The Power of Specificity

The first thing Sage, an ELA teacher, said when we sat down for a coaching conversation was, “It’s not working!”  I heard her exasperation, but I had no idea what the frustration actually was. Because of the ambiguity of her statement, I was stumped. Ambiguity prevents progress. We had to name specifics before we could move forward.
 
Broad statements like Sage’s label a situation rather than describing it. But vague thoughts could mean all kinds of things; they don’t get us closer to a goal. To think things through and come up with possible solutions, we need details. We need to push beyond broad descriptions and know what it looks like and sounds like. Even for the teacher, who was in the classroom and saw and heard it, naming what happened, putting words to what was sensed and noticed, begins to unravel the mystery.
 
When a teacher feels crunched for time, she might be ambiguous as a matter of efficiency, summarizing rather than offering details. I think that’s why Sage jumped in with a summation that expressed her emotion. As her coach, I needed more. Sage’s statement told me that her brain had recognized a pattern, but I needed specifics. The first step was simple: Keep listening.
 
Keep Listening
 
Rather than jumping in with a question, I leaned forward in my chair, prepared to listen hard. After a pause, Sage started filling in details about her eighth-grade students’ writing challenges. She was focused at the sentence level because she’d noticed many incomplete sentences in her students’ writing. Sage said they’d spent a week’s worth of lessons focused on nouns and verbs and how they combined to form compete sentencea. But, she said, it still wasn’t working.
 
My silence had encouraged Sage to fill the gap and begin reflecting. Sage had offered details as she kept talking. Now I had context, but Sage still landed back on the vague frustration, “It’s not working.” I hoped that asking questions could get us to specificity.
 
Ask Questions
 
“Tell me what that means,” I said. “What is it that students are not doing that you want them to do? Or what are they doing that you don’t want them to?”
 
I soon had a fuller picture. After Sage thought she’d addressed the sentence fragment concern, many students went to the opposite extreme, stringing fragments into run-on sentences. No wonder she was frustrated! But now, at least, she’d named the challenge. We were getting there. But we could get even clearer by looking at examples.
 
Ask for Examples
 
When I asked for examples, Sage pulled up Google docs, and we scanned them for complete sentences and those that were not. Then she pulled out a pile of paper strips that had served as exit tickets, and we sorted them according to the sentence strengths and errors.
 
As we looked at student work, we put our brains together and began considering possible next steps. Looking at examples had gotten us to the needed level of specificity so that we could find solutions. Encouraging a closer look at evidence helped us pinpoint students’ confusions. This information was helpful as we considered next steps. Specific examples clarified our understanding.        
 
From Ambiguous to Specific
 
It’s really tough to know what to do when we hear ambiguous statements that can be interpreted in many different ways. A math teacher who says, “It’s not working,” has an entirely different concern than Sage did. He might be concerned that students can plug numbers into algorithms but don’t have conceptual understanding. Sage’s starter statement could mean a million different things. We have to get specific to get solutions.
 
Sage’s opening, broad statement served as a fine starting point. Listening, asking questions, and considering examples got us where we needed to go. With a clearer understanding of the challenge, we could check our brains for possibilities and reach out for other resources. Now we had a job we could go to work on.
 
When a teacher is feeling stuck, help them get specific. Saying the details out loud and considering examples moves us in a productive direction. Identifying a specific problem helps us identify specific solutions. And teacher buy-in for coaching increases when we zero in on a teacher-identified need.
 
 
(Stay tuned! Next week we’ll think about the coach’s specificity.)
 
p.s. The demo lesson I wrote about recently for turned out to be a great learning experience – for me! More later on that, too.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

Overcoming risk avoidance:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/my-student-is-risk-averse/
 
 
Benefits and questioning strategies for reading historical fiction:
 
https://www.middleweb.com/52006/humanizing-the-past-with-historical-fiction/
 
 
Fostering reading identity:
 
https://ccira.blog/2025/03/18/reading-identity-matters-a-broad-view-of-foundational-skills/
 
 
Quick focused-attention practices (like brain breaks, but quicker!):
 
https://revelationsineducation.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Cohort-6-Focused-Attention-Practices.pdf
 
Get ready for National Poetry Month in April - How poetry can build emotional intelligence:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-poetry-supports-sel-elementary-school/
 
 
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!
 

