Coaching Retrospective: What impact have we had in five years?

Coaching Retrospective: What impact have we had in five years? 

A little over five years ago, I sat across the table from seven or eight of our school’s senior leadership team to be interviewed for a newly-created position: Teaching and Learning Coach. 

“Tell us about a time you helped others be reflective.”

“What do you think about when you are planning instruction?”

The questions weren’t hard to answer, but I had no idea what they thought of my responses.  

At the time, I really didn’t have a clear concept of what the role of Teaching & Learning Coach would entail or whether I would be a good fit. I went home thinking I had quite possibly embarrassed myself in front of the whole LLT.  I guess I did okay in the interview though, because eventually I was offered the role, and became part of a cross-school team. The team has ebbed and flowed a bit over these five years, but one thing has been very consistent: the group of people I’ve been privileged to work with has been amazing. They all have a particular set of skills and dispositions: reflective, empathetic, analytical, learning-oriented and kind. I’m so glad I took the risk of applying for the role because it has been an incredible learning experience for me. Most of all, I have learned so much from each and every one of my amazing colleagues who have invited me into their classrooms and their thinking. 

Recently, ISB hired a new director, and has been developing a new strategic plan. The Learning Leadership Team has decided to pause coaching for a year while we rethink some aspects of Professional Development at ISB. We hope that this pause will allow us to ensure that coaching is well integrated with the overall PD model and our whole school priorities, and to further refine our coaching program to ensure we have the most positive impact possible on teaching & learning. 

As I prepare to go back to full time teaching next year, I've been reflecting on what impact I have had in the coaching role in those five years. 

My reflection (and this blog post) has three parts:

1. What do coaches at ISB do?

2. What impact has coaching had on teaching and learning at ISB?

3. How might coaching be (even) more effective after the pause? 

What do coaches at ISB do?

As Teaching & Learning Coaches at ISB, we have a clear mission and we have been trained in a few different methods for working towards that mission. The school has sponsored some excellent trainings on how to support individuals and teams, whether in extended coaching cycles or in more bite-sized chunks. 

The first training we received back in 2016 was through Jim Knight’s Instructional Coaching Group. We learned how to take fellow educators through a coaching cycle where they set a goal based on some data (usually student learning data or a video of their class), implement some key strategies and then celebrate the achievement of the goal. These cycles tend to take about 6-8 weeks. 

The coaching team, along with anyone else who was interested,  also took part in a Learning Institute in 2017 with Jenni Donohoo on Collaborative Inquiry for Educators. This gave us a framework for working with teams who want to do some action research together on some aspect of their practice. So far, we’ve used the collaborative inquiry model with a few different teams in the elementary school. 

Most recently, in 2019-20, we took Cognitive Coaching Training through Thinking Collaborative. Cognitive Coaching helped us learn how to better facilitate reflection, planning and planning resolving conversations. These can be within a larger coaching cycle, or as a one-off conversation. We started offering these conversations to support people with their Professional Growth and Learning Goals, and quite a few people took us up on the offer. 

When we look at our data, we can see that the nature of what coaches do has shifted over time, from working solely within intensive one-to-one coaching cycles back in 2016, to a mix of short-term and long-term coaching relationships with individuals and teams today. This has enabled us to support more educators across a school year, and to customize coaching a bit more to the different needs of different educators. 

In addition to our core work of coaching individuals and teams, as coaches we are also asked by our Heads sometimes to facilitate professional learning in other ways, such as at Monday Meetings or on PD days, or through using our classrooms as Lab Classrooms to try out pedagogical approaches.  

What impact has coaching had at ISB?

Over the past five years, the coaching team has been keeping track of two levels of impact:

• Impact on the educators we support

• Impact on the students and their learning

Impact on the Educators We’ve Supported

Recently, I wrote a blog post about Teacher Wellbeing: How coaching (and Positive Psychology) can help. One of our colleagues left a heartfelt comment about how coaching supported her at a time when she was struggling. Here is an excerpt from her comment:

What a wonderful comment to read! As coaches, we hope that we always have a positive impact on our colleagues when we work with them. One way we’ve measured our impact on the teachers who we have coached is by asking them directly. When asked how much coaching impacted their teaching practice, over 90% of respondents have rated our coaching program as ‘Impactful’ or ‘Highly Impactful.’ The people we’ve coached have also very consistently said that they would recommend coaching to a colleague. 

