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Teacher Coaching And Development Process

Jessica Quap

Grand Canyon University

EAD-530 - Improving Teacher Performance and Self-efficacy

Dr. Steve Debee

March 31, 2021

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Teacher Coaching And Development Process

In order to prepare for upcoming teacher coaching and development, I have viewed a

complete teacher pre conference, observations and post-conference. As a teacher of 16 years, I

have been through many of these using different methods. The goal of an observation is always

to improve student achievement. We must reflect and be coached in order to be better. Our

reading for this week said that the process of coaching is never to “fix” something that is wrong.

We are looking for a way to make ourselves and our students better (Danielson, 2016).

Observation Pre-Conference

At the conclusion of viewing the pre-observation conference, I noticed that this

conference is very similar to the ones I have participated in before; however, one thing that was

different was the fact that it seemed very “question and answer”. To explain, I felt the principal

was not really listening to her teacher’s response because at one point the principal asked about

how she has scaffolded for this lesson, and the teacher did not specifically say if they had used

the Kegan strategy she mentions as her scaffolding before this lesson. I think the teacher

misunderstood the question and the principal did not ask it in a clarifying way. My conferences

have been more of a conversation instead of a checklist.

During the conference, the coach asked questions that lend themselves to outlining a well

developed lesson plan. These questions asked by the administrator began with asking what are

your objectives going to be and what are your expectations for this lesson? The teacher stated the

objective of the lesson to be if students could identify the author’s purpose of an informational

text. Then she asked if there had been introductions to these close reading strategies or is this

something that we have been working on? I don’t believe the teacher understood this question

because she answered that her students were going to use a Kegan strategy to let her know what
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they already knew about the topic. To me, that is not what the question is asking. I hear, have

your students learned about any of this before or is this your intro lesson. Her answer should

have been that she introduced author’s purpose last week, and her students were going to work

on digging into the “inform” portion of author’s purpose today, so they had already talked about

what inform is and now they are going to apply their learning to see if they can understand why

something is to inform. How are you going to know that your lesson objectives are achieved?

What are your look fors going to be? She answered this very well, which shows a lot of

pre-planning. She already had her assessments planned out. Her lesson appears to be fully

planned before the pre-conference. The teacher stated that her look fors would be the Kegan

structures to support their prior learning. She means that her students will have prior knowledge

because they learned this last week. What is the academic relationship between this lesson,

lessons you have done before and lessons you will be doing in the future? She said that they had

began the introduction for the author's purpose earlier in the week and today theory were

focusing on “inform”. This is what I think the principal meant in the earlier question of her

scaffolding before the lesson. What can I expect to see from your students? She stated if they can

show their learning in the Kegan strategy and talk about their explanations of highlighting and

why they highlighted what they did. Then she said guided practice and independence. practice.

Not sure what she means by that other than her kids can do the guided and independent practice.

She should have been more specific here. How will you structure your activity for the discourse?

The teacher said they were going to be doing “Inside/Outside Circle”. Being familiar with Kegan

strategies, I know this will have students move around a circle interacting with each other over

the text. Great strategy to use to get students to share learning and build on learning from others.

What assessments are you going to do as checks for understanding to gauge their learning this
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lesson? The teacher answered that during lesson will be a formative assessment constructed

response using a sentence frame. Her task will have the students explain what they highlighted

and how that helps them understand. She means to say that her students will explain how their

highlighted text evidence helps them support their determination that the author’s purpose of the

text was to inform. I would guess this teacher is not 100% confident with her teaching material.

Maybe a newer teacher. Throughout I wish the teacher had been more well spoken in her

answers. I can tell she is nervous, and not confident in her answers. Probably because of the

camera. I have done these before and mine looked the same way when used as a training aid.

What is your experience with sentence frames? I loved that she said they use sentence frames

daily. This is so important for ELL students. Is there going to be that piece where they have to

defend their positions? She states that their defense of their answer will be the second part of

their constructed response. This type of summative assessment is very common and does well to

see if students can put their learning into words and explain why. Is there anything in participle

that you want me to look for or be hyper aware of? She wants the principal to ask students what

they are learning. This is very beneficial because she can tell if the students can articulate their

learning.

Classroom Observation

Things from the classroom observation that a coach and admin should look for include all

elements of the lesson cycle. This would include preview of the learning standard and objective.

