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Developing a School-Wide Instructional Coaching Program at Shanghai American School with SAS Instructional Coaches

#coachbetter

Release Date: 04/21/2026

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In this #coachbetter episode Kim talks with several members of the instructional coaching team at Shanghai American School in China. This is such a big team, that even with 6 guests on the show today: Alex McMillan, Alex Braden, Yuri Liu, Andrew Ranson, Bick McSwiney and Scott Williams, this is still less than half the team!

We're excited to share this episode with you today because SAS has been doing phenomenal work in very intentionally developing their instructional coaching program both at the leadership and school wide level, and with the instructional coaches themselves. Associate Director of Ed Programs, Scott Williams has been leading this work, and Kim has partnered with SAS to support their coaches in their own private cohort of The Coach Certificate and Mentorship Program, as well as spending some time at SAS working with coaches and leaders together. SAS is also one of our Founding Member Schools of AAICIS. 

This episode is a window into the intention and strategic planning it takes to develop a coaching program in a very large international school! If you’re curious to learn more, Scott and Kim have also written an article for the AAIE InterEd Journal which goes deeper into many of the elements we discussed in this episode.

In this episode...

  • The history of coaching at SAS

  • The vision and goals for the program as it’s being developed now

  • The key documentation the team has developed

  • The team at SAS

  • What coaching looks like right now

  • The way’s they’re planning to socialize this work with all educators

  • How they intend to measure the impact of coaching

  • The specific contextual challenges for SAS

  • What school leaders should know when embarking on program development like this

Find the show notes for this episode here. 

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