Instructional Leadership in Action
5 Tips for Setting Up and Sustaining Coaching in Your District
by JOANNA MICHELSON on Apr 28, 2016
Focus coaches on student learning
Coaches are a powerful lever for supporting teachers’ ability to address questions about student learning. Coaches may for instance talk to teachers about their goals for student learning and then observe specific students in the classroom, or help teachers analyze student work and make decisions about the next day’s lesson. Sometimes this is a first step for teachers working with coaches and student learning plays a critical role throughout coaching. Evidence of student learning and student learning challenges provide direction and focus for coaches and teachers in their work together.
Choose a clear instructional focus
Coaches work most effectively when they support a clear set of instructional practices. For instance, you may expect your coaches to help teachers differentiate their instruction for English-language learner (ELL) students. Ideally, coaching is one professional learning structure among others (workshops, PLCs) all contributing to a larger strategy for supporting teacher learning aimed at the same goals. Without a focus, coaches can feel at a loss about what to do as they start to support individual teachers.
Work out the details
A coach’s role can feel ambiguous and undefined without specific parameters in place. How will coaches work with the principal? How should a coach’s day go so that they spend as much time as possible coaching teachers? Which teachers will they be supporting and for what specific purpose? As a district or school leader thinking about launching a coaching program, make sure you think through the details with your colleagues. We recommend involving coaches and teachers in this decision-making process and communicating along the way. In some districts, for example, coaches start out by supporting new teachers. While this is a great idea in many ways, there is a danger that other teachers may think only new teachers need support in fine-tuning their instruction.
Communicate, communicate, communicate
Sometimes coaching is brand new for teachers. Other times “coaching” has become a dirty word because it has been used the wrong way as an evaluative tool, as a way to “fix” teachers or with the idea that coaches are “resource gatherers.” For maximum success, everyone in leadership roles in a district should learn to describe the roles of coaches, how they support district work and what this means to the teachers. Principals can share this at staff meetings and one-on-one with teachers. District leaders may communicate this through printed or electronic messages or with principals and principal supervisors in their meetings.
We find this framing to be helpful:
Our school/district is working on __________ instructionally in service of this need for students: _______
Here’s why we have coaches this year: __________
Here’s how coaches will help us reach our goals: ___________
Here’s how the coaches will work with teachers: ____________
Here’s how the coaches will work with principals: _____________
Provide support for your coaches
As I have mentioned, coaching is its own practice and it is complicated. Coaches face a steep learning curve in their first few years. We recommend job-embedded professional development so coaches can observe and learn from each other as well as from experienced coaches from outside the system. Coaches also benefit from opportunities to collaborate with each other to troubleshoot and share successes.
