When Opportunity Knocks, Part 2

She was more than a little surprised to the response when every one of the fifteen teachers, and three part time teachers, said they wanted to be involved in Peer Coaching. They wanted professional development that was relevant for them, and they didn’t want to leave school to get it.  Melanie wasn’t initially sure how she could involve every teacher in Peer Coaching, but she was positive she couldn’t turn her back on teachers desire to collaborate to improve student learning. Her principal agreed and asked that Melanie adapt the peer coaching model to suit the needs of the school.  After the initial day-long coaching meeting he devoted more than 60% of school’s annual  professional development budget to support coaching and worked in creative ways to provide time for teachers to collaborate.

How do you make it possible for every one of the 18 teachers to participate in a coaching program?  Melanie faced two dilemmas.  How do you help every teacher to develop coaching skills that are critical to a coaches’ success?  Melanie increased the degree of difficulty when she realized she wouldn’t be successful if she added too much to the teachers’ busy workday, or made it too difficult for teachers.  She started small.  When she introduced coaching Melanie had teachers develop a few coaching skills, like group norms and collaboration skills.  Over the next year she taught other coaching skills to the whole staff just as they were needed as coaching relationships grew.   Just enough, just in time could have been her mantra.

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When Opportunity Knocks: An innovative approach to peer coaching implementation

Shortly after completing Peer Coach facilitator training in June of 2010 Melanie Hogan faced a happy dilemma.  She met with staff at her school, Lakelands Primary School in Dapto, just south of Sydney, Australia, to explain of Peer Coaching, and how she hoped coaching would unfold in her school.
Everything she heard in facilitator training suggested she should work with the willing, and start small. Melanie was hoping she could find just two or three
teachers who wanted to collaborate and expand on her successes working with them.

Like most schools this was a school with no strong tradition of peer coaching; teachers got on with the task in their classroom.   If you asked for help colleagues were always willing to help, but it was unheard of for a grade four teacher to visit a kindergarten classroom.  Most professional development
happened off site.  Given this background the principal gave her a full day to present coaching to the staff as he was optimistic that the teachers would see the benefits of the program.

Melanie introduced communications skills with the staff; they discussed and set norms to guide their work together.  She made it clear that coaches would have no role in evaluating teachers’ performance; coaches were there to serve as a catalyst to help teachers improve student learning.  And Melanie asked teachers how they might collaborate with a coach.

She was more than a little surprised to the response…

Tune in next week for Part 2 of When Opportunity Knocks

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