Eureka! Coaching the Aha Moments

In a legendary description of discovery, Archimedes supposedly shouted, “Eureka! (Greek for “I have found it!”) when he stepped into a bathtub and discovered the principle of buoyancy. Although classrooms may not be the setting for legendary discoveries, students (and teachers) discover insights that are new to them every day. While coaching this week, I capitalized on “Eureka” moments to set the stage for constructive conversations.
 
This week, I had the good fortune to observe lessons in eight elementary school classrooms. In all the classes, students had pent-up energy from inside recesses due to colder-than-usual temperatures, and teachers were a bit frazzled for the same reason. Still, there were times during every lesson where children’s brains were turning things over, figuring stuff out, and lighting up with answers. So I started each debrief coaching conversation by asking about those moments.
 
I asked Amber, “When was an aha moment during that lesson – a time when you really saw a light bulb go on?” Amber recalled when, in her fifth-grade lesson on the comprehension strategy of clarifying, one student, Raimi, piped up, “I knew we wouldn’t find the answers in that passage we already read – that’s why we had questions in the first place!” Amber replied that sometimes we might miss something while we were reading, even if the answer was there. Raimi nodded as understanding dawned.
 
Maribeth remembered that some kindergarten students learned new vocabulary when their phonics practice included the word “trek,” along with a context-rich image. The first-graders who figured this out beamed as they shared.
 
During Harper’s second-grade lesson on landforms, she spontaneously included a physical example: When students were struggling to understand what a peninsula was, she became the landmass; with her arms at her side, she was an island, and the “fish” (a designated student) could swim all around her. When she touched the desk with her arm to close off the “waterway,” the “fish” could not get through.  
 
During Sarah’s first-grade lesson on computational fluency, I saw students working diligently but hadn’t noticed any especially-perky “ah-hah!” moments, so I modified my conversation-starter question, just to make sure she was at ease. I asked, “When did you see the most thinking going on during this lesson?” Sarah started off talking about the “game” routine that they used for most of the lesson, with students writing answers on their magic slates. But her voice trailed off as she replayed the scenario in her mind. “I guess I saw the most thinking when students were working on their exit ticket,” she reconsidered.
 
I could go on with four more examples, but you get the idea. The important things were the conversations that followed.
 
When Amber shared one student’s aha about clarifying, I emphasized what an important insight that was, since one of the main purposes of the clarifying strategy is to send readers back into the text for answers. Amber decided to revisit that moment the next day, because she realized she’d passed over it too quickly as an aside to Raimi, without drawing other students into the conversation. Going forward, she would be more explicit about the purposes and applications of comprehension strategies.
 
Maribeth’s recognition of vocabulary learning led to a conversation about the value of the images she had added to phonics slides. I affirmed her practice of having students decide which of the three images matched the decoded word, and I asked her about the sequence of her routine. She described how students would pull down letter tiles on their own phonics boards to form the word displayed, then together they would blend the word, then say which image it matched. I said I’d noticed that one time, she reversed the order, having them choose the image before whole-class blending. “Which sequence do you think worked better?” I asked. Then I saw a light-bulb moment for Maribeth, as she realized that students did more independent thinking, and were more engaged, when she had them choose the picture first. She decided to permanently switch up her routine.
 
When Harper and I talked about her peninsula demo, I asked why she thought that example stuck with students so well. She then told me about a lesson last week with a similarly-effective spontaneous example. She decided that the effectiveness of these examples hinged on her responsiveness to students’ confusion and the fact that there was activity involved. I applauded her responsiveness and her determination to include physical, active examples that were planned for, as well.
 
After rewinding the lesson and remembering that there was a lot of off-task behavior during the “game” portion of the lesson, Sarah decided to tighten up the routine and make the steps visible for students by creating an anchor chart.
 
