How coaching and mentoring can drive student success

The registration for the second craft beer debate is almost complete and before I present the case for the current system actually working better than I suspect many realize, I wanted to give a quick window into one component of student success: the school principal.

Let’s be clear about a few things.  First, I am not suggesting principals are the only component in student success or even the most important.  In fact, I am not an education expert and won’t pretend to know the current state of the research on this point.  But most people aren’t education experts, either.  And since they let the rest of us vote on issues related to education we ought to be able to make some sense out of whatever information is out there.   I hope to augment this post with information readers send in, but since at least one of our panelists is an expert on this topic I will start there.

Dr. Helen Griffith will lead the new e3 Civic High School in the downtown library (which, by the way, is set to have some sort of opening ceremony on September 28, 2013).  Read her full bio in this post. I’m surprised how many people didn’t know there was going to be a high school in the library.  Here’s a link to the Frequently Asked Questions page about the library.  I could go off on an entire separate post about the pros and cons of building a new library and what the facility does or does not mean for the region, but that’s a topic for another day.  The library is being built and it has a school in it, so let’s just leave it at that for the moment, shall we?

Back to the point, our panelists Dr. Griffith did extensive research about the role of a specific coaching and mentoring program in helping principals develop quality teachers to improve student success.  At least, that’s my understanding of what the research was about.  Here is a link so you can read it for yourself.

The popular media seems to spend a fair amount of time either blasting teachers for being greedy or blasting administrators for not giving teachers enough support.  Let’s sidestep that and just look at this one component that may help teachers be better at their jobs and therefore help students achieve more.  If you get a chance to read Dr. Griffith’s work and feel so inclined, please comment or just shoot me an email.  I’ll be posting whatever I can get my hands on that seems relevant to this debate, so I hope to hear from you.