Educational Coaching

A Partnership for Problem Solving

Cathy A. Toll

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781416625643
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Educational coaches—whether math, literacy, instructional, or curriculum coaches—vary in the content of the work they do and in the grade range of the teachers with whom they work. But "good coaching is good coaching, " as coaching expert Cathy A. Toll affirms in this, her newest book. All coaches seek to help solve problems and increase teacher success, and they all depend on effective collaboration to do so.

This practical guide shows readers how to get the most out of educational coaching. It details

• Models of coaching that enhance teachers' thinking, help them overcome obstacles to success, and lead to lasting change.
• Three phases of the problem-solving cycle.
• Characteristics of effective coaching conversations.
• Components of CAT—connectedness, acceptance, and trustworthiness—that are essential to the partnership.
• Practices that support teamwork.

Toll also tackles the obstacles that hinder a coach's success—administrators who don't understand coaching and teachers who don't want to engage. Full of insights and answers, Educational Coaching is for all coaches and those who lead them.

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Chapter 1

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Coaching 101

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> How is educational coaching defined?

> How does educational coaching differ from other forms of teacher professional development?

> What qualities do coaches need to have?

Chapter 1 Vignette

Ginger Laidlaw is a middle school curriculum coordinator who has been asked to include coaching in her work this year. She's taken the lead in furthering a schoolwide initiative to include writing in all aspects of the curriculum, so she decides to make that initiative the focus of her coaching. She announces to teachers at the back-to-school faculty meeting that she'd like to meet with teachers individually to review lesson plans and coach them to include writing in their instruction.

As Ginger meets with teachers, she finds that although they all present lesson plans that include writing, the writing is either assigned with no support or is superficial, such as writing a caption for a photo. In these meetings, she explains how to improve the lesson plans; the teachers thank her, and they part company. In follow-up coaching sessions, Ginger finds that teachers either didn't implement her suggestions or implemented them and didn't like the results. Ginger doesn't feel that her work as a coach is having any positive effect.

When coaching became popular in U.S. schools in the early 2000s, it spread quickly and according to the understanding of a variety of practitioners. As a result, there are many versions of educational coaching to be found. This chapter will provide basics about coaching that will establish a common ground from which to proceed. Whether you're highly experienced or new to coaching, I urge you to read this chapter. It's crucial for understanding the key concepts on which this book is built.

Coaching Defined

Despite the many articles and books written on educational coaching, specific definitions of coaching are hard to come by. Most agree that coaches provide a kind of professional development and that this professional development occurs in relationship to individuals and teams of teachers. From there, though, definitions are often vague or nonexistent. So for starters, let's agree on what an educational coach is.

Early in my work with coaches, I defined an educational coach as someone who helped teachers identify their strengths, grow those strengths, and develop new strengths (Toll, 2005). I developed this definition to emphasize that coaching was a positive experience for every educator, not something solely for ineffective teachers—and I stand by it. However, it is a bit general and, therefore, I've developed a second definition to accompany the first:

Educational coaches partner with teachers for job-embedded professional learning that enhances teachers' understanding of students, the curriculum, and pedagogy for the purpose of solving problems that impede teacher success and pursuing interests that enhance teacher success.

This definition has several significant components:

• Coaching is a partnership. It's a collaboration between equals. The coach may steer the process, but the teacher has the final say in what is discussed and what actions are taken as a result.
• Coaching is job-embedded, meaning that it attends to teachers' own classrooms and their own strengths, needs, and interests.
• Coaching is about professional learning. When coaching is effective, teachers learn.
• Coaching enhances teachers' capacity; coaches don't "fix" teachers or tell them what to do.
• Coaching supports reflection about students, the curriculum, and pedagogy. Too often, coaching processes emphasize only one aspect of the work of teaching—for instance, when coaches and teachers address only best practices or student data. Coaching partnerships must consider all three aspects of the work.
• Coaching helps teachers enhance their success as teachers. Teachers learn to solve problems that get in the way of their success. They also pursue interests that can increase their success, such as integrating the curriculum, developing new instructional plans, or using digital technologies.

My more precise definition of coaching is applicable to coaches with a variety of labels. It applies to math coaches, literacy coaches, instructional coaches, curriculum coaches, and others in coaching roles. Sometimes people think that a different label for the coach leads to a different definition of coaching, but I find that coaching is coaching. What changes is the focus of the coach's content or the outcome in relation to a program or subject discipline. What doesn't change is the purpose for coaching and the manner in which coaches and teachers collaborate.

