What improv has taught me about instructional coaching

How to build collaborative co-learning communities using the golden rule of ‘yes, and…”

I was a awkward 14 year-old who wanted to be a part of something, that at *our* school, was as highly revered as a championship-winning basketball team. But improv didn’t come easily to me.

I was slow processor, a head-in-the-clouds kind of girl.

Oh…and I wasn’t funny. Nope. Not. One. Bit. Of course, I rehearsed exaggerated facial expressions in the mirror, spent hours mimicking accents from movies I had seen, and tried to come up with puns wherever I could… but it wasn’t enough.

I would look with envy at those kids who, within an instant, could fire off a joke connecting pop culture, politics and an audience’s foibles.

I could think slowly and with care about existentialism…but I couldn’t anticipate a punchline.

When I finally made the team (aka I was invited to join after someone quit), you can imagine my teammates reaction when, on stage, they would set me up with the perfect joke and I would completely miss it, resorting to one of the bad accents I had practiced. But they would take what I had put down and turn it into something new, something equally as hilarious as the original joke they had intended. They knew what to do with an idea or thought that might be a little off-center…it is the oldest improv rule in the book and they had mastered it: The “Yes, and…” rule.

Responding to what was in front of them (an unfathomably unfunny me) and going with it is what carried us.

Fast-forward 25 years. As I work as an instructional coach in education, I realize the relevance of this improv axiom to coaching.

In the context of destreaming, fissures have emerged between teachers, instructional coaches, departments, and schools. Twitter and other social media have also contributed to a hostile environment of this-or-that. A dilution and misinterpretation of complex ideas and pedagogies are circling an echo chamber where understandings become cemented and people polarized.

How can instructional coaches work effectively and collaboratively in this context? I need to go back to that improve stage and my 14 yo self to learn from my teammates.

But I can also draw on more recent models. In an episode of Melissa and Lori love literacy, Sonia Cabell discusses how to become conversationally responsive partners. In the episode, she is discussing the importance of integrating academic language instruction into disciplinary teaching. She argues that teachers can use conversational moves to support the extension of student knowledge and make content relevant through a form of open-ended questioning. Becoming a conversationally responsive teacher expands a student’s thinking by building on what they already know or say.

While Cabell discusses this in the context of the teacher-student relationship, I wonder about the coaching-teacher dynamic. Can we utilize this “Yes, and…” rule to build bridges, foster trust and build relationships so colleagues want to share? Can we make sure that that teachers are willing to take the stage, even when they can’t anticipate the punchline?

Can we utilize this open-ended, always compassionate, ready-to-harness-all-strengths approach to create a more collaborative and united environment? To build bridges instead of islands?

I hope so, I really do.

….Annnd SCENE! At least for now.