Impactful Coaching Conversations Seldom Happen by Accident

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Check out my book, Differentiated Mentoring & Coaching in Education: From Preservice Teacher to Expert Practitioner, available from Teachers College Press! Use the code AUG2026 to get 15% off.
 
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We spend a lot of time talking about the importance of planning in teaching.Teachers plan lessons, anticipate students’ needs, think about questions they might ask, and consider how they will respond when things don’t go quite as expected. This kind of planning matters in coaching, too.
 
Even though we can’t (and shouldn’t try to) script a coaching conversation, that doesn’t mean we should walk into those conversations unprepared. That’s why I created the GIR Conference Planning Guide. It’s a simple tool that is flexible enough so that we can follow the teacher’s thinking.
 
The guide gives coaches a way to think ahead about the teacher, the purpose of the conversation, and the amount and type of support that will be most useful. It takes just a few minutes to complete, but those few minutes can help us be more intentional about the support we provide. We can enter the conversation with a sense of purpose—and then adjust as the conversation unfolds.
 
Start with the Teacher—and the GIR Model
 
Planning starts by thinking about the teacher and a coaching focus you’ve determined together. Next, we consider what kind of support would help the teacher move forward. The 5 moves in the GIR coaching model (model, recommend, ask questions, affirm, and praise) describe varying levels of support – from greatest (modeling) to least (praise). When trying something new or complex, a teacher may benefit from more supportive moves, such as modeling and recommending. With a more experienced and confident teacher, we shift to questioning, affirming, and praising as the dominant move. Predicting how much support is needed helps us plan for possibilities.
 
Once you know the focus and have thought about where the teacher is on the GIR continuum, you can begin thinking about the conversation itself.
 
What will you ask?
What might you model?
What could you recommend?
What will you affirm or praise?
 
To get your ideas flowing, the conferencing guide offers suggestions and sentence stems for each of the GIR moves and space for thoughts you want to hang onto and reference when you’re with the teacher. You plan potential moves without planning the whole conversation.
 
Anticipate Possibilities
 
The purpose of the conferencing guide isn’t to create a script, it’s to help us anticipate possibilities. Is there a resource you want to have handy? A question that would land better if phrased just the right way? Something working well that you want to highlight? Taking a minute to think these things through and to jot a note or two is preparation for a productive conversation.
 
For example, if modeling would be helpful, is there a video clip you could show? A strategy you could model in the midst of a conversation? Or might it be best to offer to teach or co-teach for the teacher’s class, so that she sees it in action with her own students? Possibilities like these are included as reminders on the conferencing guide.
 
if recommending seems appropriate, think ahead about a few possibilities. Rather than handing over a single answer, sharing several ideas that the teacher can consider honors teachers’ agency. Being prepared makes it easier to offer choices.
 
Planning questions ahead of time is also valuable, especially when you feel that questioning might be the bang-for-your-buck move for this teacher. Our questions should be authentic, not leading toward an answer we already have in our heads, but seeking out the teacher’s insight. Questions like:
 
*What did you notice about how students responded?
*What surprised you?
*Which students seemed to benefit most from this approach?
*What possibilities are you considering
 
Questions like these keep the teacher’s thinking at the center of the conversation.
 
Affirming, too, can be useful for centering the teacher’s thinking. Pointing out something specific in a lesson that went really well encourages further consideration and use of that approach. And authentic praise can cement the use of an effective practice.
 
The GIR model (below) is central to the conferencing guide and helps you think about exactly what GIR stands for: How will our coaching gradually increase the responsibility the teacher is taking for their own planning, thinking, and reflecting? Your planning notes beforehand pilot that process, and looking back on the guides from previous conversations with that teacher shows you the progress.
 
The final space on the guide is space for notes for yourself during and after the conversation. Do you have promises to keep? Jot them down. Are there things you want to check in on later? Write a reminder. There might be a specific student you’ll want to ask about, or a concern you want to revisit. Having a note can be the memory nudge we need in our action-packed days.
 
Planning for Responsiveness
 
Having a few thoughts written down before a coaching conversation frees you from trying to hold everything in your head while you’re listening to the teacher. It lets you listen deeper. We plan so that we can be more responsive.
The goal of planning isn’t to control the conversation, it’s to make it easier to let go of control once the conversation begins.
 
When you’ve already thought about the teacher’s needs, the focus of the work, your likely coaching moves, possible questions, and the reminders you want to carry into the conversation, you can give your attention to the person sitting across from you. Even when listening leads me somewhere different from where I’d planned to go, the planning guide steadies me. My preparation isn’t a script, it’s a thinking tool that helps me prepare for a conversation while leaving room for the conversation to become what the teacher needs it to be. The handy lists for each of the GIR moves help me switch in mid-stream.
 
As the new year gets underway, consider the role that planning will play in your coaching conversations. If you’d like a digital copy of the GIR Conference Planning Guide that you can print of complete digitally, click the link and let me know. Once it’s yours, you can modify it to best suit your coaching needs.
 
Your planning as a coach – listing a potential focus, the level of support, and a note for moving forward with that coaching move – will make you more ready to be responsive as you step in to coaching conversations.

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

Why the first 30 days of mentoring new teachers matter most:
 
https://www.smartbrief.com/original/the-first-30-days-of-mentoring-matter-most
 
 
Fail cheerfully with improv techniques (good for staff meetings, too!):
 
https://www.k12dive.com/news/improv-can-help-educators-draw-students-out-of-their-seats-and-shells/827698/
 
 
Letters from home - Letting family & friends teach us about students:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/letters-from-home-letting-families-and-friends-teach-us/
 
 
Supporting students’ dysregulation:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/15-effective-ways-to-manage-dysregulated-students
 
Retelling rubric for themes and ideas:
 
http://chartchums.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/image-2.jpg
 
That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!
 
Want more coaching tips? You can find My Coaches Couch, the podcast (with different content) in your favorite podcast app or at MyCoachesCouch.podbean.com. Or 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! It’s 25% off through August 3. 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!