Being an instructional coach is humbling. On my best days, my time is spent in perpetual reflection with teachers: sponging up emotions, unsticking thinking, affirming ideas, or supporting lessons in real time within the classroom. On other days, I'm the teacher voice at the table where decision makers introduce initiatives that have a serious impact on staff and students. I am not an administrator, which often spurs people to ask me, "When are you going to be a principal?"—as if shifting to administration is the natural next step. The implication is that leadership in schools has to be hierarchical and there is something more or better about leading from the top.
But as Simon Sinek (2014) argues, "Leadership is a choice. It is not a rank." After 17 years in the classroom, I decided to step beyond my classroom and into a role of guiding other teachers—and I realized that teachers themselves can choose leadership by sharing their own wealth to refine instruction, theirs and others'.
Of Craft Knowledge and Learning
No one told me how to do this coaching job, so I've continuously revised my approach to find what works to support all teachers. I have learned far more about instruction as an instructional coach than I ever could from a coach. After I began creating experiences for teachers within one another's classrooms, I realized that not only is studying one another's instructional practices as a community essential in becoming more effective for our students, but it also lifts teachers up as leaders.
When I first began serving as an instructional coach at Robbinsdale Armstrong High School in Plymouth, Minnesota, I set out to improve instruction one teacher at a time. There has always been an expectation for me to coach individual teachers to reflect on their practice and implement strategies that engage students, decrease behavior issues, and increase learning. And it works. In a year-end survey of Armstrong teachers, many reported that they valued how I challenged them to think more deeply about instruction. First-year teacher or veteran, everyone I worked with realized that he or she had something more to learn.
Knowing this caused me to wonder whether I could leverage the system to affect a greater number of teachers, particularly as I realized how much I was learning just by stepping in and out of many classrooms.
As a coach, I was introduced to a mosaic of communities, rituals, and levels of inquiry and engagement. I was witnessing what Barth (2001) calls craft knowledge, the "massive collection of experiences and learnings that those who live and work under the roof of the schoolhouse inevitably accrue during their careers" (p. 56). Some teachers lectured from slides; others had students debate in Philosophical Chairs. Many lined up the desks in rows; others clustered them in small groups or arranged them in a circle. In one room, Chromebooks and phones were viewed as a distraction, whereas in another, technology was an integral part of the lesson. Learning looked different in each space. The experience was eye-opening, and I wanted teachers to have it too.
Letting Teachers In on the Experience
In Jerry Seinfeld's TV show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, he drives other famous comedians around in classic cars and interviews them. In one episode, Jim Carrey tells Seinfeld, referring to joke writing, "I used to watch you at the Improv when I was starting out and I was like, this guy is a mechanic. He's an amazing mechanic." Watching this episode, I began to see parallels between joke construction and lesson plan writing, and I understood what was missing from the current coaching model: a culture of studying our practice by watching one another teach.
Part of the benefit of visiting other learning environments is watching teachers make real-time decisions in response to students. I noticed when a teacher subtly brushed a hand across her forehead, cuing a student to remove his hat. I saw how students began to problem solve as a group when the teacher stepped back and to the side. While teachers taught or facilitated, I used the time to reflect on how I could have applied what I was seeing to my own classroom—if I still had a classroom.
Other teachers needed to see what I was seeing, and we needed to learn together. I began to see the classroom as a space for professional development. This learning was richer than the kind that transpires while we sit among other adults at professional learning sessions in hotel conference rooms. It included students and was steeped in classroom culture.
At the time, Armstrong teachers collaborated in professional learning communities, but as they shared lesson plans and analyzed data, they were describing and listening to—not experiencing—the work of colleagues. The discussions stayed technical; they lacked inquiry and wonder about improving the craft. Teachers weren't seeing one another teach, and rather than blaming the schedule or the building culture that didn't support it, I had to find a way to get them into one another's classrooms, sharing their practices. So, with a nod to Seinfeld, I set up Teachers in Classrooms Getting Connected, a system to free teachers up to visit classrooms during the school day. Seinfeld had comedians in a car getting coffee—what would we be getting? Connected.
I was clear that teachers should be entering one another's spaces not to critique a colleague, but to study the learning environment that the teacher had created through established rituals, routines, and relationships. We would focus on student engagement and approach the moment as learners, not evaluators, accepting the premise that we have lots to learn from one another. I imagined that the best design would enable teachers to simply share their practice, essentially leading colleagues to improve instruction from within their rooms without any extra preparation or the need to take on any new role.
Approaching the work collectively might help avoid the teacher culture taboo that Barth (2001) describes: the code that says, "Thou shalt not distinguish thyself from the rest—nor even appear to distinguish thyself from the rest" (p. 58). With so many people participating, it would be possible to establish a new norm in which people open up their classrooms and let others in. Rather than feel the stress of teaching their peers a particular strategy or calling attention, in front of a group, to what has worked, teachers could be their best selves with their students—just like any other day—and the burden would be on visiting teachers to explore the space and notice practices that they deemed unique or excellent. If a visiting teacher later told others about the expertise or effective strategies of a teacher she observed, the act of singling that peer out would seem to fall within the parameters of the teacher code.
Marketing the experience would be important because I didn't want teachers to feel threatened. One key was not to use the word observation, which is loaded with evaluative energy. Instead, I used the word visit—like we were stopping in to join the learning community for a moment. Another key was to establish norms to frame how we would each be in the spaces. I determined that I would not join people on their visits, nor would we follow a pre/post model that put me in a position to teach people about what they had experienced.
