Fine-Tuning Instructional Coaching Cycles with Jim Knight, ep. 175

Fine-Tuning Your Instructional Coaching Cycles with Jim Knight, Episode 175, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran  00:01

Trying to get coaching cycle started and feeling like you just can’t make it work. I’ve got the email course for you. Realistic coaching cycles is a mini course sent right to your inbox. It’s five days of short videos that will teach you exactly what you need to do to start coaching cycles. document your work with a teacher and help them implement the learning you’ve done together. Get it for free at buzzing with MS b.com slash cycles and start your coaching cycles today.

Chrissy Beltran  00:28

What’s your instructional coaching personality type? Have you ever wondered what superpowers make you a really strong coach? And what areas you could strengthen a little with a little direction? Well, now you can find out I created the What’s your instructional coaching personality type quiz? To help you answer this very question. Just head to buzzing with MS b.com slash quiz with a capital Q to take the two minute quiz and get your coaching personality type sent right to your inbox. Even better, you’ll get a playlist of podcast episodes that are handpicked just for you to help you hone your superpowers and strengthen your areas of growth. I’m so excited to share this quiz with you. So don’t wait, go to buzzing with Ms. b.com slash quiz with a capital Q and learn so much about your coaching self.

Chrissy Beltran  01:15

Welcome to instructional coaching with Miss B where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach and every coach does, too. I’m Chrissy Beltran, an elementary teacher who became a coach, and I had to create my own coaching program that worked. Now I teach coaches how to design their coaching programs, build a school wide action plan and use differentiated strategies to support teachers. Plus, I’ve got a special spot in my heart for literacy coaches. Now let’s dig into the episode.

Chrissy Beltran  01:43

Hey, coaches and welcome to episode 175 Fine tuning your instructional coaching cycles. This is part of our monthly theme all about coaching cycles, and how to make them happen. If you have been running up on some issues during your coaching cycles as you feel like you don’t know how to make them really work or they’re not as effective as you’d like them to be. This episode is absolutely for you. I have a fantastic guest today that I know you’re gonna love because you have requested this person. And we have finally made it happen and got our schedules coordinated, as is the author of the impact cycle and better conversations Jim Knight. Now as you’re listening to the episode, if you’re like, Okay, I feel like I really want somebody to hold my hand and guide me through this process one step at a time, I have the resource for you. If you go to buzzing with Miss b.com slash cycles, you can grab the coaching cycle Crash Course and it’s going to be an introduction to how to do a mini coaching cycle to get some practice, maybe improve over a little cycle you’ve done before. If it hasn’t worked out for you as well, and you’re trying to make this a process that works for you. That’s a little better, and maybe not quite as complicated. Check that out a buzzing with Miss b.com slash cycles. And now let’s welcome our guest, though. Let’s welcome Jim to the podcast. Welcome, Jim. It’s great to be here. I’m excited for our conversation. All right, thank you so much. I know that you’re the man who needs no introduction to my audience, but it is fun to play the introduction game. So as a quick way to get to know you a little bit, I would love to hear about a couple of things. Who do you help? And how do you spend most of your time and energy at work?

Jim Knight  03:13

So I would say we

Jim Knight  03:15

are our goal is to help children. So our little organization, the people I work with, everything is filtered through the question what’s best for kids.

Jim Knight  03:24

And the way we help kids is by working with organizations. So we work with coaches and administrators primarily to help put coaching in place, whether it’s administrators learning how to coach relatively informally or instructional coaches learning how to be coaches, and then by doing that we’re hopefully we’re having an unmistakably positive impact on kids.

