Having spent 28 years in education with the last eight years coaching teachers at all stages of their educational journey, I thought some of you might enjoy considering some of my more positive experiences.

I will try to make these comments especially relevant for new graduates, those contemplating coaching, and teachers (classroom or specialist) who haven’t had a coach, mentor or buddy before.

What does an effective coaching experience look like?

1. Show Don’t Tell

We have probably all been to professional learning sessions where we are told what good teachers do but how many of us have had specific strategies demonstrated with our own students, so that we have a chance to observe, reflect, then try for ourselves?

So my first observation about effective coaching is that teachers benefit greatly when they can observe a colleague demonstrate a specific teaching strategy with their own students. What do you think? Is this possible in your context?

Teaching is a highly nuanced profession full of complexities and challenges. Teachers at all levels can feel highly vulnerable and even fragile if they are not supported and encouraged by their colleagues from the word go. Support ideally involves celebrating strengths as well as working on new skills.

Finding a coach or mentor whose advice you trust and can rely on is an important step for every teacher’s professional growth - in many cases a coach could be a colleague across the corridor or someone else on your professional learning team. For more experienced teachers and middle leaders, it might be a leader in another school or an expert in your field of interest. Importantly and especially if you are new to teaching, a coach can help you understand what you already do well.

So my second recommendation for an effective coaching relationship is to identify and celebrate your strengths. This can work two ways - you could discuss an area that both you and your coach do well then the coach could demonstrate a simple strategy that harnesses that strength and receive feedback from their colleague. After discussing what worked well (WWW) and Even Better If (EBI) for the coach’s session, the colleague could then have a go and repeat the process.

Do you identify your own and others’ strengths in your teaching team? Does it help improve your professional practice? Happy to hear your thoughts.

The start of a new year is the ideal time to look for opportunities to collaborate with like-minded colleagues or commence a coaching relationship. Getting to know each other’s strengths, challenges and areas of interest takes time, especially in busy work places, but is well worth doing.

Hence my third tip for would-be coaches is: Build Rapport! You need to get to know your colleague(s) and how they work before you can make suggestions to support them and help them improve.

Perhaps you could start by asking a few questions over a coffee:

What are you looking forward to this year?

Which curriculum areas/themes/topics do you really enjoy?

How do you relax and unwind after a day’s teaching?

What is one thing you really like about your students so far?

How could I support you and your students this week?

Teaching is about relationships. In my experience coaches who recognise the need to establish and build rapport are more likely to achieve professional improvement over time. What do you think? How have you built rapport with a colleague in the past? Did it lead to improved professional practice?

“Yes, yes, let’s talk about the weather!” (Chorus from Pirates of Penzance, Gilbert and Sullivan).

Why do we always start a conversation with the weather? Because it's one thing that interests and affects everyone, so everyone has an opinion and something to say!

Our students are no different. When we start the year, we need to find out who they are and what they know. Not only does this help us to understand them, it makes them feel more comfortable contributing because they can be confident about the information being discussed.

From students to teachers. I like to start coaching conversations with “Would you like to tell me a bit about your teaching journey?” or more specifically “Would you like to share your experience in learning languages?”

Hence my fifth coaching tip is - always start with what you know to build confidence and open up the conversation. What do you think? What questions do you use with a new student, a new class or a new professional relationship?

There are many different coaching structures out there. The principles are usually pretty similar; they all aim at making goals and progress explicit and measurable.

For example, I quite like the GROW acronym because of its simplicity (Goals, Reality, Options, What will you do).

Hence my sixth coaching suggestion is “Use a structure” as this gives clarity to both the conversation and the outcomes. It is often best to set a small, achievable goal, rather than aiming for too much and not achieving any of it.

What coaching systems do you use? Are they successful? Why/Why not?

When we start a new year or a new class, our students are usually keen to feel that they belong, are valued and that their strengths are recognised. Identifying, acknowledging and harnessing those strengths is important for building a positive class culture and ensuring every student feels valued.

Effective mentoring and coaching relationships are similar. All teachers bring strengths to their work and experienced teachers can support their colleagues by acknowledging things that they do well.

Hence my seventh coaching tip is “Find the Positives”. Start with something that you notice is working well and see whether your colleague realises! Start a discussion with them about what it was that made you think that and see if you can build from there.

The word “feedback” is used in a range of ways these days. Sometimes it means “I don’t like what you’re doing and I’m going to tell you!” We give feedback to students all the time but what about our colleagues?

In a professional teaching/coaching relationship I find it helpful to be quite specific about what feedback will be provided. For example, the coach might ask the colleague “What is one micro-skill that you want me to watch for and reflect on?” or “How would you like me to let you know about your students’ reactions to this activity?”

The principles that I find helpful before opening my mouth to give feedback are: Is it kind? Is it specific? Will it help my colleague (or myself) improve?

