EDU 650B Leadership Fieldwork Project

Collegial Coaching for New Teachers

Theme: Instructional Leadership
Management & Learning Environment
Xupian Jiang
HTH GSE
2021-2022 Winter Term

Introduction
As a Resident at HTH, without previous school site working experience, this role has offered me a new
perspective to explore: being a part of the new teacher community, how can we feel more engaged and
connected while developing my project-based teaching skills? What PD structure can truly support the new
teachers and make sure all new teachers are getting what they need, rather than being a school leader wanting
to check off the box? Through observations at school sites from August 2021, I have witnessed the emerging
obstacles in this crazy year that interfere with staff engagement. New teachers comprise nearly half of the
staff community (2021-2022 is the first year teaching for 13 of them among 27 teachers). Therefore, I set the
focus of instructional leadership practice on shaping a collaborative culture of teaching and learning for new
teachers.

Context of Professional Development (PD) at High Tech High

The sharing of two teachers at HTH in the beginning of Fall 2021 struck me when one teacher shared out
after we revisit the Brave Space Norms (community agreement building) at a weekly staff meeting: "This
started because a staff member pointed out to the community that there were no co-constructed norms and it
left them feeling a lack of safety...Considering last Friday’s meeting and in consultation with integral leaders at
this school, we as a community were not ready to build norms together and that there needed to be more
transparency about the process and be honest about where we actually are. The truth is we haven’t built the
relationships and trust yet to even consider norms. ” Another teacher shared in mid October"I am hearing a
lot of us struggling with the work level and burning out. Perhaps this is worth exploring in a staff time, with a
restorative approach in mind, because I worry about our ability to sustain this. I know it is impacting students
as well." These voices revealed that our staff community needs more trust and more support to direct
teachers' own learning.

A Sample Schedule of a New Teacher

There are two morning meetings per week from 7:40am to 8:30am on Wednesday and Friday. The regular
rotation of Wednesdays includes: Action Groups/PLCs (e.g. Anti-racist; Professional Development;
Advisory); Disciplines; and Grade Levels. For Firdays there is no set rotation and the staff meeting is often
open for every staff member who wants to initiate a topic, as well as the instructional leadership team at the
High Tech Organization. A teacher has one hour and 10 minutes per day to prepare lessons (or choose to
visit a classroom). X-block is an elective course that meets two times a week and allows students to explore
their passions and interests. Some of them are studying groups for students who need extra study hours.
Advisory is emphasized to a teacher as a community outside of student cliques, celebrated for its time and
space dedicated to that purpose (some new teachers spend 50% of this time passing along important college
and career information from the college counseling team.)

Focus of the Leadership Fieldwork Practice: New Teacher's PD

Realizing how tight a new teacher's schedule is, I choose to look for a "Bright Spot" for new teachers'
professional development (PD) that won't cause extra burden which may lead to burnout. The process to
achieve the goal of identifying needs and expectations of new teacher's PD are: Data Collection (What do
new teachers feel more current and needed? And what are the best practices); Implement a change idea to
improve one current instructional leadership approach; Share takeaway to the stakeholders.
This leadership fieldwork practice is also based on what I have learned in the EDU 650B course that the ways
in which adults worked with and learned from one another paralleled the ways in which they hoped students
would learn. For students, the pursuit of Whole-child education means to attach importance to the
development of human diversity, respect the different characteristics of learners, identify and attach
importance to students' personal life experience and emotional wellness, and encourage them to become
authentic themselves. We can even say that only when the learner is fully engaged as a complete individual,
can learning really happen. To form a learning community and learners can share each other's life narration
for students, a engaged learning community for teachers is essential because by truly rediscovering themselves
can teachers regain their courage and enthusiasm in teaching.(Palmer, 2007)

Data Collection: Identifying the Bright Spot

1. Best Practices of PD at HTH

After the empathy interview with instructional leaders, the 9 classroom observations (4 new teachers, 5
experienced teachers), conversations with 5 new teachers and participating in several staff meetings organized
by the PD Action Group at HTH, I have collected some ideas that I plan to implement the improvement
actions.

PD Ideas Resources from

One-on-one The Instructional Coach: “Every Tuesday afternoon, the math team meets together. We scheduled
Coaching out the whole semester. And then one person would bring a trick of the trade like a little thing, and then
Meeting; The another person would host, and then another person would plan what next. Our main activity was
power of tuning protocol, and we used a lot of protocols. And then a more democratized space. So at first, I was
protocols facilitating them, and then I created this spreadsheet where everyone signed up and was doing different
things. And they totally took ownership of it. That's part of the reason why I'm like they're gonna still
be okay, after I depart, they're gonna keep doing these things.

