How to Track Your Coaching Work with Krissy Ogletree Edwards, Ep. 143 Buzzing with Ms. B: The Coaching Podcast

Episode 143 – How to Track Your Coaching Work with Krissy Ogletree Edwards

buzzing with ms b  00:01

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. One of the challenges of instructional coaching is finding affordable specialized training that’s designed just for you. That’s why I’m excited to share an online event with you that’s right up your alley. Sibme is hosting a free online conference all about instructional coaching called Better Together. It’s a one day virtual event with dynamic keynote speakers, including Jim Knight, and breakout sessions designed to help you grow as an instructional coach, head to Sibme.com/buzz. To register for this free event. That’s s I B M e.com. Forward slash beat us ZZ Sibme, changing the way people learn at work.

buzzing with ms b  01:12

You’re listening to buzzing with Miss be the coaching podcast where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach. And every coach does too. I’m Chrissy 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.

buzzing with ms b  01:36

Hey, Coach, welcome to another episode of buzzy when this be the coaching podcast, this is episode 143. Tracking your coaching work with Krissy Edwards. I want to share before we get started that I actually have a guide that might be super helpful for you as we start getting a little closer towards the end of the school year. And we’re kind of trying to measure our coaching impact and think about how things have have gone this year, I have a reflecting on your coaching work guide. And that’s at buzzing with MS b.com slash episode 143. So if you go to that address and scroll down to the bottom of the shownotes, the little summary of this episode will be there for you. And you can also listen to this episode there. If you for whatever reason chose to do that. At the very bottom, there’ll be a place for you to enter your email address. And I will send you this reflecting on your coaching work guide that will ask you some questions to think about as you reflect on your work this year. And as you think about your coaching impact, because that is exactly the theme for this season or this next few series a series of episodes, we’re going to talk about your coaching impact and how we can kind of reflect and measure and account for the coaching work to see if we’re having the impact that we want. Sometimes we get to the end of a week of coaching. And we can’t even figure out where all of our time went. We can feel lost or ineffective. And we’re not sure if we’re making an impact on the things that actually matter. And that’s why I wanted to choose this theme to spend a few episodes on at this time of year. And that’s also why I invited this guest to join us. So I had asked in a Facebook group for coaches about how coaches track their work. And Krissy responded with some excellent ideas about using Google Sheets to create your own tracker. So I’m really excited to have her here today. So thank you so much for joining me today. Krissy.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  03:25

Hi, thank you so much for having me today. I’m so excited to be on your podcast.

buzzing with ms b  03:30

Oh, thank you. I’m glad that you’re here too. And I don’t often meet any other Christie’s it’s weird. Isn’t that funny? It’s not a super common name anymore. And so it’s kind of nice to meet another Krissy and have you as a guest

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  03:43

to Christie’s I like it. A great show.

buzzing with ms b  03:47

The show Christie squared today. Yeah, it’s funny actually the person who does handle my podcast show notes she goes by Chrissy as well and it’s kind of weird that I know somebody and my friend Nikolas Turner her daughter goes by Chrissy and I think that’s the most Christie’s I’ve ever known in my whole life

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  04:03

with Nicole Turner Yeah, this is making my my little coaching star strictness even bigger at the moment because I also follow her and all of her exciting things she produces. I actually graduated with two other Christie’s Wow those are the only ones and they were both short for something man is truly just just receivable.

buzzing with ms b  04:26

see mine is short for Christina but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten my Christina a day in my life. Like when I was a kid, I thought Christie was my actual name. But Nicole Turner is a good friend, my good coaching buddy. And we actually did the coffee and coaching membership with each other for two years because it was an online membership for coaches and now we did you know kind of move apart in that way because we each had different responsibilities but I do always participate in the simply coaching Summit and the simply coaching reset so the summit will be coming up again in July. I have this year. So that should be pretty great. And you can buy now you’ll be able to register for that. Yes, thanks. Yeah. So as we get started, we know your name is Christie. But beyond that, if you’d like to introduce yourself, that’d be great. Talk a little bit about who you are, how you ended up here, and what kind of work you focused on right now.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  05:17

