Coaching Is . . . Coaching Isn't . . .

While I haven't been an instructional coach before, I have worked in a district with instructional coaches at the elementary school level. Admittedly, I didn't know what their role exactly was. Often times, I don't believe they did either. Or, at least, they were tasked with so much "other stuff" that their time was taken away from their primary responsibilities as an instructional coach.

In Get Some Guts, Coach!, Jackson writes:

"It is essential to recommit to what coaching is and what it isn't, and align our work to what's happening smack-dab in the classrooms every day . . . I know this to be true: there is no coaching activity or task completed that will trump the return on investment of getting into a classroom and supporting a teacher before, during, and after instruction."

Jackson created a table to support her characterization of coaching, describing what coaching is as well as what coaching is not. See below.

Coaching is . . .

• Individualized to each teacher
• Improving the quality of instruction
• Improving the effect of the instruction on student performance
• Professional development
• Diagnosing teacher needs, based upon student data
• Focusing on specific teaching skills
• Face-to-face
• Communicating care and serving as an example to teachers
• Providing positive feedback
• Providing corrective feedback
• Modeling
• In the classroom

Coaching isn't . . .

• Optional
• Punitive
• Personal
• Tattling to the administrator
• Unlimited patience
• Always comfortable
• Paperwork based
• Fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants
• Subbing in the classrooms
• By teacher invitation only
• Working with kids directly
• Doing work for teachers
• Acting as the go-between the leader and teacher

Jackson emphasizes the importance of action over talking, when she says, additionally:

"Many coaches spend way too much planning time, collaboration time, professional development time, and leadership and coaching time merely talking about things teachers should do. Very little, if any, actual in-classroom coaching is taking place -- and that is why the return on investment of professional development is so low. We have ignored the data that tells us that coaching is the number one tool for getting training information into practice. And without getting that training information into practice in the classrooms, there is literally no way that the training we provide teachers will impact student achievement."