Introduction to Mini Instructional Coaching Cycles, ep. 174

Introduction to Mini Instructional Coaching Cycles, Ep. 174 Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

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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. 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.

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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. Hey, coach, and welcome to instructional coaching with Miss B, this is the first episode of season five if you can believe it. That means that I have invested four years of my life into recording roughly like 40 Some episodes every year. To share with you and I am super excited we are on episode 174. I cannot believe we are here because I can remember sitting in February of 2020, before the whole world just exploded. And trying to think about charting this podcast that was my first season ever. And the way that it works is so different now, but I just love it. So it’s given me so many opportunities to meet different people and to talk to amazing guests this year will be no different. I have got some truly spectacular guests lined up for you next episode and beyond. And so I want to share with you the goodness of this podcast and hope that my joy in recording this episode blasts through your speaker into your earphones, wherever you are in your car, in your kitchen, washing dishes, in your classroom after school, wherever you are, I hope that the joy that I have and the love that I have for this work that I’ve done in the through this podcast is coming through to you, I hope that you will leave me a review so that other people can find this podcast and know that it is a good one to listen to, and a good way to spend their time. And if you want to tell me something about the podcast, send me an email because I would love to hear from you. Let’s dig in to Episode 174.

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The theme this month is coaching cycles make them happen. And I chose coaching cycles. Because even though we just did a coaching Cycle series last season, and I think like October, it’s still a really hard thing for coaches to do. Which sounds crazy, because it’s also one of the main things that coaches are technically asked to do. But then when you look at what the tasks they’re given to do, are, it’s not all coaching cycles, right. And so I wanted to make sure that we dug back into this topic in February this month to make sure that you are prepared to do them on your campus. And that’s because I know that this is a struggle for you. Because so many of you in the survey that I sent out last season at the end of last season, so many of you said that you wanted even more information about how to get them started. And these are the questions, the common issues that coaches have had with coaching cycles, how to get them started, who to start with, what they can look like, when to start, how long they should be how to make them work, if you have a very structured required approach that is not your approach that you didn’t choose. It’s just the way your school does it, how to document them how to provide feedback during coaching cycles, that actually works, when to work with a new person and how to keep learning happening when you’re not in the classroom working with that teacher anymore. So over the course of this series throughout this month, coaching cycles make them happen. We’re going to answer these questions and so many more, we’re gonna have so many good conversations about this topic. This first episode is all about out a tool that you need in your coaching strategy toolbox. And I’ve talked about your coaching toolbox before, and I’m talking about it again, your coaching strategy toolbox is full of things you can do to support teachers where they are. And the tool we’re adding to your toolbox today is a mini coaching cycle, you might have a longer approach that you use in your school, and if that works for you, fantastic, listen up, because you still might get some things that you can add to adjust or tweak that cycle. But if a longer approach doesn’t work for you, then you’re like me and many coaches who juggle many responsibilities and many teachers.

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My role before I left working with one school to support lots of schools, when I was still back as a campus coach was to make change happen. This is basically what I was told, you need to make it happen. And so this meant that I had to support teachers in many classrooms at the same time, through many planning sessions and many PD sessions, and I had to get my hands dirty and get the work done no matter what it took. And a longer coaching cycle would mean that I was spending time in one room and I wouldn’t get to as many teachers in the span of a few weeks, maybe I’d be able to work with two teachers or one

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over, you know, four or five, six weeks. And while there were times when I did work with a teacher for three weeks or longer, that was about as long as I could manage three to four weeks. And those were usually very special cases, such as brand new teachers or teachers who were suddenly mid year moved from kinder to fourth grade, or first grade to fourth grade, which is a true story. Seriously, those teachers were troopers because that was rough move. So my coaching cycles were often short. And one cycle consisted of this short three step process, pre conference, classroom work post conference period. So those terms might be part of the problem that is actually stressing you out. So in just a bit, we’ll talk about what they mean and what it looks like in a mini cycle. But before we dig into how to do a mini cycle, I want to talk a little bit about what makes the mini cycle work and why I chose to use it so much, why it was a tool that I pulled from my toolbox more frequently than a longer cycle. Now, if you want more information sent right to your inbox about this topic, you’re in luck, because I have created the mini coaching cycle crash course this is realistic coaching cycles that you can actually manage, regardless of what your crazy schedule looks like. It’s a five day course that jumps right into your inbox every day. And it teaches you exactly how to get these mini coaching cycles started. So if you want to join that go to buzzy with Miss b.com, slash cycles, or you can check out the show notes for today’s episode of buzzing with mystery.com/episode 174. And you can get access to that course because it really will answer a lot of the questions that you’re having, and give you the tools that you need. It’s got a really cool handout and some free downloads that go there go along with it that will help you do the work in classrooms.