And when you have an awesome team and tools in your tool, like great protocols, great routines like I
think they're in a good spot. You don't want to work yourself out of a job, but you don't want people to
be so reliant on you that if you leave the whole thing falls apart. ”

Classroom The School Director: "Now, it might not be true that every teacher has been partnered up with
Observation someone who they worked well with. But there's always been this ongoing idea of collegial coaching of
Culture critical friends, of something that has teachers working directly with other teachers to improve practice.
 And that's been going on since I joined in 2004." "Must classroom observation always come from an
administrator? Absolutely not. I hate to think that anyone feels excessively entrapped in that situation
where they have to fight for their job every day. But I would hope that there's pride in the work that I
want to be doing good work. And I actually want the person who's seeing my good work to let me know
that I'm doing good work to help me where I'm good, and to also make me feel that I'm being an
effective teacher. " "I think it should just be lots of people helping by observing lots of other people with
the common thread from time to time. "

Check-in with The GSE Instructor/ Previous School Director: "One thing that I used to do with new
New Teachers teachers when I was their director was having regular check-in with the new teachers. I observe them, I
after class visit give them feedback, but often we would just meet. We talk about what's going well, what their challenges
are. One thing that I would always carve out time for, especially in the first semester, was to during their
planning period, I would come grab them, and I would take them to some classroom where I thought
there were some really great things to say. So for example, if a teacher was kind of struggling with
classroom management strategies, I would take them to a classroom of a teacher. It was really strong in
that area. If they were struggling with reading instruction, I would take them to a teacher's classroom
who did that well. So I'd take the teacher and we'd stay for a little while. We would leave. And then as
we walked out, we'd find a place to sit down. And I would say "what did you notice?" And we would
talk about what we saw because that talking about it, getting them to name it is really important.
What did you notice about the classroom feature? Yeah, all the students were engaged.--"Why do you
think students were engaged like that?" I would really try to get that teacher to describe what they were
saying.

Critical Friends The PD Action Group: "Critical friends are designed for teams to support one another for the
duration of a year. Continuity of the partnerships is important. Knowing the ins and outs of one
another's projects and the challenges that come with them will allow partnerships to assist one another
over the course of a project better than one-shot tuning meetings with different teams. Key moments
include but are not limited to: Shortly before a semester begins, once or more during the course of a
semester, towards the end of a project (often to prepare for exhibition) and after exhibition as a way of
sharing and consolidating lessons learned. In addition to tuning protocols, teams are encouraged to
extend their partnerships through the sharing of resources, observations and other means of their
choosing."
 2. The Bright Spot: Collegial Coaching

What is Collegial Coaching and Why Collegial Coaching?

Collegial coaching doesn't have to be where one person has more experience——sometimes they just need to
be someone who's looking carefully and asking good questions and being a different set of “ears” and “eyes”
(Gawande, 2011). This instructional approach is the bright spot because it is already introduced in staff
meetings and is a historical component for PD at HTH, which could be appropriate to ideate a solution to
the current dilemma. The dilemmas of new teacher support in this semester are:

A. Lack of one-on-one instructional coaching for non-math teachers either from the school director or
the instructional leadership team (and there is a personnel transition of the instructional coach);
B. The Collegial Coaching has been planned since Fall 2020 but not been implemented till Spring 2022.
C. The Critical Friends can meet the most crucial PD need from new teachers on multi-disciplinary
project design (mostly in structure and process of PBL skills) but doesn't serve the need of
developing discipline-teaching skills and general classroom management.

The Practice of Collegial Coaching

Step 1: Relationship and Trust Building with New Teachers

I started my collegial coaching by observing the classrooms of my Critical Friends (all them are new teachers.)
This is because trustful relationships would be a strong foundation of further connection and according to
Bryk and Schneider, “trust is important for organizations that operate in turbulent external environments . . .”
(Bryk & Schneider, 2002, p.33). It is the intersection of trust, leadership, courage, and dialoguethat
supports the evolution of schooling to meet the complex demands of the information age. Fullan captures the
essence: “Leading schools—as in any great organization—requires leaders with the courage and capacity to
build new cultures based on trusting relationships and a culture of disciplined inquiry and action” (Fullan,
2008, p.45)

I actively responded to the emails from the school directors and the teachers about classroom observations
because I believe that being engaged is a way to support culture building. (Surprisingly, there were 12 teachers
who replied about the availability of their schedule)

This is the email by the school director: "Finally, tomorrow's meeting time is set aside for Advisory Grade Levels, BUT Kalle
suggested an alternative which I am strongly leaning towards - using this as prep time to free up time for classroom visits:
Visiting each other's classroom's is a HUGELY helpful way to see how we teach, to connect with colleagues and to get ideas to
make your own classrooms better. I would like to try what Kalle is suggesting this week to see how it works:

● Use meeting time this week as a prep period and use your prep to visit a colleagues classroom.
● If you are willing to host,please reply-all with brief theme for your day and the periods you are teaching and would
welcome some visitors
● If you are planning on visitingsomeone in your prep please reach out (not someone in your teaching team - be
more adventurous than that)
● Do one or both. If you neither visit nor host youwill make me sad.

