Coaching Teachers Who Don’t Think Like You with Ashley Hubner, Ep. 136 Buzzing with Ms. B: The Coaching Podcast

Coaching Teachers Who Don’t Think Like You with Ashley Hubner, Ep. 136 Buzzing with Ms. B: The Coaching Podcast

buzzing with ms b  00:02

Hey coach and welcome to episode 136 coaching teachers who don’t think like you. When I started out as a brand new, squeaky clean coach, I had absolutely no idea of what was going on beyond my classroom door, and let alone what was going on past the door to my school building. I had given professional development to teachers at my school and collaborated during PLCs and served on so many committees and cadres and led teams. But I had spent very little time and other people’s classrooms. I mean, really, I can think of the times that I visited other teachers on my campus. And I had spent no time at all in classrooms at other schools. This is actually, in my opinion, a really, really big problem. In our education system that we go to teach, we close our door, we do our thing. Everybody else is doing their own thing. Even if we try to get aligned, what does that really look like we don’t see what people teach, like in their classrooms and what things look like rather than just talking about them, because whenever we talk about them, it doesn’t always look like what we picture. So once I became a coach and I moved to a school about 15 miles away from my school that I was a teacher at. I was expecting classrooms to look a lot like my classroom had or at least what I had seen at my school. And I figured teachers who had been sitting in the same district PDS as I had for the last 10 years would have had them of the same language and structures that I did, and that we’d all be working towards the same sorts of things. But I was very wrong about that. Whenever I started at this new school, I was smacked in the face with culture shock. Everything was so different from my classroom. And many things were different than I’d ever seen or even heard about at any place at my school. And I slowly started to realize, Oh my gosh, we are all coming at this from very different places. So I can definitely empathize with anyone who is struggling to coach teachers who don’t think like you do. I have been there I have gone through that process. And, and I know it’s really challenging. So the thing is, we’re here to coach all teachers and grow all teachers, not just the ones that we happen to like naturally jive with, right? Yes, I just said jive. If

buzzing with ms b  02:13

he’s wondering, I do occasionally use that word. I was not around in the 70s. But I think it’s a terrific word. So I like it. Anyway. So what do we do? Whenever we are struggling with this, okay, first, I have a really great free email challenge for you. It’s called coaching resistant teachers. Sometimes those teachers aren’t always resistant, but we perceive it as resistance, because they’re coming at things from such a different direction. So I want you to check that out in the show notes. If you go to buzzing witness b.com/episode 134 and scroll to the bottom, you will find that actually 136 Sorry, Episode 136. Scroll to the bottom, you will find that free download where you can sign up for the handout and the little videos that will come every day during the week. It’s a week long, it’s fantastic. And a lot of people have told me they’ve gotten really great results from that. On top of that I have a guest today who’s going to help us think of some different ways that we can approach this issue.

buzzing with ms b  03:09

Ashley Hubner as a person behind access, coaching and the author of foundations of instructional coaching. So thank you so much for being here with us, Ashley. Thank you. I’m happy to be here today. Would you get started by introducing yourself a little bit to our listeners and talk a little bit about, you know, how you ended up doing, what you’re doing and what kind of work you focus on now? Yeah, so I started in Texas and Texas public education within the elementary level, and I was a classroom teacher. And then after going back and getting my master’s in curriculum instruction, I moved into a math specialist role

Ahley Hubner  03:43

in and that’s where I kind of started my foundational work of instructional coaching, it was more organic and unintentional. But as I was working with teachers on creating intervention plans, and working with tier two, and tier three students started

Ahley Hubner  04:01

unintentionally coaching teachers on tier one instruction in the classroom for math, and working with them to kind of fill those gaps before the kids got moved to tier two and tier three. And so that’s kind of where my coaching started, after some family changes, got married, decided to have kids moved to a smaller town outside of the school district that I was working at. And I became an Instructional Coach K through six on elementary campus, all content areas. And this experience of my life. I was on that campus for seven years is really what built the foundation of my book that I wrote about.

