At the end of the school year, I found myself among my team of teachers, all of us with happy tears rolling down our faces. Our students had seen immense personal and academic growth. We were a brand-new team of teachers and instructional coaches. Shared data cycles had just become a mandate across our school. At that tear-filled meeting, our team lead shared a quote from Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly: “If you are not in the arena, getting your [butt] kicked, I am not interested in your feedback.”
I think of that quote often as a coach who supports teams. A coach must be in the arena getting their butt kicked, but they are not the main act in the arena. Instructional coaches come to the arena with plans and sneak attacks. They can see the arena from a vantage point a teacher cannot. Below is a guide for instructional coaches to help you stay in the arena and empower the main act: the teachers.
Step 1: Get clear on roles and structures
An instructional coach has their feet bridging two different roles: building leader and classroom teacher. It is easy for administrators and teachers to see a coach as “the fixer” and set the coach up to be the leader of the teams. But a coach is not the leader of a team of teachers. Conversely, they are also not just “the note taker.”
To set your teams up for success, you need to make sure everyone knows their roles.
Action
- Advocate. For yourself: Get ahead of the game by meeting with whoever leads each team and communicating what you will do in each meeting. Ask what they see your role as being and find a common ground so you are a valuable member of the team. For the team: Are there structures in place where there is clear time set aside for teams to meet and clear expectations on what could be done in those meetings? Is there a clear leader and, if there is not, are teams equipped to run meetings collaboratively? For teacher leaders: Do the leaders of the teams have time for coaching on leading effective teams? Are there clear resources in running shared data cycles? Is there time for teacher leaders to meet with and learn from other leaders?
- Show your role with your body. Turn off the radio, close your computer (unless it’s absolutely necessary), and participate in any team time as an active member.
- Come ready with questions. Here are some questions that could help guide teams into clarifying roles: What roles do we need to have a successful meeting? What strengths does each teacher have on this team? How does each teacher want to improve their collaboration skills? What does the team think is the best course of action? What went well in this meeting and what would the team like to do differently next time?
Step 2: Coach and advocate for shared values and expectations
Often, when teams get together, it feels like a waste of time to spend any of our precious minutes setting up norms and expectations—or getting to know each other as a team. You cannot have a thriving team culture and effective, student-focused, life-giving team time without everyone on the team working to uphold what the team values. As a coach, it is your role to validate and possibly coach a team lead in setting up a thriving team culture.
Action
- Start with a connection. This could be achieved by asking the group the same question every time or having some other opening activity you do consistently. Ritual and a soft start set the tone of safety and equity of voice in a meeting.
- Have values and norms visible. Make team meeting minutes come to life by placing your values and norms at the top of the document. If teams meet in the same space, also print them out and hang them on the walls. Having shared values and norms visible gives a positive reminder to teams of what they value and how they will act in a way that upholds their values. A common example I have seen is time and talk values. For example, “We will be done with this team time in 45 minutes no matter what.” While that specific example could go many ways, I have seen a simple statement like that kick teams into effective and efficient meetings because it was a shared value for the team.
- Advocate. Get team members training in project and team management. I was fortunate enough to work in a district that paid for my training in SCRUM and Adaptive Schools. I still use resources from an Adaptive Schools live binder when planning any meetings or professional development.
Step 3: Help teams find focus for the year
Backward planning is ingrained in every teacher when planning for their classroom, but for some reason, it goes out the window when it comes to teams of teachers. I worked with a team that had a goal that followed this framework: “By May of 2022, students will _____ and we will _____.” They referred to that goal every time they met. Individual teachers knew how to access the goal outside of meetings and regularly referred back to it in their own planning time.That team absolutely knocked their goal out of the park and felt invigorated by their focus.
Action
- Run a protocol. Remember, you are not the leader, but you could be a guest speaker with some focused coaching work. Use a protocol for teachers to find focus. Remember to include checkpoints and measurements and to predict possible roadblocks and what the team might do to be proactive about them.
- Use this time to listen. This is a great time to mine possibilities for coaching cycles that are chosen by the teachers. Listen to them, and in the next coaching conversation say, “I heard you mention this in our team meeting. Do you want to work through that with me?”
Step 4: Be proactive with the “What about…?” questions
I was an electives teacher for many years, so I have lived in a world where the typical team structures might not work or there are many missed opportunities to get teachers together to plan for their students. It is both awesome and kind of lonely being in the “What about…?” group. “Oh, yeah. What about SPED? How will this affect their schedule?” is often said when it is too late to change a decision that has already been made.
The teams that do not fit the mold at your school, and even those teams of one, still need support and guidance.
Action
- When planning for team time, think through the constraints that SPED & electives face. Ask these teams what they’d like team time to look like. Connect them to other teachers so they are not an island. Support them in planning special events to uplift the entire school. Communicate with them what core teams are doing.
- Get teams to talk to other teams. This one looks like, “Oh, yeah. What about when our sixth-graders become seventh-graders?” Our schools are a continuum. A sixth-grader does not remain a sixth-grader for the rest of their life. To support collective efficacy, we must look beyond the grade and content we teach. What skills are teachers seeing that are working? What is not working? How can we improve the continuum? One of the content teams I was a part of had appointed team members as liaisons. They were expected to regularly communicate with another grade level or special interest team and report back at team meetings what was going on in worlds outside of their team.
- Purposefully plan professional learning with teams in mind. This one looks like, “Oh, yeah. What about this professional learning coming up in 10 minutes? Should we just group teachers randomly?” This is a missed opportunity to support teams. If you are not using your professional learning time to purposefully group, I encourage you to make time for like groups, unlike groups, and random groups to plan together.
Get in the arena
While you can and should be proactive and advocate for the teams you work with, sometimes setting up teams of teachers for success is simply being in the arena and facing whatever comes at you in the moment. When instructional coaches are in that arena, the number one tool in your toolbelt is your listening skills. It will show your teachers that you’re on their side.
To learn more about instructional coaching services available through NWEA, visit our website.
