This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to Episode 26 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

In this episode, part one of a two-part episode, I interview an instructional coach to learn how

she helps teachers get better at teaching.

I first heard the term instructional coach probably three or four years ago.

It wasn't really that long ago and the second I heard it, I thought,

whoa, what is that? That sounds amazing. That sounds like a great job.

It sounds like something I would have loved to have done if I had known about it at the right time

in the right place. So I looked into it a little bit more and it just seems like over the past

few years I've heard that term more and more and more. I've either heard instructional coach or

literacy coach or math coach. So it seems like this field has been opening up quite a bit and I

wanted to learn more about what the job entails, also what the different varieties of roles are for

instructional coaches. I also was really curious to learn more about what it's like to be an

instructional coach. What their day-to-day work is like, what are some of the techniques that they use?

And also just sort of what's the whole workflow look like? What are some of their challenges that

they face and so on? So I thought what I would do is sort of research it a little bit and I've

done that. I've got an article that is going to be going up on Cult of Pedagogy that's just called

what it's like to be an instructional coach. And I also decided to interview two instructional

coaches to find out more about the work they do. So each interview is about 30 minutes long so I

decided to split this up in two episodes. So this is going to be the first interview. This is

I'm interviewing Gretchen Schulteck-Bridgers and she is an instructional coach in North Carolina

and she also has a podcast. So if you are a regular podcast listener, her podcast is called

Always a Lesson and it's really just you know encouraging teachers basically. She also has a

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