Coaching the Question behind the Question

When someone asks a question, there’s usually at least one unspoken question hiding underneath it. Developing the ability to listen for those underlying questions—and probing and responding to them—is a valuable coaching skill. When you do this, you create an opportunity for the asker to connect more deeply with their own wisdom and self-awareness.
 
For example, if a teacher says, “I’m wondering about how to mix up my lessons a bit.” You might reply, “I’m curious if you can say more about where that question is coming from?” When I had this conversation with Zane, a first-year high-school algebra teacher, he told me some students were engaged, but others, particularly those in the older grade levels, sometimes had their heads on their desks during class. Zane’s underlying question was, “How do I keep students engaged?” This led to a discussion about “thinking classrooms,” where students work, standing in small groups, to solve problems at the whiteboard. No one could have their head on the desk in that scenario! Zane had read about the practice in teacher preparation classes but hadn’t put it into practice yet. Our conversation nudged him in that direction.
 
Elise, a third-year middle-school English teacher asked the question, “Do you think I should give students choice about their argumentative writing topic?” I asked what she’d done in the past. She told me even though she loved the idea of teaching the argumentative writing unit because it had always been her favorite as a student, she hadn’t yet taught it. Then she told me she worried that students would pick topics that their parents would complain about. The question-under-the-question was, “How do I avoid parent complaints about students’ writing topics.” Because Elise had mentioned that they had an English department meeting coming up, I suggested she ask colleagues about whether there had been trouble in the past. We also talked about other steps she could take to offer choice and assure that parents understood the purpose and the process.
 
As teachers unpack their own thinking, we might respond by paraphrasing or summarizing: “I think I’m hearing…and I’m also hearing…” and then asking, “Do you want to say more about either of those?”
 
Conversations like these, that probe for underlying questions, can deepen knowledge for the teacher as well as the coach. These conversations encourage critical thinking and support insight. The coach’s follow-up can explore opinions, ask for predictions, investigate processes, make connections, uncover patterns, and encourage the teacher to look ahead. As we surface new questions, we uncover concerns, provide perspective, and sometimes challenge assumptions. Don’t stop with the first teacher question. Stay with the question. Recognizing the deeper questions beneath the conversation, actively exploring them, and responding thoughtfully is a fruitful coaching skill.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

Reframing turns a problem into an opportunity for impact:
 
https://www.middleweb.com/51881/energize-your-teaching-by-reframing-perspective/
 
 
This podcast is about PLC conversations that increase collective responsibility:
 
https://barkleypd.com/blog/creating-plc-converstions-that-increase-collective-responsibility/
 
 
Using mentor texts (and their authors) to teach the writing process:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/mentors-for-process-and-habits/
 
 
What are trauma-informed practices?
 
https://www.turnaroundusa.org/video/edutopia-presents-how-learning-happens-getting-started-with-trauma-informed-practices/
 
 
Fostering reading identity:
 
https://ccira.blog/2025/03/18/reading-identity-matters-a-broad-view-of-foundational-skills/
 
 
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!

Coaching with Demo Lessons

Modeling is the most supportive coaching move in the GIR model, During modeling, the teaching responsibility is on the coach, with the teacher as active observer. When coaches model, they demonstrate techniques and instructional practices to scaffold implementation. Modeling is a differentiated coaching activity can be a way to address a teacher’s specific needs and goals.
 
Although we usually think of modeling as a way to work with an individual teacher in a teacher’s own classroom, there are other formats for modeling. I’ve written before about Lesson Study, where teachers collaboratively plan a lesson and then one of them teaches while the others observe before debriefing to elevate their own and students’ learning.
 
In my work with National Writing Project, I became familiar with another way to model, the “demo lesson.” During a demonstration lesson, one teacher models a lesson, or part of a lesson, while other teachers pose as the students. It’s a way to see strategies in action and experience them from the learner perspective.
 
Some of the benefits of this structure are that many teachers can observe at once and the timing is flexible. This structure is especially suitable for use during a professional development day, when teachers are on site but students are not.
 
For example, Dan, a teacher and coach, led a full-day professional development for the 14 teachers in the English department at his school.* As part of the PD day, Dan did a demo lesson. First, Dan named the literacy practices he was promoting, then modeled a lesson that included them. Dan paused the modeled lesson occasionally to describe what he was doing and why, a practice that might not be used when teaching the lesson to students. Throughout, Dan attempted to connect the model lesson to what teachers would experience in their own classrooms. During the professional development day, teachers later discussed how to incorporate the new practices into their curriculum. This example from Dan’s school demonstrates benefits of the structure and how challenges to implementation might be overcome.
 
