Everyday Instructional Coaching: Seven Daily Drivers to Support Teacher Effectiveness

[00:01] SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_02:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by my friend, Dr. Nathan Lang. Dr. Lange is a former science teacher and NASA educator, administrator, and ultimately director of curriculum and instruction for Nashville city schools. And he's currently the chief education officer for WeVideo, a platform for student video creation. And he's the author of the new book, Everyday Instructional Coaching, Seven Daily Drivers to Support Teacher Effectiveness.

[00:43] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:45] SPEAKER_02:

Nathan, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Hey, thanks, Justin.

[00:48] SPEAKER_00:

A pleasure being with you today.

[00:49] SPEAKER_02:

Well, Nathan, I've been following your career for quite a while. We met at a conference several years ago when you were with Nashville City Schools. And I know you've had quite a career in ed tech and have done quite a bit of work in the area of instructional coaching and 21st century learning and things like that. What did you see in your work with instructional coaches that led you to writing this book?

[01:12] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, first off, for the kind words. And very, very excited to talk about my new book, Everyday Instructional Coaching. And really, the inspiration for this book came from when I was working in Metro Nashville as a Director of Curriculum and Instruction. And really, we had a daunting task. We had brand new standards that the state adopted.

[01:34]

We had 87 schools that we needed to roll these standards out. And So the role of an instructional coach was pivotal to this movement. And so I noticed that with the role of instructional coaching, yes, there are books out there. And of course, I love Jim Knight's work around the principles of instructional coaching. And there's other work out there that really helps to provide a framework for instructional coaching. But what I wanted to do was to look at what are some daily actions.

[02:07]

Yes, we can have a foundational guidance. But we have to kind of really balance for a prescriptive fashion with really giving some guidance on what are some daily actions that an instructional coach can do to support teacher effectiveness. Many times we see instructional coaches from school to school, even within the same district, they have a variety of different roles and pretty much whatever maybe the principal asked them to do, or maybe they just kind of had to guess what their role is. And so sometimes you see them with a group of students in a small group. And then sometimes you see them maybe working with the teacher. And so because of this variance that I see with coaches from school to school, I felt we really need work around ensuring that coaches feel empowered to really work alongside teachers to help support them and together lead students to success.

[03:00]

And so that really is the primary reason why I wrote this book.

[03:04] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, well, I think coaches are often in this position where they have to both define and protect their role because, you know, it's kind of like a box of donuts, you know, in the faculty lounge. If it doesn't have a sign on it, it's just going to get taken. And I think the time of an instructional coach, like, oh, we have an extra adult. Let's see how many things we can get that person to do that other people are doing that have been going undone. And that time can very quickly be pulled in a thousand directions if it's not clearly defined and clearly protected. So what are some of the key contributions that you see instructional coaches as making?

[03:39]

I know you divide this into kind of seven drivers. What are some of those drivers and how have you seen them function effectively to help coaches really maximize and clarify their impact. Because I think the flip side of that need for definition is that often coaching positions are somewhat vulnerable. You know, if the budget gets tight, anybody who's not working with students has to really very clearly articulate their value and what they do and what the school would be losing without that position. Yeah. So let's talk about the drivers of coaching.

[04:10] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Coaches have a really unique role within the school building because although there's a leadership component to an instructional coach, there's a very informal aspect to an instructional coach because of their relationship with the teacher. And so we have to really get coaches to a point where they feel that they are truly working side by side with the teacher, but also with the principal. And so it's a very delicate, kind of a fuzzy line sometimes that coaches walk. And so if, you know, I go in my book to describe getting the culture and the trust and the relationship to a place where these drivers can be the most effective. So a couple of those drivers, for one, transparency has to be a component of every day.

[04:56]

And we talk a lot about transparency in the context of education, especially as leaders. And we talk all the time about leaders, when you're transparent, then you're going to build a culture of positivity, and then your teachers will be more transparent. And so I propose in the book that there are ways that we can be more transparent. And One of those ways, for example, is when I was a principal, there was a 360 evaluation done on me, which was very uncomfortable because when those surveys are anonymous, then obviously people are much more prone to share really what they think about you. And so, of course, I go straight to the constructive comments, but I never made those results public. public to anybody.

[05:41]

I kept this for myself. And I had to take a while to really understand what the feedback was saying about my leadership style and what I could do to make it better. But helping coaches to really do the same process with the coach, but have these survey results basically open for everyone to see. And then have the coach meet with teachers about what the data is showing. And so what happens is this creates really just an open flow of transparency about what's working, what can I do better, and really showing, okay, this is not about a personal attack. It's truly about creating student learning opportunities, really deepening student learning.

[06:22]

And the only way we can do that is to focus on how adults work together closely and transparently. So I think that's one of the drivers. And I go, there's other tools and forms and so forth that I provide throughout the book to help tease out transparency.

