Coaching: The Missing Piece

Christine Moore • Cahn Fellow 2021

Luther Burbank Middle School(LBMS) has a well established and robust connection between theory, beliefs and practices at the school site that has led to consistent growth in student performance over the last ten years. The focus on adult learning of high leverage practices, aligned with clear beliefs about how adolescents best learn at school has created a positive culture for both staff and students. Over the last several years, the school has observed that while cohorts of students were demonstrating growth while attending LBMS, overall scores were fairly stagnant, as though there was a ceiling that couldn’t be surpassed. As the school began to look closely at its systems to find the gap, they honed in on individual teacher practice. Are we who we say we are in every classroom, consistently, or are we straying from our beliefs and our theories? How do we close the gap between who we say we are and what we do, or what we know and what we do? And how do you balance individual needs of educators and the needs of the collective?

This project explores transformational coaching as a solution to the knowing doing gap, the missing piece in a professional learning system. While systems of observation and feedback have always been in place at the school site, transformational coaching moves the practice beyond a transaction, or one direction relationship, into an ongoing process that supports the alignments of beliefs, behavior and ways of being with goals focused on increasing resilience, strengthening reflection and building skill. A year-long study of the system and practice of transformational coaching shows positive results for teachers who identify feeling seen,  genuinely supported, more resilient and movement toward more effective practice. As the school begins to scale-up the coaching system, the problem of practice hones in on demonstrated need for ongoing deliberate learning and practice for the coaches. The final missing piece of closing the knowing-doing gap for coaches is explored with ongoing learning and deliberate practice opportunities to empower coaches with strong results for both coaches and coachees.