Coaching Rookies: New and Unlicensed Teachers with Dr. Bryan Harris, ep. 208

Coaching Rookies: New and Unlicensed Teachers with Dr. Bryan Harris, ep. 208, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran  00:01

When I work with new coaches, the two words they use to describe themselves most often are excited and nervous. Even to an experienced coach, the New Year can bring butterflies and back to school nightmares figuring out what to do to set yourself up for a successful year can feel like putting together a puzzle when you don’t know what the picture looks like. Instead, let’s start the year with a roadmap that tells you exactly what to do each day for the so very important first 20 days of school. The things you do the first month of school will make or break your coaching year. Let’s do the right things together. Head to buzzing with Miss b.com/startup to join instructional coaching startup, This course teaches you what to do each day for the first 20 days of school with a short video and all of the resources you’ll need to set coaching goals, define your role, communicate with administrators, build relationships with teachers, understand your school’s needs and so much more, join instructional coaching startup today and get your game plan for instructional coaching. I even have a private Facebook group for startup coaches, where we work through the course one day at a time together. You can share artifacts, you can ask questions and get so much information about your coaching role by supporting each other inside of that Facebook group. So head to buzzing with Miss b.com/startup and join instructional coaching startup today.

Chrissy Beltran  01:22

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 Miss b.com/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 Miss b.com/quiz, with a capital Q, and learn so much about your coaching self.

Chrissy Beltran  02:09

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  02:36

Hey coach and welcome to episode 208 coaching and retaining new teachers with Brian Harris. This is an episode that is a part of our series on relationships, resistance and rookies. And what we’re going to talk about is this idea that every year you feel like you are starting over. I certainly did sometimes, because the Fourth R of this series should honestly be retention, because that’s why we have so many new teachers all the time is that we are not retaining the ones that we had before, and that’s a problem that schools everywhere are dealing with. And you know, as a coach at what was categorized as a school on the move, you know, that’s what my administrator called it, because we’re doing so many new things to support kids, I know how hard it is to feel like you’re starting all over, all over the time, because you don’t your teachers don’t have buy into the things you’re doing, or it’s just so much that’s being asked, or, you know, systemic issues or or so many different things. So you know, you take a look at next year’s roster, and you’re already worried about it, and it’s like May, and then you’re stressing out all summer about it. So if you’re listening to this in real time. You’re currently in so many classrooms with new teachers in them, trying to get everybody aligned and knowledgeable and supported and doing all the things right that your school has been building, but you’re starting over with these things every year, and then you feel like I’m going to have to do this all over again next year with a whole new batch of people, and that is really stressful. So that’s why I put out the bat signal, because we need a hero, and I found one. Brian Harris was is my guest for the podcast today, because Brian is the author of retaining new teachers. How do I support and develop novice teachers? And he’s going to share a little bit of his vast insight with us today, and I really believe it’s going to be helpful. I also have a resource that could be helpful to you called coaching new teachers. You can grab that at buzzing with Miss B dot, Miss b.com and just search in the little magnifying lens for coaching new teachers. Or you can also get it on TPT in my TPT store, which is buzzing with Miss B or Christy Beltran buzzing with Miss B, either one will will cause my store to pop up. And so coaching new teachers has all the tools that you need to support teachers who are new to your school, and that includes, you know, brand new teachers, unlicensed teachers, which we are seeing a you know, trend in. So definitely get that resource if this is something that you are facing over and over again, because it is the gift that we’ll keep on giving. But for now, let’s welcome Brian. Hey Brian. Thank you so much for being here today.

Bryan Harris  04:55

Hello. Thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to this going to be a fun discussion. And yes,

Chrissy Beltran  05:00

I am too. It’s a really timely topic, and I know it’s going to be helpful to people. So to jump right in as a quick way to introduce yourself, I would love to hear a few things. One is, who do you help? And then the second is, how do you spend most of your time and energy at work?

Bryan Harris  05:15

Thank you for those questions. So currently, my job is, I’m an associate professor of education at Arizona Christian University, relatively new to that role. This is my third year as a full time professor, but I’ve been in the in the profession, been an educator for pushing 30 years. I spent about 25 years in public schools in administrative and teaching roles, but now my daily work is really focused on training teachers. I work in both our undergrad and our graduate programs here at the university, focus on getting teachers ready to work in the field. Yeah, it’s a exciting time. So day to day life is here at the university, awesome.

