How are you providing feedback and cultivating growth for your teachers and students?
Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H. Book Study
Coaching, it’s all the rage these days.
It seems many districts and schools have embraced the trend as many have hired various coaches to help move our profession forward. We talk of our principals and leaders embracing a coaching mentality. We believe that coaching is a way for peers to collaboratively grow their teaching strategies that will be more impactful for students.
However, as we have directed our human (and fiscal) capital, have we really looked at what is necessary to provide a robust and productive coaching environment?
As we continue to investigate the art of coaching as a part of our instructional repertoire, we must ask ourselves:
“Have we set our coaches up for success?”
“Do I have the right conditions to allow my coaching to be most effective for teachers?”
“What does it really look like to be an effective instructional coach?”
Before we embark on jumping into the next big trend, evaluating the current condition and climate of your school is a necessity as we begin to embrace the coaching mentality.
In Matt’s Renwick’s book, Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H: 5 Strategies for Supporting Teaching and Learning, he concretely and succinctly breaks down effective coaching practices, ultimately answering the question:
“How do we empower our teachers and coaches (and ourselves in some instances) to cultivate a fertile environment which will lead to better instruction and greater student learning outcomes?”
As we have learned in the previous chapters, coaches must grow trust, organize priorities, and affirm positive practices. As these attributes are established, it is necessary to provide timely, meaningful, and effective feedback to our teachers in a way that will allow them to take ownership in their own learning.
Feedback for Growth
When we think of coaching, often the image of a competitive athletic or academic team comes to mind. We not only think of the coach as having influence on the team as a whole, but we also think of how the coach directs and influences each individual player. When I reflect on the multitude of coaches I have experienced in my life, the best coaches embraced the C.O.A.C.H. attributes.
My coaches poured time and energy to make me a better player, provided feedback on how to shoot the ball better, helped me practice, and trusted that I could transfer the knowledge to game situations. Through hundreds of little pieces of feedback, I became a good free-throw shooter. These pieces of feedback came during the middle of practice, after practice, in film sessions, before games, and during games.
As I became more experienced, the feedback changed. Rather than giving statements, I would be asked more questions. “Get your arm in the right position.” became “Do you see how your arm feels when extend?” I was able to self-adjust my own shooting form because I understood how to make corrections to have better success. It even began to feel weird when something wasn’t right. I could recognize attributes of my shot in real-time and make adjustments as needed. Ultimately, the coach could not control if I made the winning free throw; I needed to perform the action.
However, my performance was influenced by the continual feedback from my coaches.
This is the same with our teachers.
We can influence our teachers to grow, give them feedback, and provide tools needed for them to grow. We want them to be the masters of their own learning. Just as a coach gives feedback during the middle of practice, Renwick references that “inquiring in the moment” is an effective practice to “communicate feedback in a way that teachers hear it, own it, and use it” (pg. 117). We want them to perform and make adjustments in real-time so they can provide the best learning environment for our students to succeed. We want our teachers to recognize when something isn’t “feeling right” and make a quick pivot.
Great teachers can tell you immediately after the lesson if they hit the target. They do not need to wait to the see the results of the unit or state test. Great teachers will make the adjustment the next day to better meet the needs of the students in their class. These teachers often become the best teammates, and can also help other teachers recognize and make appropriate changes to best meet the needs of their students. When a feedback loop is established in a collaborative culture of improvement, the teacher’s desire to be coached will rise, their growth will increase, and student learning will soon follow.
When we begin to embrace the attributes of Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H, teachers will embrace challenges as they begin to feel emboldened that they are making a difference in the lives of their students. As a result, the coaching process becomes an expected practice that will continually give real-time feedback to teachers fostering an increasingly collaborative and trusting learning environment. Teachers will become the masters of their own learning. They will learn, and students will grow.
This is the power of leading like a C.O.A.C.H.
Tyler Keener serves as a consultant and coach to Ohio districts in State Support Team Region 9, focusing on school improvement. He provides principal coaching to leadership teams through The Ohio Leadership for Inclusion, Implementation, & Instructional Improvement (OLi4). Tyler also supports training on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Secondary Transition. He serves both community and traditional schools to promote positive learning outcomes for all students.
Prior to joining the State Support Team, Tyler worked as a high school principal for the previous decade. He also serves on the board for the Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators, supporting secondary principals throughout Ohio.
Tyler can be reached at linkedin.com/in/tyler-r-keener
Tyler, I think that the questions you posed are great way to start setting the stage for effective coaching. It is so important that administrators and coaches work together to identify a common vision for what coaching will look like and what the purpose is. This also needs to be communicated clearly to staff. This helps a lot toward full transparency and building trust. Your attributes for an effective coach are spot on with what needs to be seen in our schools' instructional coaches. I have seen situations where instructional coaches are referred to as the "coaching police". This type of coaching culture does not help teachers become more effective. In fact is does quite the opposite. It leads to avoidance and/or going through the motions. This comes back to setting up the purpose of instructional coaching and what can be expected. Thanks for your thought-provoking post!