Narrow the Focus: Coaching for Portable Practices

This week, I saw the power of getting specific during a coaching conversation. Specificity grounds the work in practice. Naming concrete moments helps teachers uncover their decision making and understand why something worked (or didn’t). And specifics are portable – teachers can carry them forward into future lessons. Ironically, getting specific makes effective teaching moves more generalizable. That’s why the questions I asked Patricia during our coaching work this week drew from consecutively narrower and narrower slices of teaching.
 
Patricia is a novice 1^st-grade teacher, and it was my first time to observe her class, I wanted to get off on the right foot, so after we got settled, I asked, “Thinking back on that lesson, where did you see the most learning happen?” I felt that asking for a success would be a positive launch for our conversation.
 
Patricia paused and thought back on the lesson she had just taught, on using Elkonin boxes to recognize graphemes (letter representations of sounds – that day it was “ai” and “ay”). After a pause, Patricia said she felt the independent practice was most beneficial part of the lesson. Our viewfinder was getting narrower, but being even more specific about the lesson could offer more insight.
 
“What did you see during independent practice that showed they were learning?” was my next question. More specific. Patricia responded by saying she noticed that some students were initially putting one letter in each box (not accurate for the “ai” and “ay” combos), but later she saw fewer students making that mistake.
 
“What helped them recognize that?” was my next question (more specific still!).
 
Patricia replied that she asked students about the sounds in the words.
 
 “Can you think of a specific student who you talked with and how that conversation went?” I asked.
 
Patricia named a student and said she’d asked, “How many sounds in that word?” She described how the student had said the word slowly, counting the sounds, and then realized the mistake he’d made with the Elkonin (sound) boxes.
 
Next, I asked what seemed to support that student’s learning. Patricia paused and said, “I think that he figured it out when he was able to verbalize his own thinking,” Now there was a generalizable nugget! Because of this insight, Patricia decided to include opportunities for students to verbalize their thinking as a predictable part of lesson closure. Going from broad to specific in our coaching conversation led to an approach that worked for Patricia’s students.
 
Coaching questions that focus are like turning the lens on a fancy camera – Zooming in to get at the tiny details. Asking questions that narrow the focus supports the teacher’s responses and guides them based on their own problem-solving pattern.
 
Working from broad to narrow recognizes that teaching practice is complex and worthy of close attention. Coaches can ask questions that iteratively increase specificity in ways that invite reflection, analysis, and possibility. Rather than offering generic advice, the coach communicates: Your choices matter, and they’re worth examining carefully. As I noticed this week with Patricia, narrowing the focus can keep the conversation anchored in the teacher’s own thinking and instructional choices,
 
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Did you know My Coaches Couch is also a podcast? (with different content) Find it in your favorite podcast app or at MyCoachesCouch.podbean.com
 
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This week, you might want to take a look at:

What makes teacher learning impactful?
 
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2025-12-10-why-i-can-t-pretend-teacher-learning-doesn-t-matter-anymore
 
 
NCTE’s student writing awards are open!
 
https://ncte.org/awards/student-writing-awards/
 
This podcast episode with strategies to help students develop self-awareness:
 
https://www.bamradionetwork.com/track/six-strategies-to-help-students-develop-self-awareness-and-self-reflection-skills/
 
 
Prioritizing self care:
 
https://www.teachingchannel.com/blog/teacher-self-care
 
Teachers as risk-takers:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/take-a-chance/
 
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: JAN2026 for 15% 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!