Chapter 5. Preparing the School for Instructional Coaching

Teachers, school leaders, superintendents, boards of education, and parents want their schools to be exciting, creative learning environments that provide every student with an excellent education. In our work, we have identified a number of conditions that provide fertile grounds for successful schools and for effective educator-centered instructional coaching. Taken together, they set a standard for quality. But we begin with a reminder: these are not absolutes. Few, if any, schools will have all of these conditions. Certainly, the more that are in place, the more likely the instructional coaches will be effective. Begin with the end in mind for where you want to go but focus on the reality of where you are at the onset.

The enabling conditions described here are expressions of the power of culture in organizations and depict a school environment open to continuous improvement (Hirsh, 2014). They help to set the stage and climate that supports school transformation.

1. The desire to change. You have to want to change. This should be no surprise. It is the bottom line. Starting with a desire to change is the most important prerequisite to being able to change. Then come the hard questions: Why do you want to change? What inspired the desire for change? What kinds of change do you want to see happen? What outcomes are you hoping to achieve?
   The best approach is transparency—a school community coming together to talk about what the current climate is, how the climate could be more conducive for teaching and learning, and what would help it change. The discussions must be nonjudgmental, reflective, and aligned with the schoolwide improvement plan. They must be a collective endeavor that includes the constituents who will be affected.
   But remember that change for its own sake is not an answer. Change does not necessarily mean that things will be better. School communities need to carefully and thoughtfully think through the "why" before they can figure out "what" will help them make change happen.
2. Shared goals and vision. Do teachers, school leaders, staff, and community share a common set of goals and a clear vision for the future of the school? It helps if all concerned are pulling in the same direction. Where are you and where do you want to be? Be clear and precise. Don't overreach. Be sure there is broad agreement on what you want to do before you think about how you will do it. Articulating goals and a vision is essential to figuring out how to get there. Convening focus groups to discuss the needs of the school community, prioritizing the needs, identifying goals around those needs, strategizing ways to achieve those goals, and developing a timeline and an action plan can help construct a shared vision and shared responsibilities for prompting school transformation.
3. Good communications across staff and between leadership and teachers. Good communications and teamwork are essential to effective instructional coaching. Poor communications can result in a noncooperative environment: teachers do not talk or share with one another; teachers are suspicious of leadership (and vice versa); no one admits that they do not have "the answer"; everyone is protective of his or her bit of turf and unwilling to say anything that seems to suggest they "need some help" or would benefit from it. The list goes on. Schools are healthy when teachers and school leaders are not defensive, are willing to listen to one another, learn from one another, and are comfortable with recognizing that they may not individually know all they need to in order to promote quality teaching and learning.
   Holding regular meetings for which notes are recorded and publicly posted enables all to see the progress of the plan and invites participation in an open and risk-free environment. Although passion for change is critical, emotional "I" statements may hinder progress. Staff members can disagree without being disagreeable.
4. Support for collaboration among staff and between school leadership and staff. This condition is often a significant stumbling block. Instructional coaches rely on sharing knowledge and finding ways to help teachers and school leaders help one another. It is all about transparency. Suspicion, insecurity, or intimidation will get in the way. If instructional coaching is a desirable direction, building a community of trust that is open to collaboration can smooth the pathway. In a sense, this condition is an extension of "good communications," as described above. The difference, however, is that collaboration enables nonevaluative interaction, an important goal for all instructional coaches.
   One of the most effective ways to support change is for the school leadership to dedicate time for coaches and teachers to work together in a confidential, risk-free atmosphere. This is "made" time, not "found" time. That means that schedules include dedicated time to work with colleagues, time that is sacred and not dismissed by the administration to use the coach for other, less important tasks.