Ahley Hubner  04:39

And then again, more family. Things happen and we moved to Florida from Texas, so I left the Texas public school system, and that is we’re excited to kind of go out on my own and start my exit coaching and consulting. And so I started working, contract work with companies school

Ahley Hubner  05:00

districts, individual teachers, whoever there was a need for that reached out to me and started coaching, virtually leading professional development, and mentor training, training mentors and started working a lot of conferences, and then published my book. And right now I’m Paul contract with a company called reimagine classroom. And we I essentially coach and train curriculum teams to write curriculum content or create professional development for clients nationwide, depending on what they what they need. So that’s kind of where I am now. My passion is coaching and professional development. I mean, I love working with educators. I love learning and growing. I think collaboration is a key factor in our continued growth in our profession. We, we can’t stop learning or growing because our kids are ever changing. The world is ever changing. And so I just I, that’s what I love about education. And that’s what I love to do.

buzzing with ms b  06:00

I love it. Yeah, it definitely keeps your brain busy. Right. It’s not something you can learn how to do. Let’s move on. What part of Texas were you from? Because I’m actually from El Paso, Texas. Well, I’m from Dallas, but I live in El Paso.

Ahley Hubner  06:11

Okay, so I grew up in East Texas I taught in Duncanville. ISD with my beginning right outside of Dallas, and then we moved to ruffle ISD. So a little bit more northeast.

buzzing with ms b  06:25

Okay, great. Yeah, I was, I was born in Irving, I lived in DeSoto until I was seven. And then I moved to Cedar Hill until I was 16. And then we moved here to El Paso. Ya know, a

Ahley Hubner  06:38

lot of the things stomping grounds.

buzzing with ms b  06:39

Yes. Right. So sometimes whenever we move into the position of instructional coach, it can be really eye opening, right. And I just I, in my little introduction, I talked a little bit about my experience, moving from your classroom bubble, you know, maybe you see a grade level, maybe you see a couple of classrooms on your on your campus. But you don’t spend a lot of time in other classrooms as a teacher, unfortunately, right, we should spend more time. So one of the ways that I experienced this culture shock was I realized how many different approaches and views and mindsets and philosophies teachers had been bringing to the table when they approach their work. So I would love if you could talk a little bit about how different teachers approach their work, and why sometimes it feels like we’re not speaking the same language.

Ahley Hubner  07:19

Yeah, I definitely experienced that too. With a positive and a negative experience with that, I remember my principal always told me, actually, what happens inside of your four walls isn’t the same thing. It happens in everybody else’s four walls. And you don’t really see that until you do get out there, outside of the classroom where you’re stepping in and out of all these classrooms day to day, just like the administrators on your campus, or even then the extra people like the ESL teacher that comes in your classroom, or the special ed person who pushes in, and they see all of these things. But I think a lot of it has to do with it. Everybody has a different background and experience. And everybody bring who they are to their classroom. Teaching is a very personal profession. And I find that it is very personalized by every teacher based on their knowledge base based on how they were taught based on what they liked and didn’t like about school. So I think all the different attributes of you know, their cultural background, their education background, where did they grow up? Where did they go to school, what is their learning style and their preference, kind of molded them into who they are and what their teacher craft looks like, and what they implement in the classroom. And I know that they can be exposed to a lot of different philosophies of teaching or different types of methods. But they ultimately kind of like pick and choose the ones that they really like. And so I think that’s where we get this very diverse sense of what could be happening in every classroom, because each person, each teacher kind of makes it their own, depending on you know, what they want.

buzzing with ms b  08:58

That’s very true. We kind of take things through our lens of okay, we think this is good, we think this is not so if something, we kind of get to our filter, it’s because we have approved it and said, Yeah, this mesh is makes sense to me. And so changing the way that we approached, maybe we would be open to other kinds of methods. But if we approach thinking about our teaching, we might be open to different kinds of methods. But if we’re just kind of like, you know, if we haven’t been really called to change a lot about our teaching, sometimes we teach, like you said, the way we were taught, we teach the way that we were taught in college, and whenever you don’t know what to do, studies do actually show that you teach the way that you learned as a child. And, and yeah, when you’re stuck, which is a lot of teachers, as new teachers are like, I don’t know what to do we revert to those practices, because that’s what we’ve seen.

