The Coaching Letter
The Coaching Letter is written by Partners’ staff member Isobel Stevenson, who has extensive experience as both a leader and a coach. The Coaching Letter’s perspective is that leaders could be a bit more successful if they thought and acted more like coaches, and coaches could be a bit more successful if they thought and acted more like leaders.
Coaching Letter #236
June 26 , 2026 The first Connecticut NIC meeting, June 2021 On scaling as strategy Hello, I hope you’re doing well. Almost all schools in the northeast are out for the summer, so you’ve got more time to read... That’s great! I hope you’ll have time for this book! We are busy getting ready for the Building Thinking Classrooms National Conference that we are hosting in New Haven in the next few days—hope to see many of you there!
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Coaching Letter #235
May 23, 2026 Scaling, part the fifth Hi, how are you? Thank you for subscribing to the Coaching Letter. You rock. Yes, I know, another CL about scaling, I’m sorry about that. But the previous ones have got me so much mileage and interaction with folks, and knowing how way leads on to way, I find myself committed to finishing up the series, and I’m kind of on the clock, so I’m working my way through them as fast as
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Coaching Letter #234
May 17, 2026 Scaling, part the fourth Hi, I hope you’re doing well. Thank you for subscribing to the Coaching Letter. You rock. Thank you for the responses to the posts on scaling—they have been super useful. Dina, this is your response. Marta, I’m really grateful for your information about failure modes and you’ll see those in the next Coaching Letter… This Coaching Letter continues the theme of scaling (#231, #222, #233); this time, what does it mean to scale something that is deeply human,
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Coaching Letter #233
May 10, 2026 How aviation instructors go about illustrating form and function Scaling, part the third Friends, I hope this finds you well. Thank you for subscribing to the Coaching Letter—you rock. I was out of town last week, so lots of time to write while sitting on airplanes and waiting for things to happen. This work on scale has taken on a life of its own, so here is the next layer. If you want to read
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Coaching Letter #232
April 28, 2026 Scaling, part the second Friends, it’s a beautiful spring day here in Connecticut. All the leaves on the trees came out last week like somebody flipped a switch, and the flowering trees are particularly lovely. But don’t worry, the weather’s supposed to get worse again tomorrow. Thank you for subscribing to the Coaching Letter—you’re terrific. In the last CL, I talked about scaling and its complications. I talked about Logic Alpha, which assumes that scaling is always linear,
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Coaching Letter #231
April 19, 2026 Scaling, part the first I started writing this and then it got so unwieldy that even I couldn’t follow my own writing. I’ve spent more time on book chapters. So this is part one of a mini-series on scaling, nested within a larger series launched in Coaching Letter #223 with this statement: My goal is to never have another leader ask me: “How do I get teachers to…” when the question should be “What conditions and structures should I create?” This
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