness supports student
motivation:
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