There was an article on USNews.com about coaching for teachers. The phrase “Just like athletes become stronger under the guidance of a good coach, so do teachers“ caught my attention. Teachers have to keep improving just like athletes and change their teaching methods to keep up with times. Being a teacher myself, I constantly set benchmarks and review my teaching methods and curriculum. Teachers should also use current real-life examples to arouse students’ interest and better integrate content.
A case study found that teachers who had about 3 or 4 sessions with their mentor improved more than those who had more than 15. It is evident that the quality of the feedback is more important than quantity. The company Kraft noticed several common implementation problems as the coaching programs got larger. The first was that coaching quality deteriorated. Coaching programs were often developed by academic researchers who did the coaching themselves or trained a small corps of teachers to coach in a specific way. It became harder and harder to find good coaches and have them stick to a coaching protocol in an expanded program. I agree with the theory that smaller programmes work better. Working in smaller groups and tailoring specific education management programmes will be better over large-scale training. Like students, there are different teachers with unique styles of teaching. Moreover, teachers handle different types of students whom may require specific solutions.
Technology can help to improve teaching as well. Examples mentioned in the article were classroom cameras and video recordings that help to cut down the hours required to coach teachers and give teachers real-time feedback.
We believe in coaching, and it is apparent that coaching helps. Smaller groups with quality feedback yield better results. Our expertise revolves around improving the education quality of educators. We instill in educators the mindset of constant upgrading and lifelong learning so they can be more effective teachers.
You can read more about Mr Barshay’s article here:
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-03-05/does-every-teacher-need-a-coach