5. A school leadership team that can think creatively about how to achieve school improvement. The old ways are the old ways. Sometimes they are the best ways; sometimes not. School leadership team members have to think outside the box. They cannot and should not rely only on what they know and what they "think" works. Schooling is increasingly complex; the demands on leaders are nearly overwhelming. A recent study (Grissom, Loeb, & Master, 2013) found that principals actually spend little time on matters of curriculum and instruction, which should hardly surprise anyone in education today. Add in increasing rigor in state curriculum standards, more-demanding statewide student assessments, and a host of issues around teacher support and effectiveness, and what we have is a prescription for overload. Under the circumstances, school leadership has to be willing to step back and find ways to gather the collective wisdom of the school staff as a source of ideas and strategies for improving teaching and learning. A creative school leadership team recognizes the talent pool that can be tapped at their school and in their district. Rigidity and clinging to the way things have always been done might be comfortable, but looking for new approaches can make a big difference for teachers and students. Great leaders are not reckless, but they do not shy away from new ways and are willing to assume some creative risks in the quest for school improvement.
   Innovation and collective problem solving are critical for change. The school leadership team needs to partner with staff members and honor their voice and choice, allowing flexibility to try new things without fear of failure. Focus groups that are established at the onset and given the independence to follow through from construction to appraisal of what worked effectively can make a difference in school change. For school transformation to occur, staff members must be part of the thinking, planning, and delivery.
6. Understanding how adults learn. It is easy to overlook the very real differences in how adults and children learn, but understanding adult learning is a key to developing effective working relationships with teachers and school leaders and helping them change. There is extensive research in this area (see Figure 1.1 in Chapter 1 for comparisons of adult and child learning styles), and adhering to best practices is essential to implementing strategies that will promote professional learning. So much of coaching is based on one-on-one interaction. A strong foundation in adult-learning theory helps build both trust and support for the work that coaches do, especially in understanding that teachers are valued practitioners even when they work with a coach.
   Coaches honor adult learning by involving staff members in developing a relevant professional development plan that is aligned with the school improvement plan. Administrators need to allow coaches to establish the professional development schedules with staff, co-facilitate sessions where appropriate, and encourage coaches to meet one-on-one with staff to ensure that the professional development sessions lead to professional learning.
7. Receptivity to new ways of thinking about professional development and professional learning. Professional development is often an afterthought. Frequently, specific days are set aside for state- or district-proscribed activities that are often led by a consultant, a publisher, or a program vendor and not tailored to a school's specific needs. School-designed opportunities are rare. As a result, professional development tends to be disconnected and, at best, only marginally relevant to teachers' instructional priorities. Does it have to be that way? Professional development is not cost free. Between staff time and hard-dollar expenditures, professional development typically consumes 2 to 5 percent of a school's budget (Gulamhussein, 2013). There are, however, many ways to think about how these funds are spent. Instructional coaching represents a different approach to organizing and implementing professional development. To the extent that school leaders are willing to consider alternatives to the "one-and-done" professional development tradition, a more targeted and personalized approach can be accomplished by instructional coaches who provide follow-up and sustainable implementation of new learning. For this to happen, the school leadership team must be willing to do things differently and examine how best to collaborate on developing a vision for the school, honoring teachers' voices.
