As SchoolMint’s chief academic officer and host of the ChangeAgents in K-12 podcast, Dr. Chris Balow gets to discuss the top issues in K-12 education today.
From district-level administrators to people leading innovative companies, ChangeAgents features a variety of guests — the change agents themselves — with incredible insights and guidance for school leaders.
Recently, Dr. Balow had the opportunity to interview Dr. Jim Knight, the senior partner at the Instructional Coaching Group.
Read on to learn more about the group, about effective instructional coaching, and for an overview of Dr. Balow and Dr. Knight’s discussion!
For more than 20 years, the Instructional Coaching Group has been researching best practices in coaching and offering guidance on what makes a successful instructional coach for teachers.
As stated so succinctly on their website, instructional coaching “makes it easier for teachers to meet the needs of their students.”
“If you want to be really outstanding at what you do, you almost always have a coach — whether you’re a surgeon or an athlete or a violin player. It’s helpful to have someone not to tell you what to do, but to help you see things you might not see, to share ideas, and so forth. Most outstanding performers have a coach who has helped them get to that level of excellence.”
— Dr. Jim Knight, Instructional Coaching Group
At SchoolMint, we believe in the power of a highly effective coach. And we believe in coaches because, ultimately, a highly effective teacher is a happy, fulfilled teacher — as well as the most important component of student achievement.
You can read more in this previous post: What is Instructional Coaching for Teachers?
Instructional coaching is a partnership between a coach and a teacher. This is a rewarding partnership — not a punitive one — where the coach and the teacher work together to analyze the current reality, set goals, and discuss teaching strategies and support to reach those goals.
For this partnership to be effective, a teacher coaching program requires seven components.
As outlined by Dr. Knight, those elements are:
We also recommend learning more about the Get Better Faster approach to coaching and how it accelerates teacher learning.
In addition to learning about the components of successful coaching, Dr. Knight also offers suggestions for any school or district leader considering implementing instructional coaching:
Ready to learn more about instructional coaching? Tune in below to listen to the discussion between Dr. Chris Balow and Dr. Jim Knight.
You’ll learn more about instructional coaching, learn how content experts can be effective coaches, get three suggestions for any school leader looking to implement instructional coaching, and much more.
Visit the episode’s page here to see where all you can tune in, to read the transcript, and more.
As Dr. Knight elaborates on in A Conversation on Coaching, data is key to the success of any coaching program.
Data helps you set realistic learning goals for teachers, determine if your coaches and teachers are on track, and make strategy adjustments if needed. Data not only helps coaches monitor the progress of teachers but also monitor their own effectiveness as a coach.
Videos are a highly effective way of capturing coaching data. A platform like SchoolMint Grow provides built-in video recording, uploading, and sharing capabilities as well as robust data reporting.
Grow is a transparent, efficient, and data-driven platform for education leadership. Using Grow, coaches and leaders can accelerate teacher proficiency to improve learning.