What sort of feedback do you seek? Is it general or specific? How is it delivered? Feel free to share any success stories.

Seeing is believing. An important coaching skill is to be able to demonstrate a strategy, game or method.

Once a specific focus has been agreed between a coach and teacher, it may help if the coach offers to model or demonstrate how they would teach that strategy. This may be just a short block; an introduction, an explanation or a technique, rather than taking over an entire lesson.

Demonstration offers the teacher the opportunity to watch, participate without taking the lead, then give feedback to the coach. The coach can then invite the teacher to try the same activity/strategy and then offer their own feedback. This process can cement a strong, two-way learning relationship.

So my ninth coaching tip is Demonstrate!

What do you think? Has anyone ever demonstrated a new approach with your students? Did it help? Keen to hear your ideas.

While this tip sounds a bit dry, I do find the AITSL standards (https://www.aitsl.edu.au/standards) really helpful in supporting teachers to understand where they are at in their career and their possible next steps.

Once a coaching goal has been chosen, it may be helpful to explore where that goal fits against the teacher standards. The teacher then has a clear indicator to aspire to and the coach has a clear description of when that goal has been realised.

So my tenth coaching tip is “reference standards”, whatever they may be in your teaching context, but in Melbourne, I use the AITSL standards most.

Were you aware of the AITSL standards? Do they impact your work as coach or mentee at all?

Most Victorian schools would say that they have some form of mentoring/buddy/coaching/WOW program, where colleagues can team-teach or watch each other work (WOW). However, in my experience, these often do not happen on any regular basis and when they do happen, they often lack a clear improvement focus area.

Finding a like-minded colleague is a great thing to do at the start of a new year. Once you know each other a bit better, perhaps you could ask specific questions like “How do you introduce a new topic in Maths?” or “How do you manage transition from group activities back to whole class reflection? Can you show me?”

Remember that all teachers should have access to ongoing professional learning as part of their employment conditions. When I worked as a Deputy Principa and Principal I was most likely to approve extra release time when two or more staff members showed me that they had a specific, well-thought-out idea that would lead to improvement for themselves and their students. Even better if it aligned with the whole school priorities (which it would, if it led to improved practice). I was less likely to approve a request for “extra time”!

So coaching tip #11 is WOW! Watch Others Work. But do it in a specific and purposeful way, with full knowledge of your leadership team.

A practical tip today. Experienced teachers know that we often get to Term 3 and suddenly and “unexpectedly” receive an email from the office saying that budgets are now overspent so there will be no more professional learning or purchases this year.

Hence my tip: Access PL Early! All schools have money allocated for professional learning and Term 1 is the time to be thinking about and asking for coaching/mentoring and external PL. Even if it starts in Terms 2, 3 or 4, it may be helpful to have a conversation, organise and book it in and get an email from your PL co-ordinator assuring you it can happen!

What is your experience? Is it best to access PL early or wait and see what comes up? Maybe both? Happy to hear any thoughts.

Coaches may see a colleague’s classroom with a fresh set of eyes. 

Sometimes it can helpful to point out that each classroom environment is already rich with resources and learning opportunities, or what the research calls the “third teacher”. (see for example: https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2018-04/QA3_TheEnvironmentAsTheThirdTeacher.pdf)

Many teachers diligently put up posters and student work around the room and adjacent spaces but may not explicitly reference them or teach students how to use them. In a coaching relationship it may pay dividends to do a learning walk together, examine the learning environment and ask yourselves whether the students are aware of, and are accessing, all the resources you have at hand.

So, Use the 3rd Teacher!

What do you think? Is your classroom just a nice room or does it support your students as a 3rd teacher?

Many teachers, particularly graduates, can feel overwhelmed by the challenges of classroom teaching. A coach can reassure them and help them to re-prioritise tasks.

But it starts with listening. We all need to “get something off our chest” from time to time. Coaches can initiate conversations about challenges and then offer thoughts from their experience as to which challenges are more important and which are less important. But the key is to acknowledge that, big or small, they are real for us and our colleagues.

So if you are considering mentoring or coaching this year, my tip is “Acknowledge Challenges” - listen to them and don’t sweep them under the carpet, but then reset with some positive, achievable next-steps, and keep moving forwards.

As professionals, teachers need to be aware of whether their strategies and approaches are backed by research. Yet we often resist research as “just not what happens in the classroom”. I found it took me many years of practice before some of the educational philosophy I’d learnt in uni actually resonated with me.

That is where a coaching relationship can help. Once colleagues have discussed an aspect of their teaching they would like to improve, the coach can suggest which strategies may have the strongest backing from research.

Everything is contestable, however, I found John Hattie’s Effect Sizes (see, for example: https://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/) worth perusing - his huge meta studies over many years have shown what teachers do that really makes an impact.

So today’s coaching tip is “Reference Research”.