The Art of Coaching Read online

  8 Question: How has it been for you coming to work at this school? What's been challenging? What are you enjoying?

  My Thinking Lenses Used

  I'm curious whether Mr. Delgado will address any factors around age, race, ethnicity and background. I know they play a role—within a system that is inherently oppressive, they always place a role. Does Mr. Delgado raise any of these issues? If not, I may ask him what it's been like to be a man of African descent teaching African American students, what his relationship is like with his male students—does he think they see him as an ally? Or do they engage in power struggles with him? Systemic Oppression

  I will also pay attention to how Mr. Delgado describes his emotional experience of being at this school and facing the challenges he's dealing with. Does he feel that he can grow and learn from facing these challenges? Does he want to? Does he seem optimistic? Emotional Intelligence

  A Story about a Teacher Who Seems to Struggle with Classroom Management: Part 2

  “Hi, Mr. Delgado,” I said, as I let myself into his classroom. Mr. Delgado was sitting at his desk, staring at his computer monitor. “I'm glad we're going to have a chance to work together. I'm looking forward to supporting you.”

  “Thank you,” he replied. “This was a hard day.”

  “Let's talk about it, then,” I said. “I'm wondering if you'd mind sharing what you felt today during the time I was in here observing?”

  “OK,” he said. “But I really want to hear what you thought. I don't know what to do.”

  “We'll get to that, but first I'd like to hear about how you experienced today.”

  “I felt very upset,” Mr. Delgado said. “I felt very disappointed in my students and in myself. I do not believe in shouting at children, even when they behave in the way that Davontae behaved. I lost control and I regret that.”

  “I hear that,” I said, nodding. “I'm curious if you noticed that you were losing control?”

  “I did. I told myself a few times to ignore their comments and take deep breaths. They are just young people in a difficult situation and I must not take out my anger on them.”

  “Could you tell me more about how you see the situation or the problem?”

  “Well, I will start by saying that I know that the principal thinks the problem is my classroom management. That's why he wants you to coach me, right? He thinks if I was stricter that I wouldn't have these problems in my class.” Mr. Delgado's tone is shifting just a bit; I hear irritation.

  “It sounds like you disagree,” I said. “How do you see the situation?”

  “I am not sure that anyone wants to hear my perspective of the situation,” he responded.

  “I'd like to hear it. I'm here to support you.”

  Mr. Delgado looked at me for a few seconds. He exhaled loudly. “Maybe you could help me to understand this management plan I'm supposed to use,” he said.

  “Sure. What parts are working for you?”

  “One of the problems is that I don't even know what I'm supposed to do. I was hired two days before school started and so I missed the training that everyone went to. The principal said he was going to schedule a makeup session for me, but that hasn't happened. So I don't really know what this plan is or how I'm supposed to use it.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, I can see how that would make it hard to implement! That seems like it is one of the challenges in this situation.”

  “Yes, and it's frustrating when people keep coming to me, and they are upset by my management, and yet I haven't had the training.”

  “That would be very frustrating.”

  Mr. Delgado leaned closer to me. “The assistant principal even insinuated that I could lose my job if I don't improve. I told her I'd missed the training and that I wanted to learn this program. And then she told me that she'd talk to you about meeting with me.”

  “That seems unfair.”

  “It is. And she made it seem like if I didn't meet with you I'd be fired. I guess I was a little annoyed by that, and that's why I missed some of our meetings.”

  “I understand. That's not what coaching is about—I'm not here to fix you or make you use a program. I'm really here to support you. I'm wondering if you could tell me a little about your background. I don't know much about your teaching experiences. Maybe you could share what brought you into teaching and what you feel are your strengths?”

  Mr. Delgado spoke at length and with enthusiasm about his teaching background. In Cuba, as a young man, he'd taught English at the university. After he immigrated to the United States, he taught in various after-school programs as well as at the high school level. He felt that his strengths were in developing relationships with students and in understanding their lives. When he shared this, I found a way to connect it back to what I'd observed in his class that day.

  “Mr. Delgado, it's fantastic that you feel confident about being able to connect with students. I'm curious what you know about Davontae.”

  “I have worked hard to get to know Davontae in the last two weeks. You know he's a Katrina refugee?”

  “No,” I said. I did know that hundreds of displaced families from New Orleans had come to Oakland in the weeks since the devastating hurricane.

  “His mother sent him here because they are homeless. He's living with his great-uncle, who is disabled. Davontae can barely read in English. I think he may have learning difficulties. I don't know why they put him in a Spanish class.”

  “Wow, poor kid,” I said. “I can see you have really started to get to know him.”

  “I have. I care about that boy. I can relate to him—being a refugee, not being able to go home. I have tried to work hard with him, but I can't reach him. He needs more help.”

  “That seems like something we should advocate for. I wonder if he can get counseling and other support.”

  “I've been trying to get that to happen, but the system at this school is very slow, and I don't really understand it.”

