Coaching with Graduated Risk

When I met this week for a coaching conversation with Erin, an early-career teacher, I had mixed feelings when she told me she hadn’t used the “Take a Stand” activity during her unit on argumentative writing. When we’d talked about the activity in a previous conversation, she’d seemed so excited! She’d asked me to send her details, and I’d sent that follow-up email. Now I learned she hadn’t done it.
 
The happy side of this revelation was that she trusted me enough to tell me so. The frustration was that I felt this could have been a meaningful activity for her students, and I thought she’d bought into it. Erin hinted at potential reasons, and when I named her fear – that students would get out of control during the activity – Erin affirmed that was a concern that stopped her from moving forward. “But I think I could do it now,” she said. “They’ve tested my boundaries enough now to know what they can get away with and what they can’t,” she said.
 
Still, I didn’t want her committing to something she might once again omit. I felt it would damage our coaching relationship if that happened. We needed a collaborative win.
 
During the conversation, Emily had already named partner talk as a strategy she thought her students could use – shifting from the individual conferring with students that she’d been doing to having them talk with each other. As we chatted, she came up with another way that she could have students share their opinions – one that didn’t risk rambunctiousness: she could have students demonstrate their opinion by placing their sticky note on the appropriate side of a T-chart. I affirmed this as a low-risk and effective option, and we talked about how that might lead to the goal she’d started with of incorporating more discussion.
 
Before closing the conversation, I laid out the three options we’d talk about on a continuum. “You have three good options for incorporating discussion so that students can share their opinions before writing,” I said. “Partner talk, sticky notes with whole-class discussion, and Take a Stand.” I described these activities as a menu she could choose from when planning the upcoming lesson. “It might even be different for different periods, and you could change your mind at the last minute, depending on how students are acting that day.”
 
By naming options that evoked varied degrees of risk-aversion for Erin, I hope that she will end up using one or more of them and increase her teaching courage. When she tries something we’ve talked about and it (hopefully!) works, it will give traction to our coaching work. We needed to walk away with a plan that would result in action and a win. I wanted to maintain the positive momentum we’ve been building this year, and I didn’t think the relationship could sustain another follow-up conversation where the report was, “I didn’t do what we talked about.”
 
When a teacher has a fragile hold on teaching strategies and is intimidated by the idea of stepping outside of the box, naming a graduated list of options mitigates the potential for neglecting to implement. Even if Erin just does just one partner talk between now and the next time we meet, she’ll have something to share – and, importantly, she won’t feel like she failed to follow-through. Naming options with graduated risk can avoid a stall and help to sustain momentum.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

A score of ideas for National Poetry Month:
 
https://ncte.org/resources/poetry/
 
 
Enhancing motivation and belonging:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/the-science-of-student-motivation
 
 
Using brain intervals (shorter and less disruptive than brain breaks):
 
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/focused-attention-practices-brain-intervals-woven-stress-desautels/
 
 
6 Flaws of PD (and how to fix them):
 
http://www.gettingsmart.com/2018/02/the-six-flaws-of-traditional-professional-development/
 
 
This brief video about creating a culture of belonging:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/quick-take-listen-to-create-a-sense-of-belonging/
 
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: MAR2025 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!