Reflections on a Coaching Year

At the close of the school year, instructional coaches support teachers’ reflection on their work. This is also a time to pause and think about our own experience. It can be helpful to frame our reflection around three “sights”: hindsight, insight, and foresight. Hindsight helps us recognize what we’ve gained in the past. Insight governs our present, and foresight prepares us for our future. Let’s settle into each of these to guide our introspection.
 
Hindsight for Reflection
 
Growth lives in the honest examination of experience. When we take the time to check in on events that occurred and how we and others experienced them, we can better recognize effects. Here are some questions for summoning hindsight:

• Which coaching conversations felt most productive or transformative?
• What feedback did I receive from teachers, formally or informally?
• What habits or routines helped me be consistent and effective?
• What coaching moves had the biggest impact on teacher growth and student learning?
• What moments of discomfort led to breakthroughs — for me or for the teachers I support?
• What patterns emerged across my work that are worth noticing?

Choose two or three of the above questions to consider. As you do, try to filter defensiveness and distortion. Instead, lean into humility and curiosity. Journaling or talking through your responses with a trusted colleague could be helpful in recognizing hindsight. Unfortunately, experience doesn’t automatically lead to growth – it could just foster stagnation. But experience plus clear reflection leads to hindsight. And learning from the past propels insight.
 
Insight for Understanding
 
Insight is clarity in the present. Insight is deep, grounded in in-the-moment examination. It’s that light-bulb moment, that “ah-hah” experience. It’s what happens when something clicks. Insight can resolve stuckness. Walking through the day with eyes wide open and presence of mind increases insight. Here are some questions to foster insight:

• What do I know now about my coaching that I didn’t know a year ago?
• What do I now understand about my role?
• What’s bringing me energy in my work? What’s draining it?
• How do my values show up in my day-to-day coaching practice?
• What have I learned about navigating school culture and systems?

Insight is recognition of what matters, what’s true, and what’s possible. Insight might offer a shift, a reframing, or a new direction. Although it lives squarely in the now, it opens future options.
 
Foresight for Intention-Setting
 
Foresight is looking ahead with intentionality. It includes taking stock so that we know what we’re carrying forward. Foresight is not just predicting – it’s choosing how we want to show up in the future. It is planning with purpose. Foresight helps us position ourselves so that we’re ready for what will come. It is all about designing a hoped-for future. Here are some questions to engage foresight:

• What do I want to do more of next year? Less of?
• What kind of coaching culture do I want to help create?
• What will I need to let go of to make space for something new?
• What structures (e.g., schedules, tools, norms) will help me be more effective?
• What risk am I willing to take in my coaching practice?
• What learning do I need to pursue to support teachers more powerfully?
• What systems, routines, or boundaries will help me coach more effectively?

Foresight allows us to design the future rather than drift into it. Through foresight, we align our future actions with noticed opportunities. Summer is a great time for breaking away from the day-to-day so that we can zoom out and strategize a desired future. Foresight fosters clarity and hope.

Using Our “Sights”
As you shift into summer mode, I hope you can carry this reflection with you – not as baggage, but as ballast. Ballast, according to Webster, improves stability and control, equipping us and steadying our course. I hope our hindsight can ground us, our insight can guide us, and our foresight can propel us toward our aspirations for 2025-26.
 

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

Picture books for mental wellness:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/picture-books-for-mental-wellness/
 
 
6 Ways to recharge this summer:
 
https://artsintegration.com/2018/07/01/6-ways-to-recharge-in-the-summer/
 
 
Book clubs as teen activism:
 
https://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/story/ya-books-reflect-the-activism-of-real-life-teens
 
 
How to program your brain for positivity:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmx_35rQIRg
 
What data counts for student growth:
 
https://ccira.blog/2022/05/17/creating-a-narrative-of-progress-broadening-the-definition-of-reading-growth/
 
 
As the school year draws to a close, I wish you more:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hti6bGm4664
 
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: FDNS25 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!