Notes About This Coaching Menu of Options

As a planning team, we recently created an information hub that has hyperlinks to all kinds of documents and sites, many of which we created. One of the documents that I made that is sure to impact my work is the Coaching Menu of Options. As the name suggests, this tool presents teachers with a range of ways they can engage with instructional coaching next year. I borrowed the basic chart from the teaching partner who is working with the planning team next door, and I made revisions so that our menu represents our planning team's hopes, and values. It also reflects some of the theory I think is important. I'd like to think this menu helps lay the initial groundwork for impactful collaborative work based on teachers' perceived needs. 

I've linked to “What Good Coaches Do,” a blog post by Jim Knight, a researcher who studies instructional coaching at the University of Kansas. Knight writes and preaches about research-based "partnership principles" that coaches should attend to in order to minimize the amount of resistance they encounter when trying to help teachers. Over the years, I've generally found that when coaching doesn't seem to be working, or when my work with a teacher or group of teachers feels unproductive, there's usually one of those principles that I've skipped or need to attend to. I even have favorites: 

Praxis- I love the notion that teachers' practice is always evolving based on ongoing learning, and that in coaching I have the chance every day to help teachers stretch and improve the way they work with and impact young people. 

Dialogue- This is a principle that is so important because the exchange of ideas and perceptions is so key to teacher learning and effective collaboration. I always try to remember the role of listening. In its simplest form, coaching is preparing for dialogue and engaging in dialogue. Listening is a skill that I think demands my regular practice and attention. 

Reciprocity- This principle reminds me that teaching and learning is reciprocal, in the sense that teaching and learning don't move unidirectionally. In the process of teaching, teachers learn from their students all the time and, very often, students explicitly teach us things. In coaching, reciprocity is really straightforward. If teachers don't engage in coaching, not only don't I get to help anyone, I don't learn and improve as a coach. If we look at instructional coaching through the lens of reciprocity, teachers are who work with coaches being generous.  

Equality- This principle is often forgotten because teachers and coaches jobs are different in obvious ways. Sometimes the different roles and responsibilities can be misconstrued as coaches having higher status. Knight writes: 

At the Kansas Coaching Project, where we have watched many video recordings of coaches and teachers interacting, we see talented coaches skillfully act in ways that communicate that they do not see themselves as having higher status than their collaborating teacher.
I'd like to believe that status is a worthless concept in a public school anyway. When everyone readily agrees that we're all working for the kids, it can help adults dispense with useless notions of status and get to the business of working with the students and our community better today than we did yesterday. Moreover, in my experience, when collaborative work between coaches and teachers is fun and yielding results, everyone learns and grows as a result of the impactful partnership.  

Ultimately, I hope that the work I do with teachers, and the work teachers engage in collaboratively with each other, is driven by curiosity. Along those lines, I'm curious what Highlands teachers think about the draft Coaching Menu of Options. 

What's interesting? 

What sounds daunting? 

What is unclear? 

Please reply in the comments with your thoughts. 

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