Rebekah (School Leader): We are nowhere near perfect with it. I think there’s a longer, bigger vision for all of the coaches to have some commonalities between how they coach and how they use time. If we’re asking (again as a midsize school) our teachers (who are teaching four or ve preps) to co plan, which is where I see coaches having real power – in the co-planning. If we’re asking them to co-plan with the learning support and IT and EAL – that’s a lot of meetings and a lot of talking. I think for us that’s part of our next step – trying to figure out what that’s going look like – systemize isn’t quite the right word, but we’ll roll with it for now. Systemize those conversations. I feel that teachers are becoming more and more open to coaching or co-planning in particular because of a lot of hard work that learning support in particular has done to make that happen. People are more open to people coming into their classrooms. But it can be a lot of meetings and sometimes coaches in their own sphere feel like they’re not getting all the time that they want – but then forgetting that there’s four other coaches who are trying to get to that one teacher who’s really open to coaching.

Tico (School Leader): The word is culture. You have to have the systems and the structures, the time, all those things. Those are the technical pieces. The most important part is the cultural piece. I think it became pretty popular in schools to read Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Advantage. It’s about organizational health. Anthony Muhammad has written some books about organizational health, but you’ve got to get that right. And the reason I talk about organizational health is because trust is so important. In a healthy school, you can be vulnerable and you can trust and you have people who want to grow and learn. That’s what a healthy school looks like. That’s a coach’s dream what I’m describing right? Then you can put in structures and those are important too. Don’t get me wrong, if we don’t put in the supports, how are we going to meet? Where are we going to find the time? Are we going to get the support we need? Those things are all important. I don’t want to minimize them, but the key component is the culture. Do you have a healthy culture that allows for vulnerability? For trust? And the idea that a good professional learns and grows just like they want their students to learn and grow.

Niki (School Counselor): One of the key things that struck me when I first went through my cognitive coaching training was, I was aware that some people had done it and I hadn’t yet. And that was just the nature of it because not everyone can do it together. It made me think, oh my goodness, like they’ve got this super power that I didn’t know about and have they been using it on me and I didn’t know about. So that made me a little bit fearful of this type of conversation. So thinking on from that, I think one of the ways that this can be really successful is (it’s difficult because not every institution can do this) but I think if everybody kind of is a coach or everybody is aware of that type of conversation, then I really do feel that it, takes away the hierarchy of it because it does feel hierarchical if some people are trained as coaches and other people don’t know about this almost “secret power”.

So maybe if in a perfect world (we’re talking about a utopian world) a really egalitarian approach to coaching so that everyone has access to those tools and you are very conscious that you’re choosing to go into that conversation and you’re aware of what’s happening – you’re not someone that this is being done too. I don’t know how that would work everywhere, but definitely being mindful of removing any kind of hierarchy in this I think is key to it being successful. Which then plays into that idea that you can make yourself vulnerable because we’re all in it together. It’s not just the bosses being trained as coaches or “special people” having this ability. It’s “all of us” can do this.

Adam (School Counselor): So first and foremost, I think I would come back (and maybe I’m biased), but I would come back with some sort of a social emotional answer to this, which is clearly that feeling of safety and the permission to be vulnerable with your colleagues is fundamental. We’re paid to be experts to a degree, but we’re also paid or expected to be learners as well. So if you can be vulnerable enough to continue to learn, then it just sets up the dynamics that will support that. So being able to go to someone and saying, “hey look, I don’t know the answer to this” and that’s really okay. You don’t need to know every answer to every educational or school-wide problem. Like that’s not what’s expected of us. I think if the culture supports that dynamic, then we’re free to go get the answers that we need and to rely on our colleagues for their contributions.