Using Data to Inform Coaching Cycles, Ep. 122 Instructional Coaching with Ms. B

Using Data to Inform Coaching Cycles, Ep. 122 Instructional Coaching with Ms. B

Chrissy Beltran [00:00:00]:

Are you new to coaching? Starting out as a coach can be incredibly overwhelming, especially when you aren’t given much direction from your administration. That’s why I created the new coaches playbook. It includes a roadmap to help you start building your coaching foundation and a guide to seven podcast episodes in order that will give you the steps and ideas you need to build relationships, define your role, communicate with your admin, and make a plan to start coaching. Coach, what’s your instructional coaching personality type? Have you ever wondered what superpowers make you a really strong coach and what areas you can strengthen with just a little bit of direction? Well, now you can find out. I created the what’s your instructional coaching personality type quiz to help you answer this very question. Just head to buzzing with missb.com/quizwithacapitalq to take the two minute quiz and get your coaching personality type sent right to your inbox. Even better, you’ll get a playlist of podcast episodes handpicked just for you to help you hone your superpowers and strengthen your areas of growth. I’m so excited to share this quiz with you, so don’t wait to take it. Go to buzzingwith missb.com/quizwithacapitalq and learn so much about your coaching style.

Chrissy Beltran [00:01:27]:

You’re listening to Buzzing with Miss b, the coaching podcast, where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach, and every coach does too. I’m Crissy Beltran, an instructional coach, resource creator, and coffee enthusiast, and I’m your host. Stay tuned for practical tips and honest coaching talk that will help you coach with confidence.

Chrissy Beltran [00:01:50]:

Hey, coach, and welcome to episode one twenty two of Buzzing with Miss B, the coaching podcast. We are starting a new month on the podcast, and that means a new monthly theme. Last month, our theme was, what do you do here anyway? We spent four glorious episodes talking about some of the different things that coaches do, including building a coaching mindset, planning support during PLCs, facilitating a data PLC, and advocating for equity with doctor Lindsey Wilson. This month, we’re shifting gears to zoom in on one thing that coaches do that nobody else on campus really does. That’s the coaching cycle. The coaching cycle is a process by which we help teachers grow. Basically, it’s in three parts, the preconference, then you have classroom work, which is an observation model lesson or co taught lesson, and the third part is a debrief. In episode three, I really dig into each step in the coaching cycle, and I give you tips about how to make each part effective. All of these tips, you know, everything I share in that in that episode and really in all all of my episodes comes from my own trial and error. They’re things that I’ve learned after making lots of mistakes. So if you’re feeling frustrated that you have also made mistakes, that’s okay. Everybody does. Coaching is a process, and it asks for so much of us. Our emotional strength, our mental agility, flexibility, good intentions, a good heart, so much is demanded of coaches. And all we need to do is our best and learn from those mistakes. We need to be completely, you know, constant learners and apply what we learn. And whenever we don’t do something the right way or the way that turns out way we want, it’s a lesson, and we make a change. So anyway, if you really wanna dig in and learn the process of the coaching cycle, really dig into each step, check out episode three of this podcast. This month, we’re focusing on how to make the cycle more effective, how to extend it, how to to make different approach different parts of it in different ways so that you can apply this to your existing coaching cycles and really see a change in your teachers. Whenever we talk about using data to support your coaching cycles and inform your coaching cycles, that you can find lots of reasons to use data. Okay? So this runs a gamut from choosing teachers to participate, choosing a focus for your work together, and developing next steps as you move through your coaching cycle, planning together, and evaluating your progress. It can also support you in determining the effectiveness of your coaching cycles and justify the work you do, whether that’s to yourself or to someone else who needs to see evidence of of your effect on an impact on teachers. So to start, we’re really going to talk about a common way that

Chrissy Beltran [00:04:30]:

data is used in coaching cycles, and that’s to figure out who can use your support. You know, if you’ve listened or followed me online for any length of time, that I do not believe that coaches are only intended to work with new or struggling teachers. Some coaches are designed as new teacher coaches for good reason, but for the most part, coaches are here to grow and support every teacher on campus, including those we might call the naturals and the veterans. When coaches only support new or struggling teachers, we’re undermining our value and role. And anytime we’re asked to work with a teacher, that teacher thinks there’s a bad reason for it. This automatically puts you on the wrong path because they’re not going to be receptive to what you have to offer. But working with teachers who have been identified as needing support is a very real challenge for coaches. I’ve had to do it many times. And if you’ve been coaching at all for any length of time, you’ve probably done it too. So this brings me to the first way we use data to inform coaching cycles. It’s data from assessments to identify areas of need or classrooms of need. This is often an approach used by administrators where they see a need and they decide the teacher needs some support and the coach is the one to do it. I’ll talk in a minute about how you can approach this very delicate kind of delegated role. But first, let’s talk about what kinds of data you or your administrator might be using to decide if there’s a need. You may wanna look at more actually, you really do wanna look at more than one piece of information when you decide that there’s a need in a classroom because one set of low test scores doesn’t really tell you much. Okay? If the class has been plugging along just fine and then suddenly you see a change, that’s not a huge red flag unless you see a pattern. Granted, if you don’t collect a lot of assessment data, then one low assessment may be the only sign that you get. So it really depends on how your school is collecting and using your data from assessments. So you might notice a pattern over time that the classroom is not moving forward. You could look at student performance as a whole, but that’s just the first step. Okay? From there, we need to break down student data by assessment, by standard, and by subpopulation. You may notice special ed students, for example, who are not achieving similarly to their peers or a consistent group of students who are not moving forward, whether that’s a group in a specific race, gender, or other identifiers, such as maybe English language learners. That’s a huge issue that we frequently see is kids who are learning the English language are not getting the full benefit of the instruction,

Chrissy Beltran [00:07:04]:

and that doesn’t show that their learning is not showing up on their assessments. We see the gap, and then we have to figure out what to do about it. Actually, I have forms for doing this kind of data disaggregation in my first twenty days of school resource on TpT. So if you need something that has some forms, they’re even editable PDFs so you can plug in the data on your computer. You can go to teacherspayteachers.com and and search for my store, Chrissy Beltron, buzzing with miss b. Either one of those will work. They’ll both pop up. And you’ll find my first twenty days of of coaching. That’s what you want. First twenty days of coaching, it includes these data forms that will help you get started looking at your assessment data for your campus and by teacher. All the different ways that we just talked about breaking it down are included and then stem by standard, by, like, we can notice the patterns. You can compare previous assessments from previous years. So definitely check it out. So if you’re in your administrator and maybe you as well, you’ve looked at this data. You’re noticing some patterns that are concerning in a few classrooms. Right? What do you do if you are asked to intervene in a classroom that is not performing well in assessments? So if your administrator says, hey. Hey. Can I talk to you, miss Beltran? I have a classroom that I want you to go in and work with them on reading. They are the kids are struggling in their assessments. They’ve had really low test scores over the past three assessments. So I’m gonna ask you to go on in and and step in that classroom. Well, one thing to keep in mind about this way of identifying teachers in need of support from the top down is it can really backfire. When teachers do not want support and they didn’t ask for it in this case, right, they will also shut you down. And it can be putting you in the place of managing the teacher depending on how you and your administrator work together to make this work as well as the teacher. It can be handled tactfully, but the principal needs to be share to be tactful in sharing the reasoning for having you work in the classroom with a teacher. So if they approach a teacher and they say, look. This is not acceptable. Miss so and so is gonna come in here and help you work on this. Okay. You’re already not gonna be that teacher’s favorite person. If the principal says, hey. I’m noticing that your kids are struggling. I wanna get you some help because I know you’ve got a challenging class, but I believe that you can do it. We just need to get you some some different support. Miss so and so and so is gonna stop by next week, and they’ll

Chrissy Beltran [00:09:24]:

talk to you about how to get this started. That’s at least a more tactful and respectful approach for introducing the idea to the teacher, and it will keep I mean, it it doesn’t it’s not perfect. No teacher is always gonna say, oh, wonderful. I would love to have another person in my classroom. They aren’t always gonna do that. But some of them will, and some of them will say, okay. And then whenever you go in, you bring your positive problem solving, respectful mode, and you can say, hey. The principal, mister so and so or miss so and so, whoever, has told me that you’re working on x y z, and you they wanted me to pop in and support you. So let’s set a day and time so you can tell me about what you’re already doing, and we can figure out a plan that works to meet your needs. You wanna keep it very focused on what the teacher needs. You’re being firm and kind as well. Right? So we wanna be firm and say, this is what’s happening, but we also wanna be kind and say, look. I know this you didn’t ask for this. And acknowledge that the teacher is already working towards a goal. We have to believe in our teachers and believe that they’re not there on purpose to make kids miserable even if that’s what it might look like it’s happening. Oftentimes, they just do not have the tools and they are ashamed or they think it’s the kids because they cannot admit that they’re the only person in the classroom that has a degree that maybe could make an impact on what’s going on. That’s really stressful and really scary to a lot of people who haven’t been exposed to different ways of doing things. So my recommendation is to go in with thinking that they have the kids’ best interests in in at heart, and that they really are trying to make a positive effort in those kids’ lives. When you visit, after you set your day and time, you can ask the teacher what they already have in place and how that has gone for them. Find a place that they want support to focus your efforts. So figure out, well, where do you think this is falling apart? What do you see happening? I see you’re doing this. I see you’re doing that, and this is how the kids are performing. So where do you think the gap is? What could we work on here that would be the best way for me to help you? Complaints are a good place to work together on. So if the teacher complains, you can use that as an opportunity to dig in further and understand better what the issues are. For example, let’s say that your teacher is complaining about how students don’t have any stamina. Like, you know, if they start their test, they don’t ever