Asking teachers to recall students’ “Eureka!” moments helped them recognize practices that had worked so that they could hone these practices and take them forward. Using this question as a conversation opener set a positive, asset-based tone for our conversation. It’s something I’ll use again. That’s my “Eureka!” coaching moment for this week!
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

16 Variations on Think-Pair-Share:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/think-pair-share-variations-16-ways-up-your-game
 
 
Art as a bridge for multilingual students:
 
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2025-01-22-art-saved-my-life-when-i-was-a-student-now-it-s-helping-my-multilingual-learners
 
 
Books with resilient characters:
 
http://www2.ncte.org/blog/2017/10/finding-mentor-books-inspire-resiliency/
 
Spread positivity – morale boosts for teachers:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/weekly-morale-boost-teachers
 
 
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!
 
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! You can use the code: JAN2025 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!

Teaching for Hope

Hope is a buffer. School environments are increasingly places of stress, anxiety, and burnout for both teachers and students. Bullet-proof glass and intruder drills may instill fear rather than confidence. Memories of school closures may take our psyches to distress and isolation. The antidote is hope.
 
In last week’s post, I offered a framework for coaching to build teachers’ hope. This week, I’ll show how that framework applies to students, and how teachers can use it in the classroom.
 
Goal
 
Setting meaningful, achievable goals and making progress toward them fosters hope. To establish a goal-setting habit, teachers can start with class goals and transition to individual goals as students get traction with the practice.
 
 For example, we recently shared with teachers a detailed learning progression for middle-school writing. Teachers determined where the majority of the students landed on that progression, and the next step up was the first class goal. After achieving a couple of class goals, moving incrementally to more challenging writing objectives, teachers shared the learning progression with students and conferred with them about their next individual goal. Students let their teachers know when they had enough evidence of achievement to choose a new goal. A process like this could be applied in any subject.
 
Pathway
 
In the example above, the learning progression provided a pathway forward. To offer hope, students have to be able to see a clear path. They need manageable steps along the way. Whole group instruction coupled with intentional small groups and regular teacher conferring supports progress and generates pathways thinking.
 
Teachers can guide students in brainstorming pathways to overcome learning obstacles and modeling how to navigate uncertainty. They can offer opportunities for collaboration that foster peer support, developing hope through shared experiences and encouragement.
 
Teaching strategies helps students persevere in the face of challenges. Metacognitive strategies like planning, checking for understanding, and reviewing keep students moving forward and should be explicitly taught. Thinking strategies like predicting, inferring, visualizing, and making connections are important in all academic areas (and in life!). In addition to teaching content, teachers instill hope by teaching how to learn the content.
 
Agency
 
Research suggests that agency builds hope. Agency is more than choice; it is choice with say-so. It is the right to decide, the power to make a difference. Teachers, as the designated authority figure in the classroom, are in the position to offer agency. They can make students agents of their own learning. At the beginning of the year (or semester), teachers offer agency by giving students voice in class norms rather than laying them down themselves.
 
Agency means offering meaningful choices that align with students’ current abilities, needs, and interests. For kindergartners, deciding which manipulatives will best help them solve the math problem is meaningful agency. For high schoolers, agency might mean offering choice about the format (video, audio, graphic, written) and the specific topic for their final project on the American Revolution.
 
Efficacy
 
Celebrating small successes builds resilience and self-efficacy. Regularly acknowledging students’ efforts sustains motivation. Teachers can offer opportunities for students to reflect on progress through conversation and through written reflective journals. When students write about their goals, their successes, and the strategies they are using to overcome challenges, they see themselves as capable. Of course, they will need models of optimism and nudges to take this stance.
 
Hope Is a Ladder
Hope creates solutions mindsets. It helps us persevere through difficulties. It fuels curiosity and the belief that, through our individual actions, the future can be better. Hope counters helplessness. Fostering mental health not only improves students’ academic outcomes, it improves their lives.
 
Hope is the ladder that helps us climb out of dark holes dug by the mind. It fosters resilience, motivation, and a sense of possibility. Please pass along this much-needed message of hope.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

Ways to infuse hope into the curriculum (scroll down):
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/7-ways-infuse-your-curriculum-hope/
 
 
Little pieces of classroom joy:
 
https://ccira.blog/2019/01/15/little-pieces-of-classroom-joy/
 
 
Prepare for World Read Aloud Day on February 5:
 
https://www.litworld.org/worldreadaloudday
 
 
Benefits of reading aloud:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c95MRI5MeqU
 
 
27 closing activities:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/engaging-closure-activities/
 
 
That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!
 
