Adjusting to Being Out of the Classroom, Ep. 151 Instructional Coaching with Ms. B

Adjusting to Being Out of the Classroom, Ep. 151 Buzzing with Ms. B: The Coaching Podcast

Chrissy Beltran  00:01

Hey, Coach, when you think about the beginning of the school year, how do you feel unsure to helpful, overwhelmed, you’re not alone. Since the dawn of time instructional coaches have been left to figure things out on their own, resulting in frustration and failure. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Instead, let’s start the year with a roadmap that tells you exactly what to do each day for the exponentially important first 20 days of school. The things you do that first month of school will make or break your coaching year. Let’s do the right things together. Head to buzzingwithmsb.com/startup to join the waitlist for my instructional coaching startup course. The course opens in mid July, but if you join the waitlist, you’ll receive a coupon code for 15% off when the course opens up. I can’t wait to help you start strong and coach better this year. My favorite summer coaching event is just around the corner and I want to see you there. This is the fifth year of the simply coaching summit, the first virtual conference for coaches, and I’ve been a part of it every single year. This online conference for instructional coaches is on July 10 11th, and 12th. And it’ll give you everything you need to change your school one step at a time. The summit is three days of keynotes, live workshops and pre recorded session, I’m giving a workshop about what coaches should do the first couple of weeks of school focusing on building your coaching menu from start to finish. But there’s so much more to this summit that you have to see for yourself, head to buzzingwithmsb.com/summit to save your spot. The best part is that you have six months to watch the videos. So if your summer plans didn’t include some cozy PD at home on the couch, you can watch them when you’re back at school. Check out busy with Miss b.com slash summit and I will see you soon. 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 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.

Chrissy Beltran  02:13

Hey, coach, and welcome to Episode 151, adjusting to being out of the classroom. In this episode, I am going way back to 2012 When I first started my first coaching job, so if you’re new to coaching, or if you’re starting a position next year at a different school just making or you’re considering making the move into instructional coaching, this episode is for you. changing roles after teaching for almost 10 years is a bit of a jolt. And some of you have changed roles after a much longer time than that. So I’m sure you can relate. It was especially difficult because I spent those 10 years at a school that was very different from the one I ended up coaching at. And so the culture shock of the two different schools. It was significant, right. And so whenever I first started coaching, I had given some professional development in the week leading up to the first day of school and I had spent some time at the school over the summer. And with my new administrator trying to understand my role and things like that, I will be upfront when I say I did not have a good idea of what it was to clearly define my role. And so I did not do that. I highly recommend that if you are experiencing any challenges with instructional coaching, the first thing you do is you go back to defining that role. And that is absolutely the missing piece in a lot of coaching programs. And so if you’re struggling with that, check out the define the five year coaching role free webinar because that is often the issue that you’re having. I also have a really cool resource called the new coach’s playbook that will walk you through the foundational pieces for establishing a coaching program. And you can get that at buzzing with Miss b.com slash new coach. So grab one of those two resources. Because it is really hard to do your job without having that foundation. So my first day of coaching my first actual school day had come after a week of professional development. And the teachers had not had the benefit of a true coach. In the past they had kind of had like a support person who might help them plan lessons and look at data, but they didn’t really have a coach. So it was it was a new role to the school. I stood in the hallway on the very first day of school, and I had a little roster and I saw all the kids coming in with their new you know, pencils and crayons and folders in their backpack and their parents who are nervous and you know, giving them hugs and kisses on their first day. And I helped kids find the right classrooms. It was busy. There was lots of traffic, lots of good energy right on the first day of school and the school smells so good because you know they’d come in and waxed all the floors over the summer and it was just really great place to be and And after school got started and all the kids were in the right spot, and the hallways had kind of cleared, I have this sudden thinking feeling. And I walked to my room, it was a classroom that I had created my office in. And it was quiet and it was empty. And there was nobody else in there. Nobody needed me. And that feeling of not being needed was horrible. There was no joy in it, there was no hope for the relationships I was going to build with these kids. I was missing that feeling that you get at the beginning of the school year, which is the feeling of promise. I didn’t have it. And I went into my office and I sat and I think I looked at some, I don’t know questioning or something I pulled up something to work on that needed to be done or that I pretended needed to be done at that time. Because I was so lonely and sad. Now, it didn’t last for long that I was lonely, and that I had downtime. And I didn’t know what to do with it that was very short lived. And later on, I wished for the piece of that first day, when I didn’t have a million in one responsibilities and adults clamoring for my attention. But at the time, it was a hard adjustment. And I didn’t think I made the bad or wrong choice. I didn’t think it was a wrong placement for me. But I knew it was going to be very, very different than being a classroom teacher. And I was already feeling the lack of that excitement of a new school year. I think that one of the biggest challenges to me was not having kids, obviously. But short of that it was not having a team. And whenever you’re a teacher, you have an automatically designated team, you have a grade level, or if you’re a special ed teacher, you generally have at least one or two other special ed teachers, although that can be a very isolating role as well. If you are a special teacher, you may have had that feeling as well, where you just kind of don’t really have a team at your home base that gets what you do every day. But if you’re a classroom teacher, in general, Ed, you usually have a team, the team is designed for you it’s set up, there’s you know, for three or five, or whenever I first started teaching, there were eight teachers in our grade level. It was we called ourselves a fourth grade Armada, it was a big group. And that team was designed to be your learning community, and to be your support system. And I didn’t have one of those. As a new coach, I didn’t have a team yet. And it was hard, was a big change for me. And that was one of the biggest struggles. Now there were a lot of positives in becoming a coach and, and I remember I wrote a blog post about them early on about how shocking it was to be able to go to the bathroom at any time of day. And, you know, the idea that I had discretionary time, I had chunks of my schedule that I could decide how to spend time, you know, there were pieces where I was not booked, I had meetings and things that were scheduled for me. But then there were large chunks of the day where I can say I think this is important. So I’m going to work on this. And that was really an amazing and positive change. And I loved having that that discretionary time. I’m actually going to talk with some coaches next in the next few weeks about building your schedule, and what that can look like and how they schedule their time. So if you have questions about that, you can listen to that episode. It’ll be about two weeks from now. But you know, just having discretionary time, at all is a huge shift from the classroom where every single day you’re structured, and you’re scheduled and you have kids. So even if you had some time that you weren’t, maybe didn’t have a plan for, you got to figure something out, because the kids are there staring at you. There’s no independent time when you’re a classroom teacher, completely different. I remember one of the big shifts for me is I was able to keep a refrigerator, a little tiny fridge in my room because it was a PLC room. And as a classroom teacher, we had had an admin go through a few years prior and take out anything that plugs into the wall, basically, because they said it was too much electricity. And that’s how they were going to save money instead of saving on all the other stuff they saved on us. Right? You know, you also it’s a real struggle

Chrissy Beltran  09:08

to to move into working with different content areas or different grade levels. But it sure is fun. And so you get to actually see how things build year after year and you get to go work with a kinder, you get to go work with fifth grade teachers and you see the the change over time that these kids go through. And you also get the benefit of learning those content areas of those grade level. So you get to really dig in and say okay, what does it look like in first grade? What is it going to look like in second grade? How are we going to make this look different? And that’s exciting to me. I love the nitty gritty I love the fine points of learning all the different grades and seeing how we can make positive change happen over time. So that was a real positive. I also got to see the effects of my work schoolwide whereas before I got to see it only with the kids that I worked with in my classroom. So there are a lot of positives when it comes to the becoming a coach, or else I mean, obviously, nobody would want to do the job right? There was there were a lot of really great opportunities for growth and learning that were not open to me whenever I was a classroom teacher. However, there were some things that were not so positive. Dealing with adults, most of the time is hard. And it’s a big shift, because you go from being a classroom teacher who’s probably really good at teaching to being a coach, who is like, how am I going to get these adults to work with me? And that is such a big transition, you’re suddenly in a different placement in the bureaucracy of school, and you have to navigate that position. And, you know, one of the people that I’ve spoken to on this podcast, talked about how jet Dr. Jenn Hasbrouck spoke about how we the reason we have to keep defining coaching roles, is that it’s kind of a new position. And not all schools even have one. So we know what a principal does. We know what a fourth grade teacher does. But what does a coach do? What does that look like, and it vary so much from school to school, that, that your role really impacts the way that adults interact with you. So dealing with adults, is not always such a positive shift to make as a new coach. The fuzziness of the job description. And your responsibilities really contributes to that lack of communication with adults and not really knowing how to approach them, you’re also pulled for a lot of random stuff, which is not great, right? We know that coaches do the best work when they’re actually working with teachers, but what tends to happen is, you do not have a class, and tons of things have to get done. So suddenly, you’re like an administrative assistant, you’re gonna go through and highlight all the students who fall into the intermediate category on tail paths, or you are, you know, placing purchase orders, or whatever it is that needs to be done that day, you might be the person who has to do it. So that alone is a real challenge, because your fuzzy job description means that you get pulled for whatever responsibilities could possibly fall in your just jurisdiction, or really just anything that maybe you might be able to do, right, if you can figure it out. You are also a lot closer to the hot seat of administration. And the hot seat isn’t a fun place to be in, it’s a challenge sometimes to walk the line of being a coach, whenever you are not admin, you’re not a teacher, a classroom teacher, you have to figure out your placement there and admin can sometimes get very, very fiery, when there is accountability to be had. So you might be the person to take the rest, you might be the person to hear some of the inner workings of accountability and decision making. But maybe you kind of wish you didn’t know because it’s a little bit sickening. Being that close to administration puts you in a different placement. And that’s a big adjustment, too. You also have no actual power. But sometimes you are required to hold people accountable, which is very challenging to do. leading from the middle is not easy work. And you don’t have a built in team. So you’re trying to lead from the middle on your own, it can feel like a man is very, very complicated. And it can leave you feeling isolated, frustrated, and like you don’t have a support system to actually do the hard work that you’re doing and talk through it with someone. So those are all the challenges, or at least many of the challenges. I don’t want you to think that that’s the end of the episode. Okay, we’re going to talk about how to adjust to some of these challenges, one of the things that you’re going to need to do is you’re going to have to make your own team. And unfortunately, that team, well, classroom teachers are amazing resources for you. That team cannot be classroom teachers. Because if you are trying to figure out how to conduct your coaching work, and you’re having these conversations about what’s happening at your school, he can’t have those conversations with teachers, you have to kind of put yourself in your own little bucket. If there’s another coach on campus, you need to become buddies really quickly, if at all possible. Because you’re going to have to find a way to move your school by leading from the middle and then the only other person that’s going to be in that middle spot with you. If there are not other coaches, look to the librarian, look to the technology coordinator, look to an interventionist look to other support staff members, who are also going to be part of that leadership team who can help you work through some of the challenges that you’re having as a coach. You also may have to make your own team by reaching out beyond the bubble of your school. And there are huge benefits to doing this. Because whenever we are on a campus, we tend to get really stuck and how things are done on that campus. And the problem is, whenever you’re in a bubble, you can’t always think past your bubble. Having a support system that is not part of your campus means that you are actually able to get ideas that are not kind of distilled down to what you already do at your school. They’re not limiting to that certain box because this week work coming from other boxes. So having a support system of people who work at other schools, in your district, or even in other places, and maybe it’s a virtual support system, like an online Facebook group can make a tremendous difference to you, as an instructional coach. Because you can get input, you can get ideas, you can get feedback on things without violating confidentiality of your teachers that you currently are serving. And without feeling like you’re gonna get stuck in the same thinking ruts that you do whenever you communicate with people on your campus. One recommendation that I have, that is going to help you make an adjustment is give your time a little bit of time to visiting classrooms that give you energy. And the trouble is, we sometimes spend a lot of time in the classrooms that need a lot of support, because those classrooms really need us. And that takes it’s kind of like with your students, you tend to work a lot with the kids who need you the most. And maybe the kids who need you not as much. I mean, they all need you. But the kids who don’t need you as much, they don’t get as much of your time. Same thing happens when you’re a coach, we tend to spend more time in classrooms that maybe need us more. Or sometimes we get lucky and spend time in the classrooms that want us more. But that’s not always the case. I really recommend to you that you visit classrooms that give you energy that when you walk in the room, you feel the learning, you feel the joy, you feel the love. And it motivates you to be able to go back and say this should be happening, we should see the love of learning happening in our kids and the skills growing, we should see this happening across our school. So you take that energy and you use it in another room. I also recommend that you focus your work, so you’re not overwhelmed. Sometimes we try to do way too much. And we feel like change needs to happen today. It needs to happen. Now these kids need it. And sure they do. But they do need it and they do deserve it. But that’s not how change happens. So whenever we get really caught up in the idea that things need to happen now and everything needs to change, all we’re doing is setting ourselves up to fail, and setting our teachers up to fail and also creating a relationship between us and the teachers, where we’re pushing, pushing, pushing for new things and they’re pulling back. Instead, I want you to use the big three to plan your time, you’re gonna identify three things you want to accomplish through the year. And then you’re gonna break that down over different quadrants, you can look at quarters and say, What three things do I need to do in this quarter in order to do these big three things? And then you’re gonna look at those quarter that first quarter and say, Okay, what three things do I need to do in this month in order to accomplish these three things by the end of the quarter? Then you’re going to look at each week and say, Okay, I’ve got threes three things that I want to accomplish by the end of the month, what do we need to do the first week, second week and third week, in order to make sure that I’m getting to that point, by the end of the month, we’re going to focus our goal by starting with big ideas, and narrowing them down to things, we can do three things, we’re just going to focus on three things every time frame, if we try to do too much, we won’t be able to do it well. But if we can focus on three things, we can accomplish those three things. It’s the way that I plan for myself, even in my business. But it certainly is an effective way to plan your discretionary coaching time.