Ahley Hubner  09:41

And yeah, it’s comfortable. And yes, it’s easy. It’s not a push.

buzzing with ms b  09:45

Yes, yeah, it’s not as stressful to try out something totally new that you don’t know how it’s gonna go. And so like keeping that in mind that there are there are some practices that maybe are not ideal that we don’t want to see in classrooms. But one of the challenges that I’ve had as a coach is I’m seeing that teachers who do things very differently than I do. It doesn’t mean necessarily that it’s bad, right? It’s something different isn’t necessarily bad. So how can we move away from that idea and kind of embrace different kinds of teaching, even if it doesn’t look like the way we would do it?

Ahley Hubner  10:18

Yeah, I actually wrote about this in my book, there’s a chapter called Building Relationships hustled, pray, grow. And I talk about my personal experience with a teacher that probably most other educators wouldn’t approve of. And I’ll talk about that a little bit more later. But also talk about my role as a coach and how at first, I did judge teachers. And in my book, I said, like, we shouldn’t be doing that this is a collaborative profession, we need to learn how to work together and take each teacher’s craft and grow it. And so one of the chapters I talked about compassionate accountability, and it was an experience with a teacher that was very strict. And to the point that it was kind of wearing down some of the children, like their personalities didn’t match. And so in this instance, I had to think about, how can I meet her where she is? How can I use her craft, and her expectation of herself as a teacher and blend that to create a better environment for students. So I can use this concept of strength based coaching, and not removing what made her her, but also showed her the why behind, maybe we need to try to things a little bit different. And in this scenario, actually just kind of shared with her some of the things that her students shared with me. And honestly, it surprised her, she didn’t realize how her persona and personality are rough, you know, outside was was rubbing off on students. And so it did push her to say, Okay, well, what can I do? And so we came up with this coaching of compassionate accountability and really worked on love and logic, and how do we hold students accountable? Because they should be held accountable. So we’re still going to give you you have high expectations for your students, and we’re still going to let them have these high expectations. But how are we also going to love them and show them that we love them through that, because that’s the piece that they’re missing. They know you have a higher expectation, but they don’t feel the love. So how do we bring that in? So I think when we start to have this mindset of that’s different. And maybe we start to feel that it might be bad, I would challenge coaches to rethink their thoughts and say, what is good in this scenario? What is this teacher strength? And what can I use to then blend that into something that will produce better results, depending on what the issue is that we see going on in the classroom, whether it’s classroom environment, student relationships, maybe it’s data, maybe there’s an instructional practice that they are just tied to, I have a teacher who is all about project based learning. But if we’re not implementing it the right way, then we’re not getting the results that we want, as far as you know, on assessments or things like that. So, okay, they love project based learning, but then how do we tweak these things to get the results that we want? I’m not going to take it away from you. But how are we going to make it better? So that’s kind of the approach that I’ve used?

buzzing with ms b  13:26

Yeah, I like that. I love that idea of coming in with, like the framework of I’m going to see what’s good here so that we can use those strengths, like you said, strength based coaching to grow the areas that maybe need continue some change, you know, because we do have a way of looking at teachers and generalizing and saying, Okay, this is not good. This is not good. This is not good. This is a bad teacher, right? That’s something that people don’t usually say it but the feeling might be there, the sentiment is there. And whenever you look at a classroom, you say, I wouldn’t want my kid in this room, it’s it can be hard to change the way that you think and say, Okay, well then, but what how can I approach these you cannot coach somebody that you think is, quote, bad, they’re not going to want to work with you. It comes out one way or another. Right, the feeling right comes out in your work. So what is is there like a mindset that we can adopt to better coach teachers who think differently from us what is like a big shift that we need to make?

Ahley Hubner  14:21

I think about might sound cliche, but I think that growth mindset approach like how can we elaborate on what we know as coaches also, to help these teachers, there’s not we, honestly, we are the ones who need all the toolkits in our back pockets. We should know all of the philosophies and approaches so that we understand them better, and think that we have to know who our teachers are, and how was their stall learning how do they grow and learn to then take them and build that craft and ask them to do things differently? You know, we don’t know though. well enough, then. And we’re not giving into them with a growth mindset, then how are we going to ask them to give us a growth mindset and try something different. You mentioned like not wanting a student in that classroom, your child in that classroom. And one of the stories I wrote about with me as a personal child having a very rigorous and strict teacher to the point where I thought she was rude. But that year, I learned and grew so much, because she held me to such high level of expectations. And I was the kind of achiever that I always wanted to prove that I could do it. And I wanted to prove you wrong. And so even though maybe you weren’t, you were a little bit more. The feedback was a one on one, it I guess I could say that way, or didn’t come to me the way I wanted the feedback, I was always going to live up to those expectations and say, Well, I’m still gonna make 100 on time. And even if you are giving me this criticism, I can still do it. So it didn’t break my soul were other kids, it might break their soul. And so knowing who you are as a teacher, and knowing who your students are, also can change the way that you adapt to those situations. And that was kind of what I took with the teacher that I worked with, was, you know, every student is different. They all have different personalities. And so they’re all going to need a different teacher. There’s not a one size fits all. And so although we might think we know what the ideal good teacher is, that’s not necessarily going to be that good teacher, for every student, depending on what their needs are.

