Coaching Certification Program
The Lastinger Center offers tailored online and in-person coaching certification programs for early learning, K-12 instructional, and literacy coaches.
Early Learning Coaching
Data indicate that high-quality coaching positively affects teachers’ practices across differing measures of instructional quality—leading to improvement in children’s language, literacy and social-emotional development.
Our Coaching Certification program develops early childhood professionals’ skills to deliver high-impact, teacher-centered coaching support. Participants learn the fundamentals of coaching, strategies that aid in goal-setting and modeling best practices. It also informs their instruction by teaching them how to effectively collect and use data to engage in coaching conversations that lead to improved teacher practice and child outcomes.
“The coaching certification content has helped me become a better listener and I have learned how to ask better questions. It has also helped me become more data-driven.”
Intended Participants
Professionals who work with early childhood education teachers, leaders and administrative-level providers.
Our ten-module, online certification program is facilitated by certified Lastinger coaches and can be completed in eight months.
Module 1 - Interrogating Ideas About Coaching: Exposing Your Beliefs
Explore your current thinking and existing beliefs about coaching. Self-assess your current coaching practice as it relates to the coaching competencies and associated behaviors.
Module 2 - Tell Me So I Can Grow: Encouraging Growth through Effective Feedback
Consider the role of feedback in a coaching partnership and explore individual “Ways of Knowing” to determine coaching readiness. Learn how to apply your knowledge to different scenarios.
Module 3 - A Comprehensive Approach to Quality Improvement
Learn about our coaching model, and how to distinguish between technical assistance and coaching supports.
Module 4 - Exploration and Relationship Building: Developing a Nurturing Partnership to Grow
Advance deeper into the first stage of our coaching model. Observe and reflect on a conversation between a coach and a new coachee. Apply these strategies to build and sustain transformational coaching conversations.
Module 5 - Strategic Planning: Seeing the Path Forward
Learn the origins of the Focused Conversation Method and how to apply it to real-life scenarios. Develop a collaborative Coaching Plan to guide your work.
Module 6 - Professional Development: Building Content Knowledge to Achieve Sustainable Growth
Explore your current thinking and existing beliefs about coaching. Self-assess your current coaching practice as it relates to the coaching competencies and associated behaviors.
Module 7 - Identifying a Focus for Coaching
Use probing questions and other facilitation strategies to guide a coachee to a focused, guiding question about teaching and learning. Leverage the value of video to cite evidence that establishes a mutually determined focus for their coaching cycle.
Module 8 - Using Descriptive Data to Power a Coaching Conversation
Learn how to differentiate between interpretive and descriptive data. Explain the value of a data display and its role in one or two key practices.
Module 9 - Putting it All Together: The Coaching Conversation
Understand the importance of self-reflection and awareness while developing your coaching practice. This includes Identifying structural elements that establish a coaching conversation for success and creating a data display and video recording of your coaching conversation for the Benchmark Assignment.
Module 10 - Demonstrating Your Coaching Skills
Video certification and program reflection
%
teachers who engaged in professional development with coaching support demonstrated mastery of the content
%
average gain of CLASS composite score for early learning providers who engaged with a certified coach
K-12 Instructional Coaching
Our K-12 Instructional Coaching Certification program develops the skills education professionals need to deliver high-impact, teacher-centered coaching to the educators they support. Participants learn the fundamentals of coaching, strategies to aid in goal setting and ways to model best practices. Participants will discover how to effectively collect and use data to facilitate coaching conversations that lead to improved teacher practice and student outcomes.
Contact Raquel Diaz, Ed.D., senior partnerships manager, at rdiaz@coe.ufl.edu for more information.
Intended Participants
Participants must be able to actively coach K-12 teachers throughout the certification program.
Delivery and Duration
This job-embedded program is offered virtually and in-person and can be customized to best meet the needs of the participants. Certification is earned via video submission of a coaching conversation that is scored against the UF Instructional Coaching Evaluation Rubric. Each cohort is supported by certified coaching facilitators.
Literacy Coaching
The Lastinger Center offers a tailored coaching certification to develop highly effective reading coaches. Participants will gain advanced knowledge of highly effective literacy instruction and evidence-based coaching strategies to enhance teachers’ knowledge and skills, ultimately improving literacy outcomes for students.
To learn more, please contact Jessica Richards, literacy partnerships manager., at jessica.richards@coe.ufl.edu.
Intended Participants
Participants must be able to actively coach K-12 teachers throughout the certification program.
Delivery and Duration
This job-embedded program is offered both virtually and in-person and can be customized to best meet the needs of the participants.
