Teacher Coaching: Milestones in Education

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Coaching teachers and staff in many schools across NZ has been a rewarding journey, particularly during my 8 months at Twizel Area School. My approach includes one-to-one in-class coaching, along with before and after-school team and full staff workshops that support behaviour management and educational milestones. Through calm, considered tips and regular conversations—often in the form of 'passing chats'—teachers feel empowered and supported in both pastoral and pedagogical systems.

Over a 2-year period, Hailleybury College in Beijing was supported to implement a new reading programme from the ground up. This initiative required a significant team effort to assess all students, group them by ability, purchase books, and develop a system for levelling and coding them. It also involved coaching teachers to effectively assess reading and manage reading groups. We somehow found extra hours to meet daily with senior leadership to enhance mentoring skills and establish systems for overseeing the maintenance and development of the entire programme, marking important milestones in education.

By utilizing online training followed by in-school follow-up, including workshops and in-class coaching for teachers, St Judes School in Canberra has effectively adopted SharpReading as its Guided Reading approach. This initiative also supports important milestones in education and enhances behaviour management within the classroom.

This review of the High School English Department serves as an investigation into the transition from primary school to secondary school across the road. This led to the implementation of behaviour management professional development in the high school and the Christian Schools group at Calvin Christian School Tasmania. Additionally, behaviour management assessments and teacher training, including in-class coaching, were conducted in Nambour, Queensland. I also had the privilege of being a keynote speaker at the Southland Literacy Symposium. Furthermore, I tutor at the New Zealand Graduate School of Education, where we focus on training beginning primary and secondary teachers. My experience includes being a primary school teacher in Christchurch, New Zealand, and serving as a head teacher for ESL programs at Clarke High School and Ohtani University in Japan, highlighting significant milestones in education.