Developing Teacher Leaders to Support School Change with Melnequa Holloway, Ep. 158 Instructional Coaching with Ms. B

Developing Teacher Leaders to Support School Change with Melnequa Holloway, Ep. 158 Buzzing with Ms. B: The Coaching Podcast

Chrissy Beltran  00:01

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Chrissy Beltran  01:47

Hey, coach, and welcome to episode 158. Building teacher leaders for change with Melnequa Holloway. This month, we’re looking at how we can move our schools with a school wide approach to learning and support. We’ve talked about how to establish a coaching culture even with admin isn’t supportive in Episode 157. Today, we’re going to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is building teacher leaders for change. It’s absolutely impossible to do all the things as a coach. And on top of that, it’s not really the best idea anyway, if all the learning and modeling comes from us, teachers don’t ever take on leadership roles or learn from each other. To build a true PLC, we really want to have teachers grow together and collaborate. And one of the best ways to do this is to lift people up who have something to share. Today, I’m chatting with my guest Melnequa Holloway about how to do this in our schools. So welcome to the podcast. Hi, well,

Melnequa Holloway  02:44

thank you for the invitation.

Chrissy Beltran  02:47

Can you introduce yourself to our listeners and talk a little bit about who you are how you ended up here and what kind of work you focus on?

Melnequa Holloway  02:53

Absolutely. So my name is Melnequa Holloway. They call me Mel in this part of Middle Tennessee. I’ve been teaching this is my 20th year in the classroom. I still consider myself a teacher. But I’ve been an instructional coach. for about four years. I focus on mathematics. So I’m a three five coach, instructional coach, and my focus is math. So most of my time is spent with math. There are total of four of us and two of us spend time with math and two to spend time with ELA. Yeah. All right,

Chrissy Beltran  03:26

awesome. So the topic we’re talking about today is teacher leaders. And I would love if you could kind of share with us what a true teacher leader is. Yeah, sure,

Melnequa Holloway  03:36

absolutely. I love that question. Especially the adjective true, because you can have a title. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re a teacher leader, you can. I’ve been in the classrooms enough to know and enough PLCs. To know, the work of a teacher leader requires so much more than the title. You know, and I think sometimes, just by default, many times administrators choose people because they’ve been there a long time, because they’ve had an opportunity to do some some work, but maybe not all the work. So what I would consider a teacher leader is someone who is builds trust and safety in their teachers. They spend a lot of their time building and learn building on what it takes to be seen, but not necessarily heard, like spinning this time up. Let’s see how to I want to say this. being emotionally safe is very important for teachers psychologically safe has been important for teachers. So building that is very important. As a teacher leader. I’d also say vulnerability, because trust comes before vulnerability, I know a lot of times we say, you know, we want you to be vulnerable. We want you to be vulnerable, but a lot of times people aren’t vulnerable unless they can trust you know, So the teacher leader is the person that you think about if I have a problem, who can I go and talk to, and you can be truly vulnerable with them, and show them the very depths of who you are, and know that the judgment will be there. And they’ll also follow it up with feedback that will help you and lead you in the right direction. And the last one is purpose. They’re there for a purpose. They’re there to look at all the things that the other members of the team then look at, they’re there that take they take time to look at data, they take time to study kids, they take time to learn their team, they take a lot of time that other people don’t necessarily they don’t see that. And I think and I don’t think they take it for granted. They just don’t see it. And I, sometimes teachers, I believe leaders are born. I believe that leaders are built not born. You build leaders, and I think it’s taking that personal time to develop yourself. So that the purpose comes forth as you lead a team.

Chrissy Beltran  06:03

I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Because we can all grow in these areas. And some of us may have strength in some places, and blind spots, and others, we all do. And we have to get better in all of these areas in order to really lead teachers from that same position. Because when you’re leading as a teacher, you are you don’t have the authority that like an administrator does you don’t have that power or anything like that. You’re leading with sort of organically,

Melnequa Holloway  06:28

exactly. So this year, I had a team that there was no one there was we had a brand new team, no one was there from the prior year. And my first goal was to build a leader, this leader had not even been in our school, they had not even taught math. They were in another school, another district, another subject. And so my first objective was to start to pour into them. Like I started doing what I wanted her to do, I built my goal was to build some safety there. I had meetings with her. We talked about things other than school, like how are you? How’s your family or your children? What can I do to help you from a personal level? And then we started to build the trust. So now she’ll email me say, Hey, I’m only going to talk to you can you? Can we talk and it can be about anything, but that eventually rolls into the learning of the kids. Because ultimately, that’s what we want to see is kids learning. Kids Learning. Yeah,

Chrissy Beltran  07:24

yeah, I really liked that. So if we have somebody who is a teacher leader, and we are trying to put them in sort of a facilitator role, or how can they support collaboration and true PLCs? How can they actually take the lead in those situations?