Chrissy Beltran  05:53

And so then you have a lot of perspective on what these new teachers need, which is why I think you’re going to be so great for this topic. My second kind of question, really, is about what is your favorite TV show or movie, the one that you could watch every day? Oh,

Bryan Harris  06:08

TV show or movie, I’ll give you one of each. Okay, guilty pleasure. TV show is probably the office. A lot of us would probably say the same thing, right? Even though I’ve seen some of those episodes a dozen times and I know a joke’s coming, I still laugh out loud. So that’s kind of a guilty pleasure. My favorite movie, well, I’ll tell you one that’s, well, it’s probably common. It’s a Christmas movie. It’s elf Buddy the Elf. I love that movie. I can quote lines from that movie. And in fact, I’m such a Buddy the Elf fan. There’s a life size cutout of Buddy the Elf in the hallway in my house, and he stays there year round. That’s how it tells you how much I like Buddy the Elf I love. So when people come to my house for the first time, they get startled, because there’s Buddy the Elf just at him right the entryway.

Chrissy Beltran  06:53

And he’s pretty tall. So yeah,

Bryan Harris  06:55

he’s taller than me. Yeah,

Chrissy Beltran  06:57

that’s so funny. Yeah, my husband, that’s his favorite Christmas movie. He’s, I’m a huge Christmas movie fan. He’s not so much, but he loves elf and the scene whenever they’re putting the lights on the tree, and then they they’re going to put the star on the tree, and he, like, runs and jumps onto the tree and the whole tree tips over. He laughs so hard every time that happens. Yeah,

Bryan Harris  07:16

I do too. Yeah. I can relate. Yeah.

Chrissy Beltran  07:18

Okay, so what we’re going to talk about today is, you know, this idea of tons of turnover at schools. We’re struggling with retention. We have new teachers every year. We feel like we’re starting over as schools and instructional coaches trying to support people and get everybody in alignment and build knowledge and institutional knowledge, and then we just lose it and start over. So what are some of the underlying reasons for why schools are dealing with this massive high turnover and so many new teachers?

Bryan Harris  07:46

All right, so how long we got? Three, four hours to scratch the surface, yeah. So we, we’re all dealing with high turnover. We have for a long time, actually. So maybe a way to kind of first frame. The question is, is turnover always a bad thing? So in every profession, we need some turnover. So certainly within education, we wish more of our teachers would stay. There’s no doubt about that. But it’s good to remember that some turnover in any profession, whether that be the medical profession, law enforcement, firefighters, you name it, there’s got to be some natural turnover, because not everybody’s a fit for the job, even well meaning, loving, compassionate people who thought they wanted to be a teacher, once they get in the classroom, they realize, okay, this is not really my skill set. It’s not what I thought it would be. Maybe I’m just not cut out to do it. So the first thing to remember is just some turnover is actually a good thing. We want some. If we don’t have any turnover at all, we’re not weeding anybody out. We might not be getting the best people. So that’s another way to look at it. Another question we could ask is, why do people leave right? Some turnover is necessary. Some of those things are outside of our control as educators or as administrators, things like a life change. So for example, if a family decides they want to have one of the spouses stay home and, you know, watch the kids a pregnancy, a spouse, their job relocates, and they have to move. So there are a whole bunch of things that are slightly outside of our control. Some teachers decide, You know what, I’m going to teach for three or four years and I’m going to go do another career. So they decide they they want a career change or a family change. Some of those things are a little outside of our control. And that’s okay. That’s just life. Every industry, every type of profession, deals with that same exact thing. Sometimes they are counseled out of the profession. That kind of goes back to the idea that we want some turnover. There are some teachers we work with that we might love them dearly, but they’re just not cut out to be teachers. It’s just, they’re just not good fits. And we do counsel some people out of the profession. Again, that happens everywhere. A couple other reasons. People. Believe poor pay and benefits is an issue, although I, in preparation for our discussion, I did look it up. The NEA says that the average 2023 teacher salary is 42k 42,000 a year. So that’s certainly on the lower end of what other people with a bachelor’s degrees would get. But depending on your part of the country, that 42k is a national number. By the way, it’s a national average. You know, that’s that’s not horrible. It’s certainly not what they deserve, what new teachers deserve, but it’s probably not horrible. So but pay and benefits are an issue. Sometimes it’s inadequate resources. They get to a position, or they get to a school, and they realize that I don’t get the resources or the support I need. So lack of support, lack of resources, sometimes difficult working conditions or people reason, a reason that people leave the profession. Sometimes it’s related to stress. It’s a stressful job, and it’s a different kind of stress. If we take a kind of a stereotypical person went through college, graduated from college, early 20s, then is out starting their career. It’s a stressful job. It’s a different kind of stress than working in another environment or being a student, a full time student at a school. So stress has is part of it. You know, bashing of the profession in general is still a bit of an issue, although it’s significantly less of an issue than we saw maybe 10 plus years ago. But still, some people look at this as like for 42k this ain’t worth it, right? And they decide, You know what, I’m going to look for something else,

