This blog is the first in a series that follows two coach trainers, Martin and Alexandra, as they train college teachers to adopt a coaching approach to holding collegial conversations following lesson observations.

Martin is an experienced teacher, trainer and certified coach. Alexandra is too. They have worked together on assignments coaching teachers for several years.

The aims of this blog are to:

1. List the necessary ingredients of a coaching approach training course

2. Offer a design for experiential learning activities

3. Demonstrate the effects of collaborative leadership

Impossible Missions

Not every organisation has the right sized budget

Reflecting on those teachers who had given me the best support when I was at school, College and University, I have realised that what they all had in common was that they used a coaching approach. They listened, with full curiosity, and they gave me space to grow by refraining from harshly judging my youthful behaviour as I developed from a young man into an adult. It is no surprise that my best subjects, mathematics and science, were taught by the teachers I loved the best, the ones who used a coaching approach to their teaching.

Later, after a working lifetime of teaching blended with entrepreneurship, consulting and coaching in various forms and combinations, I find myself coaching teachers, and training teachers to use coaching in their work. No surprise.

I love getting those Mission Impossible messages. The ones that ask me to design and run a training course that’s on a subject close to my heart - training teachers to use a coaching approach in their work.

The ‘impossible’ part of these assignments is usually that there are woefully limited resources. That sadly seems to be the norm for the Education System, and I delight in the challenge of creating something worthwhile using minimal resources. I have my grandfather to thank for that, but that’s another story.

The Mission Impossible that came to me from a certain college for 17-19 year-old students in Sweden, requested that I train the teachers to carry out lesson observation and give coaching feedback, in just one day. I needed to consult my colleague.

To Coach or Be a Coach?

A qualitative question of ‘doing it’ or ‘being it’

“Just one day!” I complained to my colleague Alexandra when we met over a cup of coffee to discuss the assignment. “They want me to do all that in one day.”

“Do what?” inquired Alexandra, who had been more focused on her coffee.

“They want the teachers to give each other coaching feedback after lesson observations.”

“If anyone can do it, you can.”

“Thanks for the flattery but it concerns me that the management team might consider their teachers to be coaches after a brief one day introduction.”

“Is that what they want?”

I gulped. It was certainly a question for me to ask when I meet them. I made a mental note of it.

Alexandra continued her questioning, “What is it you are actually worried about?”

“Oh, it’s the age-old conundrum of balancing quality and time. It’s easy to teach coaching tools in a short space of time. It’s more of a challenge to develop a coaching mindset in such a short time.”

“You don’t want to teach coaching tools?”

“I do, but not at the expense of knowing why we use them, and the mindset that must be behind them.”

Alexandra narrowed her questioning, “So what’s the one thing you would want them to take with them regarding a coaching mindset?”

“Maintaining a sense of curiosity, especially when you think you know the answer. In a word - Non-judgement.”

“And how will you do that?” Alexandra challenged.

“By maintaining a sense of curiosity especially when the answer seems to be obvious and suspending judgement at all times.”

“Well then!”

“It sounds like you just volunteered to be my partner for this workshop.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

It came as a relief that Alex wanted to share this assignment with me. It’s always easier to share the workload of creating a workshop. Two perspectives. Two sets of experience. And the challenge of being on stage together was rewarding, when it went well.

Inside the Hearts and Minds of Instructional Leaders

Finding out the why and the what of the impossible mission

With only a few weeks to go before the planned workshop, I managed to get a meeting with the College Management Team. The most senior person there was Dorothy Ho.

Dorothy invited me into the meeting room with a generous smile. She introduced me to Ronnie Griffith and Jose Hickman who stood beside her staring intently at me. It was a stare that mixed welcome with caution. The youngest in the room were three teachers Isaac Griffith, Rowan Andrade and Tobias Pierce. They were sitting at the table, at the further end of the room and were engrossed in some documents that I guess they had all been talking about before I had been brought into the meeting.

Dorothy’s generous welcome smile had given me the courage to speak openly.

Martin  I am grateful for having been asked to do this. What exactly do you want to get from this workshop?

Jose     We want our teachers to observe each others’ lessons and give feedback.

Martin  But why? I mean, what are the reasons for choosing observations and feedback?

Ronnie We do them as quality control and professional development. It’s connected to their employment contract. Every term we visit each teacher at least once and observe them teaching.

Jose     And we give them feedback on what they could do better.

Isaac    But the problem is, there’s a lot of fear of being judged. And that gets in the way of their development.

Rowan It’s an enormous challenge, with some teachers, for me to get the right balance of, let’s say correction and encouragement.

Martin  What made you ask me to come in and give a workshop?

Rowan We believe that they will learn from seeing a colleague teach a lesson. At the very least they will see what they do differently and can consider adopting other teacher’s strategies and techniques. We have evidence of that from new teachers who observe some of our more experienced teachers. They learn in a very direct way, a lot of things that are not taught in teacher training. Practical stuff. Classroom management. Motivational techniques. That kind of thing.

Isaac    And we have seen that the teachers have a wide range of practical teaching strategies, from our observations. We do share what we have seen. And we encourage teachers to try each others’ strategies… but there has been little change.

Martin  So you hope the teachers will learn from what they see in a colleague’s lesson?

Rowan Yes, that AND there’s a more important aspect. It’s a bit more diffuse. Do you want to describe it Dorothy?

Dorothy           Trust. And confidence. Trust in each other and confidence in what we are doing at this college.