   By definition, instructional coaches are skilled practitioners who build trusting relationships with their teaching colleagues. Administrators need to capitalize on the coaches' strengths and respect from the staff so that coaches and teachers can organize a grassroots approach to discovery, working together to plan the kind of professional development that becomes ongoing, sustainable professional learning.
8. Making the best use of time for professional development and professional learning based on an instructional coaching model. Time is in short supply, but planning professional development based on an instructional coaching model will take time—time to design how it will work in the school, to put teams together to identify needs, and to help teachers determine their individual needs and wants. Building a coherent, aligned effort requires a good deal of organization. Teachers and school leaders are already challenged to do what needs to be done to make it through the day. An overlay of new responsibilities may be viewed as one thing too many. In addition, too often a new initiative is proclaimed without proper planning and preparation. As a result, the reaction is "This, too, shall pass." That said, it is a matter of priorities. A carefully articulated professional development plan, co-designed by staff members and implemented with an instructional coach, can yield big dividends in terms of professional and student learning.
   Effective use of coaching time is intentional and deliberate. Focus group meetings must include attention to addressing the needs as proposed by the staff, allowing them to collaborate on ways to support those needs, and reflecting on how those needs were met.
9. Patience. Besides time, patience is another thing in short supply in the world of K–12 education. If a new initiative (whatever it is) does not show results in a year, it often disappears. But deep down, policymakers and practitioners alike know that schools and schooling are so complex that evidence of effectiveness does not come overnight. If the objective is to find a silver bullet, instructional coaching will not provide one.
   Instructional coaching unfolds over time as coaches and teachers build trust, focus on achieving the mission, and recognize that teachers and school leaders must learn how to learn—from one another as well as from coaches. No one is an expert, but together, everyone becomes a member in a community of learning and practice, sharing a vision about how to build teacher capacity and improve student learning. The payoffs in classrooms can be significant. To be effective, coaching requires a deliberate plan for elaborating how coaches will support the vision of schoolwide improvement. Patient policymakers, school leaders, teachers, and parents are willing to wait a reasonable amount of time for evidence of improved outcomes. Expecting immediate results will undermine the effort, and so patience is required when discussing expectations. Some things—adding common planning time on teachers' schedules, creating a shared vision for change, establishing focus groups, and generating a needs assessment—can change almost immediately. Congratulations and pats on the back are in order for these small but crucial steps. However, changes in outcomes take longer. Planning, revisiting, refocusing on the needs, debriefing, re-evaluating the successes—all of these take time, and administrators are wise to periodically remind the staff that schoolwide improvement will not occur overnight.
10. Understanding how issues of confidentiality fit into the equation. Respect for confidentiality is one of the basic elements for helping instructional coaches succeed. It is how coaches gain the trust of teachers and school leaders. Coaches must be able to navigate between those wanting help and those demanding better performance. Many school leaders recognize that improving practice is a balancing act—teachers have to be amenable to change, have ideas about what they want to change, be comfortable asking for assistance, and not feel as though they are being "evaluated" (for better or worse) while they are given support. Confidentiality is a cornerstone to effective instructional coaching. If the environment is safe and supportive, teachers are more willing to take risks to improve their instructional practice. They will be ready to make mistakes without fear of failing. That's how they will learn what works in their classrooms.
    Coaches should be selected not only for their content knowledge but also for their ability to establish solid, trusting relationships with staff members. Ideally, coaches have demonstrated effective interpersonal skills that show respect for confidential, collegial interactions. Administrators need to understand that confidentiality is critical for implementation and not breach that confidentiality by asking coaches about their interactions with teachers. Administrators need to make themselves visible and see what is happening in classrooms that is having a positive impact on student learning, rather than ask the coach for updates.