Chrissy Beltran  11:36

yeah, yeah. Something else I’ve seen is lack of autonomy, where decisions are being made, not even necessarily by the school or even the district, really, but by entities beyond that, that are, you know, kind of limiting what choices you can make in the classroom, what resources you can use. And that can be really stressful, because, you know, you’re not allowed to be really a practitioner anymore, because you have to abide by all of these arbitrary rules,

Bryan Harris  12:00

yes, yeah. Well, Said, that’s definitely an issue for for many people,

Chrissy Beltran  12:05

yeah, and it is, and you’re right, there is good turnover, absolutely and having been a coach, you know for a while, sometimes it is absolutely appropriate that people go on to find some other kind of work, or maybe find a school that is a better fit, or something like that. Sometimes your school may have higher turnover when it’s a time of change at your school, and it’s not a good fit for those teachers anymore sometimes, and they need to find a place that is a better fit. So that’s a really good point. I’m glad you brought that up. Yeah. Well, frustrating as it can be, sometimes there are good reasons that people are leaving, but you can find somebody who might work better for your school.

Bryan Harris  12:37

Another thing to keep in mind with attrition and retention is, let’s say you hire a new teacher again. We’ll kind of go the stereotypical early 20s right out of college, and they move to a different community or to a different state to start their career, and then after a year, they realize, I just want to be home with my family again. It’s a loss for us, but it’s actually a plus for maybe, maybe they’re going to stay in the profession. They just go back home to do it doesn’t help us, because we lose them, but we don’t lose them to the profession. We just lose them from our organization,

Chrissy Beltran  13:10

right, right? That’s very true. And so whatever you’ve done to support that teacher, you have still contributed to growing that teacher, and they will carry that with them wherever they go. So that is at least helpful information for you when you’re dealing with losing so many teachers. Yeah, somebody

Bryan Harris  13:24

else gets to sow the seeds that you planted. That’s right. Yeah. Okay,

Chrissy Beltran  13:28

so you talked about in your book four different supports that we need to provide to help teachers stick around and really be successful. Can you share a little bit about those? Yeah,

Bryan Harris  13:38

I think we’ll do a deeper dive coming up in some of your questions. But generally, there are induction programs. Is one level of support, and we’ll talk about that if it’s in, if you’re interested, there’s difference between induction and orientation. Those are not the same thing. But in, if we want to support our new teachers, we have to have a system to bring in, bring them into the organization. We have to be very thoughtful and very systematic about it. So induction is one of them, making sure that our administrators know how to support our new teachers. So supportive administration is another. And it’s not just that I’m welcoming and that I’m friendly and that I have a welcoming personality. Certainly that helps, but there are some concrete things we can do. We can discuss those as well. Mentoring is a huge part of it. Sometimes they put districts will put mentoring and induction kind of in the same category. I think that’s okay, but when we give real significant thought to how we go about selecting and training mentors, and lastly, is a category that’s often forgotten, and that is, how do I train the my colleagues or the colleagues of that new teacher. So for example, most districts, most schools, understand my new teacher needs a mentor. That’s good. They need some sort of an induction experience to bring them into the culture of the organization and help them understand the curriculum we use, all that sort of stuff. Those are good as well. Most districts will also say. I need to train my administrators on how to support the unique needs of new teachers. All is good. The thing that this often overlooked is, how do I prepare the other people at that grade level? Here’s an example. Let’s say there’s a fourth grade team. There are four teachers on that fourth grade team, three of them are veteran or been there a couple years, and you have a brand new teacher. What my research found, and I did a doctoral dissertation on this topic, granted given in full transparency. That dissertation was defended 10 years ago, so the data is a little bit old, but what we found is that while the teacher, the new teacher might love their principal, might love their mentor, but if they’re not surrounded by supportive colleagues, they’re not going to stay. So if I again fourth grade, I’m the newbie, and the three people around me, one of them might be my mentor, but if the culture of that grade level is not supportive, those are the people I live with every day, right? I might see my administrator and have a decent interaction with them, maybe once or twice a week to those people that I see every day, and if they don’t have really good, supportive, collegial environments, they’re not going to stay.

