How to Be a More Effective Instructional Coach

I have been a classroom teacher teaching 6-8 ELA for 15 years, but something I don’t write a whole lot about on this space is that I’ve also been a literacy coach for 11 of those years. While I’ve always kept one foot in the classroom, teaching a section of middle school students each school year, a large part of my daily job responsibilities leans toward the instructional coach side of things.

I was recently in an instructional coaches meeting, and we were reading an article on Collective Teacher Efficacy. This is a topic in the education world that fascinates me because of its large effect size (1.44) on student learning, and I’ve blogged about it before. This conversation and article pushed me to not only think about Collective Teacher Efficacy in the role I play with the grade level team of ELA teachers I teach with, but to think about how I help to create a culture of fostering Collective Teacher Efficacy in all the teams I work with as a literacy coach.

One thing I’ve struggled with in my role as literacy coach over the years is this overwhelming feeling and pressure to have all the knowledge and continuously provide professional development to pass the knowledge down. While I do think it’s important for me to read the latest research, learn, and grow, I’m realizing there’s a whole lot more that I can do. Letting this notion go has allowed me to realize the best way I can serve teachers through my role as an instructional coach is to help teams build Collective Teacher Efficacy.

Teachers need to get to a point where they feel like they need their grade level content teams in order to plan and implement curriculum, not like going to a team meeting is just one more thing or a waste of time. So how can instructional coaches help to create Collective Teacher Efficacy in teams? I’m glad you asked! Here are SEVEN tangible ways you as an instructional coach or literacy coach can intentionally help to create high-functioning teams that positively impact students’ learning.

1. Advocate for the resources and tools teachers need. As an instructional coach, you have the ears of principals and district curriculum coordinators. If your school schedule is not set up so that content area grade level teams are able to meet during the school day multiple times each week, then your district is putting a HUGE barrier in place to get to a point of Collective Teacher Efficacy. If teams don’t have the time to meet, how are they supposed to rely on each other and develop the trust necessary to co-create curriculum resources, talk about students’ work, etc.? On that same note, if your school does not have high quality, common curriculum resources for teachers to use as a basis for planning their daily lessons, teacher teams are automatically set up to fail. I put this tip as the number one item because without collaboration time and high-quality curriculum that teachers like in place, CTE is hard to accomplish. Be an advocate for the teacher teams you work with. Fight for them to have these two pieces in place and bring creative solutions to the table to make it happen.
2. Show up to content area grade level team meetings. This is a place you want to prioritize your time. You will get so much insight during team meetings about curriculum resources and decisions, student performance, and team dynamics. Just showing up to these meetings takes away the awkward conversations with teachers about what they’re teaching in their classroom and why. You were at the meeting; you’re in the know. You don’t have to ask and waste time. Also, show up as a team member who is ready to work. Be willing to take on a task, make a proficiency rubric, call that guest speaker, whatever it is. Model what it’s like to be a productive member of a team. You’ll also be amazed at how many doors this opens up.

   When presenting at conferences to instructional coaches, the number one question I get asked is, “I offer out all kinds of help to teachers, but nobody seems to take me up on it. What should I do?” The short answer to this question is: Teachers are BUSY! You need to make their routines part of your routines. If you are in curriculum planning meetings with teachers, all of a sudden you are right there to offer up a resource, answer a question, come help out with a students, etc. Just show up. A quick tip for holding yourself accountable to this is to put in on your Google Calendar and send invites to the teacher teams you’re joining. This way a reminder pops up on your Google Calendar and theirs that you’re planning to be there.

3. Use a Pop-In Coaching Model. In recent years, I have focused instructional coaching only on new teachers in their first 1-3 years at our school. While I still do longer, weekly coaching sessions with new teachers, I decided to switch that up this school year and am using a pop-in coaching model where I pop-in to every ELA teachers’ classroom in grades 5-8 every week. I schedule this by schedule one grade level per day and pick a class period. I start in one teacher’s classroom, spend 10-15 minutes, and then move onto another teacher’s classroom. I visit every teacher’s classroom in that grade level during the same class period. We have 3 teachers per grade level, so this is doable. What this allows me to do is see the common threads between classrooms. I get to see the same lesson on the same day. It’s fun to see the different instructional strategies used in the different classrooms, even with the same lesson.

   After being in each classroom, I send out an email to all three teachers to share one positive instructional strategy I saw in each classroom. It’s an awesome way to get into a lot of classrooms and make connections between the content planning meetings and what’s happening in the classroom with students. Sharing the positive instructional strategies also creates dialogue with the teachers in that grade level and gets them talking more about instructional strategies instead of only focusing on curriculum content.

