The Art of Coaching Read online

  Coaching alone, however, will not result in the kind of transformation that I envision. First of all, coaching for transformation is not possible in a vacuum—certain conditions must be established in an educational context in order for coaching to be effective. Second, coaching alone will do nothing to address the loss of funding for American schools, an issue that results in fundamentally inequitable schools. Until the current funding structure is changed, we will continue to have difficulty developing equitable schools. Finally, some educational policy and national “reform” efforts have actually made the creation of equitable schools more difficult: as long as the evaluation of a teacher's quality is reduced to a number, we will not have equitable classrooms. A single number can never encapsulate the experience and outcomes for all students.

  It will take time to transform our education system. I find consolation in the Dalai Lama's advice: “Do not despair,” he counseled a group of activists. “Your work will bear fruit in 700 years or so” (Wheatley, 2009, p. 83). I also recognize that I have no choice but to engage in this process of transformation. The sages who wrote the Talmud declared, “It is not up to you to finish the work, but neither are you free not to take it up.”

  While the whole system may take generations to transform, the coaching you do today can impact students immediately. The effort is well worth it for them. We cause transformation all along the road to greater transformation.

  One Purpose and Two Promises

  My intent in this book is to propose a model of coaching that can foster transformation in schools and beyond. This model emerges from several theoretical frameworks, proposes dozens of specific activities, and suggests belief stances and habits of mind that coaches can adopt. Coaching in schools is an emerging field. I hope to contribute to our knowledge and understanding of what coaching is and what it can do.

  I make two commitments to you. First, I promise that this book will be full of immediately applicable and useful ideas and resources. I write for an audience who may not have much time to read and who may read this book in short chunks, consulting it when looking for information that might provide guidance at a specific moment. With this awareness, I promise that this book will be useful and that you won't need to read more than a few pages without getting ideas for something you can do today. At the same time, I don't want to give the impression that coaching is merely a checklist of strategies. It is much more than a set of tools, and a coach must cultivate a particular way of being—I will define this “way of being” and suggest how it can be developed.

  Second, I promise to tell a lot of stories. Our brains are wired to learn through stories, we remember what we hear in a narrative, and we enjoy stories. I will use stories to illustrate theories, to provide concrete examples of the ideas I'm presenting, and to share how these coaching practices actually play out.

  Where I'm Coming from and Who This Book Is For

  After one year teaching high school in rural Salinas, California, I moved to Oakland (in the San Francisco Bay Area), where I have taught and coached in our public schools for seventeen years. For most of the time I've worked here, the demographics in our schools have been roughly 40 percent Latino, 40 percent African American, and the remainder divided between Asian Americans, whites, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders. About 25 percent of our students are English language learners, and over 70 percent are eligible for free and reduced-cost lunches. My stories and experiences emerge from this complicated and dynamic urban context.

  I transitioned into coaching after over a decade of teaching. First, I coached teachers new to the school where I taught. Working with adults was a shift—sometimes rewarding and other times frustrating, but something about it hooked me. After a few years in the hybrid teaching-coaching role, I left the classroom for a full-time instructional coaching position in a large middle school. I knew I was in for a challenge, but assumed I'd find resources to help me.

  I learn best by watching others—and as a teacher I was lucky to work with a fantastic coach, but I also learn from books. When I turned to the usual places for resources in print, I found barely a handful of books written on coaching. I read everything I could, but some of it was too specific, or not basic enough, or not grounded in an education context.

  I've always heard that you should write the book you want to read. This is the book I wanted to read as a new, struggling coach, and it's still the book I want to read. I am not yet fully the artful coach I aspire to be—I have many years of practice to go to approach mastery. Writing this book is a way for me to reflect on and develop my coaching.

  One note: this book focuses on coaches working with individuals. Many of the approaches are applicable to facilitating groups of educators, but the art of coaching teams is worthy of an entire volume itself.

  Beyond myself, I write for three audiences:

  Coaches working in schools. I hope that regardless of which area a coach works in—whether beginning teacher support, math, literacy, classroom management, leadership, or school improvement—you will find relevant resources, tools, and ideas. I also hope that regardless of whether you are a brand new coach or an experienced coach, you will find something here to augment your practice.

  Principals and other administrators working toward school transformation. Coaching strategies can be used by anyone. Site-based leaders, central office administrators, school counselors, deans, and other educators engaged in school change will find resources for refining skills such as listening and asking questions, building trusting relationships, understanding adult learners, and more. In order to highlight sections that might be useful to those who are not coaches but who want to use coaching strategies—primarily principals and other site-based administrators—specific sections throughout this book have been flagged as tips for principals. Look for the circular arrow icon.

