Christina Brammell continues discussing her techniques for turning conversations from mandatory to voluntary with her second TeachBoost post on successful student-centered coaching.
I wanted to share with you some of my keys to success in my work with my teachers. I have identified four key components that I find invaluable to my success when living deeply in Student-Centered Coaching.
Please know that the training I have received is a combination of many wonderful educators who have shared their research through books and conferences. One of my favorite coaching resources that has helped me with Student-Centered Coaching comes from Diane Sweeney and her book called Student-Centered Coaching at the Secondary Level.
Since instructional coaching is about working collaboratively to move the student learning forward, our school leaders are a key component to my success. My leaders create and support a school climate where all students have the right to grow. When teachers are supported as the single most important factor in student achievement, they are willing to try new things, take risks, and reflect on successes and struggles in their journey for all students to experience growth.
To help keep the climate focused on student learning my leaders and the coaching team collaboratively create a partnership agreement. This partnership agreement is the key that allows us to communicate about our work towards our campus' common goals, while keeping our work with our teachers confidential. We revisit our agreement throughout the year to help clarify our work together.
Approaching my work with any teacher from just the science content, for instance, or the pedagogy behind instructional strategies, will fall flat if I have not first cultivated a relationship with the teacher. To help me create authentic relationships, my campus leaders revisit the role of an instructional coach each year as a whole staff. They explain how we are an integral component to helping all learners experience success. From here I spend time meeting with my teachers to share my job description, how our work together supports our campus' overall goals and I dispel some of those “typical” coaching rumors by clarifying that I am not an evaluator and that our work together is actually confidential.
When we meet as a team we create norms for working together and partnership agreements to help guide our work for the year. During our planning I facilitate and support my teachers in the backwards design process as we work to identify what mastery of the standards looks like, the strengths and weaknesses of the students according to previous data with respect to the standards, the design of their assessments, and our instructional activities used along the way.
By treating my teachers with respect, they understand that I am not an evaluator and learn that I support them as the primary decision maker in their classroom. I then spend as much time as possible in my teachers' classrooms to learn about their teaching style, their students' needs, and how their work with their students tie to their personal and the campus goals.
Having established the necessary foundational relationship with my teachers, I then look for the openings to move our conversations from mandatory to voluntary with a focus on the students' progress towards mastery of the standards. Since my campus has created a culture and expectation that everyone who has students strives to meet each student's individual needs it makes this part of my job easier, but here are still some of my favorite ways I use to get my foot in the door:
As I take in all of this information I then determine what the specific student need is and tie it to a learning standard. I then meet with my teacher and ask for clarification in identifying the standard based student learning goal. Once we are on the same page I then inquire about how I can help support them on their journey in this work.
Anytime I am working with a teacher the first thing I do is carefully clarify their actual goal. If they haven’t already tied it to a learning standard we work to identify which standard would be appropriate that the students will be learning in our upcoming unit(s). This allows for our work to be redirected to a measurable goal based on student learning. Without this clarification our work together would fall into a Teacher-Centered or Relationship-Centered coaching cycle and open the door for teacher judgement. My tip for all instructional coaches needing to redirect a personal teacher goal is to ask the teacher, “What will the students be doing …”
Once a teacher and I have decided to work on a specific student-focused, standard-based goal we collaboratively create a partnership agreement. The magic behind a partnership agreement falls in identifying the answer to questions such as:
To ensure that the teacher continues to know that I am not judging their work professionally, or acting as an evaluator, I always add that last statement to our partnership agreement. You will be surprised when your teacher opens up after seeing that you truly respect them as an educator who is working to meet the needs of all of their learners.
"When you know your why, your what has more impact because you're walking in or toward your purpose." — Michael Jr., BreakTime
As an instructional coach you spend every day being a catalyst for change. Sometimes, our work results in successful collaboration and growth for the students, teachers, and ourselves. Sometimes our work is derailed due to a lack of buy-in from our teachers. For me, Student-Centered Coaching is my what and my why are the students. When I share my why with the teachers our work together is united and impacts ALL of our students on their individual academic journeys.
Christina Brammell started her educational career as a true science loving nerd when her first birthday request was a microscope kit. She earned her B.S. in Chemistry at Westminster College at New Wilmington, PA in 2010 and her M.S. in Chemistry from Texas A&M University at College Station in 2012. During this time she realized that her passion for science flourished when she was able to help students make real life connections to science and she jumped into the world of education. After five years in the classroom, she has just finished her first year as a science instructional coach at two intermediate campuses.