Chrissy Beltran  16:08

Mm, hmm, yeah, I like that, because that’s, that’s really good information. That’s something that a coach can actually support with. Then, you know, they can work on that, that team aspect, and making sure that they know how to support each other, yeah, because they are outside the team, but they can kind of see it. They can see what’s happening. Sometimes, yeah, they have

Bryan Harris  16:27

a tremendous influence, far more than they realize. Sometimes it’s a subtle influence, and it’s things like, let’s again that fourth grade team. The principal says, As a fourth grade team, you need to meet once a week to do some collaborative planning, right? And you meet every week at 1215 on Tuesday for your collaborative planning. But three of the people kind of they complain about it. They grudgingly go. They show up 10 minutes late. They don’t give their full heart into it. That is telling the new teacher this is how we’re supposed to behave at this school, even though the new teacher is not necessarily going to say, Yeah, that’s good. That culture, that that subculture, has a tremendous influence. And if that new teacher says, I don’t really feel comfortable here, they’re going to go find some place where they are comfortable. And here’s one thing we have to remember as administrators and leaders, is it’s an open job market. If I’m a fourth grade teacher and I don’t particularly like it here, they know I can go to the district next door, the school down the street, they’ll probably offer me a job. It might not have been. It wasn’t that way when I started my career in the early 1990s I started in 1993 I was just happy to get a job. I took the first job somebody offered me. It’s like, I didn’t think I’d find a job. I found a job. I’ll take it. I didn’t do any research on the school. I didn’t do anything. It’s like, you offer me a job, I’ll take it, right? It’s not the same anymore. They know that they have options.

Chrissy Beltran  17:45

So true. When I started teaching, was in 2003 and I was here where I lived in El Paso, Texas, there everybody was getting jobs. I think the districts were growing at the time, yeah. And I think there was a fair amount of turnover, you know, new leadership, and I everybody was getting jobs. And I looking back, I’m like, were you crazy? I I held out for a job at my dream school. I got offers from several schools. I was like, I’m waiting to see if my dream school, you know, opens up. And then the principal at the dream school called me, offered me a grade level I didn’t want. I said, I’ll hold out and see if you get an opening in fourth grade because that’s what I wanted, and then I got it. That was, that was, and I feel like maybe that’s happening again. You know, people are able to wait for what they really want, yeah, so we have to make them happy, yeah. So you mentioned, oh, go ahead. Yeah. No, that’s

Bryan Harris  18:38

okay. Certainly we want to help them feel satisfied and fulfilled happy is a different question, right? You want them to be unhappy? I’m not trying to go out of my way to be unhappy, but if I’m chasing happiness in my profession, in this profession, because there’s so many variables, I’m going to be miserable. But what we want to do as leaders is help them see that they’re making a difference. They’re getting personally fulfilled, they’re managing their stressors, they’re seeing the outcome of all of their hard work, then that kind of fills us that with this inner joy of saying, I’m making a difference, and that’s what I’m called to do.

