A Virtual Coaching Toolkit

As many of you know, I LOVE coaching notebooks and toolkits: collections of ideas, resources and coaching moves to help me design engaging professional learning for teachers. I’ve even created a coaching sketchnote book full of my favorites created with colorful markers and sticky notes on gleaming while pages of possibility.

And I share that love of notebooks and toolkits with other coaches. I've created a webinar on how to create your own coaching sketchnote book and have digitized by own notebook full of coaching sketchnotes andsketchtivities paired with blog posts to help you try them in your own work.

But as we face extended school closures due to COVID-19, my usual coaching tips and tricks simply do not all work as they once did. I’ve been honored to work alongside teachers as they continue their own professional learning during COVID-19, as well as shift their teaching online for their students. And I’ve made even better use of technology and digital tools to transform my coaching in these digital, virtual and remote coaching environments. We have virtual Zoom sessions with colleagues, connect through individual coaching calls and even engage in virtual coaching cycles around virtual classroom instruction. That’s my favorite.

I wanted a way to capture these new coaching moves as we coach in unprecedented times to represent my own shift in coaching. So, I’ve created a digital Padlet wall curating the ideas, tips, tools and tricks that I’m trying in my own practice in hopes they will help others, too. I’ve curated my blog posts on virtual coaching, offered tips for organizing your workspace from home, posted new ways to build community from afar, created new soft starts for online learning sessions, listed my top tips for virtual meetings and showcased some of the new ways I’m engaging teachers (think hyperdocs and choice boards for personal learning) and more!

My virtual coaching toolkit is a work-in-progress and I add to it daily as my coaching evolves virtually and remotely. I like to think of it as a portfolio of sorts capturing the innovation borne out of this crisis. And I hope it helps you do the same. I’d love to hear about your own innovative coaching practices during this time and the challenges you are facing that I might offer support for. Let’s celebrate the innovative ways we are continuing our work and even redefine what coaching looks like when we finally emerge on the other side of this crisis.

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