The Art of Coaching Read online

  The apprenticeship is an ancient form of coaching. An experienced practitioner welcomes a learner who improves her practice by watching, listening, asking questions, and trying things out under the supportive gaze of the mentor. While there are critical distinguishing factors between a mentor and a coach, the sensibility and outcome are the same: the learner is met and accepted wherever she is in her learning trajectory, she is encouraged and supported, she may be pushed, and in the end, she's a competent practitioner.

  Coaching is also, essentially, what any parent does with a child. When my son learned to walk, I supported him in his first steps, standing close by and offering a hand when necessary. I let him stumble and fall, looking for that fine line between his need for reassurance and his need to remain upright. I'd crouch a few feet away, with my hands outstretched, rambling, “Come on, sweetie, I know you can do it! Come on—take a step, you can do it.” Gradually, I'd scoot backward on the floor, allowing my toddler to take more steps as he was ready, until eventually he was running across the living room.

  With our children, we use a gradual release of responsibility model, providing just enough help for them to do it, but not so much that they don't develop the skills by themselves. When they're nine months old, we don't scream, “I can't carry you any longer. You need to walk now or I'm leaving you here!” Threats and coercion don't work.

  In order to transform our education system, we need to pay attention to the people who make up this system and all of their needs. This requires everyone to develop tremendous patience, compassion, humility, attentiveness, and a willingness to listen deeply. We need to meet people wherever they are and then together devise a “how,” and, most likely, we'll have to try a few “hows” before we see the results we want. There's just no other way.

  What Can Coaching Do for a School? What Does the Research Say?

  Administrators: this next section will be very useful if you are considering hiring a coach or setting up a coaching program.

  There's generally an agreement that educators need more knowledge, skills, practice, and support after they enter the profession. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), calculates that it takes ten thousand hours of deliberate practice—practice that promotes continuous improvement—to master a complex skill. This translates into about seven years for those working in schools. The majority of teachers and principals want professional development; they want to improve their craft, be more effective, implement new skills, and see students learn more.

  Opinions diverge as to what professional development (PD) should look like. Traditionally, PD has taken the form of a three-day training, say in August before school starts, and then perhaps a couple of follow-up sessions throughout the year. This kind of PD by itself, which just about every teacher has experienced, rarely results in a significant change in teacher practice and rarely results in increased learning for children. According to a 2009 study on professional development, teachers need close to fifty hours of PD in a given area to improve their skills and their students' learning (Darling-Hammond and others, 2009). While the research on the ineffectiveness of “one-shot” PD continues to pile up, a search is under way for PD that might work. Learning Forward (the international association of educators formerly known as the National Staff Development Council) has developed an invaluable set of Standards for Professional Learning that identifies the characteristics of professional learning that lead to effective teaching practices, supportive leadership, and improved student results. It is very useful to all engaged in designing or leading PD. You can find these standards online here: www.learningforward.org/standards.

  Coaching is an essential component of an effective professional development program. Coaching can build will, skill, knowledge, and capacity because it can go where no other professional development has gone before: into the intellect, behaviors, practices, beliefs, values, and feelings of an educator. Coaching creates a relationship in which a client feels cared for and is therefore able to access and implement new knowledge. A coach can foster conditions in which deep reflection and learning can take place, where a teacher can take risks to change her practice, where powerful conversations can take place and where growth is recognized and celebrated. Finally, a coach holds a space where healing can take place and where resilient, joyful communities can be built.

  When considering hiring a coach, principals often ask the following kinds of questions about the impact of coaching: What does the research say about how coaching can transform a school? Is there a model that is most effective? Is there evidence that coaching will result in increased student achievement?

  As coaches, it is our responsibility to know what can be expected. We can't go into schools purporting to raise test scores by 50 percent in the first year. We need to articulate what we might be able to accomplish. Fortunately, there is a growing body of research indicating that coaching can help create the conditions necessary for instructional practices to change and student outcomes to improve. These are valuable data points for coaches to be aware of as they help direct the work we do; our work is not simply about working individually with teachers to improve their practice—it must extend farther.

  To date, the most thorough and comprehensive study on coaching was done in 2004 by the Annenberg Foundation for Education Reform. It reports a number of findings that offer powerful validation for coaching. First, the report concludes that effective coaching encourages collaborative, reflective practice. Coaching allows teachers to apply their learning more deeply, frequently, and consistently than teachers working alone. Coaching supports teachers to improve their capacity to reflect and apply their learning to their work with students and also in their work with each other.