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So let’s talk a little bit about why mini cycles. Well, they’re not as scary or stressful to teachers as a long investment. So if you have teachers who are kind of looking at you with some sci fi, and they’re a little unsure about working with you, proposing a longer relationship can be a lot to ask. And instead proposing a three day relationship where they can get to kind of know you and work with you a little bit before they jump right into something longer is a smaller ask. They are short, so you can schedule them realistically, in the midst of all the chaos of schools, including assemblies and special events that you have to participate in and family nights that you’re putting together and test you’re administering and all of that stuff. They are highly focused on one specific thing. So you really need to focus when you’re doing this kind of work on a very specific target. And I actually have observation forums on my store that can help you do this, you can get the link in the show notes at buzzing with MS b.com slash Episode 174, or head to my store at buzzing with Ms b.com. and search for classroom observation forms. These will help you focus on a specific quality or method or something really targeted that you’re looking at in classroom. You can stack them up against each other, as well as the mini cycles that is. So if you do want any cycle, you can continue cycle work with multiple mini cycles or you can move it easily into other coaching strategies from your coaching strategy toolbox. So let’s talk a little bit about how to make mini coaching cycles happen. And I’m going to share five steps in this process. They are not complicated. I promise you can do this. Okay.

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The first step is you’re going to build the relationship with the teacher. And this needs to be authentic relationship building. We want to have real conversations. We want to know the teachers interests. You know, we’ll dig into building relationships with teachers a little bit more later on in this series. But you can also check out Episode 74, for some really good ideas about how you can build relationships with teachers that are lasting and effective. But I’m going to share something with you today that I’ve kind of isolated this relationship building process down to three really important components. And I think they’re really easy to remember. They are clarity, consistency, and connection. Clarity is whenever you are really clear about what you’re there to do. And you’re clear about how you will interact with the teacher. So this might mean a really specific time that you’ve introduced your coaching role, a coaching menu that makes clear exactly what kinds of support you can provide. It might be a coaching agreement that you and the teacher has that you’ve created together, in order to work together and make sure that everybody knows what everybody’s job is. That’s clarity, consistency means you are consistent and predictable. They know what kind of person you are and how you’re going to show up. And you’re not kind of freaking them out by showing up as a different person all the time. And you do what you say you’re going to do consistently, they need to be able to count on you. And the third is connection. And sometimes I feel like we get really focused on connection and not so focused on clarity and consistency. Connection is whenever you actually build a bridge to the teacher, and you identify some sort of common ground and you make sure that you are reaching towards them, you are initiating building the bridge. So you can get to that teacher through some sort of connected interest, or hobby or even just that you’re both humans and you listen to each other. Right? Those are the three C’s of relationship building. And if you are lacking in one of those areas, it may be difficult for you to build these relationships with teachers to where they’re actually going to want you in their classrooms. So those are three areas you can focus in. So step one, build relationships with teachers, specifically, this teacher you’re thinking about step two, initiate the cycle.

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So there are different ways that you can initiate a coaching cycle. But I want to share a little bit about how to know for sure that you are initiating it with somebody who you want to work with. And I have talked about this before. It’s called Finding a friendly. Now a friendly is not just a person who is friendly to you, it can be somebody who’s friendly to you. But it doesn’t have to be it can only that it also has to be somebody who’s friendly to the idea of working with you. And so this friendly is generally a person with a classroom that has decent classroom management, because you don’t want to start out with management, I’m telling you right now do not make classroom management, your first coaching cycle, you will live credit, because that’s kind of what I was thrown into. And it was really rough. You want to focus more on some sort of instructional method or strategy, not a classroom, that is absolute chaos. You want a coach, you want to coach a teacher, who is interested in trying something new, maybe has some sort of, you know, things like ideas that they learned from PD, one really great way to get an idea of who to start with is at the end of a professional development is you give out an exit ticket. And then somebody who writes an idea that you’re like, oh, I can help them work on this. You follow up with that teacher? So on the exit ticket, it might say something like, what is one thing you plan to implement from this professional development? And then it could say, what are some questions that you have moving forward? So you look at those responses and you find one that you’re like, oh, they want to implement this, they have these questions. I can work with that. And you go visit the teacher and you say, Hey, I was looking at the exit tickets. And I saw that you wanted to implement this and you have these questions. Would you like to work with me on doing those things and figuring that out together? And most of the time, they’re gonna say, Okay, sure. Because you just chose a friendly. You don’t want to start with a teacher who doesn’t want you around because then that makes you look like you’re pushy. You’re going to go into try to fix teachers, but none of those things do you want to have as part of your image as a coach, okay? When you go meet with your friendly and you suggest working together, you want to set the date right away. So you can say, Okay, we want to start on this. Let’s look at the calendar right now. I am free tomorrow at this time. And you don’t want to say okay, great. I’ll get back to you or we’ll figure out a good time. You won’t time will pass and it won’t happen. Make sure that you get that written down on the calendar. Start right from the start. That’s step two, initiate the cycle. So so far we have building relationships with with teachers, and then you initiate a cycle with a friendly.

