Coaching for School Improvement: A Guide for Coaches and Their Supervisors

1. Coaching for School Improvement: A Guide for Coaches and Their Supervisors An Overview and Brief Tour Karen Laba Indistar® Summit September 2, 2010

2. Agenda and Outcomes Session Agenda: • Survey coaching use • Rationale for a coaching guide • Tour the draft guide • Try out one of the exercises in the guide Session Outcomes: Participants will • Share current “level of implementation” of school improvement coaches • Examine the contents of the draft guide • Assess a sample exercise • Respond to an invitation for feedback and input

3. Who uses ‘coaches’ ? • Raise your hand if your implementation of Indistar® makes use of coaches. • How would you rate your “level of implementation” of coaches to support school improvement within the Indistar® system? • A. No development or implementation • B. Limited development or implementation • C. Full implementation • What evidence did you consider to come up with your rating? (If you indicated “C,” please check in with me to share what you’ve learned and how you evaluated your coaching functions.) • What gaps exist between your conception of full (and effective) implementation and your current status?

4. Rationale for a “coaching guide” • Collect what’s best about current practice to enhance the good outcomes from school improvement processes • Definitions/ description of school improvement coach roles, responsibilities, competencies and dispositions • Coach’s role across the stages of a continuous/ rapid improvement cycle • Suggestions for coaches working within the Indistar® system • Strategies for supervisors responsible for selecting and supporting coaches • Encourage sharing of best practices, lessons learned in using coaches to support improvement teams over time

5. Survey of the Coaching GuideSection 1: What is a school improvement coach? What does the coach do? • Continuous improvement cycle stages • Stage 0: establishing a school improvement team • Stage 1: assess current status • Stage 2: develop a plan for change • Stage 3: implement the plan • Stage 4: monitor implementation • Stage 5: monitor impact • Stage 6: review new data • Stage 7: revise and refine the plan

6. Survey of the Coaching Guide Section 2: Coaching with Indicators • What are indicators? Why indicators? • Using Indistar® within the school improvement cycle • Providing formative feedback • Indistar® Step 4: Assess indicators • Rating implementation • Selecting priority • Judging opportunity • Indistar® Step 5: Create School Plan • Visualizing full implementation • Evidence to monitor implementation • Evidence to monitor impact • Indistar® Step 6: Monitor School Plan • Standards for quality of evidence

7. Survey of the Coaching Guide Section 3: Selecting and Supporting School Improvement Coaches • Defining requirements, responsibilities, qualities • Event based interview process • Training options: Indistar® pioneer states, resources • Buying time: the power of checklists • Engaging coaches in collaborative problem solving

8. Sample ‘Pause and Reflect’ Purpose: Build a repertoire of coaching comments that encourage teams to think critically about their work. Setting: You are assigned as a coach for a school improvement team using Indistar®. • Read the examples of school plans taken from Indistar® on pages 34-35 of the draft guide. • Read the question stems in Appendix B (p 53). • Construct a coaching comment for one of these examples that would encourage the team to define tasks to lead to their desired outcome. • Share your example with others in your group/ at your table.

9. Request for Feedback and Input • Comments? • Feedback request in folders. • Return by usps or email to Pam Sheley Next Steps: Revise draft. Post completed guide on website.