Recognizing Teachers’ PLACE, PACE, and PROGRESS in Instructional Coaching

When coaching, there are 3 P’s to keep in mind as you support teachers’ ongoing growth: Place (where someone is), Pace (the rate of movement), and progress (the anticipated direction of movement).

Place
 
Learning is a dynamic process: with each step, we are at a different place in the journey. The terrain changes, and so the support needed for moving forward must also change.
 
I’m sure you have experienced this as a learner when you were acquiring new ideas and skills. You have also experienced it as a teacher, adjusting scaffolds to ensure that a learning activity was within a student’s zone of proximal development.
 
As a coach, understanding where a teacher is in their pedagogical learning journey gives you a place to start. Observation and conversation are “pre-assessment” tools for figuring out a teacher’s current place.
 
Pace
Teachers learn at different rates, just like their students. Differentiated coaching includes varying our coaching to align with the teacher’s gains, matching mediation to motion.
 
Some teachers are quick and spontaneous; others are deliberate and reflective. Matching a teacher’s learning pace maintains interest and appropriate challenge. Sometimes, we accelerate to advance; other times we slow down and go deep. We accommodate their appetite for new understandings.
 
We adjust the pace of our coaching to match the teacher’s learning needs. Adjusting the pace includes determining which coaching move will be most effective (modeling, recommending, asking questions, affirming, or praising), and leaning into that move. We’ll still include the other moves in our work, of course, but recognizing which move is most likely to be a lever for change keeps our support aligned with the teacher’s learning pace.
 
Progress
 
By intentionally selecting from among the coaching moves, coaches nurture growth. Sometimes growth is measured not in leaps and bounds, but in inches. Whether improvement is like turning on a light switch or a more gradual sunrise, what matters is the direction of change. Are we making progress? You don’t have to be blooming to be growing.*  Coaching work is a cycle of growth and change for both teacher and coach.
 
Because progress can be incremental, changes that happen in inches rather than miles may not be apparent to the teacher, who lives through them minute by minute. Praise can magnify movement so that it is visible to teachers. As an occasional visitor or thinking partner, coaches are in a better position to recognize cumulative change, and your praise of progress can be revealing and bolstering to the teacher. Acknowledging progress with comparative “before and after” verbs, like smoother, clearer, and deeper, is a healthy form of comparison that helps teachers recognize their own progress.
 
I’ve included two visuals of the Gradual Increase of Responsibility (GIR) coaching model below. The GIR Model helps coaches carefully consider a dynamic process for supporting growth. Differentiated coaching means recognizing teachers’ place, pace, and progress, and then varying the supports provided as those you work with gain experience and expertise, one step at a time.

*https://www.women-encouraged.com/blog/podcast-episode-6-you-dont-have-to-be-blooming-to-be-growing-with-ruth-chou-simons

 

 

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

Using Super Bowl ads in the classroom:
 
https://www.middleweb.com/20198/teach-media-literacy-super-bowl-ads/
 
 
Spread positivity – morale boosts for teachers:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/weekly-morale-boost-teachers
 
 
Notebook pages for selecting writing topics:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/five-notebook-pages-i-cant-live-without-and-neither-should-students/
 
 
Reminder to talk “with” students, not “at” them (keep watching…):
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nyr1OizVo0
 
 
That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!
 
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Want more coaching tips? Check out my book, Differentiated Mentoring & Coaching in Education: From Preservice Teacher to Expert Practitioner, available from Teachers College Press!  I’m so excited to share it with you! TODAY you can still use the code: JAN2024 for 20% off. Click  here  and I’ll email you the free Book Group Study Guide that includes questions, prompts, and activities you can use as you share the book with colleagues.  I hope you’ll love this book as much as I loved making it for you!