Coaching and Building Trust

November 15, 2009 at 11:26 pm (Standards 6 & 7. Communication & Collaboration) (coaching, EDU 6600, planning, professional development, Professional Learning Communities, teacher beliefs, teacher leader)

One aspect of the trust-building I have witnessed in my short career is to ensure that coaching is embedded in the teacher’s context and focuses on best practices in a way that is supporting and positive, not punitive.  Focusing in the teaching practices and not the “shortcomings of those practices” is key (pg 169, Professional Development). Teachers need to feel supported and like they can talk about their experiences with new curriculum as they are. No part of the coaching process should be tied to teacher evaluation (pg 194, Professional Development).  This doesn’t mean that evaluations can’t include how teachers are implementing new strategies, or even that teachers are trying new strategies.

With the use of data in a supportive atmosphere we can get teachers to admit that change needs to happen, that our teaching practice needs to be “modified, extended, or replaced” (pg 194, Professional Development). Teachers, especially high school teachers, need to see that working in isolation is not in the best interest of anyone.

I have just completed my first 2 hours of my last year of the NACL conference. We have spent 2.5 years discussing how to use data to drive discussion about student learning and professional development. Our Zepeda reading is very pertinent to what we are discussing this week- our professional development plan for our district for the forseeable future. Coaching will need to be part of our plan because it is so rich and embedded in context.

We spent tonight talking about Designing Professional Development and how to build a sustainable program. We spent a long time in our district group discussing what sustainability means and what we want it to mean for our district science program. We do not want to become stagnant in our program or approaches. “Sustainability” means more than maintaining the status quo. Being “sustainable” means growing and changing with our students and as professionals. This is going to be a great week!