Chrissy Beltran  03:44

Excellent. I love it. So the other question is a little more personal. It’s just something to get to know you as a human being, because sometimes we forget that part. So I want to know, what is your favorite movie of all time? Okay, I’ll tell you if you tell me yours. Oh, no, you asked a question I wasn’t prepared for. Why wouldn’t I have an answer to this? I’ll think about it while you answer. Okay. Well, mine is

Jim Knight  04:07

It’s a Wonderful Life. No question. Oh, that’s a good one. Every every It’s a Christmas tradition than for like, I don’t know, at least a decade. We watch it so wonderful. To the point where I can kind of mouth the lines now a little bit. And I still and I usually only, you know cry during sporting events, but I can I have to fight back the tears at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life every time.

Chrissy Beltran  04:29

I can totally relate because the first movie that jumped into my mind, and it could have been listening because I would listen to the soundtrack recently. But it was Little Miss Sunshine. And at the end of that movie, I cry every time when they’re all dancing on stage and the family is coming together in their own unique ways. Oh, I might cry right now. Just thinking about it. It’s just go for it.I’m not even kidding.

Jim Knight  04:51

 With tears. We’re only one minute and I like that. That’s good.

Chrissy Beltran  04:53

We like to jump right in. Yes.Well, thank you for sharing that. And so now we can get into the coaching work, I would love to hear a little bit about what a coaching cycle looks like sort of a brief overview.

Jim Knight  05:06

Sure.So let’s imagine there’s a teacher, and I’m coaching her. And we get together. And I say, we need to get a clearer picture of reality to start if you’re up for that. So we’ll make sure we focus on the right things. And we spend our time together in the most productive way. And she’s not that keen on it. But she says, you know, okay, I’ll do the video thing. You know, if you want me to sell it, it’s only for you, nobody else is going to see it. I’ll let you record the class you live. But when you get a clearer picture of rally in lots of other ways, so the teacher looks at the video. And she realizes she has seven kids in her class are multi linguistic. This is actually a variation on a case that we actually did as part of our research. Michelle Harris was the teacher, Sarah’s coach, but she watched his videos, she realizes that seven of the multi linguistic kids are not, are not, are not engaged in conversation. She said, I had no idea that was going on until I watched the video. And then we say, okay, so what kind of goal is a set of questions we asked, they’re different every time but we have a sort of a bank, a library of questions we draw from so I might say, well, what would you like to see happen in this class, it’s not happening right now. And she says, Those kids have to be a part of Saturday, seventh grade science class, those kids have to be a part of the class if they aren’t seen as valuable learners in the class now by their peers. And if they’re not involved in learning now, in seventh grade, when they get to 16, when 16 years old, are going to drop out, I need them to be engaged. So we set a goal around engagement. And then I say something like, then we explore what the strategy would be, we might ask the question, you’ve probably thought a lot about this, what do you think you might do? And she might know exactly what she wants to do. Or she might say, I don’t know, I really have no idea. And I say, do you mind if I share a few options. And so together, we co construct a list of six things. This is a myth people have about coaching, either coaching is telling people what to do, or it’s not telling people what to do. And it’s really a little of both. But what I do is I acknowledge the fact that she’s not going to do what she does, unless she chooses to do it choices there, whether you acknowledge it or not. And so I try to communicate in a way that makes it most likely she’ll choose something that is going to make a difference for kids. Not trying to get her to go to my Direct where I want her to go, I just want her to pick the things she’s most confident about. So she says I want all my kids involved in discussion at least 70% of the time, and I’m going to get there and she picks a strategy. And then I might describe the strategy and model, it could be one that I suggested it could be one sheet shows. If she picks something that I think is problematic. I say Do you mind if I share something I’m wondering about this? Now you know your kids better than me? You know how you see it, but I’m wondering about this, and I want that teacher to feel she could tell me whatever she thinks I don’t want to have to nod her head yes, and go do something else. So then I help her get ready. If it’s strategy that I know a lot about that she’s not that familiar with, I might have a checklist and I say, let’s go through this checklist. And you tell me how you want to do it, you want to do it like this, like that. And if she makes modifications, that are pretty significant. I would say, Well, I’m wondering about this, I’d share my ideas, but But if she just says, You know what I’d like to do, I’d like to just brutally ruin this strategy that will never work ever for anybody anywhere. Is that okay? I’d say Well, I wouldn’t do it for these reasons. But you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it, we have a goal. Let’s see if it hits the goal. And so the goal becomes a standard of excellence. I don’t have to tell her what to do. And then I say, Do you want to see me? Do it in your class? Or do you want to go watch another teacher? So let’s say it’s something like think pair share some simple thing. And we talked through other issues, like who do we pair together, which kid she’s the one I want every one of my multi linguistic kids to be with somebody, they’re comfortable talking to who’s fluent in English, so that they, they can work together. And then she tries it out. And we realized we put some of the wrong kids together. Sometimes it’s the wrong strategy completely. Or maybe the goal was too ambitious or too conservative, we make modifications until we hit the goal. And through the whole process. I see the teacher as a professional, which means I recognize that what defines professionalism is the ability to make decisions. You know, they’re not unskilled laborers, stacking the shelves at the grocery store. They are professionals who have an education who use your education to to think for themselves about what to do and and so the way I see instructional coaching, it’s about honoring the teacher as a person who’s a professional, but also providing the resources they need when they don’t know what to do. That’s kind of how I see it.