Chrissy Beltran  19:10

Yeah, yeah, that’s true, yeah. Happiness is you can’t, you can’t make anybody happy, honestly, yeah, we all have, kind of have to choose what we do. We’ve got so you mentioned induction programs. And I’m really curious about this, because I have seen what, and you mentioned that some induction programs are paired with mentoring programs. You know, I’ve seen lots of them not done really well, and I would like to know what a really good induction program does look like. Once

Bryan Harris  19:36

again, how long do we have? Yeah, it’ll be a really long interview, right? So let me step back a little bit, and that’s to just differentiate between orientation and induction, or they often are kind of put together, and if we use those, use them as synonyms, I don’t think it’s that big a deal, as long as the leaders, whoever in charge of these understand the differences orientation. Typically deals with payroll stuff, signing all the forms, things like, here’s your IT, email, password, here are the keys to your classroom. Here’s where you park. Those things are important. We need to provide that kind of orientation to kind of figuring out the nuts and bolts of this new organization that I’m a part of that’s absolutely important, and sometimes it’s even as nuts and bolts as when you jam the copier. Here’s who helps you out. It’s really that nuts and bolt stuff induction is specific training and supports for teachers as they enter into the profession. So it’s going to include things like understanding the school or the district’s MTSS policy or or discipline policy, understanding the curriculum materials we use, and giving them time to dig into those curricular materials. Here’s one thing we often forget, especially if that new teacher is coming from outside the organization, meaning they didn’t student teach with us, right? We’re they’re given their curricular materials. Now, many of them will say the summer ahead of time. Can I have them so I can plan but some of them are given those curricular materials five days before they’re supposed to use them. And can any of us do that? I don’t know, not well, so it’s helping them understand the curriculum materials, maybe the testing schedules or the assessment schedule that the district has what effective instructional models look like, or what we’re looking for in this organization or in this school, because some schools have a relatively small instructional methodology they want you to use, a traditional school is going to have a probably a more narrow instructional model They want you to use than maybe another type of school. So it’s going to include those topics which help them understand how we do the professional stuff in this district, from collaboration to lesson planning to discipline policies to communication the though it’s really understanding the differences, helping them during induction, understand this organization and how we do things,

Chrissy Beltran  22:04

yeah. And so what should that look like? Is that look like a special day that the school does in advance of the school year? Does it look like after school workshops? Or what are some ways that schools do