Step 2: Implementing change ideas: Coaching Interventions with New Teachers

After the classroom observations and small conversations with the new teachers that I observed, I sensed
what coaching interventions I could choose. For example, one teacher lacks confidence and is afraid of risk or
failure, feeling incompetent, frustrated and unmotivated. I know my goal is to achieve a deeper level of
understanding and build morale and self-confidence for them. Then I tried some statement stems and
questions within the conversations afterwards. These are what worked well by receiving feedback from the
two teachers "it's so helpful":

• Here’s something I’ve noticed…

• I know you’ve identified ___ as important/something you care about. My observation is ___.

• I want to share a strength I’ve noticed in your teaching…

•It seems like this is really hard for you... What about __is hard for you?

• How are you feeling about…?

•You named__. Can you say more about that?

Step 3: (Not presented yet) Share the practices with stakeholders, especially PD
Action Group to try out in a weekly staff meeting.

Learnings and Takeaways: A Proposal for “Collegial Coaching Conversation

Protocols"
As a school leader, if you are a brand-new coach and want to address issues of professional development for a
new teacher. Here is a proposal that I adapted from John Heron (Heron, 2001) and Elena Aguilar(Aguilar,
2016) that might be helpful to implement within a weekly meeting (normally a morning meeting is 40-45
minutes.

Collegial Coaching Conversation Protocols

Collegial coaching will fall within disciplines (e.g. A humanities teacher will pair with another humanities
teacher). The conversation can include several dimensions: General advice and support, a shoulder to lean
on, sharing of best practices for curricular and extracurricular work (advisory, xblock, clubs, etc..),
developing and implementing instructional goals and practices, and if possible classroom observations.

5min 1. Check in and Chat

3min 2. Create a plan for the conversation:

•"What's on your mind?"
•What are our intentions (state of mind) for this conversation?
•What are the goals for this collegial coaching?
5min 3. (Optional) Check in on previous commitments: "How'd that go?"

12min 4. Engage in coaching stances and approaches (Confronting and

Supporting) (After a Class Visit)
• Here’s something I’ve noticed…
• I know you’ve identified ___ as important/something you care about.
My observation is ___.
• I want to share a strength I’ve noticed in your teaching…
• It sounds like you… handled that well (with confidence…) in a way
that got to the results.
• I hear your concern/energy…
• What do you see as some of your strengths as a teacher?
•Going into this…what are you feeling confident about…?
• How are you feeling about…?

5min 5. Determine next steps

•The changes in practice
•Areas for follow up: What else might be helpful for me & you to do?
•The follow-up agreements

5min 6. Reflect on conversation and ask for feedback

•How do you feel about our meeting today?
•What has been valuable in this conversation?
•What would you like more of or less of in our coaching conversation?

Samples of Classroom
Observation
Last but not least, this leadership fieldwork was precious to me as a school leader because I realize that trust is
essential to leadership. "Have I invested efficiently enough to truly build up trust with the community I want
to lead and the people I want to be teammates with?", by putting myself in new teacher's shoes, I have learned
how to choose Facilitative Coaching and Directive Coaching (Aguilar, 2016) within different contexts at
school sites.

In the future, I will develop my own coaching manifesto and describe my beliefs about coaching and my
work. I hope through exploring what kind of coaching is most comfortable for me to do within the sphere of
my influence, I can continuously develop my coaching skills from the "beginning level" to "modeling level"
(2016, p301). Fundamentally, I believe that there is a symmetry ((Jal Mehta & Fine, 2019)) that the ways in
which adults worked with and learned from one another paralleled the ways in which they hoped students
would learn. While we are striving for supporting students to learn from a beginner, it is critical for schools to
protect the time required for new teachers to develop a professional path because after all, everyone goes
through a novice period, no one wants to experience it helplessly and hopelessly.
 References:
Aguilar, E. (2016). The art of coaching teams : building resilient communities that transform

schools. Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand.

Anderson, W., & Schuh, K. (2021, November 1). Self-Efficacy Holds Staying Power for New

Teachers. ASCD.

https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/self-efficacy-holds-staying-power-for-new-teachers

Bryk, A. S., & Schneider, B. (2002). Trust in schools: A core resource for school improvement.

New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Fullan, M. (2008). Facilitator’s guide : the moral imperative of school leadership. Hawker

Brownlow Education.

Gawande, A. (2011, October 3). The Coach in the Operating Room. The New Yorker.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/personal-best

Heron, J. (2001). Helping the Client: A Creative Practical Guide. Sage Publications Ltd.

Jal Mehta, & Fine, S. M. (2019). In search of deeper learning : the quest to remake the American

high school. Harvard University Press.

Palmer, P. J. (2007). The courage to teach : exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. John

Wiley & Sons.