Due to this proven effectiveness, coaching is a popular topic in the field of education, and many educators have adopted the recommendations of several prominent authors. For one, Diane Sweeney’s (2011) book, Student Centered Coaching, described three types of coaching and their attributes (Sweeney & Harris, 2017). The types of coaching are student centered, teacher centered, and relationship driven, each of which characterizes the focus, role, and perceptions of the coach, and the corresponding use of data and materials. This delineation is helpful in understanding that there are various types of coaching depending on the goals of the coaching program. As the title of her book suggests, Sweeney advocated for student-centered coaching and attested that it has the most impact on student learning.
Jim Knight is another author who has provided years of research and writing from which many educators have gained a strong knowledge base. His book, The Impact Cycle (Knight, 2018), contained a wealth of information and details about many of the tasks an instructional coach typically performs. Knight promoted a cyclical model that emphasizes the partnership between teacher and coach. Many coaches also use Elena Aguilar’s (2013) The Art of Coaching: Effective Strategies for School Transformation as a base for their work. This book presented coaching as a transformational activity for a teacher, a classroom, or a school. It also provided a research base and a plethora of strategies that coaches can use to establish a strong relationship with teachers and help clients accept coaching and make changes in their practice. Common to all these works is the idea that coaches can catalyze improvement throughout a teacher’s career by taking a collaborative approach to practicing new skills.
Every school can plan and utilize practice and collaboration through coaching. Skeptics say this is impossible because of both efficiency and cost. But consider: when a district spends money to train teachers, it expects that the teachers learn from and use the training. It is not a day off from class to simply hear about some interesting ideas; the district pays for a speaker or trainer with the intent that change will take place in the classroom. As explained previously, however, we know that traditional methods of professional development do not effect this change. Coaching is effective and, therefore, a much better investment. The framework is already available in schools—all teachers are surrounded by other teachers and many schools already have coaches. The heart of the issue is how to use scarce resources to create significant and sustained change in student learning. Harnessing and planning a collaborative support program using existing resources is a little messy and requires some focus but is within reach of every educator.
Coaching is about getting better. If you want to learn to downhill ski, you take a lesson with a coach. If you want to improve your golf game, you hire a coach. Every professional sports team relies on its coach. The coach knows the game and can teach it. But more than that, the coach can watch a player’s performance, make decisions about what needs to be improved, and focus the player’s attention on that skill. Alternatively, the coach can listen to what the player wants to improve on and develop a program to make that happen. Transferring knowledge about teaching strategies and skills from the notebook, the folder, or the teacher’s head into the classroom takes focus, work, and practice. This is the role of the coach. This is what coaches do. This is how coaches help teachers get better.
What Coaching Looks Like
A coach makes a difference. Coaches can:
■ Observe strengths and weaknesses
■ Target one or two skills to work on
■ Explain how improving the skill can improve performance (and student learning)
■ Demonstrate or model the skill
■ Direct practice and keep the client on target for improvement
■ Provide specific feedback on progress and encourage results
■ Direct professional opportunities such as observations of an expert, selected readings, co-teaching, role playing, improved instructional language, cooperative learning, and so on
In practice, a good coach can make change materialize.
Coaching programs and individual coaches already exist in many schools and school systems. Many of them are effective in supporting new initiatives and ongoing teaching and learning applications. These programs are as diverse as their schools, but three foundational elements are common to many strong programs that keep teaching and learning sharp and professionals on the cutting edge: (1) a well-defined model of instruction, (2) universal coaching, and (3) the coaching cycle.
In the 1980s, I moved to an island and was given a fourteen-foot wooden sailboat. I had never been in a sailboat. My boat was in terrible condition—it had spent some time on the ocean floor and had been sitting on a broken trailer for a few years after that. I put on a new deck and asked a high school student where the lines went (my first coach). I read a book about sailing to gain background knowledge. Ready to go? Not quite. I asked for advice and went underway with a friend who sailed (second coach). I took the advice and then paddled upwind for half a mile and sailed home (yeah!). I crewed on a racing sloop—though the captain (third coach) may have thought I was more like deck hardware than a mate. Then I sailed on my boat with a friend who had been sailing for years (my fourth coach). I learned a lot and executive transfer occurred. With knowledge, practice, and training and support from my various coaches, I was able to become a competent sailor. More than once I spent a hard day as a principal and then sailed across Fishers Island Sound, up the Mystic River, got an ice cream, and sailed home as the sun was setting. Heaven!
Model of Instruction
A model of instruction defines the strategies, skills, attributes, curricular applications, and the like that teachers are supposed to be using in preparation for instruction, during instruction, and with colleagues to instill learning in students. As such, it provides a comprehensive definition of what good teaching and learning look like so that all teachers and administrators have the same definition against which to assess teacher competence and growth. Having a model of instruction is an essential foundation for improvement and coaching (Marzano & Simms, 2013; Marzano et al., 2014).
From a coaching standpoint, the model indicates the specific elements and strategies that define effective teaching and learning. Teachers or observers can determine from the model which skills a teacher is good at and already using, as well as those that are absent from his teaching and might bring about a stronger learning environment if implemented. One of the strengths of a model of instruction is that it provides the teacher and coach an identical foundation from which to work. They can measure performance in a given strategy and make a plan for improvement. They can also measure success as the teacher’s repertoire gains depth and breadth.
Schools may develop their own models of instruction or use a pre-existing one. Marzano’s (2007, 2017) The New Art and Science of Teaching model is a good example of an available model of instruction. The protocol consists of forty-three elements (see the appendix, page 108), which are supported by over three hundred strategies that teachers can use in their instructional practices. Together, these elements and strategies comprise a comprehensive definition of what teachers (and learners) can do to instill learning. Marzano and his colleagues have described the model and its implementation in Becoming a Reflective Teacher (Marzano, 2012), Coaching Classroom Instruction (Marzano & Simms, 2013), The New Art and Science of Teaching (Marzano, 2017), and the Marzano Compendium of Instructional Strategies (Marzano Resources, 2016b). Danielson (2013) also defined a comprehensive model in The Framework for Teaching that consists of four domains and twenty-one elements, each with associated rubrics, attributes, and examples.
Both Marzano and Danielson divided their models into domains and included