 The schools that have improved student achievement are very focused on the instructional core. They stay focused on the instructional core, and they figure out a zillion ways to work on the instructional core. They are not distracted by a hundred initiatives. They stay focused on what matters, the instruction and evidence of learning. The coaching is changing to not be about fidelity to curriculum materials or a new program, but fidelity to student understanding, fidelity to teaching something well. And that's a big shift, and it's still like a very in and out kind of shift. People fall back into the mechanical parts of things, which implies that you're moving from a coach kind of helping you get better at this thing and them get better at that thing to a much broader view of what coaching can accomplish, because coaching, when we're engaged in the right kinds of dialogue and we keep our eye on the right thing, which is this improvement of the essence of great instruction, we're going to transform schools. So coaches become these transformational agents as opposed to people that come in and assist you with some aspect of teaching. Coaches evolve a lot in their role over the course of several years when they're committed to this work. Initially, coaches often start by observing and trying to figure out what teaching practice looks like in classrooms. And one of the big ahas that coaches have when they leave the classroom is not everyone teaches the same way they teach, and that there's differences in people's practice. And often we start in this tentative sort of, I mean observe and watch, but really what I want coaches to do early on in their work is say, what do I have to offer students in classrooms and teachers? What am I good at that I can share? What do I still need to learn? So that stance of saying this is an inquiry base, this is a learning process, right? So coaches often go from tentative observation to saying, I have a strategy that we can use. Let's try this part together. They may start leading study groups or grade level teams where you're doing inquiry work together, and then volunteering and saying, I'll be the person to try on that new practice we just read about. They also then need to start honing their eyes to who are the lead teachers in our school that can start to make a difference? Who can I buddy up with each other? So one of the roles of a coach is a matchmaker. How do I work with someone and then pair the right people up so that other people are observing so that this work takes hold? One of the goals of coaching and coaches is that we learn that by spreading our work across all classrooms over time, we start to close the achievement gap rather than perpetuate it by just working in pockets of classrooms. We know if our coaching model is working if we have a clear goal. So one of the things that schools and systems need to do is get very specific about what they envision teaching and learning to look like as a result of any kind of professional learning. So for example, a goal of improving literacy is far too big. Saying, what about literacy? Reading. What about reading? Reading informational text and being able to determine main ideas. All right. So what does classroom and practice need to look like in order to achieve that? The way that we know it's working is when we start to gather evidence of success. So is it increased amount of charting? Increased student talk? Students being able to read complex text? We have to look for those markers of success based on what our overall goal is.