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“I can’t wait to tell you about a coaching conversation this week,” Sandi said when I ran into her in the hall. “Molly was so excited about her lesson, and the question I planned to ask her really paid off.” Sandi is part of a group of coaches I’ve been working with, using the GIR model to support cycles of coaching. In recent weeks our focus has been on asking questions to guide teacher reflection. This week, when I began our meeting by asking for celebrations, Sandi jumped right in to tell her story. Molly, a teacher Sandi was working with, was so excited about a lesson she had just taught that she asked to meet with Sandi a day earlier than they had planned. Seeing Molly’s enthusiasm, Sandi rearranged her schedule and prepared for their conference. Questioning had been a productive strategy in her recent meetings with Molly, and she felt it should still be her dominant coaching move. Seeing Molly’s excitement about her lesson, she knew a different kind of questions was called for, s...

A couple of years ago, I had a coaching experience I’d rather not repeat. I was working with a student teacher at the time, but the lessons learned could apply to any coaching experience. The intern (who I’ll call Amber) had been on my radar since early in the student-teaching experience. Scores on her evaluations were low, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Amber’s dead-pan deliver left students unengaged, which opened up all kinds of possibilities for classroom management issues. In addition, her instructional plans were driven by teacher monolog (or ping-ponged teacher-student drills) rather than discussion, and the low expectations that she seemed to have for student learning became self-fulfilling prophesies. Despite assigning her the best mentor teachers as models and conferring regularly with specific recommendations for change, as the end of the student-teaching experience approached, I was worried about whether I’d be able to recommend Amber for licensure. It was time to enla...

When it’s time to shift the weight of responsibility for improving instruction, alternating between recommending and questioning as coaching moves can provide a productive balance. As teachers are getting more comfortable with new instructional approaches, they might still benefit from your recommendations. You can appropriately make suggestions during planning conversations, but using questions intentionally as a coaching move during debrief will give the teacher you’re working with the opportunity to gain her own insights through reflection. It’s all too easy to continue recommending beyond the time when the teacher is ready to do the lifting on her own. You shift the weight of responsibility for improvement to her as you recommend less and question more. With a mixture of recommending and questioning, there’s a healthy back-and-forth action between who is providing the answers. Before long, the teacher will be doing all of the heavy lifting. I talked with a coach this week who had i...

Have you gotten used to writing “2016” yet? Before the new year becomes old hat, take advantage of the increased motivation that accompanies a fresh start and help teachers maintain their new-year enthusiasm for teaching as the calendar pages turn. Motivation catalyzes the success of an organization, so efforts to maintain drive and enthusiasm among teachers can pay off in important ways. Research suggests that coaches and other instructional leaders can create a climate that nurtures motivation. Here’s how: Recall Successes Revisiting a personal success can increase motivation. When I debriefed with a teacher about a lesson that had frustrated her, I realized the tone of our conversation needed to change. I asked her when she had taught a similar lesson that went well. It didn’t take long for her to remember such a lesson. The smile returned to her face as she reflected on this triumph, and we learned a lot together as we compared the two lessons. Self-efficacy – our belief about our ...

Last week’s post focused on the benefits of focusing on tangible feedback from students during a debrief conversation. Looking at student work and students at work provides data about whether the lesson’s objectives were achieved. Kid-watching is an important part of a coach’s job! Ultimately, the teacher should automatically focus her attention on this tangible feedback, but initially the coach might support such reflection through her recommendations. What  bridges the gap between the coach making recommendations about feedback and the teacher independently taking this action? As with other teaching moves we are trying to develop, asking questions helps build that independence. This week, as I met with a teacher to reflect on a lesson I’d observed. I started by asking, “What do you think went really well during that lesson?” She said she thought the students really “got it” – she felt they had achieved the lesson objective - understanding about numbers between zero and one on a ...

When a tennis player lofts the ball, she gets immediate feedback: it either stays in bounds or it is out. Similarly, teachers get immediate feedback on their instruction: whether or not their students are learning is an indication of their success. Some teachers are very tuned in to this feedback, but others need a nudge to shift their attention from what they are doing to what their students are doing. Whether it’s the little things (like a blank stare after new content has been explained) or bigger things (like a masterfully-completed project), helping teachers tune in to the tangible feedback given directly by students is more important in the long run than the indirect feedback they might occasionally get from us. When I’m observing a teacher, I’ve noticed that I have to remind myself, too, to shift my focus regularly to what the students are doing. It’s easy to get comfortable in the chair at the back table and take notes on what the teacher is doing. But I don’t really know how...

As a coach or mentor, it feels good to make a recommendation that is just right for the teacher and comes at just the right time. Even better is seeing that the suggestion is actually implemented and moves the teacher’s learning forward! In previous posts we’ve talked about ways for increasing the likeliness of this outcome; for example, being specific and offering choice can increase the uptake on your recommendations. Another way to increase implementation is to make the recommendations part of a conversation. When conferring with a teacher who might benefit from your suggestions, it helps to frame the recommendation within a comfortable context. For example, I’ve been talking with Kate about writing conferences, but writing isn’t Kate’s strong suit. She has a math brain and is a natural problem-solver. So it helped when I began our conversation about writing conferences by thinking with her about how she provides feedback in math. “I love trying to figure out what they’re doing,” sh...