Bryan Harris  22:14

that? Yeah, it’s a variety of ways. So going back just a little bit, I spent 25 years in public school districts here in Arizona. 14 of those years, I served as a district level administrator. I was a director in charge of teacher training, new teacher development, induction, all that kind of stuff. In fact, it’s all the way back then, because I took that job in 2004 it’s at that time when I started, first started becoming interested in figuring out, how do we keep people because even back then, we had a bit of a teacher shortage, not like we have today. So I had to kind of do all the nuts and bolts of figuring these things out. Most districts will do some sort of in service, especially oriented towards their new teachers. So maybe it’s three or four or five days before veteran teachers return, before the fall that is supposed to focus specifically on helping them understand how we do things in this organization. So training is absolutely a part of it. The way I organize, and the way many districts still do that, is they balance those. Let’s say you have five days just with your new teachers before the betsman teachers return in the fall. I try to balance those between training, giving information, and collaboration and time in their classrooms. What new teachers want more than anything else. This is my bias. Is based on experience. Give me time in my classroom so I can just nest. I can figure out. How do I do my bulletin boards? How am I going to do my seating arrangements, getting getting my my space ready? That’s so important, we sometimes forget that. So we try to balance those five days again, three days, four days, five days, whatever it is, if it’s only one day, that’s a different discussion. And I encourage anybody who’s watching or listening, if you only have one or two days for this thing we call induction, reach out to me. We’ll talk more, because you have to be very, very careful about how you use that time. But balance it between giving them time to just breathe and figure stuff out, and training. It’s a combination of both, okay, but a few of my favorite strategies during that obviously, there’s going to be some formal training kind of stuff, time in classrooms, time during that special week, again, 345, days to meet with their mentor. We’ll talk about mentoring coming out, because that’s pretty important, but where they can sit down and just have a meal with their mentor, because many of them haven’t met their mentors yet. Yeah, and mentoring is so interesting because it’s kind of like an arranged marriage, if you think about it, is two people have never met, and the principal says you’re going to be this person’s mentor. Go and be nice to each other. So time to meet with your mentor, time in the classroom. A couple other of my favorites is give or provide neighborhood tours. Now I live in in Arizona. I live just south of the Phoenix metro area, so I live in the desert. It’s hard. To do a bus tour in the middle of August or late July, early August, because it’s 170 degrees out there. It’s horrible. Nobody wants to sit in a bus. But what I’ve encouraged principals to do is, I say, take your new teachers, throw them in your car and just do a neighborhood tour. Just say, here, here maybe. Here’s the apartment complex that we serve. Here’s what our neighborhood houses typically look like. Here’s where a lot of your kids will probably hang out on the weekends, just having them see the environment that’s so important. Neighborhood tours love them. Another thing that you could arrange again, anybody wants to know more about this, just reach out and we’ll talk more. I’d love talking about this stuff is create what we call model classrooms, M, O, D, E, L, novel classrooms. Contract with some veteran teachers, some highly effective veteran teachers, and say, I’m going to pay you ahead of time a couple of days to where on the first day of induction, I have them five days early. Maybe it’s four days early. I want your classroom completely set up as if it was the first day of school. And I’m going to bring my new teachers, so I contract, let’s say, with a high school English teacher, and I pay her ahead of time, and she sets up her classroom as if it’s the very first day of school. Desks are ready, handouts are done, it’s all set. Then I’m going to bring my secondary teachers that are new going through my induction experience, and say, let’s just go visit and pick her brain. Why did you put your teacher desk over there? Why are why is your computer, chart cart over there? Tell me about how you use that bulletin board. Tell me about your first day of school activities, so that a teacher, especially a novice teacher, can go into a classroom and say, Oh, that’s a pretty good model. I can see and I can steal really good ideas. So model classrooms absolutely love them. Yeah, I love that idea. Yeah, one last idea, and then we’ll go on. I know I can get a little verbose on this, because it’s such an interesting topic to talk about. Is administrators in in that district or in that organization, have them attend elements of induction, even if it’s just part of a lunch, even if it’s just, I want them to sit in for about an hour during one of our training what we want to do, in this case, is help the teacher see that the district administration, who might be leading the induction experience and the site administrators are part of the same team. Yeah. What we don’t want is the principal say, Yeah, I don’t know if you have that anything about that induction stuff, but you’re supposed to be there on August 2. Yeah, we want that principal to say, I know exactly where to go. In fact, I’ll go there with you. We’ll spend the first hour together. And that’s one thing I’ve done in the past, is build time in during induction to where the principals can just sit with their new teachers. Maybe they are three or four new teachers at their school, and they just sit and I give them some things to talk about some things to discuss. When the site administrators see what they’re doing during induction, the topics they’ll talk about, the activities they’ll participate in, they’ll be much more supportive. And it also allows district level leaders to get input from principals. What else can we add to their experience which will help them transition back to your school?

Chrissy Beltran  27:59

Yeah, yeah. That is so important, that alignment piece. We see that a lot with instructional coaching as well. Coaches go to trainings, come back to schools. Principals don’t know what they were trained in, then they say, No, we’re not doing that. We’re doing this. Coaches are like, now, what do I do? Like, there’s no alignment. Yeah, that’s so important. And you’re kind of leading us to where I wanted to ask about next, actually, which is about administrators and what they can be doing specifically to support new teachers?