Chrissy Beltran [00:11:38]:

finish anything. They run out of energy. They’re very distracted, and they, you know, all all the things that we might hear. You can say, you know what? That is such a common issue with kids. I mean, these assessments that we’re asking them to do are actually really long and and probably not age appropriate at all. Right? So what can we do to build stamina? Let’s think about this. Together, we will figure something out. And then you dig in together and you work on that problem. But we can’t just say, yeah. I mean, sometimes we handle it in one or two different ways. One is we say, well, yeah. I mean, they’re kids. Right? And so if we don’t make them do it, they’re not gonna do it. And then the other the other way we might the other thing that we might do and respond is something along the lines of, you know, that’s what’s really hard. What else can we work on? And we might be overwhelmed by their problem. Right? But what we have to do is say, we can figure this out together and then mean it and really do it with the teacher as a partner. My second way that I’m sharing with you about in of working with data and using it to inform your coaching cycles is looking at data from student work that you’ve reviewed during a PLC together. So in this case, you would score the student work together. You can use a process like the one in my course, the confident literacy coach, or another process that you use at your school. Basically, you have the teachers use a common scoring guide or rubric or tool, and it’s kind of calibrated, and then they discuss what they see and what they observe as they score student work. Once you’ve collected data from each classroom, it can give you an idea of the strengths and weaknesses that can actually frame your coaching work, not only for individual teachers, but that whole PLC. Right? When we’re thinking about coaching cycles, of course, we’re mostly talking about individual teachers, though. So this can help guide, like, in this individual classroom, this is how I can support this teacher. Another way to use data, the third way, is to use data from observations that you have made in the classroom. So let’s say that you’re in the middle of a coaching cycle. This is how we can use data during the coaching cycle to inform our work together. When we do classroom work as a second step in the coaching cycle, that usually takes a form of modeling, co teaching, or observing. Okay? Once you’re in a coaching cycle, data can be a really helpful tool to figure out where to go next Because sometimes you’re like, I what do we need to do next? I don’t know. What do I need to look for here? So the best thing

Chrissy Beltran [00:14:05]:

that I have found is to make sure that teachers know exactly what you’re looking for when you’re doing that classroom work. Let’s say you’re you’re observing. Okay? Your teachers need to know exactly what you’re looking for and how it will be recorded. So, basically, the idea is that whether you or the teacher recorded the interactions, you’d both come up with the same data because it’s so clear how it’s going to be recorded on a document. Then whenever you debrief together, you go back and look at the data that was recorded, and you use that to notice patterns, notice trends, to figure out what you can work on next based on what you see from students and teaching interactions on those form in that data. So I actually have some data forms that will help you do this. These are, like, documents that you can use whenever you do a coaching cycle and you work with a teacher and you record the exact interactions or processes that you see going on in the classroom. There’s a bunch of different tools you can use for this, and I have several of them in my instructional coaching mega pack That’s actually on TpT as well. If you go to teacherspayteachers.com, search for Chrissy Beltran, buzzing with miss b, and look at my mega pack resource. It’s my best selling instructional coaching resource because it has so many great tools for you, and some of them some of these ones I’m about to talk about are in the mega pack. So here’s one way to collect data during a coaching cycle so that you can guide your work together. One is class management data. You can record the redirection that the teacher has to make and how much time is spent on each one. Another is the lesson alignment data. Record everything that’s done and then go back to mark lesson alignment patterns. Is the target aligned to the activity, aligned to the instruction, aligned to the assessment? Are they actually aligned, or are we moving off course here? A different kind of way to collect data during your observations is student participation. It’s really simple, and I really like this one. You just have a class ross a class seating chart that you draw on your form, and then you record tallies to see who the teacher is calling on. The academic language form helps you record data on a seating chart which academic language is used. So then you’ve got your seating chart, and then you mark on there, oh, this student said boil, this student said melting point, this student said liquid, this said solid. You record that academic language, and that way you can see who is doing the talking using the language of of of the study that they’re doing so that you can talk to the teacher afterwards and say, what are some ways that we can get language into the kids’ mouths,

