Last summer, Reba and Frances traveled to El Campo, Texas to facilitate the Leadership Coaching for High Performance seminar for administrators and instructional coaches in the El Campo school district. As we began, Reba told the story of George (Shotgun) Shuba. He played 7 seasons for the Brooklyn Dodgers and was on the 1955 World Championship team. After reading an article where a sports writer described his swing as being as natural as a smile, George laughed and responded, “You call that natural? I swing a 44-ounce bat 600 times a night, 4200 times a week, 47,200 times a winter. There’s nothing natural about my swing. Games aren’t won on game day.”

The coaches and administrators embraced that vision as a metaphor for how they wanted to begin to have internal conversations about teaching and learning in their district. El Campo Middle School even adopted “Games Aren’t Won on Game Day” as their motto for the year. The entire middle school team showed up for follow up training sporting T-Shirts proclaiming their motto.

What is even more important than a motto on a T-Shirt is the district-wide dedication to coaching as an instructional improvement process. The district administrators recognized the importance of providing follow up by contracting with Results Coaching Global leadership coach, Reba Schumacher, who supported instructional coaches with one-on-one feedback throughout the school year. Administrators also had the opportunity to receive one-on one coaching. El Campo administrators and Results Coaching Global collaborated in designing a systematic process ensuring observation of teachers, coaching conversations with teachers, and reflective feedback to the coach regarding her coaching.

Leaders focused on developing the essential coaching skills of committed listening, powerful paraphrasing, presuming positive intent, and reflective feedback. High expectations were set for continued practice and use of powerful communication coupled with the mindset of growth for everyone in the district.

The design:

• Four days of intense coach training, including practice
• One-on-one follow-up coaching for administrators
• Observation of classroom instruction with individual coaches, observation of instructional coaches coaching teachers, and feedback to the instructional coach from the Results Coaching Global coach
• Refined goal setting based on the feedback
• Renewed commitment and expectations for continued practice

Coaches don’t develop as coaches without setting goals for improvement, hours of practice, feedback about their practice, coaching about the feedback, and refined goals. Instructional coaches only improve when coaches are engaged in a feedback loop with teachers.

Games aren’t won on game day.

By Frances Shuster, PCC
and Reba Schumacher, PCC