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Coaching for Principals and Assistant Principals

Bastow | Coaching for Principals and Assistant Principals

Participating in Bastow’s Coaching for Principals and Assistant Principals program ignited a passion for coaching in Lancaster Primary School Principal Trish Perry and helped her invigorate the Campaspe region’s small schools cluster.

Now an accredited coach herself, Trish continues to apply her coaching skills to support her teaching team, students and other principals.

Learning the solutions-focused coaching model has transformed Trish’s approach to leading, teaching and engaging with peers. It is also transforming her career.

‘This has been one of the best professional development programs I’ve ever done in my many years of teaching,’ Trish says of her collegiate group coaching experience. ‘It ignited my passion for coaching and revitalised my thinking.

‘It has certainly renewed my enthusiasm for leading – not just leading within my school, but leading within our collegiate schools network and beyond,’ she adds. ‘I’ve now gained my coaching accreditation and that’s where I’m heading in my career – to eventually coach other principals in schools.’

Trish has headed Lancaster Primary for the past 10 years. The town of Lancaster comprises only a few houses, a footy oval and the school. However, under her leadership the school’s enrolments and staffing have doubled during the past four years, with many students travelling from

nearby Kyabram. The school now has 70 enrolments and five full-time teachers in addition to the principal.

Being based in a small school can be isolating and keep you focused on the smaller, rather than the bigger picture, Trish says. ‘It can be difficult to keep up with developments in teaching and leadership and to make sure you’re doing the right thing by your students and teachers – and yourself,’ she explains. ‘That’s why I do Bastow programs and work in collegiate groups whenever I can.’

Bastow provides professional coaching for school leaders as individuals or in collegiate groups of three to six people. Trish believes the benefits of being coached as a member of a collegiate group of peers cannot be overstated, particularly for principals of smaller schools.

‘When you’re leading a small school, you can lack the collegiate support of an internal leadership team,’ she says. ‘Working with peers from other schools can provide that missing support. You can bounce ideas off each other, rather than trying to do everything on your own.’

Helping small schools think big

Trish’s group coaching experience began in 2014, when she joined forces with two principals from other small schools in her region for collegiate coaching. They wanted to work together to lead and strengthen their Campaspe Network Small Schools Cluster at a time when some networks were fragmenting.

Building collegiate networks through coaching

Participant:

Trish Perry Principal, Lancaster Primary School

The coach challenged the three participants to improve the quality of cluster meetings, set goals, identify options, find solutions, plan actions and follow through on them.

‘When we first started our coaching we had a blank slate,’ Trish says. ‘Our coach challenged us to work out our purpose and seek feedback from the wider group about their needs and what they wanted to get out of being part of the network.

‘For our small schools cluster, it also meant the leadership responsibilities and workload could be shared around,’ she adds. ‘For example, one person set the agenda for meetings, one person led the meetings and one person took and distributed minutes.’

Through their collegiate learning process, the three principals galvanised their relationships and revitalised the cluster. The nine small schools jointly pursued funding opportunities, including start-up grants for language programs; bargained collectively for resources and professional development; and purchased video conferencing units to help overcome their relative isolation.

‘If we hadn’t done the collegiate coaching program our small schools network would have broken down,’ Trish says. ‘Because three principals from our network were doing the collegiate coaching together, we were the drivers to make sure the cluster continued and remained focused and relevant for its members.’

The greatest impact has been on the relationships and trust that have been built within the cluster, and the enthusiasm and commitment that’s grown out of that trust, she adds.

Pictured: Willie Alblas with student

Bastow | Coaching for Principals and Assistant Principals

Coaching for solutions and growth

Every aspect of her collegiate coaching experience resonated with Trish. She now applies the structured coaching model to how she leads her teaching team and engages with students.

‘I endeavour to follow the key strategies of coaching to ensure that I build trust, listen attentively, ask effective questions, give the other person enough time to answer, be aware of body language and be totally ‘present’ during the session,’ Trish explains.

‘Before being exposed to this coaching model, I tended to just give people the answers when they asked for help,’ she adds. ‘I now use a structured process of listening and questioning that encourages greater accountability in others and guides them to work out the solutions for themselves. It’s now all about getting them to take more ownership of their problems and knowing they’ve got my support to do that.’

