Inclusion Coaches on My Team!
3 different school leaders told me,
“We need coaching, but we can’t hire coaches!”
For more than a decade, I’ve been providing professional development related to inclusive practices in school districts. In partnership with some amazing visionary school leaders, we’ve tried three different approaches:
We tried stand-alone workshops. This didn’t work because, as research has proven, strategies without coaching (drive-by PD) are a waste of time.
We tried interactive workshops followed by me personally providing in-class coaching. This worked! Teachers experimented and discovered that my sequential strategies worked! Planning and teaching collaboratively did make their jobs easier AND students succeeded. I recorded those workshops so teachers could watch (or re-watch) when I wasn’t there. Teachers told me they rediscovered their love of teaching! Yay!
But two roadblocks soon emerged:
If the Principal didn’t endorse the initiative with clear expectations, nothing changed.
I’m just one person. There was a limit to how many classrooms I could visit and how many trusting coaching relationships I could sustain in a growing number of schools.
3. Three years ago, we tried another support model.
School districts designated their own Inclusion Coaches. In most cases, they added Inclusion Coaching responsibilities to existing Instructional, Literacy, Math or Autism Coaches. These coaches were already familiar with district policies and procedures and knew many of the leaders and teachers they would be serving. They participated in my Inclusion Coach packages to grow their own coaching skills. But, working for the district and wearing multiple hats, they were sometimes reassigned to more pressing duties — especially during the pandemic. When they did have time with teachers, they sometimes had to choose which responsibility was the highest priority.
This brings us to our 2022-23 approach. In the last month, school leaders in three different states told me, “We need coaching, but we can’t hire coaches!” They already knew I had discovered: that professional development without targeted coaching won’t change teachers’ practices.
So I started brainstorming about expanding my team to include on-site Inclusion Coaches as part of my professional development packages.
The advantages were clear:
✔ My coaches will have ONE clear responsibility when they are on-site: to support school leaders, teachers, and support personnel to improve their inclusive practices.
✔ My coaches will access my online Inclusion Coach modules and attend my all-expenses paid retreat where we will create a powerful mutually-supportive Inclusion Coaching Network. Their experiences will contribute to continuous improvement of my Joyful Inclusion packages.
✔ My coaches will be trained to implement the four evaluation tools from my Joyful Inclusion Schools sequence so that we will have reliable measures over time of our outcomes and impact.
✔ Plus, there is an abundance of experienced special educators who have recently left their positions. Many have retirement benefits and may be looking for part time meaningful work.
Here’s the bottom line: I’m optimistic and excited about the possibilities ahead. I have a vision for powerful co-teaching, effective specially designed instruction, and inclusive school communities. In this vision, teachers experience wholehearted satisfaction, partner respectfully with families, and foster students as expert learners. In short, we all win!
