The first days and weeks of the school year are always a whirlwind, but they’re a great opportunity to start the year well in your coaching role! In this spirit, I am revisiting eight strategies to start the year right as an instructional coach with an added curated selection of #coachbetter episodes to help you explore each one!
1: Be Extra Visible
Schedule in time to walk around campus and pop into the classrooms. Being visible gives you an opportunity to build relationships, to get to know your colleagues, and to see what teaching and learning looks like in as many classrooms as possible. You may also discover a great opportunity to provide immediate support or assistance for a teacher. This can help potential coaching partners identify and recognize the support a coach can provide.
This is especially critical for new teachers who might not really know exactly how the coaching process works. New teachers are always a great opportunity to expand your coaching support and build the coaching culture. Making time to specifically visit and support those that are either new to the school, or even new to teaching, can be an extra special support for them - and a great way to build and cement new relationships.
Check out this #coachbetter QuickTips episode:
Bonus: Document Your Conversations
It’s also worthwhile to keep a coaching journal, to keep some notes on what you’re talking about with teachers. You might find it helpful to jot down notes on important information that you want to remember so that you can begin to personalize your interactions with that teacher. You can even make notes about personal elements, like family or their favorite treats or what they like to have in their classroom. Having a coaching journal means that every time you work with that teacher, you have those reminders of exactly what’s important to them to help personalize their learning experience.
Check out this episode of #coachbetter:
2: Establish or Maintain Quality Relationships With Your School Leadership
If you are returning to the same school, it is likely that you have a great relationship with your school leadership already. But if you’re at a new school, this is a good time to start to get to know your school leadership. You can both establish and maintain that relationship by popping into their office and asking a little bit about their goals for the academic year and what you can do to support them at this point in time.
Most school leaders expect you to know your role and support them effectively. Use this opportunity to share how they can help you be more effective in your job. This might also be a nice time to share with your school leaders how your pop-in visits have been going, the great things that are happening in different classrooms, and the ways that you’re planning to support all the teachers in the building or the district right now. This gives them a little bit of an insight into what you’re doing as a coach at the beginning of the year.
Check out these #coachbetter episodes:
Bonus: Visit Middle Leaders Too!
You can be intentional about visiting all school leaders, not just the building or divisional Principals. You can make time to visit with the heads of departments, curriculum and tech directors, and other school-wide coordinators, to help them recognize how you can support them too. Many of those people might actually be in the classroom as well, so you can ask if there’s anything you can do to support them in their role as leader.
3: Do Your Research
After visiting with so many teachers and school leaders you probably have a lot of new info to explore. You might know about some new and exciting things that are expected in the school district over the school year, like new professional development initiatives, or new tools or techniques teachers might want to use. Now is a great time for you to do a little professional learning research, and potentially create resources for teachers or strategize approaches for working with different teams or different departments, plan some training for the year, and upskill yourself.
Bonus: Get Ahead
Now might be a little bit of a quiet time while teachers are classroom prepping and starting the new year. So, you can get ahead by being prepared and doing a little bit of groundwork for what you know might be coming this academic year.
4: Set Goals and Identify a Mentor
Everyone benefits from having a coach! We always want to improve our own practice as well. Now is a great time to do a little reflection and a little planning ahead and thinking about what you want to achieve this year as a coach. Maybe it’s:
Whatever it is, identify that goal. As you’re visiting classrooms and seeing all the different people you have on staff, identify who can support you, who can be a great sounding board for you, who can be that other pair of eyes to review the work that you’re doing and make sure you’re moving in the direction you want to go.
Check out these #coachbetter episodes:
Bonus: Become a Better Coach!
Work with a mentor to build your coaching skills too! Making time to invest in coaching for your professional growth is a great way to demonstrate how much you value the process (and it’s a great way to be a role model for your coaching partners). If you don’t have a mentor on staff, you can join The Coach Certificate and Mentorship Program to get the support of a mentor for the entire academic year - plus follow the Thrive Model for Sustainable Instructional Coaching to learn everything you need to build a thriving and sustainable instructional coaching program, unique to your school needs!
