Setting a Coaching Purpose Through Coplanning

Carrie Sand contributed today's post.

Last month, I talked about the importance of establishing and articulating a common vision at the beginning of each new school  year for the role of a literacy coach. After a vision has been shared, a coach often moves into developing and implementing a menu of service options he/she will offer throughout the course of a school year. One structure that offers a range of differentiated options is the Literacy Coaching Continuum outlined in Mary Catherine Moran’s book Differentiated Literacy Coaching: Scaffolding for Student and Teacher Success.

Of the options that this continuum presents, I find coplanning to be one of the more common ways I start my work with teachers and teams in the beginning of a school year or a coaching cycle. In my experience, coplanning can be a comfortable entry point for a coach’s work because it can feel less invasive, less personal, and overall less threatening than starting with conversations about instructional routines, practices, or philosophies. Also, I believe curriculum and planning are naturally on the forefront of teacher’s minds within the fall months, as many times teachers are still working on gathering their first pieces of classroom data, getting to know new grade levels, starting off in new positions, or even working with new team members. Finally, I also find coplanning to be a good place to start with those teachers who are having difficulty (or are reluctant to) articulate a purpose for the coaching cycle. Often, throughout the course of coplanning, questions, uncertainties, or frustrations will naturally arise. In this way, coaches can “tease” out a purpose for the coaching cycle through the conversations that originate during coplanning.

A coach can support teachers through coplanning in a variety of  ways, depending on the needs of their teacher or teams.. First, coplanning time might involve an examination of data; secondly, a teacher might work to align and plan a certain lesson or unit of instruction with a teacher or a team. In her book Differentiated Literacy Coaching, Mary Catherine Moran highlights the following four responsibilities for a literacy coach during coplanning. During coplanning, coaches may:

• Coplan lessons and curriculum units with teachers based on a systematic study of teacher’s needs.
• Work with teachers to align instruction to learning standards.
• Set goals and plan lessons with teachers based on analysis of student assessment data.
• Examine students’ ongoing performance data to identify needs, monitor progress, and modify instruction for struggling readers.

In my experiences, I have also used coplanning to work with teams in setting a protocol and structure for lesson plan writing, understand a new curriculum, tool, or resource, and lay out a systematic scope and sequence. As I mentioned above, these opportunities are especially useful for teams/teachers who have new members or new tools they are working to understand and implement. My recommendation is that coplanning occurs for a minimum of once a week up to five days a week, depending on needs and scheduling. I have found by setting aside a structured time for coplanning, acting as a collaborating member of a team or partnership, and following a structured protocol (for team planning or conversations) coplanning time is a very productive way for a coach to start off their school year. The coplanning process allows a coach to support teams or individual in building knowledge and a common vocabulary, it fosters a relationship of collaboration between the coach and the individual/team, and it helps set a purpose for future coaching opportunities. For these reasons, a coach can easily use the coplanning experiences to purposefully select additional tools or options from the coaching continuum to move into a new or deeper phase of coaching.