Melnequa Holloway  07:40

Again, I think personal development, you have to personally endeavor to do better as a person individually, because I don’t think you can leave without being in front. Now, I do believe that you can lead from the back, you can lead from the middle. And I can believe you can lead from the front. But I think as you’re learning how to collaborate, your teachers have, you have to be an exemplar of what you want teachers to do, you have to be an example. You have to model that. And I also think you need to do some research to back what you’re saying, I’m not saying you lead with research, but I think you need the best practices for leadership, the best practices for collaboration, the best practice for collective efficacy that you can get, so that you’re doing the work of the PLC. You know, as teachers, we are the PLC, it’s not a meeting that we go to, it’s not this planning session, we are the professionals doing the work within a community. And if we’re not learning, then we’re not PLC. So I think as we move forward, as as teachers are moving forward in this teacher leader, I think first and foremost, you’re spending that time learning and developing yourself as a leader, and telling and being transparent about all the mistakes you make in the process. Because I’ve learned, you make a lot of mistakes. You make a lot of mistakes and being vulnerable enough to say, Hey, guys, I missed this one out, will you please help me show me what I did wrong? Show me and and I think that collective efficacy comes when or that collaboration comes when you can have those, you know what, you’re where you’re going, but you’re carving the path together. And that collaboration process is more than one person. It’s a group of us learning and making mistakes and currently in school working on another degree, but my professor talks a lot about tinkering, tinkering with and taking risks, tinkering with the conversations. Maybe we should lead this conversation this way. Maybe we should ask question this way. Maybe we should listen for feedback this way. But you’re tinkering and taking risk in this collab. process so that you can again go back to the learning of the kids because that’s what the what is it the three big ideas behind PLC is the first one is learning our kids learning. So yeah, that collaboration piece is probably one of the in actually the second part of that is collaboration is learning and then collaborating and learning how to be vulnerable. I read this amazing book by Daniel Coyle called the culture code. And he talks a lot about MBA and, and one of the things he talks about not my MBA, I’m not an NBA mom, but my son is a basketball. I’m a basketball mom. And he talks about one game he played. And in this game, they were expected to win. And they lost. And he still took the team out, and they were crying and upset. And when he got when they got to the hotel, he knew exactly the food that they liked the drinks that they liked. And he said, he built that on learning who they are. He visit visited their families prior to practices, he went to their different countries, he tried their food, we have to do the same thing. As teachers, we have to spend that time getting to know each other individually. So the collaboration comes with ease easier than it typically would.

Chrissy Beltran  11:25

Mm, yeah. But sincerity. And that personal level of understanding each other is important. And sometimes in school, we are not doing a really good job of giving people time to get to know each other. Right? I remember once I was sitting with an administrator, and the administrator who usually was great, but for some reason, I don’t know, off day maybe she said, You know, I went into this classroom, and it sounds like it was like fourth grades PE time, you know, their prep time. And they’re all just sitting there laughing and what but then they complain that they don’t have enough time to do the work. And I was like, well, it is normal to laugh with your colleagues. That is a good thing, right? Like, we want them to engage and and then I said, Yeah, I want the she has said how’s it going with this one grade level, I said, you know, they respond really well to humor. So I just tried to build that in and she goes, Oh, I’m sorry that you have to do that. Oh, it’s normal to you know, want to have a good time with the people that you’re working with. That’s that’s a good thing.

Melnequa Holloway  12:28

I worked at a school, we didn’t have that. Like it was much more business. And the relationships weren’t there. So I came to this new school. And everyone was eating lunch together. And okay, wait a minute, what’s going on? Like it was so foreign to me. But everyone else in my also stayed in their rooms, ate lunch by themselves. And it just showed me how important it is to have that collaborative culture. Yeah, was key to the success of this school.

