Top 10 Most Popular
Blog Posts of 2020
What Teachers Have Found to Be Essential to Remote Teaching
We’ve been awfully curious about how educators have handled the stay-at-home orders; specifically, what teachers have been focusing on and noticing in their remote teaching. At this early stage of the work, we realize everyone is creating their own interpretation, but...
Joellen Killion Teaches Us About the 10 Roles of a Coach
As the impact of COVID-19 continues to affect our lives, most of us are striving to learn new ways to do our jobs and maintain relationships. In times like these, it can be helpful to clearly define our roles so we can be sure we are still meeting the needs of all of...
Refining the Impact Cycle: The First Coaching Conversation
"Tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today." —African Proverb For coaching to succeed, it needs to get off on the right foot. For that reason, we suggest that coaches have a short conversation with their collaborating teacher to ensure that both teacher...
How to Reboot Your Coaching Approach
For any number of reasons, you may be thinking it is time to reboot the way you are coaching. Maybe you have made some miscalculations about how to approach people – you don't feel certain relationships are where they need to be, and you want to see if your approach...
Seven Success Factors for Great Instructional Coaching
Why are some instructional coaching programs more successful than others? Coaches and onsite professional developers often find themselves in high-stakes, critically important roles expected to lead school reform efforts with little or no professional...
Great Questions for Instructional Coaches
For the past few years, I’ve been asking people for their metaphor for coaching, and I’ve heard a number of different suggestions, including a sherpa, sour dough yeast, and the gobstopper that Violet eats in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Two metaphors have been...
Preparing for the New School Year #4: The Impact Cycle Checklist
In the first three posts of our Preparing for the New School Year series, we covered strategies to enroll teachers in coaching, using group presentations to enroll teachers, and the importance of establishing role clarity and agreeing on time management with an...
The Instructional Playbook: The Missing Link for Translating Research into Practice
Receiving new information can be a bit overwhelming. In the context of instructional coaching, it can feel especially intense for teachers because there are often many factors at play: the complexity of their students’ needs, building a working relationship with the...
The Easiest Way to Triple the Impact of Coaching: Principal Support
Yesterday, I led the workshop, What Administrators Need to Know About Coaching, with a group of principals and coaches in a wonderful school district in Texas. On their evaluation forms, respondents were very clear that bringing coaches and principals together was...
PEERS Goals
Goal setting is an essential part of coaching. Coaches often partner with teachers to set SMART goals, which are variously understood to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable (or Actionable/Assignable), Realistic (Relevant) and Timely (or Time Bound). I believe teachers...
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