What Is A Coach? (1of3)

This is the first in a three-part series of posts examining my evolving understanding of the “transformational/instructional coach” role that is new in our district, based directly on conversations I have had.

Me: What do you think about the coach role?

Teacher Friend: The people I’ve talked to have said, “If you guys don’t know what it is, how can we?”

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This was the comment that made me realize one of the largest issues with the coaching role…it was yet unclear to the people it serves.

Schools are under unprecedented pressure to change.  Teachers are expected to perform tasks of data analysis at micro- and macro-levels…and teach.  Principals are expected to manage myriad administrative, community, and financial tasks…and improve instruction.  Districts are expected to manage policy- and socially-induced change coming at increasingly fast speeds with increasingly small budgets…and provide structure to enhance learning.   Teaching and learning are the core technology of our business, thus our specialties, but our resources have been diverted from that task to solving other problems.

As I’m finding, coaching benefits teaching and learning, the core technology of public schools, by providing resources, with a teaching orientation, to really focus on improving instruction to the exclusion of other interference.  This is a benefit as true, systemic improvement often fails to take root simply because teaching is such a labor-intensive occupation that we can’t stop what we’re doing in our classrooms or find the energy later to fully exploit operational efficiencies and nurture them to grow.  One role of the transformational/instructional coach is a progressive attempt to leverage eyes, ears, voices, and minds from inside the classroom to approach systemic educational change with a practical and student-centered sense.  The coach is a resource provided to explicitly focus on improving the core technology so that everyone else can continue delivering it.

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