Coach It Further

Using the Art of Coaching to Improve School Leadership

Peter M. DeWitt

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781506399478
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Leadership in Education

Practical strategies for building coach-leader relationships

Leadership is complex work. High quality leadership coaching is one of the most effective methods of professional development for leaders. Coach It Further uses a narrative format to illustrate the important aspects of leadership that leaders and coaches can work on together to achieve their shared goals. It includes:

• Authentic stories from leaders and students
• The Collaborative Leadership Growth Cycle, which provides leaders with a starting point and specific steps to take to reach their goals
• Strategies for the four priorities research shows school leaders are most concerned about: collective efficacy, communication, student and family engagement, and political climate
• Reflection questions for leadership coaches to use with their leader-coaches

Whether you are a seasoned coach, a leader looking to be coached, or a leader looking for guidance on how to coach burgeoning leaders among your staff, this book will build your confidence and provide you with valuable insights and strategies.

Watch Peter?s interview with WNYT-NBC as he discusses Coach It Further.

Offers a model of how educators can engage in the art of leadership coaching. School administrators will connect to the realistic, varied, and detailed examples illustrating the complexities of leadership. Here you will find thoughtful insights and practical suggestions for improving the quality of leadership coaching in your practice.

–Jenni Donohoo, Best-selling author and Professional Learning Facilitator

A must-read for school leaders and leadership coaches. You will connect to the real struggles of a principal learning to be coached. This book is chock-full of research, tips, and examples to help you improve your self-efficacy as a leader.

–Jessica Johnson, School Leader

Co-Author of The Coach Approach to School Leadership and Breaking Out of Isolation

1 Beginning a Coaching Relationship

Peter M. DeWitt

We know that coaching can be helpful to our growth. Often, leaders are fully on board with teachers working with coaches. However, as leaders, we sometimes feel as though we are not successful in our job if our superintendent suggests we work with a coach. We often put pressure on ourselves to know everything. We think to ourselves, “What will the staff think of me if they know I’m working with a coach?” Or, “Will I lose credibility with staff when they find out I am working with a coach?” Our insecurities can get the best of us sometimes.

Where this is a little different is when a principal uses the coaching mindset with his or her assistant principals. It’s easier to digest because assistant principals expect constant evaluative feedback from their principals. It is a missed opportunity that many principals do not apply a coaching mindset in their relationship with their assistant principals. Perhaps the situation that plays out in the following chapters will help principals understand how they can coach it further with growing leaders on their staff.

In this chapter you will meet Gavin, a new principal. His story and his insecurities may not be unlike yours.

Introducing: Gavin, Beth, Brad, and Dr. Coppola

Principal: Gavin Young

Assistant Principals: Beth Lopez and Brad Washington

Superintendent: Dr. Mayan Coppola

Gavin Young is a first-year principal at Naylor Middle School, which is a suburban school district charged with educating 754 students. Approximately 61% of the student population is White, 27% is African American, 5% is Latino, 3% is Asian, and 4% identifies as Native American/Indigenous. Approximately 18% of the students qualify for special education. Additionally, school staff are beginning to see an increase in the students who identify as gay or lesbian and some who identify as transgender. All of this has an impact on the school climate (how students, staff, and parents feel on campus).

Besides approximately 62 teachers, there are 37 support staff, or what some schools refer to as classified staff. Gavin also has two assistant principals, Beth Lopez and Brad Washington, on his team. Sadly, team is a loose interpretation of how they function. Although Beth is very supportive of Gavin’s leadership, as she has known him for over a decade because she was a school counselor in his former school district, Brad is another story. Brad has been an assistant principal with the district for five years, and to make matters more complicated, he interviewed for the job that Gavin now has. The reason he was passed over is that he isn’t exactly a ball of fire. He plays a more passive role in the building, but he went for the job because of higher pay and more status.

Although many of the teachers in the building were not surprised that Brad didn’t get the job, it certainly was a surprise to Brad, who assumed he was a shoo-in, and he hasn’t quite warmed up to the idea that he is still the assistant principal.

Although Gavin had been an assistant principal for three years in a neighboring school district, he doesn’t always feel confident as a school principal, but given that he only has 50% support on his leadership team, he isn’t ready to admit that to either Beth or Brad. He worries that Brad will see it as a weakness and use it, and he doesn’t want to confide in Beth because he doesn’t want to put her in the middle.

Gavin lacks a belief in his own capabilities when it comes to leadership, but it isn’t on his radar to a deep extent. He figures it’s just part of being new in the job. He sometimes wishes he felt more prepared, but he believes that if he just keeps plugging along, he will be fine.

What to Do Versus What Not to Do

Gavin’s previous administrative experience leading up to his head principalship wasn’t helpful either. Most of his days as an assistant principal were spent focusing on task completion or tasks that his supervising principal didn’t want to do. He didn’t have a lot of time for relationship building, and when he was seen talking with teachers the principal didn’t like, he was often asked what they were discussing.

Gavin spent most of his time with discipline issues and was not able to visit as many classrooms as he wanted to, which created a disconnection with staff. He felt as though his principal used him as a gopher, which meant “go for this” and “go for that.” His previous experience could be categorized as more of a case of what not to do rather than what to do in leadership. Unfortunately, due to his training and his experiences thus far as a school leader, what not to do is not always as obvious to Gavin. He simply doesn’t always know what he doesn’t know.