Next week, I’ll be teaching a demo lesson as part of a conference session at a Writing Project conference. After briefing participants on the format and giving an overview of the strategy (using mentor texts to teach grammar), I’ll launch into a lesson that I recently taught to 7^th graders. Afterward, teachers will have a chance to share their thoughts, including adjustments they might make when teaching a similar lesson in their classroom. I’ll let you know how it goes!
 
During demo lessons, participants experience strategies first-hand. They analyze the strategy and discuss why it works and how it can be adapted. Rather than being prescriptive, demo lessons are designed to be collaborative, inquiry-based, and reflective. Modeling is a highly-supportive coaching move, and demo lessons offer another way for coaches to offer this support.
 
*Gallucci, C. DeVoogt Van Lare, M. Yoon, I, & Boatright, B. (2010). Instructional coaching: Building theory about the role and organizational support for professional learning. American Educational Research Journal, 47(4), 919-963.

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

Besides hand-raising, how do you gauge (and encourage) participation?
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-to-rethink-the-objectives-of-classroom-discussion
 
 
Keeping writing authentic in the age of AI:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/teaching-authentic-writing-age-ai
 
 
Go back to the familiar to teach new literacy elements:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/when-learning-gets-tricky-go-back-to-the-pigs/
 
 
Better partner and small group conversations:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juR87aAg4vM
 
Why teachers should care about PLCs:
 
http://www.allthingsplc.info/blog/view/378/why-this-why-now-why-bother
 
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!
 

Coaching Question: “What do you want to do more of?”

As I waited for Hannah to return from dropping the kids off so that we could have a coaching conversation about the science lesson I’d just observed, I wondered what I could do to make sure our thoughts were steered in a positive and productive direction. The lesson had held many bright spots, but the last tem minutes had been very rushed, and I was afraid that’s what Hannah’s mind would be dwelling on. Truthfully, there were a couple of recommendations that lingered in my mind, too, but I felt confident in Hannah’s own ability to figure things out. She’d shown me that before.  In the last minute before Hannah returned, I jotted down a question I don’t think I’ve asked before: “What do you want to do more of?”
 
After taking some time together to celebrate things that went well, I felt we were ready for a constructive conversation about change. So I asked my question: “What do you want to do more of?”
 
I was taken off guard by Hannah’s response. Since we’d just been talking about some things that went right, I expected her to choose one of those that she could build on. But Hannah took this as the opportunity to talk about running out of time and rushing through the lesson’s closure. She said she wished she’d gotten to the notebook activity, where students would sort the new science words they were learning and match them to their meanings.
 
“Why do you feel that part of the lesson was important?” I asked.
 
Hannah said that’s when they would really be using the words they’d just learned, so that they’d remember them.
 
“Well, you can’t go back and make more time in the lesson,” I said. “But reflecting back, when you saw you were running out of time and wouldn’t be able to do that activity, how might you have gotten the new words into their heads again?”
 
Hannah recalled part of the closing conversation where she asked a follow-up question to get a student to name the process he’d been describing, using the new vocabulary word. “I really forced him to say the word,” she said.
 
“Yes, more of that!” I affirmed. Then I reminded Hannah of the research about how many repetitions it takes for a new word to enter long-term memory. “They need to hear you say it and say it themselves, lots and lots and lots of times,” I added.
 
“I think it would have helped if there’d been a list of the new words for them to refer to,” she said, her eyes gesturing toward the wall. “Then they probably would have used the words more.”
 
“During this unit, you’ve really been emphasizing the new vocabulary to label concepts they’re learning about. Have you got an anchor chart of those words somewhere?” I asked, looking around the room.
 
That is when the conversation really started to get productive. Hannah did have a list of the words. All of the vocab words for this science unit were grouped, with headings, and posted on the inside of the classroom door.
 
Some back-and-forth conversation got Halie to the idea that, since she always taught science right before lunch or at the end of the day, the words on the door could be the chance for the perfect exit ticket. Hannah spontaneously generated some questions she could have students think about so that, by having students touch one of the words on their way out the door, she could gather some helpful formative data. “Point to the word that you want to learn more about,” or “Which word are you most confused about?” she could ask. She quickly had a list of out-the-door questions for her students.
 
