Teacher Coaching: A Tool for Retention.

Personalized support of new teachers addresses classroom management, instruction and psychosocial needs

In their quest to retain experienced teachers and ease the transition for newcomers, school districts might look toward teacher coaching.

Teacher coaching programs pair beginning teachers with more experienced mentors from the teaching ranks. Coaching programs try to combat the attrition problem by improving beginning teacher success rates. Coaching programs also can benefit experienced teachers, who can sharpen their own practices and expand their career responsibilities without moving into administration.

Most coaching programs have been formal and structured. The school district prescribes the scope of topics that coaches and beginning teachers must cover. The coach often must conduct assessments of the quality of the beginning teacher's classroom practices, and the principal and the district use these assessments to evaluate the newcomer's performance. Also, many coaching programs, by design, assign several beginning teachers to a coach.

The prescribed approaches can make it difficult for a meaningful relationship to develop between the coach and the beginning teacher, impeding the program's effectiveness. What would happen if a school district allowed the coach and beginning teacher to develop a personalized support plan?

A Different Tack

A decentralized model of teacher coaching has been put in place in several Los Angeles-area school districts through an initiative known as Design for Excellence: Linking Teaching and Achievement, or DELTA.

The DELTA coaching program, created to address the need for beginning teacher support, differs in important ways from traditional programs:

* Coaches and beginning teachers are encouraged to develop a personalized plan for support, rather than adhere to district-prescribed models.

* DELTA emphasizes a one-on-one coaching relationship, assigning only one beginning teacher to each coach.

* The model focuses on support rather than evaluation. The coach is a provider of skills training, not a supervisor or performance evaluator.

District- and school-level administrators play key roles in the design and implementation of DELTA's coaching program. A coalition of district and union administrators were involved in the initial design. District administrators later smoothed the way for implementation by devising ways for coaches to be paid through the district's personnel office and by coordinating DELTA with existing coaching and internship programs. Administrators also lend support through cost sharing, offering time and space for coaching and using DELTA coaching activities as part of the beginning teacher job-evaluation process.

Skills and Support

During the first two years of use, we've learned some lessons from the DELTA coaching program.

* Lesson 1: Both curriculum and classroom management are important parts of coaching.

The two primary topics covered by coaches and beginning teachers in their coaching sessions are curriculum/instruction and classroom management. In the former, coaches share materials and help teachers develop structured and innovative lesson plans. As one beginning teacher noted, "My coach helped me to think about the goals of my lesson and she pushed me beyond my initial thinking."

Classroom management is another area of focus for beginning teachers and their coaches. Many beginning teachers feel lost in terms of arranging or managing their classrooms. Coaches help beginning teachers to develop their own styles of classroom management.

Coaches are best able to help beginning teachers when they are matched by grade level or subject area. This can be a challenge depending on the availability of experienced teachers at school. In one location, a beginning English teacher was paired with a science teacher. Although the coach was able to help with classroom management issues, he was not much help on curriculum matters.

* Lesson 2: Psychosocial support is a key ingredient of successful coaching.

Coaching relationships are likely to serve two general types of functions: career and psychosocial. Career functions are aspects of the relationship that help the beginning teacher develop skills necessary for success in the organization. Psychosocial functions help the beginning teacher on a more personal level, assisting him or her to develop a sense of self-worth and competence.

Both DELTA coaches and beginning teachers point to psychosocial functions of coaches as being the key ingredient in the coaching process. From their perspectives, the personal and emotional support provided by coaches is a key benefit of the coaching program.

* Lesson 3: Increased program flexibility allows coaches to tailor activities to beginning teacher needs.

Unlike other more structured beginning teacher support programs, the DELTA coaches may tailor the amount of time they spend with each beginning teacher to the teacher's individual needs and background. As a result, the length of time they spend together varies widely. Some pairs meet daily, while others touch base several times per month.

The flexibility of the DELTA coaching program also allows coaches to combine both formal and informal coaching strategies to support beginning teachers. Although some formal strategies are used, such as classroom observations or lesson plan meetings structured around specific curricular areas, most coaching support is informal as the coach and teacher meet in an informal setting or on an as-needed basis to discuss whatever concern the teacher might be facing.

* Lesson 4: Limiting the evaluative component of coaching improves the coach/beginning teacher relationship.

Traditional coaching programs use coaches not only as support for beginning teachers, but as formal evaluators. By contrast, the DELTA coaching program emphasizes the use of observations as tools for developing the coach-beginning teacher relationship. Observations are used only as a diagnostic tool for determining focus areas for the pair to address and are not used for evaluation by the school district or principal.

Any evaluation done by the coach is kept strictly confidential. This allows the coach and beginning teacher to develop a close and trusting relationship.

* Lesson 5: Effective coaching offers benefits to both the teacher and coach.

Besides specific help with curriculum, beginning teachers benefit from the DELTA coaching program in several ways. Many beginning teachers commented that having a coach made them more confident as a teacher, particularly in dealing with issues of classroom management and student behavior.

The newcomers also reported a positive impact on their classroom practices, from trying out new curricular ideas to testing out techniques for increasing student participation in class. The new teachers also benefit from learning about the day-to-day workings and administrative demands of the school, such as required paperwork, faculty meetings and the roles of specific administrators.

Coaches reported they too benefit from their participation. The vast majority agreed that being a coach contributes to their professional growth. Through coaching, they learn to examine their own knowledge base and instructional practices.

Additional benefits to coaches come from the training and support process. All coaches receive training prior to meeting with their beginning teachers. The training covers content knowledge (for example, rubrics for observing teacher classroom practices) and process training (such as interpersonal skills for working with a beginning teacher). Many DELTA schools also offer follow-up training and support for coaches during the school year.

Mutual Gains

Support by district and school administrators for a new approach to coaching is critical to the success of any coaching program. Both coaches and beginning teachers involved in DELTA have benefited from the relatively unstructured coaching program, in contrast to the more structured, district-driven approaches typically offered.

Although developing basic classroom management skills is an important component of the DELTA coaching program, emotional support plays a key role for both coaches and beginning teachers. Clearly, it takes more than observations and evaluation to support new teachers through those difficult first years of teaching. The DELTA coaching program offers districts an alternative model of how this additional support can be provided.

Noelle Griffin is associate director of the Center on Educational Governance, University of Southern California, 3470 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, Calif. 90089. E-mail: [e-mail]. Priscilla Wolhistetter is the center's director and Leslie Bharadwaja is a research assistant at the center.