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Coaching Support Structures

Some literacy leaders receive extensive training for working with adult learners, but most of us do not. As you move between the stances of coach, collaborator and consultant, you’ll need support structures in place for defining your role, communicating with administrators, advocating for your position with a school board and more. Here you’ll find reflections and how-tos that respond to the question, “Who coaches the coach?”

Latest Content
Coaching Connections: Drop-In Visits

In this first installment of a three-part series, Gigi McAllister explores ways instructional coaches can make strong connections through drop-in visits. Download the Drop-In Visit note sheet and add drop-in visits to your schedule today.

Growing Professional Learning Communities

Cathy Mere encourages instructional coaches to take the best parts of workshop practice and apply it to coaching.

Building a Schoolwide Coaching Culture

Matt Renwick offers three contexts in which a coaching culture is deliberately built and supported in school.

Words of Reflection for New Coaches

Stella Villalba reflects on her journey as an instructional coach and offers advice to new coaches in a question-and-answer format.

When the Best Coaching Is Offering Advice 

Matt Renwick shares a classroom observation and his process for discerning what kind of feedback to give. By considering different coaching approaches, as well as their limits, Matt concludes that sometimes the best coaching is offering advice.

Everything I Need to Know About Teaching Children, I Learned Through Conferring

Stella Villalba pens a personal essay reflecting on her journey of learning to confer with students and reminds us of the importance of this practice.

Coaching Minute: Keeping Writers in Motion

Ruth Ayres explains the importance of keeping writers in motion and ways in which instructional coaches can empower routines that will help students keep writing.

Coaching Minute: Find a Network of Coaches

Inga Omondi encourages instructional coaches to curate a network of others who are doing similar work.

And Other Duties As Assigned…

David Pittman shares the importance of a principal-coach agreement and offers guiding questions to get started.

A Word to Aspiring Coaches

Principal Jen Schwanke offers encouragement for teachers considering an instructional coach position.

Have a Little Fun and Encourage Colleagues

Inga Omondi offers wise (and fun) advice on how to uplift and encourage colleagues.

Offer a Mirror: How Coaches Empower Reflection

David Pittman unfolds a coaching process to provide teachers with a mirror so they can reflect deeply and discover their next instructional moves.

Fine-Tuning Our Coaching with an Equalizer Model

Gwen Blumberg is inspired by a stereo equalizer in adjusting instructional practices to find the just-right mix as she works alongside teachers and students.

Mantras Matter

Brian Sepe guides us in the importance of creating and living by mantras.

Coaching Through the Student Door

Gwen Blumberg outlines the way sharing an asynchronous minilesson with teachers allowed her to share instructional insights in a relevant and useful way.

Coaching Minute: Principals and the Change Process

Principal Lee Snider talks about the change process with teachers.

Teacher to Literacy Coach Transition

Literacy coaches Cathy Mere and Kelly Hoenie talk about the transition from being a teacher to becoming a coach.

Coaching for All

Jen Schwanke believes in the importance of leaders seeking a coach in order to remain sharp as a professional. She offers three identifiers to know it’s time to find a coach.

Listening and Learning from Literature

Stephanie Affinito proposes that a first step toward anti-racist coaching and teaching is through carefully selecting the books we read and recommend to teachers.

From a Coaching Vision to a Coaching Menu

Stephanie Affinito guides us in transforming a coaching vision into a practical coaching menu so teachers can choose their ideal way to work with an instructional coach. Download a copy of a coaching menu.

Coaching in a Time of Crisis

Cathy Mere explores some of the new routines literacy coaches have put in place as they move between live and remote guidance of teachers.

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