By spring break, the common thread that bound together the team of middle school teachers with whom I worked as a professional development coach and planning team facilitator was unraveling at a rapid pace. The team’s students had presented to my colleagues a series of learning and behavioral challenges. When these challenges were added to daily managerial and instructional tasks, the once-motivated group was now creatively stymied. Our common planning time lacked instructional focus, and enthusiasm for this important work was flagging. As coach, my role is to foster collaboration among the team’s grade-level teachers during common planning time and encourage the team’s use of a learning cycle in which collaborative teams analyze student achievement data from multiple sources to create a specific action plan