Zooming in on Coaching: Carving Out Space

Last post I unpacked some of the misconceptions about coaching.  There are so many reasons that teachers put up walls around their practice: burnout, perfectionism, very real time crunches, and not to mention pandemics! Engaging with coaching does ask us to slow down. Because the main role of a coach is about carving out space for thought partnering and reflection.

It is about....

• playing with a new strategy that you heard about and figuring out how it works in your context.
• visioning the big pictures of a unit and then the instructional implications in your lessons
• turning a frustration around a dynamic in your classroom into something concrete and hence actionable.
• examining student data and determining next moves.
• sitting down to process after a professional development session to rumble with new ideas.
• reflecting on your assets as a pedagogical practitioner and building off of them. 
• laughing and blowing off steam to help ride the waves of education during a pandemic.
• celebrating the bravery of reimagining something or trying something new.

After the space is carved out to do any of those ideas listed above, it is then the coach might be involved with suggesting, coteaching, modeling, or resource curation.