This was the energy-generating moment that I always hope for in a coaching conversation. Although my question, “What do you want to do more of?” hadn’t generated the kind of response I’d anticipated, it had been the spark for this productive exchange. I had expected my question to point us to something that went well that she could build on – something that would surely be within her ZPD, since she’d already demonstrated it in a small way. Instead, Hannah’s rumination on what didn’t go as planned led to valuable outcomes.
 
Isn’t it wonderful when we’re surprised with the generative outcome of a coaching conversation? Neither one of us would have come to the door-as-exit-ticket idea on our own, but together, we’d created a plan that Hannah was excited to try. That is the value of collaborative coaching.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

Teacher reflection boosts resilience:
 
https://www.middleweb.com/51924/how-teacher-reflection-aids-growth-resilience/
 
 
Less is more with mentor texts:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/mentor-texts-and-important-reminders/
 
 
Switching up routines to beat spring teaching blahs:
 
https://www.middleweb.com/51943/when-students-attention-wanders-switch-it-up/
 
 
A podcast episode on listening (my favorite quote: “Listening—to loved ones, strangers, faraway places—is an act of generosity and a source of discovery.”)
 
 https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/411697251/the-act-of-listening
 
 
March madness with a book twist: 
 
http://marchbookmadness.weebly.com/
 
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!
 

Sparking Interdependence in Coaching

Yesterday I met with Erin, an early-career middle school teacher. As many novice teachers do, Erin struggles to find the joy in her work. She hasn’t said that out loud to me, but I’ve seen it in her overwhelm all year long. That’s why I was so happy that yesterday’s coaching conversation sparked animation and enthusiasm for upcoming work. It happened through the kinetic energy of interdependence.
 
The conversation started with me asking, “What would be most helpful for us to spend our time on today?” There was a long pause – so long that I (ooops!) filled the empty air with my own thought: “Would it be helpful for us to talk through the lesson you’ll be teaching next period?”
 
Thankfully, my comment didn’t pull Erin away from the thinking she’d been doing. “No,” she said, “I think I’d like to talk about the argumentative writing unit that’s coming up.” So we did.
 
Erin’s first concern was about online research. How would students find the info they needed about their topics? She worried that students would be all over the place on the internet and get distracted. But, she said, she had an English department meeting coming up, and maybe her colleagues could offer ideas. She imagined creating lists of topics with links. So I told her about the ProCon and AllSides websites I’ve used that already have this format. I wouldn’t have pulled these sites from my own memory without her brainstorming. There was interdependence.
 
The next concern that surfaced was, I think, the one that was weighing on her most (teachers often don’t lead with their biggest anxiety, I’ve found). She worried that she’d get pushback from parents in their conservative community if students chose to explore controversial topics. Well, controversy is what argument is all about! And it’s honestly why Erin was excited about this unit in the first place! She knew it was an important life skill, and she said it was always her favorite genre to write herself. But she hadn’t tackled it yet in her teaching experience. Erin said she was thinking about banning anything political to keep things under control and parents at bay. When I asked Erin a few questions about purpose and buy-in, it moved her away from restricting students’ agency. But she was still worried about parents.
 
Pulling through the thread she’d brought up earlier, I suggested it was something she could talk with her department colleagues about. How had parents responded in the past? Erin told me about the prepared parent letter for the unit that was part of their adopted resources, and how that usually ended up in the trash can on the way out the door. We talked about a more authentic letter for parents, and that is when there was an “ah-hah” moment that lit up Erin’s face and gave us the momentum that made the rest of our conversation fly. “I could talk with parents at conferences this week,” she said, “and encourage them to have conversations at home about the topics.”
 
I’ve honestly never seen Erin so animated. It was an obvious idea – there Erin sat in her fancier-than-normal clothes, ready for conferences that would start that very afternoon. But the thought grew from our back-and-forth dialogue.
 
The rest of the conversation was equally productive, with us tackling teaching ideas for topic generation, critical reading, and civil discourse. She had ideas to share, and so did I. It was a fruitful, collaborative conversation. As I was leaving her room, Erin said, “Thanks for letting me have a brain dump!  I feel so much better now!”
 
Reflecting on that turn-around coaching conversation, I thought of something another coach told me last week. “I love the GIR model,” she said. “I’m transparent about it. I point to it when I’m coaching. No other model has that goal of interdependence and collaboration. That’s what I’m going for, and that’s where I get buy-in,” she said (see model below). She was especially talking about her work with veteran teachers, but my conversation with Erin this week reminded me that interdependence is a valuable goal with novice teachers, too. Putting our brains together sparks ideas that wouldn’t be created otherwise. That’s the power of collaboration.

