Skills for Coaching / Mentoring PRTs

How to sit on your tongue while going for a ride in a helicopter.

Mentor – a person who has more knowledge, skills and experience helping someone who has less knowledge, skills and experience.

Coach – a person who has a set of skills to assist people achieve goals. These goals may be the coachee’s, or they may be the organisation’s goals.

common skills

Active listening Focus on speaker (“sitting on

your tongue” Reflecting, Paraphrasing, &

Summarising (to gain a clear understanding)

skill development

Person A: Talk to your partner for 5 minutes about a significant difficulty you had with a student.

Person B: Use active listening skills to actively listen to A.

At the end of the time B is to summarise what they understood of the situation.

further skills needed for coaching / mentoring Goal-setting Action planning Questioning (“dialogue-type

questioning”) to encourage reflection Big picture thinking: “Helicoptering up” Giving descriptive and evaluative

feedback Balancing support and challenge

goal setting exercise

In pairs write a goal to do with a PRT / a group of PRTs

goal-setting

Check that your goal is …. Specific Measurable

Attractive and Achievable Relevant Time-bound

from Bronze to Gold

Compare the following goals

2. I want to create better relationships with the Maori students in my classes.

3. I want to craft and use a new strategy that will increase the engagement of Maori students and result in better achievement

format of a Golden goal

A strategy to do XXX which will be evidenced by YYY

A strategy that will increase the engagement of Maori students so that there is an increase in their learning

Grant, 2005

going for Gold

Rewrite your goal in the format of a Golden goal

action planning (pp134-135, Robertson, 2005)

Establish indicators against which to measure progress

Set out the key steps to achieve the goals Set time frames Specify the support the coach will give and

when Use the SMART framework to identify and

discuss resources and barriers COACHEE MUST WRITE THE PLAN

Sample action plan

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On the template develop a sample action plan.

sit on your tongue

People don’t change because they are told to….

Teachers often need to “unlearn” something to be able to do something differently.

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Sensitivity - stages of growth

Layer support and challenge Introduce new ways of doing

things through them observing WHEN you have laid the groundwork (motivation), and WHEN they are ready.

moving from telling to asking good questionsTeachers change when they understand

what they can do to make a difference, and then commit to this change. (Fullan, 1992)

Challenge is to ASK the questions that will lead to thisGreene & Grant, 2003

questioning

Level 1 – Questions to clarify events, actions, feelings

Level 2 – Questions about purpose, reasons, and intended consequences

Level 3 – Questions that require an exploration of the basis or impact of their actions

(pp120-1, Robertson, 2005)

ask, don’t tell

You have a PRT who is continually late to department meetings.

Decide what you would like to tell him. Then don’t.

Develop some questions to explore the situation and perhaps lead the PRT to an insight about the consequences of their lateness.

“helicoptering up”

In coaching, people get “stuck”.

Coaches need to keep the overview

We do this by imagining we can go way up high and see “the big picture” of what our coachee is trying to achieve.

questions to help helicopter up

What will this look like after reports are over?

We can’t change what has happened – in the big picture ….?

What is the most important thing in this …?

If we look at the year as a whole, how does ……?

balancing support and challenge The biggest challenge Built on reciprocal trust Is at the heart of effective coaching Support without challenge will not

develop the teacher Challenge without support will result in

withdrawal

Challenge

low high

Support

low

high

No real changeFlight / fight

StagnationGrowth and development

Getting it right?

guidelines for feedback

Be really careful with feedback. If it is perceived as judgemental it raises resistance.

Focus feedback on presentation of data collected- it should be descriptive, not evaluative.

Ask questions (at L1,L2 and L3) to clarify and evaluate any actions you thought were not productive.

post-observation

Initial feedback as they leave the room. (What you liked, what you want to reflect about before the meeting).

Sit-down meeting to go over lesson observation tool. Self assessment by PRT

• “What went well..” • “What would you do differently next time?”

Guiding questions by mentor

next steps

At end of session discuss the focus / goal to be worked on before next observation.