Full Description
A practical guide for education coaches navigating teacher resistance and driving lasting change
In How to Coach Resistance, bestselling author and coaching expert Elena Aguilar takes on one of the most persistent challenges in education: what to do when teachers push back, shut down, or comply on the surface while changing nothing. Drawing on decades of experience as a teacher, coach, and founder of Bright Morning, Aguilar offers a powerful new understanding of resistance, not as a character flaw or a problem to overcome, but as a signal to interpret.
In the clear, compassionate, story-rich style that has made her one of the most trusted voices in coaching, Aguilar shows that resistance is behavior on the surface, but underneath it are emotions, threatened human needs, and personal and institutional histories that shape how educators respond to change. At the heart of the book is a transformative insight: resistance does not live only in the teacher. It emerges in the space between a teacher's protection and a coach's push. That shift changes everything. It means resistance is not fixed, and it gives coaches far more agency than they may realize.
What makes this book especially urgent is its connection to the larger purpose of schooling: serving children. When resistance hardens into cynicism, withdrawal, chronic mistrust, or toxic school culture, it erodes the professional community that strong teaching depends on. It becomes harder for educators to collaborate, reflect honestly, take risks, and create the vibrant, trusting communities that children need and deserve. Bridging one-on-one coaching and group facilitation, How to Coach Resistance brings emotional intelligence, coaching practice, and organizational insight to a topic too often oversimplified. This is not a book about overpowering resistance. It is a book about learning to read it, work with it, and transform it into possibility.
Contents
About the Author xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: The Question Every Coach Is Asking 1
What Resistance Is Telling Us 4
The Impact on Children 5
How to Use This Book 8
1 What We Call Resistance: The Iceberg Beneath the Behavior 11
Behavior Is the Surface 12
Resistance Requires Two Forces 14
The Four Emotions to Recognize 17
The Core Human Needs 22
How You Raise Your Hand 32
2 Your Half of the Resistance: The Inner Work of the Coach 37
Face Your Own Resistance 39
The Strain Built Into the Role 41
The Stories We Tell 43
Your Triggers 45
Which of Your Needs Feel Vulnerable 48
What Your Resistance Looks Like 50
The Space Between Trigger and Response 53
The Transformational Coaching Dispositions 54
Turn Toward Yourself 58
3 How to Coach the Emotions Beneath Resistance: The ACE Framework 61
Emotions Go Underground 62
A: Acknowledge Emotions 68
C: Cultivate Compassion 73
E: Expand the Story 80
Examples of ACE in Coaching Conversations 84
Example Two: Full ACE Sequence 86
Five Resistance Scenarios 94
When You Don't Know What to Say 100
4 What's in the Way: The Gaps Framework 103
Different Resistance, Different Response 105
The Gaps Framework 107
The Will Gap 110
Passive and Active Resistance 113
Seeing the Gap I'd Missed 117
Two Cases of Misdiagnosis 122
Now Pick Up the Mirror 128
5 Widen the Lens: Power, Identity, and the Systems We Work Within 131
Power in a Coaching Relationship 134
Required Coaching, Required PD 139
When the Teacher Is Right 142
Coaching Without a Program 146
Coaching across Lines of Identity Difference 149
Coaching in Toxic Cultures 152
Spheres of Influence 156
When You Have to Act 159
6 Resistance in a PD Session: The Three Moves 165
How a Room Differs from One-on-One Coaching 167
Notice What's Happening in You 169
Get Curious about What's Underneath 172
Respond Out Loud 174
Slow Down 178
The Three Moves in Real Time 181
A Starter Phrasebook 185
It's Not Personal 189
7 Refilling the Reserves: Coaching the Depleted Teacher 191
Where Resistance Comes From 192
Begin with Belonging 195
Beyond Bubble Baths 197
Find the Bright Spots 200
Activate Agency 204
Change the Story 209
Reading the Depletion 212
Drop Your Hand 216
Conclusion: Choose Love 221
Appendix A: The Core Emotions 225
Appendix B: Coaching Sentence Stems for ACE 229
Index 233