Bryan Harris  28:22

Yeah. So a good way we could frame that discussion is asking the questions, what do new teachers want from their administrators? And so there’s, there are lists out there, and you probably don’t need a research study to tell you that a new teacher probably wants them to be visible. So what I might do, and I’ll give you a whole bunch of other characteristics, but what I might do is sit down with my administrators, maybe even do some post surveys, as my new teachers are finishing up their second or third year, and say, What do you most value as a new teacher from your administrators. Visibility is huge. They want to be able to see that the principal or the assistant principal, the administrator, the CEO, the headmaster, whatever the title is. They’re out in school, in classrooms, in hallways. They’re interacting. Highly visible is important. Clear communication is important. Being organized is pretty important. Having a clear mission, an articulable I say that, right? Articulable. They can articulate their mission. Sorry, I can’t they. They notice the and value accomplishments of their staff. There’s a whole bunch of lists we could create, but asking the question, what is my brand new teacher probably need from me that might be different than what everybody needs from me. One kind of really key idea there is to increase the amount of face time that you give as an administrator. So if I’m a school principal, I served as a school principal for a couple of years, I’m going to increase the amount of face time on inter personal interactions I have with my newer teachers, probably once a week. I’m a big fan of new teacher meetings, maybe once a week, maybe once every two weeks. I don’t want to overload their schedule. But I want to meet with them periodically, just to check in and say, how you doing? What can I provide to you? What questions can I answer? Not so much driven by my agenda, but just an ability to listen. So new teacher meetings are huge with with the principal or the administrative team, again, not for evaluation purposes, just to say, How’s it going? What do you need? Give me some of your success stories. What’s happened that’s been funny? What’s something I can take off your plate that might help relieve your stress here in the next month? One suggestion, kind of one bias with that is, don’t call them rookie rookie roundups or newbie meetings. This is just my my personal bias. It just is what it is. It’s just me, right? But I counsel new teachers. I said, Never say something like, I’m just a new teacher, because you’re not just anything, right? If you became a teacher, you got your degree, or you have your experience, they hired you. They think very highly of you, and you don’t want to diminish your own value by saying, Well, I’m just a new teacher. Say I’m a teacher. So I don’t want to call them rookies or newbies, because it almost sounds demeaning. It also kind of almost kind of putting them down, down a notch, like their perspective or opinion doesn’t matter as much as somebody who’s been a veteran teacher. It matters equally. I might respond to it differently depending on my experience, of course, but again, my I’ll get off that soapbox. Don’t call me.

Chrissy Beltran  31:30

Yeah, I think that’s really good point about we have a characteristics that new teachers want from administrators, because they want security. They want to know like that. They are, belong in the system, that they have a place that they’re doing what’s being asked, that they are, you know, getting a response that is appropriate. And, you know, whenever you don’t see your administrator, people are like, I don’t am i doing a good job? Am I doing my job? Well, I don’t know.

Bryan Harris  31:54

Yeah, they, they so value the feedback. They so value the appreciations or the directions they one thing we have to remember is, for those of us been in the profession for a while, we we kind of forget this. But just coming out of college, just starting my career, whether I’m 23 or 43 I’m just starting, I’ve been trained. Most of them have been trained somehow. I There’s a sense that I should know stuff that I actually don’t know. If I’m totally honest with you, I just went through a workshop and took a whole college class on formative assessment. I don’t think I could define it right now, right? So I’m speaking as if I was a new teacher. Yes, I know there’s all sorts of things they should know that they feel like I should know how to disaggregate data, but I’m sitting and I’m kind of faking my way through just giving them a little bit of ability to relax and say you can’t remember everything. I’m going to help you slow roll into this profession, because my goal is for you to be around as long as you want to be around and have a happy, healthy, long career. So I’m going to maybe slow roll you and not expect you to know everything you think you should know. That’s a really, really important idea kind of related to that. I saw you had a question, but I had thought related to that. So I started my teaching career in 1993 so depending on who’s watching, you can kind of relate. You see, I have a lot of gray hair there. When I started my career, I could fail in private. Unfortunately, it also meant, for the most part, I succeeded in private, but if I had a bad lesson, I just bombed it, and things went south. As long as I wasn’t mean to kids, they’re not ratting me out, right? I never had one kid raise his hand and say, excuse me, you stopped. You failed to do a closure on that lesson. We’re not going to remember this. They don’t do that. So if I had a bad lesson, or things just fell apart. Nobody probably saw that. Yeah, because my early on in my teaching career, I had my principal evaluate me or do observations, I think, three or four times that first year, with two to evaluate or two formal evaluations. Other than that, nobody ever came in. Yep, today, it’s different. There are academic coaches, like the people you support. There’s principals, assistant principals, there might be district level people, there’s their mentor. They’ve got a lot of people constantly watching them. They don’t have the ability to fail in private very much anymore. Not that’s not always the case, but if they have a bad day, somebody probably knows about it, and so giving them the freedom as an administrator. So I’m going to give you the freedom. If you mess up, it’s just kind of expected. We tell kids, I expect you to try and kind of take risks, and sometimes you’re going to mess up, but I’m your safety net. I’m going to help you out it so helping them understand there’s a lot of pressures, a lot of people watching them, and if, even if I got, like, straight A’s in college, and had great recommendations from my professors. I get in, and it’s just a different world. So remember,

