We want to give you a peek inside our Coach Certificate & Mentorship Program. Coaches taking part in this academic-year-long journey have graciously given us permission to post some of their learning and reflections from the private coursework they are undertaking during this program. Where possible, we have shared the course and the action task to give context for the guest post.

Watch Crystal’s Video

Read Crystal’s Reflection

At the beginning of this cohort, my team and I really wanted to gain tools to help us become a better instructional coach, grow the coaching program in our district, and create a coaching culture with all staff.

After each milestone, we were one step closer to that goal. By creating documents utilizing the information and knowledge gained from the course, we could easily turn them around to use in real life here at school.

It’s hard to choose just one milestone as the one with the most impact, because all of them have helped shape our district coaching program. From milestone #1 giving the foundation for the program in a vision statement and coaching beliefs, along with a clarifying role explanation document, to milestone #2, our coaching plan template that explained the process of coaching in an easy to read, friendly way, each project had a profound impact to move forward. Our culminating milestone #3 pulled it all together in a teacher end of year survey, where we collected direct feedback.

I think the biggest area of growth for me has been in clarifying the process of a coaching cycle and utilizing the stances and questioning techniques.

As seen in the original reflection below, our goal of wanting a document to help support our program, did just that!

“The artifact that we chose to create as a team, was an infographic for the coaching cycle and process, as well as a guiding form for documentation purposes. We chose this make these our milestone artifacts in order to help support our coaching program. We wanted a document that was both coach and teacher facing that we could use to show the process of what it looks like working with a coach, and then we needed something to document the coaching. As we worked on this artifact, we pulled all of the important info we wanted to share and make it easy to read and understand at the same time. We now will be bringing this infographic and sharing the document with the teachers we work with in order to move our program forward.”

There is definitely still room to grow and continue to strengthen my coaching skills and our district program. I think that teachers are starting to come onboard for coaching and I see more opportunities as the years pass.

Our admin has now completely bought in as well, and are helping to be a driving force to create the culture that everyone works with the coaches. This was the biggest challenge that we were able to overcome this year in my opinion.

In previous years, the admin looked at the coaches as a means to fix a problem, which translated to a punishment for the teachers. They are now shifting that perspective and see the value of all teachers working with the coaches to move forward.

My learning within the Coach has help prepare me in so many ways. From learning the different theories of coaching models, to understanding coaching stances and how to implement different conversation and questioning, the Coach has allow me to grow professionally.

My next step in professional learning will be to continue to hone my literacy leadership skills and grow my pedagogy to support teachers and students.

Level Up Your Coaching with The Coach!

If you are ready to dive deep into your coaching practice, to help you #coachbetter and build a thriving coaching culture in your school, please join us for our next cohort of The Coach!

Wherever you are in building a coaching culture in your school, The Coach will give you the strategies, skills and tools you need to make coaching a success and will empower you to confidently apply instructional coaching strategies in any situation – from building a coaching program, to having coaching conversations, to being a leader in your school community. We facilitate only one cohort each academic year so we can offer individualized support for each participant.

Coaches of all levels are welcome: you’ll start the program with a self-assessment to determine exactly what the next steps are for you!