This is taken from the state standards. When the lesson begins, an administrator would pay

attention to the lesson pacing and structure that would include an anticipatory mini-lesson to

preview new learning or review prior learning, the presentation of instructional content, which is

the I do, We do, You do model of gradual release. During each of these the admin would look for
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the teacher to model the strategy of learning for the day, group collaboration where teachers and

students are thinking aloud together to practice the learning. The teacher would use this time to

ask questions to guide the students' thinking and lastly independent practice by the students in

which the teacher monitors the students' understanding through independent practice. The

teacher would focus on individual students and ask them questions to help them overcome

misconceptions in order to demonstrate mastery. I would look for differentiation at this point in

the lesson. At the conclusion of the lesson, coaches and administrators would look for a closure

for the lesson that would include reflecting on their learning and feedback to them on the mastery

of the objectives by going over them again. Out of these I feel the area that the administrator

should focus the most on is the student outcome. Were the students able to meet the stated

objective of the day. In my experience, when a teacher’s students cannot demonstrate mastery for

the day with their product, the teacher has a weakness in one of the areas of the lesson cycle. A

teacher may not spend adequate time on modeling for the students before setting them free to

complete the activity or skip the “we do” guided practice all together. I see this often with high

school teachers.

During the lesson, I would not feel it would be appropriate for an administrator to offer

any additional feedback or support during the observation of the lesson. The point of the

observation is to view the teacher and students in a summative manner without intervention. A

very good reason for this is that in some districts, like mine, a teacher’s compensation is affected

by their performance on the yearly evaluations. If I was to interfere with a solid performance

rating by helping in any manner through feedback or support, I would be in violation of the rules

for teacher incentive compensation. Furthermore, I know that even if that wasn’t the case, I

cannot give any feedback and support to anyone unless I am going to give it to everyone, which
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is not the purpose of the observation practice. The feedback and support should have come in

during walkthroughs and the coaching process before and after informal observations.

However, after the observation, it would be critical to offer constructive feedback and

support to teachers. This could be in the form of a refinement area. That refinement area needs to

be tied to a specific part of the evaluation rubric with evidence to support the refinement and

specific strategies given through feedback and coaching to support the teacher. The feedback can

be about any portion of the above mentioned lesson cycle and should include positive

reinforcement feedback and constructive refinement feedback.

Post-Observation Conversation Opening Comments and Specific Evidence

At the beginning of the post-conference, the observer made sure to remark that was

thankful to be able to observe her and that she saw some great strategies. I feel it is very

important to begin with positive feedback. According to the article “Effective Coaching:

Improving Teacher Practice and Outcomes for All Learners”, “Positive feedback includes overt

statements of praise for the teacher’s use of specific practices” (National Center for Systemic

Improvement at WestEd., 2019). All throughout the post-conference, the observer was sure to

state which specific strategies the teacher and students used in order to master their learning

objective for the day.By doing this, the observer is setting the tone for the conference just as a

teacher sets the tone when greeting her students. We want the interaction to begin positively and

continue to feel supportive. The observer was also noted to use specific evidence in her feedback

(sentence frames) in order to “clarify how [the] teachers' practices directly impact[ed] learning

(National Center for Systemic Improvement at WestEd., 2019). As teachers, we want to hear that

what we are doing is working and is leading to our students demonstrating mastery of the

learning objective for the lesson.

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Post-Observation Positive Feedback and Areas of Refinement

When the observer was giving refinement feedback, she asked the question, “What would

we see if we had the student work product in front of us and If you could do this lesson again,

what would you do differently?” She was wanting the teacher to evaluate exactly what the

students turned in. As I mentioned above, the student work product is the most important part of

the observations and gives the observer the evidence that student learning was evident for this

effective teacher. When giving this type of feedback, it is important to approach it in the form of

a question in order to give the teacher an opportunity to refine himself/herself in their practice. If

an observer comes in and tells them exactly what they did wrong and how to fix the lesson, there

is not an ounce of ownership for the teacher. The corrective feedback was directly given instead

of allowed to be discussed by both the teacher and the observer. If the goal is to coach, we want

our “players” to be able to identify their weaknesses on their own and identify ways to improve.

Evaluates the effectiveness of the coach to give positive feedback and describes whether or not

the coach validates the strengths of the lesson and rationalizes why asking the teacher a question

is a good strategy to use when the teacher reflects on areas of the lesson needing refinement.

In reflection after reading the article, “Principals are Loath to Give Teachers Bad

Ratings” by Liana Loewus, I understand that principals want to give their teachers good ratings

because they want to have a positive relationship with them and never want to be responsible for

someone not having the job they want; however, it is our job, as principals, to ensure that we are

giving our community and students the very best we can offer. Honest conversations are not

always easy. This observation was very easy to complete because the teacher did a great job. My
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hope is that if the opposite were true, the conversations about why students are not achieving

their goals and meeting their learning objectives each day would have started way long before

the formal observations in the spring.

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References

Danielson, Charlotte. Talk about Teaching!: Leading Professional Conversations. Corwin, 2016.

Loewus, L. (2017). Principals are Loath to Give Teachers Bad Ratings. Education Week, 36(37),

1-7.

National Center for Systemic Improvement at WestEd. (2019). Effective Coaching: Improving

Teacher Practice and Outcomes for All Learners. In National Center for Systemic

Improvement at WestEd. National Center for Systemic Improvement at WestEd.