  A second finding from the Annenberg report is that effective embedded professional learning promotes positive cultural change. The conditions, behaviors, and practices required by an effective coaching program can affect the culture of a school or system, thus embedding instructional change within broader efforts to improve school-based culture and conditions.

  Coaching was also linked to teachers' increase in using data to inform practice. Effective coaching programs respond to particular needs suggested by data, allowing improvement efforts to target issues such as closing achievement gaps and advocating for equity. The Annenberg report found that coaching programs guided by data helped create coherence within a school by focusing on strategic areas of need that were suggested by evidence, rather than by individual and sometimes conflicting opinions.

  Another key finding was that coaching promotes the implementation of learning and reciprocal accountability. Coaching is an embedded support that attempts to respond to student and teacher needs in ongoing, consistent, dedicated ways. The likelihood of using new learning and sharing responsibility rises when colleagues, guided by a coach, work together and hold each other accountable for improved teaching and learning.

  Finally, the Annenberg report determined that coaching supports collective leadership across a school system. An essential feature of coaching is that it uses the relationships between coaches, principals, and teachers to create the conversation that leads to behavioral, pedagogical, and content knowledge change. Effective coaching distributes leadership and keeps the focus on teaching and learning. This focus promotes the development of leadership skills, professional learning, and support for teachers that target ways to improve student outcomes.

  Additional research studies indicate that effective coaching structures promote a collaborative culture where school staffs feel ownership and responsibility for leading improvement efforts in teaching and learning. Coaching attends to the “social infrastructure” issues of schools and systems that often impede the deep and lasting change that school reform requires. These issues include school climate, teacher isolation, insufficient support, and limited instructional and leadership capacity. In 2010, the Elementary School Journal published eight studies on the impact of coaching on teach
er practice and student achievement. This included a three-year study on literacy coaches working in grades K–2 in seventeen schools. In these schools, they found that student literacy learning increased by 16 percent in its first year, 28 percent in its second year, and 32 percent in the third (Biancarosa, Bryk, and Dexter, 2010).

  Another study investigated the effect of coaching on new teachers in a high-turnover school. It found that schools with coaching programs saw significant improvement in measures of teacher practices and student outcomes compared to schools without coaching programs. The findings suggest that new teachers benefit from teaching in schools with strong coaching programs in place, and that coaching programs could have an added benefit in high-turnover urban schools (Matsumura and others, 2010). Reflecting on the eight different studies, the Elementary School Journal editors write: “Many in the field have trusted that intuitive feeling that putting a knowledgeable coach in a classroom to work with a teacher will result in improved teacher practices and increased student learning. The jury of these researchers and the peer reviewers of their work have delivered its verdict: while coaching may be new, it is no longer unproven” (Sailors and Shanklin, 2010).

  As the field of coaching in schools develops, it is critical that we identify and gather sets of qualitative and quantitative data that can reveal the impact of our work on student learning. We need to track the changes we see in teacher and leader practice and gather evidence that our work is resulting in improved student learning. This can be an exciting and validating effort—it is these data that help us feel effective and that let us know objectively that we're doing good work. In order to do this, we need to make sure that the scope of our work is defined and narrow, that we're gathering data on how our clients make progress, and that we're articulating these findings. A highly effective, comprehensive coaching program in a school or district supports coaches to systematically gather a range of evidence to illustrate the impact of coaching on teachers, administrators, and students.

  The Necessary Conditions

  The potential for coaching within the education system has yet to be reached for several reasons. First, in most schools and districts, there is no formal pathway or training for entering a coaching role. The majority of coaches were strong teachers who demonstrated mastery of content and pedagogy and who were encouraged, or self-selected, to pursue coaching. While content and pedagogy are foundational knowledge for a school coach, there are many more skills and capacities required for working with adults. Furthermore, once in the position, most coaches receive little professional development. Therefore, given the inconsistency with which coaches are trained and supported, there is bound to be a discrepancy between what coaching can offer and the reality.

  In addition, the potential of coaching cannot be realized if certain conditions are not in place. Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code (2009), describes coaches as farmers who cultivate talent in others. As someone who has long admired the patience, attentiveness, and groundedness of farmers, I love this analogy. It is also apt when considering what needs to be in place for coaching to be effective: the land must be fertile, invasive weeds need to have been removed, and the seeds can't be old and moldy. A farmer must be aware of local climate—you can't plant pineapples in Alaska and expect them to thrive.

  Coaches, similarly, need to be able to analyze systems and identify situations primed for coaching. It is partly our responsibility as coaches to accept positions in schools where the foundation is laid for us to do our best work. Principals, or supervisors of coaches, are also responsible for assessing how “ready” a coach is to undertake the work.

