In an effort to get more teachers on board the "standards train," LBUSD sent a cadre of teacher coaches into the field during the 1998-99 school year. The talented teachers -- and the district -- learned a lot from the first year of this promising but challenging program.
by John Norton
Christine is a long-term substitute who's teaching math
and science to sixth and eighth graders. She has a degree in video/film
and almost no classroom experience.
Ed is a talented educator who became a department chair in his third
year of teaching. He's expected to help lead his fellow science teachers
to higher levels of performance through standards-based teaching and assessment.
Jeff went through "survival basics" his first full year
as an emergency teacher, when he was given overflow classes three weeks
into the school year. Now he's ready to hone his teaching skills and get
kids excited about math and science.
Barbara spent nine years at Price Waterhouse before turning to teaching
for more job satisfaction. Her maturity and work experience have given her
the confidence to begin a new career with minimal preparation, but she needs
help strengthening her students' writing skills.
Stephanie is a fifth year veteran with plenty of in-service training
in English, history and reading. As her teaching becomes more standards-based,
she's trying to add new "tools" to her classroom assessment toolbox.
Jason is excited about his first full-time position teaching eighth
grade history, but the challenges of classroom management and the district's
demanding standards-based curriculum are daunting, to say the least.
Tim knows his stuff when it comes to teaching technology, computers,
and career exploration. Now his principal wants Tim to help students become
better readers. He has no idea how to do it.
Mike wasn't quite ready for medical school so he took his Harvard
biology degree and joined Teach for America. After four weeks of summer
training in Houston, he found himself with his own classroom in one of LBUSD's
top middle schools. Expectations were high and there was a lot to learn
in a hurry.
In years past, Christine and Mike and Ed and the hundreds of teachers like
them in Long Beach Unified could expect only marginal support as they struggled
to adapt themselves to new jobs, or new roles and responsibilities.
Despite the district's many high-quality workshops, seminars and new-teacher
sharing sessions, when the time came to translate all the new knowledge
into teaching practice, teachers would usually find themselves alone with
a roomful of kids, sinking or swimming, with little feedback or guidance
from other adults.
For a group of middle grades teachers, this situation began to change in
the fall of 1998. District leaders were pressing schools to move forward
on a standards-based reform agenda, and principals and teachers needed more
help developing the new knowledge and skills required to get the job done.
Reflecting on the success of the district's curriculum leaders (specialists
in core subjects who work with schools across the district) and drawing
on models in other school systems, the administration decided to create
a "cadre of coaches" who could work regularly with teachers in
their classrooms.
During an exciting - and sometimes challenging - first year, the coaches
learned their jobs "on the fly," figuring out who to help, how
to help, and how much to help. The results have been promising enough to
encourage the district to expand and fine-tune the coaching program and
make it a mainstay of the district's grand strategy for middle grades reform.
How the Coaching Program Works
They answer to several names - standards coaches, content coaches, teacher
coaches, the "guides on the side." Some coaches are full-time;
some teach half the time; some are assigned to a single school; some serve
as many as eight schools. All are expert teachers with many years of experience,
chosen for their demonstrated excellence and their success in adapting their
teaching to the district's standards-based model.
Their roles vary according to their work situation. All coaches have an
overarching responsibility to help teachers use the district content standards
to raise student achievement. Last year coaches also supported the district's
push to have all middle school departments create "curriculum maps"
describing the who, what, when and how of teaching. Not surprisingly, every
coach invested some time helping teachers and students prepare for the SAT-9
tests in the spring. Each coach was called upon to assist rookie teachers
with the basics of classroom management, and many coaches arranged for new
and experienced teachers to observe successful teachers in other schools.
Each of the school system's three administrative areas had its own coaching
staff, and each area adopted a different coaching approach. In Area A, a
full-time, four-member team (math, science, English and history) took up
residence in a bungalow at Hamilton Middle School. Hamilton's large student
population, rapid teacher turnover, and its high percentage of inexperienced
teachers made the school a good candidate for intensive coaching support.
In Area B, two teachers were selected in each middle school to coach half-time
and teach half-time. Area C elected to use only two full-time coaches (one
in science, one in social studies) and allowed principals to help decide
how much time the coaches would spend in each of the area's eight schools.