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

Teaching is a creative profession. Here are 10 ways to boost creativity:
 
https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/boosting-your-creativity-10-great-ways.html
 
 
Arts vs. crafts:
 
https://www.preschool-plan-it.com/arts-vs-crafts.html
 
 
Integrating more rereading (especially beneficial for multilingual students):
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/fostering-more-rereading-in-classrooms/
 
 
What is number sense and why is it important:
 
https://players.brightcove.net/1740322051001/default_default/index.html?videoId=5724225624001
 
 
A podcast for teacher well-being:
 
https://www.selfcareforteachers.com.au/podcast/
 
 
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: FEB2025 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!

Reframing Perspectives of Classroom Interactions

Recently, I observed a kindergarten class after a cold-induced inside recess. It was hard for Mallory, a novice teacher, to help kids settle into the phonics lesson. There were multiple transitions, and kids seemed to make the most of these as opportunities to get up and about and to check in with each other. They were most engaged during parts of the lesson that included gestures, and they loved the opportunity to vote on the right word that she incorporated into each slide.
 
I took a few notes during the lesson, and, before getting too far, I added the words, “JOY” and “ENERGY” in caps and with exclamation points at the top of the page. I could tell Mallory was getting annoyed, and I sensed she worried she was being judged. So I wanted to capture my own delight in these 5-year-olds, hoping it could be a productive anchor for our post-observation conversation.
 
After students left for specials, we sat down together at the kidney table, “They aren’t usually that bad,” Mallory said. “They were just so off-task, we didn’t even make it through the lesson!”
 
“Inside recess is hard,” I said. “They did have a lot of energy,..and so much joy!” I pointed out the words scrawled across the top of my page and told her I could just sit there and soak up their happiness! Reframing students’ energy and social interaction as joy gave us a more-positive perspective and helped us identify, together, what had worked well and how Mallory could build in more of that. I did eventually give a recommendation about how to have fewer transitions in their phonics routine, but only after we’d talked about students’ energy and sociability as a resource for learning.
 
Reframing is a cognitive strategy for shifting perspectives, helping us to see a situation in a more constructive or empowering way. Reframing can help teachers reinterpret experiences and find opportunities for growth. As a coach, you can nudge a teacher to a new interpretation by introducing an alternative perspective that is easier to align with teaching objectives.
 
Shifting from a perspective of threat to one of opportunity reduces stress and fosters resilience. Changing the explanation for an event can help a teacher manage emotions and respond more thoughtfully. Reframing opens the door to more effective teaching strategies.
 
For Mallory, reconsidering her students’ off-task behavior as positive energy helped her recognize ways to harness that power for learning! She also created more positive energy for herself. Rather than feeling depleted, she had momentum.
 
When you feel a challenge coming on, practice reframing it in a positive way. The more you practice this yourself, the better you’ll be at helping teachers rename and reframe the experiences that they, and their students, have in the classroom.
 

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

Helping students recognize and handle cognitive overload:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/cognitive-overload-elementary-school
 
 
Guiding students with goal setting:
 
https://www.middleweb.com/51861/help-students-set-goals-in-all-subject-areas/
 
 
Mentor texts for teaching endings (plus a chance to reminisce about your favorites):
 
https://www.stylist.co.uk/books/the-best-100-closing-lines-from-books/123681#
 
 
Who are the quiet powerhouses in your classroom? Check out this Ted talk about the power of introverts for ideas:
 
https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts
 
 
Be still and learn what teachers need:
 
https://ccira.blog/2019/02/19/teacher-coach-and-everything-in-between/
 
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: FEB2025 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!

Unearthing Expectations

When talking with Elie after observing her third-grade class, where she modeled asking authentic questions as part of a reciprocal teaching lesson, I asked her, “What do you expect students to be doing while you’re reading aloud?” The next day, I asked Ashley a similar question when she modeled the comprehension strategy of clarifying with fifth-graders. Later that week, Annie got a similar question from me when we discussed her read-aloud to demonstrate a new graphic organizer. Same convo with Elsa, working on strategic reading with her fourth-graders. In all of these examples, our conversation revealed that the teacher was expecting students to be reading along with her, but hadn’t said so.
 