Chrissy Beltran  09:45

Yeah, I like that distinction. And I agree that that is a myth that you do spend so much time like deciding do. The myth is actually that you tell everything or you don’t tell everything. So you do have to spend a lot of time as a coach thinking about when is the time do I do I offer some information, and then providing some choice within that so that teachers can still have agency and determine what would be a good fit for them. So I like,

Jim Knight  10:09

yeah, let me be clear, they have all the choice, I’m not trying to get them to when we do it, I’m not trying to get them to do something. I’m sharing my ideas of one professional to another. And I’m not saying that now it’s, and the thing is, we get sucked into thinking telling people what to do is the right thing to do, because of confirmation bias, our bias perceptions of reality. And when you give people advice, it’s pleasurable, you get little dopamine hit, oh, I solved your problem. The only thing is, they don’t do it. And so the whole time through this is really important. From my perspective. I mean, everything’s different. And every conversation is different. And things may be different, depending on the person but but I don’t see myself as like an expert gift to the teacher here to tell them what to do. I see myself as one professional talking to another. And if that’s a brand new teacher, who doesn’t have a lot of experience, I’m still going to, I’m still going to work with that teacher as a professional, which means I still share ideas, I just say now, how do you think you want to do it? I don’t, I don’t try to talk them into what I do. The old saying is when you insist they will resist the moment I tried to start talking. And a really great place to learn about this is the approach to therapy called motivational interviewing. And Adam Grant has a chapter on that in his book, think, again, which is a really good chapter that describes what it’s like. But if you really want change to happen, you need to let go of the something not you. But the change leader has to let go of the notion that I have the secret to this person, I’ve watched an hour of their class, I know something they don’t know. And all I have to do is tell them what to do. And they’ll do it. Really what you need is a collaborative conversation where both brains are engaged with both pains or problem solving. Plus, if I solve the person’s problem for them, who owns the problem, me, and then they come back six weeks later, and they say I did that thing you said it didn’t work, because they didn’t own it. So so it’s really about seeing the teacher as a professional, not someone and this is not the way other people see it, I would imagine. But to my mind, I see the teacher as an equal a person with a brain. And I don’t try to control them, I don’t try to determine ahead of time what the goal should be. I don’t say this is what the strategy is we work it out together. At the same time. I have expertise, a good instructional coach, should have the depth of knowledge about the highest impact teaching strategies. So when it’s needed, I can say Do you mind if I share a few options? And you tell me what you think? So I think it’s, it’s, it’s, I, to me, having spent decades researching this when the dissertation was on this, to me, it’s it’s probably one of those situations where I’m so deep into it, I’m not as clear as I could be on it on, on explaining it. But you know, when you’re trying to talk to somebody into something, which I might be doing right now. You have all the energy. And when you’re working it out together, there’s a sense that both people are energized by the conversation. And if I’m telling the other person what to do, and they’re just responding and sort of listening and you know, making up their own mind what they’re going to do, and there isn’t that same kind of energy. One more thing about this is my friend John, John Campbell. He has this little acronym. He said, When coaching goes well, there should be three things in place. And his acronym is Ace. There should be action, clarity and energy. And if you don’t have action, clarity and energy, I want to think about how the whole process of working that’s that’s how I see. Okay, I’m done.

