 The role of the principal is absolutely crucial in the success of coaching. If the principal is not actively involved in the leadership of the work, all the research shows that coaching will not take hold. So what does that look like? The principal having a vision for what teaching and learning can look like in classrooms. The principal saying, let me organize schedules so that adults have time to collaborate and plan and debrief. The principal saying, I'm going to sponsor the work of coaching by explaining that the reason we have coaching as a tool is to elevate our profession further and to help meet the needs of students in the classroom. The principal organizing meetings between teachers and coaches and just voicing and sponsoring and being a part of the ongoing professional development work. Without the principal, the coaches left to just say, who wants to work with me? Anyone want to work with me? That's not systemic change. And coaching is a way to impact systemic change because the leader of the school has to be at the helm of that ship. The principal is a key player in any coaching initiative. All of us understand that the work of the instructional leaders, the coach and the teachers have the same goal, which is improvement of student achievement and the development of wonderful people who can operate in a global society and democratic world, etc., etc. Then we're all trying to accomplish the same thing. We're just doing it from different roles. So the most important thing, first of all, is the principal and the coach need the same images of what effective instruction actually looks like, feels like, and sounds like. So there's like a plan, a strategic plan, that the coach and the principal need to develop together. The coach is like a bridge between the faculty and the principal and vice versa so that when you start to implement these things, the coach is going back and forth between these different groupings to bring information between them. So in other words, they're allowing the information to flow. They are the feedback loops. And it's those feedback loops that keep the coaching cycle, the coaching initiative healthy because you can then adjust it based on what you're finding in the field.