Gently opening Pandora's Box

Steps to a Coaching Classroom: Newsletter 8

”I might not be able to pay teachers more money, or give them the public recognition they deserve for the amazing work that they do, but I can teach them about a coaching approach. And that will be my contribution to a better world.”, Martin Richards

Martin Richards is the founder of C4E, Coaching for Educators, an organisation that offers professional coaching support to educators.

In the previous article, I suggested that Socrates was the first person to use coaching questions in an educational context. We looked at examples of six types of questions, and the structure that allowed for deeper classroom conversations.

In this article, we investigate the preconditions that ensure you will be successful when you use Socratic questions to drive a classroom discussion. I also include a powerful, general strategy for engaging new students such as the ones you meet when you are a supply teacher sent to a school for a brief time, in the middle of the term. I have also added a tried and tested lesson planning template that aligns with using a coaching approach.

The Perfect Cover Lesson for Supply Teachers

I have been recruited to teach for a week for a teacher who's off work, sick. Social Studies is not my subject, but that's what's on the timetable. When I find the classroom, the door is open and the students have already occupied the room. I enter, drop my bags on the teacher's desk and turn to face them. They ignore me, continuing to talk loudly with their backs turned towards me.

“They aren’t going to listen to you,” taunts Fear in my ear.

There is a momentary silence in the students' conversations. I make my approach, “Well”, I cough, “I have a question to ask.” (I am willing to make this approach over and again until they decide to listen to me. Rarely does it take up much of the lesson.)

I pause and umm and allow the temporary silence to grow, and say, “Is it OK with you that I lead this lesson?”. (I have my next question ready, in case someone says 'No'. I will ask them, "What would make it OK?" and explore the conditions under which they will make themselves teachable.)

Letting me lead them is a big ask, they have no idea who I am, nor what is about to happen. To them, I'm a stranger and I'm certainly not the teacher they were expecting. In the foot-shuffling silence, growing in confidence, I continue in an upbeat voice.

I give them a promise and make a request.

“I will make this lesson interesting and fun. I will decide who gets to talk, and for how long. And I decide who works with who. Can you be OK with that for an hour?”

Their glances towards the informal leaders in this class give me the information I need to work with next. I turn to face each of the informal leaders in turn. “Can you be OK with that for one hour?” I ask the first one. “Can you be OK with that for one hour?” I ask the second. “Can you be OK with that for one hour?” I press.

They eyeball me with curiosity and surprise. I assume their continued silence indicates agreement. I begin the lesson with a simple choice scenario, “What if you had to decide between going out with one group of friends to the cinema, or another group of friends to play basketball. How would you choose? What’s important to you?”

No answers come, so I switch to a safer strategy, “Talk to the person next to you for three minutes and then I will ask you to share your answers.”

After the three promised minutes, I invite one of the informal leaders to speak aloud their answer, “So, what would you do?”

After the informal leaders have spoken, I repeat the most recent opinion and invite the other students to physically stand for their answers, pointing at three different places in the room.

“Stand here if you agree with that, and over there if you have a different reason, and here in the middle if you don't know, or if you want more information.”

Eager feet stampede across the room to stand in their desired places. I walk into the midst of the pushing and shoving and, as the noise settles, I use the board marker as a pretend microphone to interview some of the students who are standing for different opinions, “What is the reason you are standing here? What makes that important to you?”.

Sometimes I build on their agreements, other times I build on their disagreements. I use questions like, “Who else agrees?” or “Who has a different reason?”, and move to a different interviewee following the energy in the room.

There are times the room becomes chaotic and I find it hard to keep my balance - I hear my authoritarian voice demanding respect, saying something like, "Hold on a minute, a little more respect please." or "You aren't clones, you are all different, so let's learn from that." or "None of us know the whole truth. Show more respect for different perspectives, please."

Other times when I manage to maintain my balance and composure, I ask, "What do you hear yourself saying?", or "How does that sound to you?", or "How respectful are you being right now?"

Wherever possible, I ask for pauses for silent reflection on the deeper meaning of what they are actually doing in this lesson, "OK, hold your breath a minute and have a think about this...", “What are we doing here?”, “What are we learning?” , “What’s important to us, as learners, in this place?”

After half an hour, the students are leaning into the deepening discussion; exploring their values and building courage and trust in their shared learning environment.

When we reach that point, I begin to think about the Social Studies lesson I have been sent to teach them; and reach for the textbook and assignment.

Checklist for Successful Socratic Discussions

Looking at the six types of Socratic questions, you might think you have found the answer to how you are going to lead meaningful conversations with your students. However, the questions are not the tools that do the work, it is the you who holds the tools that make them work.

To make them work, you have to prepare.

Your preparation, aside from writing out a list of questions to ask, is to sharpen your skills of: Balance, Curiosity, and No Agenda.

Balance - Finding your balance means, for the moment, setting aside the troubles and woes from your own life. It can also mean identifying and managing any triggers you might have from your past. That's a larger issue.

How do you find balance? What grounds you for your day?

For now, forget about the bills you haven't paid, the coffee you haven't drunk, or the bus you missed on your way to work. Take a deep breath and find your balance, physically, mentally, spiritually. And when you are ready, step into the school, classroom and conversation. When you are ready, not before.

Curiosity - If you are about to meet a class that you have taught before, set aside what you know about them (except any previous agreements and accommodations). This will give the students a chance to grow beyond your current image of them. If this is a new class, set aside any previous experience of other classes you have met before. This is a new day, new you, new them. Get curious about the strangers you are about to meet.

How do you access your curiosity? What might get in the way - and how do you move it aside?

No Agenda - Having no agenda might sound odd since the school has employed you to teach a lesson, but you will be teaching people, and there's no point teaching them until they are teachable. That means the students must first accept you as their leader - if only for the lesson hour - and make themselves ready to learn from you.

What agendas do you need to set aside? How do you do that?

When you have gained acceptance to lead, you can take out the agenda that you have been paid to deliver. Not before. There's no point, you'd be wasting everyone's time if you did.

Lesson Planning Template

You can use coaching questions to design your lessons. When I am sitting at home on a Sunday afternoon planning lessons to give during the coming week, it's useful to have a template, an outline to guide me. 4MAT is one such template and it offers a clear progression for the lesson.

You can use coaching questions to design your lessons.

It begins with a small "What?", which simply gives this lesson a unique name. The lesson opens up the learning with the most important question, "Why". This is followed by "What", "How" and "What if":

Why - Explores the meaning of the topic being taught / learned

What - describes the concepts associated with the topic

How - describes and practices the necessary skills

What if - Explores any adaptations that may be needed when this is applied on a broader scale

The connection between 4MAT and coaching is the practical use of open-ended questions that define the four stages of the lesson. Naturally, coaches tend to ask "What is the reason for..." rather than asking "Why", but the purpose is the same - to engage the learner.

Summary

• Asking Socratic Questions, to drive class conversations deeper and higher, requires that you prepare by adopting a mindset of balance, curiosity and having no agenda.
• The open-ended questions: Why, What, How and What if, are useful for guiding your lesson planning.

My thanks go to Elizabeth Helen Adamovic and Jocelyn Pepe for supporting the development of this article. Six eyes are better than two.

C4E Call for Certified Coaches

If you hold a coach certification and are interested in supporting the development of coaching in schools, you are welcome to join the C4E Roster by joining one of our Roundtables here: www.coaching4educators.org

NEXT Edition, with Maths teachers in mind

In the next edition of this newsletter, I will describe GROW, a structure for asking questions and show how they can be used to drive learning during a Maths lesson, in a coachlike way of course.