Today, I am attending the TASA/TASB Midwinter conference session called “Coaching Counts: The Impact of Texas Instructional Leadership on Student Achievement and Efficacy.” School boards need coaches, school leaders need coaches, principals need coaches, and teachers need coaches. Intentional coaching with monitoring can turn a school district around and grow leaders at every level!

As an example, a few years ago, Fort Bend ISD had many underperforming schools and desperately needed a turnaround plan. The Fort Bend ISD school board decided to adopt a district-wide coaching model based on the principles in “Leveraged Leadership.” The school board’s “coaching” model is called “coaching through layers,” and it made a big difference at Fort Bend ISD; student results improved dramatically!

To implement the coaching model, district leaders got coaches, these district leaders then coached the principals, and the principals then coached the teachers. According to Anthony Indelicato, Fort Bend ISD, Chief of Staff, the most critical part of the coaching model are to “monitor results,” and “schedule intentional and meaningful times for coaching,” and make sure everyone has a coach. If everyone has a coach, it is a real “team effort” and not something being “done to just teachers.”

According to Principal Stephanie Houston, the “coaching through layers” program turned her poor-performing Fort Bend ISD elementary bilingual campus around. Houston’s main focus was to coach teachers by having them practice, practice, practice the craft of teaching; she made teachers practice everything from how students should line up in the hallway to how to effectively deliver a complex lesson. She said it is essential to: (1) observe teachers, and (2) coach teachers by giving them real-time and intentional feedback.

To observe teachers, she spent lots of time in the classroom with her teachers, had teachers give “mock lessons,” and videotaped teachers throughout the day. She then worked to provide her teachers with real-time feedback. She also focused her teachers on teaching the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), and on using student data to reteach anything that students missed.

Fort Bend ISD wants to share their coaching model with other schools. Hats off!