Pointers on Principal Coaching

Consider these five suggestions for coaching focused on principals’ goals during your meetings with them this spring.

These suggestions appear in an online article from ASCD and are summarized in Marshall Memo #979, March 27, 2023. This summary is used with permission and includes additional links/recommendations specific to our Iowa context.

In this online ASCD article, Jo Lein (Johns Hopkins University and the Oklahoma Teaching and Leading Initiative) has five suggestions for those who coach school leaders:

1. Articulate a shared understanding of effective school leadership. Consider how the progressions can inform this conversation. What are the key attributes and behaviors that need to be affirmed and developed? What are the most important actions for our principals to take? How do we see their role evolving in the years ahead? The answers to these questions focus future coaching conversations, as well as shape PD, hiring, and evaluation.
   
   
2. Collect evidence. Coaching conversations with each principal are guided by what is observed in classrooms and meetings and gleaned from planning materials and student and staff data. Again, what has the district determined is evidence of growth and development specific to performance of the ISSL? Video recordings of meetings might be an option for additional evidence and focus for conversations.
   
   
3. Decide on action steps that are instructive and practical. Coaches should give principals advice (or incorporate coaching questions) that directly affects (connect to) teaching and learning, can be acquired within a week (i.e. next action step toward a larger goal), is grounded in school-level evidence, and is transferable beyond one specific area. How might the IAPDP Template  (if you want to add this template to your Google Drive, click on ‘Use Template’ in the upper right hand corner) support this conversation?
   
   
4. Encourage and monitor application. Every coaching conversation should encourage the principal to apply the action steps in classroom visits, follow-up debriefs with teachers, PD sessions, and all-staff and teacher team meetings. The coach can observe and provide feedback and/or support the principal in reflecting.
   
   
5. Follow up in ways that result in lasting improvement. “Coaches are not only building principals’ technical skills,” says Lein; “they are working actively to create reflective individuals who are developing as people. Follow-up should allow individuals to acknowledge their progress and reflect on what they have learned about themselves in the process.”

Access the full article “How Principal Coaching Differs from Teacher Coaching” by Jo Lein in ASCD, March 13, 2023.

Additional reading: What Does It Take for a Superintendent to Earn Principals’ Trust?