  “I can try to help with that,” I said. “I'm wondering about something you mentioned—I'm curious what the process is for determining who takes Spanish and why Davontae was put in your class.”

  “That is a very good question,” Mr. Delgado said, sitting up, his face looking animated. “That is another thing I have been asking about. I asked the school counselor why she'd assigned Davontae to my class. She said, ‘You had space.’ I said, ‘It's Spanish 2, and he's never had Spanish.’ She explained that the only other elective for eighth graders at that time was advanced band and that the music teacher selects students who are in that class. They are students who have been in band since they were in elementary school—so they are a very special, select group. Have you ever been in that class?” Mr. Delgado asked me.

  I had observed advanced band. The students were quite talented. I had also noticed that the band students did not represent the racial demographics of the school—these students, who had been in band since early elementary, drew from our city's middle class and predominantly white elementary schools. Those were the schools that, because of the fundraising efforts of the PTA, still had a music program. The middle school they now attended drew from both the city's poorest neighborhoods, which were almost exclusively African American, and from its upper-middle-class neighborhoods—which were predominantly white. The result was that although the school was 80 percent African American, advanced band had only two black students (out of thirty students total). The effect of that scheduling decision was that advanced band dictated the school's master schedule and created a de facto tracking system that cut across racial lines.

  Mr. Delgado and I talked about this for a while. I was starting to get a picture of the complicated set of factors that were entwined in Mr. Delgado's “classroom management issue.” I told Mr. Delgado that I'd raise some of the systemic issues with the administration—issues of how new teachers are brought into a school's program such as the behavior management program, how students are assigned to classes, and
what kinds of social and emotional support could be provided to Davontae. Then I shifted the conversation back to what Mr. Delgado might be in control of and what he could do in his classroom.

  “I hear that you really care about Davontae and understand him. I'm wondering what you noticed about him when he entered your classroom today?,” I asked.

  “I could tell he was angry,” Mr. Delgado said, nodding. “I noticed that.”

  “I'm wondering if there's anything you think you could have tried to help him calm down?”

  “I was just trying to get my lesson off the ground. I want my students to just come in, take their seats, and start working. I want them to care about their learning and be responsible for it.”

  “I hear that, and that's great. You want them to be intrinsically motivated. I'm wondering, however, when a student comes into class and you can tell he's emotionally upset, if you there are things you could try in order to get him to settle into learning?”

  “I'd like to try something. Do you have some ideas?”

  We spoke for a while about different strategies that teachers use to defuse student behavior or help a student calm down. Mr. Delgado was open and interested. When I broached the subject of the behavior management plan that the school was using, Mr. Delgado became less engaged. He seemed resistant or reluctant to use a plan. “I just want them to care about their learning and get into it without me having to tell them to,” he said several times. I validated this feeling and suggested that his role was to help students bridge the world of the lunchroom, the hallway, or wherever they were coming from, and the learning that was possible if they settled into it.

  We ended our conversation with an agreement to meet weekly. Mr. Delgado was receptive to support on lesson planning and instructional strategies. He also agreed that he'd like to learn some ways to calm himself down and not explode when students pushed his buttons (he admitted that this had happened before). But he remained apprehensive about support on the specific topic of classroom management. He agreed to attend the training that the principal would set up, but dismissed coaching in this area.

  Using the Coach's Optical Refractor and the six lenses to view what I'd observed in Mr. Delgado's class raised many questions and opened many paths for exploration. Although my debrief that day revealed some of the answers and some of the factors, I knew there was still more to what was going on with Mr. Delgado. Had I not used the lenses, I might have approached Mr. Delgado and focused my conversation exclusively on management. He may not have engaged as openly with me, he may not have taken up the offer of more coaching, and I may not have been able to see the systemic implications of the situation.

  As I coached Mr. Delgado that year, I continued to apply this set of lenses and questions to what I noticed in his classroom. Management continued to be an issue—students were often out of control in his room and getting into fights, and Mr. Delgado seemed unwilling to manage them. A couple months into our coaching work together, I asked Mr. Delgado one of the questions I'd wondered about after my initial visit: I asked him how he experienced being a black man teaching mostly African American children. “What's that like for you?” I asked. It was this question that finally revealed some of the core issues at play.

  “I love teaching these children,” Mr. Delgado said. “My heart and soul is with them. I was like them once—perceived as someone who would not make anything of himself, viewed as a second-class citizen, as someone who would become a criminal. It is this that makes my job so difficult. I refuse to be another person in their lives who oppresses them. I refuse to be a policeman or a prison guard. I refuse to be a part of this racist system. This is what I feel I am being asked to do.”

  Once he trusted me, and once I asked the questions, Mr. Delgado was very clear about why he was not invested in using a classroom management plan that he felt resulted predominantly in the suspension of African American boys. But because he was also committed to helping students learn, he struggled with this contradiction in what his job required. Over the year, he instituted some structures and learned to manage some of his students' behaviors, but at the end of the year he decided that given the current conditions in schools, he could better serve African American youth outside of the classroom. Through coaching, he had been able to explore the contradiction he experienced between wanting to serve children by being a teacher, and the personal and systemic factors that made this hard to do. He resigned from teaching and went on to work with a restorative justice organization where his work was appreciated and he felt effective.

