The Core of Coaching Framework

This blog was originally posted to the Forward Edge blog, and written by my colleague Katie Maciulewicz.

As instructional coaches, our main goal is to make a difference in the lives of teachers and students every day. But we want to have a lasting effect. When we work with a teacher, we don’t want them to make a small change for one lesson or one unit and then never use that skill or tool again. We want to create sustainable change that spreads across the department, the school, and the district. We want to build a culture of learning and coaching that helps every educator be the best they can be without losing the drive to constantly improve. 

But how?

This is where the Core of Coaching framework comes in. Developed by Dr. Katie Ritter and Brooke Conklin, and based on years of coaching experience and research, the Core of Coaching provides an approach to driving systemic change in instructional practices across a school or district. 

As a coach, the Core of Coaching can help you clarify and define your coaching role, provide a blueprint for your own professional growth, and can help you both improve your collaboration with teachers and administrators and assess your impact. 

It also serves as an excellent companion to any coaching model you’re already using. Do you follow Jim Knight’s Impact Cycle? The Google 5-Step Coaching Cycle? Are you a tech coach who focuses on ISTE’s Standards for Coaches? Great! The Core of Coaching framework is not a new model or structure for how you do your job on a daily basis. It’s simply a new way of looking at the daily job of a coach and of expanding your impact and reach as a coach and is flexible enough to work with any existing model.

Again, how?

The Core of Coaching is built around three domains: building relationships, sustainable change, and organizational shifts. Each domain is described in detail with key skills, critical behaviors, and action steps for coaches.

The true magic of this framework is that third domain: Organizational Shifts.

As Roxi Thompson, Lead Instructional Technology Coach for Peoria Unified District in Arizona, put it,

“When I got to domain three…I thought [it] really spoke to what is missing in some of the other things that are put out for coaches – that bigger organizational shift piece.” 

Working within this third domain ensures that the change and growth the coach is fostering are more than just one time, small changes. Creating sustainable change means that the daily work of the coach is supporting a larger vision and building a culture of coaching and learning. This requires the coach to work closely with school leadership and to align coaching with school and district policies and initiatives. 

Beyond the three domains that build the Core of Coaching, the framework also defines Key Performance Indicators to assess the effectiveness of coaching within each domain.

How can you measure the success of relationship building, sustainable change in teacher practice, or creating organizational shifts?

The framework gives you all of this, AND then tools for maintaining your success in each domain through a discussion of Feedback Loops. 

In the end, the goal of the Core of Coaching is not to completely change the work that we as instructional coaches do, but to take what we’re already doing and help us embed that work into the fabric of the school culture. It’s to remind us that coaching is more than just providing feedback to teachers, but rather it’s about building and supporting a community that values continuous improvement, collaboration, and reflection. It’s about creating a space where everyone – coaches, teachers, administrators, and students – can learn, grow, and thrive. 

Have you downloaded The Core of Coaching Framework yet? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Tech To You Later!
-Katie