Family Friendly Schools Distance Coaching program, EdCoach, provides a component that is unparalleled in most professional development – continuous Action Team support that creates accountability and sustainability. After the initial two-day Engage! All Families Workshop, FFS Certified Family Engagement Specialists (CFES) continue working with school Action Teams over a one-to-five year period.

These coaching sessions celebrate progress, provide encouragement, and support the next steps for school success and student achievement. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive about the coaching experience. A participant from Murphy School District, in Phoenix, Arizona, says, “It’s great that we have an accountability system (our Distance Coach) in place to implement our Action Plans.”

Family Friendly Schools Distance Coaches work with school teams to:

• set both long-term and short-term goals,
• encourage commitment to act on these goals,
• create action plans and monitor progress in attaining goals,
• develop strategies to utilize strengths most effectively,
• build focus and momentum where it is needed and wanted,
• celebrate achievements, and
• reach desired outcomes.

EdCoach Distance Coaching is not about providing solutions, but about providing tools for independence and responsibility for the future.

• If coaches provide solutions, they take away the school team’s opportunity to reflect on possibilities and make thoughtful choices.
• If coaches provide solutions, they rob the team of self-esteem & self-confidence.
• If coaches provide solutions, they suggest that the team is not smart enough to solve the issue, and must depend on the coaches.
• If coaches provide solutions, they absolve the team of the responsibility for the outcomes of the action taken.
• If coaches provide solutions, they elevate their own status as to that of “problem solvers.”