Leading Student-Centered Coaching: Building Principal and Coach Partnerships

Essential leadership moves for supporting instructional coaching in your school

Strong leadership is essential in any successful instructional coaching effort. Leading Student-Centered Coaching provides principals and district leaders with the background, practices, and tools required for leading coaching efforts that have a profound and positive impact on student and teacher learning. Filled with practical ideas that school leaders can easily apply to their own school settings, this book includes: 

• Tools and techniques for preparing a school for coaching, launching a coaching culture, and supporting coaches
• Leadership Moves sections that provide strategies for building principal and coach partnerships 
• Richly detailed Lessons from the Field, based on the authors’ real-life experiences, that illustrate principal and coach collaboration
• Recommendations for coaches to use as they strive to increase their impact 

With a focus on the critical role of school leadership, this action-oriented guide provides the key ingredients for ensuring the success of school-based coaching initiatives. 

"Sweeney and Mausbach explore the necessary ingredients to a successful instructional coach partnership between the principal and the coaches. This is a must-read for building leadership teams implementing an instructional coach program"
―Timothy S. Grieves, Chief Administrator
Northwest Area Education Agency, IA 

"This book synthesized the work necessary of school leaders when working with the coach. As a principal who was a student-centered coach, this book has shown me how I can tweak the skills I learned and apply them with a leadership lens."
―Kelly Neylon, Principal
Meadowview School, Woodridge IL 

Diane Sweeney is the author of The Essential Guide for Student-Centered Coaching, Moves for Launching a New Year of Student-Centered Coaching, Leading Student-Centered Coaching, and others. Each of these books is grounded in the simple but powerful premise that coaching can be designed to more directly impact student learning. Diane spends her time speaking and consulting for schools and educational organizations across the country. When she isn’t working in schools, she loves to spend time outside with her family in Denver, Colorado.

Ann Mausbach, co-author of Leading Student-Centered Coaching: Building Principal and Coach Partnerships (Corwin, 2018), School Leadership through the Seasons: A Guide to Staying Focused and Getting Results All Year (Routledge Eye on Education, 2016) and Align the Design: A Blueprint for School Improvement (ASCD, 2008) has been an educator for over 30 years. Ann’s belief that the greatest investment a leader can make is in people not programs has focused her work on supporting principals and teacher leaders with the tools they need to align purpose with action.  Her administrative experience includes serving as a Coordinator of Staff Development, Director of Curriculum, Director of Elementary Education and an Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction. She currently works as an Associate Professor for Educational Leadership at Creighton University in Omaha, NE.