Coaching provides a rich experience for teachers to think about their
thinking (Costa & Garmston, 2002).
- Coaching supports continuous learning.As continuous learners,
teachers who desire to improve their craft seek coaching, and they bene-
fit from being coached. Skillful artists, athletes, musicians, dancers—
including Sasha Cohen, Yo-Yo Ma, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Michelle Kwan,
Tiger Woods, and Jackie Joyner-Kersey—never lose their need for coach-
ing. Likewise, in education, to continually perfect their craft, teachers
profit from coaching as well. Good schools are in the habit of remaining
open to continuous learning. - Coaching supports effective teamwork.We l di n g t o g e t h e r t h e i n di -
vidual efforts of team members into a well-organized and efficient unit
requires the persistence and stamina of an expert coach. This concerted
effort, however, does not “just happen.” It takes someone—a conductor—
who “knows the score” to provide the synergy. It takes time, persistence,
practice, and coaching to develop a winning athletic team, a celebrated
symphony orchestra, or a learning organization. Building on teamwork
develops the muscle of thinking interdependently. - Coaching enables educational innovations to achieve their full
impact. Joyce and Showers (1988) found that efforts to bring about changes
in classroom practice are fruitless unless the teacher is coached in the use
of the innovation. Only when the component of coaching was added was
the innovation internalized, valued, and transferred to classroom use. - Coaching enhances the intellectual capacities of teachers, which, in
turn, produces greater intellectual achievements in students(Costa &
Garmston, 2002). Vygotsky (1978) provides a strong theoretical support
for coaching as a means of intellectual growth:
Every function in... cultural development appears twice:
first, on the social level, and later on the individual level; first
between people (inter-psychological), and then inside (intra-
psychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to log-
ical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher
functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.
(p. 57, emphasis added)Creating a Culture of Mindfulness 279