Chrissy Beltran [00:16:42]:

and how do they actually engage with this language so that we are not the only ones using the words that they are? Another form that I really like is time management, and you record how much time is spent on each task. I’ve used this for teachers whenever they’re like, I don’t know where my time is going. I am not able to fit everything in. So then I sit and I document how many like, this from eight zero three to eight zero seven, you were handing out materials. From 08:07 to 08:11, you were reminding students of the directions. From 08:11 to 08:22, you were having a discussion. Like, I mark each time frame and exactly what took happens during that period so that way we can say, well, where’s your time going? Well, you spent a lot of time in any kind of materials. You don’t have very long in your class period. So what’s a better way that we can approach this so that kids have access to what they need and you don’t spend all your time handing it out? Another strategy that I really like is from Diane Sweeney, and it’s called you pick four. In this one, the teacher chooses four students for the coach to watch and really observe closely and record everything that they do. And you can just divide a paper into fourths or, probably be better to divide front and back into halves on paper because that way you have more space to work with, and you record everything that they do and say. The last one is scripted dialogue. In this one, the coach records exactly what the teacher and student said in order. So that way we can see teacher said this, student said this, and we can see the connection. Those are different ways that you can collect data during your observations in a coaching cycle, and I really recommend you try some of them out because I have found that using different tools during that time can be so helpful for us to to really collect specific data tied to the issue that we’re seeing or that the teacher is seeing so we know what to do next. If we don’t really focus in on the problem and figure out exactly what’s going wrong, then we can’t figure out how to make it go right. Another way to use data during a coaching cycle is to look at student work after or even really during a lesson that you’ve modeled, co taught, or observed. So to do this, you and the teacher have collected the student work, and you lay it out in front of you. It could be an exit ticket, a writing sample, or really anything you had done with students to capture how they were responding to what you’re teaching. It should be aligned to the learning target or objective of the lesson. And an important part of this dialogue that

Chrissy Beltran [00:19:05]:

you’re having with the teacher is looking at the student work and saying, what does this tell you? This gives the teacher the opportunity to think through what they’re seeing and what it means for their teaching, and it builds that thought process. Whenever you have these dialogues with teachers, you are are growing their academic language and their academic thinking really about the way that we look at student work and what it tells us about our next steps. So discuss with the teacher the observations that you have because this is how we’re supporting their academic learning and their thinking. Sort the work into piles. You could have different piles, like students who are getting it, those who are not, or maybe students who are showing they’ve mastered the skill, those who need some reteaching or new strategies, those who are unsure of how to start, and then figure out the next steps that you need for your coaching work together based on what you’ve collected. Modeling your thinking around this sorting work is so beneficial, and it encourages the teacher to start thinking differently about how they consider student work and its role in their own teaching. Here are a couple other method methods of collecting student assessment data during a coaching cycle. This is a more formal way. It whether it’s a short or a long assessment based on your work together, you’re gonna create an assessment that is aligned to the learning targets, that is aligned explicitly to what kids are expected to be able to do. Common assessments work really well for this. Okay? And I’ve I’ve done this with common assessments. Those are assessments that the grade level does or the the team does across the board so that people can actually compare things and talk about what’s going on in different places, and they have, like, a common experience. So you could also do this, though, with shorter, multiple choice exit tickets or mini quizzes. Anything, like, brief that you give is okay. It just has to be basically right or wrong is what you’re looking at. So from here, you take percentages. You fig like, you score it, basically, and you figure out strengths and weaknesses. It helps you understand specific areas students need continued support in, and then you can use that to plan your next steps that you’re going to do with the classroom teacher. So if you’re seeing that students still need support, maybe they’re doing really well with with adding numbers that don’t require regrouping. But once you get to regrouping, they really struggle. And so you know, okay. I’m gonna continue to work with you on different ways to teach students how to regroup so that their mathematical knowledge grows. It gives you a focus for your work together. And, again, it models for the teacher how to use student assessment data and turn that into your next lesson. However, something to keep in mind is