Chrissy Beltran  18:13

You actually can learn more about that in the course the confident literacy, core love and literacy coach. And I recommend that you grab it if you can, because the the course is opening soon. And I want you to like just be aware that it’s not going to be open forever, right. So it opens for a short amount of time. And I do teach how to do the big three in my course, I teach you how to break it down. And I’m very explicit about it. So if that is an area that you have found challenging, definitely go to confident literacy coach.com. And sign up for notifications to be notified when the coach open the course open soon. So you can get it right away, and be very prepared to manage your time. Another thing you’re gonna want to do is define your roles, so you know where to spend your time. So I talked a little bit before about how not having a clearly defined role is very detrimental to relationships and to coaching work. It’s also hard because you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing. So you might be spreading yourself very thin, you also might be just trying to do too many things in that don’t really align with your goal and your role. So I recommend that you define that coaching role, you can grab a free webinar at WWW dot buzzy with Miss b.com slash webinar. And if you grab that it’ll teach you how to define your coaching role specifically, it’s a really important thing to do in order to adjust to the role. Well, my last tip is push back against the idea of saying yes to all the things looking at your schedule and saying wow, well, I have leadership on Monday PLC on Tuesday, that on Wednesday learning Thursday after school but look at all this time I have in between I can I can run that I can be PTO, president president this year. Sure. I’ll handle that fundraiser. No problem. We’ll sit on the EIC I can share that committee. When you say yes to All the things you’re saying no to your coaching work, because we need to spend time in classrooms with teachers. So a big adjustment that you’re gonna have to make is knowing you have this discretionary time and still saying no, because you’re gonna have to schedule that time to work with teachers and make an impact on classroom instruction, you can say yes to a couple of things, but not too many things. So for example, I was approached my first year, as a coach, they mentioned that doing gifted and talented might have been on my, my responsibility list. And I really pushed back on that, because I thought, if I test for GT, if I have to collect all the the responses, if I have to do all of the assessments and turn in all the data and create all the portfolios, I’m never going to be in classrooms. So I pushed back against that, and I’m so glad I did, that would have taken up the majority of my time in the spring. And that’s not something that I could have sacrificed. So I really recommend that as you’re thinking about adjusting to your coaching role, you keep in mind that time you want to keep those time blocks, even if they’re not full yet. They’re going to be you need to work with teachers and teams of teachers. So push back on the idea of saying yes to all of the other responsibilities instead, say no, or say, can I get back to in a few weeks, so I can kind of see how this is going to go and determine if I actually have the time to do that. Well, don’t say yes to anything right away. Always ask for some time to think about it so that you can really decide if it’s gonna fit into your new schedule. Again, if you are just establishing your coaching work, I have a great download for you. It’s free. It’s the new coach’s playbook. It has a little handout for several different topics about establishing your coaching your coaching program. And then you can also listen to the podcast episodes that I recommend for each tip. And it’s going to help you make sure that you have a good solid foundation for coaching that’s here, you can grab that at WWW dot buzzing with Miss b.com/new coach. In the next episode, I’m actually going to walk you through building your coaching program. And that’s episode 152. But before we go, I do want to share my favorite thing. I’ve been sharing favorite things at the end of every episode. And this is no different. I want to share that my favorite thing has been making reading a priority. And I know that sounds silly I love to read but I have two small children. You know, I run this business, things take a lot of time and it’s been difficult for me to find the time to read. First of all, I’m always tired. I can always fall asleep at the drop of a hat. And I my two year old has barely started sleeping consistently through the night. So I do have a little bit more, a few more brain cells at the end of the day. And so what I’ve started doing is I am not starting a new TV show. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I love shows really well made shows are just I think such a joy. I love good stories. But by not starting a new show. I’m making sure I have time for reading. So once I get the kids to sleep, I go take a shower immediately. And then I start working towards getting into bed early so I can read before I go to bed right now I’m working on the Golden Compass that His Dark Materials trilogy and because I do enjoy fantasy and so making reading a priority has been such a joy for me and I wanted to remind you that that is a thing you are allowed to do and it can be reading for fun. It doesn’t just have to be reading for work. again next episode 152 We’re going to talk about how to build your coaching programs. So if you’re starting from scratch, if you’re starting over at a new school or if you just want to redo and you kind of want to revisit what your coaching work looks like this episode is going to be for you. So join me next week and until then, happy coaching

Chrissy Beltran  23:52

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