buzzing with ms b  16:34

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Coming to that growth mindset idea, having the idea of this is what a good teacher is. And I’m doing air quotes, because it’s not like you said this, there’s not one standard thing, it’s like when like, categorizing something as good and bad, is kind of like the easy way out. And it’s kind of whatever you just follow your feelings, that’s my net might be where you end up. But there might be good things that are going on in that room that certain kids really benefit from, and you don’t want to take that away either. So coming back to that growth mindset ideas really important, actually did an episode on the podcast about that this season, just a few few weeks ago, Episode 133, about growth mindset and instructional coaching, because we do we bring so much of our experience with us that it can be really easy to kind of put people into boxes, you know. So I’m wondering about, about common language, and to me, like establishing a common language. Whenever I first started coaching, the knee became very clear. I felt like it was very, because we were all using different words. I mean, I can even remember sitting and talking to people about word study. And sometimes like, what’s word study? Is that like spelling is that what what do you mean? I don’t know what you’re talking about. And so that was a big hurdle for us. So in your experience, how important is common language when it comes to to coaching teachers who think differently from you? And how can we build that language? If it is that important? What are some things that we can do?

Ahley Hubner  17:52

I do think common language is very important. I do think it’s not isolated within coaching, but it is, school community needs to all have the same common language. I think it brings clarity for all stakeholders, whether it’s the teachers, the administrators, the community, the students, like everyone needs to have the same kind of understanding of what is our Campus Framework? What is it that we do? And what is that terminology that we use? I think it brings a lot of clarity and transparency for everyone involved in the learning community. So I think the first of all, you have to identify that as a team, like whether that the committee, or a leadership team doesn’t start with. I know, in my case, with my seven year old on a one campus that I was on, a lot of it came from Admin working with instructional coaches to kind of find, okay, what is the math framework? And what is the terminology we’re going to use? What is what is our literacy framework look like? And what and we define that for teachers. And so first, you kind of have to create that map in that plan, have that language in place, and then then it goes to teacher training, okay, this is what we’ve decided who we are as a district. And what we do, this is our full name way, this is the way that we do it, and training them on that, and making sure that everybody kind of has the same terminology. And even in the educational world, you go online and you start Googling terms. This one term is synonymous to this other term. And this is synonymous to another term. And so I think if we start trying to dig, and look at all of it is a lot of it is all the same thing. It’s similar. It just has a different spin on it. So what terminology are we going to use and what are we going to call it and just make it more explicit and break it down? Because it’s, there’s too much to get involved in all of the pieces. And I had this conversation this week, we have talked about design planning, backwards planning PBL trans transdisciplinary learning, cross curricular connections integration I like so many of these things are really kind of the same thing. So just one person or company or whatever, put a different name to it. And it’s the same thing. So create that for your school community and your culture, and what is it for us? And what are we calling it?

buzzing with ms b  20:18

Yeah, I think that’s so important. And that’s kind of an ongoing process. I mean, it comes about through through PLCs, and discussion and, and pulling out the language people use and identifying what what structures are important and how we’re going to build, like you said, your framework, what components you’re going to include, and what those really look like. I mean, it takes a really long time for that to happen. It doesn’t happen. It’s not like you can just say, Okay, this is we’re gonna follow this structure. And this is what it is, and everybody suddenly buys in and understands it. Actually, that’s probably like, the worst way to do it, because nobody was interested in doing that. So yeah, if you can get people to communicate and share and then over time you use the language, they use the language you have even like matching activities where people can match the words with with, you know, what it looks like, and you watch each other teach and action and look at videos, you can see oh, this is what we mean, whenever we say phonemic awareness. This is what the lesson looks like, you know, it really does take time and effort. And so that could be like a major component of your PLCs. And your PD is making sure you’re coming back to the same things over and over again, so that people get multiple exposures and the opportunity to really solidify their understanding about those things.

