Advocating for teachers as an instructional coach is an underutilized strategy to promote collaboration and achieve goals. To advocate for a teacher means an instructional coach would understand the needs and wants of the teachers and support their efforts in meeting the request. The benefit to successfully advocating for teachers is that it builds relationships,…

Being a district teacher leader (instructional coach, PD coordinator, subject area specialist, etc.) means you are supporting teachers at multiple school sites instead of staying at one single school. This can be logistically challenging in addition to meeting the various expectations of each building you support. If you are moving from a school to district…

Building relationships with teachers can be challenging for instructional coaches, especially when you are supporting a large caseload of teachers. Regardless of difficulty, it can be done. And its advantageous to figure out just how to do it too. This post will outline ways instructional coaches can build relationships with a large group of teachers.…

There are four essential aspects of instruction that have the greatest impact on student learning- lesson design, classroom management, student engagement as well as student ownership and accountability. This post explores the teacher essentials for classroom and career success. The Discovery Throughout my years as a classroom teacher, I helped numerous students become successful learners…

Growing as a leader not only requires mindset and vision work, but also tangible resources to help you put principles into action. This post will outline helpful resources to support your growth as a leader, not just telling you what to learn but why it’s essential to your success. Learn Before you know exactly what…

Coaching resistant teachers comes with its obstacles. Not only do you have to figure out what the resistance is, but you have to work to remove the barriers all before you can even begin a productive coaching partnership. This post will outline common reasons teachers feel resistant to working with a coach, ways to overcome…

Collecting student data is considered a best instructional practice in today’s schools. It allows teachers to know exactly how well students know and understand the material being taught to them. However, data collection processes can be confusing to implement which could result in inaccurate student data. This post will explore 5 things to avoid when…

I often get asked what I am currently reading or what have I loved or found helpful. This blog post will share books from my personal library that I love and think any educator should read. Teaching The following list are books I suggest for those educators interested in teaching: The Essential 55: An Award-Winning…

Data collection is an important piece of teaching. However, it can be confusing and somewhat daunting to teachers if they are asked to collect student data without clarity on how and why to do it. This blog post will explore the what, how and why of data collection. What is data collection? Data collection refers…

As an instructional coach, partnering with teachers is not always easy. Many times, teachers push back on working together or implementing suggestions from the coach for improvement in their classroom instruction. Push back refers to when an individual is not in agreement with what someone else is saying, doing or requesting of them and either…