[06:36] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, well, let's talk more about what that transparency looks like, because I think there's a truth, you know, in that idea that's embedded in 360 feedback that we have to really have a clear sense of where we are, of where things stand, of how things are, you know, how we're being perceived, if we want to have any hope of change. And when you talk about transparency, are you thinking in terms of relationships between, say, teachers and administrators, or in terms of, say, transparency into the teacher's own practice that the coach is helping them reflect on?

[07:05] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so I mean, I would say transparency all around. And one of the aspects in the book that I talk about is from Patrick Lencioni, and he coined the term naked service. And it basically describes, you know, the vulnerability that a service provider has with their clients and customers. So what I did was applied that to the work of a coach. And there's many reasons why transparency is so important. I mean, Of course, there's always fear of losing the business.

[07:37]

When service providers are very transparent, they're like, oh, gracious, what's going to happen to my clients? But the clients see the level of loyalty and trust whenever they are transparent. Of course, others are afraid to be embarrassed. And so when you are making your mistakes known in front of others, it's embarrassing. But the more we do it, the more proactively we ask questions and make bold statements, then the more that we can overcome that fear. And then, of course, especially in the teaching realm, the feeling of being inferior.

[08:09]

And coaches are known to be master experts. And so just right out of the gate, and I experienced this as well as an administrator, I felt like I had to have the answers. And when a teacher would come to me with a question, then I felt like I had to have an answer instead of maybe asking a clarifying question or a follow-up question and really creating a conversation that says, hey, let's discover this solution together. And so there's always a fear of being inferior as well. And so I think transparency helps alleviate those three fears. And again, curious is kind of culture of, hey, let's talk about what's not working and what's working and let's create solutions together.

[08:53] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I think that's a great segue into chapter three on transparency. inquiry, the idea of investigating and learning together. What do you see as the role of coaches in inquiry? Or what do you see as the role of inquiry in coaching?

[09:05] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And it is a great segue from when we were talking about how coaches are often perceived as having all the right answers. And yes, I think we need to illuminate the expertise of a coach. But at the same time, we know that coaches are going to be much more relatable. They have They frame their answers instead of always providing answers. They are providing maybe scaffolds for teachers to ask questions about their practice.

[09:34]

And there's one model that I propose in the book called the why, what if, and the how. And so when there's a question about how to do something better, we can go through a series of steps to say, okay, there's lots of things we do in the classroom that we do it because we think we should, or maybe it's been done for years. And so we have to continually ask ourselves, why are we doing this? What is the sole purpose? What's the picture that we're painting as far as we are doing this because we're creating X, Y, or Z? So first determine why we're doing it.

[10:09]

And then what if we do it differently? What's the result going to be? And then once we start to ask questions about the what if, then we can determine how. And of course, those questions would result in more questions being produced. And so, of course, inquiry is rooted in questioning. And one of my favorite tools that the Right Question Institute developed was the QFT process.

[10:33]

And they developed it for teachers as a strategy to use with students to help them improve questioning and prioritize questioning. So what I did was I took the QFT model and applied it to instructional coaching and how a coach can help the teachers create better questions.

[10:53] SPEAKER_02:

Well, Nathan, I know in a lot of cases, people have kind of the expectation that an instructional coach is going to play, as you said, the expert and is going to share their expertise in a way that's somewhat one directional. But I know in the book, you talk about the idea of reverberation and the idea that this is not just a one way street, but that feedback is a little bit reciprocal. Could you talk more about that idea of reverberation?

[11:17] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so this was a word I coined to build on feedback loops. So feedback loops are typically, you don't find that phrase in education circles. You find it more maybe in leadership models or business models. But I love the concept of you don't get feedback once. It's a continual process. But the one thing the feedback loop really emphasizes is just more the cyclical nature, but not necessarily feedback.

[11:46]

the back and forth nature between the person providing the feedback and the person receiving the feedback. And so with the reverberation, really the overall concept is we have an instructional coach that provides feedback to the teacher, but we also have the teacher, of course, responding to the feedback, but then the teacher, we want them to give feedback to the coach about how coaching is supporting them as a teacher. And so Again, it goes back to establishing that trust, the transparency, the relationship for this driver to become the most effective. That's the overall concept. And so, of course, it is still a loop and there's still a back and forth. But we want to make sure that teachers are reflecting on the feedback, but they're also providing feedback.

[12:31]

And that's something that we don't see a lot is we get a lot of feedback, but we don't feel that we have the permission to participate. provide feedback from the person who's giving it to us to begin with.

[12:41] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I'm thinking about the nature of instructional leadership. And we know from the literature on instructional leadership that it's not simply the case that the administrator, the principal, is the instructional leader, and then maybe you have another administrator who's in charge of discipline, but then nobody else is an instructional leader. I love the model that I've read in so many different articles and papers that instructional leadership is distributed and that there is a role for administrators to play. There's a role for coaches to play. There's a role for teacher leaders to play. And I wonder what some of your thoughts are around that kind of shared work of leadership and the role specifically that coaches can play in that process.