Ahley Hubner  21:26

Yeah, it takes, like two years. Yeah, yes,

buzzing with ms b  21:29

exactly. years. Yes, absolutely. Whatever people ask me about because we should do collaborative planning and PLC every week. And the first year I dreaded Tuesday’s because that was the day we did it. And like I said, we’ve we were all speaking different languages, sometimes literally, okay, I live in a bilingual community. I am not fluent in Spanish, I speak very little Spanish, I can read better than I can speak it. And, and so sometimes the conversation would, you know, move in a different language, and I’m like, Guys, I, you’re gonna have to, you’re gonna have to treat me, you know, like a monolingual English student here, because I don’t have it. So, but yeah, those days were very stressful for me at first, and I’m sure they were stressful for teachers too, because they were like, great, we get to go into this meeting and talk to this person who has no idea what we’re talking about. And we have no idea what she’s talking about. And, and they had never planned together. And so it took, it did take a couple of years. And then after a while, I actually started to really look forward to Tuesdays, which sounds shocking, that, that I would love PLC, but I did I love planning. And so once we were kind of on the same page as far as what we were trying to accomplish, and what that can look like and what structures we were using. And we have like a set of strategies that we would frequently use so that we had that common language as well. It was really enjoyable. But until you get to that point, it is not always enjoyable. So in terms of building common ground with teachers who, who don’t think like us who are thinking very differently, that have a different, very different background, what are some some actions that we can take? Because sometimes we’re like, okay, I know, I need to build a relationship with this person. I know, I need to reach out, but we don’t always know what to do.

Ahley Hubner  23:06

Yeah, I think first it is going to start with the empathy and, and listening. And having those conversations, think understanding their viewpoints, and what they’re thinking, and then comparing it to what you’re trying to propose or create with this, this common language. I think a lot of times when we actually sit and just listen to someone explain, you start to realize that some of the things that they’re saying are exactly what you’re saying, but in a different way. And so I think if you can then build that connection between the two and decide, okay, we are talking about the same thing, or this is very similar to this. So what are we going to identify this? And what are we going to call this and build that common ground. But I think that as a coach, building relationships is so foundational in having the buy in as well, to that common language. And I always go back to even when I was a teacher in the classroom, the most important thing is your audience, your who and so when you really know your students, you do the best teaching when you really know your teacher, and you do the best coaching. So taking that time to sit and have those conversations and listen to them. And, you know, sometimes a PLC, in my case ended up just a dialogue and conversation the whole entire time, because we just had to have those conversations to figure out what we were trying to do, and everybody got a voice in it. And then we could come to some common ground and decide what we were going to do moving forward.

buzzing with ms b  24:41

Do you use any structures for talking during PLC, like any discussion structures, or do you just kind of have an open dialogue?

Ahley Hubner  24:48

Um, I don’t know if I ever started with any. Um, I think I think we just talked like I just opened it out. What I noticed a lot is that one, there’s all different kinds of teachers, there’s one teacher who wants to share her voice on everything and wants to be heard. Let her share. Two, there’s the teacher who sit there silently doesn’t say anything, but they’re thinking a lot of things in their head. That’s the teacher I go to after the PLC and say, come sit with me, we’re gonna have a one on one conversation. What didn’t you say today that you wanted to say like, what what was going on in your mind. And then there’s those ones that will fill out a survey and honest enough, anonymously and won’t, you know, speak up, and then you get that input. So looking at the various inputs that you can get, but also pushing towards that safe place, where they feel like it’s okay to share out. And so I worked really hard to build those one on one relationships with my teachers, so that when they came to PLCs, they felt like it was okay to share out. And it might have been a conversation that happened before the PLC, where a teacher told me, I really want to tell you what I think, but I don’t want to tell you in front of our principals, okay, I would tell her not to come, let’s have a conversation. And I would go to the principal, and I would say, hey, look, I want to share some things with me, they feel more comfortable. If you’re not, like no offense or anything, let me have this conversation with them. And then let me debrief with you about it. And then my, my leadership was very open to trying things that would help our teachers grow. And so if that was something that need to happen, and we needed to have that dialogue, where they felt in a safe place, and could really share their thoughts. And then I could then summarize that and debrief with my principal, and then problem solve that situation and see how we can move forward, where then they heard their voice was heard, okay, what are we going to do next step. And then they feel more comfortable the next time that the administration is in there, because they know that I have come together and created a plan for them, I’ve heard you, I’ve seen you, this is what we’re going to do. So take whatever it takes to create that safe place for them. So that then they feel like things are gonna happen, I think that was one of the things is they felt like they might say some things, but either they were gonna get judged for it, or nothing was going to come of it. So why say anything, so you have to prove to them that, okay, something is gonna come of it, and no, you’re not going to be judged. So breaking down those obstacles and the barriers of those conceptions that they may have, if they share your voice.

