When talking it through isn't enough.

I was recently delighted to find out that Target is still very much selling, "The First Days of School", by Harry & Rosemary Wong — the go-to new teacher handbook for those of us who came up in a certain time.

While some of the ideas in my copy didn't age well (professional dress chapter, I'm looking at you), there is SO much value in those pages. Here's a gem from that book that I've been thinking about lately:

💥...the person who does the work is the only one who learns. 💥

While the authors were referring to how we design and implement lessons with students, the same ideas can be applied to our coaching meetings with teachers. Here's what I mean:

As a new coach, I was always super excited when something resonated with a teacher. "That's a great idea", or "I want to try that with my next class!", would be followed by enthusiastic planning. The motivation, the energy, the recapping of next steps were there. But, here's the thing - sometimes when the teacher would actually then put the steps into practice with students, the plan would fall flat. There were questions the teacher hadn't known to ask, pointers I hadn't thought to give, areas where I didn't realize we were miscalibrated about implementing a strategy successfully. Through those missed opportunities I've realized that talking through ideas -- even in detail, isn't enough.

Most of the time when this discrepancy has happened between idea and implementation, it's because I've done the work and I haven't sufficiently brought the teacher along. Whether I talked too much, gave too many suggestions, or just tried to explain a strategy quickly, if I'm doing the work of the coaching session, I'm taking the active learning opportunity from the teacher I'm supposed to be supporting. So what are some routines that keep learning sessions rigorous and active for teachers when introducing a new strategy?

Instructional Coaching Strategies that Make the Learning Active

Offer Models

Take a field trip to another class, curate videos of teachers implementing the focal skill, show samples of student work or teaching and planning artifacts, or model the target strategy yourself, whether in your coaching meeting or co-teaching. Bonus points if the models or exemplars show different ways to implement a strategy while staying true to the focus or purpose (because no two teachers need to sound or enact things in the exact same way) -- just steer clear of models that are heavily dependent on a person's individual charisma. Be sure to focus on a prompt for what to look for, like, "Our goal is to identify what the teacher does and says to ensure a successful turn-and-talk."

Make a Checklist

Once you've analyzed a model or two together, identify and list the key things that the two of you are identifying as important steps or components for success. You can use pre-made checklists if you have something like an instructional playbook, but having the teacher tease out and generate the steps themselves and put moves into their own words can support internalization, ownership, and agency. You can always ask additional questions or add details if needed. For example, "What did you notice about how she redirected Itzel?"

Normalize Practice

Make practice a routine part of your coaching meetings. Rather than just talk through or plan next steps, ask the teacher to practice implementing key parts of a lesson or interaction with students. Sometimes people are hesitant to practice because it feels awkward, and will say they're okay just talking it through or planning it out (that was me!). But role playing the teaching strategy can be SUCH a useful way to test out new strategies, language, or coming up with questions that we don't realize we have until we're actually trying it. In fact, simulating real situations is a research-based way to build stronger mental models. So name that it can feel silly. And then get into rehearsal mode anyway.

Play it Back

Given the example or model, the checklist, and the practice, ask the teacher to recap their biggest takeaways and things they want to keep in mind before they implement with students.

In each of these moves, the teacher is the one that is doing the work. And as we know... the person who does the thinking and the work is the one doing the learning.

Thinking about everything you need to get done to ensure a smooth and impactful instructional coaching cycle? Don't miss this FREE resource:

The Instructional Coaching Cycle Checklist