A Great Coach is

Benevolent and Competent: It is essential that coaches demonstrate through their actions a commitment to the well-being and success of their New Educators. Competency, or knowing what we are talking about and being able to make things happen, is another essential component in a trusting relationship. One without the other can lead to disastrous results.

An Advocate: Coaches can be advocates for their own New Educator and for new teachers in general.

A Systems Thinker: Expert teachers fully understand the social and organizational systems that are in place in their own classrooms; they know that those systems establish the conditions necessary for high performing learning communities to thrive. They not only understand those systems, but monitor and correct the systems when they are not functioning smoothly. Expert coaches must not only understand the systems necessary to lead in individual classrooms, they must understand which systems are in operations in the department, the grade level, the school, and the district.

A Student Learning Guru: A challenge for all coaches is finding the balance between personal practical experience and reaching out to the research base on teaching and learning. As coaches we must not only know and be able to share strategies that work, we need to be able to explain the reasons a given strategy is a good choice for a particular instructional situation.

A Life-Long Learner: A natural pitfall of being seen as expert teachers is that newcomers may decide that we have all the answers. It is important to communicate that the more we know, the better we understand just how much we do not yet know.

Grounded: We remember well those situations when we were so uncomfortable with what we were being asked to do that all our attention and energy went toward our own survival and success. As we developed our content knowledge and built our instructional repertoires we became more grounded and were able to focus on and respond to the needs of the learners. The same developmental pattern unfolds as we learn to be great coaches. We have to learn more about how adults learn and how to provide growth-producing feedback.

Capable of Bobbing and Weaving: While school systems tend to move more slowly than other organizations, we are always subject to new programs, new approaches, and new directions. Just when we think things are stabilized, financial or political variables lead to shifts in direction. Mentors can assist their New Educators by minimizing their own reactions to new directions and looking for ways to utilize the new approach so that it contributes not only to student learning but to the professional growth of the new teachers.

Source: Paula Rutherford