Practice As a Key to Improving Supervisory Conversations

In this New York Times article, Troy, NY principal Katie Yezzi describes how her Uncommon Schools boss, Doug Lemov, coached her in preparation for a midyear conference with a struggling teacher. “I was dreading the review,” says Yezzi. “I didn’t want to be harsh, but I also didn’t want to water down the message and give this teacher a false impression. I knew I wasn’t ready to have that conversation…” 

Practicing the conversation over and over with Lemov proved to be extremely useful. “When it was time for the review, I felt confident and calm, and was able to be entirely present and to listen,” says Yezzi. “I said everything that I needed to say, and found the balance between directness and compassion. Practice had helped to make something difficult much easier.” 

That worked for a difficult conference, but Yezzi didn’t think it was necessary with a higher-performing teacher. To her surprise, there were tears during that conference. “I had fallen into the trap of assuming that practice was a tool to avoid disasters, as opposed to a way to maximize positive outcomes,” she says. “Now I see it as one of the only things that will keep helping me grow as a professional and add value to my organization.” 

Practice also works when coaching teachers for lessons. Yezzi used this approach with a teacher who was discouraged and didn’t think anything would get her students to improve. “Then we practiced, with me demonstrating alternative teaching methods and her trying them out,” says Yezzi. “Her whole outlook changed. She felt the difference. Five minutes later, she was performing in front of her students, doing what we had just practiced. I could hear the difference. I checked in with her later, and she was beaming.” 

Ninety-two percent of Yezzi’s students live below the poverty line, and, she says, “the urgency of our faculty’s work is what motivates us to be great every day. But the overwhelming need to be great can also swallow people up. If teachers are underperforming, or if student achievement appears to be plateauing, teachers can become paralyzed and fall prey to self-doubt or frustration. We have found an antidote to this sense of defeat: practicing and preparing outside the classroom.”

“At Work, Practice Puts Perfection in Reach” by Katie Yezzi in The New York Times, Nov. 24, 2012, http://nyti.ms/S7M1E6; Yezzi is co-author, with Doug Lemov and Erica Woolway, of Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better (Jossey-Bass, 2012). 

From the Marshall Memo #464