Isaac    At the moment the staff are fragmented. We need to be more cohesive. A team. We are not a team.

Martin  So, what I hear you asking is, through the workshop in lesson observation and coaching feedback, you aim to bring the staff together as a cohesive team.

Isaac    Yes.

Martin  What makes you think that collegial lesson observation will do that?

Rowan When we observe, we have a checklist of behaviours and outcomes that the college is looking for. The teacher has no choice about what will be observed. It feels like an evaluation. When a colleague observes, the teacher can be at choice, and we think that will make all the difference. A small difference that makes all the difference.

Martin  That sounds like an NLP-inspired phrase.

Rowan You’re right. Isaac and I went on an  NLP introductory course. Neurological Programming.

Isaac    Neuro Linguistic Programming

Rowan Yes. It’s about the programs, or thought patterns, that we have about our thinking and learning.

Martin  I see, and do you want me to include something about NLP in the workshop?

Rowan No, no, it’s just that we have noticed the need for teachers to be mindful of what they think about their own teaching, to build up their confidence in their methods and trust in themselves and their students.

Martin  So you want teachers to be more reflective on their teaching and learning?

Isaac    In a structured way. And we think the coaching feedback will give them the space and the structure.

Martin  Ah, right. So, you are asking me to show how a teacher can give a colleague the space to reflect on their teaching in a structured way AND for the observation to NOT be an evaluation, but an opportunity for professional development.

Isaac    Yes.

Another Cup of Coffee and a Bicycle or Two

Two coach trainers design their working alliance

“We are on!” I exclaimed when Alexandra finally arrived at our favourite coffee shop to plan the workshop.

“On what?” she asked, as if she didn’t already know.

“On stage, next month, at ‘a college near you’.” I air-quoted the name to maintain some semblance of secrecy. “The one we talked about last time,” I whispered.

“Oh, that one,” she grinned. “And did they want the teachers to become coaches?”

“Almost… It’s a big step for them to go and peek into each other’s rooms, let alone observe a whole lesson and then give feedback, a coaching feedback.”

“How will you make it easy for them to do that?” Alexandra challenged.

“Show them. We can show them two teachers collaborating, supporting each other, observing each other’s behaviour, asking open-ended questions…”

“How WILL we support each other?”

“What helps me to give the most is when I know you will bring me back from any boundaries I might be about to cross, when I get enthusiastic…”

“Permission to interrupt you then?”

“Always!”

“It sounds like you are going to do a demonstration of coaching.”

“Yes. Let them see it and hear it. Then decode it”

“I can do the debrief.”

“I know you can. I learn a lot from listening in on your debriefs.” I acknowledged Alexandra for the trust that we had built up over the years of working together.

Alexandra continued, “And that would be a demonstration of how a teacher can debrief a lesson, with some guiding questions.”

“So the debrief would be a demonstration of the coaching feedback. I like that.” After a moment, I realised that focusing on what was seen and heard would not be enough to support teachers in adopting a coaching approach.

“I do want them to learn really good questions, but mostly it’s the coaching mindset that’s going to make the difference for them.”

“The difference that makes the difference?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

We sipped at our coffee whilst we thought about what we needed to agree on.

“How can I support you, Alexandra?”

“Your stories. You always have a story, for almost every situation. If I need one, can I ask for one?”

“You know you can. And you can interrupt and debrief the story.”

“We seem to have a plan.” Alexandra reflected, then asked, “You will be teaching them GROW then?”

“Yeah, why not? It’s easy and memorable, and we would have time to stretch past the edges of that model for those who are ready to fly.”

“And give a necessary structure to those who aren’t ready to fly, Martin”

“Ah yes. Must remember that! Thanks for reminding me.”

“My pleasure.”

I jumped at the chance to use a powerful question that I’d learned on a course for co-leading groups, “What’s a good metaphor for how we are together on stage?”

“A bicycle!” Alexandra spontaneously shouted.

“A tandem bicycle!” I added.

We weren’t happy with that. It sounded like we would be coach and coachee on stage.

“Two bicycles?” I tested.

“Two monocycles,” tweaked Alexandra.

“Two monocycles, with long rubber bands tied between us”, I added.

“So we can go our own way, and still be connected!”

“A wobbly way, a bit dangerous.”

“A connected way, with ease and tension”

“Two monocycles it is then. And I will need a small umbrella.”

“Mine’s red!”

“Mine’s yellow.”

In the middle of the cafe we stood on our imaginary monocycles, wobbled a bit this way and that, and balanced ourselves with our umbrellas. Nobody minded.

Reflections

Some of the key points I hope you are taking with you are:

• Teachers don’t much like being assessed

• Teachers want to develop and grow as teachers and as a team

• Instructional leaders can be seen as assessors

• As colleagues, Alexandra and I had a natural trust in each other and we still needed an alliance for the training day

• The way we work together would be a demonstration, a role model, for how we want the teachers to work together in a coach-like way.

• Mindset is important. The hand holding the tool is more important than the tool itself

• The best kind of training is to see it then do it

• Models are a better as a summary than an introduction

• Metaphors are a fun and creative way to encapsulate complex concepts.

Coming Up

In the next episode you will hear how the course is designed and the tools we will train the teachers to use in their coaching approach to collegial conversations.

The following episodes will show you what happened during the training course.

Connect with Martin Richards and read his other posts published on the good coach.