Leading by Supporting: Principal as Coach
by Alicia Fischer
Entering the Principalship is a daunting, yet incredibly rewarding position in education. As the leader of a building you can shape the culture and climate and influence the ways in which young people are educated. When evaluating the role of the principalship in a school district, leaders are asked to support the students and staff in the building in the four areas of leadership: managerial, strategic, communication, and instructional and learning. It is common that leaders may have unbalanced experience in these areas. I am a high school principal in a building with just over 1,400 students, and my previous educational roles held include high school teacher and instructional coach. My professional experience in supporting teachers through both a non-evaluative feedback loop as well as observing in a formal evaluation process is robust and has prepared me to be an instructional leader.
One of the most rewarding parts of my vocation is observing teachers and providing meaningful feedback to inform instruction to result in high academic achievement for all students. The thirty-minute post-observation conversation is my opportunity to connect and provide evidence within the observational framework that connects to our school improvement goals. In Elena Aguilar’s book, The Art of Coaching, she shares her ten steps to building trust. One of the strategies she references is planning and preparing a productive coaching/evaluation session. To build trust in this process, I am extremely transparent. In the pre-conference I state my “look-fors.” To do this, I write my questions prior to the pre- and post-observation meetings so that I am confident, clear, prepared, and credible in the coaching process. Two of my go-to questions are, “What are you doing with your students that is making the greatest impact on their achievement?” and “How are the positive relationships you make with students leveraging learning in your space?”
It is vital that principals are connecting the observations to school-wide performance goals. This school year our leadership team decided on a building-wide goal that focuses on writing components of literacy, based on our MCA II (standardized reading assessment in Minnesota) data. To support teachers, the professional development planned this school year focuses on building tools for teachers to enhance their writing strategies. Our theme is “writing for learning.” In my pre-observation meetings, I will ask what writing strategies the instructor has used to enhance learning. Many teachers are using more writing prompts in their summative assessments to allow students to share how the learning is applied, analyzed or evaluated.
In the book, Qualities of Effective Principals, authors Stronge, Richard and Catano state, “Today's principals concentrate on building a vision for their schools, sharing leadership with teachers, and influencing schools to operate as learning communities. Accomplishing these essential school improvement efforts requires gathering and assessing data to determine needs, and monitoring instruction and curriculum to determine if the identified needs are addressed.” These qualities are aligned to my leadership practices, as I work in unison with my school leadership team to lead professional development, using our school improvement plan as a vehicle to increasing achievement for all students.