These different coaching designs helped shape the job responsibilities of
coaches in each school. For example, the four-member team at Hamilton (all
outsiders assigned to the school) felt the need to "bond" with
the school family and found themselves pitching in to help with everything
from lunchroom duty to ordering supplies. At Hill Middle School in Area
B, the coaches supported the school's top priority - improving students'
reading and writing skills. In Area C, the science coach spent nearly half
her time working at DeMille Middle School, where most of the science faculty
members were new.
Inventing the Job as They Went Along
The teacher-coaches began their new work with two weeks of in-service training
before school began in September 1998. The teacher-coach was a relatively
new concept for LBUSD, and district leaders are quick to admit they were
inventing the job as they went along.
Looking back over the first year, Kristi Kahl, the superintendent's assistant
for middle grades reform, speaks for most central office administrators
when she says that "we've learned that we really needed to do a better
job communicating the purpose of coaching, to better define the difference
between evaluation and support, and to give our coaches more help in working
with adult learners."
Most coaches agree with Area C science coach Connie Roth that their biggest
frustration at the beginning of 1998 was a lack of clarity about their roles.
Coaches were uncertain about how they should document their work, what they
should share with principals and teachers, and how they could best invest
their time. There was also role confusion between coaches and school department
chairs - a group the district expects to become leaders of teacher development.
"There was no job description that really answered my questions about
exactly what I was supposed to do," says Roth. "A lot of it was
left up to the coaches to invent." Area A coach Judy Guess agrees.
"When we began, it was more or less 'you're going to be a coach. Now
you guys figure out what you're going to do.'"
Like Roth, each coach "did a lot of inventing" - devising observation
forms, exploring the proper relationship with principals, and working to
define their jobs in ways that didn't threaten teachers, many of whom assumed
that if they were being observed, they were being evaluated. "Right
away teachers said 'you're coming in and observing me and writing things
down. So does that mean that you're doing my evaluation?'" says Roth.
"Many people saw us as lackeys for the district or spies for the principal,"
Hamilton language arts coach Sandra Rogers told participants at a school
reform conference recently. "We had to break down those barriers, and
it took most of the year. And there are still people who are not quite sure
we are there just to help."
From time to time the coaches also found themselves serving as "scapegoats"
for the district's aggressive reform agenda. The 1998-99 school year was
filled with new teaching mandates and teachers were feeling "very stressed"
says Ed Samuels, math department chair at Hamilton. "There was some
tendency to blame them for the extra work, which really wasn't from them
but was coming down from the (district)."
The district's decision to require teachers to work on "curriculum
maps" was one example, Samuels says. "The coaches were trained
in it and told to bring it to the schools, so the teachers blamed them,
saying 'you guys are giving us curriculum maps.' But that was something
that was going to be required of us regardless of whether we had coaches."
The truth, Samuels believes, is "that they really made it easier for
us than it would have been otherwise. The choice was to do it with their
help, or without their help."
The suspicion about the "true" purpose of the coaching program
manifested itself in different ways at different schools and among different
groups of teachers. Young, inexperienced teachers were often eager for any
help they could get, says Hamilton coach Judy Guess, and their neediness
helped coaches establish some instant rapport.
Most first- and second-year teachers who have had the opportunity to work
with coaches (still a small minority in the district) agree that the coaching
model provides more support than the "mentor" teachers who are
traditionally assigned to new hires. Jeff Shidler, a second-year teacher
at Hamilton last year, relied on a mentor during his rookie season. "They
try to help you, but they're full-time teachers themselves." He adds
that mentor teachers may have as little as three years of experience, while
coaches are almost always teachers with many years of experience and a record
of excellence. "A mentor with three or four years experience may be
very willing to help with something like lesson planning," Shidler
says, "but the lesson planning is not as good as the person who has
17 years under their belt."
Experienced Teachers More Likely to Resist
Whatever their particular situation, every coach agrees that experienced
teachers have shown the most resistance to the coaching program.
"I think the basic thing that most of us had to overcome was teachers
feeling like they didn't need a coach," says Judy Guess about the Hamilton
team's first year of coaching. "The more experienced teachers did what
I did as a younger teacher - they went in a classroom, closed the door,
and did what they wanted to. Some were afraid to have someone come in and
say, 'OK, can we work through this together. What is it that you would like
to improve on?'"