I know I was primed to see this because I’d been thinking about the impact that time actually spent reading (more time with eyes on print!) has on reading comprehension, but having all of these examples stack up in one week made me wonder: What other hidden expectations do teachers have that students may be unaware of? How could learning be increased if teachers made these expectations more explicit?
 
When expectations are not clear, students may feel uncertain, lose confidence, and hesitate to take risks. They may be focused on figuring out the process rather than deepening their understanding. Students might waste time with off-track efforts. They may disengage or give up,
 
Clarity, on the other hand, supports an engaging learning environment. When expectations are clear, students don’t waste energy trying to figure out what to do. They better understand their role in the process. When they know what is expected, students are better at self-regulating. They are also less anxious, because ambiguity creates stress - and less stress = more learning.
 
Benefits of clarity are especially strong for neurodivergent students, who may find it difficult to infer expectations. Multilingual students will benefit, too, as will younger students who are trying to figure out how to “do school.”
 
After thinking through the benefits of explicit expectations, I was on the lookout for opportunities to increase clarity. When I talked with Hannah’s about the STEM lesson with her second-graders, I asked, “What did you expect students to be listening for when you showed the video clip?” She decided to set the stage better before viewing, maybe by giving students something specific to watch for or a question to ponder.
 
After observing in Andrea’s fourth-grade class, I asked what she hoped students would be thinking about after her read-aloud, as they headed back to their desks. She expected they would be thinking about the passage so that they’d be prepared to write once they got to their desks. But she hadn’t said so – and she determined to make her expectations for transitions more explicit.
 
My questions weren’t “gotcha” questions – it wasn’t clear to me, either, what the teachers’ expectations were. As they clarified for me, teachers got clearer themselves. I’m seeing how these reflections helped them think back to move forward better. 

This week, you might want to take a look at:
 
Student-created podcasts to boost literacy skills:
 
https://www.eschoolnews.com/digital-learning/2025/01/27/creating-podcasts-in-the-classroom/
 
 
Talk “with” students, not “at” them:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nyr1OizVo0
 
 
Reading conferences that give you info. about the reading, rather than the book he is holding:
 
https://www.middleweb.com/42127/conferring-moves-that-help-readers-open-up/
 
 
No more imposter syndrome for instructional coaches:
 
https://www.smartbrief.com/original/how-instructional-coaches-can-break-free-from-imposter-syndrome
 
 
Three C’s to guide children’s use of screen media (podcast):
 
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-02-11-a-new-approach-to-regulating-screen-time-for-kids
 
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: FEB2025 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!

Listening for Patterns in Coaching Conversations

As an instructional coach, you’ll discern how to best support the teachers you work with through observation and careful listening. An instructional coach is a listener and learner first. She meets with a teacher to listen to and learn about the teacher’s concerns, strengths, and needs.
 
As you listen to understand the teacher’s perspective and goals, you can pose questions that support the teacher’s self-directed learning. Listening helps us focus on the teacher’s needs and ideas. Unless there is an urgent reason to do otherwise, it’s best to coach teachers on something they are interested in working on. Listening is the way to figure that out.
 
I met with Molly last week after observing a math lesson on expanded algorithms in her fifth-grade classroom. When we sat down, I first asked Molly what she wanted to celebrate about the lesson. I asked when she’s seen the most thinking. I asked her about light-bulb moments – times when she noticed that a student really caught on – when real learning occurred. Threaded through the conversation were her concerns about a few students who she felt were struggling. Even when I asked about successes, she prefaced it with part of the lesson when she’d noticed a student’s confusion.
 
As the time we had together was nearing it’s close, I said, “I noticed that several times during our conversation, you’ve mentioned that you were worried about some students who seemed to be struggling. Can you tell me more about that?” Molly described this as an ongoing pattern, not just a response to that day’s lesson. I asked, “What are some ideas you’ve had about supporting those students?”
 
Molly said she’d been wondering if grouping students differently might be helpful. “I know we’re not supposed to do homogeneous grouping,” she said, “But I think it might be helpful.” I affirmed that there were times when homogeneous grouping could work well. “What we want to be sure to do is keep groups flexible and have different kinds of grouping throughout the day, not just homogeneous groups. “How are you thinking that might work in your upcoming lessons?” I asked. Molly thought she would try homogeneous grouping for math the next day and see how it went. “I think I could pull them for just a few minutes right after our whole group time, just to get them off on the right foot,” she said. She thought she could also check in on that group a few minutes later, once their work was underway, to see how they were doing.
 
