A
friend is updating the garden in her yard to include more space for home-grown
fruits and vegetables along with more flowers to nourish the soul (and less
water-sucking lawn, given that she lives in a desert clime). The new “bones”
are there now, with arches, raised beds, and trellises. In terms of production,
it’s not putting out much right now, but there’s a solid plan for growth. Soon the
trellises will support beans and peas, those arches will be bursting with
blooms, and the beds will be flush with foliage. Like my friend’s garden, coaches benefit from
having a plan for growth.
As
this eventful school year winds down and you look forward to summer, what plans
do you have for your own professional growth? Would you like to spruce up the supports you
offer as part of the coaching process? Are there skills you want to add to your
coaching toolkit? Attributes you want to develop? Knowledge you should deepen? Let’s
think through each of these questions.
Process
To
spruce up the coaching process, you might consider the phases in the GIR Model
for Coaching: Modeling, recommending, questioning, affirming, and praising. Which would you like to be more intentional
about in your dialogues with teachers as partners? How could your impact be
amplified if you coupled these coaching moves with deep listening? (I hope you’re
pausing at each question mark to consider your own aspirations!)
As
you think about the coaching process, you might want to get better at helping
teachers define their own essential questions for inquiry or recognizing and
celebrating their own growth. You might want to be more intentional about infusing
formative assessment information into the coaching process. Pick part of the coaching
process and identify an aspect for growth.
Skills
Coaching
requires a variety of skills: not just pedagogical skills, but also skills like
communication, problem-solving, flexibility, and time management. Honing these soft
skills can produce noticeable coaching growth.
Could
you communicate with more clarity or friendliness? With greater empathy
or confidence? Do you want to learn more
about taking an open-minded approach to problem-solving? Be more responsive in
the face of the unexpected? Create a
more productive schedule? Think of these skills as your toolkit for coaching.
How can you sharpen the saw?
Attributes
I’ve
written recently about personal attributes we can nurture that support
coaching. I’m including them again here as a reminder about their role in your
four-part plan for coaching improvement. Revisit posts about being humble, consistent,
courageous,
approachable,
and joyful
if you’d like to think about these mindsets for coaching as part of your growth
plan.
Knowledge
Knowledge
for teaching includes general pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content
knowledge, and content knowledge. General pedagogical knowledge can be
applied across academic areas; for example, asking good questions is an
important teacher skill whether the content is biology or Shakespeare. Pedagogical content knowledge is more
specific to the discipline. For example, Socratic circles work well for deepening
students’ understanding of literature, and base ten blocks are great for helping
young students develop number sense. Content knowledge is the knowledge
of the discipline: Which battles were turning points in the Civil War? What is
the formula for calculating the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle? If you’re going to teach the content, you need
a substantive knowledge base.
As
you think about the teachers you work with, the ways they teach, and the
content they’re responsible for, are there areas where you’d like to strengthen
your own knowledge? Increased knowledge
is another aspect of growth.
How
does your professional garden grow?
In
my friend’s garden, the plants are taking root and her plan is becoming a
reality. Like plants, humans are built
to grow. We have an innate drive to improve. By making and following a professional
growth plan, we become better versions of our coaching selves.
Now,
I’ll pose the growth questions again: Would
you like to spruce up the supports you offer as part of the coaching process?
Are there skills you want to add to your coaching toolkit? Attributes
you want to develop? What knowledge should you deepen? A growth plan
that considers coaching processes, skills, attributes, and knowledge can support
your productive summer of professional development.
This
week, you might want to take a look at:
Promoting your coaching role:
Read
alouds for saying goodbye:
This
11-min. podcast about how discussion makes students the lead learners:
End-of-year
reflection to next year’s writing teachers:
That’s
it for this week. Happy Coaching!
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very nice blog Executive Coaching Melbourne
ReplyDeleteThank you! I hope you continue enjoying the weekly posts.
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