In 2017, our district, Manor Independent School District in central Texas, embarked on a journey to improve our instructional coaching. Although the Manor district had had coaches since 2013, we were not seeing the outcomes we desired in terms of student success on standardized testing, teacher retention, nor a consistent culture of growth across all campuses. All teachers had access to a coach on their campus, but not all teachers were receiving coaching; there was not a systematic process across our district. Observations of teachers who were being coached revealed inconsistent instruction that resulted in inequitable outcomes for our students.
Research shows that coaching has the power to impact teacher attitudes, practices, and efficacy, as well as student achievement (Cornett & Knight, 2009). Strong coaches, as DeWitt (2014) observed, focus on imparting best practices, connecting colleagues with one another, providing personalized learning, and supporting teachers. A good coach serves as a teacher's nonevaluative thought partner to help them reflect and improve. As leaders in our district, we believe in a growth mindset for everyone. Just as we expect our students to grow each year, it is natural to expect that same growth from teachers—and ourselves and our programs.
Getting Past Barriers
Despite the research that supports coaching, and our own beliefs, our coaches reported barriers that impeded their ability to be successful in their role. They felt isolated—no longer teachers, yet also not administrators. Some coaches experienced difficulty or didn't know how to begin building trust among teachers. Many coaches struggled to find the time to coach due to other campus responsibilities.
Furthermore, the individual schools in our district seemed to be arranging procedures for coaching independently rather than collaboratively. Each of our campuses did what they felt was best for their students, but at the district level, we lacked a systematic coaching strategy.
To address these barriers, in 2017, we—along with a fellow district coordinator Courtney Webster—began reforming our instructional coaching program to incorporate four key elements:
- Community: We established two districtwide communities of coaching cohorts.
- Relationships: We worked to strengthen relationships between coaches and teachers to help disrupt traditional hierarchies of power and clearly define a coach's role as separate from administration.
- Accountability: We increased the amount of time coaches spent in coaching cycles by requiring coaching logs and leading coaches through reflection on what they accomplished each month.
- Leadership: We added a pathway to leadership to draw on talent within the district, which boosts retention.
Community: Overcoming Isolation
Coaches are often the only person on their campus in their particular role. They are not administrators—but they are part of the leadership team; they are not teachers—but they are responsible for student achievement and often work with students in small groups. We reasoned that if teachers benefit from working together in small communities, coaches would as well.
Our district provided a way for groups of coaches to come together monthly to exchange strategies, discuss the challenges and joys of working with adult learners, think through conflicts they faced with teachers, and learn and grow together as coaches and leaders. Forming common understandings about the roles of a coach, acquiring shared vocabulary, and seeing the importance of relying on each other would, we hoped, make these educators feel less alone and more confident.
In 2017, the district had 24 coaches who we split into two coaching cohorts or "communities." One was made up of the nine early literacy coaches working in preK–2nd grade; the other, of the 15 instructional coaches who supported our upper elementary and secondary teachers. Educators in each of these communities came together monthly for the equivalent of a full day. Initially, coaches spent a lot of time on these days reflecting together about their practice, responding to prompts such as:
- What surprised you about your coaching over the past month?
- What clues do you have that you are building strong relationships with and among teachers?
- What was your biggest barrier in coaching recently? What have you tried? Where are you stuck?
Now, two years later, coaches in each of the two cohorts continue to meet monthly as a community. Meetings are held at our district office. Occasionally, literacy coaches meet at a campus to observe coaching conversations with teachers. That strategy allows the coaches to debrief in real time. Another strategy we have implemented is "sandbox time." Coaches get into small groups to generate fruitful ideas about tricky areas of a coach's work, such as data analysis, guiding the lesson planning process, or doing nonevaluative observation. They learn new approaches through role-plays, discussing how this topic is handled and viewed on various campuses, and sharing ideas or support for tackling this part of the coach's mission.