These 10 conditions are important for building a successful instructional coaching initiative. Certainly, it is highly unlikely that all of them will be present at the same time in a school. Each one, however, can be achieved. Our experience is that schools intentionally build toward securing as many of them as they possibly can, knowing that despite the inevitable bumps in the road, lasting, meaningful learning will take place.

Getting Buy-In by Making the Case for Instructional Coaching

Whose support is critical? The list is not surprising: superintendents, principals and school leaders, boards of education, teachers, and parents. In any given school community, one of these players may be more important than another, but each will have a role to play. Each needs to be consulted or at least apprised of the logic underlying the reasons for promoting instructional coaching in their school. Make no mistake, bringing a coaching initiative to a school requires political acumen. Initiators need to provide information describing what instructional coaching is, how it works, and how it has been done elsewhere; data to support the choice of instructional coaching as an appropriate schoolwide improvement strategy; and evidence that instructional coaching will lead to positive outcomes as compared with other strategies or ventures also competing for scarce resources (time and money). Ultimately, a clear justification is essential.

Gaining support for instructional coaching requires preparation and dialogue. Everyone affected by coaching should be included to the extent that they can or want to be involved. Those promoting instructional coaching must be prepared to answer questions such as the following.

• How will instructional coaching improve student outcomes? For this question, get ready to discuss how research (as cited earlier in this book) shows that instructional coaching leads teachers to make positive changes in their instructional practice, leading to an increase in student engagement and learning (see also the Key Findings from the Pennsylvania Institute for Instructional Coaching (PIIC) Teacher and Coach Survey Report).
• Why instructional coaching rather than something else? When faced with this question, point out that schools need to assess the effectiveness of the professional development they offer. "Drop-in" professional development is not effective; nor is the effort of an outsider who doesn't know the school culture but tries to tell the staff what they need. Having a skilled practitioner do ongoing work, side-by-side with teachers, promotes the notion that learning takes place all day, every day.
• What evidence is there that schools with instructional coaching improve their outcomes? Share research from www.pacoaching.org for data, and the research cited at the beginning of this book.
• Will every teacher have to participate? Convince doubters that instructional coaching is not a deficit model and works most effectively when coaches can "work with the willing," with many teachers participating. That is not always the case, however, especially if the principal dictates the teachers with whom the coach will work. When that happens, it behooves the coach to expand the coaching cohort of teachers to include other staff members who want to work with the coach. Remember, coaching is not a deficit model; it doesn't work effectively if teachers feel they are required to work with the coach because there is something "wrong" and they must be "fixed."
• How will coaches be chosen? What skills do they need that will make them qualified for the job? To answer this question, point out that most school districts create a job description that includes the skills and competencies that are necessary for implementing an effective instructional coaching model. In a nutshell, advocate for putting on paper that coaching candidates should demonstrate their understanding of the following: subject-area content and literacy-based strategies, basic tenets of instructional coaching, principles of adult learning, effective instructional practices, data collection and analysis, assessment strategies, and theory of change.
• What does a coach's schedule look like? Stakeholders need to understand that coaches ideally need daily release time to work with their teaching colleagues. Some schools have full-time coaches; others have part-time coaches. The amount of daily time devoted to instructional coaching helps determine the expectations. Each day's activities, however, need to include working with staff members implementing some phase in the BDA cycle of consultation.
• How will we know if it is "working"? Stakeholders will start to notice a change in culture in which professional conversations become the norm in the building and staff members collaborate and generate professional development sessions that meet the needs of their students. Those professional development sessions create ongoing professional learning opportunities where teachers collaborate and plan, discuss, debrief, and revise their thinking so that their students' needs are continuously addressed.

These questions are not easy to answer, and in other chapters we address some in more depth. The point, however, is that coaching cannot be forced on a school community. Sometimes exasperated, overworked, and worried school leaders institute coaching because they think coaches will "fix everything." This is not the right reason to hire coaches. As noted earlier, a healthy school community adopts instructional coaching because it has confidence in the ability of teachers and school leaders to improve instruction through collaboration.

The Cost of Coaching

It is impossible to ignore the fact that much of what is done, or not done, in schools depends on money, which is the case for every school program that is not part of the required curriculum. Budgets are tight. Funds directed at anything but meeting basic needs are scarce. That said, we recommend that the issue of cost be addressed head on, understanding that instructional coaches should not be an "add-on" but rather an integrated part of the faculty. Coaching is not an intervention; it is an approach that offers nonevaluative, one-on-one support to teachers by a skilled, experienced practitioner.

Across the many districts and schools where we have worked, a few strategies and approaches have helped mobilize support for instructional coaching. Although coaching can be a cost-effective solution to improving instructional practice and increasing student engagement and achievement, the case must be made.

How Much Will an Instructional Coach Cost?

The cost of an instructional coach will vary, of course, from school to school, district to district, and state to state. Typically a full-time instructional coach costs about as much as a teacher with the same number of years of service. Coaches rarely are given their own line item in a budget. They are teachers, so that is the line item, just as a coordinator of a specific program is not an added cost, per se, but a teacher who has another role in the school.

