Do you ever think about your informal leadership as an instructional coach?
How can you use YOUR level of leadership to advocate for your colleagues?
In today’s post, we’re talking about how instructional coaches can advocate for equity in their school setting.
This is a highlight from one of my favorite episodes from a previous season, featuring Ange Molony, Secondary School Vice Principal at Discovery College in Hong Kong.
If you’re a longtime listener to #coachbetter you know that instructional coaches are informal leaders in their schools. We can use this informal leadership in so many ways, one way is to support or start conversations that are really important, but may be currently overlooked.
Instructional coaches are fortunate to engage with so many different stakeholders throughout their work, and they may have relationships and experiences with other community members that provide insight that other formal leaders don’t have.
When we have the opportunity to advocate for others, instructional coaches have a variety of pathways to start or continue that conversation. This conversation with Ange highlights her own experience in being an advocate, and may provide insight for you to consider how you do something similar in your school setting.
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I asked Ange: “How can we be stronger in our advocacy for equity in our schools?”…
Ange said…
Has become more at the forefront of my thoughts, in order to find the right place for me and my wife. Through my recent interview process, I realized that when I was authentic to myself, I felt much better about the interview.
I am not hiding that I’m working to be an anti-racist, teacher educator leader. I’m working on presenting who I am, and my sexuality and my gender presentation, all of those things are who I am and I’m not hiding that.
if you are lucky enough and fortunate enough that you can be so transparent and so honest with who you are and what it is that you bring, do that. And when I did, I had a level of privilege in that I was applying for positions without giving up my positionality. That comes with, with a level of added confidence.
Empathy can sometimes start from your own personal experience. I represent a queer educator and leader. I’m open in that at school. I’m open in my presentation. So even if I don’t explicitly say it, I talk about my wife, my wife works at a different school, but part of the same organization. So colleagues certainly know that. And then students that have come to learn that too.
If you hire diverse people, they’re going to see things that you wouldn’t see. No offense to the leaders that were there before, they just never experienced it.
I work closely with my Head of Secondary, we talk a lot and we make sure that we point out things that we see, and have the confidence to have those hard conversations with, the leadership team as well. In recruiting, you’re actively checking your bias and you’re getting other people to be part of that. On the leadership panel, make sure you have different people, as much as you can including students, teachers, counselors, as many different people as you can interviewing new teachers, because you may have done everything you can to get diverse teachers an interview to come to your school. But if you then only have white CIS straight people interviewing you can’t remove that bias, so you kind of opened the door, but you closed it already. When I listen to somebody’s story, I’m hearing it through, through my experience.
In the recruiting process, make sure you have different people, as much as you can on the panel: students, teachers, counselors, as many different people as you can interviewing new teachers, because you may have done everything you can to get diverse teachers an interview to come to your school but if you then only have white CIS straight people interviewing you can’t remove that bias, so you kind of opened the door, but you closed it already.
I focus on: being true to who I am; continuing to speak up; dressing the way I want to dress. Talk about my family the way that my straight colleagues might talk about their family. Speak out when I see or hear things, and keep raising it. That can be challenging, because people start with the eye rolls, and say “ not everything is racist, not everything is homophobic, not everything is discrimination.” Okay. But like a thousand little things kind of add up to a big thing, and that can be tiring.
I am learning to slow down to take a breath and to have the conversations that need to be had, but allow the time for the learning and appreciate that takes takes time. So be true to who I am and, and continue to speak up and continue to call out when you see things, and call people in.
Continually speaking up, that just becomes so taxing because helping others recognize things that they might not see takes a level of patience. The change can be so slow and it should have been like this yesterday. “Why am I still having the same conversation six years down the line?” There’s also the stress or burden or ownership of feeling like that’s your responsibility and wondering why should it have to fall on you. Obviously if we had the solution for this, the world would be a wonderful place. There probably isn’t a nice, easy package solution for this.
It’s important to recognize that everyone can do this. Everyone can speak up, everyone can keep having those conversations. Everyone can, recognize when things aren’t equitable. Just the act of speaking up is that first step and everyone is capable of doing that.
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Continue Your Learning
One of the things I loved about the full conversation with Ange is how she highlighted that coaching was her pathway to leadership – and if this clip resonated with you, please make sure to listen to the full episode.
Sometimes, as coaches, we struggle to see ourselves as leaders in our school communities. We have often come from the classroom, and still consider ourselves “just another teacher”. But making the mindset shift to see yourself as a leader is an essential part of embracing your role.
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Each of our three global cohorts will help you take the next step in your coaching practice – either as a brand new or aspiring coach in Getting Started as an Instructional Coach, or as a current coach or educator ready to build a thriving coaching program in The Coach Certificate and Mentorship Program, or as a coach who’s ready to lead in Coaches as Leaders.
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If you’re curious right now, you have questions, please reach out. You can leave a comment below, join our #coachbetter Facebook group, or find us on social media at Eduro Learning and send me a DM. I’d love to support you on your coaching journey. See you next time!
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