Math Knowledge Got You the Role, But It Won't Make You Their Coach

When I first became an instructional coach, I thought coaching meant I had to have all the answers. I had been a middle school math teacher and interventionist, had taught all three middle school grade levels, and had nine years in the classroom at that point. So I was READY. I knew some math. I had learned some great strategies and tricks over the years, and I was ready to share all the knowledge I had with eight math teachers.

Wrong.

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever gotten came from my mentor and friend, Erica Price. She told me, “Dust pan duties first.”

Give teachers bathroom breaks. Make their copies. Ask which students they need you to support in a small group. Celebrate birthdays. Leave the clipboard behind. When first period starts, walk to each room, say good morning, and let them know you’re available until your own classes begin.

Before you ask them to follow you, show them you’re willing to follow first.

That was coaching too.

Those eight incredibly talented middle school math teachers stretched me. I started learning who wanted to be left alone with a check in every now and then and who wanted me right by their side. I knew who wanted their data reports in color, who wanted help writing a lesson, who wanted me to co teach, and who wanted to sit down and fight about some math. They didn’t all need the same thing from me, and once I figured that out, I stopped trying to coach them like they did.

Then COVID hit and nobody had the answers.

We were learning how to teach from home while we were teaching from home. We designed dashboards and websites in Google Slides. We wrote interactive lessons from scratch with drag and drop problems, inline choices, and whatever else we figured out to make learning work through a screen. Then schools started opening again and we had a whole new set of things to figure out. The stress was high. We all were carrying unprecedented weights.

There was no coaching book for any of that.

And maybe that’s when it became even clearer to me that coaching was never going to be about how much of my knowledge I could spread to other people. I didn’t have to be all knowing. I needed to know the people I was supporting.

Eventually I moved into larger systems where I coached instructional coaches who coached teachers, and later administrators who coached coaches and teachers. I learned so much more about systemic math education in those roles, but I took those first eight teachers with me in how I approached the work.

I never moved away from dust pan duties.

I co taught with teachers. I wrote intervention lessons that I still hear are being used, which still makes me smile. We designed PD around what teachers told us they needed instead of deciding what we thought was best for them. I never beat my chest about what I knew or threw around a title. That has never been my thing.

Even now, in a completely different role, I tell the team I work for them. Dust pan duties look a little different now, but they are still dust pan duties. If someone is on vacation and a lesson needs to be written, I write the lesson. I’m learning my role and theirs because I want to know the work well enough to step in and pull the load with them instead of dumping everything on the team while I ride the desk.

Maybe that’s also why I struggle with what coaching sometimes becomes.

There’s nothing wrong with having a system. Goals matter. Follow up matters. Documentation has its place. But five classroom visits doesn’t mean coaching happened. A completed feedback form doesn’t mean someone grew. An action step sitting in a spreadsheet doesn’t mean practice changed. And a weekly coaching meeting certainly doesn’t mean trust exists.

When the checklist becomes the coaching, it becomes performative. We start counting visits and completed forms as evidence while the teacher on the other side is experiencing a relationship that feels transactional and disconnected.

I started coaching thinking I needed to have all the answers. I don’t believe that anymore.

Sometimes the people I support need me right beside them. Sometimes they need me to push. Sometimes they want to argue some math with me. Sometimes they need me to leave them alone and check back later.

Sometimes they know more than I do, and I need to listen.

Coaching eight teachers taught me that.

Coaching coaches didn’t change it.

Coaching administrators didn’t change it. And leadership hasn’t changed it either.

I still believe in dust pan duties. Before you ask people to follow you, show them you’re willing to follow first.