What’s Taking Up Your Coaching Time?

Emily is a school-based coach who’s deeply involved in her school community. She helps with morning announcements, assists with fundraisers, collaborates on Instagram reels with her principal, coordinates the annual readathon, and attends district literacy meetings. It’s no surprise that Emily is seen as a valued leader on campus. But there’s a downside: all these responsibilities chip away at the time she could be spending where it counts most—talking with teachers about instruction.
 
It’s a common coaching dilemma. With so many roles to juggle—some chosen, some assigned—coaches often find their time pulled in too many directions. When the to-do list grows too long, it becomes harder to engage in deep, sustained work with teachers. And without focused coaching time centered on instruction and student learning, the real impact of coaching gets diluted.
 
We know from research that coaching has the greatest effect on student learning when it includes activities like conferring with teachers, modeling strategies, observing classroom practice, and assessment-related activities.* These actions, especially when part of intentional coaching work, create space for meaningful collaboration. They lead to thoughtful reflection on student needs, instructional strategies, and curriculum planning—work that improves teaching and learning.
 
So how can coaches protect time for this important work?
 
It takes a mixture of structure and adaptability. A weekly agenda that allots the majority of your time to high-impact coaching practices ensures your commitment to these priorities. At the same time, flexibility is needed. Tasks shift, and surprises pop up during the course of the day, Coaching is opportunistic – sometimes a spontaneous hallway conversation can lead to a powerful coaching moment. The key is to stay grounded in what matters most and be intentional with how time is spent.
 
Spending your time on what matters most is important, so I’ve made a gift for you! If you’d like a free form that will track how you spend your time, click HERE and I’ll send you links to the form and to a video tutorial. Using this tool, you’ll end up with a nice pie chart of how your time is being used.
 
Teachers are eager to work with a coach when they see the impact on student learning. Student learning improves when coaches spend the majority of their time working with teachers (and planning for that work). If your schedule is overloaded with other activities, consider one change you might make next week to make teacher interactions a bigger piece of your pie.
 
*Elish-Piper, L., & L’Allier, S. K. (2011). Examining the relationship between literacy coaching and student reading gains in grades K–3. The Elementary School Journal, 112(1), 83-106.
Walpole, S. McKenna, .C., Uribe-Zorain, X., & Lamitina, D. (2010). The relationships between coaching and instruction in the primary grades: Evidence from igh-poverty schools. The Elementary School Journal, 111(1), 115-140.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

Lessons for leadership:
 
https://chiefexecutive.net/from-one-pack-leader-to-another-five-lessons-of-leadership/
 
 
Ideas for getting to know students:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/revisiting-getting-to-know-my-students/
 
 
Recommendations for adolescents AI literacy:
 
https://districtadministration.com/article/ai-and-student-well-being-how-to-support-student-learners/
 
 
Using comics to support literacy (short video):
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6yqKm3zC1c
 
 
A beautiful, printable poster with quotes about banishing teacher burnout:
 
http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el201806_takeaways.pdf
 
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 or EBOOKS for 33% off digital copies (thru Aug. 4, 2025). 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!
 

Principal-Coach Agreements: On the Same Page

The new school year will be underway before we know it, so now is a good time to make sure you and your principal are on the same page when it comes to coaching roles and responsibilities. Across the country, coaches take many different forms, and assigned tasks vary. Assuming that you and your principal visualize your job in the same way can create problems for you, your principal, and the teachers you serve. Starting the year with a principal-coach agreement in place creates clarity and makes the work smoother and more effective.  
 
If you are a returning coach – heading back to the same school with the same principal – familiar coaching routines with well-established systems may already be in place. For others, coaching may be brand new, the coach may be in a new school, or the principal may have changed – or perhaps the coach’s role has never been clearly defined. In these cases, taking the time to clarify expectations through a principal-coach agreement can help create a more purposeful start to the year.
 
A principal-coach agreement outlines how the coach and principal will collaborate and what the coach’s responsibilities will look like. Putting these expectations in writing helps eliminate ambiguity and builds a shared understanding of the work ahead.
 
Key questions that a principal-coach agreement might address include:

·        What will communication between the coach and principal look like? How often will they meet?

·        Which teachers will the coach work with? (Ideally, every teacher!)

·        What content areas or topics will the coaching focus on?

·        What specific roles will the coach take on? (e.g., co-planning, modeling, analyzing student work)

·        How will coaching be embedded into the school day for teachers?

·        What boundaries around confidentiality will be honored in the teacher-coach relationship?

·        How will the success of coaching be measured?

·        What tools, time, or other resources are available to support the coach?

