What is the right kind of teacher?

Which is to say, what is the right kind of coach?

“What separates coaches is ego involvement. Most coaches want to give you feedback that confirms their view of the world. They’re quick to tell you what they would do, which isn’t necessarily what you should do. They want to feel like they’re making you better. The best coaches coach you without you even being aware that you’re being coached. This takes time. You have to develop a relationship with the player. You have to put them in situations that stretch them. This requires a lot of focused observation.”

We can distill some principles from this description:

Start with relationships. Relationship is the soil for the seed. Bad soil, bad learning.
Design for stretch experiences. Put things just out of reach. [1]
Observe with focus. It’s not about the rush to put grades in your gradebook. It’s about the slow-cooking process of noticing student performance and enabling them, in turn, to notice their own performance.

In fact, those three principles may boil down to just one principle:

Great coaches make it about the student, not about their own ego.

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[1] Consult the last entry on “How to Cultivate Confidence in Students.”

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