Stuck on What to Coach? Start With the Simple GrowthPath

Every teacher, regardless of their experience level, needs a coach to help them refine and enhance their teaching skills. I’m a firm believer that one of our goals as coaches is to build teacher efficacy, so teachers can create supportive classrooms and improve student outcomes. The trouble is that a coach walks into a classroom and sees twenty things at once. The transitions are slow, the objective is missing from the board, three students are off task, and the questioning never gets past recall. Where do you start?

The first step is identifying each teacher’s strengths and growth areas, and I needed a way to make that simpler for myself and for the coaches I train. That is why I designed the Simple GrowthPath. It gives a coach four places to look, in an order that makes sense, so the decision about what to coach comes from evidence in place of a guess.

What is the Simple GrowthPath?

The Simple GrowthPath is the framework I use for one-to-one teacher coaching. It has four pillars, and each pillar has three Impact Drivers, the specific practices a coach and teacher can work on together.

• Organization (Classroom Setup, Teacher Systems, Student Independence). The systems and routines that let teachers and students thrive: efficient traffic patterns, a quick and effective grading system, clear and consistent communication with families. I call this the foundation of every successful classroom.
• Management and Culture (Behavior Systems, Classroom Culture, Family Connections). A learning environment where every student feels safe: students trust the teacher, feel comfortable with classmates, are protected from disrespect, feel free to ask the teacher and their peers for help, and engage with relevant tasks. An effective teacher here has behavior systems in place, students who are engaged and on task, and a positive climate.
• Preparation (Standards and Targets, Data Use, Lesson Preparation). The teacher’s grasp of the content and how they break it down, organize it, and adapt it so students master it: turning “I can” statements into student-friendly language, using curriculum maps and pacing guides, and aligning lessons and materials to standards.
• Instructional Execution (Instructional Delivery, Student Engagement, Responsive Teaching). The daily specifics of instruction: engagement tools, strategies, and a differentiation toolkit, with students challenged at different depths of knowledge and activities that are aligned and exciting.

Each driver is practiced at three levels. Core means the practice is consistent, Growth means it is intentional, and Impact means it is responsive to what students are doing in the moment. A teacher’s starting point on the GrowthPath is the first driver, in order, that is below Core. Naming that one driver is what turns “this classroom needs help” into a coaching goal the teacher can see and work toward in a few weeks.

Why the order of the four pillars changes what you coach

The pillars are in sequence on purpose. Content learning depends on a positive environment, and management settles once the space and routines are organized. A beautifully planned lesson falls apart in a room where students don’t know where to sit or how to ask for help. So when I’m deciding what to coach, I look for evidence in Organization first, especially with new, uncertified, or struggling teachers. If the foundations are shaky, one-to-one coaching with personalized strategies and tools starts there, and everything else waits.

A teacher who is struggling with Management and Culture also needs one-to-one support, and sometimes immediate relief through a short, behavior-focused Coaching Sprint (coaching cycle). Once the classroom is under control, you can move to the other pillars. Preparation and Instructional Execution look different. Every teacher, including veterans, can grow in Instructional Execution, and much of that growth happens well in PLCs and small-group coaching, where teachers share the same needs. One-to-one coaching may or may not be needed.

That is why the GrowthPath is seen and used only by teachers receiving one-to-one coaching. Snapshots cover every room in the building. The GrowthPath is for the few teachers whose evidence says they need a coach beside them, and it keeps that coaching pointed at the pillar that will move the classroom the most.

How do you find a teacher’s starting point on the GrowthPath?

Gather this information early in the school year by spending a few minutes in every room. These are Snapshots, short, focused, non-evaluative visits, and the goal is to show support and record where each teacher stands on each pillar. Those notes tell you who needs one-to-one coaching and where each of those teachers should begin. The download includes the GrowthPath Starting Point Finder, which walks the four pillars and twelve drivers in order and lands on one driver to coach first. The step names are below. The full steps, with the tool, are in the download.

Start with the foundation

When you’re stuck on what to coach, the answer is almost always lower on the GrowthPath than the thing that caught your eye. The slow questioning and the missing rigor are usually symptoms of a classroom that is still working on its systems and its culture. Fix the foundation, and the questioning and the rigor get easier to coach later. One driver at a time is how teacher efficacy gets built.