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 your coaching team

This has been a journey that I hope to capture in my personal project. Moving from an isolated technology class to a coaching model has been quite a culture shift. Our teachers are still used to that older model of having technology as a subject, and shifting that mindset to understand that technology isn’t a content to be taught but a skill to be integrated with other areas of learning is a challenge. COVID really helped us to accelerate a lot of those goals, but then moving to build a coaching team has been the next step.

This microcredential course has been a move towards building our team. Helping the team to build more of a unified understanding of what coaching is and is not, and building understanding of some of the skillsets we need to become effective coaches, while also being coached ourselves has been a part of a big goal for this year. There’s still a lot of work ahead as we help teachers and leaders to also understand the role of the coach, while also building confidence amongst our coaches to know what coaching looks and feels like, and developing those coaching skills.

One of the ways we’ve been trying to build up these skills in a small way has been through the NEXTeacher program. These have been the main coaching target points for our coaches. Coaching the entire staff of 350 is not possible, but working on a more intentional coaching relationship with teachers who have signed up to be coached helps to refine the skills of our coaches and understand how working towards a goal might look like. It doesn’t mean that coaching the other teachers have not existed this year, but much more of those relationships have been consulting relationships or co-teaching, but the goal is we can expand these to be more coaching relationships as well.

It’s still a work in progress, and clearly from reading the comments from the coaches above we’ve had varying success and development in this area. But I’m thankful for the team we have and the growth mindset that has been shown and the many honest conversations we’ve had that will hopefully help us to move forward in our coaching journey as a school.

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

Amy’s post: Coaching as Leadership

Ashley’s post: Seeing Yourself as a Leader

Karli’s post: The Coach Approach

Debra’s post: Essential Skills for Coaches

---

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!