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Step three is where we get to the actual steps of the mini cycle. This is a pre conference. Pre means before pre conference is a time that you meet with a teacher before you do classroom work together, it just means the conversation that you and the teacher will have about how you will work together during the classroom work. So during this conversation, you’ll identify a focus or goal for your coaching work, which I like to have in student centered language. So the students will do this, the students will use academic language to explain their responses, the students will cite evidence from the text in a written response, the students will engage in,

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turn and talk and you’re looking for how the kids are going to add something to what they can do. Okay, then you want to talk about the kind of choke, coaching support that you’re going to try it together. So you have five options for this coaching work this actual classroom work, and I will talk about those in just a minute. But just know that during this conversation, you’re going to identify a focus or a goal for the students, which is your goal for your cycle. And you’re going to choose the type of coaching support you want to work together, you will make a plan for the lesson and talk about what you’re going to focus on. So whatever your goal is, like I just mentioned, academic vocabulary, turn and talk. That is what you’re going to focus on when you’re observing the lesson. Or whenever you’re making mental notes to talk about later. Then you want to set a date, or a mode of communication for the post conference. So set the date for the classroom work, and then set the date for the post conference immediately. Are you going to talk about it right at the end of the lesson? Is that possible? Are you going to talk about it after school that day? Are you going to talk about it the next morning, make sure you get that date written down before you do the classroom work, or else time will pass and it’s just gone. Now this is the next step, step four in this process is classroom work. Okay. So we have our pre conference, that could be one day, your classroom work might be the next day, okay, you basically have five choices for classroom work. And this is what I just mentioned, in the pre conference, like you’re going to identify which type of support you’re going to provide.

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These are your five choices, all of these five choices should be strategies you can go to because there are tools in your coaching strategy toolbox, but you don’t have to offer them all right away. So in Episode 167, I share in detail about these five options. And I’m just going to give you a brief overview here. The first one is modeling, modeling is whenever you go in and model the lesson that you planned together during the pre conference, I have modeled lessons that I planned on my own. But I prefer to plan it together during the pre conference, and then model the lesson because then the teacher knows what they’re looking at and why we made certain decisions. co teaching is another possibility co teaching is whenever you’re both teaching at the same time. And in this mini coaching cycle Crash Course I have a guide for co teaching and a guide for modeling, they’re free as part of your download, just download those as well. And you can actually use this guide to help you plan a lesson alongside the teacher to make sure that you’re both prepared to teach a lesson together and that it’s going to be an effective experience for students and give you some things to talk about. Another option is observing, observing is when you go in and watch a teacher teach and you provide them with feedback later. My fourth option, which is not always included, is visit a colleague, this is a great strategy. If you have a classroom where the teacher wants to see something in action with kids in another room from another teacher. Or perhaps it’s in a language that you do not speak, or in a subject that you are not familiar with. But the teacher does not want to to to be observed. They want to see it happen. You can schedule the teacher to visit another teacher, see that happen. And then have your debriefing conversation after that. And then the last option is video coaching, where the teacher will actually record themselves. And then you and the teacher can watch it afterwards and have dialogue about that. So those are your classroom work choices. And that’s the fourth step in our process.

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The last step is the post conference. This is our reflective conversation that we planned a date for during our pre conference. And this is the this neck could be the next day could be later that day. This could be a 234 step toward a process. It doesn’t have to stretch longer than that. A post conference is just a dialogue in which you connect with a teacher. You question how things went and you have very specific kinds of reflective questions that up, you reflect together, you identify a direction for your work together, or you help the teacher prepare for their independent application of their learning that happened during this conference. I actually teach this five part post conference dialogue structure to my coaches and confident literacy coach course. And it’s actually open right now if you want to join us at confident literacy coach.com But basically, you’re going to connect with a teacher by coming in showing your face as pleasant. You’re not here to pass judgment, you’re going to talk a little bit about, you know, this is this is some of the notes that I took while you were teaching. And I’m really looking forward to talking about this with you today, how’s your day been normal things you do to connect? Then you’re going to question you want to question the teacher’s thinking a little bit. Let’s talk a little bit about how you felt the lesson went, let’s talk a little bit about the goal that we had, what are some of the observations that you made? Okay, now, I’m going to share some information that will help you reflect a little bit on this specific goal that we’ve been talking about. So the new reflect, then you’re going to identify a direction for your work together. Okay, so we need to make our plan, are we going to continue working together through another kind of support? Are we going to say, Okay, you’re going to try this out on your own? And then you’re just going to independently implement that. We have to decide what’s going to happen next? And what are we taking away from this work into what’s happening next.