Chrissy Beltran [00:21:32]:

that student success isn’t an indicator that the teacher doesn’t need support anymore. Okay? That can create a couple of problems. The first one is that the teacher thinks they only need support when students are struggling. That happens sometimes. We say, okay. The kids are doing great. I’ll see you later. Right? But then the teacher goes, oh, well, I guess whenever the kids are struggling, I need help. But other than that, I’m I mean, as long as as everybody’s fine, I’m fine. I don’t need to learn a single thing. The other thing is we’re saying that student success means the teacher is ready to be independent. But in reality, if you’re doing the teaching, if you’re co teaching with them, if you’re modeling, you’re partially responsible for that success students had demonstrated. So if you cut the teacher off at that moment, you’re basically dropping the ball, and the teacher could just return to their previous ways and that success will stop. We’ll talk about using the gradual release model for instructional coaching in an episode coming up that I’m really looking forward to sharing with you. But I did wanna mention that while some teachers will work with you for a short time and then take the experience and run with it, many need a more gradual release of responsibility for the learning to really be implemented well and consistently. So don’t fall into the trap of seeing one good set of assessment scores and saying, perfect. You’re on your own. Bye. Okay. My last tips are for using coaching cycle data after a coaching cycle. Okay? You’re collecting data to determine how effective a cycle was and trying to figure out what the impact on the teacher was. This is a really great way to use time to use pre and post assessment. So you can use a pre assessment for the students and a post assessment, and that can help you gauge how effective that that unit or series of lessons were that you worked on with the teacher. That’s really about how the students are responding. When you think about the teacher, collecting teacher data can be done through a rubric and think you can ask them questions like how often do they do certain practices in your classroom. For example, well, before we started this unit, how often did you, did you use manipulatives to teach math concepts? Now that we’ve completed this unit, how often do you see yourself using manipulatives? You can ask them about their comfort level. At the beginning, how comfortable did you feel with, independent reading time? Now how comfortable do you feel with independent reading time? You can get responses via a Google form or you can use SurveyMonkey, but Google forms are free and easy. Everybody knows how to use it, and it’ll often tie into whatever platform you’re already using. In many schools, they use Google stuff. So I would recommend Google Form

Chrissy Beltran [00:23:58]:

over SurveyMonkey because SurveyMonkey costs money after a certain time after a certain number of responses to get access to that data. I recommend you use the same form, one labeled before and one labeled after so that way you can compare your data cleanly. You can take this and turn it into a presentation if you need to. You can use it to justify your role or the amount of time that you spend in classrooms rather than doing clerical stuff that they often throw instructional coaches over to when they don’t know what else to do with you or where they don’t have anybody else to cover that other work. Those are my big tips for today. This was all about how you can use your data from the beginning to the end of a coaching cycle. Again, you can use it to identify areas of need or classrooms of need before you start work. You can use it to identify what students need to work on after looking at work during a PLC. During your actual coaching cycle, you can use data from observations to guide your work together. You can use student work data after a lesson you modeled, co taught, or observed. You can collect student assessment data during coaching cycles using short assessments, and you can also use data to justify the effectiveness or to see the effectiveness of your coaching cycle on a classroom by doing pre and post form, format or surveys from teachers. The next steps for you is to grab the free download at buzzmovementsb.com/episode120two. In that free download, I include some coaching cycle tools and forms, and you can grab it and start working with teachers on coaching cycles. I also have a resource in my TBT store that’s all about coaching cycle forms. So you look for, again, my store, coaching cycle forms, and it’s got so many helpful tools that will really guide your coaching cycle work with teachers. You can learn more about this topic in episode three, the coaching cycle in six easy steps, episode 87, getting teachers to initiate coaching cycles, Episode one twenty, facilitating a data PLC. And you can check out student driven coaching that you those books are by Diane Sweeney, and they’re excellent to learn more about those strategies of looking at work together during cycles. In episode one twenty three, we’re talking about how to collect and use behavior data during coaching cycle. I know that we’re gonna we just have this season, this whole month we’re gonna have coming up about behavior, but I wanted to pull out just this specific episode about analyzing behavior data with teachers, because sometimes we don’t know how to approach management support during a coaching cycle. So this episode will give you specific strategies for collection and some ideas for analyzing it and implementing your collaborated ideas in the classrooms that you’re coaching. So that’s what’s coming up next week, analyzing behavior

Chrissy Beltran [00:26:52]:

data with teachers and until then happy coaching.

Chrissy Beltran [00:27:01]:

Thank you for listening to buzzing with Ms. B, the coaching podcast. Want more coaching ideas? Check me out at buzzingwithmissb.com and on Instagram at buzzing with miss b. If you love the show, share it with a coach who would love it too, or leave me a review on iTunes. It’s free, and it helps others find this show. Happy coaching.