One of the responsibilities that some coaches have assumed
is offering to cover classes of teachers who want to visit other classrooms.
While I think the offer is well intentioned, covering classes is not. Here’s
why… when an instructional coach and teacher talk about practice and suggest
visiting another colleague’s classroom to see the practice in real time, both
parties need to see the same thing at the same time or the translation of what
happened will only be seen through one person’s eyes. The feedback will be
one-sided, leaving no opportunity for the coach to ask the kinds of questions
that promote deep reflection because the coach wasn’t there to bring attention
to something that might be overlooked by the visiting teacher.
The undeniable benefit of working with a coach is to talk
about the practice viewed by both parties where both have goals for watching
that practice. If one of the two is not present, the “analysis” of what
happened in that classroom is translated rather than experienced firsthand. The
actions are shared via a filter of the person saying what happened. If a
teacher tells the coach what happened rather than the coach seeing it
firsthand, is the interpretation of events unconsciously biased?
The other issue about one colleague visiting another
colleague’s class is the idea of a visit without a “before” conversation. Does
the visiting teacher participate in a “before” with the colleague to become
acquainted with the lesson’s goals or does the teacher visit without that
benefit? How does the visiting teacher know the goals and reflect upon whether
the classroom goals were met if there was no pre-visit conversation?
As professional practitioners, we want to share our
learning. How we do so is critical. If an administrator assigns a sub to cover
a class or colleagues exchange visits so that the coach can accompany each
person involved in the visitation schedule, that’s a much more effective way to
encourage classroom visits and provide opportunities for the coach to engage in
ongoing conversations about practice in a truly collaborative environment.
How can coaches
facilitate the opportunity for colleagues to visit their peers in order to
foster conversations about classroom practice and student growth?
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