Chrissy Beltran  13:42

I love that I do, you kind of started to talk about something that I’m really very interested in in about this partnership between you and the teacher. And so I’m really, I would love to hear a little bit more about the seven success factors, because I know that partnership is one of these. And so, you know, keeping in mind these seven success factors, how can a coach approach their work?

Jim Knight  14:02

Right? We would say, you know, we studied this for 25 years. I’ve given five presentations at the American Educational Research Association about this. We’ve got some articles, we’ve published his 10 books. And I’m actually working on a revision of the book instructional coaching, which was the first book on the topic. And it’s pretty much obsolete as far as I’m concerned. We have to rewrite the book completely from sort of from top to bottom. But in that work, working with people on coaching, in our various projects we’ve done first in Topeka. Well first in Lawrence, Kansas, then Topeka, then Beaverton, Oregon, then Othello, Washington, where our main studies and then recently we’ve been working with people around the world, but certain things have come out. And it’s just kind of common sense. If I’m going to work with the teacher, I probably need to interact with the teacher in a way that increases the likelihood that will be in alignment. So the way I approach people could engender resistance. And so part of that is a set of beliefs I work from, do I really believe the teacher and I are equal or not. And if I believe they’re equal, and that’s gonna say one thing about the way we interact, if I don’t think we’re equal, that’s gonna say something different. And equality means I think they’re just as important as me, doesn’t mean I treat them differently. Just means I see what Floyd Cobb and John Crapo will refer to as dignity, I see the dignity of the other human being, when I don’t think I’m, I don’t think I’m there to solve them. The second thing would be the way we communicate.

Jim Knight  15:33

It’s pretty hard to be an effective coach and not be a very good listener. So I always say the way you ask questions, the way you listen in coaching is kind of comparable to skating and ice hockey, if you can’t ask good questions and listen. And the third thing is how you lead yourself and how you lead others how you lead yourself is how you organize your time how you clarify your purpose, leading others, often about balancing ambition and humility. It’s a whole bunch of other stuff. So the first of this of the three, the first three, success factors are about who I am as a person, when I work with teachers, how I communicate, what my beliefs are, how I lead myself, and how I lead others. The second part is what I do. And so under what I do, we have a coaching cycle, which is called the Impact cycle. And the impact cycle is a way we help teachers identify a clear picture of reality, and then a goal and then a strategy. It’s kind of what I just described a few minutes ago. And the second part is to enter identify a clear picture of reality, to set a goal to monitor progress. I need to be able to gather data, I need to know what would the goal be? And how will we know we’re moving towards it? So we talk about different kinds of engagement and different kinds of achievement. You know, are we looking at acquisition of knowledge? Are we looking at transfer of knowledge? Are we talking about emotional engagement, behavioral engagement. And so a coach has to be pretty proficient at identifying what’s happening in the good use, I’m working on a book coming out in the summer called Data rules. And the idea there is that through data, you can see things data helps you the people you wouldn’t ordinarily see.