There are three typical approaches to funding: (1) a coach is hired as a teacher and is part of the school allocation; if the coach initially starts as a part-time coach and part-time teacher, the goal is to morph that part-time coaching role into a full-time role the following year; (2) a coach may be supported by reallocating funds for traditional professional development, and that money is set aside for the coach's salary and benefits; or (3) the coach may be hired with "soft money" through external funding that pays for the coach's salary and benefits. Although the first two options are the ideal, the third can be an alternative, especially if the school leadership begins planning from the beginning that the soft-money stream will become part of the operating expenses the following year. The critical point is that those making decisions must think about the resources they have and how they will allocate those resources and sustain the funding to make the greatest long-term impact on student learning.

We have seen instances where a school thought the position of coach was so important that there was the collective will (among school leader, teachers, parents, school board, and superintendent) to "trade" a teacher for a coach. This took an extraordinary effort, supported by well-documented gains in student outcomes and true community collaboration. Later, after seeing the coach's positive impact, the school leader was able to persuade all concerned that spending hard-dollar revenue in this way was well worth it. Additionally, the school leader was able to reallocate some professional development funds for coaching, recognizing that the instructional coach, indeed, was the leader of the school's professional development program.

In some cases, schools have funding set aside to "purchase" consultants to provide drop-in professional development for the staff. These are cases in which information is shared but rarely followed by ongoing support to discuss implementation. This approach is an expensive proposition—schools pay for professional development but then must wait for the consultant to come back and answer questions about a practice that may have occurred some time ago. It is not real-time or side-by-side support; this kind of professional development is done to teachers, not with teachers. When compared to the cost of a full-time coach who is on staff and can be reached all day, every day to provide ongoing support to teachers, funding for the drop-in consultant does not appear to be an efficient use of limited resources.

Risks and Rewards of Soft Money

Many schools and districts are in states that provide funding for coaches from a variety of federal and state grants for innovation or school improvement. There is danger, however, in such dependency. The good news is that these kinds of funds are commonly available. The bad news is that funds from these sources are like a drug—a habit hard to break and especially painful when or if the funds disappear or diminish (as so often happens with soft money). Many of the school leaders with whom we have worked have initially used soft money for coaches, but they begin to think about sustainability right from the beginning, putting a plan in place for expeditiously transitioning to hard money. This means working to make certain that the instructional coach provides valued assistance to teachers, monitoring metrics to document effectiveness, and continually making the case for the coach as central to the school's mission. These are the kinds of leaders who hold the coaching responsibilities sacred and protect the role designed accordingly. (See Figure 5.1 for a table describing some soft-money sources that are often used to fund coaches.)

Figure 5.1. Soft-Money Sources for Funding Coaches

All too often, schools and districts do not go through a planning process to segue from soft to hard money. When the soft-money source dries up, there is no way to sustain the instructional coach, no matter how effective that coach has been. Some schools and districts have designed compromises to address the funding issue: sharing a coach between or among sites (which diminishes the benefit of onsite support every day), supporting only a part-time coach (although recognizing that a part-time coach is not likely to have the same impact as a full-time one), or training an existing staff member (e.g., a librarian) to fulfill some of the duties of a coach. Needless to say, these kinds of compromises take a toll on the coach's capacity to meet the needs. No matter how well conceived, it is hard for us to recommend such weak "second-best" strategies.

The bottom line is this: educator-centered instructional coaching is not cost free. Although the optimum solution is to use the school's operating funds to ensure that coaching is an integral part of the school's improvement plan, initially that might not be the case. To work well, ECIC requires a commitment from the entire school community and a powerful strategy to ensure funding that will support coaching beyond the short run.

Summing Up

Consider the qualities that make for the success of an instructional coaching initiative. Think about each in the context of the school environment. From the start, consider which qualities are most important and make sure that they are understood and in evidence. Bring in an instructional coach for the right reasons, and carefully manage funding sources. Don't look for a "quick fix" (that can only disappoint), and make certain that the coach has the supports essential to fostering change in teaching and learning.