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“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” ~Cynthia Ocelli Sometimes, change and growth are miniscule and incremental. We hardly know they are happening. Looking back on where we were, we are surprised at what we’ve now become. But sometimes, sometimes growth is like Ocelli’s quote, above. Sometimes, change and growth look like destruction. Sometimes we feel cracked. Sometimes, everything spills out before change and growth occur. Sometimes it has to be that way. As coaches, we are agents of change and growth. Sometimes, we work with teachers whose incremental growth gradually moves them to become better than they were. Some teachers, though, seem stuck in their shell. Familiar routines and practices are comfortable and protective. Their shell seems hard, until one day, somehow, it comes undone. Lynn was ...

Are you working with a teacher who is desperately hanging on to old ways of doing things? Jennifer Schwanke calls these teachers “Pumpkin Patch Teachers,” referencing a social studies teacher she knew who, every year around Halloween, made each student buy a pumpkin and dress it up as a character from American history…..even after American history was no longer part of her grade level standards. The project should have disappeared, but didn’t, because it was fun, easy, and enjoyed by both the teacher and her students. Working with Pumpkin Patch teachers can be discouraging. Over the years I’ve noticed a few coaching strategies that encourage reluctant teachers to embrace innovation—or at least try s omething new! Here are a few ideas you might consider when working with reluctant teachers: I frequently espouse the merits of modeling , and this coaching move can encourage change with teachers who are highly-invested in the status quo. Seeing a strategy work, especially in her own clas...

Teaching is hard. I don’t need to enumerate the reasons why. We all know. Change is difficult, too. It requires us to leave comfortable routines behind. Coaching tackles these two hard things together – teaching and change. So we can’t expect it to be easy. By acknowledging the struggle and complexity of the process, coaches can clear the way for progress. Most things in life require balance, and your response to complaints definitely calls for careful consideration. Ignoring the difficulty of a situation can come off as inauthentic, but you don’t want to become a negative venting place. A response that has worked well for me is, “It’s hard, isn’t it?” A colleague described all the data required for RtI, and her complaining seemed to be blocking progress with this new intervention process. Her demeanor changed when I acknowledged her concerns with, “It’s hard, isn’t it?” It seemed that being heard—feeling that her struggles were understood—opened the path for moving forward. The compla...

As professionals, teachers are lifelong learners seeking continuous improvement, and coaches can play a supportive role. Successful coaching is a developmental process that is responsive to teachers’ changing needs. Effective coaches provide more assistance in the beginning, when something new is being learned, and gradually reduce that support as teachers develop additional expertise for the new approach. The GIR model is an adaptation of Pearson and Gallagher’s Gradual Release of Responsibility model, which many teachers have read about and used to guide their instruction. Like the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model, the GIR coaching model shows how support changes over time. In the GIR process, coaches model , make recommendations , ask inquiring and probing questions , affirm teachers’ appropriate decisions, and praise in order to provide decreasing scaffolding that moves teachers toward skillful use of effective instructional practices. Coaching moves serve as scaffolds for...

In the movie, The Wizard of Oz , Dorothy seeks help from the all-powerful Oz, hoping he can solve her problems and those of her friends. After she lifts the veil to reveal a bumbling man pulling levers, her hopes are dashed. However, Oz provides all they need: heart, brain, courage, and power to go home. Revealing the mechanisms behind the scene did nothing to reduce the assistance that Oz could provide, even though he felt exposed when the veil was lifted. Like the Wizard, for years I kept the veil drawn on the help I was providing as a coach. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I was afraid that being transparent about my coaching moves would make the process feel less authentic. And maybe there’s some truth to that. But I’ve found that when I have lifted the veil and shared the GIR Coaching Model, it has been well received by the teachers I’m working with. The Gradual Increase of Responsibility Model for Coaching and Mentoring (below), turns the familiar GRR teaching model on its head by putt...

As a coach, it’s handy to have some open-ended prompts on the tip of your tongue – ones that can be used in most situations and that give you time to get your feet under you while you figure out the situation. My favorite new phrase for this is, “Tell me more.” Asking a teacher to simply tell me more gives her permission to let her ideas tumble from her brain. Keeping the prompt simple and straightforward allows the teacher to focus more on her own thinking and less on what I am asking her to do. A complicated prompt can overwhelm; a simple prompt opens room for reflection and helps the teacher articulate that nagging something about the lesson that just didn’t feel quite right. That’s what happened in my recent debrief conversation with Alison. She said that overall she felt good about the lesson, but she felt there was room for improvement. “Tell me more,” I said. “I want my students to share their experiences, but I think I may have let them share too much during the lesson,” Alison...

The Gradual Increase of Responsibility Model for Coaching and Mentoring is a guide to support learning: specifically, the learning of teachers. But as learners, teachers aren’t so different from the students they work with. Everyone benefits from a good model. I observed the importance of modeling in a first grade classroom recently. After explaining the task, which involved creating arrays on a grid using Unifix cubes, the teacher did something that made all the difference in students’ understanding of the task. He sat down in the middle of the carpet, gathered students all around him, and did a “fishbowl” model of the process. Then he sent students on their way to do it on their own. Afterwards, the teacher talked about the lesson. “Even though I say it, they don’t really hear it,” he said, talking about his oral instructions. “They’ve got to see me doing the process. That’s when they understand.” Like their students, teachers sometimes need a good model. If you’ve made a recommenda...