Gurnee School District 56

“Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance.” - Atul Gawande

In his work with hospitals, Atul Gawande found that checklists and coaching had an amazing impact when it came to improving the efficacy of surgical procedures and preventing mistakes. If coaching has proven to effectively improve surgical practice, then surely we will find it to be effective at improving instructional practice as well.

We started an instructional coaching program in 2018, hiring both an instructional coach and a behavior coach. We also have an outside coach for the integration of our coding curriculum in partnership with Code to the Future. Our coaches will do targeted work with teachers surrounding the use of proven instructional strategies and proven ways of helping students to manage their behavior.

According to instructional leader and author Jim Knight, “instructional coaches partner with teachers to analyze current reality, set goals, identify and explain teaching strategies to meet goals, and provide support until the goals are met.”

As this program is new, getting teachers comfortable with the model and the coaching staff was important. We supported our coaches to be creative in reaching teachers. As such, they work on distributing resources through their blogs and a podcast series, “Coffee with Coaches,” where they explore instructional strategies.