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.

The Topic: Coaching for School-Wide Change

The Task: Share your strategy for supporting and empowering learning leaders in your school

This is a topic that is SO near and dear to my heart. My masters program focused on distributed leadership and building capacity in teacher leaders and this idea drives my desire and approach to coach others. I’m constantly looking for ways to lift up other educators and this module had me reflecting on ways I’ve been able to coach leaders in my division:

1) Connecting passionate teachers on Twitter- giving them voice, platform, inspiration and connections to share their thinking and make a difference. @DanielWickner is a grade 3 teacher at my school who is super passionate about identify and I encouraged him to engage in these conversations on Twitter to find out what other schools are doing and connect with other advocates to share his thinking and build a broader base of support for his work. He’s taken it and run with it and is a frontrunner in our school for DEI work.

2) Co-Facilitating a Cross Divisional Task Force: I am leading a Portfolio Task force with a grade 1 teacher in lower primary (that I didn’t know before ending up in this position together). She has regularly commented on how much she has learned about leading groups and facilitating meetings just by working with me. It was a reminder of how leading meetings has become routine for me, with experience and practice, but it’s a great growth opportunity teachers don’t regularly get. It’s been great to partner with her and apply my coaching lens to a context currently focused on adult learning.

3) Teachers Teaching Teachers: We recently had a Faculty Meeting Led By Teachers Focused On Sharing Assessment Practices (aligned with and supporting our divisional goal this year). The administrators asked our coaching team to organize logistics and facilitate the meeting. In the weeks leading up to the day, we each worked to encourage teachers to share practices we noticed or worked on with teachers in their classrooms. A teacher had approached me asking for my help and support planning a session to share about her digital portfolio practices.  I was happy to partner with her and encouraged her to consider presenting with our art teacher as they were doing work with portfolios in different contexts- neither of them knew about the work the other was doing, but as a coach I had the school-wide perspective to be able to connect them. In the end, they presented and I was really proud to have helped them make that connection and share their practice with others confidently.

I am driven by the impact my role has on developing leaders across our division and school.

Read more from The Coach participants as they share their learning from the certificate & mentorship program…

Ashley’s post: Seeing Yourself as a Leader

Karli’s post: The Coach Approach

Debra’s post: Essential Skills for Coaches

Kate’s post: Seeing Yourself as a Leader

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!