Coaching thrives with strong leadership. Research shows that when principals visibly support the coach’s expertise, affirm that all teachers benefit from coaching, and trust the coach to manage their time independently, teacher participation in coaching increases.*  A supportive principal and clearly defined coaching role are essential for success.**
 
To help you get started, I’ve created some tools to guide the development of a principal-coach agreement: reflection questions, templates, and samples that illustrate how others have approached this work. If you’d like to receive these resources, just fill out this form and I’ll send them your way.
 
Once you and your principal have reached clarity, think about how to share your agreement with staff. When teachers see the principal and coach working in partnership, it sets a powerful tone for the collaborative work ahead.
 
When I began as a literacy coach years ago, coaching was still a new thing – no other schools in my district had a coach, but my principal wanted to give it a try. We didn’t have a roadmap—we found our way together, often discussing questions like those listed above. While coaching has become much more common, it still varies widely from school to school. That’s why taking time to co-create a clear, shared vision at the beginning of the year is an important first step for the school year. Having a shared understanding of the work right from the start sets a tone that makes coaching effective.

* Matsumura, L. C., Sartoris, M., Bickel, D. D., & Garnier, H. E. (2009). Leadership for literacy coaching: The principal’s role in launching a new coaching program. Educational Administration Quarterly, 45(5), 655–693.
 
**Matsumura, L. C., Garnier, H. E., & Spybrook, J. (2012). The effect of content-focused coaching on the quality of classroom text discussions. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(3), 214–228. 

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

Saying “no” respectfully prevents burnout:
 
https://www.smartbrief.com/original/why-saying-no-can-be-a-smart-career-move
 
 
Coaching for “will” vs. “skill”:
 
https://www.smartbrief.com/original/dig-deeper-offers-a-framework-for-coaching-teachers
 
 
Rewarding intelligent rule-breaking fosters innovation:
 
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-algorithmic-mind/202507/how-to-teach-kids-to-break-the-rules-intelligently
 
 
Offering opportunities for students to keep thinking:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/alert-mistakes-in-progress/
 
 
Effective teacher-to-teacher communication:
 
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-importance-of-effective-teacher-to-teacher-communication-3194691
 
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!

Try This at Home: Don’t Interrupt

This week’s post is the final in the summer series, “Try This at Home.” Summer will continue on for a bit, but I’ll shift the focus here to getting ready for school. The practice for this week is, don’t interrupt. It’s a practice that will serve you well in any situation – now, with friends and family, and later, in your coaching work.
 
Reasons Not to Interrupt
 
Although we all likely fall into the interrupting trap at times, the damage of interrupting is intuitive. If we pause to consider, we’ll recognize some of the following reasons.
 
First, interrupting interferes with psychological safety. Psychological safety is the belief that you can speak up, take risks, and make mistakes without worrying that you might be humiliated or punished. Psychological safety is the foundation for trust and authentic connection. We want that at home and we need it to make coaching effective.
 
Interrupting can be viewed as disrespect. It sends the message that you feel the speaker’s words are unimportant. Interrupting dismisses the other person’s ideas, pushing your own ideas to the top.
 
Interrupting diminishes trust. It feels controlling, sending the message that the interrupter wants to drive the conversation. Others feel manipulated or undervalued.
 
Interruption disrupts thinking. Ideas that are in the process of being shared may not come to fruition, or at least aren’t fully expressed. Both the speaker and the interrupter miss out.
 
Jumping in too soon creates misunderstanding. The interrupter may make incorrect assumptions and respond based on their own interpretation rather than what was actually meant.
 
Of course, interruption interferes with listening. If you’re just listening for a chance to interrupt, you’re not really listening.
 
These real reasons should dissuade us from interrupting.
 
How to Avoid Interrupting
 
We know that interrupting has negative consequences, but it can be a hard habit to break – especially when our brains are spilling over with ideas we’d like to share. If interrupting is a habit,  not  interrupting  can become a habit, too. That’s why it fits well as a summer “Try This at Home” exercise. Here are some ideas to help you avoid interrupting.
 
To avoid interrupting, practice the pause. Take a breath and ask yourself, “Is it my turn to talk?” Stay focused and listening. Along with your own pause, wait for the speaker’s pause…It will come.
 
To avoid interrupting. pay attention to the tone and body language of the speaker. These give us cues about whether the speaker has finished. They also help us tune into their message so that we’ll be less-likely to disrupt it.
 
Be curious. Previous posts have talked about curiosity as a key coaching mindset, and it’s one that serves us well as we proverbially bite our tongues to keep from interrupting. Staying curious keeps the conversation open.
 
