The second trend exists at schools that do have certain frameworks or rubrics around teaching and coaching. In many cases, leaders attended trainings on those models, and in other cases, the trainers came to them. The problem here is that these frameworks and rubrics are very dense, and much of the language is gray (“most students, some students”). So, often, the leaders aren’t experts at the very thing they’re attempting to train their teachers on. They have these impressive frameworks, but they’re barely being used; when they are being used, they aren’t being used effectively. I observe leaders from all around the country speaking very generally and hesitantly about instruction while flipping through multiple-page documents that they themselves haven’t fully internalized, and neither have their teachers. Leaders in these schools try to observe teachers and provide meaningful feedback (though the “feedback” often comes in the form of emailed “action steps,” which the teachers need to have real training on, rather than just an email about), but it’s often so broad and across multiple domains, so their meetings aren’t as intentional as they can be. Also, teachers can feel totally overwhelmed by the amount of feedback they receive, sometimes being told they need to tighten up their entry routine, write more meaningful objectives, and have students working in groups, all in one meeting. I call this “feedback shrapnel.” It doesn’t make teachers better. They just duck to get out of its way, all while potentially feeling like they’re failing miserably because they’re getting feedback on so much at once. Without leaders and teachers hyperfocused on what good instruction is, without leaders narrowing in on every teacher’s most important next step, and without significant training and follow-up on those next steps, these docs (which I do believe contain a lot of the “right” stuff) are as useless as the most decadent cheesecake is to a person who is lactose intolerant.
The final trend is around leaders’ cherry-picking of skills that aren’t the most important next step for their schools. A powerful example of this occurred at a school I visited in Detroit. The leaders had just run a training on Cold Call that they were very excited about. They’d read about Cold Call in a text and decided that it was exactly what their school needed. The problem was, they missed the mark. This wasn’t the school’s most logical next step. Because when I asked teachers in the building if it was an effective training and if they felt like it was what they needed, many responded that they simply wanted to know how to get their students to sit down. I get that no one becomes an educator so they can practice giving directions or designing routines for handing out papers. They get into it so they can ask deep questions and share their passion for their content with young people. So, I get why these leaders defaulted to Cold Call before some of the more foundational classroom culture skills. But in doing so, they risked totally disinvesting their teachers and their students. Think about a teacher who’s having trouble building a strong culture in his class, asking a question that no one is listening to, and then cold calling on a student—who likely didn’t even hear the question—to respond. I witnessed this. As you can imagine, the more the teacher pushed, the angrier the student got, until eventually he erupted and stormed out of the room. Interactions like this lead teachers to lose faith in their leaders, and students to lose faith in their teachers. And then, in some cases, teachers default to saying toxic things like, “That doesn’t work with my kids,” when it’s time to try executing that skill again.
These trends, and the learning I’ve acquired from many brilliant educators I’ve met over the years, led me to create the approach we currently use at Skyrocket. And I wrote this book because I want to share that approach with you. Because I believe it can support you in increasing your effectiveness as an instructional leader. Whether you’re a thirty-year veteran principal, charged with training your entire team, or a brand-new master teacher who’s coaching one or two teachers, I believe something (hopefully many things) on the following pages will resonate and positively impact your coaching. And the more effective your coaching is, the more effective your teachers are, and in the end, that’s great for your students.
I’d like to make one point before you dive in. While some PD and some programs promise quick fixes to really complex issues in schools, Skyrocket is just the opposite. We play for the long game, coaching the leaders with whom we work to shift their thinking and, as a result, their actions. We coach school leaders to adopt the mindset that execution is everything in this work, so following our approach halfway will yield halfway results. To use a fitness analogy: Some groups are like the new fad diet that promises you’ll lose weight if you eat only tree bark and sleep upside down for two weeks, while we’re the personal trainer who gets you out of bed every morning at 5 a.m. and gets you on the treadmill for an hour of interval training.
That being said, you may not be ready for that level of intensity. Maybe your school is just dipping its toes into the world of instructional coaching. Maybe you’re a master teacher who teaches most of the day, but you coach one teacher a couple of times a week. Maybe you work at a school, network, or district that has a robust coaching program, but the approach is much less direct and precise than ours, and you don’t feel comfortable marching into the superintendent’s office, demanding she adopt our approach. Or maybe you’re still getting your coaching legs under you and you need a little more time to build up the confidence to coach as intensely as we’re prescribing. I want you to know that all of these things are okay. Yes, we want people to coach intensely and to make radical change in schools. We also want people who do have barriers to think creatively about how they can still execute at a high level. But even if you can’t go all-in just yet, for whatever reason, I still believe you’ll get a lot out of this book. Whether it’s around collecting data more effectively, or noticing and addressing low-bar language, or defining criteria for the teacher you’re coaching, I’m confident you’ll increase your effectiveness, even if you execute on 10, 20, or 50 percent of what’s described on the following pages. Because even fifteen minutes on the treadmill is way better than eating tree bark and sleeping upside down.
Part One:
The Skyrocket Approach
1
BIG Ideas
We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
—Aristotle
Imagine you decide, after years of wanting to learn how to play the piano, to hire a piano teacher and begin lessons. You start slowly, one key at a time, following your teacher’s lead. She hits a note. Then you hit the same one. She does it again. So do you. Soon you’re playing the easiest of all piano songs, “Chopsticks.” You’re slow, but you’re getting it, building confidence along the way. You’re thinking, I can do this. I’m playing piano. And then your teacher looks at you and says, “Now let’s work on some Tchaikovsky.”
Likely, this would shock you. Or frustrate you. Confuse, anger, or disinvest