It’s that time of year when new coaches may find themselves wondering, “What do I do in August if I don’t have a classroom to prepare?’” Some new coaches might not even have an office to set up. Experienced coaches are reflecting upon what they have learned about coaching in their experiences up to now […]

I recently had the opportunity to have several conversations with Sherry St. Clair, the author of Coaching Redefined: A Guide to Leading Meaningful Instructional Growth. Sherry is a strong promoter of the need for school leaders and coaches to support teachers as they tackle the challenges of maximizing student success. Here she shares her thoughts […]

Collective teacher efficacy, when a staff of teachers believe that together they can inspire growth and change in their students, has the greatest impact on student achievement—even higher than factors like teacher-student relationships, home environment, or parental involvement (John Hattie). Collective teacher efficacy is unlikely to develop without a leadership plan for creating the environment […]

During the current and past year, I have been working with the staff at QSI International School of Chengdu in China.  Using Skype, I facilitated professional learning sessions with the entire staff and held coaching sessions with individual PLCs. Last year we focused on professional learning communities and this Fall we added peer coaching practices. […]

Education: Most teachers have never had a coach and are not sure what to do with one. Many have had a mentor and all have had a supervisor/evaluator but not an instructional coach. Considering the cost to school systems, when they decide to invest in instructional coaching positions they should be considering how they educate […]

I wrote about vulnerability in an earlier blog  and was reviewing my thinking this week as I prepared to work with principal and instructional coach partners in planning for student achievement and teacher success at their schools. One of the issues I knew I wanted to explore in our conversations was, “How do principal and […]