Coaching and Learning Embedded in District Culture BY ROCHELLE L. HERRING/School Administrator, December 2021

From left, Jill Baker, superintendent in Long Beach, Calif., Unified School District, meets with district colleagues Kelly An and Suzanne Caverly at Stanford Middle School, where central-office and school-based staff work on collaborative teams. PHOTO BY MARK SAVAGE/LONG BEACH UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

As part of the Wallace Foundation’s Principal Supervisor Initiative, the Long Beach, Calif., Unified Schools created a powerful system of on-the-job support. During site visits and grantee calls, I noticed the distinct way in which the district engaged in active questioning and storytelling and framed its challenges as learning opportunities toward improved instructional leadership.

Long Beach works collaboratively though a system of teams that include the community, central-office staff and school-based staff. Superintendent Jill Baker identifies the key components of principal supervision this way: “Shared goals, a high level of trust among participants, a focus on we and not me at all levels, support and inherent values of sharing and collaboration.”

The 70,000-student district for years has been nationally recognized for its relentless focus on supporting high-quality teaching districtwide. For the past several years, Long Beach has intensified its focus on developing the relationship between principals and principal supervisors as key parts of a system of support for that teaching.

Principal supervisors have helped increase learning across the system by taking a coaching approach to supervision. As a result, they have created a culture of coaching and learning, opportunities to learn through collaboration and a leadership model focused on learning how to lead the system.

Culture of Coaching

The research is clear that when principal supervisors help principals grow as instructional leaders, they focus on coaching, not compliance. Studies by Meredith Honig and Lydia Rainey, co-authors of Supervising Principals for Instructional Leadership: A Teaching and Learning Approach, show that principals who grew as instructional leaders had support from their supervisors in leading their own learning supplemented by coaching from a teaching-and-learning stance.

Long Beach Unified has been a national leader in this effort. “We are very fortunate that over the last five years, we’ve built a strong coaching model for our principal supervision practices,” Baker says. “Why is that important now? Because learning relationships are at the center of what we do. These relationships have been developed through coaching. This coaching foundation makes it easier for leaders to move into unknown territory, especially when faced with a crisis.”

She adds: “Our principal supervisors have been right on the frontlines with principals, coaching them, asking good questions, advocating for them and bringing the lived experience of principals back to central office.”

Suzanne Caverly, principal of Stanford Middle School in Long Beach, attests to how the system operates. “My principal supervisor models supportive behavior. He listens. He knows us all so well. He is always linking me to other principals so that I have a support system,” she says. “Instead of trying to answer all of my questions, he says, ‘I know who you should call’ and gets a conversation going among my peers and me. My principal supervisor helps me think about how to achieve the vision for my school. He helps stay aligned to the district goals.”

Goal alignment is made possible through a set of community- and staff-designed roadmaps to ensure the vision is clear. Long Beach has a knack for making expectations explicit and aligned.

Nadar Twal, a program administrator in Long Beach, explains it this way: “The strategic plan provides collective purpose. Clear roles and responsibilities provide a foundation for collaboration. The teaching and learning framework illustrates a commitment to equity through high-quality teaching and learning. Every aspect of the system is documented as a roadmap. Everyone is clear in their purpose, and we can weave in and out of each other’s work. The documents reflect a shared vision in the form of clearly articulated goals for the children of Long Beach and the ways in which meeting those goals will prepare students for the future.”

Caverly says the coaching conversations have helped her and her school team improve personally and professionally. Learning together and designing new ways of approaching their work enables the school to examine practices that have interfered with student success. The principal, in her third year at the 1,200-student school, says the opportunity to design new approaches is building leadership capacity. 

Rochelle Herring PHOTO COURTESY OF ROCHELLE HERRING

Modeling Learning

The emphasis at the moment, Caverly says, involves “coaching one another toward designing equitable schools.” She and her principal supervisor are discussing racial justice and creation of a culturally responsive curriculum. “This work is deeply personal and requires us to learn new practices,” she explains. “I am coaching my staff. They are coaching me. My principal supervisor and peers coach each other. It’s our culture to help one another learn.” 