  Let's consider these conditions that need to be in place in order for coaching to work. It is critical that these be delineated, because when the status of these conditions is murky, it is hard to assess the impact of coaching or draw conclusions about its impact. For example, if a principal invests scarce resources to bring coaches into his school and sees little change in test scores after two years, he might conclude that “coaching doesn't work.” While this appears to be an obvious conclusion, is it correct? If taken at face value, it could result in a school culture that does not value or utilize coaching.

  There are two sets of variables to assess for readiness: the readiness of the coach and of the site.

  The Coach's Readiness

  A coach working with teachers or principals must have been an effective teacher for at least five years; there is just no other way to have developed the kind of empathy and foundational knowledge and understanding that teachers or principals need in a coach. A dynamic teacher or principal may not necessarily segue into being an effective coach without additional training. Fortunately, many of the technical skills and knowledge about coaching can be learned, but a prospective coach must at a minimum have strong communication skills, particularly listening skills, and high emotional intelligence.

  Principals interviewing coaches might also explore how the coach became a coach—did she participate in any training? Has she ever been coached? What draws her to the domain of adult learning? Without a deep interest in—and perhaps passion for—adult learners, a coach will struggle. The following list offers questions that principals might ask applicants for a coaching position.

  Interview Questions for a Principal or Hiring Manager to Ask a Coach-Applicant

  Tell us a little about yourself and your background in education.

  Why do you want to be a coach? Why do you want to be a coach here?

  What has your experience been with coaching? If you were coached in the past, what worked for you? What didn't work?

  Which coaching skills do you feel you're strong in?

  Which coaching skills would you like to develop?

  What conditions do you think need to be present at a site in order for you to have an impact as a coach?

  What does a really good classroom look like to you?

  When you go into a classroom as an observer, what are you looking for? Or looking at? What catches your attention?

  What would you do if you were coaching a new teacher who couldn't manage a class?

  What would you do to get to know a site that you were assigned to coach at?

  How would you work with a teacher or administrator who didn't seem to want coaching?

  What experience have you had working in teams?

  What are your thoughts about how teams develop? What do you anticipate doing as a coach to support team development?

  What are your thoughts and beliefs about how systems change? As a coach, how do you see yourself affecting system change at a site?

  How would you measure or evaluate the impact you have as a coach on your client?

  Tell us about a time when you experienced big change that may have been outside of your sphere of control. How did you manage it?

  Most teachers and administrators experience significant stress. How have you managed stress and emotional turmoil at work? What ideas do you have for supporting clients in this area?

  How do you learn best? How do you see yourself developing as a coach?

  The Site's Readiness

  There are definitely conditions in which an experienced, trained, highly skilled coach can fail to produce any kind of change in teacher practice or student outcome. In this case, we want to be careful not to come to the easy or obvious conclusion that the coach was ineffective without also looking at the conditions at the site.

  An abundance of research describes the determining impact that a leader has on a school. In order for a site to be ripe for a coach, the principal must demonstrate some degree of effective leadership. The main areas to assess for are in the domains of how a leader fosters vision or mission, determines instructional foci, creates and sustains a collaborative culture, organizes professional development, and makes decisions. A site that is under a time-bound threat of sanctions for not meeting external goals (such as not making NCLB's adequate yearly progress, or AYP) is one where the range of a coach's impac
t will be limited—at least for the immediate future. A coach can help a site improve markers such as AYP, but it takes years. In a school with ineffective leadership, coaching won't result in whole-school change. While it is very likely that some of these conditions may be in place in any school that seeks to bring in a coach, prospective coaches would be wise to consider for themselves how many conditions need to be in place in order to allow them to be effective, or which ones are nonnegotiable. The following list offers questions for coaches to consider when applying for a coaching position.

  Most transformation programs satisfy themselves with shifting the same old furniture about in the same old room. But real transformation requires that we redesign the room itself. Perhaps even blow up the old room. It requires that we change the thinking behind our thinking.

  Danah Zohar (1997, p. 243)

  Questions for a Coach to Ask at an Interview

  What are your school's overarching goals? Who has set these goals? What was that process like?

  What is your school's vision and mission? When were they created? When and where are the vision and mission revisited? What percentage of your staff, students, and parents would you guess know the vision and mission well?

  What do you see as your teachers' areas of strengths? Areas for growth? How have you gathered these data?

  What does professional development look like at your site? When and where does professional development occur? What role do you play in professional development? What impact does professional development have on your teachers' practice? How do you know?

  Have you had coaches working in this school before? What was that experience like?