A Story About Coaching

I know a young girl who has been involved in gymnastics for many years. She enjoys the performance aspect and continues to pursue it still.  Although she learned many new skills, she often found herself disheartened after joining the junior varsity team.  She did not always know what she needed to do in order to improve or excel. This same girl also recently began to compete in high school track. She immediately loved the sport and made excellent gains in both pole vaulting and hurdles. What was the difference? The coaching. The track coach invested in her and every other member of the team. Following each meet, the coach sought out the athletes individually to discuss what went well and how they could improve for the next time. This was a new and impactful experience for the young athlete who had never really had one-on-one coaching before.

In the same way, teachers can directly influence the writing growth of students in their classrooms by meeting with them one-on-one in a coaching format. Once the student leaves the conference, she should know exactly what it is she is doing well and how to improve upon not only the piece at hand, but also future writing.  Good coaches often ask athletes what they think they need to work on in order to make sure they have a goal in mind and to help narrow down one specific skill or technique to practice. Likewise, students should not leave the conference without knowing how to grow and develop in their writing. Just as the young athlete above struggled through her gymnastics season due to a lack of direct guidance, writers may struggle without specific content information offered in the gradual release of responsibility mode during the conference time.  The writer may even decide to give up on writing, rather than continue to pursue it on her own.

In my own classroom, I have wrestled with the conferring aspect of the Writing Workshop. I have always made it a goal to meet with students individually, but too often, I find myself pointing out punctuation and capitalization errors (they are plentiful!) and I forget to focus on the craft of writing. After extensive research on the true art of conferring, I am now able to see the conference as a time to really connect with my students – to ascertain what is “near and dear to their hearts," to gain insight into their writing thinking, planning, and goals, and to coach them towards better writing.