some reflections on coaching

Many years ago, I wrote a piece about coaching with my friend Aishwarya. At that time, we wrote about being coached.

Many years later, I am in the wilderness of coaching others. And I love it! But it struck me one day to re-read that piece and see if, after 4.5 years of coaching others, I have anything to change or add.

Now, as a coach, I still think that coaching to create empowered teachers is crucial to effective instructional coaching. In my coaching practice, I can think of some teachers I have helped with that lens, but it is far from 100% of teachers I have worked with.

What I know now about coaching, years after that first piece:

• I must find something I like about every person I coach.
• Modelling and doing the work myself helps a lot – teaching my own class gives me real-time struggles to build connection with students; college and career counselling kids side-by-side ensures coaching conversations are grounded in specific children, specific knowledge, and specific knots to untangle.
• Text empowers. Over time, my teachers and counsellors develop their own trusted resources that they share with me and with each other. Everything they know cannot and should not come from me. Those who seek out their own texts, websites, blogs, books, YouTube videos are the ones who really thrive in their roles.
• The more I internalize their professional goals, the less that I spiral or self-doubt or people-please. When I share an example that turns into a story that goes on too long, I can ask myself whether it is connected to their goal and can check days later whether it has helped them meet it. When my goals rather than theirs are centre-stage, impact assessment is harder and feels more subjective or fickle in a way that both disserves the teacher and undermines my own self-confidence in my work.
• Adults are different from children – this might feel obvious but must be explicitly stated. With adults, insecurity around my work feels different than teaching children. What if they learn or grow so fast that my job becomes obsolete? and other thoughts and insecurities swirl around more aggressively with higher volume. But just as every year comes a new set of students in a classroom, so each year comes a new batch of teachers to coach. I should celebrate teachers moving onto other mentors or seeking out other resources to learn, rather than see it as a failure.
• The only way to ‘stay ahead’ of a teacher I am coaching is to learn the trade of teaching continuously – that means studying, teaching and reflecting. My skills will become stale if I stop practicing them.
• Being insecure is human, but taking out those feelings on the teachers we coach is unacceptable. Whether through journalling, discussions, grounding myself in classrooms and students, or working with a coach of my own, I have found ways to acknowledge and attend to my feelings and ensuring I don’t take them out on the teachers I coach. I have experienced coaches who have become hyper-sensitive, defensive, overly prescriptive, or pretentious in coaching conversations that have ultimately undermined my work and have felt like they come more from self-protection than genuine interest in my professional development.

In reading my piece with Aishwarya, I am reminded that as a teacher, I noticed a lot about my coaches and often took them more seriously than I necessarily should have. When I felt smart and self-assured, I noticed and articulated a lot of slips in my coaching experiences. When I was more self-doubting, I took authority and supervision so seriously that I harmed my own professional growth in the face of unhelpful advice. As a coach, remembering my inner and past teacher relationships with coaching can hopefully keep me careful, gentle, and grounded.