Coaching tips from Gawande
Atul Gawande — New Yorker staff writer, surgeon at Brigham and Women’s, and professor at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) — took 90 minutes from his busy schedule Wednesday to talk about ways teaching can be improved through coaching as part of the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Askwith Forum series. “The biggest factor in determining how much students learn,” Gawande told the crowd at Longfellow Hall, “isn’t class size or standardized testing, but the quality of their teachers.” Gawande discussed a visit to a middle school in Albemarle County, Va., to observe how an eighth-grade math teacher, Jennie Critzer, benefited from coaching to achieve better outcomes for her students. As Gawande explained, Critzer’s coach knew exactly how to break down performance into critical components, such as the quality of planning and interaction in the classroom. A coach provides a pair of skilled eyes and...