Teachers Coach. Every day!

Steps to a Coaching Classroom: Newsletter 9 Extra

In Newsletter #8 Extra, I showed how quickly teachers can infer the core coaching skills from a short coaching demonstration. My colleague and I were invited to show teachers the kind of coaching that was on offer to the staff who needed / wanted it. Our task was to inspire and encourage as well as to inform; so we gave a fifteen-minute coaching demonstration with a volunteer from the audience. Afterwards, we asked them to name the skills they had seen the coach using. Within minutes, they had uncovered 80% of the list below:

Meeting Ethical Guidelines and Professional Standards, Establishing the Agreement, Establishing Trust and Intimacy, Presence, Active Listening, Powerful Questioning, Direct Communication, Creating Awareness, Designing Actions, Planning and Goal Setting, Managing Progress and Accountability.

Coaching in lesson time?

When was asked the teachers to say which of the skills they had used in their lessons in the past week, we found that most of the teachers had used most of the skills multiple times. They said they could not teach until they had come to an agreement with the students, established a feeling of trust within the class. They used their adult presence to take charge when necessary, actively listened to what the students were really saying, used powerful questions to probe deeper into their thinking, created awareness of how much they knew and what they needed to learn or do better. They had designed learning activities and made plans and set goals, often together but not always. And the teachers managed the students progress and held them accountable to the set goals. Although they used these skills for the purposes of teaching, they were also coaching.

Teaching or Coaching?

• When does a teacher coach? Whenever they are supporting the student as a person rather than as a recipient of knowledge. Essentially, when they are getting students ready to learn, encouraging them to get more invested in their learning and celebrating their learning achievements.

Teaching can also include giving instruction. There are a multitude of YouTube 'How to...' videos that show you how to do something. They are very instructive. They aren't coaching though, because there is no connection between the teacher and student.

Any coaching activities include the following four stages:

1. Setting the Foundation - who are we and why are we here?
2. Co-Creating the Relationship - do we trust each other enough?
3. Communicating Effectively - am we getting through to each other?
4. Facilitating Learning and Results - how far have we come?

All of the above come from the ICF definitions of core coaching skills.

I hope you agree with me that on a daily basis teachers move between giving instruction and coaching their students. Both actions come under the role of being a teacher.

However, although teachers do coach, they often lack formal coach training. I wonder what might happen in schools if teachers were also trained as coaches? I imagine they would become as comfortable and confident about the coaching side of being a teacher as they do about the instruction side. What might that mean for the students? What might the affect be on 'results'?

The History of the ICF, International Coach Federation

It may come as news to you to learn that coaching as a profession, is as young as it is. It's 25 years old. It is a young, confident and courageous organisation that holds coaches to a set of standards of behaviour, the Gold Standard they call it, and I'm inclined to agree. There are other excellent coaching organisations, too many to list here, so I am going to share the one I know best, the ICF. Here is a brief history from the ICF website:

Professional Coach Thomas Leonard started the International Coach Federation (ICF) in 1995 as a nonprofit organization for fellow coaches to support each other and grow the profession. The following year, a president was appointed and a board of directors established. The first ICF Chapter was established, and by May 1996, there were more than 60 ICF Chapters worldwide.

TIPS

If you are a teacher and want to know if you are more of an instructor or a coach when you teach, take note during the working day whether you are wearing your instructor hat (focusing on the subject) or wearing your coach hat (focusing on the student).

• Which hat best fits you?
• Which hat do you long to wear most?
• Which hat do you need further training in?

NEXT

In the next article, I cover the questions you are afraid to ask about your teaching, yet need to.