Roth makes a similar observation. "Some people I work with are reluctant
to take suggestions. Or even hear any suggestions. They're defensive, and
it takes awhile. In the beginning, I do a lot of observation. I get a feel
for how they work in their room and try to build a rapport before I start
giving advice."
Stephanie Dunn, a five-year veteran who teaches sixth grade English and
history at Hamilton Middle School, says teachers at Hamilton were "understandably
suspicious" when they first learned that a team of coaches would be
placed in their school. "At first there was some apprehension. Why
are they coming? What's the purpose? Everybody hears the word 'coach' and
thinks 'football team.' And we know what the coach's role is with a football
team, so we figure that a coach coming in over the teachers has the same
job. They're probably going to tell us how to teach, or tell us how not
to teach. I think that was one way that people were looking at the coaching
in the beginning."
Some experienced teachers, like Dunn, have welcomed the help. "I've
had positive experiences from the beginning. They've helped me improve my
classroom assessment and culminating activities for units," she says.
Hill Middle School coach Shelley Gustafson helped math teacher Mark Egelko
improve his students' ability to read and understand a difficult textbook.
"That's not something I was trained in," he explains. And Hamilton
science department chair Ed Samuels says Judy Guess has deepened his understanding
of the standards teaching approach "and put me in a better position
to help our other math teachers."
When coaches were asked at the end of the school year to identify the training
they needed most - but didn't get - there was near-unanimous agreement.
Judy Guess calls it "cognitive coaching;" others describe it as
"adult learning theory." In plain English, Guess says, it's the
question of "how do you talk to teachers about different issues? What
are the best ways to get them to listen to you and get the most out of what
you're trying to tell them? We didn't get enough suggestions on how to work
with teachers who really don't want you there."
District leaders responded to these concerns this August when they held
their second professional development program for coaches. "The Art
of Coaching," a seminar presented by Joellen Killion of the National
Staff Development Council, helped coaches understand the dynamics of adult
learners and offered ideas about improving communication and helping teachers
"build understanding of their own needs." Killion will continue
to work with the coaches throughout 1999-2000.
"I'm impressed by the district's commitment to provide the time for
coaches, by the selection of coaches, and the focus on their on-going development,"
Killion says. "But they seem to have an enormous task to accomplish,
especially in schools with large numbers of inexperienced staff and large
staff turnover."
The Power of Positive Coaching
Two snapshots from Hamilton Middle School help demonstrate the potential
impact of the coaching program.
Two years ago, before Hamilton's four-member coaching team took up residence,
a young 8th-grade history teacher described his first year of teaching as
an experience in survival. While the school's administration offered all
the help it could spare, his struggles with student behavior and his lack
of training in teaching methods made for "a brutal situation,"
he said. "I haven't talked to anyone much about the curriculum, it's
mostly been about discipline. That's the challenge I'm facing." The
young teacher said he was learning to teach through trial and error. "You
make mistakes early. You give an assignment, read two pages, answer the
questions in the textbook. No one gets the questions or the reading. So
you learn by mistake."
Last spring, we heard a different story from Jason Marshall, also an 8th
grade history teacher in his first year. "I go home smiling every day,"
Marshall said. "I don't feel frustrated. Just yesterday we spent a
few hours just picking (our history coach's) brain and working with her
to try to create lesson plans for the next six weeks. We've got clear ideas
about how to tackle each lesson we're going to be doing. I don't feel burdened.
I feel excited about coming to school."
Marshall said he had discipline problems at the beginning of the year. "Hamilton
is known as a tough school to work in. For a first-year teacher at this
school, it's pretty difficult. But I was able to get help from all four
of our coaches. In classroom management, they all have their own style and
you can choose what you like. They come in the class and model for you or
give you tips. It's been an unbelievably positive year."
Coaches Battle Low Expectations
In some schools, coaches found themselves battling low expectations - not
just among students, but among teachers.
"I had a couple of teachers last fall say to me - and this was one
of my real downers - that 'you don't understand our students.' They really
believed that their students couldn't learn very much and we were naive
to think otherwise," says Ann Robertson, a highly regarded history
teacher who moved from Hill to join the Hamilton coaching team.