  The coaching community outside of education. I frequently read literature from the broader field of coaching. Regardless of where they work, the goals for many coaches are similar—the growth and development of an individual and the authentic integration of skills and passion for a greater good. I hope to share some of what has been learned in the education context with coaches who work in other fields; we have much to learn from each other.

  Summary of the Contents and How to Use This Book

  Even if you could read this book cover to cover in one sitting, I'm not sure I'd recommend you do so. Coaching is effective in part because it is experienced over time: you keep coming back to your coach, exploring a different aspect of your work, and then venturing out to try new approaches. In the same way, I hope this book will act as a coach—that you'll get some ideas, go try them, and then come back to reflect and learn more.

  Part One, “Foundations of Coaching,” will be very useful to those new to the field. It's what I wish I could have read during my first year. This is also the information I review with principals when they're considering hiring a coach. I recommend that you read this section first.

  Part Two, “Establishing Coaching with a Client” explores how to build trust, get to know a client, and determine a coaching focus. The information in this section will help a coach set up the coaching agreements and relationship.

  Part Three, “The Coaching Dance” describes the listening, questioning, conversational approaches, and activities that a coach typically engages a client in. At the end of the chapters in Parts Two and Three are sections on Common Challenges that coaches experience, followed by suggested solutions.

  Part Four, “Professional Development for Coaches,” is geared for coaches and those who supervise them. It proposes some structures and activities that coaches can engage in either independently or in teams to refine their practice. (See the following table of Essential Frameworks for Transformational Coaching.)

  Essential Frameworks for Transformational Coaching I offer three frameworks that I suggest are essential in transformational coaching.

  Framework Description

  1 Th
e Ladder of Inference (See Chapter Three) A framework to help us understand what's underneath behaviors that we observe and to help us deconstruct beliefs. This is based on the work of Peter Senge.

  2 The Coach's Optical Refractor (See Chapter Four) A set of analytical tools that can help us see a situation in many different ways. There are six lenses which help us look at evidence from different perspectives. These are based on the work of the National Equity Project and Daniel Goleman.

  3 Coaching Stances (See Chapters Nine–Twelve) An analytical framework for coaching conversations and activities. These can help us plan coaching conversations, make decisions during the conversation, and guide the next steps we take. These are based on the work of John Heron.

  The Appendixes offer a glossary of commonly used terms and recommended resources on topics raised in each chapter. On my website, www.elenaaguilar.com, you'll find a bank of additional tools and tips.

  A Couple Notes

  On Terminology

  As someone very interested in the power of words, I am unsatisfied with any of the terms that are currently used to describe the person who receives coaching: the “coachee” or the “client.” Coachee sounds too cute, informal, and like a derivative of “coach.” Client references the business world, but our work in schools is about transformation, which lies too close to the heart and soul to be associated with financial transactions. As much as I dislike these two terms, there are no other alternatives currently in use, and rather than attempting to be innovative, I'm going to grudgingly settle for using these two interchangeably.

  On Anonymity and Pseudonyms

  To protect the privacy of every teacher and administrator I have ever coached, as well as the schools where they worked, I have changed names and most identity markers so that the people about whom I write will be unrecognizable even to themselves.

  Part One

  Foundations of Coaching

  Chapter 1

  How Can Coaching Transform Schools?

  Read this when:

  You are a coach, supervisor of coaches, or principal who wants to articulate what coaching is and can be

  You are an administrator considering developing a coaching program in your school

  A Story about What Coaching Can Do

  The best way to describe how coaching can transform schools—through improving teacher practices, addressing systemic issues, and improving outcomes for children—is by offering an example.

  Karen, a young white woman, was in her third year teaching English in an urban middle school. Before I started working with her, I had been warned that she was “not good with Mexican kids.” One principal had already moved her out of his school, and her new principal, whose student population was 80 percent Latino, was very concerned. I found Karen to be well intentioned, able to create engaging lessons, and capable of building good rapport with students. She was also eager to receive coaching.

  A significant percentage of Karen's eighth graders were several years below grade level in reading. Karen agreed to explore her students' skill gaps and selected Angel, a Mexican-American boy, as a focal student. She hoped that digging deep into what was going on with one student would reveal insights and practices that could be applied to other struggling students. Angel was bright, well liked, and had a stable home life; his parents had both graduated from high school in California. He was also goofy and frequently off task in class. Karen had no idea why Angel read at a second-grade level.