Okay, um, well, I’m Krissy Edwards for my whole entire name there. And this is my 19th year overall in education. And let’s say, and it’s my 11th year in my current district, but my eighth year as an instructional coach, I’m a called an instructional partner by my district. But it has evolved over time, the first year that this was a job that was offered in my district, it sprung out of the one to one initiative with iPads and Chromebooks that we were getting in our district. So they created positions for Instructional Technology coaches, which has always been a passion of mine, I did a master’s in computers and applied technology out of the University of Alabama, and was always interested in how we can use technology in education. And I saw that as a perfect opportunity to help the teachers figure out what we’re going to do with these iPads in the classroom. And then just over the last eight years, we have evolved from technology coaches, to instructional coaches, to instructional partners using, you know, Jim Knight’s terminology there, but work COVID has, of course, affected everything. So it’s been a couple of crazy years of not getting to do as much coaching because of the subbing situation. But I love getting in classrooms and partnering with teachers and helping them identify their realities, and their goals or where they want to go from their reality, and the strategies that it takes to get there. Love it,

buzzing with ms b  06:47

that is a good point. That role does change over time. So much, whenever I first started, I was hired as a school wide Project Coordinator, because they hadn’t updated the job description in a really long time. And I remember the principal was like, okay, that’s the title. But that’s what you’re actually going to do is completely different than what your title says. So it’s interesting how that’s changed.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  07:09

Even still, I have a very hard time when I tell people my title, and then they ask, what does that mean, you do that? The answer is just so convoluted, I do just the maryada thing, you know, whatever. They just usually say whatever they need me to do what I do.

buzzing with ms b  07:25

So true. Yeah, that’s very other duties as assigned. That font is very small, but it takes up a lot of space in your work week. And that’s actually kind of what we’re talking about. Today, really, have you shared in this Facebook group, about this fantastic method that you’re using to document your time. And so if you could tell us a little bit about why you decided that you needed to have a record of where your time is gone? I would really love that, because I’ve had this conversation with different people and get very different answers. Okay, sure.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  07:52

I think that in the in the midst of changing roles from being a classroom teacher, where your day is pretty well set, your lesson plans are made, you know what’s coming each period of the day, I worked in a secondary setting. And so we were on eighth period days, you know, bell to bell activities, and everything was pretty well planned out. And then when I became this instructional coach, that was totally different. And it was also a brand new role for my school and my principal and my district. And I really just think that no one was really sure what all I needed to be doing. We were still going through training those first couple of years with the instructional partners network, learning how to be an instructional coach. So part of it was I kind of didn’t know what to do with myself. And then part of it was I did feel like I was doing a lot of things each day, a lot of Orion, whatever anybody called and asked me to do, can you run here? Can you run there? Can you be in this room, or just doing what I was learning that a coach does and go in and observe classrooms and meet with teachers on planning and that sort of thing. But I didn’t have it on a schedule anywhere. I didn’t have anything planned out ahead of time, really. So sometimes I got in this habit in the maybe halfway through my first year of just having a paper calendar. And even if it kind of sounds like when you write down your to do list after you’ve already done it all and you can check it all right, but at least wanted a record of what I had done that day. And so I got in the habit of writing down the things that I had done and I would write down things that I knew like that that were going to be coming up if I had appointments that were scheduled, I would put those of course on my calendar, but then I also would jot down the other things that I did get called on to do that day, no matter how miscellaneous they were. So that at the end of the day, I could look and say that I actually had done something you know, I think I just had this overwhelming feeling in the beginning of not having my days accounted for anymore. It was it was such a wide open yesterday. schedule versus being in the classroom. So I needed a way to at least know at the end of the day, hey, I did some things today.

buzzing with ms b  10:07

Yeah, that’s a really good point. Because it does feel that it kind of like flows through your time, or your time flows through your hands, you know, and you’re just like, where did where did all my time go? I feel like I didn’t get as much accomplished today as I would have liked to. It’s kind of like parenting. At the end of the day, like, what did we even do? Yes.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  10:29