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! You can use the code: JAN2025 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!

Choosing Hope

For the eighth time, I’ve chosen a word-of-the-year to guide my intentions. Having just one word has made it easier to stay the course. Of course, that word has to be well-chosen, and it’s best if it can carry me in many directions. That’s why I love my word for 2025: Hope.
 
Teachers need hope, and instructional coaches are in a position to help teachers build a path of hope. Since choosing my word, it has, of course, been popping up everywhere! I was delighted to find a section on hope as I read from Brené Brown’s book, Dare to Lead. Brené says that hope is the antidote to anger, fear, or despair, which might be masked as cynicism. This is good to know. That dubious, cynical teacher might be masking self-doubt. Her skepticism could come from a place of anxiety. Her sarcasm might represent discouragement. Digging out of that place and into a place of hope creates better outcomes for both the teacher and her students. As coaches, we can cultivate hope.
 
The four parts of the pathway to hope are goal, pathway, agency, and self-efficacy. Let’s think about each and how it might grow hope (in the teachers you work with and within you).
 
Goal
The idea of choosing a goal is all around us at this time of year, and it’s usually how we head into a coaching cycle. Choosing a goal gives us a focal point as we move forward. We know where we want to go. Let’s make sure goals come from a place of progress, recognizing our strengths and building on those rather than focusing on deficiencies. A strengths-focused goal sets us on a path of hope.
 
As coaches, let’s make sure the goals teachers set are achievable. When my principal first introduced the idea of a stretch goal, I was not a fan, and I’m still not. For me, a goal that I know is beyond my reach is discouraging. The SMART acronym works for me: Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound. These are good guides for a coaching cycle goal.
 
Pathway
Once we know the destination, we can choose the pathway. I’m a hiker, and when I’m at the trailhead, I take a careful look at the posted map. I think about the time, energy, and strength that I have as I consider the options for getting to where I want to go.
 
There’s more than one route to achieving a goal, and coaches can help teachers see those paths. Offering multiple suggestions for teachers to choose from helps them select a route that suits their pace and supports teachers’ agency.
 
Agency
Agency is choice with authority. Help teachers see that they can make choices about instruction, even if there’s a scripted curriculum to follow. There is so much space between the lines, and teachers sometimes assume the worst about how they are expected to use provided resources. Instead, help teachers see possibilities, with the required curriculum (if you have one) as a starting place.  
 
As the lead learner in the classroom, teachers are authorized to make decisions. They have the charge, so they need the choice.
 
Efficacy
Self-efficacy is needed to feel hope. Coaches can boost teachers’ confidence by highlighting strengths, supporting asset-based reflection, and celebrating progress. Because it won’t be a straight path forward, we need to encourage risk-taking and normalize challenges. Teachers might need to switch to Plan B and Plan C.
 
As teachers make progress toward a goal, determination and tenacity increase. Letting go of doubt generates optimism and an assurance of good things to come. Coaches help teachers persist in the face of setbacks. With clarity and kindness, our conversations teach hope.
 
As I pursue my one word goal for 2025, I’ll keep in mind the value of goals, pathways, agency, and efficacy as I cheer myself and others on.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

“One little word” resolutions for students:
 
https://ourclasswrites.com/2012/01/08/one-little-word-one-big-idea/
 
 
Strategies for Public Speaking: Big, Loud, and Slow:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/big-loud-and-slow-six-strategies-for-better-public-speaking/
 
 
This 3-minute video has 8 activities for closure:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/video/8-closing-activities-to-wrap-up-a-lesson/
 
 
A well-balanced diet – choice and parameters in reading and writing:
 
https://ccira.blog/2018/08/28/a-well-balanced-diet/
 
 
Or, as the new year gets underway, you might consider: Is balance the right goal for life?
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/the-big-fresh-january-23-2016no-balance/
 
That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!
 
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! You can use the code: JAN2025 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!
 

