At the Center for Coaching Certification, students are exposed to coaching agreements during their training. The following blogs are examples of coaching engagements using different models, processes, and the competencies. Each description is followed by possible questions.
Academic Coaching
Imagine a school district brings you in to coach teachers on how to be more effective in the classroom. They are familiar with and request use of the FUEL model – Frame the Conversation, Understand the Current State, Explore the Desired State, Layout a Success Plan.
Applying your coaching competencies, first you ensure everyone understands the role of sponsor, coach, and coachee. You ensure there is a clear agreement on what information will be exchanged and how it will be provided. You sign a service agreement with the school district as sponsor, and sign individual coaching agreements with the teachers who will be your coachees. Both agreements include your Code of Ethics.
To frame the conversation, in your first coaching session you ask the coachee to share their approach to planning lessons and teaching. You ask them their thoughts on how they interact with the students. To help understand the current state, you observe the coachee when they are teaching and ask follow-up questions about your observations. As the coach, you establish trust by demonstrating your trust in their abilities and being present to how they want to think and process. The communication is clear and direct with powerful questions followed by active listening. The questions explore the desired state by inviting the coachee to explore what they want it to be and then you follow-up by asking them to layout their plan for success by defining their action steps. As the coach, you serve as their accountability partner by asking about their progress and acknowledging their successes.
Questions for this Coaching Scenario:
- What is your understanding of our coaching relationship?
- How do you feel about the confidentiality arrangements?
- What is your approach to lesson planning?
- What are your thoughts on how to interact with students?
- When this situation occurred, what options did you consider?
- How do you decide which approach to take?
- What is your evaluation of your teaching?
- What do you want to change?
- What do you want to continue doing?
- What is your ideal classroom environment?
- What skills do you want to further develop?
- What might prevent you from creating your ideal?
- What resources do you have?
- What strategies will you implement?
- What are your specific action steps?
- When will you do each?
- How do you want to manage accountability?
- How will you measure progress and success?
- How do you want to recognize your progress and successes?
- What are you learning from the coaching?
- What are you learning from your actions?
- How do you want to adjust moving forward?