 

The wonderful ISB Communications Team has also interviewed some of the colleagues we’ve coached from time to time, and it’s really nice to be able to listen to people describe in their own words how coaching supported them in achieving their goals. You can see these videos here and here. 

In preparation for writing this blog post, I reached out to the people I have coached over the past five years to ask them what still sticks with them from our work together. Here are a few bits of feedback I received:

“Trust, relationship, a safe space for risk taking were some of the most impactful aspects of coaching when I collaborated with Tricia. The non-evaluative quality of coaching makes it a brave space for risk taking, thereby nurturing iterative, reflective, and innovative mindsets.”

“My regular meetings with Tricia not only held me accountable to my goals but also pushed me to keep trying to overcome the challenges and obstacles I was encountering.  During our sessions, Tricia would also share resources or research she had found to help me with my goals. I can not tell you how incredible that was.  The one thing teachers are all desperate for is more time and by taking on this task, she was freeing me up to focus on the delivery of instruction… Even though my coaching took place several years ago, I can without a doubt say it was the most impactful thing I've done at ISB in regards to Professional Development.”

“I decided to apply for some coaching with Tricia as PE is often a little peripheral when it comes to learning based discussions, with many thinking that all students do when they come to PE is run around and play tag. But Tricia was phenomenal in being a thinking partner around authentic and meaningful ways for my intensive learning support students to be assessed and be the drivers of their own learning journey. We trialled a number of different options and after some observations, trial and error projects and many open, honest and enjoyable conversations we co-created something I am still using and developing today.  It was refreshing that it didn't need to be another Phys Ed teacher who I developed this assessment  / learning pathway tool with. The external perspective was powerful. The learning principles and approach to supporting students with their personal progress covers all subject areas - we need more opportunities to connect in this way!  Tricia asked great questions, listened to my crazy ideas and researched current best practice. It was like having a co-teacher in the room.”

Did all the comments show a clear positive impact? No. There was one person I coached early on who talked about how our coaching cycle about her classroom management felt uncomfortably vulnerable. She says that in retrospect, her discomfort was related to her own insecurities at the time, but I can’t help feeling sorry that my coaching skills weren’t strong enough at the time to raise her feelings of self-efficacy.  Now that I have had the Cognitive Coaching training, and gotten more experience under my belt, I wish I could go back in time and try again. With what I know now, I think I could find a way to help her feel good about her strengths and help her build on them: that is always my aim when I’m coaching someone. 

Impact on Students and their Learning

The second level of impact - the impact on the students of the teachers we coach - is arguably even more important and also a bit trickier to measure. One way we have tried to quantify this impact is again by asking the teachers we’ve worked with about their perception. Most teachers have reported that coaching is ‘Impactful’ or ‘Highly Impactful’ on student learning. 

Another way that we ensure our impact on student learning is by trying to have a measurable goal for each coaching cycle, and to track student progress towards that goal. For example, in a Middle School science class, the goal might be that each student will go up one level on the rubric by the end of a coaching cycle. In a language class, the goal could be that all students will increase their oral output in each lesson. 

We keep track of these goals each year and reflect on which kinds of goals work best. 

From the data we have collected, I feel confident that coaching has a consistently positive impact on student learning. 

How could coaching at ISB be (even) more effective?

As we’ve continued to reflect on our coaching program, we’ve started to dream of a coaching program that has not two but three different levels of impact:

• Positive impact on the educators we support

• Positive impact on the students and their learning

• Positive impact on the growth of the institution

Earlier this year, the coaching team presented to the leadership team our vision of how coaching could have an even bigger positive impact in future years. Below is a summary of what we suggested:

We are hoping that after this pause, we will be able to further strengthen the coaching program in ways that continue to support teachers and students, and also help the school continue to improve. 