Chrissy Beltran  13:01

And it takes time for that to happen. It takes time for teams to come together and get to know each other. And some teams need some help along the way, because it doesn’t happen organically in those cases. So yeah, that’s that’s like that’s a really good point is that our teacher leaders have to put them in sell themselves in a place where they’re going to value other teachers as people. And they’re going to communicate with them as people and not just the people the little like robots that are doing their jobs.

Melnequa Holloway  13:28

Exactly, yeah. I read something by I think his name is Kofi llamo. And he talks about this theory behind his call. So humanism and basically he’s saying, we have to commit to getting to know people like that is what our job is to get to know you spend some time. I actually was in a meeting with Dr. Heather Dillard, she work with Bob Baker, and did some work with him. She’s in this middle Tennessee area. And she was prompting our, our instructional team, our instructional PLC, we’re growing as and we’ve been together for years, but we’re growing as a team. And she was like, if it’s not interpersonal, if you’re not taking time to learn and know the people, what you’re doing is will never last. And I thought, wow, that’s powerful, because I never I didn’t know how much how important that was until within the last two years. Yeah. Yeah. What

Chrissy Beltran  14:23

an interesting thing to think about. So then as we’re trying to support our teachers and taking leadership positions, and then stepping to, like you say, sometimes leading from the front, especially at the beginning, we have to start out being that model. How can we set teachers up for success in those areas? Because you have some who are more reluctant? Some who are more naturally ready to go, what does it look like to prepare teachers for this?

Melnequa Holloway  14:44

One of the things we do here is we have especially for new teachers, I’m going to speak specifically for new teachers and it’s going to relate to our our teacher leaders is providing opportunities for them to get the resources is our new teachers we do something called Little Hawk 101, where we’re like introducing all the things, you know, you know, all these old things about our culture that are very out and open, and also the silent things in our culture that no one really tells you like, you’ve got to walk around during this period of the day. And so teacher leaders have to prepare, provide resources, prior to school starting to help all teachers, making sure that they have making sure the administration and the coaches have to make sure that the team leads and then PLC leads have the resources, I think I’m learning that we just assumed sometimes that they know and they don’t know. And it has to be very clear and specific. And if it’s not clear, and specific and simple, it needs to have some simplicity to it. Then if you don’t do that, we can become upset. But it’s our responsibility to make sure that those it’s simple and clear. I’m working with a principal at another school in our district, and we’re anticapitalistic like we’re in the middle of state testing. And she sent an email out to her teams, and, and to our teacher leaders, and to your team said, here’s something that I want you to do as it were licensed, yep. Well, she gets all these, all this information, like all these emails, and she’s like, but I told you exactly what to do. She said, Well, I’m not upset now. She said, I realized it was not clear. It was not explicit. And it wasn’t simple. And so she’s having to go back. And, you know, fix that for next year. But I think we as leaders have to make sure that these things are clear, and you have to practice it, you have to have time to practice what you’re expecting teachers to do given them opportunities. So teacher leaders have to put in a little front word, but in a little front load a little bit of this so that they understand, so that you can provide enough examples and enough exemplars for teachers so that they can be prepared for the role or whatever your thing, you know, many?

Chrissy Beltran  17:23

Yeah, I think that’s so interesting, like you’re talking about onboarding, and, and setting people up explicitly, instead of sometimes it’s kind of an afterthought, oh, we want you to leave the session or facilitate this, this planning meeting. And it’s like, people are thrown in. And they haven’t been given the tools. But if we had, like, you talked about having a new teacher orientation, basically an onboarding process, if we had, like, you know, leadership workshops at school, where people are explicitly taught, this is how you can do it. This is how people take the lead from this position. This is what the process looks like, whenever you’re planning together, this is a protocol that we’re going to use, I think, yeah, preparing people explicitly is a great way to go about that, instead of just kind of hoping that they can naturally take the lead, which most of the time it does not work.

Melnequa Holloway  18:16

Yeah, most of the time and frustration sits in, right. And then, you know, we’re into October and November, and there’s these little offenses that start to start to arise, but you didn’t know you didn’t prepare them for the role, that you can’t be upset, but you know, you did not give them enough to to be successful, and you want to set them up when they’re successful.

Chrissy Beltran  18:39

Yeah, even in terms of interpersonal training, and how to how do you deal with conflict in your team? How do you respond if you know somebody is outright saying rude things during what do you do? Like we need to know what role they play in that because they, they will immediately turn to the hire, like, you know, bureaucratically, you know, the person, they will look to, at some authority to respond to it. And they need to know what is within their purview that they can actually respond to.