Jim Knight  17:06

And then the last part is you need to know teaching practices. And and by knowing the teaching practices, you’re going to help people. And so what you do is you say where am I now? Where do I want to get to? How am I going to get there? And so the coach needs a process to help surface those things. And they need to understand data and teaching strategies to help that all work. And then lastly, is the idea that you work in a system that supports you. And that system helps you know, one more thing about this if it’s okay, yeah, checking my clock, because I was a three minute ramble. But one more thing is, we believe, and we’re not alone in this, but we believe the focus needs to be first, on what’s best for kids. What’s the change we want to see in kids? And once we identify, and that’s where data comes in, once we identify either an engagement or Achievement Goal, then we say how am I going to get there. But most professional development is the opposite of that. They say here’s this really good teaching practice evidence supports it, you should take it and fit it into your class. And that just seems backwards to us at the same because often what happens is people invalid a little bit, it seems awkward, and not really sure if it’s for them. And pretty quickly they drop it, they go back to where they were. Whereas if you start with a change in students, and then you say, Okay, what strategy would help me get there? That seems to be the way to go. And so for example, I saw a little thing on Twitter yesterday about ratio of well, positive reinforcement of students. And there are different opinions people have. To me I think you look at the research, you say, what does the research say about positive reinforcement? What works, what doesn’t work, we talk about ratio of interaction, which is the interactions you have with the behavior of the person. But the bottom line is, does it help you hit your goal? I don’t care what the effect size is. If the strategy doesn’t help me, help kids, and not everything’s going to work the same way in every class. In fact, what we found is you always have to change it to make it help hit the goal, you’ll always have to modify things. So I think coming at it from saying, well, the effect size for this is point seven, five. So you should use this strategy is backwards. What you should do is should have a coach who knows that research, and then helps teachers figure out what strategy to use to hit the goal and start with the goal, then figure out the strategy. Okay, I’m done.

Chrissy Beltran  19:33

I love it. Well, I love it because you help us get to the next thing that I want to know about. Okay, good. Because I would love to talk about goals and really dig into that idea about helping teachers refine their goal for their coaching cycle work, because sometimes you engage with a teacher, they’re not really sure I love your examples is video coaching, by the way, where the teacher noticed that there were specific students in their classroom that were not engaged during their lessons. But sometimes we have you know, the teachers may not have that awareness of certain things. I’m although video coaching does bring many of those to light, or they’re just struggling to really nail down what it is that they want to achieve with their kids what they want their kids to do, that they’re not currently doing. So what are some things a coach can help teachers think about to choose their goal that they want to work on?

