3 Reasons Sibme’s Instructional Virtual Coaching Offers Powerful Support for Struggling Teachers

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I know why we are surprised—even unprepared when it happens. It’s because we were pro-active! At the beginning of the summer, we used a team of the school’s finest to interview all new potential hires. We crafted and categorized the interview questions around the two major themes of classroom management and instruction. We identified more than one candidate to interview for each open position. We reached a unanimous agreement on who we should hire. That’s why within a week of school starting, we are surprised and unprepared when we learn that some of the new teachers we hired are beginning to struggle.

Now we have to support those struggling teachers—and usually we do that (to the best of our ability) in one of two ways: we either use EMT’s or cooks.

EMT’s

Unfortunately, for many schools, coaching resources for struggling teachers include the department heads, instructional specialists, and assistant principals–already stretched thin because of other job responsibilities. And, while the initial response to a struggling teacher may be filled with all of the intensity of an ambulance rushing to the scene of an accident, it will be hard to sustain that level of care. Remember, EMT’s stabilize patients for transport to hospitals. After that, they move on. It’s likely that resources within a building will need to move on as well, and teachers who require more than an initial life-saving response, may not receive the level of support they will need to survive.

Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen

Another reason that in-building coaching with limited resources sometimes falls short is from having too many cooks in the kitchen—none of which is following the same recipe! Often, two or three “cooks” are sent to help the struggling teacher at various times without an aligned plan or process for providing assistance. Too many un-aligned suggestions have the same result as too much salt in the broth.

Why Use Sibme’s Virtual Coaching?

When we cannot sufficiently help a struggling teacher with the resources in our building, then we need to consider hiring outside help—and fast. The longer a struggling teacher stays in a classroom without the right type of support, the harder it will be to “coach them up” to success. There are three important reasons to consider hiring Sibme’s virtual coaches—we have the best People, Process, and Product.

Sibme Virtual Coaching’s 3 P’s:

Sibme’s experienced instructional virtual coaches follow a six-week coaching cycle built around a hybrid approach that blends personalized, individualized coaching with Sibme’s technology platform, designed to enable teachers to quickly record and share videos using the app they download on their own mobile device. Every week, the virtual coach will use this hybrid approach in a cycle that includes:

• A personalized 45 minute conversation with the teacher that focuses on a specific goal
• A request for several short Snapshot videos that provide evidence that teacher is working on the identified goal
• Expert time-stamped feedback on the Snapshot videos provided by the teacher
• Shared research-based articles related to the focused goals
• A coaching report emailed to both the teacher and the supervising administrator

Dr. Jim Knight, guru for using video to improve teaching practices, has identified video as “the most powerful advancement in professional learning in schools in our lifetimes.” Sibme’s virtual coaches blend the use of video with relationships and personalized coaching to offer the most powerful support possible for struggling teachers.

Allyson Burnett – Director of Professional Learning & Virtual Coaching