Here, so it’s Messier, at the end of the day, no matter what, and I always say, I’m gonna, they’re gonna go to bed, and I’m gonna tidy it all back up, and we’re not even going to count the days that actually happens,

buzzing with ms b  10:39

right? It would be probably a very low count, let’s I feel. So if a coach has decided that they do feel like they want to record of their time, and actually I had another reason that that I’d recommend to coaches to keep a record of your time sometimes is to justify your work, because you know, coaching, that’s one of those positions that they’re very quick to put you back in the classroom, or to put you to cut the position, you know, whenever like, right now we’re so short staffed, it’s very easy for people to say, well, we’ve got this random person, what do they do anyway, let’s stick them back in the room. And so you kind of it’s one way to justify your job to say, No, this work is important. And this is what I’m doing. And I think it’s also important, if you are really unhappy with the amount of time that you’re spending on different things. So like, we have coaches who are being pulled to cover classrooms, you know, twice a week, who are covering PLC one day a week, and then maybe they have two days a week left for coaching. But we know that it doesn’t really only look like coaching, you know, so they have tons of other responsibilities. So if you can actually take this data, you know, export it in a graph and say, This is where my time has gone, then maybe use that as a talking point to redefine your role on that campus, with your administrator or with your central office personnel or whoever it is that defines your role and classifies you. Because if we don’t have any data, it can be really hard to say, Well, I just feel like I spend a lot of my time not coaching, you know, what are you doing? I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  12:05

Right, that it? Absolutely, I had jotted that down in my notes that I did need to feel not only need to feel accomplished, but I needed to validate my role and my job. And on the one hand, for all those exact reasons you just said about being able to say, I do have important work to do. And then also to document here’s all the other things that I’m being asked to do. Because we do have some great advocates in my district that really fight for the coaches to be able to protect their coaching time. And not that that’s always been able to be protected, especially not with recent times and the sub shortages, but they really do try to ensure that our principals know the district expectation is that we will be spending the majority of our time coaching. And that it is okay. You know, there’s plenty of responsibilities in a school to go around, you know, and some of them I mean, one of mine even is making the school newsletter each week, which I don’t mind. And it doesn’t take very long, especially now, not now that I have a system and I’ve been tracking it. But I do like to notice, this is how much time I’ve spent doing these other tasks this week. And I can run that report and and see the actual number of minutes.

buzzing with ms b  13:18

Yes, yeah, I think that’s a great, great explanation of that. So then if a coach has decided that they are ready to do this, what are some of the things that they need in place to start tracking their time? Like, do they need any special technology? Do they need to approach their work differently? Or like make time for it? What does that look like for you?