Melnequa Holloway  19:08

I would even go as far as to say you need a common. This may be a little bit over the top, but even a common vocabulary or dictionary of when you’re coming here at this school. This is what we believe here’s what we say this is because, you know, yeah, I do. I believe you can go as far as making these things so simplistic that it makes it easy for teachers to help with good students learning.

Chrissy Beltran  19:35

Hmm, it gives a structure within that they can use that to support each other instead of being like, Okay, how do I approach this? I do like that. And I think common language is super important. And I don’t think it’s something we talk about enough when it comes to professionals. Because we all there are so many frames of reference or everybody has had a different experience. People have come from different environments or from different teaching background melons are different programs or different ways that they ended up in the classroom, people who have taught under different models, we are all speaking a different language. Right? It’s such a challenge. It was one of my biggest challenges as a new coach was to realize, Wow, we are maybe eight miles apart. We are like worlds apart from my old school that I used to teach that.

Melnequa Holloway  20:20

Yeah. And you can be in the same building sometimes in the same room. And, you know, you have these heated conversations about something that’s exactly the same, or you have these different departments within the school that have different languages. And one part one students being served by multiple people, right, they don’t have this common thread or this common conversate common communication on and so we ended up kind of going around the mulberry bush a little bit.

Chrissy Beltran  20:51

Yeah, yeah. spinning our wheels. Yeah. So what are some ways that teachers can step into a leadership role that actually work? Like, you know, we talked a little bit about facilitating PLC, like sessions and things like that. So what what can they actually do? Yeah,

Melnequa Holloway  21:05

I, um, what we would recommend is that you start spending time with the leaders, spending some time with the leaders, knowing what they do, how they do it, almost somewhat like a mentoring or a mentoring type program where you’re being trained as the next leader. And I think that’s important, I think, unfortunately, I think sometimes certain roles are associated with moving up the ladder, but I think it requires a little bit more than that, I think you have to know, you have to look at the intricate details of what a leader is. And so I remember, I remember, I stayed in my school, my first school so long, my principal, like literally kicked me out. I was like, No, I’m equal, you gotta go, you cannot stay here because it was comfortable. And I had to take a risk. And she was like, and I didn’t know what my future held, but she was like, I need you to go. So I think taking risk that you typically wouldn’t take, being willing to show the amazingness in your room, the thing that you don’t think that everyone says, Oh, my gosh, Christy, that was amazing. You know, people need to know how you made that amazing. How did you change that lesson? I think it’s really key in these POCs, when we discussed in our PLCs. And we’re listening to the strategies that we’re hearing, see what trends and patterns we see within each teacher in that team, and begin to learn from those particular trends that you see. And I think that’s one of the ways you can get into these leadership roles. I think reading about leaders is amazing. I, you learn a lot from what they’ve done, how they’ve done it, when they’ve done it the mistakes that they’ve made. So yeah, I believe that’s one way to get into a leadership role. Yeah, some ways how

Chrissy Beltran  23:01

once teachers are like, kind of establish more the leader on their campus, what kinds of things might they be doing?