Trish says her teaching team is loving her new approach, which includes coaching them around how to set SMART* goals for performance and development plans using three key questions: ‘By … [When?], I will … [What?], So that … [Why]’.

To reinforce the approach, Trish has embedded one-on-one coaching for her teaching team into the school’s 2016 Annual Implementation Plan and her own performance and development plan. She coaches teachers individually, and also as a collegiate group when there are whole-of-school issues to resolve.

Problem-solving with students

The same coaching approach is also filtering into the classroom in the way Trish and her team interact with students. The children are being encouraged to think about options and explore alternative solutions when they encounter a problem, rather than expecting one of their teachers to solve the issue for them.

In 2016, the school established a Student Leadership Council (SLC) to amplify its student voice. Trish uses solution-focused coaching during SLC meetings to prompt the students to think about what can be done to improve the school and how it can be achieved.

For example, when the students suggested establishing a vegetable garden, Trish guided them through investigating realistic options for achieving that goal, setting a plan and timeline, and working out how it would be maintained. The school now has a vegetable garden that’s maintained by students at lunchtime, vegetables are advertised for sale in the school’s newsletter, and the money raised helps buy garden materials.

Similarly, when the students wanted to erect a bicycle rack, they problem solved how to make it happen. They managed to obtain a donated rack, which a teacher’s husband put up. At the time of writing, they were investigating how to obtain and erect a bike shelter.

‘Because of that coaching, our students are thinking about things at a deeper level; they’re being challenged to think through problems rather than look for quick answers from one of us,’ Trish says. ‘It’s making a big difference with student voice and staff voice, and is improving our teaching and learning performance overall.’

A valuable mentor and coach

Adam Torney, Acting Principal at Lockwood South Primary School near Bendigo, has known Trish for more than 12 years. She was his mentor when he transitioned from teaching into his first role as a principal, and he isn’t surprised that the solutions-focused coaching model resonates so strongly with her.

‘Since I’ve known Trish, she’s always had the ability to sit and listen and then ask the right questions at the right time,’ Adam says. ‘Her questions always got me to the answer, which is what I really needed.’

Adam says Trish’s ability to ‘read’ people and bring the best out in them, has grown considerably as a direct result of her recent collegiate coaching experiences.

‘She coaches people much more confidently now, even those she doesn’t know very well,’ he explains. ‘And she does it so gently and expertly that I don’t even realise what she’s done until I’m half-way home and the answer I was looking for comes to me and I think: Gee, she’s done it again!’ he laughs.

During 2015, Adam, who was then Principal of a tiny six-student school in Drummartin, joined Trish and Lyn Coulter, who heads the much larger 200-student Epsom Primary School, in another Bastow collegiate coaching activity.

Their coach guided them through the solution-focused process to review a range of instructional models and assess what aspects of each would work best in an improvement model that could be implemented across schools of varying sizes.

Pictured: Students from Lancaster Primary School

‘Because of that coaching, our students are thinking about things at a deeper level; they’re being challenged to think through problems rather than look for quick answers from one of us.’Trish Perry

Bastow | Coaching for Principals and Assistant Principals

The model they eventually developed focuses on how teachers will learn and teach professionally, how students will learn, how the community can be engaged and how to build a positive climate in the school.

Trish says the three principals were pleased to see that the core elements of the model they developed ‘married beautifully’ with the School Improvement Initiatives announced as part of the Victorian Government’s Education State agenda later that year.

While based at Drummartin, Adam was also a member of the small schools cluster and experienced the positive impacts of the collegiate coaching Trish and two other members were undertaking.

‘Trish facilitated our meetings using a combination of mutual respect, questioning, good organisation and thorough pre-preparation,’ he says. ‘She’s always been a true professional, but you could see how her abilities went up a notch after receiving the coaching – she was able to expertly steer that group in the right direction.’

As she continues to apply the coaching model across all her leadership activities, Trish is demonstrating how the principal of a small school can still have a big impact.

* SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.

‘[Trish] has always been a true professional, but you could see how her abilities went up a notch after receiving the coaching – she was able to expertly steer that group in the right direction.’Adam Torney

Pictured left to right: Willie Alblas, Trish Perry

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