Creating a Vision and Plan for a Coaching Program

Leaders and coaches often ask us what resources they can turn to when thinking about building, maintaining, or strengthening their coaching program. We’ve compiled just a few of our favorite articles and research to support you in setting up a vision and plan for your coaching program.

Why Your Coaching Program Is Failing

Elena Aguilar provides some good advice on things to think about when starting a coaching program, through the lens of what mistakes are made in unsuccessful coaching programs.  These missteps include:

• “Coaching” isn’t defined
• Coaches haven’t been trained
• Coaches aren’t coaching
• Teachers are forced to receive coaching
• Coaches think they’re better than everyone else

Why Teachers Might Benefit from Transformational Coaching

Elena Aguilar is back in EducationWeek exploring how transformational coaching finds the connections between the individual client’s beliefs, the institutions and systems within which the client works, and the broader educational system in which we live. Therefore, the goal is not simply individual change (say, in a specific teacher or a specific student) but broader, more significant change that transforms the very craft of teaching.

What is Transformational Coaching

Elena Aguilar shares a short one-pager that explores the three Bs of Transformational coaching and provides strategies to explore three domains of who we are: behaviors, beliefs, and being.

Seven Factors for Success

Jim Knight describes his Seven Success Factors that contain fundamental knowledge and resources in the following areas:

• The Partnership Principles
• Communication Skills
• Coaches as Leaders
• The Impact Cycle
• Data
• Teaching Strategies
• System Support

Tips for Launching High School Coaching Cycles

Thomas Ferrebee, from Diane Sweeney’s website, specifically addresses possible hurdles with starting a coaching program at the high school level and provides helpful tips to address these specific challenges

• Tip #1 – Co-Plan How You Will Introduce Your Role and the Process
• Tip #2 – Co-Plan into Co-Teaching

Getting Started with Student Centered Coaching

Diane Sweeney discusses her seven principles for setting up a coaching program. This article has helpful diagrams and also timelines for thinking through milestones when starting a coaching program.

The 10 Key Elements of Transformational Coaching

Linda Yaron, a National Board certified teacher, provides another take on setting up a coaching program. In addition to her 10 key elements for coaching programs, she shares sample questions for pre-observation and reflection questions for after the lesson.

Demonstrating Teaching in a Lab Classroom

Lisa Houk explains how Lapeer Community Schools, a Michigan school district, used the lab classroom model to provide a level of instructional consistency in the district, particularly in the area of literacy. Teacher knowledge, understanding, and application of the writing workshop model within the district varied significantly. Using this teacher leadership model helped align practice across the district.