Melnequa Holloway  23:07

Oh, yeah, I’m looking at data. That’s a really understanding that and not from, you know, that large summative assessment, but understanding how formative assessment, or what these formative assessments are telling you. And then how to find those trends and patterns, again, how to find those trends and patterns. So that’s when you’re going to be doing how would you say, you are facilitating conversations amongst your team members? I had an opportunity. This was it was a teaching a teachable moment. But I had a friend recently this is I don’t have anything to say. And I was like, you have something to say. And so I started probing I’m like, okay, so what did you hear? So what did you see? So what did you feel like, I started asking these probing questions, to see to get that out of them. That’s one thing, you’re working very closely with your administrators, if you’re a coach, you’re working, you’re the liaison between, you’re, you’re gonna know a lot of information, you’re gonna be the person, between your teachers, between the teachers, and the coaches, and you have to learn how to steward that information with care. But also, you have to be on board with your leaders agree with even if you don’t always agree, you have to agree. You know, you even when you and if you if you cannot agree, then maybe you should look at other things, but you have to be on board 100% You were talking about interpersonal relationships. Here at our school, we had a coach to come in, to specifically focus on that. And my principal walked out of the room one day and she had a goal and I’m like, okay, so how realistic is this? The goal that she had? She said, Well, if you’re not on board, then it’s not realistic to you. So you have to be on board with the vision and the mission of the school that you’re In, and we’re not always going to agree with everything people say, but you do have to say this is the mission and vision that I’m willing to go after. And that’s, you know, that’s only the administrative side, on the teacher side, you know, there’s some, you’re gonna have to learn not how to not tell everything, you’d have to learn how to give them information that is wise, but aligns with the mission and vision of the school. And then if you’re in a school, like me, you have responsibilities, I have title responsibilities, I have, you know, I have coaching responsibilities, title responsibilities, I have all the other things that come when I owe a lot of the other things to help my principals that Mike the arm, like the shoulder, I’m there to help them. And so that is what you should expect in this position, you are there to do walkthroughs, and talk to your teachers and consult in coaching cycles. But there’s also another side of it, which goes back to that relationship, learning the people, and then learning how to use this data and teaching them to look at each kid. And there’s a lot of little nuances to this. Coaching, I really love what I do. This is a sweet spot for me, and I really enjoy it. But I’ve also recently heard of some coaches deciding that this isn’t, they would rather be in a classroom back to the classroom. So I think it’s important that you know what you want to do. But you also are willing to support what’s in place.

Chrissy Beltran  26:31

Yeah, but that vision that you mentioned, is really important. And I really love the way you talked about highlighting what’s happening in classrooms. I think that’s something that as coaches, we can build our teacher leaders by getting other people in those rooms, and like making sure that we’re creating this collaboration. That is that is authentic, because teachers don’t get to see each other teacher enough, not nearly enough. And if we can get teachers into other classrooms, and we can really support like, let’s say we’re moving into some new learning, and we’re having some resistance with that, because teachers are struggling to envision how it would work. Getting them to visit a colleague is priceless. It is massively beneficial to the colleague that is being visited as well as the one who’s visiting, you’re supporting the growth of that leader. You’re saying this person has tried these things out. And they have found some ways to make them work. And let’s go with it and see. And I think that that is such a great thing to consider. You talked about like, Hey, I’m doing this really cool thing. And other people don’t necessarily think like you think it’s normal. Everybody thinks everybody else does what they do, right? But then other people see you do it. They’re like, what is that? That is wild? Why have you never told me about this? Well, I follow standard, pretty standard stuff. So we want to we can get build our teacher leaders by getting other teachers into those classrooms and putting them in that position of have like instructional authority. You know, that’s an amazing.

Melnequa Holloway  27:54

Yeah. We so our district leaders, provide this framework where teachers get amongst their colleagues and teach in front of them. And yes, it is scary. It is very scary. But there were some teachers, we ask that all of our teachers in our building to do this, learn from this. And to watch the growth from day one, even though the nerves were there, and the emotions were there and to see how much they’ve grown, how much their kids have grown, how much learning has occurred is amazing. It’s fantastic. You’re right, getting in there and seeing it at work is so key to growth. It is.

Chrissy Beltran  28:43

And you know, I remember it’s you were saying that it flashed me back when I was a new teacher, we used to have what we called Behind the Glass, because there was a special portable building that they had installed with that was a two way glass or whatever, where you can see through one way out. Yeah, it was like fancy like they that was there before I got there. And so we did have to take turns going behind the glass. And that’s what they called it behind the glass. It’s a big deal. And that’s the way that it was done whenever I was a new teacher and most of you would just take a small group in there, because that’s pretty much who would fit in the space. Because it was a portable cut in half, you know? Yeah. And then we’d come it was pretty cool. Then we come out and they’d give us feedback. You know, the other call colleagues would have listened to us to our lesson and watched and would give us notes. And it was very interesting. And then as a coach, I spent, we didn’t have behind the glass and that was fine because I think getting teachers into their college classrooms was a really great way to go. They could actually see them the natural and habitat. This is where it really happened. And those teachers did become like their colleagues learned that they could go to them and ask the questions like you said, if they’re if you’re somebody who other people go to you and say hey, I’m having trouble with this. You know if you can open your door and support other teachers then you are behind Having a teacher leader and coaches can can really leverage those teacher leaders to make great things happen on their campuses. Yeah. Yeah, that’s amazing. I do have one question. And you’re mentioning it earlier talking about, like really setting people up for success. And kind of doing like an onboarding or like specific training, helping them really learn what leadership looks like, and I’m, I’m envisioning how, at some schools, certain people are chosen to do this and kind of to advance, and other teachers are like, well, they’re a favorite. That’s because she’s her favorite. Do you? How do you think we should address this issue? Or do we even try to address it? Do we like not even worry about it? Because it’s not? I mean, it’s kind of childish? Or, you know, what, what are you? What are your thoughts on that?

