can be implemented more quickly, but some may take longer. This pace may seem too slow to create significant change, but consider: When is the last time you or any of your colleagues gained ten new strategies in a school year? Over the course of a thirty-year career, that would be three hundred!
2. Coaching is about change: Teachers teach and students learn in a broad array of styles and situations. There are innumerable factors that lead to high-quality learning. Students bring with them rich backgrounds and sets of physical, social, and emotional skills. Teachers bring the same. The possible effects on learning are endless. It is the teacher’s professional responsibility to control the variables at his disposal, and to improve his ability to do so throughout his career. This is difficult to do alone; hence, the collaboration between the coach and the teacher allows the best chance for positive change.
3. All teachers can get better: New teachers need to develop broader skillsets. The best teachers can (and should) get better. The Teacher of the Year can get better and is likely the Teacher of the Year because of his or her dogged work on the craft of teaching and learning. Educators will never run out of new methods: models of instruction contain hundreds—maybe thousands—of elements, skills, and strategies on which a teacher can work. Having and using a larger skillset is always helpful to the learning environment. The goal of professional development is better teaching and learning. Indeed, getting better is the only thing.
4. Coaching is teaching, not doing: A coach should model and co-teach, but the intent is to have the teacher gain and independently use the skill. In curricular coaching, a coach may develop the first one or two lessons plans or assessments, but must also teach the teacher how to develop them. In instructional coaching, the coach may (and should) demonstrate a skill or even go into the classroom and use the desired skill with students, but the goal is that the teacher learns and uses the skill with automaticity.
These, again, are the five cyclical steps of coaching and being coached that are crucial in creating positive change in the teaching and learning process.
1. Establishing a baseline
2. From the baseline, setting a goal
3. Planning for the change and its implementation
4. Practicing the new strategy, with time for the teacher and the students to make the change
5. Assessing and celebrating growth appropriately
The remainder of this chapter goes into detail about each step of the coaching cycle.
Establishing a Baseline
As described previously, the first step of the cycle is establishing a baseline. The coach and the teacher need to take stock of current performance in order to make decisions about what specific change will have a positive effect on teaching and learning. There are several ways to determine which instructional techniques, when enhanced or added to a teacher’s repertoire, will improve instruction and, subsequently, student performance.
There are important pros and cons with any method of determining a teacher’s baseline performance. Teachers are often insecure about their performance and, while getting better is a laudable goal, they are already working hard and change seems to add to the burden. Positive language by supervisors and the coach will help. Knowing the pros and cons of each of the options should provide knowledge for both the teacher and the coach so that they can together maximize the pros and mitigate the cons. While there are several options to determine what the teacher is doing on a day-to-day basis, four are common: (1) observation, (2) teacher reflection, (3) teacher evaluation documents, and (4) student data. To help coaches select from among these options, each section includes a list of pros and cons.
Observation
Often a coach will schedule a time to observe the teacher in his or her classroom. During the observation she will take notes which she will review with the teacher at a later time. After some discussion the teacher and the coach may come to a consensus about what was happening and why. Most educators are very familiar with this process as it is usually used for teacher evaluations. Another variation of observation is for the coach to create a video recording of the teacher’s instruction. This has the added benefit that the teacher and coach are able to review the video together. Video observation is also a useful solution to scheduling conflicts—if the coach has difficulty finding time to observe a teacher in person, he or she might record a video of the class instead. The use of video as an observational tool is discussed in depth in chapter 3 (page 48).
Whether observation takes place directly or on video, the result we are looking for here is an annotated list of elements and strategies that the teacher is good at, as well as those that are ripe for improvement. The coach can refer to a list of elements from the school’s model of instruction, whether it is Marzano (2017; see appendix, page 108), Danielson (2013), or an evaluation instrument. Figure 2.2 displays an example of a coach’s observational notes, which will serve as a starting point for the conversation about what and how to change.
Figure 2.2: Observational notes.
There are pros and cons to be aware of for both the teacher and the coach.
| Pros | Cons |
| • The coach is not teaching and can view the classroom from a different perspective. She can watch a particular student or group to see what they are focused on. She can listen and watch to see how students receive the lesson. • The coach has background knowledge from seeing many teachers teach. This broadens the coach’s repertoire and provides the opportunity to see the effect of a strategy on student performance. • The coach can focus on unique aspects of the classroom. She can determine if off-task behavior is momentary, intermittent, or constant. She can see if students are using resources during the lesson. • The coach can see the classroom from the point of view of a student. Many good coaches do the lesson along with students: keeping notes, doing the activities, working the problems, and so on. | • The observation covers only a slice of the teacher’s performance. • This format is commonly used for teacher evaluation. It may make the teacher feel as though he is being judged or evaluated, both during the observation and during the later discussion. The teacher may get anxious, especially if he makes a mistake or things do not go as planned. • The teacher may prepare and present differently because he knows that he is to be observed. We all want to show our best selves, but this is counterproductive to determining what to improve in a given classroom. • The presence of the coach may affect the students as well. The students wonder, “Who is she and what’s she doing here?” The presence of a second adult in the room may change student behavior (for the better or the worse). • The teacher and the coach are observing from different points of view. The teacher should be observing student behavior for signs of learning or the lack of it and for positive or negative behaviors. He should be monitoring the lesson to ensure students are progressing and he is within an appropriate time frame. The coach is evaluating the teacher’s strategies and techniques to determine what the teacher might do differently to better meet the learning needs of the students. These different perspectives can bring conflicting understandings. |
On the whole, observation is a key tool for establishing a baseline because it provides the coach with recent, firsthand evidence.
