Visualizing Failure: How Instructional Coaches Help Teachers Ride the Waves

As an instructional coach, you’ve probably been there when a lesson falls apart. Things are moving along smoothly—students are engaged, the pacing feels right, and everything is clicking into place. Then something shifts. Students get confused. Directions don’t land. Side conversations bubble up. What started as a strong lesson begins to wobble, and sometimes, it unravels.
 
These moments aren’t rare interruptions to otherwise perfect teaching—they are a natural and inevitable part of it. The question isn’t whether things will go off track, but how prepared a teacher feels when they do.
 
This is where instructional coaching can make a meaningful difference—not just helping teachers plan for success, but helping them prepare for when things fall apart.
 
Planning for the Messy
In many professions, it’s part of the training to plan, not just for success, but also for breakdowns. Pilots learn emergency procedures. Athletes visualize how they’ll respond under pressure. Military personnel have a wartime plan. They don’t wait for things to go wrong to decide what they’ll do. Visualizing in advance is the best preparation, and teachers need that preparation, too. But too often, our planning conversations stay focused on the best-case scenario:
 
*What will students do?
*What questions will you ask?
*How will the task be structured?
 
Those are important, but they leave out a critical piece:
What will you do when it doesn’t go as planned?
 
Stopping short of that step leaves teachers without a clear path forward when reality doesn’t match expectations. That’s were a “wartime plan” comes in.
 
Creating a Wartime Plan
I’m not actually suggesting that the classroom will be a warzone, of course, but you understand the metaphor! When things unravel quickly, teachers benefit from having thought things through in advance. A wartime plan means having an intentional response to predictable challenges—a way of thinking ahead about how to navigate those inevitable moments. Rather than being caught off guard, teachers can respond with confidence.
 
Naming possible ways that things might fall apart helps to normalize them and it opens the door for proactive thinking. Instead of reacting in the moment, teachers can begin to anticipate and prepare. During planning meetings, you could bring up potential challenges like;
 
* The activity is too hard (or too easy)
* Students become disengaged
* Technology fails
* The discussion falls flat
* Directions are confusing for students
 
These aren’t signs of failure; they are simply part of the complexity of teaching and learning, and teachers should be prepared for them. Coaches can prepare teachers for flexibility by helping them think ahead about possible sidesteps that might be needed in these familiar moments. We always need a Plan B.
 
On my desk, I have an old toy – a small Gumby doll based on the Claymation cartoon character who can bend, stretch, and reshape himself. He uses this ability to solve problems or escape tricky situations. Gumby reminds me to be ready to be flexible. Like Gumby, teachers need to be prepared to be flexible when things start to fall apart.
 
Moving from “What if?” to “I See Myself…”
Teachers need to ask themselves, in advance, “What will I do when things get hard?” They begin building the habit of asking this question when you regularly ask, ““What will you do when things get hard?” Then, we move the practice from abstract planning to mental rehearsal by asking for visualization that brings those thoughts to life. Asking a teacher what they might do is a good starting point, but the mental imagery of visualizing a hoped-for outcome prepares the teacher’s mind for the challenge.
 
When visualizing, teachers can mentally simulate the classroom experience—the students, the timing, and even the pressure of the moment. This kind of rehearsal strengthens decision-making because it reduces the cognitive load when the teacher is tested. Instead of generating a response from scratch, she draws on something she has already “experienced” in her mind. Instead of being reactive, she is intentional.
 
Visualizing helps teachers clarify the steps they’ll take. It reduces hesitation, helping them to react more quickly and deliberately in the moment. Entering a challenging situation with a plan increases confidence. Teachers can be steady instead of panicked, calm instead of anxious. Because of visualization, a teacher’s mind and body feel like they have practiced success before the real moment arrives.
 
Coaches can support this rehearsal by asking questions that ground the plan in action:
 
* “What might you say first in that moment?”
* “What might students do?”
* “Where would you move in the room?”
* “What might you do?”
* “How will you know whether the adjustment is working?”
 
Questions like these can slow the coaching conversation down in productive ways that transform a vague idea into a concrete plan.
 
The goal of a wartime plan is not to anticipate every possible outcome, but to have a starting point that keeps the lesson moving forward. It is a first step that creates a sense of readiness. Taking this step can make the difference between a lesson that stalls and one that recovers.
 
Why the Plan Matters
Without a plan for these messy moments, even experienced teachers hesitate. When there’s not a clear next step, it’s easy to default to ineffective habits or to lose valuable instructional time while deciding what to do.
 
But when teachers have visualized and rehearsed their responses, they are ready to act quickly and intentionally. They are more likely to maintain the flow of the lesson, preserve student engagement, and adapt in ways that support learning goals. They begin to see these moments not as disruptions, but as manageable parts of the teaching process. That shift in mindset is empowering!
 
A Coaching Move Worth Trying
In your next planning conversation, consider creating space for this kind of thinking. After discussing the flow of the lesson, you might ask:
“In this lesson, when might things get messy?” Then invite the teacher to visualize that moment and talk it through in detail. Ask follow-up questions that help them see themselves in action. Over time, these pauses build a habit of proactive thinking that teachers carry into their independent planning.
 
Our Own Wartime Plans
Just like in the classroom, the goal of instructional coaching isn’t to eliminate difficulty. It’s to be ready for it. As instructional coaches, we encounter our own challenging moments. There are conversations that feel tense and sessions that drift away from their purpose. In these situations, we are also susceptible to hesitation and uncertainty and can benefit from a wartime plan.
 
In our practice, we might prepare by considering how we’ll respond when a teacher becomes defensive, when silence lasts too long in a conversation, and when teachers are unproductively negative. Having intentional “go-to” moves, and taking the time to visualize using them, can help us navigate these moments with greater confidence and care.
 
Because when we are prepared for the waves, we’re far more likely to keep moving forward—to ride the waves, even when the water gets rough.
 
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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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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: FNDS26 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! 

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

Pause, recenter, and renew during busy days:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/pausing-for-renewal-throughout-the-day/
 
 
Visual thinking activities to boost student writing:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/6-cool-visual-thinking-activities-that-strengthen-student-writing
 
 
3 ways to help students manage emotions:
 
https://blog.heinemann.com/3-coping-skills-activities-to-help-kids-manage-emotions
 
 
Ideas for coaxing poems (April is National Poetry Month – coming right up!):
 
http://www.poemfarm.amylv.com/search/label/Coaxing%20Poems
 
 
Book guide for the picture book, Big:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/course/big-book-guide/
 

That's it for this week. Happy Coaching!