If
you’re new around here, welcome! This blog focuses on the important processes
of mentoring and coaching, from preservice teacher to expert practitioner using
the Gradual Increase of Responsibility
(GIR) Model pictured below. We explore how supports provided by mentors and
coaches vary as those they work with gain experience and expertise, one step at
a time.
Strong
evidence supports the value of instructional coaching and mentoring for
teachers’ professional learning, and many models have been suggested for
guiding coaching work. Most models, however, do no account for the differences
among teachers in experience and expertise and how these factors change over
time. But the GIR Model supports differentiated coaching that helps you match
the coaching to the need.
When
mentoring and coaching, one size does not fit all! The GIR model suggests differing levels of
support and increasing responsibility for teacher-learners. As teachers gain
experience and expertise, effective coaches and mentors adjust their approach.
Increasing responsibility generates increased agency for teachers as the lead
learners in their classrooms, a stance that is empowering and energizing,
sustaining teachers in their professional roles.
In the GIR process, coaches model, make recommendations, ask guiding questions, affirm teachers’
appropriate decisions, and offer praise
in order to provide decreasing scaffolding that moves teachers toward more
skillful use of effective instructional practices (see the model below). Of
course, this progression is idiosyncratic and nonlinear. The coaching path
(shown by the curving line in the model) starts at a point above the origin on
the vertical axes as an indication of the prior knowledge that teachers bring
with them to a learning situation. Similarly, by having the line end below the
upper corner, the model implies that teachers will continue to learn and grow
in their profession. Rather than being perfectly linear, the line’s upward
trajectory is shown as sinuous, indicating the iterative and recursive nature
of change as these coaching moves are used. The path is flexible, and there is
interplay among these practices; however, the GIR model describes a trend
towards decreased support from coaches and increased responsibility for
teachers.
If you are thinking ahead about the support
you’ll provide when the school year gets underway, you know there will be
plenty for you to do! I have worked with
many experienced, masterful teachers who are interested in improvement. As
Charlotte Danielson has said, “Because teaching is so demanding and
complex, all teaching can be improved; no matter how brilliant a lesson is, it
can always be even better.”* Many
effective teachers are on a continual professional improvement quest; coaches
can offer support in that crusade. And for experienced teachers whose energy is
waning, you can be the needed boost.
And those brand-new teachers who will be
joining your team may come in full of confidence ready
to change the world! However, the world
holds harsh realities: piles of paperwork, extra duties, behavior problems,
parent concerns. The light in their eyes may begin to dim. As a coach you can
help them keep the fire burning.
Evelyn was a novice
first-grade teacher who was feeling this weight. She had a heart and mind for
the work, but she was drowning in classroom management issues that kept her
brilliant lesson plans from becoming a reality. I wish I could say that this
was an easy fix. But it wasn’t. It was a slow, difficult process of becoming.
It was experimentation and adding routines.
It meant changing her posture, her tone of voice, and even the way she
moved around the room. It meant changing the way she responded to both
acceptable and unacceptable behavior. None of these changes came easily, but
Evelyn and I held onto the vision of what she would become. Eventually, the
learning she visualized as she created those expert lesson plans became a
reality. What a celebration it was when Evelyn was able to stop worrying about
classroom management! She became the
teacher she had always had the capacity to be. Over time, coaches have the fulfilling opportunity
to see the teachers we work with becoming who they envisioned themselves to be.
*
Danielson, C. (2012). Observing Classroom Practice. Educational Leadership, 70(3), p. 32
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The Gradual Increase of
Responsibility Model for Coaching & Mentoring
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It’s
July, and I’m so excited that my book, Differentiated Mentoring &
Coaching in Education: From Preservice Teacher to Expert Practitioner will
be released this month! You can pre-order it now and it will show up on your
doorstep as soon as it’s printed! Use the code: for free shipping. I hope you’ll
love this book as much as I loved making it for you!
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