How-to Guide: Coaching Cycles

Overview

Coaching Cycles supports three groups of people, and this guide is organized around them:

• Administrators turn the feature on, set up cycle stages and templates, and read the coaching reports.

• Coaches manage their roster, run visits, and assign and follow up on action steps.

• Teachers see their coaching in a single read-only place and act on it at their own pace.

Coaching content is private to the coach and teacher. Administrators see activity and reporting, not the contents of a coaching conversation. Find the section that matches your role below.

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For Administrators

Turn Coaching Cycles on

Coaching Cycles is made available to your account by your reseller. Once it’s available, an administrator switches it on.

Find it:

• Go to Settings (Observe settings).

Then:

1. Locate “Enable coaching cycles?” and turn it on.

2. Optionally turn on “Send coaching reminders?” — when enabled, teachers get email reminders as action-step check-back dates approach, and coaches get alerts when a visit is overdue. Turning this off silences those nudges without affecting other coaching emails.

Note: Turning “Enable coaching cycles?” off later pauses coaching account-wide and hides active coaching work from coaches until you turn it back on. Existing coaching records are preserved.

Set up cycle stages

Cycle stages define your coaching cycle and its expected visit cadence.

Find it:

• In the admin sidebar, open Settings → Coaching → Cycle Stages.

From there you can configure the stages a coaching cycle moves through and the visit cadence each stage expects. The cadence is what drives the Due soon and Overdue indicators coaches see on their roster.

Build the action-step template library

Templates are reusable, well-worded action steps coaches can reuse instead of retyping.

Find it:

• In the admin sidebar, open Settings → Coaching → Action Step Templates.

Create, edit, and manage the reusable steps your coaches will draw from when assigning work.

Read the coaching reports

Find it:

• Coaching Dashboard — in the sidebar under your reports, or at the Coaching Dashboard report.

• Coaching Reports — the reports submenu, with Coaching Activity by Coach and Coaching Activity by School.

The dashboard opens with KPI tiles — Active coaches, People coached, Coverage, Completion rate, Visits — and charts for coverage, visit cadence, completion-rate distribution, visits over time, top focus areas, and visits by grade. Use the Schools and Coaches filters to narrow it, click Activity by Coach or Activity by School to drill in, and use Export CSV to pull any breakdown out for your own analysis.

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For Coaches

Find your roster

Find it:

• In the sidebar, open Coaching → My Roster.

Your roster lists every teacher you coach. Each row shows:

• Cadence — an at-a-glance status: Not started, Overdue, Due soon, or On track.

• Observee, School, and Stage.

• Last Visit — e.g. “5d ago,” “today,” or “no visits yet.”

• Active Steps — how many steps the teacher is currently working on.

Click a teacher to open their coaching cycle: their active steps, a timeline of past walkthroughs, their focus areas, stage, and start date.

Assign and manage action steps

Action steps are assigned from a walkthrough and then carried forward visit to visit. On an active step you have these controls:

1. Complete — marks the step done; you can add an optional completion note.

2. Revise — edit the step’s wording.

3. Defer — set a “Defer until” date and an optional reason to pick the step back up later.

4. Recommend a course — suggest a professional-development course (see below).

5. Remove — delete the step (you’ll be asked to confirm).

A step you’ve completed or deferred stays visible in its own state, so both you and the teacher can see the history at the next visit.

Recommend a course

If your account has Learn enabled, you can attach a course to any action step.

1. On the step, click Recommend a course.

2. In the Recommend a course window, filter by category on the left or type in “Search courses by name…” at the top.

3. Select a course and click Recommend.

The recommendation appears on the step as a chip that updates as the teacher progresses — Recommended, then Enrolled, then Completed. To take it back, use the remove (×) control on the chip.

Note: If no courses are licensed to your organization yet, the window will tell you there’s nothing to recommend. Once Learn courses are licensed to the account, they’ll appear here automatically.

Reminders

If your administrator has enabled coaching reminders, you’ll get an email titled “You have coaching visits that are overdue” when an assignment hasn’t been visited on its expected cadence. It lists which teachers are overdue and by how long.

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For Teachers

See your coaching

Find it:

• In the sidebar, open My Coaching.

Your “My Coaching” page is read-only and organized to keep the focus on what matters now:

• It leads with your current action step — what your coach wants you working on, in their words.

• “Also keeping up” quietly lists any other active steps.

• “Part of how you teach now” celebrates the steps you’ve completed.

• “Set aside” holds steps that have been deferred, and “Earlier” keeps your past coaching tucked away but available.

The same summary also appears as a Coaching panel inside your observation view, so it’s there when you’re reviewing a walkthrough.

Reminders

If reminders are on for your account, you’ll get an email titled “Your coaching action steps are coming due” as a step’s check-back date approaches. It lists the steps and suggests talking them over with your coach at your next visit. There’s nothing to click or confirm — it’s a nudge, not a task.

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Summary

• Administrators turn coaching on under Settings, configure Cycle Stages and Action Step Templates, and read the Coaching Dashboard and Coaching Reports.

• Coaches work from Coaching → My Roster, assign and manage action steps (Complete, Revise, Defer, Remove), and can Recommend a course when Learn is enabled.

• Teachers follow everything from My Coaching, a read-only page that highlights current work and history.

• Reminders are optional and separate from other coaching emails: teachers are nudged when steps come due, coaches when visits run overdue.

• Coaching content stays private to the coach and teacher; administrators see activity and trends only.