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  13:35

I will say this is a Google oriented system that I’ve been using. And I heard about it from my friend, Jennifer Butler, who was an instructional partner with me at the time and has gone on into an administration and is wonderful. But it involves a Google Calendar, and a Google using Google Sheets. And then using an add on within Google Sheets. I think I might have called it an extension in my Facebook comment, but it’s it’s an add on. And so you just you, I really I have had to change the way that I make sure that I remember to put the things in my calendar, because there are specific steps to how you enter your appointments or whatever your activities in your calendar so that this extent or this add on and Google Sheets will track it. But it’s really easy to set up if you open up a Google Sheets document. And you go to the add ons. And you know most people who are interested in this probably would know the steps to getting to that. And you go to your add ons and you want to install a new add on and it is just called time sheet. And so you select to add that to your Google Sheets probe, you know, Google Sheets application, and you can launch it at any time, but nothing will run from it unless you’re using your Google Calendar. And the only thing you have to do on your Google Calendar is put a hashtag or pound sign for us that are old enough to remember that it’s called put a pound sign in front of the category. And I, I use categories, you could literally put a pound sign in front of every single thing that you are doing. But I just thought it made more sense for me to put the pound sign in front of something, I would consider a category, like coaching, I would put hashtag coaching, and then I would hit the spacebar and put the name of the teacher who I was coaching for that amount of time. And then you select the other things on your Google Calendar, what day and what time, you know what time it started, what time it ended, how long you were coaching with that person. And you would put that category every single time that you were coaching a person. Some of my other categories were things like working on that newsletter, I would put hashtag newsletter, and just put the amount of time that it took me to finish the newsletter, hashtag subbing, if I go into sub at 1130, for the day, I put in subbing from 1130 until whatever time I’m out of that room, just to keep up with how much time during that week that I was doing that other ones were hashtag or hashtag meeting and I would hit the spacebar and put whatever that meeting was, I used to be in charge of scheduling these benchmark tests and creating the test and using this program called Performance Series. And that took up a lot of time, whenever it came time to give benchmarks. So I would always put that in there that one has kind of fallen off because we use new programs, hashtag professional development, or just PD. And of course, I have hashtag miscellaneous or you know, abbreviated there. So those are my basic categories. And they even have if you open up your Google Sheet, and you go to the Add on add ons menu and select the time sheet one, they have a timer and it says it’s in beta. But you can have Google Sheets open and start the timer on an activity right there live in the Google Sheet, and it will automatically add it to your Google Calendar for you. You select on the Google Sheet that I’m pulling data from this, you know, the Krissy Edwards calendar, whatever your name of your Google Calendar is that you want it to communicate with. So you’re using your hashtags in your calendar. And then you come back to that sheet at the end of the week. And you can run it anytime you can run it after a day of using and if you want to. And you’ll click on time sheet, and you’ll click Run Report. And it will pull a list based on your categories, all your little hashtags into a little chart, and it’ll show hashtag coaching. And if you had a bunch of different entries for that with a bunch of different teachers names, it would show the hours or the you know the net for the week because it runs it based on the week, I’ve only you can run it a custom amount of time if you like, but I choose a weekly report. And I save that tab at the bottom, you know the week of January 16 or 20th. And then the next week, I’ll do a different tab and run that report for that week. And if you know if you’ve done if you’ve ran it once during the week, on like Tuesday, Wednesday, and you want on Friday to update it to your full count of how many hours you’ve spent doing, you just go to the Add on select timesheet and click update report. And it updates all of the calculations for how much time you spent on the various activities. And I just have my phone with me or my iPad, to where I can pull up my Google calendar. And just remember to enter in an event for the you know, an activity that I’ve done and put the hashtag in front of it. And even if I have to do in my old way of writing my to do list after it’s already done, it still it still keeps track of it for me though, even no matter when I enter it in.

buzzing with ms b  18:38

That is Sony. I just love that. And I mean, it’s free. It’s accessible to everybody. So that’s Yeah, awesome. Do you know

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  18:45

that wasn’t too confusing to understand if it was I can try again. But

buzzing with ms b  18:50

okay, I think that I mean, obviously, it’s something that people need to see to be able to really figure it to make sure that they’re doing it the right way. But I think you gave people enough information that they could like, open up a couple things, open up Google Sheets, you know, tried to add the add on, and kind of go from there. And you know, remember to use the pound sign or the hashtags? Yes, for their categories. So those categories, you just kind of made them up based on on what you mostly spent your time doing, is that where they came from?

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  19:14

Yes, I felt like I knew the things that I was getting called on to do. And I know the things that I really wanted to be spending my time doing, you know, such as coaching, and I also use one for when I was just observing what, which typically would be involved in coaching. I just kind of tried to qualify a coaching conversation where I’m talking with a teacher versus just being in their classroom to observe not like a formal observation. And this is just for me to say anyway, unless anyone at my district ever asked for proof of what I’ve been spending my time on. This has just been my personal way of keeping up with where I’m spending my time and I can run that report whenever I want to. And if I because I feel like gosh, where have I been? What’s been going on this week? Have I really been in enough rooms about met with the teachers that I’ve said I’ve met that I was going to meet with this week. And it helps me get a visual and in sort of a calculation of where my time has been going,

buzzing with ms b  20:11

I can see that would be beneficial in so many ways, even more ways than I had originally thought about, you know, I really, so then do you connect this to your coaching goals or like your plans for coaching for the year in any way,

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  20:24

that kind of why I wanted to use something as concrete as you know, a Google sheet, you know, a spreadsheet form of document versus my paper calendar, because that’s what I was doing before just writing everything down on paper calendar and keeping up looking, I love to look at the spread of my week and seeing that I had jotted down the names of teachers whose rooms I had been in. But then especially once I noticed how much time some of the miscellaneous tasks were taking me, I didn’t want that to keep me from going and doing the coaching that I knew I had time to do, just because I felt like I had spent a lot of time doing something during the day that didn’t feel as productive. I wanted to be able to look and say, hey, you’ve still got time to go, you’ve still got time to go check in with that teacher, you still got time to catch them just for a few minutes on their plan are to pop in and support them in their classroom for a little while. And knowing that I’m tracking it this way. And that I want to say that hashtag coaching number increase on my spreadsheet, really helps me focus on making sure that I am getting out from behind my desk and going and visiting these classrooms and supporting the teachers because I have a great group of teachers this year, a lot of new people new to educate first year teachers, and they really are craving the support and the feedback. So I don’t want to just be stuck behind my desk doing miscellaneous tasks.

buzzing with ms b  21:45

Yeah, I love that. And you kind of talked a little bit about about how this has been helpful so far. But can you share a little bit more about how you’ve used this record? As your you know, you’re thinking about your coaching work? And what you’re like? What ways have you have you been thankful that you did it?

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  22:00

Well, seeing seeing the amount of hours spent, especially on those really good weeks when I’ve gotten to be in those classrooms, and then I’ve gotten to have those feedback meetings or goal setting meetings with teachers, seeing the actual count of the time spent makes me feel very good about my job. Because sometimes it’s really hard. I’m not in the classroom, I’m not directly, I don’t feel like I’m directly impacting and teaching those students, which is something that I love to do. So seeing the names and the amount of time spent with teachers helps me know that I’m reaching those kids through reaching those teachers, and spending time with those teachers, and that they want to spend time with me, they’ll ask me, Well, when are you coming back? I had a teacher come just today I was I was getting prepped to meet with you. She said, Where have you been today? Did you leave me? And I said, Oh, no, I’ll be back, I just have to go do something really exciting also. So I love that I can see their names and the time spent with them. And then using this little strategy of the Google Calendar. Kind of it just makes me want to, you know, I’m not a super competitive person. But for myself, I’m like, Oh, next week, I want to see if I can get even more time in the classrooms, and maybe not get bogged down or, or get sidetracked. I like seeing a number go up on the chart, I guess Long story short, I like to see my numbers look good.

buzzing with ms b  23:30

That makes total sense, though. Because as we’re reflecting sometimes we’re reflecting based on like our feelings about how much we accomplished or what we did. We feel like we didn’t do this, or we did do this. And we spent too much time on that. But having the data and actually seeing it really will tell you. Okay, this is really where my time is going. You know, I’m really I’m spending way too much time on this. Or I really could be spending more time on that. But where can I pull it from? Well, I have a document that would give me some ideas about where I could pull it from. So that’s awesome. Have you ever had to share it? I know you mentioned that just for you. But has it ever been useful with you to share it with your administrator? Or do they even know that you do this?

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  24:08

Um, we have gotten a new administrator this year. My assistant principal, she was an instructional partner at the time where we kind of learned about it. And I don’t know that everybody else I mean, it’s sort of you figure out what, what fits you. So I might have been the only one that sort of took it and really tried to use it on a consistent basis. But the the district person who is kind of our direct line over the instructional partners in my district, she is very well aware of that I use this. I think she thinks it’s pretty cool. And I think that if it ever came into question about what an instructional partner does, or kind of like you were saying earlier, oh, there’s this extra person, we can just pull them I think she would be very quick to say, hey, wait, no, she really does a lot of stuff and she actually keeps a record of it all and could show it to us if we needed to Do I haven’t ever had to. But I do know there are people who know that I use it and would be very supportive of saying, wait a minute, she can show you what all she does in a week. You know, she keeps track of it. And so that’s that’s a good feeling to that reminds me, you know, that it is a good thing too. I’m not held to a certain schedule. We do have coaches in our district that are reading and math coaches specifically. And they are very tied to state mandated things and have to, they have to document their time because they’re supposed to be getting a certain percentage of their time coaching and classrooms, but they’re required by law in our state because of their job to, to track there’s that way. So I’m lucky, in one way lucky that I’m not, you know, being followed up on by the State Department, but I am also keeping track of what I do.

buzzing with ms b  25:57

What state are you in? Alabama, Alabama, interesting, I didn’t realize that they were tied to well, we have

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  26:03

a Literacy Act. And so the elementary instructional coaches, and they may have a different title, don’t quote me on that. They might be called Reading interventionists reading specialists. I’m not sure what their new title is. But they there’s a Alabama reading initiative that’s tied to this Literacy Act that’s been passed about kids being on a certain being proficient by the third grade, or by the end of third grade. And so in support of that, those people in those roles have to follow a certain guideline for where they spend their time. Interesting. It’s very

buzzing with ms b  26:38

interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I do have a question about whenever you, you actually look at your data, you said something about it. tabulates, the number of minutes? Is it giving? Do you like export it as like a pie chart? Or what does it look like? Whenever you see the final version?

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  26:52

It is, it is a two or three column chart. And it’ll say the categories and just whatever else you have out beside, you know, if I said hashtag meeting and I put, you know, PLC or meeting principle, you would have that in the first column. And the second column is a total for the week as far as hours. So it’ll be like 1.15 hours, it’ll show it as a whole number and a decimal 1.15 hours of meetings for the week. And then that’s a very, that’s not a realistic number for how many meetings have been in a week. But yeah, and then you could take that out. That’s a good idea. You know, one thing I haven’t done is highlighted that data and turned it into any other kind of chart. But within sheets, that is something I know how to do, I would highlight it and go up to those options at the top to turn it into a pie chart or a bar graph and total it up for the week, I just look at the number of hours. Because I don’t account for every sometimes I feel bad that I haven’t accounted for every single minute of the day, you know, you think Oh, gosh, what was I doing in those times that I didn’t give it a category, but it’s almost impossible to fill up the whole day. Right? With a category. You know, sometimes there just are minutes of the day where you’re in transition of things, or right now.

buzzing with ms b  28:08

Yeah, absolutely. Preparing for things and you just kind of lose track of what it is. Yeah, you don’t always remember if that might be interesting to looking at, like a pie chart would give you like a percentage. And so like, okay, like, I know that, like you mentioned with your coaches that are in reading and math around the districts that I used to work out, they were like, Okay, this much percentage of your time needs to be spent in classrooms. It was kind of an unrealistic percentage, given all the things that they also wanted you to do.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  28:34

Same here.

buzzing with ms b  28:36

Yeah. But, but it was, that would be an interesting way to look at it is to say, Okay, well, they want us to be in classrooms, you know, 75% of the time. So then 75% of the time means this many minutes, and let’s look at our little pie graph and how like, I’m only in there 60% of the time, or whatever, which actually would probably be pretty fantastic. But that was that’s kind of the way that I pictured, like looking at at final data, that might be a way to kind of also just like, if you have to justify it to Administrator, that might be an easy way to say, look, this is where my time goes in a week. And look at half of my pie is spent dealing with stuff that is not coaching stuff. Right.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  29:13

Right. And I think initially, that’s kind of what turned me on to using the spreadsheet is I felt like so much of my time wasn’t spent on coaching and I was being asked to do a lot of I’m on every committee at the school, you know. So those things that were there for a while we were jumping in and helping out with anything that the PTO, if the if there were PTO events happening, even things like selling the concessions to the kids for an award or reward party, you know, I would be up there and not that there’s anything wrong, you know, I want to be all hands on deck. But I also wanted a record of hey, that was time that I wasn’t getting to do what is technically my job and that’s just the reality. If that’s the nature of it, it’s not that I was bitter about it, but I do see it. Yeah.

buzzing with ms b  30:06

Oh, I totally understand that. Because all those other duties as assigned, like you said, they have to be done have to be done by somebody, and you don’t have a class. So it’s often you’re the somebody you know, by. But yeah, it takes time from your coach and work. So you’re always trying to balance this is what’s important about my coaching work. But this is important for the school right now. And you’re trying to figure out how to walk that line. And this information can help you make those decisions about when to try to push back and say, no,

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  30:30

absolutely. In fact, it’s much easier to say, especially when I’m tracking time that I’m specifically spending with specific teachers. And I can say, you know, if we can find, if we can get a parent volunteer to come up here and help with that, because I’m really involved in this cycle with this teacher right now. And it helps to validate that. And, like, you know, I’m all hands on deck, if something needs to be done. And I realize I’m the extra person, sometimes happy to do it. But I like to note that that’s where my time is going. It’s just It’s also really neat to see.

buzzing with ms b  31:05

Yeah, is there anything else that you can think of that just that might be helpful for coaches to know, as they’re trying to implement this?

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  31:13

It does take it took me a little getting used to, and I feel like maybe the first year I tried it, I was hit or miss because I was so tied to my paper calendar. And I was just so used, it’s always open on my desk, I would jot down things. And even just that day, if someone called on me to come see them in the afternoon, I would just jot that down. And then I had to make myself get in the habit of even if I had jotted it down and but if I wanted to track of the actual time, putting it in that calendar and using the little hashtag system. And then also I did like, I do like getting in the habit of if I’m gonna have my computer with me somewhere anyway, and I do deal with a lot of technology stuff just because people know that that’s kind of one of the things that I’m pretty good at and have a passion for. So I do typically, and I have access to the programs that we use. So if I end up helping with somebody needing to log in to something or troubleshooting, I typically just have my computer with me, but I can also have that sheet open and start the timer right there from the Google Sheet. And that really helped me not have to remember to go back to my calendar, because I was tracking it right there live when I was doing that activity. Because tech help I ended up doing I felt like I was doing a lot of tech help for a while. So that was one of my hashtags. And I would just time it the whole time that I was helping somebody with that kind of problem. And I wanted to make sure I was balancing other kinds of help with, I didn’t want to just be you know, we have a tech guy dedicated to our buildings. So, you know, I want to make sure that people know, my job is a little bit different than his job, you know, I’m happy to help you. I’m always happy to help. But also there are things where he needs to handle that. And I’m here to help you with instructional things and partnering with you for your classroom goals. So

buzzing with ms b  33:03

that would be Yeah, I could see like making a little shortcut to the, to the sheet on your desktop or, you know, somewhere that way, it’s easy to get to so you’re not always like going to Google go, you know, sometimes people spend time doing those kinds of things. And then it’s just kind of a pain. But if you have the shortcut to it right there, it’s it’s always your it’s easy free access.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  33:22

Are you telling me there are people that close their tabs because I have 50 tabs open at all times? And that’s always one of them is my

buzzing with ms b  33:30

you know, I think I’m an open tab person and my husband has closed everything out and have one folder on your desktop person. Yes. And he is always harassing me about it. And I am not going to change and it’s neither is he. So yeah, they’re open to people and close to people.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  33:45

Yes, my husband’s a district tech guy. I think he hates looking at my computer in general. I think he’s just like, what is happening here, you have folders and documents on the desktop and tabs open everywhere and just how

buzzing with ms b  33:56

like, I can’t, I’m gonna go back to those things. And I need to read them. So I remember them. That way. I know I have to finish them. I know.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  34:05

They’re open for a reason. They’re Yeah, they’re being useful.

buzzing with ms b  34:08

It’s a system. Okay, it’s my system. Well, thank you so much for all of this. I really think that coaches are going to want to embrace this. It’s such a good, free tool that they can use. And I have I do want to ask you kind of a fun question. I’ve been asking on the podcast of all the guests. What is your favorite thing right now and this could be like a book or a movie activity, product, whatever that you love right now. So what is your like, favorite thing that you’re loving?

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  34:34

Okay, I do have a I have a fun answer for this. I think it’s fun. I have a friend who also was an instructional partner with me. Her name’s Janney Osbourne, she arm knits. Have you seen the chunky? Yeah, she can do those with her arms. And just using her arms as the knitting needles and you can learn this on YouTube. She hosts she teaches classes on it but I never could go to the classes so I got on YouTube. When I looked up, I found a lady called the reclaimed heirloom. And I learned how to make them. Where I was very afraid that if I got my arms tangled up in this, this yarn, one of my children would need the children at home too. And I thought, I can’t be trapped in the yarn and have to go do a diaper change. So I’ve watched a YouTube tutorial on how to make it where you just do these finger loops. And I made this gigantic blanket for my sister in law for Christmas. And I’m making another one for another sister in law. So knitting chunky blankets is an I’m trying to have be my hobby right now. You can leave it out on the table and come do a few loops at it, you know, a couple of rows of loops at a time. And I love that I don’t have to sit and have the whole thing done in one sitting. I can have it out and work on it little by little. And then by the time it’s done, I have a great big blanket to show for it.

buzzing with ms b  35:53

That is so neat. I am so glad I asked you what your favorite thing was. That is fantastic.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  35:59

I wish I could show you a picture. I’m super proud of the blanket that I didn’t make. It’s It’s so comfy and cozy. And it’s that that big fat yarn. It’s just Yeah,

buzzing with ms b  36:07

yeah. Our meeting on Instagram before, but I’ve never haven’t seen the finger loop. That’s pretty cool. What an

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  36:14

all my friend had knitted my to my littlest babies, when they were born, she had given me blankets that she made for them. And they’re just wonderful. And I thought, Well, I’m gonna learn how to make these. And I’ve, I’ve made one, and I’ve got one started. So it’s just a tiny bit of a hobby, but it is really fun. And

buzzing with ms b  36:30

that’s great. It’s nice to have, it’s good to have a hobby. If people want to learn more about how they can use Google Sheets, can you think of anywhere that they could go to learn about it?

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  36:41

YouTube is my best friend for everything I used to. I think I watched a YouTube tutorial. Whenever my friend Jennifer told me about using timesheet I just got on YouTube and searched. timesheet add on for Google Sheets or timesheet add on will probably get you there. And step by step it shows you exactly how to launch the add on and then how to use your Google Calendar in coordination with it.

buzzing with ms b  37:06

That’s awesome. I think there are also like, Google has like certification courses. And you can take a certification course and like sheets, if you really wanted to be more comfortable with it.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  37:17

Oh, wow, I haven’t gotten that specific. I’ve done the like Google level one. Okay, you know, but I hadn’t thought about doing a specific application. Because that was I think I want

buzzing with ms b  37:27

to say my brother was doing I mean, he’s gotten some he’s a baseball and high school teacher. He’s a baseball coach and high school teacher in Mesquite, Texas. And he was talking about, he’s gotten different certifications in different things. And it sounds pretty interesting. I mean, there’s all kinds of cool stuff you can learn on Google.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  37:43

Oh, yeah, I’ll have to look into B becoming a trained Google Sheets or a Google. My husband’s like an Excel expert, though. So I have to say I tend to rely on him for that.

buzzing with ms b  37:54

Yes, I get it. Yes, we like to outsource whenever you can. Well, thank you so much for being here. Christy. I really appreciate everything that you shared.

Krissy Ogletree Edwards  38:04

Thank you so much. I really enjoyed being on your podcast today. I’m so excited. I feel so silly being so excited about it. But I just think it’s really neat.

buzzing with ms b  38:14

That was such good information. I know it can be hard to picture it. So what I recommend that you do is you’ve listened to this episode once, go ahead, sit in front of your computer, open up Google Sheets and listen to it again, you know, get the add on. Try it out, test it and see what it looks like whenever you add different categories. And if you use this, let me know because I would love to see how this is going for you. I also want to remind you that you can grab that some that free reflecting on your coaching work guide at episode 143. So it’s buzzing Miss Miss b.com slash episode 143 You can grab it in the show notes. And I want to also remind you about our next episode, we’re going to continue chatting about your coaching impact. So today we looked at how to track your coaching work. Next week, we’re going to talk a little bit about evaluating your coaching impact. So how do we know what kind of a job you’re doing? How do we know if your coaching work is having impact you’re spending 50% of your time in classrooms? What is that causing to happen? What change are you making on your campus? That’s going to be episode 144 And until then, happy coaching

buzzing with ms b  39:24

Thank you for listening to buzzing with Miss B the coaching podcast. Want more coaching ideas? Check me out at buzzing with Miss b.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