Jim Knight  20:15

Well, first off, there’s a mountain of evidence that says goals are helpful. And, and helping goals provides focus, it’s motivating. Creativity usually is about a gap between where I am and where I want to get to. So I know I’ve told my little group I’m working with it, I want to run a 5k, in under 36 minutes. Right now, I’m at 53 minutes, not very speedy. But that’s what I want to do before the end of our virtual Institute, we have these Institute’s all all all year at different times. And so I know where I want to get to, I know where I am. And then when when they bring that big dessert to my plate, I have to say is that desert going to help me accomplish my goal. And I can let go the goal temporarily or not, but there’s a tension between where I am where I want to get to. Fritz called this the creative tension. Peter sangee talked about in The Fifth Discipline, too, he called it personal mastery. So without a goal, you don’t have that tension. And without a clear picture of reality, you don’t really see the need motivation. This is Miller enrollment, but motivation comes from that gap between where I am and where I want to get to. So I need to know where I am, I need to know where I want to get to. And then that tension is where creativity happens, where growth happens. So we we started with smart goals. And what we found was, it didn’t work very well, for one thing. I’m not saying people should get rid of SMART goals, but I think you just maybe you need to rethink them a little bit. We just found people were just kind of ticking off the letters. Okay, we got specific, Is it measurable? And then weren’t asking the really fundamental question, which is this is going to have an unmistakably positive impact on kids, it’s going to be a lasting change, a powerful difference for kids. And then a second, it depends on what smart means for you, because there’s different ways of defining it. But the second thing that literature says on goal setting as people need to care about the goal, or it’s not going to happen, is it an emotionally compelling goal. And, and then is it reachable. And so we came up with their own acronym, we said, if they’ve got one, we can have one too. So we came up with peers, a good goal is powerful, it’s as easy as possible. Now, sometimes people don’t like easy because they think, oh, there has to be productive struggle. But I got a classroom full of kids, it’s going to be productive struggle. So let’s figure out if we can make it easier, is there a quicker way to hit this goal that makes it more likely you’re gonna be able to hit the goal and then emotionally compelling. And then reachable means I have a finish line, I have a clear understanding of what the goal is. This is why understanding how to gather data is so important, because once the coach is really clear on how to gather achievement and engagement data that can help with a more effective goal. So reachable means I know what my finish line is, I know what my measurable outcome is. But I also have a pathway there. And then the last thing and peers is after reachable is student focused, not teacher focus. So it’s not about learning a different way of asking questions or small group activities. It’s about what’s the change I want to see in students, then we figure out the strategy. That’s how the, that’s how that works. And I would say, two things are going to be really important. One of them is to have a clearer picture of reality. And there are a lot of different ways to do it doesn’t have to be video, not everybody wants to go on video. And I respect that people’s decisions. I think if you forced video, it’s it’s so emotionally complex, it’s going to be problematic. So if you know what to do that I can interview the kids, I can set it up so you can watch your kids really carefully. And I could do a lesson for you what we call the close watch. We could we could have a classroom discussion about what’s happening, you know, the different things we could we look at student work. The trouble with only looking at student work, though is you’re not paying attention to things like how engaged were the students how much instructional time was wasted, how much of the teacher talk how much of the students talk, that kind of stuff comes out better through video. Anyway, to get a clearer picture current, that first thing is a clear picture of reality. The second thing is that you’ve got a peers goal that’s based on a clear understanding of data. So if the coach can’t gather data, effectively, they haven’t learned about data. That’s why we wrote this book data rules. Maybe I’m biased about it because I’ve been putting my head spin in the book nonstop. But without an understanding of how to measure things like either time on task, or cognitive engagement or psychological safety or whether or not kids can transfer their knowledge without without ways to understanding engagement and achievement. It’s going to be hard to set a goal. But if the coach can help the teacher get a clearer picture of reality, and understands how to measure goals, then you can set a finish line, but it doesn’t have to be perfect. You can refine it as you go along. You can say you know, I think I think we could do more. I think they can do more. I think we can make this more challenging goal or I thought this was the issue but really I think the issue is this so I thought we needed to work on time on task but we don’t the kids are engaged. Let’s just focus on the achieved Mental and so you can make modifications along the way.

Chrissy Beltran  25:03

Yeah, I’m glad that you brought that up. B, we do sometimes focus on something that we think is really going to be helpful. And it’s maybe not going to actually make the change that we want to happen in our kids. And I feel like I do see that a lot with teachers where they do focus more on maybe student behaviors that are more like overt and less maybe on the thinking. So there’s more like compliance versus engagement, thinking, I guess. And so then looking at student work can be a piece of that. What are some other ways that teachers can kind of be? Or that that teachers can really examine what’s happening inside of students heads? What do you look for? Whenever you’re looking for engagement?

Jim Knight  25:42

It’s very hard. So that’s what we call cognitive engagement. What is what’s happening inside you could also feel select to use to refer to it as authentic engagement, which is I think the terms for me, at least the terms are kind of synonymous other people might see it differently, is very hard to look at a student and say is that student cognitively engaged or not?

Jim Knight  26:01

They could be composing the world’s best topic sentence. Or they could be saying, wouldn’t it be cool if Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift moved in next door, we don’t know what they’re thinking we can’t read their minds. And, and so when you gather data on cognitive engagement, it’s, in our opinion, the best way to do it is to ask the students in some way or another. And so there’s, you could use an exit ticket, where you ask the kids a question what their level of engagement. But we found kids tend to buy us high on exit tickets about engagement, you could interview the students, but the trouble with interviewing students is you can’t do it every week. And when you’re in a coaching cycle, you probably need to get data every week, because the first things you try probably aren’t working, you’re gonna have to make adjustments, you know, the, to think that we’re going to set a goal that we’re going to measure in two months, and see what happens. And so we’re gonna try, it’s like a GPS that only tells you when you arrive at your destination, it’s not really helpful. So you need to gather the data every week,