Coaching and Other Forms of Professional Development

The criticism of "sit-and-get" approaches to professional development is well known, and educational coaching has grown in part because it provides an alternative. Interestingly, coaching can enhance even traditional approaches to professional development that consist of an expert's presentation by providing additional follow-up reflection and problem solving (Showers & Joyce, 2002). Nevertheless, many school districts are moving toward approaches to professional development that are more engaging and collaborative than presentation-style efforts, including professional learning communities or teams, book study groups, and mentoring, as well as educational coaching. In addition, schools often hire content-area specialists, such as math specialists and reading specialists, with professional development among their duties.

I'm often asked to explain the differences among the various approaches to teacher learning as they pertain to coaching. Here's a view of coaching in the contexts of professional learning communities, mentoring, study groups, and content specialization.

Coaching and Professional Learning Communities

In many schools, teachers now collaborate in small teams that typically consist of individuals from the same grade level or department. Sometimes these teams are referred to as professional learning communities, and sometimes they're called professional learning teams. I'll use the former term here for convenience.

Professional learning communities meet for a variety of purposes, sometimes explicitly laid out by school leaders and sometimes assumed by the participants. Thus, teams meet to pass on information from administrators, to develop curriculum, to analyze student data, to collaborate in planning lessons, and for many other purposes.

When professional learning communities attend to the "L" in their title—learning—there can be a role for an educational coach. Coaches, with their skill in facilitating teacher reflection and problem solving, are ideal facilitators of learning done by teams. Please note that everything in this book applies to coaches' work with teams of teachers as well as with individuals. There are some characteristics of professional learning communities that make coaching a bit more challenging, which I will address in Chapter 7.

Coaching and Mentoring

Coaching and mentoring are sometimes confused. Sometimes they overlap, but there are important differences between them. A key distinction is the difference in clients. Coaches' clients are teachers: Coaching is job-embedded and focuses on teachers' challenges and interests. In contrast, mentors have several clients. Mentors work with new teachers to help them adjust to the teaching profession, learn about district and school policies and practices, and develop their teaching practice so their students learn. Mentors' clients include administrators, teachers, and even teaching in general, given that mentoring has been promoted as a way to retain new teachers in the profession. Mentors sometimes attend to the challenges and interests of the new teachers they work with, but mentors also attend to the curriculum, human resources information, or administrative tasks. Thus, coaching is likely one of the tactics in mentors' toolkits, but, understandably, mentors must perform many other tasks as well.

Coaching and Study Groups

Another kind of small-group professional development is the study group, often organized around a topic for inquiry or a professional book. The discussion in study groups may enhance teacher knowledge and skill without any assistance from an educational coach. However, group discussions usually benefit from a facilitator, and coaches typically have skills that make them effective facilitators. Coaches' support of inquiry groups or book study groups is not educational coaching per se, but coaches' good questioning and careful listening are likely to assist such groups in furthering participants' professional learning. Tips for a coach's role in relation to study groups are found in Chapter 9.

Coaching and Content Specialization

Math and reading specialists, and occasionally other content-area specialists, have in recent years found coaching on their list of duties. Frequently, they're challenged to balance their time between coaching and other responsibilities. However, in the absence of a job description that clearly delineates the specialist's duties or of an agreement as to what percentage of time is to be devoted to coaching, the coaching role often loses out.

An additional challenge for many specialists is that they may be asked to represent their school or district administration in passing on policy information, leading curriculum implementation, or completing other tasks that put them "in charge." When these specialists shift to a coaching role, the teachers they work with may struggle to be open and vulnerable because the specialists seem more like administrators. When asked to represent the school or district in a given task, the specialists may wish to speak in the third person, in order to clarify for teachers that they are not acting in a policymaker role—for instance, by saying, "The principal has asked me to share her policy on…" And, of course, savvy specialists will use their best coaching qualities when asked to do non-coaching duties so that the difference between their behavior when coaching and when performing other tasks is not too great.

Qualities of Effective Educational Coaches

I've given you my definition of coaching and clarified how coaching pertains to a variety of professional development contexts. But what about the coaches themselves?

Coaches begin successful partnerships when they demonstrate the following qualities:

• Connectivity: Coaches engage with their partners.
• Acceptance: Coaches welcome whatever teachers have to say and whatever efforts teachers put forth.
• Trustworthiness: Coaches respect what teachers tell them and maintain confidentiality.

