Tanner Slagle, math coach at Ebinport Elementary School in Rock Hill, SC shares the journey of shifting his coaching practice to a more learner-centered model. He does this by cultivating trust, “modeling the model,” and giving teachers choice in their professional feedback. Read on to learn more!
Q: When educators hear the word coach or instructional coach, what do you think they expect?
A: I think what comes to mind for them when they hear that is the idea of a sports coach when you're little: someone who's helping you, coaching you, giving you that advice. Someone who is leading and who is there for you. It’s an interesting world as an instructional coach. They're the person who is administrative but not administrative. They seem to have power but no power at the same time. We have to find that nice balance of where are we as coaches and where do we fall along that spectrum. Are we really that person who teaches?
Q: How do you think your role or perspective as a coach has shifted as you grow more into this idea of personalizing or student-centered learning? How did your role start and how has it shifted over time?
A: When I became a coach last school year, a lot of the work I did was seen as being an extension of the central office. That line of communication from the central office came from me as I worked everyday with teachers. I found myself just doing PD, or walkthroughs or having conversations in the hallway. A lot of the time, it became non-personal and everybody got the same thing. Whenever we had grade level meetings, for example, no matter what every grade level received the same presentation. I found it wasn’t the way to provide everyone with what they actually needed. So as we were getting ready for January, we decided to try more of a personalized approach for coaching and how I was responding to teachers.
Q: When it comes to coaching teachers, do you believe it is important to be flexible, and why?
A: In late October, I was thinking about how this wasn’t working. As I was on the outside looking in, I started noticing how we are asking teachers to look at kids as individuals, to be responsive to what children need, and adjust our instruction for those needs. But we aren't doing that for teachers as learners. It's hypocritical in some ways. With teachers, I’m the coach delivering “sit and get” and we move on when I'm ready, not being responsive to what teachers need. We called out the hypocrisy of coaching the way I was and decided to make this shift. That’s how we communicated it to teachers: “We ask you to be responsive to the needs of learners, so we are going to coach you in a way that’s responsive to your needs.”
Q: What are some specific strategies that you've used to gain the trust of your teachers to help them find the right entry points for trying something new?
A: Trust has to come first. I had the benefit of being at Ebinport Elementary for a long time, so trust was something I had spent time developing with relationships over the years. But I needed to earn trust as a coach. People look at you differently as a coach. A lot of the work I did in August, September, and October was listening and offering positive affirmations. Walk throughs were focused on the positive. I was offering to help and to teach alongside others instead of focusing on directives. I asked teachers to let me learn alongside them and learn from them. Trust was impactful.
Something else I focused on was looking at teachers as learners who are individuals. I laid the foundation as a new coach spending August, September, and October on what was the message from the district, and what is their vision for Ebinport and the schools in Rock Hill as a whole. Then in November and December we started laying out the individual work to achieve that district-wide vision and goal. In December and January teachers began looking at PD choice boards, which I had designed. Those choice boards had a variety of elements: some were tasks that could be implemented right away in a classroom, others were articles or videos with questions to reflect. I included websites to try with students and templates to use with lesson planning. At the bottom of the choice board, I added the open-ended option of a teacher suggesting a choice that wasn't on the list. Giving teachers autonomy to choose for themselves is important. We treat teachers as professionals, which is a part of trust. So if we talked about questioning, or math workshop, or data-informed instruction in earlier PD conversations, teachers get to choose which of those they’d like to work on for their professional development. Then the grade level meetings are a time to discuss how things are going, what they’re learning, and sharing with one another. So instead of one PD session from me, it turned into 8 PD opportunities teachers get to choose from and then reflect and share with one another. It builds capacity and builds them up as a team.
Want to learn more? Listen to our podcast episode with Tanner here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/additional-resources/personalizesc/episodes/Ep--46---Flexibility-Within-Fences-Part-3-Trust--Choice--and-Learner-Centered-Coaching-e26a3q1
