Coaching+Initiative

**What is Instructional Coaching?**
An instructional coach is someone whose chief professional responsibility is to bring evidence-based practices into classrooms by working with teachers and other school leaders. Coaching is confidential, non-evaluative, and supportive. Coaches work one-on-one and in small groups with teachers on specific teaching strategies or problems, focusing on practical changes they can make in their classrooms.

Many professions ensure that their practitioners benefit from the wise counsel and hands-on assistance of experienced colleagues — in other words, coaches. Some professions require coaching as an essential part of mastering the requisite skills. In medicine, for example, internships and residencies provide required coaching for doctors new to the profession or specialty. In the legal profession, senior partners mentor junior associates. The education profession is now adopting coaching as a promising strategy for building teacher expertise, raising student achievement, and advancing school reform.

At its core, instructional coaching involves two people: the classroom teacher and the coach. Coaches work one-on-one and in small groups with teachers, providing guidance, training, and other resources as needed. Together, they focus on practical strategies for engaging students and improving their learning. Coaches also are often responsible for providing or arranging professional development activities for all teachers in a school or district.



**Coaches Resources**





 * This is the link to register for the PA Instructional Coaching Resource Guide**
 * This is the link to the "Art of Questioning" for coaching wiki**