Pause and Ponder: What Stands Out from Your Coaching This Year?

The districts in my area wrapped up the school year this week, and Sandi took the time to pause with me and reflect on her third year as a coach. We talked of her proud accomplishments and also how she wanted to come back when August rolls around. Sandi is proud of the way she laid a uniform foundation by meeting throughout the year with every team in her school, discussing schoolwide goals. She is proud of how she has moved from putting out fires to a more systemic coaching approach. And she has thoughts about how to take the coaching deeper next year by providing PD, helping teachers select their own related goals, and creating an authentic coaching rhythm that supports teachers in achieving those goals.  
 
If you are no longer moving at full speed with end-of-year meetings, post-conversations, celebrations, classroom cleaning and a long list of things that need attention before summer officially begins, I invite you to pause and ponder; What has this year of coaching meant to you and the teachers you work with? What will you take with you into next year, and what will you leave behind? Coaches spend so much of the year helping teachers reflect that it can be easy to skip reflection for ourselves. Let’s make a space to stop and notice.
 
What’s Worth Celebrating?
Our brains are wired to see the negative – an approach that could serve us well if we were being chased by a predator, but isn’t as useful for our everyday lives (thankfully!). When you pause to think back on this school year, push negative thoughts aside for a moment and consider:
 
*What’s something you’re proud of?
*What was a strong decision you made?
* What effective practices did you see teachers start using?
* Where did you create momentum?
 
Honor the work that you’ve done, noticing what went well. Reflection can help us notice what we might otherwise overlook. It’s worth slowing down long enough to note the impact you’ve had. Growth often shows up in quiet ways.
 
What Stands Out?
As you look back on the year, what stands out? What feels most memorable? What moments do you hope will stay with you? Recognizing significant moments helps us make meaning from our experiences rather than simply moving through them. It helps us reconnect with our purpose. Whether we are noticing the impact of our work or the places where we fell short, revisiting significant moments elevates the lessons learned. We can recognize what we now know about relationships, decision-making, communication, or practice. We see not just what happened, but what mattered.
 
What Was Learned?
As you sit with the year for a moment, looking back on highlights and hard moments, notice the threads that connected your work. Maybe you learned some principles, like slowing down instead of solving problems, distributing the work, or prioritizing relationships. Or maybe it was skills that improved – practical things like how to ask better questions or how to protect your time. Reflection helps experience evolve into wisdom.
 
What Stops?
A fruitful end-of-year question is:
 
*What do you want to leave behind?
 
Framing it this way makes a shift in practice feel like a lighter load. Are there things that didn’t work that you don’t want to repeat? Are there things that were just too much – too much time, too much effort, too much of you doing the problem-solving? Did you overcommit? Strive for unattainable perfectionism? Feel pressured to have all the answers? If you carried something this year that has become too heavy, put it down. Reflection can help you disrupt unproductive patterns.
 
How Do You Want To Come Back?
The things you celebrated might be things to step back into when the new school year starts. Name them. List them. Then you’ll remember them without having that uncomfortable feeling of holding it all somewhere in your brain over the summer.
 
You might also have ideas about stepping in with something new. What’s the next iteration? What do you want to do? What do you want to be? Do you want to be:
 
*More curious?
*More present?
*More focused?
*More courageous?
*More balanced?
 
When I met with Sandi today, the words depth and authentic kept coming to her mind, creating a vision for how she wants to come back.
 
Give Yourself a Gift
Before you step away from this school year, give yourself the gift that you so often give to others: the opportunity to reflect, notice growth, and think forward with hope. Pause and celebrate. Ponder what stands out, what was learned, what stops, and what will start when the new year gets underway. Reflection can remind you why coaching matters.
 
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You can find My Coaches Couch, the podcast (with different content) in your favorite podcast app or at MyCoachesCouch.podbean.com.
 
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This week, you might want to take a look at:

Finding the middle ground – Teaching the pros and cons of AI in ELA:
 
https://www.the74million.org/article/why-the-middle-path-of-ai-literacy-may-be-the-future-of-english-class/
 
 
Teaching morphology in early elementary:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/teaching-morphology-elementary-school
 
 
Using drawing meaningfully in ELA:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/three-meaningful-ways-to-incorporate-drawing-in-english-class/
 
The importance of the first 5-years for brain development (brought to you by in this TED talk by a 7-year-old):
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aISXCw0Pi94
 
 
How to increase the chances that your feedback gets heard:
 
https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/creating-a-culture-of-feedback
 
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: MAY2026 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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