Coaching for Teacher Agency

Teacher agency—the power and autonomy to make meaningful decisions about pedagogy—is a cornerstone of effective and sustainable teaching. When teachers have agency, they act as the lead learners in their classrooms, making informed decisions that benefit their students and align with their professional expertise. Instructional coaches have an important role in fostering this agency, inspiring teachers to take ownership of their practices and helping them navigate the demands of the education system.
 
The Empowering Potential of Agency
 
When teachers are positioned as lead learners, the work is energizing and sustaining. Having agency infuses teaching with purpose. Reflecting on how to best support student learning through expertise in content, pedagogy, and knowledge of students is demanding but motivating. It sustains teachers in their professional roles and fosters fulfillment.
 
Coaching to Empower Teachers
 
Instructional coaches can play a critical role in fostering teacher agency. But we must be mindful of unintentionally taking hierarchical positions that undermine teachers’ invention of their own teaching identities. To empower teachers, coaches must recognize teachers’ professional expertise and position them as active agents in their classrooms.
 
When using the GIR model for instructional coaching (see below), everything we model, recommend, question, affirm, and praise should acknowledge teachers’ agency and efficacy. They choose what we will model and what they will focus on. We offer recommendations as options, saying, “Some things you might want to consider…” We ask questions that support teachers’ decision-making. When good things are happening, we affirm and praise the choices made.
 
Practical Strategies for Supporting Agency
 
One of the most effective ways to empower teachers is through reflection. Reflecting on practice helps teachers feel volitional and capable, allowing them to recognize the agency they already possess to exercise their expertise through thoughtful decision-making.
 
Our coaching approach should highlight opportunities for choice. We can offer suggestions framed as “Some things you might want to consider…” This invites teachers to think critically about what is presented. Providing multiple options increases opportunities for choice and autonomy.
 
Teachers should feel empowered to make instructional decisions based on their students’ needs rather than rigidly adhering to scripted curricula. The process of reflection, risk-taking, and refinement reinforces the idea that teachers have both the power and responsibility to adapt and grow in response to the dynamic needs of their classrooms.
 
Teacher Agency Within Constraints
 
Teacher agency exists within systems of accountability and constraints, such as state standards, district mandates, and required curricula and materials. However, teachers often imagine there is less wiggle room than actually exists. There is usually more chance for agency than teachers recognize. Coaches can help teachers creatively work within existing systems to better meet their students’ needs. It doesn’t have to be subversive work. The space for agency is already there, ready to be acted within. Coaches can help teachers find that space.
 
By exercising agency, teachers create instruction that honor students’ interests, needs, and experiences and fosters equity and inclusion. Coaches can support teacher autonomy, allowing them to resist narrow, prescriptive approaches that may not serve diverse learners effectively. Instead, they can advocate for practices that prioritize meaningful, student-centered, and culturally responsive teaching.
 
A Call to Celebrate Teacher Agency
 
Teacher agency is central to effective instruction. It is the capacity for teachers to act autonomously, informed by their pedagogical expertise and their students’ realities. By positioning teachers as their own agents of change, we celebrate their professionalism and the critical role they play.
 
As instructional coaches, we can support teacher agency as an essential component of meaningful, student-centered, responsive teaching. Empowered teachers are better equipped to meet the needs of their students and sustain themselves in their roles. Let’s cultivate teacher agency and celebrate the impact teachers have on their classroom communities.

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

Using “Hot Chocolate” breathing to create calm: 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCIyEn8_XLU&t=5s
 
15 things productive people do:
 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2016/01/20/15-surprising-things-productive-people-do-differently/
 
Creating class books:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/lets-write-together-the-importance-of-class-books/
 
Interactive read-alouds in science:
 
https://www.amnh.org/explore/curriculum-collections/integrating-literacy-strategies-into-science-instruction/interactive-read-alouds
 
 
Questions worth considering about coaching ethics:
 
https://newbycoachlive.wordpress.com/2018/08/06/why-think-about-ethics-in-coaching/
 
That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!
 
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! You can use the code: JAN2025 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!