23 Jul 2015

Coaching as a Leadership Tool

Yesterday I had the privilege to attend a workshop with educational consultant Trudy Francis, looking into the tool of coaching within a school context.

It was very useful, especially with my current roles of Associate Teacher for a third-year trainee, Literacy Lead Teacher running an Accelerating Literacy Learners programme, and a Deputy Principal overseeing an Effective Teaching Team.

I used the handout booklet Trudy gave us to record my notes, but here are my comments from my course report to the BOT:

Course Title: Coaching Leadership and Relationships – from skilful teacher to skilful coach
Course Leader: Trudy Francis  (C21 Learning consultant)  
Date: Wed 22nd July 2015          Location: Invercargill

Describe what the learning was about?
Workshop was focused on clarifying the coaching role and looking into effective methods for coaching within a school environment.
·        Coaching is about helping people succeed by developing their talents and transforming how people work together to achieve the aspirations and goals of their school community.
·        Coaching works best when the coached are empowered to make their own decisions with support, using predetermined goals for focus points.
·        Professional relationships must be built on/based on mutual trust and respect.
·        Coaches need to develop observation, listening and questioning skills – discussions with the ‘coachee’ involve active listening and exploratory questionning.
·        The GROW process aids the discussions between coach and coachee by ensuring the talking is focussed on the Goals, the current Reality, the Options available, and then What will happen next and When will it happen.

Professionalism: Teaching and Learning
What changes with/to your teaching will you implement as a result of your new learning?
·        The GROW process can easily be applied to pupil learning conversations – helping pupils to reflect on their current learning and discuss their next steps.
·        I can also use the GROW questions when working on my planning for any subject or group of pupils.

Professionalism: Conduct and Culture.
What implications does this have for your role in our school?
·        The GROW process is very much how I have already been carrying out my observations of my trainee teacher as well as observations of Jo and Wendy for the ALL programme, so running through it yesterday was a good reinforcement that I have been on the right track and gave me ideas on how to fine-tune my method and questioning skills.

·        Coaching can easily be carried out by any staff-member – it will be a natural step up from our Tony Burkin discussions about mind-growth and reflection/inquiry into our own teaching practices. I would like to apply it to our appraisal system – personal teaching goals especially – with teachers coaching each other (not necessarily just the ETT leader or curriculum leader doing it – actually a triangulation of people was discussed eg the coachee, the coach and another neutral observer). Would make sense to try this in 2016 once staffing changes have taken place.

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