My leadership role became that of an architect designing an opportunity for teachers to learn from one another. Block (2008) writes about leaders as social architects: "Community building requires a concept of the leader as one who creates experiences for others—experiences that in themselves are examples of our desired future" (p. 86). Teachers' "desired future" is one in which their instruction meets the needs of all students.
Setting the Stage
For the inaugural round, I invited teachers into the experience with four questions: (1) What can we learn from getting into other people's classrooms? (2) What ideas can we gather for ourselves? (3) What does the experience make us think about our own teaching? and (4) What questions are we left with? I anticipated that 15 people would be interested, so I was stunned when more than 50 teachers signed up to participate. I expanded my original plan and set a two-day schedule that provided substitutes to relieve teachers of their supervision duties so they could each visit a classroom.
I sent the entire staff a Google Form to elicit participants and gather information about each teacher's availability and preferences: Did they want to see a particular teacher or course? Someone within their PLC or department—or outside their department? (Many people clicked, "Surprise Me!," which gave me more flexibility.)
For the initial round, I made sure that every teacher who signed up to visit another classroom also had a visitor come to his or her own classroom, to stress that we all had something to learn from one another and that there wasn't one small group of expert teachers. Now, I've relaxed that rule a bit in an effort to draw in younger teachers who are hesitant to have veteran teachers visit their rooms. (They get one round as a visitor only, and after that they must be observed also.) I did my best to accommodate requests like "I want to observe a teacher who is more organized than me." If a teacher requested to see someone who had not signed up to participate, I sent an e-mail asking permission for the teacher to visit that colleague's room.
I made every effort to schedule only one visitor per classroom per period, but occasionally allowed two visitors to accommodate teacher requests. Some teachers had visitors during multiple periods throughout the two days, others only one. The final schedule fit together like pieces in the game Tetris. I wanted every teacher to have the best experience possible so they would participate again.
On the day of the visits, I established norms that each participant agreed to follow: arrive on time; stay for the entire period; resist the urge to talk with students; remember that conversations with students and the teacher are at the teacher's discretion; and say thank you. An informal handout for observers reinforced that we were not evaluating, but merely taking the opportunity to observe a peer's practice and reflect on our own. The handout contained two overarching questions for teachers to consider during their visit: What does learning look like in other classrooms? and How are other teachers working to engage students? It also included places for teachers to take notes on three specifics: What do I notice? What does it make me wonder? and How have I benefitted from this experience? (See a sample handout.)
At the end of the inaugural round, I facilitated a 20-minute "brief debrief" after school. More than 40 teachers attended, bringing their handouts with reflective notes, and discussed in small groups what they'd noticed. They made connections with one another about what they saw and how it influenced their thinking about their own classrooms. One teacher reflected, "I want to try to bring real-world articles into my classroom related to the material we are learning like the teacher I observed does." Another recognized, "I need to focus on a goal of quality and less on a goal of completing a checklist."
As hosts, teachers shared that they wanted to make sure their visitor had something good to see; observation seemed to inspire teachers to be more thoughtful about their lesson design for the day, not from fear of evaluation, but out of pride in their practice. One host teacher commented that visitors weren't always aware of the context of the lesson, which "forced me to think about how to explain and facilitate the lesson so they could grasp it as well—which only helped the students understand the concept better, too."
Initially, I'd thought it might pose a problem if teachers saw any instruction that wasn't the best. But as our learning community grew and teachers reflected, we realized that teachers felt supported even when visitors witnessed challenging environments and saw the host teacher struggling. Teachers always found ways to gain from what they experienced.
It wasn't perfect, but it was a start. Ninety-six percent of the participants reported that they were looking forward to another round of classroom visits. Most commented that the experience was valuable. As we complete more rounds of Teachers in Classrooms, teachers are recognizing that, "I can be an instructional leader without taking on an official leadership role."
Letting the Horses Run
"You need to let the horses run." That's how our head principal describes how he leads our talented veteran staff. He sees teachers as professionals and believes teachers initiate the best, most lasting work in our building, reflecting Danielson's (2006) contention:
Leadership in schools need not be hierarchical; communication need not be a one-way proposition. And while schools, like other organizations, need to have someone in charge, there are ways of being in charge that not only honor the expertise of teachers but unleash the power of genuine leadership in them. (pp. 10–11)
Because of our principal's approach, I am free to coach throughout the building and design professional learning experiences for staff. Teachers are encouraged to lead efforts to improve learning from within their classrooms: English teachers redesign courses to dismantle tracking, science teachers digitize learning for students, and music teachers take students around the United States to perform. But often, teachers in various departments aren't aware of the feats colleagues in other departments are accomplishing. Through frequent mutual observation, we see and share all the great work being done around our building, beyond technical descriptions that live within PLCs and individual departments. This amplifies the influence of each success. We realize that all teachers, not just those deemed exemplary, deserve and benefit from a community of shared practice.
Learning and Leadership Revealed
We recently completed our fourth round of Teachers in Classrooms Getting Connected, and nearly 75 percent of Armstrong's staff members have now participated. Teachers continue to provide feedback that reveals the high level of reflection this professional development has inspired. Through surveys and "brief debriefs," teachers note how they've changed their practice after watching a peer.
We've tweaked how we operate the program, often in response to teachers' suggestions. ("Let's figure out how to spend more one-on-one time with the teacher you observed to ask questions.") Recently, I've revised the guiding questions to focus on a new theme each round. (We just finished "Community" and will move to "Innovation" next.) Some teachers are interested in learning about particular strategies, such as teaching writing to a certain age group; others use the experience to become more a part of the school community and talk to colleagues outside their department.
Teachers in Classrooms Getting Connected reminds all of us that just as students thrive in a safe, engaging learning environment, so do teachers.
