Tools for Schools, Fall 2010, Vol. 14, No. 1
Trust matters: for educators, parents, and students
By Valerie von Frank
Tool: Appreciative interviews
Appreciative interviews will help you avoid trying to close the "trust gap" and instead focus on building on the positives. Use this tool to help you and your partners discover what has worked well in the past, affirm those successes, create positive self-images, and imagine future successes.
Tool: Principal survey
This questionnaire is designed to help us gain a better understanding of the quality of relationships in schools.
Tool: Considerations for team norms
As you begin working together, think about ground rules that might guide the way your team does business.
Tool: Partner interviews
Conducting an interview with potential teacher partners, in addition to gathering information and educating teachers on the coaching philosophy, helps coaches build "one-to-one individual relationships with teachers" (Knight, 2007). According to Knight, fifteen-minute one-on-one interviews are more effective than two-hour group meetings, so always try to schedule individual meetings, preferably during teacher planning time.
