Icebergs and Teacher Coaching

Everyone knows the saying “that’s just the tip of the iceberg” and most people have seen that cheesy motivational poster with the giant iceberg that shows just what a small percentage of the ice is actually above the water. The point is simple, but profound – oftentimes what we see is just a small part of what is actually there and by extension, we miss what is most important if we ignore what is not clearly visible.  Lots of things in life are good examples of this. The housing crisis of recent years was just the leading edge of a much larger economic collapse. Congressional scandals that become public are just a small fraction of the bad behavior in DC. The work you see pro athletes do before games is just a tiny bit of all the training that goes into making them great.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how this metaphor applies to teacher coaching, specifically about observations of teachers. At our school, all teachers are observed at least two times every three weeks (co-teachers every week) for at least 20 minutes with an in-person feedback session to follow. This feels like a good amount of time and teachers cite helpful and frequent feedback as one of our strengths as a school. But is there an iceberg problem here? Are we looking at what is visible and easy to measure, while missing out on the larger factors that really matter?

Lesson observations by definition focus on what is happening in front of the observer – what engagement strategies teachers are using, how on-task students are, what kind of questions are being asked, how teachers respond to misbehaving students, etc. Good stuff to be sure. And helpful no doubt. But are these conversations always the key driver to improved teaching and student achievement? Lots of things can make a lesson not strong and many are not directly visible in an observation. A teacher who is not using assessment data well and so is focusing on the wrong standards, or isn’t aware how he sounds when talking to families, or isn’t working well with team members to plan collaboratively, etc. That stuff can be the giant mass of ice below the water. And focusing on how a teacher responded when a student called out doesn’t mean you’re getting at what really matters.

Really strong teacher coaching and support needs to include work on the front end – what are you teaching and why; on the back end – are kids learning and how do you know; as well as work around beliefs and habits of mind – how self-aware am I or am I modeling values I want my students to emulate. Some of these are visible in a lesson observation, but not always very directly. So what to do? More thoughts and some things we’re doing at KPEA coming shortly.