buzzing with ms b  27:22

I absolutely agree with that whenever you serve as kind of an intermediary between teachers and admin, and you can take something the teachers voicing, even if it’s something that you’re like, okay, like, Alright, maybe it’s not something you’re super excited about. But you can take it and package it up in a way that the admin is going to respond well to it, because you have that relationship with them. And you kind of see behind the scenes, what it is that they go, Oh, that makes sense. And when it is that they’re like, are you serious, we’re not, we’re never, ever going to do that. So you can kind of package it in an appropriate way just to communicate it in a positive, that’s kind of a positive method. And that way, they can respond positively. So you can take it back to the teacher and say, Okay, we got to go ahead. Yes, they said that we can, we’re going to take a look at this, we’re going to address this issue. Thank you so much for sharing it with you with me. If you can serve in that role teachers trust you, like your trust level multiplies, you know, exponentially it’s, it’s crazy how much of an impact that can have on your relationship with a teacher, even if you’re maybe you’re advocating for something that isn’t something that you would that you would do, it is something that is important to them.

Ahley Hubner  28:29

Yeah, I found too, that if you have the trust from your teacher, and you have your trust from your admin also kind of served as that filter. So I got to a point where I felt comfortable when they would come to me and say things I would look at and go. Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. Thanks for sharing. Right? How are you going to tell you that’s like, like, I remember as a child filtering in my head. What were the things I could ask my parents, I knew they were gonna say yes to the things I’m saying no to. And if I knew they were gonna say, No, I didn’t even ask. So I became that filter. Also, I’m like, great idea. That’s not going to happen this year, maybe next year, we’ll talk about that, keep it in your pocket. But because I fed into them multiple positives, then when I gave them the negative, it wasn’t like I was depleting their bucket, you know, and so, if you continue to build that relationship, and you continue to feed into them, when you have to intervene on that, you know, on that kind of scope where you have to say no, or you have negative feedback or something like that. It’s not, it doesn’t kill them. You know, they’re like, Okay, I’ll give you this one, you know?

buzzing with ms b  29:29

Yeah, yeah, you can say, you know, I just don’t see this happening. Maybe we can figure out something else that might have, like, more likelihood of not getting shot down. Yeah, yeah, totally. I remember one time a teacher told me she said we want to do this and we thought maybe you could just after I’d been there for you know, was working similar group of teachers for like, four years. Maybe you could take it to the principal, because I said, Well, I can share it. I don’t know what she’ll say to that. You know, some because she was kind of an affinity in a mood. That was a little unpredictable. So I’m not sure what she’s gonna say that, but I will definitely take it to her. And we’ll see if we can figure something out. She says, yeah, it’s because I feel like you know, on My Big Fat Greek Wedding that you know, the movie. And I feel like, you know that scene where the the woman says the man is the head, but the woman is the neck and the neck tells the head where to go. She goes, I feel like you’re the neck. I don’t know if it’s to that degree, but I will definitely take a tour and see what we can do. So yeah, if you can build that relationship with teachers, where they really do trust you to take something even if it’s not, I mean, it’s even better if it’s something that’s not something you’ve been pushing for. If it’s something you’ve wanted them to do, then it’s not sincere, if it’s something that comes from them, and they really do need something from you and from the admin, and that’s a great, that’s a great strategy to be that go between. And yeah, honestly tell them, I don’t think it’s gonna fly this time. But let’s figure out something else. I love it. Is there anything else that you can think of that we haven’t talked about anything really important that coaches need to know about coaching teachers who, who think differently from them?

