Know Your Why!: Building an Instructional Coach Mindset

I have never believed there is a single path that leads to great teaching and learning experiences. There are just too many different types of learners for me to ever say that there is only one best to engage learners. This is why the best educators are always taking risks and trying different new things to engage all learners.

I am lucky enough to work with both teachers and students daily. This has helped me build and rebuild a mindset connected to instructional coaching. I am not close to perfect, but I am always learning. When people ask me about my instructional coaching mindset, I always start with the word why. I love why questions because questions that start with why almost always lead to more questions.

My mindset is built around questions connected to exploring why I do what I do!

For me, there are 4 stages of understanding why I do what we do to support teachers and learners.

Stage 1: What is your purpose? If you don't know why you are doing something, why are you doing it?
Stage 2: How will you engage learners? What pedagogical strategies will you use to support the learning process?
Stage 3.:How will your content help students develop essentials skills connected to collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity?
Stage 4: How will the teacher and the students know if they've learned? What assessments strategies are part of the learning process?

These states are all part of my mindset of why. This is the mindset that will keep you moving forward, keep you innovating. I always want to know why our students and our teachers are doing something before I think about how we can build a better learning experience.

I hope all of this makes some sense to the reader? It makes sense to me when I am working with a teacher or a student, but I am having a harder time putting this all down in writing. I am not telling you that your mindset needs to be this way, but I do believe that all coaches need to develop a mindset. This mindset will probably evolve over time
I am going to dedicated the rest of this post to some of the resources that have contributed to my mindset of why.

Have you found your why?

If you are interested in exploring or building your why, I think these two resources are a great place to start.

What Are Your Teaching Fundamentals? (Edutopia Article)

Simon Sinek - Find Your Why

Here are some of the books connected to instructional coaching that have helped me develop my ever-evolving mindset connected to teaching and learning.

Here are a few additional resources that might help EdTech and Instructional Coaches build their mindsets support teachers and students.

The ISTE Standards for Educators might be a great starting point to help teachers focus on essential skills that can be supported with EdTech.
The ISTE Standards for Coaches is a great place to start building your coaching mindset.
The ISTE Standards for Students can help planning from the student perspective.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers Who Use Technology is another resource to explore EdTech in the classroom.
If you are a Google district I would consider using the Google Training Courses as part of the course plan. These are well put together and focus on skills before the tools.