Effective coaches and mentors use tools to best meet the current goals of a colleague. Reflective coaches practice, reflect on, and improve on their use of tools. They plan for conversations with an intentional review on past conversations, select potential tools for the upcoming conversation/s, are committed to showing up for the colleague, and know that the journey is where the real learning will occur. As a result, a coach needs to be flexible and follow the colleague’s cues and most pressing questions/challenges. I want to write, in this post, about what high leverage tools do, and share some of the high leverage tools I use at this time.

What is a high leverage tool? High leverage tools lead to the greatest amount of thinking, reflection, growth, and change in behaviors. These are used in coaching and mentoring conversations, as a scaffold to guide the conversation. Over time, the questions and structure of the tools becomes internalized, a part of the thought processes of both the coach and the colleague. Awareness of the power of these tools leads to quicker acquisition of internalization. It is important to share the tools with colleagues and let colleagues know that the tools are high leverage tools.

What are some high leverage tools in my toolbox?

• How to Prepare for an Equity-Based Conversation: In this tool, from Aguilar, the coach considers: power, the relationship, entry points, the phase of coaching, and the type of conversation anticipated. This enables the coach to know how to broach healing conversations around equity and race.
• Getting to Know Students and Teachers Conversations: It is a coach’s responsibility to get to know the teacher and the tool helps guide this ongoing conversation. Some of the richest conversations happen around getting to know students: their strengths/assets and questions teachers have that can positively impact practice.
• The Planning Conversation: What are the goals of a lesson and what approaches does the teacher anticipate using, given students’ cultures/diversity, backgrounds, definitions of success, and growing identities?
• The Reflecting Conversation: These conversations include looking at how lessons went, including examples and data. Teachers explore the lesson plan with how it was actualized for different students/groups. Then, they commit to applying actions based on the new learning/awareness.
• The Problem-Resolving Conversation: Using empathetic listening and paraphrasing, the coach helps a colleague state and refine their goal and find a pathway towards meeting the goal.
• Observation Pre- and Post- Conversations: These tools help partners decide on a focus of an observation and what objective data will be collected. Clarity around data collection promotes a rich post-observation conversation with insights and next steps.
• Language Prompts: A number of tools support a variety of types of questions/prompts (both facilitative and directive), including: talking about race and bias, suggestions, clarifications, and probing/digging deeper into a topic.
• Analyzing Student Learning/Thin Slicing: In these conversations, teachers reflect on the goals of a learning experience, the diverse ways students can respond, the patterns of responses, and next instructional steps.

There are a number of lenses around mindset and adult learners that I use in addition to the tools above.These come from my work with Cognitive Coaching and the courses, workshops, and readings I have done based on Transformational Coaching. Several tools around high quality instruction practices are also a part of my toolbox (including my school district’s Personalized Learning Look Fors, the Universal Design for Learning Framework, the Ready for Rigor Framework, etc. In addition, I am learning more about “Strengths-based coaching” where we work primarily from areas of strength. I hope to write more about these in future posts.

Resources:
Cognitive Coaching
The Art of Coaching, The Art of Coaching Teams, Onward, The Onward Workbook, The Art of Coaching Workbook, Coaching for Equity
Culturally Proficient Coaching
Culturally Proficient Teaching and the Brain