Three questions about Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H.

Mary Howard and Fran McVeigh, moderators of the Twitter chat #g2great, asked me three questions to respond to around my book Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H.

My responses are below. (You can also access the full post around these questions and our chat here.) If you are into the “behind-the-scenes” process for the book, ask a question in the comments and I’ll respond.

Take care,

Matt

1) What motivated you to write this book? What impact did you hope that it would have in the professional world?

A decade ago, I wrote a blog post titled: “Can a principal also be a coach?”

This was my second year as a head principal for an elementary school. I was finding it difficult to support instructional improvement through traditional evaluation and supervision alone. What else could I be doing to influence teaching and learning?

My previous experience as an athletic coach led me to explore instructional coaching as a viable approach within my leadership position. 

Ten years later, I’ve seen the fruits of this labor in a variety of ways:

• Teachers feel more confident to take risks and try innovative practices.

• More clarity around what we are trying to accomplish as a school and why it’s important.

• Better conversations with and among faculty around our goals and efforts.

I wanted to write this book so other leaders have a set of strategies to apply in their own schools.

2) What are your BIG takeaways from your book that you hope teachers will embrace in their teaching practices?

Two takeaways:

• Schools don’t need to be “fixed”.

• Leaders should instead focus on their school’s inherent potential for sustainable success.

The first takeaway is a competing response to all the rhetoric we hear around schools as “failing” or “in need of improvement”. This is not helpful language. Students, teachers, and communities hear this and may start to believe it. 

To counter this, I encourage leaders at every level to take a step back and first ask, “What’s going well?” 

This appreciative lens should reveal a variety of strengths, for example:

• Classrooms with lots of books for independent reading,

• All students knowing at least one trusting adult who cares for them, and

• Opportunities to interact with peers with different backgrounds, beliefs, and interests.

The very structure of school – surrounded by books and friends, and supported by caring adults – makes it an amazing place on its own. Let’s start there and build upon it.

3) What is a message from the heart you would like for every teacher to keep in mind?

Celebration is at the heart of learning, for both students and educators.

This is about more than just acknowledging success as learners. It’s important to recognize people’s efforts to improve. These milestones serve as waypoints on our collective journey to schoolwide excellence. 

For teachers, you can do this every day with your students and many do.

What I am asking pg principals and other positional leaders in my book is to get into classrooms regularly and first affirm what teachers are doing well. These visits are called “instructional walks”, a practice first developed by Regie Routman in her book Read, Write, Lead. Leaders can engage in instructional walks by simply noticing and naming the instruction happening in classrooms, handwriting observations, sharing these notes with the teacher, and then engaging in a brief conversation about their practice. Instructional walks are strengths-oriented and the surest pathway to influencing instruction.

Essentially, I am trying to operate as a principal in classrooms how I would want my leader to be if I were still teaching: recognizing my important work while facilitating authentic conversations about how we might improve both individually and collectively as a school.