[13:22] SPEAKER_00:

You know, really coaches are school leaders. And in the book, I make reference to leaders being principals, coaches, and teachers. So the primary audience is really instructional coaches, but they have an opportunity to show a side of collaborative leadership that I think, unfortunately, I mean, we talk all the time with principals, we want to ensure that they have a level of transparency with teachers and that, but just by nature of the principal to the teacher, there's just sometimes an awkward barrier there because there's a supervisory aspect to it. And so we really can look to coaches as being transformational leaders in the school. And one of the drivers, actually, that I have in the book is called influence. And it's about this concept of coaches being able to be a catalyst for change.

[14:16]

And so a coach and a principal having many conversations frequently about about what are things that must change in the building to move students to be more successful. So those conversations happen at the leadership level, but then the coach is being empowered to help be a catalyst for change in the building. And so I give some strategies about working with teachers that are quote-unquote ineffective or maybe have been dubbed ineffective and how coaches can help.

[14:48] SPEAKER_02:

spark change with those teachers i really feel like coaches often find themselves kind of stuck in the middle but in a good way that coaches kind of know more than anybody else about where things truly stand in the building you know often as an instructional coach you will have the ear of the principal more than almost anyone else and also you will have more conversations with teachers that are truly about their practice that will give you a sense of where their practice truly is, including conversations that they would never have with their evaluator. So I think there's a really unique informational situation that you're in as a coach that really lends itself to that kind of influence leadership. It may not be positional power, it may not be that you control the budget and hiring and firing, But in terms of the information available to you as a coach, you do play an incredibly important role in ensuring that attention to the right issues is allocated, that resources are allocated to the right priorities.

[15:46]

And of course, that relationship with teachers, with administrators is absolutely critical. So I wonder if we could close by talking about sincerity a little bit. What are some of your recommendations on that front in chapter six on sincerity?

[16:01] SPEAKER_00:

So we hear really a lot about another word that's closely related to sincerity, which is authenticity. And so we talk about, oh, let's be authentic with our leadership and with people. But as I really dove into the research about authenticity, another word really emerged as a better word. Authenticity actually is used to define both objects and human behavior. But sincerity is mainly used to define the human condition. And so thinking about sincerity and what it means for the coach, and it does go back to transparency and it goes back to really telling the truth.

[16:42]

But it also goes back to a level of, you know, when we talk about being sincere about sometimes the pendulum swings the other way and we say, okay, then we just say everything that comes to our mind and we don't sugarcoat. You hear that statement a lot. I'm not going to sugarcoat things. And so when that happens, then there's going to be people and teachers who get offended because the message is not wrapped with kind and positive messages. And so I talk about in the book with self-monitoring and with itness. And so being able to have a balance between understanding the coach's actions and why they're responding to a certain situation a certain way.

[17:24]

And so if you have maybe a disgruntled teacher, then really thinking about why is the teacher disgruntled? So being very sincere about this is where we are, but how can my communication play a role in helping this teacher maybe see what the problem is and then moving towards a solution? And so really it's focusing on not only the teacher's perception of what's happening, but the coach's own self-perception of how does their actions create a positive atmosphere of communication and sharing.

[18:00] SPEAKER_02:

So the book is Everyday Instructional Coaching, Seven Daily Drivers to Support Teacher Effectiveness. And Nathan, if people want to get in touch with you or follow what you are up to online, where are some of the best places for them to connect?

[18:14] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Happy to... Connect with educators. I do daily on Twitter.

[18:19]

So you can find me at the handle Nalang1, N-A-L-A-N-G-1. And I respond to all the tweets. So I would love to hear your feedback and I'd love to connect. Also, NathanDLang.com. I'll post blogs there.

[18:36]

So I'm very excited to hear what people think about the book and engage further about this.

[18:41] SPEAKER_02:

Well, Nathan, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. Thanks so much, Justin. Have a wonderful day.

[18:46] SPEAKER_01:

And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.

[18:51] SPEAKER_02:

So high-performance instructional leaders. What did you take away from my conversation with Nathan Lang about instructional coaching? One of my big takeaways is the importance of coaching. clarifying your role and clarifying the contribution you make if you are an instructional coach and if you have hired an instructional coach, particularly if it's a new position. I think it's incredibly important to be engaged in an ongoing dialogue about that role and about the way that coaches work with teachers, because as I said toward the beginning, it's very easy for coaches to get pulled in a lot of different directions and get pulled into things that definitely are not coaching. And we want to protect that time after defining what coaches do and how coaches make a difference for student learning.

[19:35]

We want to make sure that as a team of educators, both administrators and classroom teachers and coaches, that we protect that time and protect that role so that coaches can make the difference that they're here to make. And I want to encourage you to check out Nathan's book, Everyday Instructional Coaching, Seven Daily Drivers to Support Teacher Effectiveness to help you work with coaches or be the coach in your school who works effectively with teachers to bring about improvements to teaching and learning.

[20:04] Announcer:

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