What skills do coaches practice to communicate being fully present in coaching conversations? How do those conversations support a growth-oriented environment where teachers feel valued, heard, and empowered to take ownership of their professional learning? Consider your use of questions and paraphrases in coaching. Find “The Leader’s Guide to Coaching in Schools: Creating Conditions for […]

Conversation is a key element for generating teacher reflection that is critical to continuous teacher growth. Effective coaching generates those conversations that support reflection. Highly reflective conversations are built around vulnerability. Coaches encourage that vulnerability when they can communicate an openness to the teacher’s agenda. A willingness to observe in the classroom through the eyes […]

As a new school year starts, conversations about coaching are critical. Have instructional coaches and principals engaged in sufficient conversations to align the coach’s decision- making about how to prioritize coaching activities? Are plans in place for a staff discussion about expectations for a coaching culture in the school and teachers’ engagement in coaching activities? […]

Conversations among teachers are critical to driving reflection and conscious practice that produce increases in student success. Instructional coaches and teacher leaders are often tasked with facilitating team or PLC conversations that can generate educator learning to impact student learning. Consider this statement from Margaret Wheatley: https://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/turningtooneanother.html “One of the things we need to learn […]

“Making the first 2-3 minutes of a conversation curiosity-based will change your conversations.” -Michael Bungay Stainer. How does your natural curiosity about teaching, learning and leading guide your coaching? How can curiosity help you avoid the advice giving that can be detrimental to coaching?  Listen to Michael Bungay Stainer with Jim Knight. Read Rina Whittaker’s […]

Creating a conversational tone in coaching conferences helps communicate a peer to peer process that encourages teacher reflection. Open questions are helpful in setting this tone. Steve defines how open questions help identify the teacher’s agenda (thinking) behind a focus point for the observation. Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes […]