Instructional Coaching Schedules, Ep. 154 Instructional Coaching with Ms. B

Instructional Coaching Schedules, Ep. 154 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 buzzing with mfi.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 buzzing with buzzfeed.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 154 of buzzing with the speed coaching Podcast. Today we are talking about instructional coaching schedules. And this is part of our establishing a coaching program series. We’re continuing this theme about striving strong and creating a really great coaching program from the get go this school year. Last week we spoke to Dr. Jenn Hasbrouck about coaching roles, and today I have a very special episode, we’re talking to several different coaches about how they schedule their time. I chose coaches carefully because I wanted them to have different specializations and roles. And I wanted them to share with us about their coaching so we can get some perspective on what goes on at different schools. Time management can be so elusive, and I wanted to speak with different kinds of coaches to shed light on what your schedules could look like. Before we welcome our first guest, I’m going to share a couple of things. First, I want to talk a little bit about the instructional coaching with Miss B Facebook group, you can find us if you go to facebook.com and search click the little magnifying lens and search for instructional coaching with Miss B. We spent all last week doing our five day coaching kickstart challenge, where we identified our three by three vision, our elevator pitch and our personal coaching message that we can use when times get tough. This will help you start your year strong. So I definitely recommend you check out instructional coaching with Miss beat, I will let you into the group and then you can check out the challenge from last week and participate because it’s still up. The other thing you can do is go to the instructional coaching startup course that is a brand new course that it opens today, if you’re listening to this in real time, Monday, the 17th. And I am so excited about this course because it will give you one thing to do every single day for the first 20 days of school. In order to set yourself up for a year of coaching success. I give you the video and the audio and I tell you exactly how to do what you need to do plus the tools that you need to do it. Go to Buzzsumo Ms. b.com, slash startup to grab that course. I cannot wait to see you there. Because I really believe it’s going to support a lot of coaches here. The other thing I’m going to do before we talk to our guest coaches, as I’m going to share a little bit about my schedule when I was a literacy coach on a K five campus. So that was my role. I was illiterate. I did literacy and social studies. And I was a K five coach and I had a math and science counterpart who did math and science coaching. So my schedule, of course evolved over time. So this is my schedule from whenever I was a few years into being a campus coach. And it’s a random random week in October. Of course no two weeks look the same. Every week look different depending on teacher needs and what was going on at our school. But there were certain elements that didn’t change and then some that changed every day of the week. Things that pretty much stayed the same. Every week. There were four things that were kind of like set in stone that I had to work around. One of them was PLC. We had our PLC planning meetings. The Same day, every week, they were on Tuesdays. And we would get together with three different grade levels one week, and then three other grade levels the next week, and my math and science counterpart would switch with me. So one week, I’d have 135 for surface, and they would have K to four. And then the next week, we would flip. So when I worked with teachers, I knew I was having to help them plan for two weeks, because I wasn’t going to see them again until two weeks from them. That stayed the same. And each of those sessions was 90 minutes. So it took up the majority of the day. But there was a little chunk of time left that I could pop into classrooms if I needed to. The other thing that stayed the same every week was our data meetings, each grade level was assigned a liaison. And I was liaison for many years to third grade. And then I became the liaison to fourth grade. And I think that the the calendar year I’m looking at right here was the year when I was working with fourth grade actually. And so I what we would do is the grade level would choose a day and time to meet for looking at data every week. Now we didn’t always have data to look for and to look at. And that was okay, because we didn’t have to meet if we didn’t have something to look at. But it was always on the calendar. And it was a lot easier than adding something to the calendar. Whenever we had an assessment, we just always knew we’re going to look at it at that day in time, we can move the data around if we needed to. But we tried to keep it consistent just because it was more manageable that way. So I met with my grade level, one day a week for 45 minutes of their choosing. Usually it was during the conference time that they picked. And we would look at data and talk about how that was going to influence the teaching they were doing in the classroom. And then we could also consider the assessments and what observations we have that would help us during our next planning sessions. The other thing that stayed the same was leadership. And that was a date that date and time that was set at the beginning of the school year, every year. This year, I believe they were at seven o’clock on Mondays, which was horrible. And why would we do that to anyone that that is what was done to me, everybody. Seven o’clock, Monday morning. I remember our principal saying, well, Mondays are already rough. So why don’t we just dump them into Monday morning. So there I was early, everybody else got there at 730, we had to be there at seven. And so that was one of our leadership meetings happen every week, they were generally from about seven to 830 or so they were quite lengthy, because anything that came from the district, anything that came from the state that had to funnel through the school, all sorts of initiatives, making a plan to support teachers, upcoming stuff, you know, events that we had to figure out all of that happened during leadership meetings, many of them were working meetings. But we did always have to go around and share how we were doing with our grade level that we were liaison to because not only did we look at data with them, we also took a special care with that grade level to make sure that they had a person in a leadership position who was there for them when they needed it. And I do feel like being the liaison to certain grade levels really did deepen my relationship with those specific teachers, because I was there go between for everything. The last thing that didn’t change was learning Thursdays learning Thursdays were a one hour professional development session we had after school every week. And again, we didn’t have to have it if we had nothing. But when do you have nothing to learn, there’s always something right. We also use those whenever we had state training for assessments were coming up like state assessments, those would go on learning Thursdays, if we had to learn how to collect writing samples for to pass that went on learning Thursdays. And if we had an open time slot, then we could basically fight it out. My math and science person and I and you know our counselor, we could all kind of figure out who needed different things, what we needed to share and how we could hopefully integrate certain things as well. The things that changed every week were coaching visits. So one day a week for a couple of hours, I’d set aside time to visit classrooms from certain grade levels. I tried not to let two weeks pass by without seeing classrooms from a grade level so I could make sure we were still doing okay that our data meetings, our PLC meetings that were We were planning during those times, that we were actually impacting teaching in the classroom, that kids were responding to the plans that we were making, that our assessments were working, I needed to make sure that what we were doing was functioning in the classroom. And so I could see what the teachers were seeing. And that way, I think I honored what they were telling us by making sure that I was in those rooms, seeing what what they were seeing and understanding at a deeper level what they were seeing happened with kids. In addition to that, I could use that information that I gathered from those visits to plan for professional development, which is so important. So classroom work meeting with teachers, all of those were scheduled as time allowed in my schedule during the week. Once I marked off my time slots for those four big things that were always the same. So then I’m going to share with you this is my real life schedule. I don’t know why I keep these things, but I do. This is an actual schedule from whenever I worked with teachers. And it was out whenever I was on a campus, one school. And so I’m going to walk you through what I did that week. No, I was not Amazing if you listen to my episode about tracking your coaching time with Chrissy Ogletree Edwards, She’s incredible. And she can probably tell you everything she did all of the time. I cannot, because I did not document my time that way. So I have my paper calendar, you know, which I, of course, love my paper calendars. I still do. But then it’s flawed in that there are gaps. And I can assume what I’d worked on during that time, but I’m not always going to be right. So I’m going to walk you through what I’ve got in writing, starting Monday, in October, okay, so seven to nine, of course, was leadership Blitz, okay. Then nine o’clock to 10 o’clock, I have here a meeting with a group of people who was putting together a new initiative that our school was trying out called Project Lead the Way. And we actually met together with that little team to develop, how we were going to approach it, how we’re going to align it and integrate art and things like that. So that was a meeting I have from nine to 10. From at 10 o’clock, I actually had to go meet with fifth grade to share the information about Project Lead the Way so that they would know exactly what was being expected of them. 1045, I pulled a small group of bilingual students who had tested at very, very early levels of English acquisition, because I was doing some differentiated work with them with a program that we had called wealth. And so I did that group of kids because the teachers were struggling trying to find a place to fit it into their schedules consistently. So I met with them twice a week. Then, I actually did some visiting of different classrooms in the afternoon, and at 145. I have here, third grade will visit fourth grade for instructional rounds. So we always tried to integrate instructional rounds as part of our practice. And we did have grade levels visit different grade levels. We also had teachers visit other teachers, you know, we tried to mix it up. So people were seeing different kinds of things all of the time. So in this case, we were focusing on getting grade levels to visit the grade level above them, except for fifth grade obviously did not do that they came down to a primary grade, or lower grade, I think they probably went to fourth. So fourth, fourth grade, got burdened with two grades to visit them. But it was very helpful for us to have that information to talk about Tuesday, of course, I show that I have PLC and I have here first, third, and fifth. And I don’t have all my PLC plans in this this calendar, I just have that we were meeting with PLC. And then I made a note data binders because I think I was collecting data binders on that day, because our teachers would reflect on their assessments and then they would hand them in and I would give them any feedback that could help them think about this differently. I do have a note at 1230 in between two PLC sessions that I was going to visit to fifth grade classrooms that I had struggled to get into that it seemed like every time I visited them, they were doing something that I didn’t know what it was. So I was like, Okay, maybe this will be a better time. So I was trying to see what was going on during literacy or social studies at that time. And I made a note to visit them at that time. Then after PLC and after the school day ends, I have a note that says, read the book study book because we conducted book studies at different times throughout the year. So we were doing a book study at this time. So I had read my book study book after school on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I show here that in the morning, we’re going to have our book study meeting, we’re going to talk about our book study findings in our leadership team. It was like a bonus meeting. I also am collecting case three data binders. So I think I collected certain data binders on Tuesday and others on Wednesday, and I was going to respond to them. At some point in the day. I have here to take pictures of her behavior pictures. And so what this is, is we created a behavior plan where it was kind of an aligned system that our teachers were going to follow so that kids always knew what was expected of them in different environments across the school. And what I wanted to do was take pictures and videos so that I could share those during a learning Thursday, or during PLCs where teachers could benefit from each other and see how they had implemented things. So I kind of went around the school and said, Okay, well, these teachers use the management system for the materials. This teacher, I’m gonna take a little video of how she learns for their students, her students up based on the program, and then I could share them with other people so they could see things in action. So that’s what I did early that morning. Then at 1045, I met with my fourth grade walls group again, 12 o’clock I have here that I’m going to visit to second grade classrooms. And then I’m going to take a video of one another second grade classroom for that learning Thursday at 1230. I’m visiting one second grade teacher and 2/5 grade teachers, the same ones that I had tried to visit the day before seemed like it didn’t work out. So I tried to get on Wednesday. And then at I probably took some time when I came back to write little notes to them about what I found their teaching, and some things that I thought were great and also some constructive ideas. Like maybe we could try this or what do you think about this? And then at three o’clock, I showed tryouts in the library. This was a stressful year for me because I also was partnered up with someone and we were in charge of the sort of a holiday program that we had to do in December, and I had to write it. And then we had to teach the drama kids and create the drama club and get them to perform it. And it was in front of the entire school and it was massive at the high school is huge. So we had our tryouts that day, at three o’clock in the library after school. On Thursday, the 20th from 740 at 745, I show that fifth grade visited fourth grade. So we had our fifth grade teachers, go back and visit our fourth grade teachers for instructional rounds. I also show like random things that tasks that had to be done. After that time, I’ve got check data sheet from leadership meeting, visit these two classrooms and discuss with the teachers I actually was going to confer with the teachers about some of their teaching practices and have coaching cycle work their print materials for for the principal based on the data because she wanted to see data for something so I was going to take it to her. At one o’clock I have for fourth grade PE they would go visit fifth grade. So fourth, fifth grade, visited fourth grade in the morning, during fourth grade PE they went visited fifth grade in the afternoon. And so we talked a little bit about how what we saw I had a debriefing meeting with them because I was their grade level liaison. And so I sat with them, discuss what they saw and what implications there were for teaching. Then after school, I show learning Thursday content is behavior. So that behavior meeting that I had been planning for the past few days, where I was recording different things from different classrooms. That’s what we did after school on Thursday. So as from three to four. On Friday, I show that I collect the last round of binders on that day. And I need to provide feedback with those on those binders at some point during the day. And then in the morning, I had a training at our central office with fourth grade and it was our it was a specific writing assessment tool that we were using. So I had to go with them. I think it was our bilingual students, I had to go with our teachers to make sure that we were collecting writing samples and scoring them in the proper way. And I had to go do that at Central Office. And that was from 830 to 1130. And then in the afternoon, I returned back to campus, I gave comments on the documents I met with two teachers, I’m showing that I met with two of the teachers that I have visited one of the previous days of that week to talk a little bit about what we saw going on in their classrooms, and what kinds of ways I could support them. And then I have a random collection of things that just need to be done like email the coaches for upcoming meeting on November 10. Make sure our PLC plans are prepared for Tuesday because I didn’t leave Friday until I was ready for Tuesday because I never knew what Monday might bring. I know that might sound a little wild. I also have a pumpkin contest in the library that was was going to be due soon. So I needed to create a document to show kids hey, the due date is coming up. And I had to set up a forum for it teachers could submit their song choices for our holiday program that was going to be happening at the end of December and send that out. The following week was even wilder. We had our pumpkins due for their contest. I had a training at central office, we had our scheme carnival, which was I had to create a whole mad scientist lab we were there from like three till I don’t even know what time building a mad scientist lab in the science lab. And it was family night was coming up. We had more instructional rounds up Monday, PLC Tuesday, it was a wild week. So if ever you feel like oh my goodness, what is happening to me right now this schedule is getting away from me, it does happen. And it happens there are certain times of the year where we see it happen more. But I want you to remember that if we know what we’re trying to focus on, we can pull our schedule back to square one and say, okay, all this stuff is going on. And that’s true. But if I have two hours that I can figure out what to do with, I need to know what’s important to me. So I’m going to go back and look and see okay, what do I want to focus on this year? What are my goals? What is my vision? What strategies am I focusing on to make sure that I’m meeting teachers needs, so that you can fill those two hours with the most essential thing, instead of filling it with random tasks. That’s why I created the instructional coaching startup course is to make sure that at the beginning of the year, we’re setting ourselves up with a plan that we can come back to all year, and that we are doing the right things, those first 20 days to prepare us for success, the rest of the school year because things can get away from us if we don’t know what our foundation is. So let’s build that foundation the first month, and you’ll know what is important to you the rest of the year. I’m going to introduce my next guests. I have three fantastic coaches who are here to share with us today about their coaching schedule, they all coach different things. They all coach different grades and they all coach in different places. So definitely listen into the rest of this episode to hear from these awesome coaches. And I will hear from you again

Chrissy Beltran  19:46

next week. Happy coaching. So I would love to welcome my guest today David White. David, could you introduce yourself to our listeners

David White  19:55

Hello Hey Chrissy. My name is David. I am over here. In Central California, married I got two beautiful kids. And I’ve been in education for about 15 years now a little bit of background and mentoring and life coaching. And so when this roll was opened, it just seemed like a really good fit.

Chrissy Beltran  20:20

Awesome. That’s great. Well, it sounds like you’re really loving your work.

David White  20:24

Yeah, yeah, I’ve had, it’s been a gift dream role. And I know not everybody can say that. But I just also want to plug in for you. Krissy. It’s, it’s also been, you’ve, you’ve helped out a lot. I’ve had the gift of teaching in two different school districts, under amazing leadership, but very different leadership, and done the teach all the way from kindergarten to eighth grade, but primarily sixth grade for that entire entire time. And I’ll tell you what, that through these different opportunities, it’s just been a, it’s just been a great step to step into this role. And you’ve helped me along the way.

Chrissy Beltran  21:12

Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you saying that. What grades and subjects do you coach right now.

David White  21:20

So currently, I’m at a site on a site based coach, and I coach TK, or transition to kindergarten through sixth grade at an elementary school here in California, and all subjects. So literacy, math, even a little bit of PE earlier this year, I’m modeling and collaborating with some teachers on implementing, like Pe into their daily routine or weekly routine. But there’s been a focus at our site for math. And so that is kind of been my wheelhouse. And my, my priority is furthering teachers experience and strategy with math instruction.

Chrissy Beltran  22:05

All right, I love it. So what are your main responsibilities in your position? You know, where does your time go most of the day?

David White  22:13

Yeah, so I guess like with most coaches, we’ve come from either a teaching background or whatever, but coming from an incredibly structured position, like teaching into a role that’s kind of like a blank slate. Learning early on, I had to define my role, my responsibilities, my schedule, I’ve had the opportunity to mold it and shape it. But primarily, my responsibility is to encourage, and equip, and empower teachers, and hopefully cultivating some sort of passion, purpose, perseverance for them, and ultimately transforming teachers at my site, and creating great experiences for kids and transforming the school. So. So that’s kind of like a little statement, I like to say to myself, but as far as responsibilities, this is the greatest job because we have the responsibility to improve the experience of teachers. And I think most of your listeners understand or know that the teachers role is challenging. And so our primary role is to come alongside and make that experience even better, so that students in learning, I wanted to just also share that. So part of my responsibilities are working with teachers, obviously coaching cycles, coaching conversations, get to collaborate with some PLCs every now and then. Learning Experiences like providing professional learning or modeling co teaching. But yeah, I mean, as you know, Chrissy as a coach, some days you walk around and like what am I doing today? What is my responsibility today? And coming from Ohio structured row, where are they giving it to you? The blank slate is can sometimes be a little bit a little bit scary and difficult.

Chrissy Beltran  24:27

Absolutely. Yes. I do have to say you might want to consider starting your own podcasts like five minute motivation from David or something for instructional coaches. Because I do think that that the way you speak about your work with so much joy and purpose, I think is it can be hard we all go through those seasons where it’s hard to find that, you know, so I think that’s absolutely beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, and you’re totally right. It is moving from like in your classroom every minute you have scheduled every minute of the day. You know what you’re doing every minute of The day to where you don’t even get to go to the bathroom is what your day looks like. Yeah. And then you move to coaching and it’s like, okay, well you have this, this and this that is scheduled for you like meetings or whatever. And then you’ve got these chunks of space. And you’re like, oh, like, Okay, where do I have to choose how to spend this time? You know? What does your

David White  25:22

because Chrissy because the OH is just gonna add because we get these chunks of time that without direction. And I’m guilty of this. Sometimes we just meander around. And like we couldn’t go to the bathroom whenever we wanted. Now I’m going to bathroom 15 times in a row? Because I’m like, I don’t know what else to do.

Chrissy Beltran  25:42

Oh, my goodness, guilty pleasures. Yeah, you can do. Without Yeah, go get another cup of coffee, you can definitely when you don’t say okay, well, what am I setting out to accomplish this week? What is my main purpose, then definitely, we can feel like, I don’t even know what to do with myself. And then sometimes you have those weird little chunks of time that you just, it’s not enough time for you to do one thing. But you know too much time. If you’re like right in the middle. And you’re going okay, I have like 12 minutes, you know what to do for 12 minutes, I feel guilty about not doing anything for 12 minutes. So it is a weird spot to be in and a big transition from teaching for short. How have you figured out your schedule? Sort of like what is your schedule look like? You know, on an average day or week, you know, I mean, it can be multiple days, because I know that those days lower probably look very different. So what does it look like in general?

David White  26:42

Yeah, so I learned early on, that I had to keep myself accountable somehow Krysia. And so early on, I actually create, I kind of made this mental note, I said, I need to keep myself accountable, who’s going to keep me accountable. And I looked at my director admin, my supervisor, and I said, Okay, I don’t have to do this. And I know there’s some coaches that kind of have to do stuff like this. But I said, every Friday, I’m going to pen, I’m gonna put together an email with what coaching conversations I’ve had this week, what classes I visited this week, any cycles I’m working through with teachers, any professional learning I gave any teams I’m working with, and my professional development. So how am I growing. And so I send that list every Friday, I don’t have to, do you ever asked me to do that. But it’s for me, it’s to keep me accountable. And so early on, I learned that it is really important, as a coach, to be a self starter, to be purposeful, to be intentional. For me my schedule, pretty much every single day starts the same. I have my morning duty, I go back into my my little room I and I kind of make a list of the must dues and the main dues. So like the must do that kind of I need to do these, they’re in my schedule, I got to do this. And then then they do that, hey, if I have that 12 minute slot, I might be able to slip this in or do this year. And a lot of them they start the same, they you know a lot of them have the same like routines. And like some of those are our class walks. So every day I’m doing some sort of class walks. Every day, I’m pursuing some sort of coaching conversation, but I don’t have one planned, then I’m planning on getting the next one. And then just kind of like finding time to have just coaching conversations. Every day, I’m doing some sort of team collaboration, whether that be a PLC A grade level team, or maybe it’s the leadership team. Maybe it’s a group of coaches in my district, because I’m only there’s only one at my site. But there’s a group of coaches in our district that we meet up with every now and then. So some sort of collaboration and then every day, I’m doing some sort of personal development. So whether that be polishing up on standards, or reading a book, or honing in on some coaching strategies, or listening to a podcast, I find myself I have the gift of building that into my routine right now. And so my schedule, as you know, and as your listeners know, it is very different day to day. But there are certain routines and structures that I’ve placed in my schedule that I find myself doing on a regular basis.

Chrissy Beltran  29:58

I love that. I think that You’re trying, you’re saying, okay, these are the important things that are going to help me do my job, I’m not doing my job if I’m not doing these things, and I’m going to try to make time for them every day or at least every few days, because something’s you know, there may be throughout the week you have a day that’s really heavy in one area, and less so in another area, but you’re trying to make sure you’re getting to them every week. I just think that’s a great way to do it. Yeah, exactly. aligning it with your purpose is good to like saying that, okay, this is what I’m here to accomplish. So then how can I make sure that I am doing these things that are going to help me accomplish this in the long run, because we set these long term goals, and then we DON’T LOOK at Him until the end of the year, right? And then we’re like, well, I should have really done more of this or more of that. So if we take those big goals, and we break them down into smaller pieces, and say, This quarter, I’m gonna focus on this this month, I’m gonna focus on a piece of that goal, then every week, we can make sure we’re working on a part of that goal. So we’re actually moving in that direction. Yeah.

David White  30:57

Exactly. So adage, how do you eat an elephant? Yes, a piece at a time? That’s right, if the elephant is, you know, higher CASP scores, or you know, these huge things that is like, Oh, I can’t do that in 12 minutes. But what can I do in 12 minutes? Well, I could be leaving some feedback with a teacher, I could be meeting. And so it is breaking these huge, massive priorities into bite sized chunks. And because he you mentioned my like, like this vision or keeping these things in front. And so three buckets that I like to continually refer back to and almost filter, anything I do, through through these three buckets is, I said it earlier, but like, my job is to encourage my job is to equip and my job is to empower. And so with whatever I do, I try to filter it and I try to sift it and organize it into those three buckets. So even like a daily task, like today, today’s Wednesday, how am I going to encourage today? How am I going to encourage them? How am I going to equip people today? What am I going to do to equip? And then what am I going to do to empower teachers? And so, you know, maybe encouraging as his class walks, leaving nice notes, say, Hey, I noticed this when you did this, students worrying, you know, yeah, 19 out of 20 students were engaged when you did that, so like leaving positive notes. Maybe I do a weekly newsletter and like spotlighting a teacher to encourage right, a lot of like, and, you know, also with encourages building a coat a culture of coaching, you know, here I walk in a, let me tell you how to do your job, because I’m better now. That’s, that doesn’t fly. But when you build their trust, when they say this guy is for me, or this coach supports me, this coach actually thinks highly of me. The doors wide open and so a lot of my role, especially this year, has been encouraging. And then when you go to equipping, right, what is the equipping look like? Well, providing feedback, focused feedback, maybe being maybe, you know, we do like a, I work at a school called powers, which is kind of a cool name, but powers teacher power up so leading power ups, and some you know, I know some coaches do like a weekly learning Wednesday or whatever, I’ve heard you mentioned, but like leading PLS, so what is the latest and greatest strategies, right, how do we deliver the same information but with a, in a more effective way? How do I equip and then the last one is empower which, which as you know, is is probably the most important piece, because as a coach, my my main goal is not to be the center of attention is not to be the know it all is not to be the the wizard. The person who comes into the class, kids are listening, they leave and they go back to how they were. Our main goal is coaches is to empower the teachers to make it feel like they are the greatest to make them feel like they are the ones who came up with ideas to make it feel like what they are doing is working. And then I think and I’ve learned Chrissy and um, and and I’m preaching over here like oh, here’s what I do, but I’ve learned a lot that you could damage. If you walk about coaching in a in a An incorrect way, you can not only damage relationships, but you can damage confidence. And so I’ve learned that the most important thing to do as a coach is to empower the teachers. And so going back to a schedule, is what I’m doing, does it? Where does it fit in those three words? Encourage equip, empower. And then am I hitting those daily microwaves, and then like, weekly, and then monthly, and then quarterly, and then like, in a year, in a year, what do I want to accomplish? So it’s kind of going back to what we had talked about earlier is like these huge priorities, these big things that you can’t do in one day, but breaking them up into smaller chunks.

Chrissy Beltran  35:53

I love that I love that you’re looking at the important things that you’re trying to do and saying, okay, then I have this small chunk of time, I can use it to further this goal that I have of working with teachers, that way I can visit a classroom that I know the teacher has been struggling and I can pop in and, you know, say something encouraging, or leave them a nice note or, you know, say, Hey, I’m seeing look at what the kids are doing right now. This is great. I know, some days are hard. But this is happening, you know. So yeah, I love that you’re doing that. Because that’s forefront in your mind is, is your purpose. And if we have purpose, we can figure out how to use our time as we have a purpose. We never have enough time. Because right now, we always have something we could be doing Towards this end, but at least we know we’re working towards that end every day.

David White  36:36

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then those like, like you mentioned earlier, hey, I got seven minutes until my next meeting, or I got 12 minutes, it’s not enough time to do this, it’s not enough time to do that. I like to have a little list of like, defaults, right? So like, what are things that is in my control, that I don’t need a teacher to come over here to for coaching, I things that can fit into a two minute slot, or a five minute slot or a 10 minute slot, because I found that if I don’t have defaults, and I’m just waiting for the next thing. And I’ll be honest, with in the early days, when I was waiting for the next thing I was at whole waste of time, I would be walking around, you know, like I said, I’d go to the bathroom again, just because I could, waiting for that next meeting, wash my hands, check my emails again. So having a list of like, here are the defaults. If I find myself with nothing to do, here’s my go twos. One of them is, I could always do a class walk, I have a I’ve built relationship with my site. They know I can come in whenever I want. And I can do a class walk, I can fit a teacher in, you know, five to 10 minutes off to my next meeting, leaving, you know, leaving a note of feedback or a little treat or something. It’s easy. So that’s one default. Next default is myself, professional development, right having something to go to maybe I read a book, like I said, maybe it’s this or that. But the last one that I think is really important, especially in this role as coach is being visible. And so like, do I just go out to recess? Like maybe I’ll just go out to recess and, and play basketball with the kids. Maybe I’ll just after school I’ll be walking by I’ll be in the staff lounge, so that not only students are seeing whoever this guy is so that if he shows up, they’re not alarmed. But teachers, I want the teachers to see that oh, hey, yeah, he’s coaching. But he’s also really visible like he’s around. Because I don’t know, sometimes it has a reputation and the coach doesn’t really do too much. Or they’re just, you know, and we are we’re like in classrooms, we’re doing things. But we’re when we’re not seeing people think things. And so class walks is a default, my own personal professional development. And then how can I be visible? Right now?

Chrissy Beltran  39:17

Great questions. And great idea. I like that you have that little list. And I agree, you have those few minutes here and there. And if you don’t, you don’t have an idea of what you can do that’s valuable. During that time, then you do fritter it away. You check your email 50 times and but if you know, oh, well, this is these are the tasks that I can do when I have an odd handful of minutes. And there’ll be purposeful and they will still make a big impact and build towards the thing I’m building, then. Yeah, you can use that time. Well, that’s great. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. So do you want to add anything, David?

David White  39:51

No. Okay, good.

Chrissy Beltran  39:52

Okay. Well, thank you so much for for sharing everything today. I think it’s gonna be really helpful. And I’m excited to put it together. With the other coaches and get a picture of what different coaches do.

David White  40:04

Cool, awesome. Well, thanks for your time, Chrissy. And I’ll say it again. But thank you. This is actually my first year, my first role as a coach coming out of the classroom for close to 15 years, and coming into a brand new position. In this, this is a new position. We’ve we’ve had district coaches, we’ve had math coaches, we’ve got ELA coaches, we have not having sight coach. And so coming in blank slate. I did not really know who to turn to or where to go. And I stumble upon buzzing with Miss B. And you have really been a help during this time. So anyway, that’s all I wanted to share. I just wanted to thank you publicly for all your work.

Chrissy Beltran  40:55

Well, thank you so much. I appreciate that. So my second guest is Michelle Ruhe. And Michelle, I would love for you to introduce yourself to our listeners.

Michelle Ruhe  41:06

Sure. So I am an educator of 23 years, I spent 15 years in the classroom, elementary all elementary, I had an interesting path where I began in kindergarten, and then I looped to first grade, that after a few years, I loops to second and then I went up to fourth. So I went in that nice trajectory on purpose, which I probably will get into in a little bit. After that I spent five years as a K five literacy interventionist, where I did reading and writing and a lot of phonics intervention. And now this is my third year is as a literacy coach, also in an elementary K five building.

Chrissy Beltran  41:45

I love it. So what grades and subjects do you currently hold? You said K five, is that right? And it’s just literacy.

Michelle Ruhe  41:52

It’s just literacy. Although I feel like literacy is 25 subjects in one. Yes.

Chrissy Beltran  41:58

It’s a big one.

Michelle Ruhe  42:00

So yes, I work all the way from kindergarten to fifth grade, with those teachers and special education teachers around the building as well. So

Chrissy Beltran  42:09

great. Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what I did when I was a campus coach, I was a literacy coach K five, and that included anybody in K five.

Michelle Ruhe  42:16

So yeah, I should mention, it’s about right, around 40 teachers that I interact with.

Chrissy Beltran  42:23

Yeah, that’s really good to note, because that does determine how you spend your time, right? So what are the main responsibilities that you focus on in your position, what takes up most of your time?

Michelle Ruhe  42:34

Honestly, what takes, those are two different answers. It takes up most of my time, or all the meetings that I have to attend. So that time has to be blocked out right away. So so that happens, then after that, which takes up the majority of my time as is I’m in classrooms, I, I do a lot to schedule myself to be in classrooms as much of the day as possible. But luckily, it’s sort of it’s hard. And it’s nice, it works out where there are blocks of the day like lunch, for example, I can’t be in classrooms. Everybody that in lunch, or math is usually kind of lined up at the same time. So I can’t go into classrooms during those times, which is helpful to me, because then I can work on those other projects like developing PD, which takes that’s probably the next biggest chunk of my time, after being in certain classrooms and coaching cycles with teachers. It’s planning the professional development

Chrissy Beltran  43:32

for sure. Yeah. And that does take time it takes more, I feel like for every hour of PD actually spent training teachers or in workshops or whatever, it took like two hours to prepare for that because you want every moment to be so meaningful and perfect.

Michelle Ruhe  43:47

It does. And I do I don’t do a lot of like one topic, Ed either. I do a lot of like, I have one coming up next week, actually, that I’m preparing for. And so I’m developing actually eight sub sessions within the session. So that that takes a lot of

Chrissy Beltran  44:05

work. Yeah. And when you’re differentiating because you have all of your grades there and you’re like I want this to be meaningful and kinder and fifth, don’t really need to hear the same thing.

Michelle Ruhe  44:13

Not at all. Yeah. And I try to be very responsive and listening to teachers about what’s on their mind what they’re most in need of every every there’s Thursdays every day of every week on Thursdays I’m in PLC meetings, that entire thing. But that gives me an awesome opportunity to hear what needs are arising for teachers that I can then develop professional development for to be most responsive.

Chrissy Beltran  44:38

So absolutely, yeah. Okay, so can you walk us through your schedule, and I know it’s gonna look different, you know, different times of the year, different days, even different weeks. But what does your schedule look like maybe across a week? What does it look like?

Michelle Ruhe  44:50

So typically, like I said, the first thing I do have to do is block out the times I’m at meetings, so PLCs are always blocked out. So that’s Monday, the week gone. I have Friday afternoons, our leadership team meetings, I have to lock that out. Coaches me, I’m also part of the coaches in our district, and we meet twice a month. So that’s blocked out, so that and then have lunch duty. So all of that is first blocked out to give me an idea of where we’re at what I have left. And then from there, I really prioritize my time in the classroom with teachers first. Many times I’m in, I’m in classrooms, doing coaching cycles, or co teaching with them. And so that time is blocked out. And my teachers have been really gracious and understanding that I need a good, I need it on the calendar weeks in advance, so that nothing gets in the way. So those kinds of standing appointments are usually in place, then I take a look at the schedule and see, okay, what grade level is free during the times I have open, not free and like unencumbered. But where can I go in and watch and get and sit on the floor with kids and get and dig into the learning with them. And I try to do a variety of times I try to sometimes see their reading, lock, sometimes their word study block, sometimes their writing block, I tried to see a variety of things across the grades. So I’m very intentional about who’s available when and plugging those times into my available schedule. So it helps me to have like a month at a time out like planned out, then the remaining times are those times that teachers are not available for me, and neither are kids. But it does help with my role. It’s very, very clearly defined. I don’t work with children as an interventionist at all. So that time, that’s lucky for me, I know not every coach has that luxury. But I do so then those remaining times are or when I then can plan professional development or big projects I’ve got going on, meet with I always have a you know, have to squeeze in time to meet with my administrator every week. So my planning time is always last.

Chrissy Beltran  47:05

Right? Yeah, you fit it in whenever you have, you’re just not able to do all the other things because the other things have to happen at a certain time. Like you’re saying if if kids are present, if teachers are present, there are certain things you can do. And when kids are not present, there are certain things that you can get done. And so yeah, it depends on on the schedule of the school.

Michelle Ruhe  47:22

Careful. And I think I learned this from who actually is planning out your projects, your big projects, and, and putting milestones in place that you want to have done at a certain time. So then again, having that long range view on my calendar, I can plug those milestones in. And actually schedule even if it’s 15 minutes at a time, I can very be very specific about like, you know, researching high frequency word, construction, or whatever it is. And then the next time I add a layer, so that stair stepping of the big projects and putting those milestones in place. And on my calendar over the weeks is the only way that I get it all done.

Chrissy Beltran  48:03

Yeah, I totally agree with that. Like you have these big goals. And you say okay, I need to come back to these every week or they’re just going to float away and my time is gone. It frittered it on something else. Yeah. So what does a day can you give us like an example of like a Monday versus a Thursday or something like that, like, what’s your actual schedule looks like? Can you walk us through a day?

Michelle Ruhe  48:22

So you’re looking for two days that aren’t set up, don’t have meetings? Correct?

Chrissy Beltran  48:27

Well, it could have meetings, I mean, all those meetings all day, because that probably wouldn’t be very interesting to talk about.

Michelle Ruhe  48:32

So those are those kinds of days are actually relatively similar. It’s just that my blocks like I might be in kindergarten for Monday, most of the day, and then on Wednesday, it might be fourth and fifth grade, depending on the coaching cycle that I’m in with, with teachers at the moment. And then so on those times that I’m not in, in the classrooms with teachers, like, predetermined, then I’ve, I, that’s what I plug in, when I go visit other times of the day and other grade levels, and I try to be, I really do have to schedule that like, down to the I can’t just say, go see third grade writing, I have to literally plug in the teacher’s name, because there’s so many they’ve got six and seven teachers per grade level. So I plug in Who am I going to see at those times. And that’s also a reminder for me to have their names on there. So that I can give them a heads up. I never like to pop in as a surprise. We’re not there yet as a staff so I don’t and it doesn’t feel right. So I just like to you know, hey Chrissy, do you mind if I pop in at eight o’clock this morning to come and watch your word study, you know, or the day before? So having their names on the calendar in front of me is the only way that happens either if it was just open, it’s like third grade. I couldn’t get that done and I think that would cause problems with the relationships.

Chrissy Beltran  49:56

Yeah, I totally agree with with having it nailed down at exactly what you’re gonna do, because that discretionary time can, it passes and then you’ve like missed your opportunity. And then that happens every day, right? We have very small amounts of time, sometimes if you don’t maximize it, but you’ve missed the opportunity to see that one thing that you really needed to see.

Michelle Ruhe  50:17

And I got, as I have to say, it took me some time to have to grow the guts to do that. As a brand new coach, I felt like I can’t do that I was just I wasn’t sure. And I was sort of like twiddling my thumbs with my time. Because that’s the big problem that I think happens is as a classroom teacher, while you do have autonomy over your schedule, for the most part, it’s, so it’s really not in your control and things you know, you have to go to lunch at 1157 and recite them that 114 like ridiculous, yeah. But then suddenly, you have all this open time as a coach, and no one’s telling you exactly what to do. So I didn’t know quite how to get into classrooms as as a new coach to building and new to the position. But it didn’t take long to figure out that I had to get I had to do something to get this in place. And now that’s been my routine for two and a half years.

Chrissy Beltran  51:14

Okay, so then how do you how do you decide how to use that discretionary time? Do you look and say, Okay, we’re working on word study. And so like, that’s a big focus for the semester. So I need to make sure I, I, you know, really get into more classrooms to look at that and see what’s happening. So I can prepare PD that responds to it, or what have you do?

Michelle Ruhe  51:32

So I actually sit down with my literacy team, at the end of the year, in May. And look at where are we let me back up the first year that I came, I took just the time to observe and watch and gather data. And so what I did pretty quickly is developed like a three year plan across all the parts of the Literacy Day. Here’s where we are. And I use data collection, I used to walk through data collection, and your idea of the ghost walk through is things like that, you know, testing data, I used every piece of data I could gather. And then I made three year goals for myself for the school, along with my literacy team. It wasn’t just me. But then I backed I backtracked, okay, where we want to be and the year before that year before that, for that. And that’s a very team oriented process. And that was my administration team on that all of it. From there, I knew where my first year’s goals were going to be. And that’s how I way before the school year even started for the following year, I develop my professional development plan. And I liked I try to keep the same topic at least for a semester. So we can dig deeper into it. And because that lends itself to coaching cycles on that topic. So that’s what I’ve done now for two years. And I already know where we’re going next year, with with PD. And it’s been very effective. There’s a lot of flexibility in that though, because, you know, I have, like my newsletter is also a form of PD, I do something I call pop up PD, where, you know, just listening and responding to what the needs are. And I will do just literally a pop up PD, like next week, hey, we’re gonna learn about this topic. I’m hearing you talk about this. It’s completely voluntary. It’s only 30 minutes at us at a time. I’ve worked with the district to offer CEU credit for it as a you know, thank you. So there’s still that flexibility in there. But my overarching goals are preset, so that we don’t lose sight and we can just keep marching forward.