Melnequa Holloway  30:48

So I do think that is king. And I think the people that have the data that doesn’t have to be quiet annotated data, it can be the quality of their instruction is, you know, how you choose those individuals. And, and I do think they have an option in and out, I don’t think you should force anyone to do that. But I do think there is something to celebrating the successes in your ability. So when it comes to favorites, there are I think there are there are schools. And I think there are individuals who may feel that they are favorites. But I think you have to go back to your mission, vision and mission vision of your school and say, you know, and here’s the thing, she made me a favorite because she’s doing the work, like I don’t want to know, I know, I know.

Chrissy Beltran  31:36

You know, not favorite as much as a thinking if I don’t have to worry too much about this.

Melnequa Holloway  31:41

Exactly. Like she’s doing all the things I do anything. Right. Um, and so I think sometimes perspective is real key as well. Because, you know, we don’t, you don’t see that this person. You know, Ken has taken the initiative to do some things that I may not be willing to do. So I do think favorites are there. I think you’d have to look at that and say, Why are they a favorite, does it? I mean, and then I think we have to shift our mindset on favorites. Is that because they’re there, but I think you should shifted? Are they problem solving? You know, is the reason that they’re in this? Are they problem solving? Are they getting us to have us quicker solution? You know, are they allowing for? You know, I don’t even know, but I think we should step away from that favorites and kind of look at it from a big picture. Like, why are they here? And then if they’re not there, I think you have to put on a big girl pants or pick up pants and say, Hey, listen, I think that’s where that collaborative, collaborative conversations happen in those. I love the saying, strip rank until hard truths, strip your rank and sit down and say, Hey, listen, this is knowingly This is not productive. It’s not showing us giving us the results that we need. And so let’s have a hard conversation. And let’s talk about this. Yeah, I believe that’s how we get to that. underlying issues of favorites.

Chrissy Beltran  33:17

Mm hmm. Yeah, I used to have a principal and say, We’re gonna have a tough conversation. We’re gonna have a lot of tough conversations here. And I don’t know if he ever actually did that. With me, but maybe he did it with some other people. But, but sometimes, yeah, you do have to say, hey, so I hear that there’s some concern about this issue. Can we talk about that, and just kind of see what direction it goes? Yeah. If there cuz that kind of that can become toxic, and it can become, you know, hateful, and it can undermine you know, what you’re trying to do with your school. So totally bring it to the forefront. And that’s, they don’t wait, I think you have to take that personal,

Melnequa Holloway  33:51

you have to take it on personally, you can’t say, because, uh, you know, I need you to come with me and didn’t know you take it on. Personally, you go ahead and address it while it’s early as early as you can. And then you move forward, you leave that behind you and you can keep moving forward, you know?

Chrissy Beltran  34:07

Yep, you do what you can and then move on. Because if if teachers are getting really caught up in well, I don’t want them to think I’m this and I don’t want them to think I’m not. You know what, in 10 years, you’re probably not going to work with the people, but you are going to be the teacher you are building every single day, right? You want to be a teacher leader if you want to or if you if you want to be a teacher leader, and you never want to leave the classroom and you want to leave from the classroom forever. Perfect. If you want to become a teacher leader, and you want to be coached great, but you can’t do that. If you’re so worried about everybody else thinking that you’re a favorite of mine. We’re seven years old guys.

Melnequa Holloway  34:39

So right you know we I haven’t heard that in a while. But I do see in here like why they get to do it again.

Chrissy Beltran  34:48

Yeah, why they get to always pick them. Yeah, I’m

Melnequa Holloway  34:50

like, Well, let me just see what they say after school for three hours.