Another way we can avoid interrupting is to reserve judgment. Interruption often occurs when we feel the need to correct. Instead, keeping judgment at bay helps us listen longer.
 
Practice Now
 
There are four ways listed above to avoid interrupting, and each could serve as a cue or impetus. But we can’t do everything at once!  It might help to pick just one of these to start with. What will you do this week to avoid interrupting? Will you pause, attend to tone and body language, stay curious, or reserve judgment? What will be your first focus? I’m going to work on reserving judgment. Although it’s something I try to be mindful of, I know I could use more work with this, and judgment (especially to correct) is probably the main reason I interrupt some of the people in my personal life.
 
Avoiding interruption is something we can practice now and carry into our coaching work in the fall. When we don’t interrupt, we build trust, deepen understanding, and foster reflection – important for creating an effective coaching climate. Listening long will offer teachers the opportunity to explore their ideas out loud, honoring their agency and professionalism.
 
Interruption isn’t just a break in speaking – it’s a break in connection that creates distance. Patience and presence are the anecdotes we can cultivate this summer to replace the urge to interrupt.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

When collaborating, colleagues match complementary strengths:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/video/teacher-collaboration-matching-complementary-strengths
 
 
Nurturing independent readers:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/nurturing-independent-reading-lives-in-middle-school/
 
 
Recommendations for adolescents AI literacy:
 
https://districtadministration.com/article/ai-and-student-well-being-how-to-support-student-learners/
 
 
Two questions to ask a teacher before coaching:
 
https://hbr.org/2018/11/if-you-want-to-get-better-at-something-ask-yourself-these-two-questions
 
 
5 Risks New Teachers Should Take:
 
https://www.teachingchannel.com/blog/new-teacher-risks
 
 
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!
 
Continuing with the "Try This at Home" summer theme, this week's post describes how conversational dynamics create relationships of power. I hope you'll gain insight for now and important practices you can carry into your coaching:
http://MyCoachesCouch.blogspot.com
 

Try This at Home: Speaking, Listening, and Power

As part of our “Try this at home” summer series, this week, I want to give you something to think about in your at-home conversations and relationships – something that I hope will offer insight you can carry with you into your coaching work. Let’s think about the relationships among speaking, listening, and power. This triad is represented in the dynamics of  power over,  power under,  and  power with.  Let’s explore each.
 
When we speak but don’t listen, we are exercising  power over  the person we are in conversation with. You might find yourself in this power dynamic when giving instructions to someone – maybe you are telling your teenager your expectations for their use of the family car; or, more appropriately, you might give a curse command to a toddler to keep them safe. Power over doesn’t usually serve a relationship well, but there are times when it’s deemed necessary.
 
A  power under  relationship is one in which you are listening, but not speaking. Maybe you are being told something by someone in a leadership position. Maybe you are holding your tongue because you don’t want to start an argument. While listening is important for any productive conversation, if that’s all you do there’s an unequal (and perhaps unhealthy) power dynamic in the situation. Power under relationships can feel suffocating.
 
In a  power with  relationship, we, and the person we are in conversation with, are both speaking  and  listening. This might be the situation with your partner or during a deep conversation with a trusted friend. There’s a give-and-take, equanimity and equality. Power with relationships are honoring, respectful, and productive.
 
Considering the power dynamics in our everyday conversational relationships can give us useful information about our inclinations and intentions and even about the relationships themselves. Pause for a moment and examine a few of the relationships in your life. Can you identify a situation (or a relationship) in which you engage in  power over  conversations? Can you remember a time when you were in a conversation that felt like a  power under  relationship? Which relationships in your daily life typically demonstrate  power with  conversations?
 
Working now to become more aware of conversational power dynamics will help you be sensitive to such situations in your coaching work. As you aim for more equitable power distribution on the daily this summer, you’ll fall into these patterns more naturally in your coaching work next fall.

This week, you might want to take a look at:
 
3 Ways to More “Aha” Moments in Coaching: 
 
http://www.growthcoaching.com.au/articles-new/3-ways-to-more-aha-moments-in-coaching
 
 
Build a reading pause pile to soothe, uplift, and inspire:
 
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e183-permission-to-pause-how-short-stories-and-essays/id1631731255?i=1000713245426
 
 
Developing independent writers:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/developing-independent-writers/
 
 
7 ways to support students’ well-being:
 
https://www.schoolstatus.com/blog/7-ways-schools-can-support-k-12-students-mental-well-being
 
What one teacher learned from readers’ notebooks:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V2bWew1lTo&feature=emb_logo

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!

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