Coaching IN the Classroom?!
You may ask, “I know how to coach after class, or even between classes, but how do I coach IN the classroom?” While most of us think of coaching as happening in the coaching meeting, many coaches naturally do some coaching in the classroom without much training or support on this skill set. Coaching in the classroom is a powerful set of tools to support teachers in their growth, and quickly.
I’m fairly new to the concept of “coaching in the classroom,” and it’s been a major shift in my approach to coaching. Read more about my change of heart in last week’s post, How I’ve Come Around to Real Time Coaching.
Here, I’ll focus on 4 strategies for how to coach in the classroom. These strategies are based on the four categories laid out by Dr. Jo Lein in her Edutopia piece, How Instructional Coaches Can Use Co-Teaching to Support Teachers, and I’ll dig into each a little further here.
4 Strategies for Coaching in the Classroom
1. Co-teaching: In the co-teaching strategy, the coach and teacher co-facilitate a lesson, or part of a lesson. Part of the goal here is to help your teacher see your “teacher presence” or hear your “teacher voice,” the bite-sized skills that are difficult to describe in a coaching meeting, but are helpful to see as a model.
Examples:
The teacher facilitates the direct instruction, and the coach facilitates 3 checks for understanding at strategic points in the direction instruction, all planned and agreed upon ahead of time.
To co-teach the lesson closure, the teacher facilitates an exit ticket, the coach facilitates a student reflection and objective review, the teacher facilitates material clean-up, and then both ensure that students remain seated until dismissed by the teacher.
2. Modeling: The coach fully facilitates a lesson, or part of a lesson, while the teacher observes. In order for this to be effective, there has to be positive framing for students as well as clear expectations of what the teacher is watching for as coach models.
Examples: The coach models:
A set of classroom culture strategies.
The direct instruction, showing metacognition, clear delivery and possible student misconceptions.
Facilitating small group instruction
Feedback during questioning
How to incorporate a social-justice oriented activity.
3. Live Coaching: With the live coaching strategy, the coach provides brief, non-invasive feedback on a targeted classroom strategy in the moment. Live coaching must be planned and agreed upon ahead of time in order to be used effectively. Coaches use a signal, a quick whisper or a text message to give on-the-spot feedback to teachers.
Examples:
After each set of directions the teacher gives, the coach and teacher have agreed that the teacher will positively narrate at least five students who are on task. While coaching in the classroom, after the teacher gives a set of directions, the teacher holds up five fingers and makes eye contact with the teacher as the agreed-upon reminder.
For a teacher who is working on noticing and responding to off-task behavior, the coach quickly whispers (when the teacher is not directly addressing the class) to the teacher observations of students who are off-task that she hasn’t noticed, such as “Two students in the back,” or “Brian has his head down.” Similarly, if the teacher prefers, these quick reminders could be sent as text messages if the teacher keeps their phone with them while teaching or circulating.
4. Teach & Support: In this strategy, the coach supports in building a positive culture by speaking with individual students or addressing the class when most students are off-task. This works particularly well for school-based coaches or APs serving as coaches to use their power or position to empower the teacher, and when a class culture reset needs to happen.
Examples:
When one student is particularly disruptive, the coach can intervene by pulling the student out, “Amanda, please step into the hall with me.” Then the coach gives a signal to the teacher to trade off leading the class so the teacher can step into the hallway to have a one-on-one conversation with the student.
When a teacher’s attempts at getting the class’ attention are ineffective or students continue to speak over the teacher, the leader or coach steps in to get attention and reset expectations. Then, they pass the “mic” back to the teacher to continue with what they needed to communicate to the class.
For a teacher working on circulating during guided, group or independent practice, the coach can also circulate to address student questions.
Determining which of these coaching in the classroom strategies to use is important, because we don’t want to further disempower a teacher or reinforce negative stereotypes about students. I highly recommend checking out the graphic in Dr. Jo Lien’s piece (linked above) that helps coaches analyze a teacher’s belief in themselves and in their students to make a determination about which strategy may work best in the context.
Then Debrief
Coaching in the classroom helps teachers grow right in the moment, but an effective debrief conversation helps teachers stamp the takeaways from the experience. Ideally, a reflective conversation will take place for about 10 minutes during the teacher’s prep or after school within 24 hours, but it could also be included at the beginning of the next coaching meeting, or even as a written reflection by email.
Here are some questions to guide your coaching in the classroom debrief conversation:
What impact did you see on students when we (or you) did X strategy?
What very specific moves did you see me make or words that you heard me say?
What are 1 - 3 concrete takeaways that you will do (or continue to do) in your classroom as a result of this experience?
What was the experience like for you?
Do you have any feedback for me about how I can improve an experience like this again in the future?
For the final part in this series on Coaching in the Classroom, check back next week for more on what Coaching in the Classroom is and is not, and to dig into the logistics of doing it effectively.