If I believe the person sitting across from me is a professional, my coaching job can’t simply be to get that person to do what I’ve decided is best. I need to engage their thinking which means deep listening on my part. Treating someone as a professional isn’t simply something we say. Teachers experience whether we see them as professionals through the conditions we create and the ways we interact with them. If we want our students to be taught by professionals who exercise professional judgment, our leadership and coaching need to continually develop that judgment and create the conditions that support professional dignity.
Listen to Jim Knight’s podcast episode, “Stop Telling Teachers What to Do” here.
Visit Brad Gaynor’s website here.
Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!
Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00.340] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.
[00:00:30.130] – Steve
Leading and coaching teaching professionals. There are many highly skilled trades, and in a trade, a person generally learns a body of knowledge and develops the skill to perform the work correctly and consistently. Supervision in trades often focuses substantially on whether the work is being done the right way. A profession is different. Professionals also study and develop expertise, but that expertise prepares them to make judgments in situations where there isn’t always one right answer. Doctors make decisions with patients, lawyers make decisions around cases, and teachers make decisions with learners. In that sense, professionals are constantly conducting experiments. They act on what they know, study the response, learn from the evidence, and decide what to do next. We call teachers professionals, but consider some of the language and practices that schools sometimes use. Implement this with fidelity.
[00:01:58.410] – Steve
Follow the pacing guide. Everyone should be on lesson 12 by Friday. Here are the non-negotiables. The coach will make sure that the program is being implemented correctly. We need walkthroughs to check compliance. None of those things is automatically inappropriate. Professionals have standards and constraints. Doctors have protocols. Lawyers have laws and procedures. The issue is, where does professional judgment live? I recently came across a systemic review of 45 studies examining teachers’ use of commercial curriculum curriculum materials. One of the findings that caught my attention was that highly prescriptive materials— scripts, pacing requirements, and fidelity checks— were consistently associated with reduced teacher autonomy and less space for professional judgment. That doesn’t mean programs, pacing guides, or fidelity are bad. But it raises a different question for leaders: how do we gain the benefits of a well-designed program without diminishing the professional thinking of the teacher who is closest to the learners? I’ve written previously about the difference between fidelity to a program and fidelity to the purpose of a program. I think that distinction becomes especially important when we consider teachers as professionals. A curriculum or an instructional program represents considerable expertise. It may provide teachers with research, resources, sequences, strategies, and practices that can increase the likelihood of student success.
[00:04:10.170] – Steve
Treating teachers as professionals doesn’t mean asking them to ignore that expertise. In fact, professional responsibility requires teachers to understand the thinking and the research behind a curricular program. But then the teacher encounters the learners. What happens when students don’t respond as anticipated? What happens when some students are ready to move on and others aren’t? What happens when the teacher sees evidence suggesting that an adjustment might produce greater learning? That’s where professional judgment enters. Fidelity to purpose asks a professional question: What are we trying to accomplish? What are we learning from students? And, what adjustments will increase the likelihood of accomplishing that goal? Fidelity to procedure can create a worker question: Did you do what you were told to do? Treating teachers as professionals doesn’t lower expectations, it raises them. Professionals should be able to explain what they’re trying to accomplish, why they selected an approach, what evidence they are gathering from learners, what they are learning from that evidence, and what they might do next. Those of us who lead and coach teachers need to be asking, are our actions increasing teachers’ capacity to make professional judgments, or are we unintentionally taking the thinking away from them?
[00:05:59.600] – Steve
That question came to mind as I listened to Jim Knight in a recent conversation with Shane Leaning on the Education Leaders Podcast. Jim addressed what it means to coach someone when we really see that person as a professional. Listen to how he describes it.
[00:06:21.540] – Jim Knight
Teachers are professionals. To have the schools we want, to give our kids the schools they deserve, they need to be taught by professionals. And if we want professionals, we have to treat them like professionals. So the notion that we can observe a class and tell the teacher what to do and that’s going to solve their problem, or there’s some simple script that they’re supposed to follow or some simplistic thing, the idea that I’m going to tell the teacher what their goal is and not involve them in, you know, why would I not want to involve their brain in the conversation? Those things deprofessionalize teaching. They treat teachers like unskilled laborers, like they’re stocking the shelves in a grocery store, as opposed to a professional bringing their whole brain, even their soul, to the classroom. And I think to get the schools we want, we need to interact with teachers in ways that see them as professionals and interact in ways that acknowledge and actually celebrate their professionalism, which means that they have a voice and they have choices and that these things are all nuanced, but that there’s a real sense in which I’m working with a professional, not an unskilled laborer.