Jim Knight  26:58

we have a thing called experience sampling, where you have a little form, and it’s got a scale from one to six rows of the scales, and you have a little timer go off and the class and and the kids circle their number from one to six ones a near death experience, six is better than chocolate, and then they write about how engaged they were. I mean, you could make the case to if the kids can answer the questions on an exit ticket or checks for understanding or some kind of achievement assessment, particularly in the moment, some kind of check for understanding if they’re if they’re engaged, they should probably be able to answer the the academic question, too. So there’s lots of ways of addressing it.

Chrissy Beltran  27:34

Okay, thank you. I love I love that you got into that. So my last question that I’d really like to dig into is about this idea of reflecting on the cycle as it’s going along. And you talked a little bit about making adjustments to your goal, figuring out kind of, if you’re headed in the right direction, what are some methods that you can recommend for reflecting on the cycle and the goal as coaches are going through the cycle with teachers?

Jim Knight  27:57

Well, the first thing is sometimes teachers have not had a lot of experience doing that, because they’ve been told what to do so much. And so you’ll know that’s what’s happened. If the teacher says to you just tell me what to do. And I’ll do it. That means they’ve been trained to not think for themselves, essentially, is what happened, they haven’t had haven’t had questions that really get them thinking. So I would say, in order to facilitate questioning, you need you need a bank or a library of your favorite questions. And so a few of my favorite questions are.

Jim Knight  28:33

This one’s kind of goofy, but it’s, it’s called the miracle question from solution focused coaching. If a miracle happened, and this class and you woke up tomorrow, and the miracles happen, and this class is going exactly the way you want it to look, it’s just perfect. What would it look like? And how would that be different from where you are? And and what could you do to move closer to that?

Jim Knight  28:53

Another question I really love is that one I mentioned before, from Michael Bungay, Stanier, where he says, You probably thought a lot about this, what do you think he might do? And the way Michael puts it, as people will come to you and say, Well, can you tell me what I need to do here?

Jim Knight  29:09

And his advice is just to say, well, you know, I I’d be happy to hear to share with you what I’m thinking. But first off, I’d love to hear what you think, how do you see this? What are your thoughts? And what else and that animate Elsa, Michael and John Campbell says same thing. It is a magical coaching question. Because it takes it it’s often when you ask and what else at the person starts to talk a little bit more.

Jim Knight  29:33

Asking people a question that I like a lot is if you had a friend who was in the situation, you’re in with these students, what advice would you give that person? The beauty of that question is it gives you distance, because when you’re right in it, and you’re thinking about your kids all the time, and you’re driving back and forth and thinking about those kids, you’re so close to it, it’s hard to think but if you step back and say what advice would it give somebody in that position? Maybe ask them? Have you had this kind of experience in the past? And what would you do with that in the past? And then I like a simple question like, What do you want in the situation? If this is going the way you want it to go? What do you look? I also like scale questions, because they force the person to say something. And then you can go for it. So if you said, you know, on a scale of one to 10, how close are you to your goal today, based on what you saw? And they say, Well, I don’t know six, maybe? And I’d say, okay, so why’d you pick that number? And if you say, How’s it going? They’re gonna say, not so bad. Not so good. But a scale question. Use at different times, can bring precision, I use them with weight, waitresses, and certainly serving people in restaurants. Now, I’ll say this, this cheesecake right here on a scale of one to 10, with 10, being the best cheesecake ever had and one being the worst, what number would you give the cheesecake, but anyway, it hasn’t worked out particularly well in restaurants. But but in coaching, it does, it’s worth it. Because you’re gonna you’re doing your your race running, I would say you want to ask questions that don’t have the answer buried in them?

