We’re excited to dive into our second installment on developing school leaders as instructional coaches. Last month, we focused on establishing coaching foundations; today, we’ll center the conversation around observation and feedback practice – and specifically, what that can look like at the beginning of a school year. Read on for more!
Instructional Coaching – Beginning-of-Year Observation
Walking into a classroom to observe, instructional coaches are inundated with inputs and data points: new instructional signage that catches the eye, an eager hand signaling for help with the after-school program flyer that went home yesterday, a student in the middle row struggling to set up her materials for class, the teacher’s skilled storytelling as they launch a lesson on how the Silk Road hastened the spread of not just products, but culture.
How do you sift through all the buzz and noise and distill a golden nugget of feedback to help grow your teacher? Stick to a central guiding question:
| What is holding back from learning at the next level, and what action step would open up this level of learning? |
At the beginning of the year, this typically means looking at two areas: time on task and student engagement. As we get ready to close out school launch season, this is the perfect time to take stock of where classrooms at your schools stand in these two areas.
Observation Preparation – Metrics of Success
In anticipation of walking through your school to evaluate time on task and student engagement, determine metrics that will help make these elements observable to you. Below are a few that we recommend – you can certainly tweak, cut, or add based on your areas of school focus.
(If you want to go deep, see here for a list of all the metrics we recommend assessing at the beginning of year!)
If you haven’t already, role these metrics out to your teams! Just as we want to be clear in our expectations of students, we want to be clear of our expectations with staff. Then, equipped with a clear vision of what you’re looking for, it’s time to move to observation.
During Observation – Action Steps
When you get into the classroom, stand up and walk around. Look at student papers and listen in on turn-and-talks. Make a note of transition times and student participation.
Once you have collected data, determine an action step. Best practice tells us that action steps include both a what and a how – in other words, the skill or strategy of focus plus the steps to execute effectively.
To access a fantastic action step menu, we strongly endorse and often use the Get Better Faster scope and sequence developed by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo and Uncommon Schools. For a quick introduction: This resource concretizes a trajectory of teacher development spanning culture, engagement, and rigor. Divided into phases (pre-teaching, the first 30 days, days 31-60, and a “stretch it” for teachers who graduate from the initial sequence), Get Better Faster lays out a “typical” sequence of learning for teachers. While no teacher would follow the trajectory exactly as laid out, it nonetheless offers access to a general order and powerful language that will undoubtedly resonate with leaders.
So how can you leverage the Get Better Faster scope and sequence in your beginning-of-year observations? Let’s say you notice that anytime a teacher you coach poses a question, she calls for hands, and the same 2-3 go up. She calls on one of those students, listens to the answer, and moves on. Engagement feels low and you’re worried that the teacher is only gauging mastery from a tiny percentage of students. Based on this, you know that this action step needs to involve increasing participation – both from an engagement and data collection standpoint.
When you flip through the Get Better Faster guide, then, you can immediately sift out the following action step to use:
A final plug: in addition to precise action step language, this tool includes questions to use during your teacher debrief and smart scenarios for teacher practice – at an amazingly low time cost to the leader.
Progress Monitoring School Launch
Armed with some thoughtful pre-thinking and your Get Better Faster guide, commit to a walkthrough of the classrooms you coach. Observe with a focus on action steps in phase 1 (pre-teaching) and phase 2 (days 1-30). Where is your teacher’s highest leverage area for growth? Are there any trends you want to address with a larger group of teachers (e.g., new teachers, a grade span of teachers, or an individual department)?
From there, write out your meeting plan, including how you’ll have the teacher(s) practice the action step. After your meeting, schedule time within the week to re-observe and assess progress – then repeat!
We hope this offers inspiration to get into classrooms and leverage the power of observation in your work as an instructional coach. We’re confident it will leave you feeling reinvigorated in your work and confident in your ability to move your school forward.
What’s Ahead
Once you’ve coached your teachers to mastery in time on task and engagement, it’s time to dive into the fun, challenging, and rewarding work of coaching for rigor – the topic of next month’s blog.
And if you like what you’ve read so far, hold the date! FCI is excited to host a three-day leadership retreat on coaching practice on June 10-12, 2025. Stay tuned for more information!