What do you do when you can't coach everyone at once?

Whether you're a solo coach, part of a small but mighty team, or you only coach teachers as part of your role, sometimes coaches are stretched thin. When you can't coach everyone at once, how do you prioritize?

1. Set a theory of action.

You can't prioritize if you don't have a North Star that you're working towards.

Why does coaching exist in your school? Is it to support new teachers? To support with implementation of schoolwide initiatives? To support a specific subject or skillset?

And if you asked people with different roles in the school to fill out the following frame would they give similar responses?

Instructional coaching at [my special school] exists to.... so that ... and then ....

Here are some different examples that would all drive different decisions about coach resource allocation:

Coaching for remediation — targeting your most struggling teachers to support them in improving their practice and student outcomes.

Coaching to drive a specific school goal — pulling resources away from classes or teachers that fall outside that focus.

Coaching for teachers who want support — partnering based on interest and even on a first-come-first-served basis.

Coaching to support new teachers — working primarily or exclusively with early career teachers.

Coaching to build a culture of learning across the school — contributing to a school where everyone is a learner, ensuring a combination of new teachers, experienced teachers, and teachers from across content areas are working with a coach.

If your theory of action is clear, then prioritization becomes less about who you're saying no to in any given moment, which makes it personal, and instead about what you're saying yes to, which keeps it strategic.

2. Coach different people, differently.

Sometimes having different types of coaching "services" or ways of partnering can support us in serving more teachers, but differently. Then, we're not just thinking of who will or won't get coaching right now as a fixed decision in one format, but rather who might get cycled through at different times in the short and long term, and in what ways.

You might offer different lengths of coaching or for different purposes, which could then allow you to prioritize different folx for different types of partnerships. For example:

On-ramp support: Whether for new teachers or the teacher who just needs some support getting started, this might be more frequent, hands-on support upfront in the first weeks of school, or as part of the roll-out plans of a new initiative or transition period (new course, change in assignment, starting mid-year, etc).

Shorter coaching cycles: Working with someone for a few weeks to a trimester or quarter, depending on the focus.

Longer coaching partnerships: Coaching cycles that last, say, a semester or a year.

Team coaching: For teachers who will be supported in a group, rather than (or inaddition to) one-on-one.

Intensives: Extended, punctuated bursts of side-by-side work on PD days, release days, or over the summer.

Quick touch points: Ways that people can get support on a one-off or drop-in basis without it being tied to ongoing work together.

In this more flexible way of working with teachers, we offer a more robust system of coaching supports that don't depend solely on rotations through fixed-length coaching cycles. Someone might not work with a coach within the first weeks of school, but they may kick off a coaching cycle within a month. They may not be on this semester's coaching cycle list, but they know they can drop into office hours with their emerging questions. They may not sign up for an ongoing coaching cycle, but welcome guidance and support in team meetings or PD days.

3. Build shared understanding through honest, realistic, student-centered conversations.

Get whoever makes decisions with you about coaching (other coaches, school leaders, your supervisor) in the figurative room and get on the same page. Create shared data-driven and student-centered reasons for why you will prioritize some teachers over others. Ensure that there is a shared vision for coaching and for the time allocations that are needed (because a model where you coach 8 teachers at a time every week is different than one where you coach 20). Ensure that the prioritization method is clear and in alignment with a shared vision for coaching.

If there is alignment and transparency, then the decisions and communication around who to coach, when, and how, will become easier and stem from a place of alignment and integrity.

. . . . .

And for anyone who's curious, here's where my current thinking lies around prioritization, which has changed based on a given school's context and needs:

1. Teachers hired on "emergency credentials": we need to get to them early and for an extended length of time for coaching that is mostly directive. We cannot have underprepared teachers flying solo.

2. Tie for second:

   1. Teachers from content areas whose student data shows we need work -- this could be in teams, and ideally is supported by other professional learning and strategic initiatives

   2. Teachers who volunteer — if folx are asking for coaching, lets get them coaching (at least a few spots on our rosters), which engages the willing and also actively combats the idea that coaching is for "fixing bad teachers"

3. The experienced teacher who's in a slump — I've worked with some amazing teachers who came into coaching from a place of feeling a little...well..bleh. These are folx who I'm so glad to see thriving and returning year after year when they may not have been sure they were going to stay on the team or even in the profession when we started working together. The slump can be caused by any number of things: their teacher bestie just left the school, they're feeling unsuccessful and questioning whether they were ever any good, they're having trouble adapting to a change, or they just feel like they've plateau'ed professionally and want to reignite their learner selves and try on some new practices.

4. Underperforming teachers — I place them lower not because I think they are less important to coach (they are high on the list of teachers in need of support), but because they often fall into one of the earlier categories or coaching may actually not be the the highest leverage intervention. Coaching isn't a substitute for strong performance management. Sometimes what's needed is more active supervision or training, where coaching plays a role in supporting implementation towards established goals. The move here, then, is less about identifying whether someone is underperforming (the symptom) and more about the cause of the struggle, to then see if coaching is the best solution or part of a system of interventions that can be implemented to help the teacher improve.

5. Influential teachers — you know the type. For better or worse, they've got pull on the team. Let's get 'em in the mix, support them towards meaningful goals, and have them become natural ambassadors for ongoing teacher development through coaching.

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