The Hamilton coaches developed several strategies to address this culture
of low expectations. "One thing that helped was providing them with
examples of student work done by students very similar to their own kids,"
Robertson says. "I wanted them to see what was possible if you have
good teaching." She and other coaches also asked teachers to visit
classrooms in other schools "We were very selective about the schools
we chose.
We wanted to make sure that the classes they were seeing look like their
own classes, but these were classes where teachers had set high standards,"
Robertson explains.
Robertson quickly gained a reputation at Hamilton as a "pushy"
coach who insisted on high expectations for kids. "The teachers were
afraid to get in their students' faces and challenge them to learn,"
she says. "They didn't want to stress them out." What some see
as pushiness, Robertson says, grows from her belief that kids really want
to learn. "The kids at one school are no different than kids anywhere
else as far as their hunger for learning. Our job as teachers is making
it exciting for them to learn, so that they always want more."
"If there's anything of value we've done as a group of coaches,"
Robertson believes, "it is showing the teachers that they need to set
a higher bar for the students. Don't accept a weak effort from students.
Tell them it isn't good enough. Don't tell let students tell you that they
can't do it."
Each LBUSD coach had a mandate to help teachers create standards-based classrooms
and teaching styles. The task was easier in some schools than others. Although
Long Beach Unified has offered professional development that promotes standards-based
teaching for years, coaches often found themselves beginning with very basic
concepts, like writing the standard and objective for each day's lesson
- and tomorrow's homework assignments - on the board.
"I've spent a good bit of time working with teachers on teaching to
the standard, having an objective, and having a method to tell whether you've
gotten across what you wanted to get across," Guess says. "We
urge them to close the classroom period with a summary of where you are
and what you've accomplished that day. That's very important. It helps students
be sure about what has happened and what you expect them to come away with."
By the end of the school year, Robertson said, the constant reinforcement
of the standards-based teaching style was beginning to pay off. "I
think you could walk through any of the classrooms and see a pretty good
approach now to a standards-based classroom. I would say a majority of the
time, you can walk in and the kids can tell you why they're learning what
they're learning."
The Future of Coaching
At a national meeting sponsored by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in
early September, LBUSD administrators, coaches and principals described
the progress of the coaching model and answered questions from intrigued
educators in other reforming school districts.
"We're beginning a new year," Hamilton coach Sandra Rogers told
participants. "We don't have all the trust issues we had before. We
have more people who are ready to look at standards and see how they can
improve teaching."
The middle grades standards coaches (and their supervisors) will continue
to refine the coaching role as the experiment progresses, assistant superintendent
Chris Dominguez told the group. "Not having a really defined description
of what the coaches were supposed to do when they started the journey is
something we're really working on now," she said.
LBUSD board member Karin Polacheck told participants that "coaching
needs to be more closely tied to student achievement." Accomplishing
that goal, she hinted, might require coaches to assume a more supervisory
role - something most coaches do not relish.
Kristi Kahl, assistant to the superintendent for middle grades reform, told
participants that "if we made the coaches another set of evaluators,
we might see some teachers changing actions because it is being mandated,
but it might not change beliefs as well as a partner who is being supportive
and is in a position to earn the trust you give to a respected colleague."
The district has decided to shift supervision of coaches from area superintendents
to principals, who may be in the best position to help the coaches find
a balance between the roles of "partner" and "improver."
At the same national meeting, Marshall Middle School principal Penny O'Toole
observed that "it's helpful to keep the roles of principal and coach
separate, but there needs to be a sense in the faculty that the principal
and coach are a team, so they know that this is something I expect to see
them doing - that I expect to see standards-based teaching."
LBUSD's coaching program is still relatively small (about 30 coaches in
the middle schools) and no one thinks it's the solution to teacher development
in the Long Beach schools. But the impact of the program's first year is
palpable, and the district seems likely to stick with the coaching approach
for the foreseeable future. As Hamilton teacher Jeff Shidler says: "The
coaches are not going to be able to turn everybody into a great teacher.
It's not a miraculous process. But they can definitely help everyone make
progress."
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