“Remember the idea of ‘catch and release’ that we talked about?” I asked. “You could pull students back together for a quick clarification if needed, then they could get back to work.”
 
Listening carefully as Molly reflected on the lesson helped me identify a pattern, leading to a fruitful conversation.
 
What the teacher says is ultimately more important than what you say as a coach (the one who does the talking does the learning!), so be prepared to prompt, encourage, and listen. When we listen with intensity so that we can hear and understand, we find threads that weave together to help us recognize patterns in the teacher’s story. Then we can respond in a teacher-centered way that leads to authentic questions. Asking questions is a powerful coaching tool for gathering information, engaging others in discussion, clarifying perspectives, and facilitating discovery and self-direction.
 
Listening builds connections and fosters respect, trust, and safety. As an instructional coach, you’ll determine the most effective ways to support teachers by attentively listening so that you can discern teachers’ hopes and needs.
 

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

Incorporate drawing into high school ELA:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/three-meaningful-ways-to-incorporate-drawing-in-english-class/
 
 
Achievement motivates!
 
https://nataliewexler.substack.com/p/the-key-to-motivating-students-and
 
 
Conferring with young writers:
 
https://ccira.blog/2025/02/04/conferring-with-young-writers/
 
 
Ted Talk – Every kid needs a champion:
 
https://www.ted.com/talks/rita_pierson_every_kid_needs_a_champion
 
 
The relationship side of coaching:
 
https://www.schoolstatus.com/blog/managing-relationships-the-power-of-follow-up
 
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: FEB2025 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 Conversation Closer

Just like a good lesson, a good coaching conversation needs closure. Closure let’s the learning sink in, giving one last opportunity for meaning making and increasing possibilities for application. In a lesson, closure might sound like, “Tell your partner one new thing you learned today.” In my coaching conversations this week, it sounded like, “What’s one thing you want to be sure to do?”
 
Even though the teacher conversations I had this week were brief, we covered a lot of ground during each one. Between the two of us, a lot of ideas were tossed around. Many of them have merit and will likely make it into future practice. But, as we concluded each coaching conversation, I wanted to narrow the focus to one for sure next step. So, emphasizing the positive, generative nature of our conversation, as we wrapped up each conversation, I said something like, “We talked about a lot of things together today and came up with a bunch of ideas. As you think back on the lesson you taught and the conversation we had, what’s one thing you want to be sure to do?”
 
In that closure, everything leading up to “What’s one thing…” gave the teacher a runway, letting their minds consider the ground covered and the horizon ahead. It helped them narrow their focus so they were ready to make one idea fly.
 
This approach worked in almost every conversation. Cindy wants to build some vocabulary practice into her second-grade readers theater fluency time. Ellie wants to give students a copy of the text she is reading aloud from the screen when she models comprehension strategies for her fourth-graders. Lara wants to make an anchor chart, along with a “cheat sheet” for multilingual students that gives a description and a visual for important terms as her second graders learn about place value.
 
Almost everyone else, too, pinpointed a particular focus. But when I asked the question of Maribeth, she gave a full rundown of the many ideas we’d talked about. It seems she wants to do all of them. And that’s great!  But I still wanted to be sure she didn’t walk away with overwhelm. Instead, I wanted her to walk away with a clear next right thing. So I followed up. “It sounds like a lot of those ideas resonate with you. Which one do you really want to focus on during tomorrow’s lesson?” I asked. After a thoughtful pause, Maribeth decided that she wants to talk students through tech steps rather than taking a student’s Chromebook and doing it for them. She feels like this will give them more ownership for their work and help them learn the processes better.
 
Closure reinforces learning, encourages metacognition, clarifies key takeaways, increases engagement and motivation, and provides a sense of completion. So, as you think about the ideas shared in this post, “What do you want to be sure to do?”

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

The value of a strong classroom community:
 
https://www.teachingchannel.com/free-videos/
 
 
Benefits of using students’ home language in the classroom:
 
https://www.k12dive.com/news/home-languages-multilingual-learners-reading-comprehension/737909/
 
 
Data day with school pictures:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/making-data-review-more-personal/
 
 
Bookmark this page for contests and giveaways!
 
https://forum.teachingbooks.net/category/contests/
 
 
Rethinking how we assess students:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/do-no-harm-flexible-smart-grading-andrew-miller
 
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: FEB2025 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!