From the beginning, community time has included explicit professional learning—and still does. The two of us lead the coaches in discussions on particular topics such as coaching lenses, coaching teachers to incorporate formative assessments, and trends in coaching. Each cohort studies a book together, learning from expert authors and thinking about how the research presented could support their work. Titles we found inspiring include Jim Knight's Instructional Coaching: A Partnership Approach to Improving Instruction (Corwin, 2007) and Carol Lyons and Gay Su Pinnell's Systems for Change in Literacy Education (Heinemann, 2001). This year both cohorts will read Diane Sweeney's Student-Centered Coaching (Corwin, 2011).
When we created a purposeful space for coaches to connect, reflect, and collaborate, as expected, they did build community. They reached out to each other more for support when dealing with challenging situations, and asked for additional time to work together and learn from each other. Crucially, our coaches now feel less alone in their role as teacher leaders.
Coaches in our district's early literacy cohort share goals and strategies during a professional learning session.(Photo courtesy of Lora DeWalt)
Relationships: Care and Trust
It's vital for teachers to build relationships with students. Kids know when you really care and when you are pretending to care. They will work hard if they believe their teachers care about them—but teachers who do not build relationships with their students tend to have issues with classroom management and student achievement. We believe the same concept is true for coaches working with teachers. Some teachers are reluctant to change or hold preconceived notions about coaching. Coaches must take the time to build authentic relationships with their fellow educators so that teachers feel valued, cared about, and trusted.
We offered coaches the opportunity to discuss their progress, role-play scenarios, and offer peer-to-peer strategies during their monthly meetings. Our instructional coach cohort read Elena Aguilar's book The Art of Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013), which gives guidance on creating coach-teacher relationships. We urged coaches to follow Aguilar's 10 steps to building trust (see ""). For instance, coaches practiced listening without interrupting and being aware of body language during coaching conversations.
We talked about how teachers might want a lot of information on a coach's background. Before trust gels, coaches should be prepared to answer questions like, What experience do you have? What did you teach and for how long? What were your results? Stephen Covey (2008) defines trust as "the feeling of confidence we have in another's character and competence." Some teachers will want to see their coach's résumé to judge their competence and "worthiness." Coaches should start the year by introducing themselves and their professional pathway, to build trust through transparency.
Solid professional relationships happen when people know their own—and their co-workers'—preferences, strengths, and weaknesses. We gave the coaches the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test, which sorts for psychological preferences and perceptions to understand and appreciate differences between people. We encouraged coaches to offer the test to teachers they work with as well. We provided a resource from Jane Kise's Differentiated Coaching (Corwin, 2006) that explains how to coach the 16 different MBTI personality types. We saw how Kise's tool helps coaches work with both teachers who are willing and excited to begin coaching and reluctant teachers. Instructional coaches were asked to share their MBTI personality type with co-workers at their campus. Transparency in communication and organizational preferences helped both the teacher and the coach feel more secure in their professional relationship.
Accountability: Protecting Coaching Time
Too often, coaches wear a wide array of hats. We found our coaches' time was often lost to other duties such as substitute teaching, writing assessments, and other noncoaching tasks. Coaches lacked time and therefore mostly coached novice or struggling teachers.
In 2017, we set out to build a culture of coaching among our elementary campuses in which all teachers received coaching, regardless of student performance. Now, our district has expanded that policy to our secondary campuses, with the full support of our superintendents and principals.
To increase the number of teachers receiving coaching, we have coaches complete coaching logs recording logistical information like the teacher's name and the date and times of coaching cycle events (like pre-conference, observations, modeling, co-teaching, and post-conference). Additionally, coaches record the overall topic of each coaching cycle while maintaining confidentiality of their conversations. The logs are collected by district coordinators who support coaches in order to analyze trends across the district, which can then inform professional learning opportunities. Principals can also request to view the coaching log when they meet with coaches working in their school. The logs have increased the number of teachers participating in coaching cycles and supported our mentality of growth for all educators.