[00:07:25.870] – Steve
Jim’s distinction between working with a professional and working with an unskilled worker highlights an important belief. If I believe the person sitting across from me is a professional, my coaching job can’t simply be to get that person to do what I’ve decided is best. I need to engage their thinking, which means deep listening on my part. Treating someone as a professional isn’t simply something we say. Teachers experience whether we see them as professionals through the conditions we create and the ways we interact with them. Those conditions were shared with me in a recent conversation I had with Brad Gaynor. Brad has been exploring professional dignity. He suggests that dignity isn’t primarily about recognition or appreciation. It’s about whether the conditions surrounding teachers’ work communicate that their expertise, judgment, time, and voice actually matter. Brad identifies 5 areas of professional dignity: time, voice, workload, behavioral support, and professional growth. Here are Brad’s descriptions: Professional dignity is not about applause. Teachers have never expected to be heroes. It is about time dignity, having enough time to prepare lessons that inspire rather than simply survive the day. It’s about voice dignity, being involved in decisions before they are made rather than consulted with after.
[00:09:30.690] – Steve
It’s about workload dignity, leaving school knowing that the most important part of your day was teaching. Not proving you had taught. It’s about behavioral dignity, being backed when managing increasingly complex behavior. And it’s about growth dignity, professional learning that builds on expertise rather than assuming deficiency. In other words, professional dignity isn’t just about how respectfully we treat teachers. It’s about whether the way we design their work allows them to function as professionals. If I say that I trust your professional judgment, where in your daily work would you find evidence that I actually do? One place teachers should find evidence is in the coaching conversations they take part in. When I’m coaching a professional, my role isn’t to eliminate uncertainty by providing the answer. My role is often to create the conditions for the teacher to think more deeply about the learners, about the desired learning outcomes, and about the evidence they are gathering and the possibilities for what to do next. That requires me to listen more than advise, to ask more than tell, to understand the teacher’s thinking before adding my own, and perhaps most importantly, to resist taking over a decision that a teacher is capable of making.
[00:11:25.740] – Steve
Now, that doesn’t mean that coaches withhold their expertise. Professionals seek expertise from professionals all the time. A coach can offer an observation, share research, suggest a strategy, model an approach, or challenge a teacher’s thinking. The difference is that the coach’s expertise is being used to expand the teacher’s thinking rather than to replace it. Perhaps one way to think about coaching a professional is that I’m joining the teacher in studying their experiment. What were you hoping would happen? What did the learners do? What surprised you? What are you making of that? What might you try next? Those are not questions designed to lead the teacher to my answer. The purpose is to strengthen the teacher’s capacity to make increasingly informed professional judgments. Whether we’re designing curriculum expectations, conducting walkthroughs, planning professional development, protecting planning time, or facilitating PLCs, we are constantly communicating something to teachers about how we see them. What’s the message our actions are communicating? Is it, your job is to implement what others have decided? Or is it, you are a knowledgeable professional. We expect you to study your learners, draw upon the best available knowledge and resources, collaborate with colleagues, make informed decisions, and continually learn from the results.
[00:13:28.200] – Steve
Teachers being professionals isn’t just a title we give them. It’s a belief that should be visible in how we lead, how we coach, and in the conditions we create for them to do their work. If we want our students to be taught by professionals who exercise professional judgment, our leadership and coaching need to continually develop that judgment and create conditions that support professional dignity. Consider taking some time with your leadership team to examine the messages your practices are sending. Where would teachers find evidence that you see and treat them as professionals? And where might your practices unintentionally be communicating a different message? Feel free to reach out if you’d like to explore this topic further. The links to Jim Knight’s comments and Brad Gaynor’s work are in the podcast lead-in. You can always find and connect with me at barkleypd.com. Thanks for listening.
[00:14:45.680] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn @SteveBarkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.
