What Principals Get Wrong About Coaching Teachers — and What Actually Works

There is a version of principal coaching that is widespread, well-intentioned, and genuinely insufficient. It follows the post-observation conversation format: the principal shares what they observed, names what went well, identifies what could be stronger, and describes what better practice would look like. The teacher listens, agrees where they can, pushes back where they feel they must, and leaves with feedback that may or may not change what happens in the classroom next week.

That conversation is not coaching. It is feedback delivery — which is useful, but it operates at a fundamentally different level than what genuine instructional coaching actually does. The conflation of those two things is why many principals invest real time in teacher development and then struggle to explain the instructional return on that investment.

The difference is not about the quality of the observations or the sophistication of the feedback. It is about where the conversation puts the teacher. Feedback delivery positions the teacher as a recipient of an expert’s assessment. Coaching positions the teacher as an active agent in analyzing and developing their own practice. These produce completely different levels of professional growth — and they require completely different things from the principal.

The principal who evaluates builds compliance. The principal who coaches builds capacity. Compliance changes what teachers do when they know you are watching. Capacity changes what they do when you are not. Only one of those builds the school you are trying to build.

The Three Errors That Undermine Principal Coaching

The first error is leading with the observation rather than the question. The principal who walks into a coaching conversation with the feedback already formed and already certain has made the conversation a delivery rather than an inquiry. The teacher’s role in that conversation is to receive — not to analyze, not to investigate, not to develop the professional skill of examining their own practice. The coaching question — what were you trying to accomplish there? What do you think happened for students in that moment? What would you do differently? — activates something that telling cannot activate. It requires the teacher to think rather than to receive.

The second error is scope expansion. The principal who identifies five things to address in a single coaching conversation has actually identified five things that will compete with each other for the teacher’s attention and none of which will be developed fully. The most powerful coaching focuses on one specific thing — one instructional move, one skill, one practice — and goes deep on it over multiple conversations rather than going broad in a single one. A teacher who has developed one thing fully is more effective than a teacher who has been exposed to five things superficially.

The third error is abandoning the follow-through. The coaching conversation that is not followed by a classroom visit, a specific conversation about what the teacher tried, and an acknowledgment of the attempt — regardless of whether it worked perfectly — is not a coaching relationship. It is a one-time feedback event. Coaching is a relationship built over time through repeated, genuine contact with the same teacher’s practice. The first conversation is the beginning of that relationship. What comes after it determines whether the relationship actually develops the teacher.

What Actually Works

Start every coaching conversation with the teacher’s intention, not your observation. What were you trying to accomplish? What did you see from your students during the lesson? Where did you feel the lesson was strongest and where did you feel it was weakest? These questions do something critical: they tell you how the teacher is currently analyzing their own practice — which is the most important diagnostic information available to a coaching principal.

If the teacher’s self-analysis is strong and accurate, your coaching conversation can be brief: name what they already know, confirm the direction, and the developmental work is mostly already happening inside the teacher. If the self-analysis is missing something significant — if there is a gap between what the teacher perceived and what students were actually experiencing — the coaching conversation addresses that specific gap.

Make one specific request. Not five. One thing the teacher will try before your next conversation. Specific enough to be observable. Grounded in what the data and observation showed about where students need it most. Then return specifically to observe that one thing. The teacher who knows the principal is coming back to see exactly what they discussed in the coaching conversation is a teacher who has real accountability for attempting the change.

The Coaching Principal’s Long Game

The culture of a building changes when the dominant professional conversation is about instruction. Not evaluation, not compliance, not initiative implementation — instruction. What students need. What we are trying. What we are learning about our practice.

That culture is built by the principal who coaches more than they evaluate. Who asks more than they tell. Who returns to classrooms specifically because of what was discussed rather than on a general walkthrough schedule. Who acknowledges attempt as loudly as they acknowledge outcome.

It takes longer than evaluation to show results. The investment is real and the timeline is longer. What it builds is a staff whose professional growth does not require the principal’s personal presence for every increment of it. That is the school you are building.