Notice that Connection, Acceptance, and being Trustworthy create the acronym CAT. If you want to be clever, you can use cat imagery and cat-related phrases to help remember the three qualities. For instance, you and your coach colleagues might wear cat-shaped pins to remind yourselves of your coach qualities of connectivity, acceptance, and being trustworthy. Or you might think of being a cool cat or the cat's meow when you engage effectively as a coach. (C.A.T., by the way, are also my initials—coincidence, I assure you.)

Some coaches seem naturally inclined to connect, accept, and be trustworthy, whereas others have to work at it, but every coach can develop the CAT qualities described below.

Connectivity

To connect with teachers, coaches must be attentive and mentally present. Coaches who worry about an interaction they previously had with their teacher partners or who are thinking ahead to the next meeting of the day are not likely to connect with the teachers with whom they're presently working.

To strengthen their ability to connect well, coaches might develop practices to enhance their attentiveness. Some coaches practice meditation or yoga. Some use prayer, music, or nature to enhance their focus on the moment. Others use visual reminders, such as a sticky note on the corner of their tablet on which they've written "now." Sitting quietly and taking some deep breaths before a coaching conversation can be helpful as well.

Coaches must reach out to the teachers with whom they wish to connect. In other words, coaches shouldn't wait for teachers to approach them. (As a teacher, you wouldn't sit at your desk and wait for students to ask you to teach them, would you?) I encourage coaches to start the school year by scheduling a meeting with each teacher with whom they wish to connect, with the goal of engaging teachers in the problem-solving cycle through coaching conversations.

Occasionally when coaches approach teachers to arrange a meeting, the teachers beg off, saying they're too busy. Similarly, when coaches and teachers have arranged to meet, teachers will occasionally fail to show up at the scheduled time. In both situations, coaches are wise to persist in a gentle way. If teachers say they're busy, patiently ask when they will indeed have time. If teachers fail to show up, find them later that day or the next morning and get another meeting on the calendar. Continue to reach out until a meeting does occur.

Acceptance

Successful educational coaches are accepting of all teacher partners, despite any differences that exist. The biggest obstacles to acceptance are coaches' judgment and fear. Judgment gets in the way when coaches listen to their partners with an ear for catching something that is wrong, either because it doesn't accurately represent the coach's understanding or because it seems like a bad idea. Coaches who want to be more receptive to their partners might practice saying to themselves, "and this" in response to what they hear, as shorthand for, "and this is part of the conversation that I accept as well." Thus, when a teacher says, "I don't think my students like to read!" a coach might mentally think, "and this" and continue listening, without becoming distracted by whether she agrees or disagrees with the teacher's statement. It's mind training for responding in a neutral manner.

Acceptance can also be blocked by fear, usually because coaches worry that their partnership with a teacher will lead to something that makes them look bad. For instance, when a teacher tells a coach that she wants her students to memorize the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution and the coach knows that the class includes students with individualized education programs (IEPs) who will never be able to memorize that text, the coach may feel a need to quickly quash the teacher's idea. To remain accepting, coaches might shore up their attentiveness skills and then ask good questions about what their teacher partners have in mind. When coaches learn more, they show their receptiveness and sometimes quell their fears because they may learn that their teacher partners have a more reasoned plan than they thought. In addition, when coaches steer teachers through the problem-solving cycle, they help their teacher partners enhance their decision-making processes to better decide for themselves what instructional practices will be best.

Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness is tricky because coaches cannot really practice their trustworthiness until they have something to be trustworthy about. In other words, teachers have to do something or tell something to the coach before coaches can show they can be trusted with that information or observation—and often teachers need to trust coaches to engage in doing or telling something from the start.

To optimize the chances that this dance of trustworthiness can begin, coaches should meet with teacher partners in a private space with the door closed. They can also tell the teacher in advance that coaching is like Las Vegas—what happens there, stays there—and they can ta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Coaching 101
• Chapter 2. Coaching for Change
• Chapter 3. Coaching for Problem Solving
• Chapter 4. Coaching Conversations for Implementing the Problem-Solving Cycle
• Chapter 5. Developing Coaching Partnerships
• Chapter 6. Communication for Partnering and Problem Solving
• Chapter 7. Problem Solving with Teams
• Chapter 8. What Gets in Your Way?
• Chapter 9. Additional Tasks for Coaches
• Chapter 10. Conclusion: Trusting the Process, Your Colleagues, Yourself
• References
• Narrative Bibliography
• Related ASCD Resources
• About the Author
• Copyright