Chrissy Beltran  53:47

So that when you have that discretionary time you try to tie it back to your golf.

Michelle Ruhe  53:50

Exactly, exactly. Always and in line with that discretionary time to like I have those big goals. What formal PD Am I developing? What many PD Am I developing? What newsletter topics, so there’s always something to work on towards those goals. Always.

Chrissy Beltran  54:08

How do you keep yourself from spending too much time in your office because that’s an EV like we love to learn and we love to like I love to give PD and I’m a big planner, I love to plan. So what how do you pull yourself out of that make sure you get in those classrooms.

Michelle Ruhe  54:24

I think that’s one of the reasons I quickly figured out I had to write down on my calendar. I’m gonna go see and when I will say I also learned quickly to forgive my own self some time for planning because I was doing it on the weekends at home too much, which was also a problem. So now I found the balance. But I found pretty quickly and it was hard to admit but I had to admit it. I was using that excuse. I’m so busy. I have to do this. I have to do this. I have to do this. Because I was avoiding the uncomfortableness yeah getting And into classrooms that that I didn’t have relationships with. Yeah, I can totally relate. Yeah. So it took me just that it took me a semester to figure this out. And then I started plotting it. And I was very open with the teachers and said, Hey, I’m just, here’s what I’m doing. I’m gonna get into classrooms more often. Now, I need to see what where the kids are, what what the learning is going is like, and how your kids are responding. And it really, it’s been very easy. Now it’s, it’s people, I’ve never in my office ever. So people know. They have to text me or Marcopolo me or because they’re not gonna find

Chrissy Beltran  55:34

you. I will, thank you so much for sharing about this. I love that you shared your thought process, that how you figure out where you’re going to be all day. And the realities of blocking off those timeframes that they’re just not in your control. Because that’s the reality of coaching in a school. It’s, I mean, it’s lovely to say, I’m going to spend 80% of my time in classrooms, but it’s also not probably realistic. Whenever at least 25% of your time is spent in meetings. Exactly, yep. Now, how can people find you online to learn more? Because I know you have a fantastic account that you can share with people?

Michelle Ruhe  56:07

I do. So yeah, I have. I’m just in an effort to help as many teachers I can’t as I can, I have a website, where there’s a blog, and there’s I offer some coaching services, too. You can find that at coach from the couch.com. I’m also on Instagram quite a lot. That is Coach underscore from the couch. So I’d love to hear from people and support them.

Chrissy Beltran  56:30

All right, perfect. Well, thank you so much for being here today. Michelle.

Michelle Ruhe  56:33

Thank you. Well, thank

Chrissy Beltran  56:35

you so much for joining me, Lindsay. Absolutely. Would you introduce yourself to our listeners, so they get in a little bit idea about who you are and what you do?

Lindsay Kasperbaur  56:43

Yeah, absolutely. I am Lindsay Kasperbaur, I am a high school instructional coach, here in Dallas center, Grimes, Iowa. This is actually my first year as being a coach. I previously was a science teacher. And I have loved it so far this year. And I am fortunate enough to have a partner coach with me, who also is at the high school. So it’s been a really fun journey this year so

Chrissy Beltran  57:07

far. That’s awesome. So can you what exactly do you coach like, what is your role include?

Lindsay Kasperbaur  57:14

So I am, I don’t have specific areas that I focus on in the high school. So really, it’s all teachers and the whole high school, anybody who wants to essentially improve their craft, anything that has to do with their teaching, they reach out to us and we work with them one on one, we do work with PLCs. Also in our building, we have six PLCs, kind of our main core areas that we also help work with. But otherwise, it’s all has to do with instruction and a lot of assessment data. We work with them too. So it’s a little bit of everything.

Chrissy Beltran  57:50

Okay, so your main responsibilities are coaching individual teachers, supporting PLCs. And looking at data and assessments. Yep. Okay. Okay, so what does your schedule actually look like? Like on any given day? I know, I know, it’s gonna be different every day. But you can give me a couple of examples would be great.

Lindsay Kasperbaur  58:08

Yeah. So we are, our high school is a little bit different in the fact that we are a four by four schedule. So that kind of dictates everything that I do have, we have four main class periods a day, for nine weeks, so kids only take four classes at a time. So my schedule will look like I kind of have a couple reoccurring meetings throughout like every other week, with principals building leadership, our whole district instructional coaches get together once every week. But a typical day is going to be me going into different teachers rooms, to either support them or observe them in different ways that they’ve looked at. So like, for example, today, my schedule, started off with our building leadership team having a meeting, just talking about how the year has gone. And then I went straight into a meeting with a teacher who was interested in talking about how they can get their kids talking more in her class. So that was kind of a follow up from a PD that we had. And then I went into with a first year teacher who asked me to go with them to go observe a different teacher to kind of just look at different strategies, engagement strategies. So that was in a classroom. The first one was in my office. And then I just finished up a conversation with another teacher, a coaching conversation in my office that had focused on like, some, they wanted to have kids feel more welcome in the room, they wanted to make sure that kids feel welcome. So it’s a little bit of run in everywhere, just wherever the teachers need me, I run to so there’s never a set schedule. It depends on whatever anybody asked me to do. So today, I don’t have a lot of downtime. But a lot of days, I do have a lot of like chunks of time where I am in my office or going to check on somebody so

Chrissy Beltran  59:53

so that downtime that you have or that discretion, it’s like really discretionary time. It’s like uses the open time that you have to figure out what to do with it. So how do you decide how to use that time,

Lindsay Kasperbaur  1:00:02

um, I kind of look at my planner is my, my, like third arm I don’t have across. But I have my planner, I have kind of a list that I start every week with of like priority lists of. So like right now something that’s towards the top right now is on Monday we have a full professional development day. And so I have some things I need to prepare for the staff professional development. So I kind of put the task I need to do and then when I need to do it by and so I always go back to that priority list of what needs to get done first, for whoever, teacher principal, and then I kind of go from there. It’s every once in a while there’s a couple lulls in the year where it’s like, I really don’t have a ton to do. So during that time. It’s me saying, Okay, where can I get better? So it’s like, what personal learning can I do? Either for a different teacher? Or since I am a first year Coach, how can I look through some read my coaching impact cycle book or something like that, where it’s kind of self motivated? What do I feel like I need to work on the most at that time. So

Chrissy Beltran  1:01:11

how much of your have that time is like principle wants you to do random things, you know, that have just have to be done by somebody and you are the person who has to do?