4. Cover Classes so Teachers Can See Each Other Teach. Something else great about the pop-in coaching model is that it can also be modified so teachers can see each other teach. It works like this: I cover Teacher A’s classroom so she can observe in Teacher B’s classroom for 10-15 minutes. She returns to her class, and I then go to Teacher B’s classroom so he can observe in Teacher C’s classroom for 10-15 minutes. Next, I cover Teacher C’s classroom so Teacher C can observe in Teacher A’s classroom for 10-15 minutes.

   If we truly want to create Collective Teacher Efficacy, then we MUST get teachers into each other’s classrooms. Teachers need new, realistic ideas from other teachers as them who are using the same curriculum. A lot of times what we share in PD sessions is met with, “That’s great in theory” or “My students would never be able to do that…” Seeing other teachers with struggling readers and students who exhibit challenging behaviors do what you’re doing is better than any PD session we could ever provide as instructional coaches. Also, talking about curriculum in content planning meetings is very different than seeing a teacher teach that curriculum in action. We might think we’re on the same page based on what is being said, but sometimes how each teacher interprets something is very different. These mini-observations will foster healthy conversations among teams.

5. Help Teams Set Goals that will Move Them Forward. About 4 school years ago, our school shifted curriculum from a Reading Workshop format to reading units using a Reading Workshop format. You can read all about that shift here. Now that we have a couple years of using reading units behind us, our teams were ready this year to take things to the next level. At our back to school in-service, I threw out 10 different areas teams may want to go next. After that, each team set goals for the year around a few of the areas. The areas we discussed were:

   -Having formative assessments that line up to our summative assessments
   -Using the Before the Unit Planning Process
   -Keeping Reading Units and Writing Units in within a set time frame (3 weeks for Writing Units, 4 weeks for Reading Units)
   -Continually update our Interactive Read Alouds and student book choices in Reading Units
   -Have a team plan for how and when we’re going to provide consistent, high-quality student feedback
   -Talk about student data consistently in content grade level meetings
   -Talk about how we’re teaching content in curriculum meetings, not just what we’re teaching
   -Have a small group reading instructional plan and consistent definitions for the different types of small group reading instruction
   -Focus on getting students to do as much independent reading as possible
   -Give on-demand writing opportunities

   Teachers were very receptive to this guided goal setting, and each grade level ELA team came together on some pretty great goals for the school year.

6. Keep a vertical vision. Classroom teachers stay pretty zoned in on their grade level and team. However, Collective Teacher Efficacy will improve if teachers feel confident that they are part of a system that works for the good of students. A system that involves a scope and sequence where students move from grade level to grade level and curriculum gets increasingly more complex while complementing and building on the year before. An instructional coach can keep that vertical vision in mind and bring it up when necessary or helpful. For example, if you’re in a grade level ELA team meeting, and they’re considering switching up a writing unit, it would probably be helpful to share more about what the grade levels before and after do for that genre of writing. Instructional coaches should guide teams to make decisions with a vertical vision in mind.
7. Lead data conversations realistically and practically. One place we rarely get to in education is talking about data. I’m not talking about the 3 times a year where we sit down and look at the results of students’ universal screening data or state test data. I’m talking about grade level content teams sitting down to talk about how students did on formative and summative assessments. These types of focused conversations lead to grading calibration, tweaking of proficiency rubrics, discussion about instructional strategies, and asking the questions of a true PLC. This is a place where teams can see exponential growth in CTE if we can find the time and the space to make these conversations happen.

   When helping to facilitate this type of conversation with a team of teachers who don’t have these types of conversations often, ask teachers to pick one recent formative assessment and bring a student who scored a “3,” “2,” and “1” (or A, B/C, and D if you’re using letter grades). Ask teachers to find similarities between students who score the highest and the lowest and have further discussions about what these different groups of students need next.

Some Final Thoughts: As an instructional coach or literacy coach, you can choose to work one-on-one with teachers in isolation and struggle with teachers opening the door to truly “let you in” to their classrooms, lesson plans, etc. or you can ditch the one-one-one notion and focus on teams of teachers instead. Opening up to an instructional coach as a team is much more inviting than opening up as an individual. Working with teams to build Collective Teacher Efficacy is going to give you the biggest return on the time you invest.

If you’re looking to give teacher teams a tangible tool to help build CTE, check out the free download below.