On average, our early literacy coaching cycles last about a week, and teachers receive one coaching cycle each month. Our instructional coaches will soon begin leading coaching cycles lasting 4–6 weeks as recommended in Student-Centered Coaching. To plan their time, we asked coaches to create a schedule of teachers they intend to coach and set dates for coaching events (pre-conferences, co-teaching and modeling sessions, debriefs, and so on). Coaches have flexibility to adjust their schedule, but they are expected to have a plan on their calendar.
This record keeping and planning helps us document and protect coaches' time working directly with teachers. When their time is already set, coaches are less likely to be pulled away for other duties. A firm calendar emphasizes that coaches play an important role on the campus and therefore must prioritize coaching cycles over other tasks. Additionally, it helps build trust when the coaches keep the commitments they have made with teachers.
Principals are crucial to supporting efforts to increase coaching time. Over the last few years, we've seen our district's principals support their early literacy coaches and ensure the majority of these coaches' time is spent in individual coaching cycles. For example, one campus delegated the role of Response to Intervention support person to another staff member so that the coach would have less meetings to attend. We hypothesize that some of our recent increases in student performance on elementary reading assessments are related to the increase in coaching cycles.
Leadership: Expanding Coaches' Roles
Indeed, since launching coaching in 2013, we've seen progress in our students' achievement scores. We have also heard from coaches, teachers, and administrators that the culture of coaching we've worked to create in the district is beneficial to instruction. However, we still have a long way to go. Like many other districts, ours struggles to balance the importance of coaching with the need to absorb budget cuts. We have fewer coaches than we did in 2013, but we are planning innovative solutions to maintain and continue to build on the growth we have achieved. For example, we are in the process of developing leadership pathways to recognize and support master teachers, in hopes that this will retain teachers and provide opportunities for them to grow professionally within the district.
Another solution has been to expand the scope of our early literacy coaches' role; they now support K–3rd grade classrooms to help bridge the gaps our district noticed between 2nd and 3rd grades. We plan to continue using the literacy collaborative model and envision our literacy coaching will soon incorporate video-recording for reflection and web-based professional development. Instructional coaches at the elementary campuses will focus their time on supporting 4th- and 5th-grade teachers across content areas.
Looking forward, our district has three goals for the current year. The first is to increase teachers' capacity for self-reflection (with the coach as a sounding board) and provide teachers time during coaching cycles to determine for themselves areas of need or growth. Second, we hope to maximize the use of time in the classroom for high-quality instruction, particularly at the secondary level. Coaches will support pacing in middle school classrooms so that these 50-minute classes are organized for impact without rushing instruction. Additionally, coaches at the high school level will help teachers take advantage of block scheduling, which we recently shifted to.
Our third goal is to boost coach retention. In our district, coaches tend to stay in their position for an average of two years. When coaches leave the district, they take with them the knowledge and skills they have learned as educational leaders. We then must start again with novice coaches. To combat this cycle and ensure the district's investment in human capital stays with us for multiple years, we are working toward creating training opportunities that prepare coaches for future roles in district leadership—for instance, assistant principals or district content coordinators—and clear pathways for current teachers to become instructional leaders on their campuses.
Reflecting on Our Journey
Just as teachers must be responsive to students, coaches must be responsive to the needs of their teachers and schools—and we as district leaders must be responsive to the needs of our coaches and all our campuses. We're still continuing to build and grow our coaching model to fit our district's unique needs. Our journey has allowed us to apply stellar ideas from many educational researchers and experts who have paved the way for our success. We are excited to see where the incredible talents and hard work from our coaches and district leadership takes us in the future.
Ten Steps to Building Trust Between Coach and Teacher
1. Plan and prepare
2. Gather background information
3. Establish confidentiality
4. Listen
5. Ask questions
6. Connect
7. Validate
8. Be open about who you are and what you do
9. Ask permission to coach
10. Keep commitments
Source: The Art of Coaching: Effective Strategies for School Transformation by Elena Aguilar (Jossey-Bass, 2013).
