Instructional Coaching
The purpose is to develop confident,
leaders who will help those they lead to
achieve extraordinary results in their
classrooms.
Essential Skills
Conversation types
Reflective feedback
The PLC (team)
“Mokita”
SKILLS ESSENTIAL TO COACHING
TEACHERS
Essential Skills
Coaching Strategies
What it “Looks Like”
Handle distractions
When meeting with a teacher to have a conversation,
set aside any and all distractions and give the
conversation 100% of your attention.
Set aside unproductive
patterns of listening
Manage unproductive patterns of listening such as,
asking questions out of curiosity or adding your own
personal story.
Value silence
Use silence constructively to increase cognition and
reflection.
Pay attention to verbal and
nonverbal communication
Integrate verbal and nonverbal cues to increase rapport,
communication, and trust in a relationship
Listen for unexamined
beliefs and assumptions
The coach surfaces challenges and mediates for
unexamined beliefs and assumtions.
Essential Skills
Coaching Strategies
What it “Looks Like”
Listen without the obligation to act
The IC is fully present and skillfully
chooses requests and responses. Refrains
from taking action.
Paraphrase skillfully
Paraphrasing for the teacher provides
clarity, elaboration, summary and/or
conceptual shifts in thinking and
understanding
Avoid advice
Not giving advice will empower the
teacher to find their own solution and
make them more independent.
Use reflective feedback
Provide nonjudgmental feedback to offer
clarification, value potential or reflective
questions for thoughtful self-assessment
Conversation Mapping
THE 4 MAIN CONVERSATION TYPES
Conversation
Type: Planning
Planning
Conversations clarify
goals, determine what
success will look like
for the teacher, keep
the focus on the
teacher’s approaches,
strategies, and
decisions, elicits
means for assessment
and requests
reflection on the
benefit of the
conversation.
Conversation
Type: Reflective
Reflective
conversations attempt
to summarize
impressions and recall
significant content
that was shared.
Questions should
promote comparisons,
analysis and
inferential thinking.
Conversation Type:
Problem Solving
•Express empathy
without negating the
teacher’s concerns.
• Attempt to “witness
the struggle” without
getting caught up in
the story.
•Clarify the goal and
transition the teacher
forward.
Conversation Type:
Goal Setting
•Work toward goal clarity
and attempt to have the
teacher articulate the goal
•Assist the teacher in
determining priorities for
the goal and identify
multiple pathways for
achieving the goal.
•The teacher leaves the
conversation with a
definitive action plan
Reflective Feedback
Step One: Clarify for
understanding
“How did your students
respond to the process?”
“How do you see this
program as different from…?”
“What are the costs you
have calculated to put this in
place?”
“Which resources most
supported your planning and
provided the foundation of
this work?”
Which groups provided
useful input to the plan?”
“When you checked TAKS
alignment, what data
supported moving forward?”
Step Two: Express the VALUE potential
specifically/Clarify strengths & what the
teacher is doing well
“This could offer value to
students with time issues.”
“The strength of the idea
is…”
“The scaffolding of your
design will help your
students understand…”
“You have really thought
deeply about…”
“I see evidence of…”
“As a parent and teacher
the idea is very exciting to
me because it supports
learning.”
“It provides high
engagement for students.”
Step Three: Reflective questions or possibilities (this is when you push/prod
etc. What do YOU want the outcome to be? How important is this on a 1 to
10 scale?
“I wonder what would
happen if…” or “What might
happen if…?”
“What goals have (did) your
students set for individual
mastery?”
“What learning gaps, if any,
did you notice in student
understanding?”
“What other considerations
are you thinking about with
assessments?”
“To align more closely with
TAKS, what if…?”
“What aspects are you
thinking may be a barrier for
parents or critical groups?”

The Team
Questions for PLC clarity
1. Where are we going?
2. Why are we going
there?
3. Who is going with us?
4. How are we going to
get there?
5. If nothing changes,
then what?
Questions for Breakthrough
Conversations
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What are our values and are
there gaps?
What are our skills and talents
and are there gaps?
What are our future
opportunities and are there
gaps?
What is impossible to do that if
it were possible, would change
everything?
What are we pretending not to
know?
“Mokita” --- That which everyone knows & of which no one speaks.
The Papuans of New Guinea judge the health of any community by the
number of “mokitas” that exist within it.
• AKA the elephant in the room.
• How many “mokitas” can you identify
in your department? School?
• Steps
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Master the courage to face the full truth
Authenticity is the only choice
Be fully present!
Eat that FROG
Respond fully to your instincts
Step out, make it safe, step back in
Leverage the conversation with silence
Thank you!