 Coaching as a theory of action means that you have a clear destination or goal or vision, something you're trying to create, which oftentimes in education is too vague and too big and too general. But let's say that you could create a very clear descriptive picture in your mind and in the minds of people that are working with you, maybe you're the leader, and you're working with others to collaboratively paint a picture of the future you want. In other words, five years from now, if we were successful, what would be going on in our schools? What would people be saying and doing? What behaviors would they be engaged in? What would the school building look like, feel like, and sound like? When you walk down the halls, what would you be experiencing, et cetera? Okay? If you got really clear on that and you said, okay, well, one way of getting there or one strategy for getting there, one action to get us there is coaching. Coaching becomes our theory of action to create that vision. Then we might, instead of using coaches in very undefined ways, we might actually get very specific about what coaches would have to do and what other people would have to do. What is the action I'm going to have to take to create the vision? Coaching as a theory of action says that educators need in the moment help so that they know how to make those decisions and so that they can progress quickly, not after the fact, but in the moment of teaching to improve teaching and learning every day for students. Coaching as a theory of action stems from the belief and knowledge that teaching is a highly complex endeavor. So the difference between coaches versus coaching is coaches are people. The power of the job resides in the actual coach and the expertise lies in the coach and people see the coach as a person as opposed to coaching, which is a process and the process of coaching is one in which we believe that through collaboration, support, ongoing, side by side work together, that noticing the problems of practice, naming and demonstrating and then replicating exemplary teaching moves that we can then help teachers improve their practice. Coaches are just people who can be sort of replaced. Coaching is a process that we want ingrained in the culture of how schools work.