Improvement 1: Coaching towards Strategic Priorities 

A while ago I read in one of Elena Aguilar’s books on coaching about a school district she worked in that had set a goal of reducing the number of suspensions of their students of color. To support their district’s goal, the coaching team made coaching for equity their top priority, and embedded this into each coaching cycle that school year. The district met their goal, and the coaching team was able to see that their work had contributed to this success. 

This case study got me thinking about all the different types of goals that we work on with teachers at ISB. All the goals are grounded in our Learning Definitions, Learning Principles and Continuum for Teaching, but teachers have autonomy in what they want to work on within that. Freedom to choose is powerful, but recently I’ve been thinking about how much more powerful it would be if more of us were choosing to work on the same things at the same time. Imagine the synergy that could happen if the school had a few clear, powerful priorities and the goals we set for ourselves were aligned with those priorities; not only would our professional goals improve our practice and the experiences of the students in our class, but we would also be helping the school move forward. As educators, we would be able to collaborate with many different people from across the school working in different ways on the same priorities.  

Recently, our LLT sent a survey to faculty and staff to get input on the strategic priorities for next year. I was excited to find out that the survey clearly identified three priorities that are closely aligned with our school’s mission statement. 

• Develop international citizens in a learning environment characterized by an explicit commitment to social justice for all. 

• Provide academic excellence and challenge for all learners, helping them to meet their personal potential to the highest possible standard. 

• Ensure that the wellbeing of all community members is a priority that we commit to in transparent and meaningful ways.

Something really exciting about these priorities is how closely they align with our school’s mission:

When coaching comes back from our pause, I can see huge potential for using coaching as an accelerator on these powerful mission-driven priorities. 

Improvement 2: Coaching Linked more Closely with Professional Development

Another idea that some other schools are using, is to attach coaching to professional development courses. There are some interesting studies that have shown that the percentage of teachers who implement what they learn in PD courses goes up considerably when they receive coaching to help them think through what they have learned and to plan how to apply their new learning to their own classroom contexts.

This data isn’t surprising to me because we have consistently heard from the educators we have worked with that having the gentle accountability of a coach that you know you need to check in with can be exactly what people need to follow through on their good intentions. 

Imagine how powerful it would be if teachers had access to quality PD aligned with our school’s strategic priorities, and also had access to coaching to be able to maximize the implementation of what they had learned. 

Improvement 3: Expanding the Coaching Team & Program

The other thing that we would love to see is a re-expansion of the coaching program. The number of coaches and the schools we are housed in has gone down in the past two years. 

Although we are cross-divisional, and we have done some wonderful coaching cycles in parts of the school outside of our home divisions, the truth is that it is challenging to make those cross-divisional connections. We’ve studied the data and it is clear: having a coach housed in a division of the school makes it more likely that teachers in that division will sign up for coaching. 

I’d love to see continued coaching training at ISB, both for current coaches, and for people who are interested in coaching. Skills such as Cognitive Coaching would be useful for everyone, and it would be amazing to have a pipeline of people who are interested in becoming coaches in the future. 

A Few more Thoughts on Improving the Coaching Program

I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention a couple of other ideas that came up through the feedback I requested from people I’ve coached over the years. Here are a few ideas they have for making coaching at ISB even better than it already is:

“It would be helpful if maybe the T&L program could have an element of helping teachers to find the balance in their work.  We promote Wellness at our school and while yoga classes are lovely, I think it's deeper than that and perhaps the T&L program could serve a role in this process.”

“Make instructional coaches a non-teaching role, in order for coaches to have their flexible, open, accessible carved out time to be in the classrooms with teachers and students, to have coaching conversations with teachers and leaders, to be professional development leads and resource providers for teams, to be facilitators of learning for parents, to be co-learners and co-leaders of the admin team; and to facilitate and support purpose and process development, as well as discussions and dialogues on anything that has implications and impact on student and adult learning and well being.” 

“ Keep it going - don't stop it!”

Like that last commenter, I really hope that this pause is just a pause. I hope that the coaching program will restart in 2022-23, renewed and refocused, ready to help accelerate the growth of this school that I love so much to be even more effective at bringing our inspirational mission to life. 

What about you? Do you have suggestions on what makes for a quality Teaching & Learning Coaching program? Feel free to leave your comments below.