Lindsay Kasperbaur  1:01:21

Yeah, I would say I do have some of that I have kind of one major task that is not coaching, it’s me handling our intervention system that we have that Flexi skid is what it’s called. So our scheduling of our those intervention periods, I’m kind of the admin on that. So I’d say that probably takes throughout my week, probably an hour of my time, if it’s just a normal week. But otherwise, not a ton of little things lunch duty, I have to do every once in a while if my principal has to step away, like he just looked at me a minute ago, and I saw him wanting to grab me, but he saw that I was

Chrissy Beltran  1:01:58

You’re welcome. You can pretend you’re talking to the computer for another hour.

Lindsay Kasperbaur  1:02:04

Not a ton of it, I would say maybe 10% to maybe on a busy week. Like if we have something big going on at school like ICF or state testing, something like that, then it like ramps up to like, right 30% 40% But average, I would say like 15 Maybe?

Chrissy Beltran  1:02:23

Okay, okay, so then you’re you’re able to kind of set your a lot of your schedule, you’re able to figure out a lot of where to spend your time.

Lindsay Kasperbaur  1:02:32

Yeah, for sure. It’s very much what do I need to get done? And what teachers do I want to work with? And it’s also me reaching out to find teachers to work with, because it’s all voluntary. So how can I invite them in to work with me? And then go from there?

Chrissy Beltran  1:02:46

What are some of the ways that you have invited teachers to work with you? Because if other coaches are, I’m just asking because, you know, there are coaches who have a similar model that it’s like, invitation only, and teachers are not approaching them. And they’re like, now what?

Lindsay Kasperbaur  1:03:03

exactly it is, it’s like you have to put in the work to try to the number one thing is the trust and relationship building, I am going around talking people nonstop trying to get those relationships and been like, oh, so if you do have a question on something, you can feel free to come and ask me. But kind of our main enrollment strategy that we use is, after any of our professional development, we try to do like an exit ticket or something that will say, okay, out of today’s work that we did, what focus area is something that you might want to work with a coach on where might you be interested. And so our last one, we did just a half sheet of paper had six different topics, they circled one or two. And then they at the bottom, it said, When do you want a coach to reach out within a week within two weeks later than that. And then from there, we reach out via email or in person, like we used a booking the booking appointments on Google Calendar. And so then we sent email with that, and then people can just sign up for a time and then we come to them. So I would say that’s probably our most successful enrollment strategy is through PD and making it kind of circle around but otherwise be invisible in our building, the amount of times we get stopped, just Yes, we have two offices, one on each end of the building. And so just walking through people that Oh, I have a question for you. And so it’s just kind of enticing them in of, can we form this into a student center goal, and then actually work through a coaching cycle and make it approachable? So

Chrissy Beltran  1:04:28

I absolutely love that strategy of tying it to your PD and the end of PD, because people are right, they’re immersed in the learning and they’re still interested and possibly excited. And is it something everybody has to fill it out? Everybody fills it out? Yep, they

Lindsay Kasperbaur  1:04:42

everybody fills it out. And then the emails Now not everybody responds back to our email, who if we send out well, yeah, essentially send out the invitation right of saying, Okay, you said you’re excited about this. So when would you like to meet with one of us and then some people do, some people don’t. So that’s where the voluntary aspect comes in. Of Okay. If they didn’t want to, we get it. And so then you just try to make something relevant to them and see, okay, they may not have wanted to with this PD, maybe it didn’t go with whatever they’re trying to work on. But let’s try something else to make it personalized for it. Our first year teachers we work with all the time, and it’s because they want to it’s they’re very much go getters, a lot of our first year teachers and so they take up a lot of our time, and we love it because they’re, they want to get in other people’s classrooms. They want to go through different coaching cycles to show they see the benefit of it. So it’s really cool to work with them.

Chrissy Beltran  1:05:35

Yeah, I love that. You mentioned we how are their two coaches? Lucy? Oh, that title? Okay. Yep. Yep. How do we divide?

1:05:43

What do you say? Oh, it’s

Chrissy Beltran  1:05:44

gonna ask how do you divide your responsibilities between the two of you? Yeah,

Lindsay Kasperbaur  1:05:48

so we don’t really have any specific division. We partner a lot in how are we like playing professional development, but then it’s like the enrollment strategy of PD. After PD, we just split the staff in half randomly. And then whoever somebody might approach her one time another person might approach me. It just depends on whoever comes in asks us or sometimes they’ll ask for a specific person knowing that we have different backgrounds. So I’m science she’s she was English. So okay. Sometimes those will help us naturally go to somebody. But otherwise PLCs we alternate? Who goes to which one? So then we both okay. Are in both of them. So

Chrissy Beltran  1:06:27

that makes sense. All right. Well, thank you so much for sharing about your day, your schedule and some little tips that people can walk away with.

Lindsay Kasperbaur  1:06:34

Yeah, I’m glad to be here.

Chrissy Beltran  1:06:37

All right, Coach, I hope that those three different coaches gave you a little bit of a framework for thinking about how you schedule your work, what your time looks like, where it goes, how you spend it. I think it was so interesting to talk to these three people, they’re very different approaches and really think about okay, well, what are you going to do all day? Okay, so I want to share a couple of things with you before we head out. The new coaches playbook is a great place to start if you are a new coach, and you’re unsure of what to do go to buzzing with Ms. b.com, slash new coach. And the playbook will walk you through a little workbook about setting up some foundational practices, as well as podcast episodes tied to each step in that process. So you can make sure that you’re doing all the important things to set yourself up for success. In episode 155 Next week, we’re talking about getting organized and structured for the start of the year. It’s an episode full of practical tips and resources that can help I’m actually chatting with Jessica Whitaker. And it’s she’s from my teacher style on Instagram. So if you follow her, you’re gonna love this episode. You can check it out next week. And I also want to tell you, I have a new Facebook group that I’m starting and we’re going to do a really cool challenge this summer. Head to instructional coaching with Miss B because we are going to do a challenge that’s going to help you get set up for the school year that is coming up really soon. So that’s instructional coaching with Miss B on Facebook. I cannot wait to see you there. And until next week. Happy coaching

Chrissy Beltran  1:08:12

Thank you for listening to buzzing with Miss B the coaching podcast. What 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!