5: Create a Data Collection Tool
What are you doing to measure the impact of your practice? You can work on creating some data collection tools for teachers, for students, for school leaders at this time of the year, so that you know your work is making an impact on student learning and teacher learning over the course of the year. It might seem like the first weeks of the year is too soon to think about tracking data, but it’s not! Getting started early will help you uncover exactly what data you need to inform your practice over the course of the year.
Here are a few favorite #coachbetter episodes to help get you started:
Bonus: Adapt These Tools for Your Colleagues
Your coaching partners likely want to track classroom data too! You can adapt the tools you’re using for yourself for teachers and leaders too. Create opportunities to support them in their goals of data collection and analysis too.
6: Get Organized
Spend some time intentionally thinking about how you’re going to document your ideas and keep yourself organized over the academic year. It can be easy to get lost in the daily rush from one event to another, it's essential to have space for you to record your thoughts, keep your notes from conversations, and your plans for all your meetings. This can be digital or paper, but you’ll get the most out of whatever you chose if you set it up with intentionality from the start!
Check out this episode of #coachbetter:
Bonus: Set Up a Meeting Scheduling Tool
As you’re thinking of how you might want to design this planner process, you might also want to think about a meeting scheduling tool (like Calendly). How will you organize and schedule meetings with the teachers you’re going to work with this year? How can you make it easy for them to book times with you and keep track of your existing responsibilities?
7: Find Your Lighthouse Teachers
We all need inspiration in our daily lives. Lighthouse teachers are those who inspire you, and who help connect you to teaching and learning on a daily basis. These might be teachers who allow you to take some risks in their classroom, or colleagues who are ready to try new things and be an advocate for coaching. These teachers then become your sounding boards and the momentum builders. The teachers who will spread the great work they’re doing with you to their colleagues in their department or their grade level. Your lighthouse teachers can help build momentum around instructional coaching for you and the school community!
Check out these #coachbetter episodes to learn about how to build capacity through coaching:
Bonus: Share the Learning
Once you have your lighthouse teachers and inspiration, you can go share those great ideas with the other teachers who might be a little bit more cautious in what they do in their classroom.
8: Make Time for You
Don’t forget to schedule some time for yourself in your calendar. You might not be able to keep those appointments but having them scheduled will be a reminder that yes, you need to eat lunch, or you need to take a moment to go to the bathroom, or you might need some time to prep some work for another meeting. Scheduling those things in your calendar is a daily reminder for you to ensure that you are taking care of yourself, so you can better care for others.
Here are two great episodes to help you get started:
Bonus: Create a Routine
If you are able to create some structure in your day or week, it can help you create a routine that makes it easy to focus on work when you’re ready. Research shows that doing a similar task at the same time or on the same day helps you get into the work smoother and faster. When coaches have such hectic schedules, this is a great way to make the most of the time you have to focus on the essential work you need to do.
How Do You Start the Year?
What is most important in your coaching practice in the first days and weeks of the academic year? How do you set yourself up for success each school year? If you’re looking for a community of instructional coaches in international schools to share ideas, consider joining the Association for the Advancement of Instructional Coaching in International Schools! Launched in March 2024, we’re a brand-new non-profit organization specifically supporting instructional coaching in international schools. Find out more at: https://aaicis.org/
Portions of this article previously appeared on the Eduro blog.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Kim Cofino has been an educator in international schools since August 2000. Having lived and worked in Germany, Malaysia, Thailand, and Japan, Kim has had a variety of roles in international schools, including (her favorite) instructional coach. Now based in Bangkok, Thailand, Kim is the Founder and CEO of Eduro Learning, author of Finding Your Path as a Woman in School Leadership (Routledge), host of the #coachbetter podcast, and the creator of the Eduro Learning The Coach, Women Who Lead, and COETAIL certificate programs. Find out more about Kim and Eduro at: https://www.edurolearning.com.