Caverly uses a coaching process at her school that resembles how her principal supervisor coaches her. “I start conversations with big questions from analyzing data and listening to the experiences of staff. What evidence do we have that all children are being engaged? How do we show our students that they belong?” she says.

These questions elicit more stories and questions that have pushed the Stanford Middle School staff to learn and create restorative discipline practices and more engaging, culturally relevant curriculum. Discussions of books such as Cultivating Genius by Gholdy Muhammad and Why Are All of the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria by Beverly Tatum have informed the design of new approaches.

In short, leadership is a three-way process school leaders learn, design and coach simultaneously by applying all three to align what the school system is doing with what the children need.

District leaders are modeling how to be learners too. Caverly sees how her superintendent models learning from teachers during a school visit. During one visit that focused on introducing the culturally responsive instructional practices developed by teachers, Baker listened and took lots of notes. The teachers described how they applied what they learned from a book study of Muhammad’s book.

Baker asked questions, listened to the teachers’ experience and took notes. “She let the teachers be the authority on their work,” Caverly says. “How often does a superintendent come to learn from teachers? Modeling like that signals ‘I value what you do.’ She ended the session by asking, ‘How can we support you?’”

That is the key aspect, Honig emphasized. “So much professional development and monitoring gets done to principals and teachers. But that’s not how teachers, principals or other professionals grow in their practice. Professionals grow when they are in systems that elevate their leadership of their own learning — systems that routinely recognize each teacher and principal is a resource for the learning of other adults and cultivate those resources and put them to work.”

Middle school teacher Hank Waddles receives a classroom visit from Jill Baker, superintendent in Long Beach, Calif. PHOTO BY MARK SAVAGE/LONG BEACH UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

Systems Thinking

Cross-functional collaboration on teams such as the K-12 steering committee prepare central-office staff to lead systemwide, not just in their defined area, Twal says. “We collaborate regularly and coach one another to think about the entire system and design with the people we serve in mind. This behavior is documented in our evaluation system, so we are evaluated on how we contribute to the improvement of the overall system by collaborating with our peers to solve problems.”

Long Beach has leadership development programs for roles ranging from teacher leader to central-office director. At every level, there is an initial training period, then learning and development continues through coaching.

“Having a long-term focus for principals’ coaching enables one to learn from one’s own experiences,” says Kelly An, director of equity leadership and talent development in Long Beach. It’s also important, she adds, that pre-K through high school leaders understand they are part of a larger system. The ability to lead with the entire system in mind is developed through school visits, deep study of district problems of practice and modeling how to approach engaging stakeholders in the work of improving the system.

The district has been honing its coaching model for more than a decade, emphasizing its importance in leader development. The coaching practices are linked to the evaluation system.

“The evaluation system enables the professional development and coaching to be anchored in shared expectations. The central-office staff and school-based staff evaluations are aligned,” Twal adds. ”Our evaluation system is motivating because it forces you to think not only about how you apply evidence-based practices in your school but how you impact the entire system. As a result, I have done professional development for principal supervisors on restorative justice and shared the work of school teams formally and informally. … We all know that we have to contribute to the system. It reinforces the learning.”

This is what Long Beach calls “systemness.”

A Long Horizon

The term systemness is used in Long Beach to summarize the work. It empowers the community, central-office staff and school-based staff to work together and take ownership of district progress. As Baker puts it: “Systemness requires commitment to a common vision and common aspirations for learners. It is important to note that the system is not perfect, but we are continuously improving and increasing the use of leadership and coaching practices.”

The principal supervisors have been necessary for this work because they find ways to empower school leaders to design their schools and cultivate leadership in others throughout the system. Long Beach Unified leaders agree it takes a lot of learning and work to operate fully. Learning has become a way of being in Long Beach. The long-term focus on systemness, with leaders coaching their way to create effective practices, has helped school leaders grow a day at a time.

ROCHELLE HERRING is a senior program officer for the Wallace Foundation in New York, N.Y.