Ahley Hubner  31:01

Well, I just I kind of want to emphasize the the fact that we cannot change people’s minds. No, not all the time. And we can’t make them do something they don’t want to do, especially by using force. So one of the things that I really keep in my heart is that as coaches, we are an impactor and we are an influencer. And so I always ask the question, you can’t change it, but how can you impact it? Or how can you influence it? In my book, there’s a chapter called gentle accountability. And it’s all about how do we hold people accountable for things that need to happen in a gentle way. And that’s through our impact and our influence? And you know, there’s different types of teachers, some who need to see it to believe it first, there’s ones who need to know why there’s ones that need to know, you need to hear the testimonies, you know, so I think, again, you get to know your who you get to know how they work, then you can use those tools to help build that buy in and genuinely hold people accountable for the things that that need to happen.

buzzing with ms b  32:07

That’s, that’s awesome. You’re right, because sometimes coaches are put in that position of, of accountability, and how do we make change happen if we don’t have any way to hold people accountable for change at all, but we can just just by our very nature, by the way that we communicate, by the way that we act, we can hold people accountable in ways that are not, Hey, you didn’t get this done? Let’s go, you know, there’s, there’s a different way to carry yourself. And I love that you bring that up. It’s awesome. Thank you so much for everything that you’ve shared about today. I, we I started to add a question to the podcast that somebody actually a listener actually said, Maybe this everybody can share something fun or special that they love. And so I’ve added the question of what is your favorite thing right now. And it doesn’t, it can be a book, movie, podcast activity, wherever you’d like, what is something that you’re loving right now,

Ahley Hubner  32:54

those two things I want to hear. Because it’s right after the New Years. And I’m all about trying to create balance in your life. And so I have a big physical piece that I’m loving right now, it is called the workout for women app. And it has workouts is short and seven minutes. So like literally, I had a seven minute break earlier today, I went and hopped down on the floor. And then when that seven minute workout, if I have another 10 minute break today, I might stop and do a 10 minute workout. Because my world has become very virtual, I sent for the computer a lot. And so I need to get that active back into my life. The other one is a book by that barrel master. It’s called leading with a humble heart. And it’s a 40 day devotional for educational leaders. And so that feeds the spiritual side of me right now. And so those creating that balance between the physical, the spiritual and my workaholic self that I am, it kind of keeps me balanced, and keeps my mind right throughout the day so that when I do get done with work, I have the capacity to love on my family and do things with my kids and all of that, and I’m not burnout. So those are two of the things I want to share.

buzzing with ms b  34:07

Thank you so much for this recommendation. That’s terrific. How can people find you online or in the real world if they want to learn more?

Ahley Hubner  34:14

I would say the easiest way is on my website. It’s called coaching access.net. And on there, I have links to all my resources to my book, I have all my social media platforms on there. So I have blogs bought podcast suggestions, and you’re always on there for people to go listen to so that would be the easiest way to find me and connect.

buzzing with ms b  34:38

All right, awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here today. Ashley.

Ahley Hubner  34:42

You’re welcome. Thank you.

buzzing with ms b  34:46

I hope some of that gave you some ideas of things that you can take with you when you try to coach teachers that maybe don’t see eye to eye with you or have very different teaching backgrounds and you do if you are looking for some tool Also check out that coaching visits and teachers email mini course, really is five days plus one or six days plus one of us emails to help you really change your relationship with you that you have with a teacher, that it’s just really the relationship is not working out. So again, that’s it buzzing with Miss b.com/episode 136. It’ll be at the bottom of the show notes for this episode. I also have and I think I mentioned it. Somewhat in this episode, some surveys, we talked a little bit about getting feedback from teachers, you can use the teacher surveys that I have in my TPT store. That’s teacher feedback surveys and forms and that’s at my Teachers Pay teacher’s store, which is Christy Beltran buzzing with MySpace, you can head over there and check those out and add them to your tools that you have to figure out where teachers are coming from so that you can be even better support to them. Next week. I’m really excited because we have a coaching call. We’re going to be talking about building relationships and all of these human sides of coaching things. And so you get to listen in as I speak to a real coach who’s having some challenges in their work, and we’re going to do a little problem solving about it. So that’s going to be episode 137. And until then, happy coaching!