Gavin’s actions reveal that he believes leadership is more management than focusing on instructional impact and learning, despite what the books and blogs say. He is good at maintaining schedules and checking the halls for behavior issues, but he is nervous about entering classrooms. What Gavin doesn’t understand is that his resistance to entering classrooms ultimately will hurt his credibility when trying to give feedback to his teachers who will not trust his assessments if they never see him observing their classes. Additionally, he lacks the knowledge that there are multiple ways to lead, and his former supervisor was less coach and more dictator, so the coaching mindset didn’t exist. And he now finds himself on a team where one person is supportive and the other is judging his every move.

Gavin worked hard in his administrative training courses at the university level, but he often felt a divide between what he learned in class and what he was asked to do in his role as assistant principal.

Coach’s Corner

Strategies for Coaching Assistant Principals

As a principal, do you have an assistant principal or several of them? Do you coach them or are they left to their own devices? Although you may have hired qualified leaders as assistants, they still need some coaching. If they are only allowed to handle discipline, which was the case in Gavin’s previous position, they may move forward knowing only how to deal with that one area. Leaders in the making need more than that. As a principal, you should do the following:

• Spend time focusing on instructional leadership strategies with your assistant principals.
• Teach them how to foster relationships with staff.
• Coach them to work toward having more dialogue in their meetings with stakeholders. We do this by offering questions they can ask and having dialogue in our meetings with them.
• Lead by example.

Am I In Over My Head?

Truthfully, getting the job at Naylor Middle School seemed to be the easy part. Over the summer months, Gavin spent a lot of time getting ready for the school year, and he was fairly engaged at the district administration meetings. But let’s face it—it’s easier to be engaged when students and teachers are not yet present in school. His insecurities started to come to light when he spent more time with Brad. He worried Brad would judge what he said or interrupt and have a contrary opinion to the one Gavin had.

It was when the school year began that he worried he was in over his head, but he was too stubborn to admit it and too insecure to do much about it. Self-efficacy is situation specific, and he began having a hard time finding out where he excelled and where he needed growth. Most times he felt as though he only had areas of growth and no areas of expertise. However, every day he put his head down and walked into the building, and due to his insecurities, he began demanding compliance through some of his rules and regulations.

It didn’t help that he was dealing with a lawsuit from parents that stemmed from a lack of special education services for their child the year before, and he was getting pushback from a few teachers and parents for creating a “gender-neutral” bathroom for several students identifying as transgender. Even though the director of special education was working through the lawsuit, and state law supported the creation of the gender-neutral bathroom, both situations were sources of stress for Gavin.

Gavin began to see that his insecurities were getting in the way of establishing a supportive school climate for students, parents, and teachers. There were times he chalked it up to cultural issues the school district always had or an unresponsive school superintendent when he went to her with his issues. He felt that these issues that were created by his predecessor were getting in the way of his chance to be the leader he wanted to be, so he would just be the leader that he learned from in his previous experience. Gavin was feeling a constant push and pull. No leadership position is easy from the start, and this one had a great deal of potential. But Gavin was finding himself becoming angry on the job.

Coach’s Corner

Strategies for Addressing Insecurities

Every leader goes through moments of insecurity. Bad leadership happens when we don’t do anything about it. What can insecure leaders do when they feel insecure?

• Seek the help of a coach.
• Find a confidant (i.e., friend, colleague, partner, spouse, etc.).
• Be honest with yourself about the insecurities.
• Join a professional learning community in your region or on social media.
• Understand that you are not alone.

Like any new leader, Gavin’s sleeping patterns were affected. He found himself waking up in the middle of the night and worrying about things that may or may not ever happen. When his alarm went off at 5 a.m., Gavin was tired, and this was beginning to affect how he interacted with staff and students. He hoped this was somewhat temporary, but it was beginning to get to him. He started spending a great deal of time on the managerial side. Like any new leader he was reactive, and he wondered if he would ever reach the point of becoming proactive.

Gavin knew that good leadership begins with relationships. In John Hattie’s research (e.g., Hattie 2012a, 2012b), which involves over 300 million students, teacher–student relationships have an effect size of .72, which is well over the hinge point of .40, which equates to a year’s worth of growth for a year’s input. Relationships among the adults in school are equally important because they are at the heart of creating a supportive school climate.

Due to his feeling of being in over his head, combined with the need for relationships, Gavin joined social media and began creating a professional learning community (PLC) using Twitter and Facebook. Additionally, he joined a small group of middle school principals via Voxer. These principals were all within their first three years of leadership. They talked a great deal about their experiences, and the conversations always came back to relationships. But Gavin felt like the people in the Voxer group were being much more proactive in their schools than he was, and he felt as though the other principals had much stronger teams. His insecurities began to grow and get the best of him, and he found less time to interact with the principal group.

Coach’s Corner

Leadership PLCs on Voxer

• Voxer is a walkie-talkie app that can be downloaded to your smartphone.
• Users can create groups of two or more and leave messages for those in the group.
• Voxer will automatically ask if you want to import your Facebook, email, and Twitter contacts.
• Search the Voxer database for school leadership groups.
• Join the Voxer group of your choice and begin a conversation.
• Voxer is a way to create a PLC with colleagues near and far.

Gavin knew that if he wanted his teachers to build strong relationships with students because of its high effect size, he needed to build strong relationships with teachers first. Whether that was welcoming them in the main office every morning or talking with them in the hallway every day, Gavin was making a concerted effort to be the first person at school, and he was going to try his best to have face-to-face conversations with as many teachers as he could, as often as possible. Unfortunately, he didn’t always know whether these methods were working, mostly because he did most of the talking, and the teachers were in a hurry to get out of his office.

As Gavin worked to foster relationships with staff, he also began working hard to get to know ...