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So we made the discussion, a decision that we were going to implement more engagement strategies, let’s take a look at some possible engagement strategies, choose one that you want to apply. And then you help the teacher make a plan for how they’re actually going to implement that strategy, in their own teaching, whether it’s with your support or on their own. That’s the post conference, it’s your reflective conversation. So those are the five steps. That’s a really basic way to get started with your mini cycles. You build relationships with a teacher, you initiate the cycle, you have a pre conference, classroom work, and a post conference, if you’re nervous about starting a longer cycle, or is it’s really been a struggle for you to fit it in your schedule, I really recommend that you try this approach, because you’re going to start to see what it’s like going through the process. And you’re going to start to feel like, okay, this is something I can do. And you’ll have enough practice, because they’re short, you can practice it multiple times and stuck them next to each other, like I mentioned. So then you’ll see exactly which parts you feel good about and which parts you want to grow in, keep them simple to start, you don’t have to offer all the classroom work strategies. The first time I probably would not, I’d probably offer like to, one would be visit a colleague and one would be one of the other strategies, maybe modeling co teaching or observing. And so I probably wouldn’t jump into co teaching that one to me was more challenging. And I took a little time before I felt confident in doing that. And that’s okay, because the speaker starting with a practice with a friendly over time, you’re going to invite other people to participate, you’re going to find different ways of getting other teachers to initiate coaching cycles, which is actually something I talked about in episode 87, if you want to check that out. And coaching cycles will become a tool that you can use in your toolbox, when it is an appropriate time to use that tools.

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So you know that I share my favorite things at the end of my solo episodes. My current favorite thing right now is cross stitching. I used to cross stitch whenever I was a kid like young like, like a teenager, I was like the coolest kid. Okay, so I crushed it. When I was a kid. I make little ornaments and stuff like that. And then I picked it up again, whenever my niece and nephew were babies, and I made them Christmas ornaments. And so then I haven’t done it since then. And I just I the other day I thought you know what i i have not invested in my own hobbies in a long time. I have two little kids. You know, I’m I do instructional coaching with Ms. B, you know, he got busy, but I wanted to start doing something for myself. So I actually purchased a little kit, a really small little Christmas kit, and I made that first to get myself back into the swing of things. And then I purchased a larger kit for a framed picture. It’s a friend’s cross stitch. My husband really enjoyed friends and he always felt sort of a kinship with Matthew Perry, in some ways, and his passing was very sad. And so I actually purchased a friend’s cross stitch kit and I am about almost halfway through with it. It’s kind of big. It might have been off a little more than I can chew. But I am getting there. So that is my favorite thing right now. I tried crocheting, I cannot do it. My brain doesn’t work. I tried knitting, and I just I started and then it doesn’t stick. I just can’t do it. I don’t like every time I go to pick up something that I’m knitting I have to like learn how to knit again. And I don’t know why that is. And I can’t do anything else while I knit which I can kind of like half watch TV while I cross stitch and so I enjoy that. So that’s my favorite thing. I want to remind you about that mini coaching cycles crash course it comes right into your inbox. It’s a five day course that teaches you exactly how to get these many cycles started and you can grab that at buzzing with speed.com/cycles Thank you for joining me for season five of instructional coaching with

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Miss B it is amazing. Oh yeah by the way, just change the name to instructional coaching with MS be big because it’s easier for people to find. So I just wanted to remind you that I also have to share with you what’s coming next week, I know you’re going to be excited, I have a really special guest that I know you’re gonna want to tune into. And that guest is Jim Knight, he has been much requested. And we were finally able to get our schedules in line, the stars aligned and we were able to get our schedules aligned. And so next week, he’s going to come on the podcast to talk about fine tuning your instructional coaching cycles, we’re going to dig into some really important parts to think about whenever you are working with teachers about how you can refine those bowls about how you can use a seven seven success factors to approach coaching work about some methods for reflection, and I’m so excited to give this episode to you next week. So make sure you tune in to Episode 175 And until then, happy coaching

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