  The issues that Mr. Delgado raised about how students' schedules are determined, how new teachers are brought into a school's program, and how students receive additional support services were large ones to tackle. Within my role as a coach, I was able to raise these and draw connections between the challenges faced by classroom teachers and the larger system issues. Some of these issues were addressed immediately (Davontae's schedule was changed so that he didn't have to take Spanish 2, and he was referred to a mental health provider for services), some other issues were changed the following year, and certain other issues were not addressed. But what was essential was that the various complicated and entangled issues that manifested when Davontae stormed into Mr. Delgado's class and was eventually suspended, and the administration's perception that Mr. Delgado simply struggled with classroom management, were deconstructed.

  When Will I Use These Lenses?

  As coaches, we can use the lenses when planning coaching work, when confronted with dilemmas, and in reflection on our work. They can be used as they were in this chapter to analyze a complex situation. As I described, applying the lenses to guide my work helped support a teacher to find an effective place from which to serve children, helped shift a system, and helped one student have a better eighth-grade year.

  The lenses are woven throughout the chapters that follow, and here's a quick map to what you'll find where. In Part Two of this book, we'll look at how these lenses can be applied as the foundation is set for a coaching assignment. As we develop trust with a client, we want to specifically look through the lenses of emotional intelligence and adult learning (Chapter Five). As we engage in the stage of exploration and learn about a client and his context, we'll take a careful look through the lenses of systemic oppression, inquiry, and systems thinking (Chapter Six). Finally, as we develop a work plan with a client, we'll look through the lens of change management, and again through the lenses of inquiry and adult learning (Chapter Seven).

  In Part Three, which describes the “coaching dance”—the conversations and activities that make up the bulk of coaching work—the lenses are integrated into a coach's analysis and decision making. In this final part, each chapter concludes with a section on common challenges. These common challenges explore the lenses that yield insight into the dilemma presented.

  In Chapter Fourteen, on reflection and assessment, I return to the lens of systems thinking to analyze how coaching has affected systems change.

  On my website there are many additional examples of common challenges that arise in coaching and descriptions of how to apply the lenses to resolve the challenges.

  Part Two

  Establishing Coaching with a Client

  Chapter 5

  Beginning a Coaching Relationship: How Do I Develop Trust with a Coachee?

  Read this chapter when:

  You're about to start working with a new client.

  You sense that your client doesn't trust you.

  You've broken a client's trust and want to rebuild it.

  You're a principal interested in strategies for developing trust with a staff member.

  “Without Trust There Can Be No Coaching”

  Most coaches know that this statement by Rafael Echeverría and Julio Olalla (1993) is true, but what does it mean in a practical sense? How do we develop trust? How do we know if our coachee trusts us? And what do we do when trust breaks down?

  Anytime someone engages
in coaching, they are bound to feel vulnerable at some point. Learning, reflecting, and taking risks are all scary. Furthermore, coaches are sometimes assigned to educators who might be struggling. Although I believe that no one should be mandated to work with a coach, some teachers or principals are just apprehensive or distrusting of coaching and we can still win them over to it.

  At the beginning of a coaching relationship, a coach needs to help a client get excited about and buy into a coaching relationship, to become open to what coaching can offer; we call this “enrolling.” Enrollment doesn't necessarily happen in one meeting—it can take months, or a client might already begin the work partially enrolled. Clients often need to be reenrolled—we must not take it for granted that we have someone's trust and engagement. While this is an ongoing process, the first meeting is critical. It can be very hard to return from a less-than-positive first meeting.

  A Story about Trust

  Jackie was a middle school principal I'd been assigned to coach. I knew she'd been at two other schools and struggled at both, I'd heard that she felt like the district had mistreated her, and I knew that she was told that if she didn't agree to work with a coach, she would lose her job. “She's going to be a tough nut to crack,” my manager told me. A colleague who knew Jackie said, “It's going to take you a year to gain her trust,” she said. “I don't have a year,” I said.

  I developed a plan for our first meeting and carried it out. I asked questions that allowed Jackie to reveal her strengths. I asked how she'd gotten into education and where her passions lay. I allowed her to lead the conversation into the areas that she wanted to work on. I shared that I was moved by her commitment to children and to her school, that I heard that her will was strong. I emphasized the confidentiality agreements that would frame our work. While we were speaking, I repeated a mantra-like statement in my mind: I'm here for you, Jackie. I care about you. I felt this and wanted to make sure that it was louder than anything else in my mind. I needed her to sense this from me the whole time. I had to put my own judgmental doubts and concerns out of my mind and focus only on the person sitting in front of me, who was scared and frustrated and dedicated to serving students.