Chrissy Beltran  34:55

You know, so yeah, yeah. Or I used to kill me when things were Be like open invitation like we would love teachers to join us on this committee, we’re going to talk about management and create a plan for next year, okay? And the same three people show up. And then everybody’s like, well, they’re the ones who decided this door was open, the door was open to you to not walk through what to tell you. So true. Yeah, there are human issues that we’re always going to deal with. But if we stay focused on our mission, if we stay focused on our goal, then we can work through all that stuff, and just take it with a grain of salt and understand that some people that’s how they operate, and that comes from a place that is often not about the person who’s the favorite, or, you know, whatever favored. It comes from, you know, self esteem or, you know, an dissatisfaction with their life or something that’s not always right in their world. So sometimes we have to take it with a grain of salt, and do your best to address it. But you can’t, you can’t change. People have to choose how they’re going to show up. And people have issues sometimes that are really hard to address, and it affects their school life.

Melnequa Holloway  36:01

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah, you’re right. I was thinking about, you know, when we, we have to learn to be nice humans and kind humans, and give people grace, because I do think that is important as well. And, and then once we give them that grace, and we try to understand it, and I do think if it’s a major problem, I do think there is times when that conversation needs to happen. So things just being gracious, being being kind is really key to understanding, because as a teacher, leader, you, you’re managing people, and not just these humans, but their emotions to a degree, you know, like, you know, everyone’s not the same, you know, teaching my 13 year old son that like everyone is not the same. Everyone handle every situation the same. And learning to manage that is, is an art. It takes time to learn that, you know,

Chrissy Beltran  36:57

it absolutely does. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on this topic today. I’ve really appreciated everything that you’ve shared.

Melnequa Holloway  37:04

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It

Chrissy Beltran  37:06

was a pleasure. Well, now I get to ask for, you know, my favorite question, which is, what is your favorite thing right now? And it’s just a fun question. It can be anything that you’re loving. It could be a book, an activity, you know, a product, anything that you’re really enjoying right now.

Melnequa Holloway  37:20

So I’m in school, as I said, I’m in Middle Tennessee State University. So currently, all my books are centered around education. Yeah. However, I am a basketball mom, and my son is an elite basketball player. And I’m bragging on him a little bit. He’s an elite player. And so we travel we get to travel a lot with him. So that’s one of my favorite things. Then I have a six year old daughter. And she had her first belt test in Taekwondo. Oh, nice. I’m also a taekwondo mommy, and I am learning and so to watch her is very exciting right now. It’s one of those things. I didn’t know what she would do, but she’s in learning to enjoy that. So those are my favorite things. Just those quiet times. We have a new puppy. We have all these new things. I have a new puppy named Mamba. And he’s like puppy puppy, like five month old puppy. So I know. So right now we’re training. We’re training puppies and learning about my kids. What they enjoy in life. Yeah.

Chrissy Beltran  38:18

I love that. That’s so exciting. You’re taking me back. My brother is he’s now a high school baseball coach. But when he was younger, he was on competitive baseball teams. And we used to travel like we didn’t even go on family vacations. Because after the travel for baseball, that was all the time we had, right.

Melnequa Holloway  38:34

So yeah, story of our lives. I’m like, okay, my husband’s going to heat like Dallas, and even we’re in Ohio. And so all the things that’s our vacation, but yeah, it’s only ended a little while longer, so I’m gonna strain her.

Chrissy Beltran  38:45

That’s right. My mother said that her philosophy was to spend as much time with them as possible so that we when it was time for them to leave, she was ready. All right with you were like, Yeah, exactly. So where can people find you online if they want to learn more from you?

Melnequa Holloway  39:02

Sure. I’m an Instagram IG. I’m known Melnequa Holloway. And if you’re at Twitter, I’m on Melnequa H and you can find me there. All right. Awesome.

Chrissy Beltran  39:13

Thank you so much. All right, thank you have a great day. That was some good stuff from the Melnequa Holloway I really liked the idea of supporting your teacher leaders and helping teachers grow in that area. It’s it’s important for us to remember that they have to deal with the human side of coaching, which we are sadly very familiar with. And they are dealing with a lot of different personalities and their role can be really challenging, whether they are facilitating PLCs or serving as a model during lesson PDS or having people in their classrooms. All of those things come with, you know, dealing with people as teachers as humans. So I like that focus on supporting our teacher leaders in those areas. Next week in Episode 159. We’re going to look at how we can support big changes To the way that our schools work. So no matter what moves your supporting teachers in this episode is going to give you some strategies you can use to help them embrace new learning and actually implement those ideas in their classrooms. So I am really excited to share that with you. It’s really good stuff that I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback on and until then, happy coaching

Chrissy Beltran  40:26

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!