 Unless we have clarity about this first piece of the framework about what our purpose is in having learning coaches, what our rationale is, and what are the whole notion of what we want to achieve from this process, doing anything else related to the structure of the program literally can't happen without this in mind. And again, I see very often school systems that will do this. Coaching that's a good idea, let's get some, and sometimes how they get them looks just like this, principal going to a lead teacher who is masterful in saying, would you like to be the coach? And that, remember I said earlier, coaches are available, they're willing, they're all those things, and the coach will likely say, sure, and a couple weeks later say what does that mean, and often it starts like this. So here's how my four way into coaching began, it's a great story. I was in a school, a large high school, principal came to me after going off to some meeting somewhere and said, we're going to get a coach, and I said great, I thought you had some who quit, of course what am I thinking, you know, the track, the football, the soccer, the basketball, that's what I'm thinking, I don't know who quit, somebody, are we getting an extra coach, the golf coach quit, you know, I don't know who's quit, and he said, no we're going to get this new thing, and I said, oh okay, what's that, it's called an instructional coach, and I thought what a clever idea, he said would you ever do that, and I said what does it mean, and he says I don't know but you'll figure it out. This was two days before school started, so in those two days he hired somebody to replace me for three of my teaching periods, which was great because lots of coaches get to do coaching on top of their full teaching responsibility. So I had these three periods, and school started, and I went to the lounge and sat around and read the paper and drank coffee, because I didn't know what I was supposed to do as an instructional coach, but I figured that whatever it was, nobody wanted to talk to me until they got into a routine of the school year. So after three days of doing that, I was really bored, and I went to the principal's office and I said, so how do I learn how to do this? And he said, oh here I've been meaning to give you this, and he handed me a list, and on the list were all the bad teachers. These were my clients, looked at the list, and of course I had taught in that school a while, so what I was looking at was not a surprise to me, but I also had this tremendous nod in my stomach about how I was going to accept this, literally take the list out of his hand and decided not to, which was a really smart move on my part. I gave the list back, but I did, as I was glancing at that list, make one observation. As I read through the list of about 10 people, it was pretty clear to me I knew where I could find most of those teachers. Now I remember I talked about this being before some of you were born. I could find most of them at several points during the day in the boiler room. Now I'm not suggesting there's a high correlation between the names of the people on my list and the activity that occurred in boiler rooms in schools back when I was a coach, but I will tell you every one of the people on my list was in the boiler room. So I took up hanging out in the boiler room, even took up the activity that goes on in the boiler room. They're doing here because I've never been there for as many years as I've been in the school. I knew where the boiler room was, but I'd never been there. What are you doing here? I'm just hanging out. So after a week of hanging out, I heard one of them walking toward the boiler room ahead of me making some comment about this kid who was a problem kid. Everyone knew this kid. Everyone really had a hard time with this student and this teacher talking to another teacher was talking about a problem that occurred with this kid in his class that day. And I thought to myself, could this be it? Could this be my opportunity to do instructional coaching? So I go to the boiler room and I say, I hear you had a thing with, I won't, you know, I'll just call him Bill. I wear the bills in the room. It was an appropriate name to choose then. I hear you had a thing with Bill. Oh, that kid just drives me crazy. He blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah. Three of them. Oh, man, let me tell you, let me tell you, let me tell you. So all now we've got Bill. Child study, I'm thinking. This is good. We can have a child review process right here in the boiler room. So now I've got to get to the next question. And I say something stupid like this. If Bill were successful in your class, what would it look like? If Bill were behaving the way you wanted him to behave in your class, what would that look like? And they went, he can't. And I said, well, yeah, I know he can't. But if he, if he were, what would it look like? And they had this long list of things they wanted from Bill. And I said, have any of you ever said to Bill, that's what you wanted? And they looked at me and they said, well, he's supposed to know that. Yeah. Who's going to talk to him? And that's how it started. It's in the conversation around the problem. So I didn't know what instructional coaching was, but I could start a conversation about something that was in need that these teachers expressed. Now, I'm not going to say they invited me with open arms into their classrooms. And I can tell you a story about that a little later, how I got had by a couple of them. But we can begin the conversations if we have a focus. So I was making up my own focus. I want you not to have to make it up on the spot. I want you to have schoolwide conversations about what the purpose is. If we have someone in a designated role, what is that person doing? People would say to me as they'd see me coming down the hall more lounge time. They had no idea what I was doing. I want it to be public because that's the way we build the culture of support and growth in learning. And I think by opening the door to the conversation about what a coach is, what a coach does and how a coach contributes is one way that you can have that conversation and support both coaching and the coach.