Bonus: Watch the spotlight version of this episode on YouTube!

Full Show Notes

“How do you get teacher / admin buy in for coaching? How do you get teachers to carve out time for a coaching role?”

We start by focusing in on school leaders, to help build their understanding of the value of coaching, particularly in comparison to a more traditional facilitation role. As we transition into talking about teachers, we highlight the connections between strategies that work with school leaders and those that work with our teaching colleagues as well. This is our second episode highlighting a question from our #coachbetter facebook group, and we’ll be responding to more questions here the channel regularly, so please join the facebook group or connect with us @edurolearning to ask your question! 

How do you get teacher / admin buy in for coaching? How do you get teachers to carve out time for a coaching role? 

Common experiences with admin interviews we’ve had

Why do you need to get admin buy in for coaching if there is a coaching role?
Is this an opportunity for you to shape what this role could or should be? Is the issue that the role is undefined? Or the issue that the admin has one vision and coaches have another vision for the role?

Start by looking at different coaching models. Follow a process of looking at different coaching models to find similarities and differences, and pick and choose aspects of each model that works for your school context. Develop a shared understanding of what the role entails and what’s expected in this context. Coaching is knowing that when I’m done, the behavior is going to continue because the new practice has been ingrained.

Approach the school leader with ways that a coach could support the leaders school initiatives and articulate the difference between how a coach would fit into to making this change happen vs the potential perception of the job that the school leader currently has.

It’s important to understand that coaching is slow moving work. In order to go deep into learning experiences for teachers, it takes time. Leverage points can come from school goals and how you can support making it happen through coaching.

Working with other teachers, and having them share feedback about the coaching process with school leaders or teachers. This helps articulate what the coaching role can and should be – for both teachers and school leaders.

It’s important for teachers to recognize that they will be successful when they are doing the lifting. It may seem like more work at first, but it will have a more long term impact. School leaders can support this by creating a coaching culture and making it “cool” for teachers to seek out coaching opportunities. At the beginning of the school year, when teachers have goal setting meetings with teachers, they can be highlighting the service of the coach in context.

Kim’s experience with MYP Coordinator at a previous school, sorting people into early adopter, middle adopter, late adopter groups to see how we might support people using different language and support strategies. This allows teacher and school leader to work towards common goals, to ensure that they’re meeting people where they’re at, rather than where we wish they were. 

It’s not realistic to expect a coach to work with every single person in the school. Understanding how critical individual relationships are, means that it’s OK not to work with everyone because you’re having more deep relationships. Critical mass doesn’t have to be 50%. It can be a much smaller group. Being strategic about creating that critical mass will create huge momentum.

Coaching is meeting people where they’re at, rather than where we wish they were.

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