5 Teacher Coaching Skills You Need to Become an Effective Coach
By: April Brown
Being an effective teacher means being a lifelong learner committed to improving your instruction and classroom management skills. An important part of helping teachers do this work is through instructional coaching. If you want to coach teachers, then you’ll need to develop some key teaching coaching skills.
Before I started working as a teacher coach, I was a classroom teacher who loved the idea of working more closely with my colleagues. Collaboration was one of my favorite parts of being a teacher, but there was never enough time.
Other than ten rushed minutes before classes began, or evening hangouts on my own time, teachers are rarely given enough time to reflect on their practice, let alone share ways they are innovating teaching and learning.
When I was teaching in a resource room setting, I helped to copilot the co-teaching initiative at my school alongside other passionate educators. This experience lit a fire under me and pushed me to consider how I might use my skills as a lifelong learner to advocate for responsive and inclusive practices.
Since then, I've held a variety of instructional coaching and well-being coaching positions in the United States and internationally. For the past three years, I've met with all of my clients virtually!
If you're considering becoming a teacher coach, developing these five teacher coaching skills and qualities is an essential part of supporting education professionals.
5 Teacher Coaching Skills to Develop
Practice active listening.
Active listening is one of the most important skills for effective instructional coaching and teacher coaching of any kind.
Before giving solutions, it's important to cultivate a sense of safety and belonging with your participants. If you expect folks to show up and be vulnerable enough to share their successes and challenges, they have to feel like you genuinely care.
Familiarize yourself with six steps of an effective listener and hone your skills by practicing active listening during everyday conversations with colleagues, family, and friends. Being present with those you care about will increase connection and allow participants to be more receptive during difficult conversations around shifts in their teaching practices.
Reflect on your expertise.
When you get started as a teacher coach, it's important to choose an area of focus. Some coaches support teachers as they navigate a new curriculum (e.g., EL Education), and others may teach their peers about Universal Design For Learning and how to design responsive and inclusive lessons.
Alternatively, you may support teachers in adopting culturally responsive teaching practices or trauma informed approaches. Another area of coaching that is truly needed is focused on supporting teacher wellbeing. Whatever you choose, it's important to get clear on how your skills prepared you to support educators.
Once you find the right coaching niche for your expertise and teaching experience, you can continue to develop the teaching coaching skills you need to be effective.
Prioritize relationships above everything else.
One of the most important traits of an effective teacher coach is someone who puts people first. Anyone who works in a toxic system can internalize the harmful practices. Knowing this is important so you can ground yourself in human-centered coaching interactions.
Although you'll have an agenda and flow to each session, it's also important to remember that the human in front of you IS the agenda. Tune into their body language and needs during the session. If they look distraught, take a moment to let them vent in a safe space (or cry).
Just as we hope to disrupt the “teach to the test” mentality, we can also push back against a system that tells us that teachers are only as important as their outcome goals. Coaching in teaching is just as much about supporting educators as it is about improving instruction.
Begin a mindfulness practice.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, defines mindfulness as, “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.”
Not only does practicing mindfulness reduce stress and burnout, but research shows that educators who practice mindfulness have greater efficacy in doing their jobs, cultivate more emotionally supportive classrooms, and have better classroom organization.
As a teacher coach, you can dedicate time at the beginning or end of each session to listen to a guided meditation or lead a body scan or breathing meditation. There are also many ways to practice mindfulness in daily life. Two books to help you get started include Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana or The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh.
Stay rooted in hope.
On the surface, being hopeful may not seem like an effective teacher coaching skill —but it absolutely is! We know that teaching is one of the most exploited professions, but as a teacher coach, it's imperative to believe that our actions and voices can lead to change. This hopefulness is important because the teachers you work with will feel exhausted, depleted, and overwhelmed.
First, acknowledge that their feelings are valid. But instead of staying in that hopeless space, invite them to think about ways to infuse small moments of joy into their day or use positive affirmations to rewire their brains to focus on the positive. Tiny shifts can make a big difference!
Ready to Start a Teacher Coaching Career?
Becoming an effective teacher coach is about more than just developing the right teaching coaching skills. You’ll likely need a lot of support, encouragement and guidance along the way —especially if becoming an instructional coach means leaving the classroom.
Whether you’re already doing teacher coaching in your school or you’re interested in starting a new career as a virtual instructional coach, Educator Forever is here to help. We have a growing community of teachers and former teachers finding new ways to work in education.
Our Beyond The Classroom program can help you review your teaching experience, identify your transferable skills and start finding flexible jobs in education.
Contact Educator Forever to learn more or explore all the ways to work with us.
About April Brown
April Brown (M.Ed) is Educator Forever’s community facilitator and a curriculum coach for the Curriculum Development Foundations program. In 2015, April began designing curriculum and writing articles for an EdTech company as a side gig while she was teaching in Placencia, Belize. After having her daughter in 2016, April was eager to use her unique experience teaching and leading in mainstream and alternative settings in the United States and internationally to work remotely while still making a difference in education.
The Beyond the Classroom course empowered April to leverage her skills as a compassionate disruptor and out-of-the-box thinker to excel as an instructional/well-being coach, adjunct instructor of a Trauma Supportive Schools course, curriculum developer, and writer for publications such as PBS SoCal, Education.com, and Britannica for Parents. April is an advocate for teachers and students – inside and outside of the classroom. You can find April in rural Vermont spending time with her husband, two beautiful daughters, and charming rottweilers.