Instructional Coaching is a process at our school whereby teachers identify an area of
need that they would like to improve on, related to their practice, and about getting that support.
Instructional Coaching was identified as a strategy to use amongst a range of strategies.
We saw that it gave us the opportunity here at St. Augustine’s to have that one-to-one
conversation with teachers about how they teach, why they do what they do.
This is about having a shared platform where we all have a discussion about our practice.
And teachers are learners too. And it’s about engaging teachers in that learning process.
Instructional Coaching enables us to do that.
A coach and teacher pair may work together over a range of time.
It is not limited, or it is not restricted to, or it’s not expected to be a certain particular time.
It all depends on the needs of the teacher. It’s where, as we differentiate
in the classroom, we differentiate for teachers.
We identify what I’ll be working on during
an Instructional Coaching session. Through conversation, I reflect on what I’ve done
or what’s happening in my classroom, and I share with my coach what I want to improve on.
And then we work out a specific goal, and work out some strategies to achieve that goal.
Now, your goal was around writing?
Yes. I wasn’t happy with the way I was teaching writing.
It was mainly to the whole group, and I just feel that I need to get into small
group explicit instruction in my writing.
You went and had look at Shaun’s class, and you were looking at his structure?
Yes, that’s right. He was the one who had set tasks, but the children weren’t all working on the same tasks.
So they were differentiated?
They were differentiated, and they had some choice in what they did when. And they were
very motivated by that. They had some ownership over their learning.
You also had the visit to Melissa?
I had the visit to Melissa’s class. And there I saw her working with a
small group, and being able to really drill down to the skills that the children needed
in that small group while the other children were on task, doing other activities.
It’s just opened my eyes to a different way of initially structuring my classroom, especially my literacy block.
I had the opportunity to look at other teachers and the way they were operating.
And I got a lot of inspiration from them.
I have the structure in place now, to be able to give small group instruction,
and visiting Melissa’s classroom and Shaun
Shaun in particular, the way he structured his literacy block. And then the
conversation with you, that afternoon, has really hit home to that there was the structure
of my literacy block that was stopping me from being able to get into small group explicit instruction.
Now my next step is that I want that to really quality instruction on what
the kids need, rather than saying, “Oh, well, here’s six kids. I’ll teach this
concept to these six, and then I’ll take the next six, and the next, and take them
through the same process.” I want to teach them. I want them to be working on something that they need.
The outcomes of the Instructional Coaching process are shared rather than reported.
Teachers reflect on what they’ve seen, what they’ve been through, the coaching process, themselves.
And they talk about their next steps with the coach. And they, at our school,
record that on a Google doc, which is shared with our AP and principal.
This way, it’s seen as something that’s an ongoing document, that it’s not limited to that experience,
and that we’ve got other people that can contribute to that coaching opportunity through their expertise.
So we look at it as sharing rather than reporting.
There are a number of challenges that any school faces when implementing Instructional Coaching.
Teaching, for a long time, has been quite a private, personal occupation.
We’ve spent five to six years de-privatising teaching.
We work in a flexible, open, collaborative environment. We’ve set up our time-table
so that teachers have time to work together.
The education landscape had changed so much that we really had to rethink the way we were delivering learning.
So we needed feedback on that. We need to be relevant. We know that we make the biggest difference to student
learning, to student outcomes. And so it’s really important that we reflect on our practice,
and that we receive feedback. But we have to identify what it is that we need to do
to improve our practice. And so you have to have a professional conversation with someone
about that. And it made sense to us that Instructional Coaching would be very helpful in that way.