Jim Knight  31:08

If if the teacher has to disagree with you to answer, you have to say something like, you know, I don’t think I don’t think it is, I don’t think small groups would happen. That means you haven’t asked a real question. A real question is one where they can think for themselves and invites them to go deeper. And I think you want to ask a real? It’s a question that shines a light on the other person. I’m asking them, and when they respond, it’s really all about, you know, in that scale question, I’m not asking them to pick my number. I’m asked them how it works for you. So I would say I’m also working on something that really matters for the teacher. If the goal is an emotionally compelling, they’re just gonna want to get it over with as quickly as possible. They’re just doing it to comply Well, I don’t want to life is too short to have people putting in time. Let’s focus on the thing that matters most to you. And then let’s ask some questions that help you go deeper and, and you depending on the expertise of the teacher, or who they are or where they are, you may have to scaffold out a bit by saying, Well, let me share a few things. You tell me which one of these sounds closest to what you think the goal should be? Which one of these would give you the best picture and I would never give one thing. Here’s what I think you should do. I’d always say here, and I learned this from Edgar Schein book helping but I’d always get a few things. So the person has to make a choice. So how I would do it?

Chrissy Beltran  32:27

Yes, I like that. I really love the skill question because you’re asking them to provide reasoning, which usually is in the form of some kind of evidence that they’ve observed something that you’re seeing happen. And they have to say, well, this is why I think it’s a six, it’s because I can still see that this part of the classroom is not engaged, this part of the group of kids is still not comprehending or whatever it is that they’re trying to work on. So I do like that a lot. And the choice is so important, because that opens up possibilities to say, well, these are some possible ideas, and then they can have some possible ideas. And then you can figure out, you know, what’s going to work or what you would like to try. So I do love that. Thank you so much for sharing all of your expertise with us today. And how can people find you in the real world or online if they want to keep learning?

Jim Knight  33:13

I was going to ask you a scale question, but I’ll let it go. So on a scale of one to 10, how good was this conversation with 10 being the best one you ever had? No. But

Chrissy Beltran  33:21

I’ll be at least a 10 plus there a 10. Plus?

Jim Knight  33:25

Sure.

Jim Knight  33:28

Well, it’s been wonderful talking the website to go to as instructionalcoaching.com. And there’s literally more than 500 free resources you can download on the website, forums, videos, blogs, tons and tons lots of tools coaches can use. There are more tools for instructional coaches on that website than any other site I’ve seen in by the power of a lot. An awful lot. There’s like literally got to be at least 100 forms you can download. And and then if they just email Hello@instructionalcoaching.com that’ll that’ll get them connected. And then Twitter is JimKnight99. Instagram, JimKnight99. It’s always 99 which is Wayne Gretzky to so you know. So that’s it. That’s where it comes from.

Chrissy Beltran  34:14

Love it. All right. Well, thank you so much, Jim. I really appreciate it.

Jim Knight  34:17

Hey, thank you for the invitation. I love the conversation. I’m grateful.

Chrissy Beltran  34:23

When I say 10 Plus, I mean 10 Plus, I mean, how much of an information dump was that your brain is probably reeling and you’re gonna have to go back and listen to it a couple more times. If you want to check out some of the books and resources that Jim mentioned, you can head to the shownotes at buzzing with Miss b.com slash episode 175 Because I’m going to link them there and you will be able to grab some of those resources that he’s talking about. Some of those books are fantastic reads that are really going to add a lot to your coaching work. On top of that, if you’re looking for your coaching cycle mini course you can grab that at buzzing with a c.com/cycles

Chrissy Beltran  35:00

Next week, I’m really excited because we’re talking to my wonderful friend Alison Peterson. She’s going to share with us some ideas about kickstart in your coaching cycles if you’re having trouble making them happen, we’re gonna get you started next week, and until then, happy coaching!

Chrissy Beltran  35:19

now that you’ve got so much to think about, head over to buzzingwithmsb.com to grab some free downloads, become a VIP, and check out the podcast show notes. Happy coaching!