Ah, April showers bring May flowers... and with the spring-like atmosphere, many students are ready for school to end and their summer vacations to begin. Right along with them are their teachers who need to bring the focus back on content as they begin the testing cycle in schools.

Your role as a coach supports a robust effort for whole school transformation through the BDA cycle of coaching and the PIIC 4 quadrant framework. The PIIC instructional coaching model is a teacher professional development pathway aligned with the common core and designed to enhance teacher effectiveness and improve instruction. Your work is a structured, yet flexible, way to provide job-embedded professional learning everyday for every teacher and administrator.  You help teachers, administrators, and other school staff identify school-wide goals, refine their skills, enhance their knowledge base, understand and use data, implement innovative instructional strategies, and promote literacy learning across the curriculum.

Well, here it is February and some coaches continue to be challenged in their quest to support teachers across all content areas and their administrators. They continue to be stretched thin as they try to support classroom teachers in school, district and statewide initiatives. In some cases, they are charged with providing the support to staff members and accepting the responsibility to offer them ongoing professional learning opportunities without the daily flexibility in their schedules to provide the side by side encouragement that is needed to create change.

With the emphasis on educator effectiveness and the Common Core State Standards, many districts are trying to be proactive and set the tone for the impending evaluations of both teachers and principals. While the "frenzy" is understandable, the collaboration and collective problem solving around educator effectiveness is what will make the difference in an effective evaluation process. The focus should not be on the evaluation itself; the focus should be on providing sustainable effective professional learning and creating a collaborative culture that will help support educators and transform classroom instruction and assessment.