  As a first step, I coached Karen in using a set of reading diagnostics. She discovered that while Angel had a tremendous mastery of a set of sight words, and therefore could read some text, he could not decode multisyllabic words. Karen dug deeper, finding that Angel struggled with the sounds of certain phonemes. Karen identified the precise skill gaps that made reading difficult for Angel. Now it was just a matter of filling those gaps. Angel leapt at the offer of extra help and extra homework, regularly skipping recess and coming in after school; Karen was enthusiastic about supporting him. In the course of six months, Angel's reading advanced three grade levels.

  In an end-of-year reflection with me, Karen revealed that initially she had thought that Angel was “just lazy.” She looked at the boy's photo, which decorated the outside of his file. “I really thought he was just a lazy boy,” she admitted. She was embarrassed by her previous beliefs and that she'd fallen into believing stereotypes about Mexican immigrants. In our coaching, I carefully and intentionally pushed Karen to explore her belief system; I challenged it and helped her shatter an assumption that she held about some of her students.

  I also coached the English department to which Karen belonged. That year, I facilitated an inquiry process to help teachers identify students' key missing skills and provide small-group and individual instruction to close those gaps. By the end of the year, these teachers concluded that it was an imperative to know, from day one, what their incoming students' exact gap areas were. They devised a process in which information could be gathered on students in certain achievement groups as part of the registration process. With these data, teachers could get a head start on planning to close these gaps.

  As a result, my coaching led to a systems change—a change in how much teachers at one school know about their students, when and how they get certain information, and what they do with the information they gather. This change was initiated by teachers, welcomed by them, and resulted in a sense of empowerment about changing the outcomes for children. As evidenced by multiple measures, student achievement increased dramatically at this school for the next two years. This is what coaching can offer.

  What Will It Take to Transform Our Schools?

  The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

  Audre Lorde (1984)

  Speaking in the early 1980s, poet and activist Audre Lorde warned that true change could only be realized when those engaged in enacting it operate from an entirely different set of thoughts, beliefs, and values and take radically different actions from those taken in the past. Without a new set of tools, Lorde warned that we risk reproducing structures of oppression. Coaching offers a new set of tools that have the potential to radically transform our schools.

  In the United States, our public school system is in crisis. On this point there is little disagreement. Something must be done. Beyond that, there is a raging debate on what to do and how to do it. Those who ride the chariot of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) deliver one message, which perhaps crudely summarized comes down to this—teachers, principals: improve your test scores or you will be penalized or even fired. Perhaps their intentions are positive, but over ten years have passed since NCLB went into effect, and this method has not worked. The “achievement gap” remains, and there have been many devastating side effects from NCLB, such as the narrowing of curriculum, the time and focus dedicated to test preparation, and the increase in rote learning. Coaching must be contextualized within a broader conversation to “reform,” save, or transform public education. As such, coaching—as a method and theory—is a political stance. Coaching rests on a few basic assumptions that place its supporters in a unique location in this discussion of school transformation.

  First, a coaching stance views teachers, principals, and all the adults who work in schools as capable of changing practices—coaches fundamentally believe that people can learn and change. Second, in order to understand the current reality and challenges in schools, coaches analyze larger systems at play as well as the historical context. We consider the impact of complex organizations, the macro socioeconomic system, and the roles of all individuals; we do not blame one group of people or seek any quick fixes.

  It is essential that we explore the nature of the so-called “achievement gap”—why it exists, who benefits from it, and why current federal legislation can't eliminate it. But it is more important and absolutely critical that we are thoughtful about the way we are going about doing things—the “how”: how we reflect on and analyze the past, how we
confront the present, how we change our schools and create the future. If we are not mindful, the change process will end up replicating the structures of oppression that produced our current system.

  This is where coaching comes in: when we explore the “how.” An understanding of this historical context is essential when we work in schools. Teachers have been blamed for poverty and told they are lazy, untrustworthy, and unintelligent. I believe that the most effective coaches were once teachers, and that they carry this awareness with them. Our communication with teachers and principals must be imbued with this empathy and contextual understanding or we risk (perhaps unconsciously) falling into the dominant discourse around what's wrong with schools.

  Former superintendent of San Diego's schools, Carl Cohn, cautions that “school reform is a slow, steady labor-intensive process” contingent on “harnessing the talent of individuals …” (quoted in Ravitch, 2010, p. 66). Herein lies the essential question for us to grapple with: How do we harness the talent of individuals? How do we develop conditions for adults to learn and develop their talents?

  A New Tool Kit Based on Ancient Knowledge

  Coaching is a form of professional development that brings out the best in people, uncovers strengths and skills, builds effective teams, cultivates compassion, and builds emotionally resilient educators. Coaching at its essence is the way that human beings, and individuals, have always learned best.