Chrissy Beltran  34:48

it’s a really good perspective to keep for sure, because you’re right. I felt them in private as well, and I also succeeded in private. And wish somebody had seen that, but I did, yeah, definitely not have people in my room. All the time, or when they were in my room, I knew they were coming, yeah, and so I got the extra time thinking about that lesson. And it was, it wasn’t that was completely different, but it just made me think about it differently, knowing somebody was going to be there. And so yeah, and the kids, you know, also were aware that somebody was in there, and that was not the norm, you know. So yeah, totally. Hey, before we go on, I

Bryan Harris  35:23

had a couple of other ideas about kind of how administrators can support all of this. A couple of them are slightly outside the box, slash, maybe even a little bit controversial. But before I share those with you, one thing that really helps as the leader is clarify the roles we just talked about. All those roles, instructional coaches, assistant principals and mentors, sit down with your new teachers, maybe during some of those new teacher meetings, and say, here’s here’s why we have this many levels, and here’s what each level does, right? So in fact, I, even when I was in that role as a director, we created a chart, a T chart, for new teachers, saying, if there’s this kind of an issue, you probably go to this person, for example, if there’s a curricular question issue like the district formative assessment, here’s the person you go to, because it can be confusing. Because I have a mentor, I have a department chair or a grade level lead, I have a district level specialist, I have a site level academic coach, I have an assistant principal. I have a principal right that can for you and I, who’ve been in the profession for a while, we figured that out pretty quick. It doesn’t worry us, but as a new person into the profession, it’s like, exactly who do I go to for all of these things? So putting a chart together of some sort, say here’s who you go to for the different for the different needs you might have. Okay, so controversial slash, slightly outside the box suggestions on how principals can support the new teachers. One is, provide them some additional resources. Maybe that’s in the form of a budget. Maybe it’s in the form of more time with an instructional aid than maybe the other teachers get. Give them some additional resources. Partially, because I’m trying to think long term. I have somebody hired. I think they’re going to be pretty good. I want them to be around for a while. The challenge is, many of our schools are veteran oriented cultures. There’s somebody who did research on this. Forgive me, my mind blanks on the name of the researcher, but she pointed out, schools have cultures, very specific cultures, most of them are oriented to meeting the needs of the veterans. So for example, there’s our fourth grade team. There’s four of us. The senior most teacher gets the most goodies. They get, the best classroom assignment they get to kind of give more insight into the incoming third graders. Which kids I get, which kids I don’t get, because, and that makes sense. I want to value my veteran teachers. I don’t want to devalue them, but because it’s a veteran oriented culture, most schools anyway, not all of them. When it comes to dividing up resources, creating schedules, it’s the veteran teacher who gets the best schedule when it comes to when my kids go to lunch, when my kids go to specials, because there’s almost this sense of they have a right to get the best stuff because they’ve been around for 1015, 20 years, not necessarily saying that’s always bad, but I want this new teacher to stick around for a while, because I think they’re going to be great. So I might need to give some sort of special support just to them. It’s hard to do, but it’s easy to justify saying, You know what, this person’s going to be great and we want them here for the next 10 years, so we’re going to slow, we’re going to slow roll them. We’re not going to essentially throw them in and hope they survive, right? Yeah, that

Chrissy Beltran  38:36

doesn’t serve anybody. Yeah?

Bryan Harris  38:38

So here’s that other, another suggestion that, again, is slightly controversial, maybe hard to pull off, but consider giving them some sort of reduced teaching load. I realize at a secondary level, especially contractually, maybe you’re required by contract to teach five periods out of seven every day, but maybe it’s during the first month of the school year. I don’t have them do any duties they don’t have to do after school duty for the first month. Maybe I give them at the elementary level a class size of two or three less than my other veteran teachers. I’m going to reduce their load somehow, maybe class size, maybe other responsibilities, just to help them slow roll in. Because we’ve seen it, right? We’ve seen so many of the new teachers, the veteran teachers, say, I don’t have room for another, another kid, the new kids, have to go over there, even though you have the same numbers. I’d probably go to my veteran teachers and say, Hey, we all have an average of 23 kids in our classes. Right now I’m going to give you two, or you 325 kids so she can have closer to 18, and most of them will. They might grumble a little bit, but if we ask this question, say, when you were a new teacher, would you have appreciated just a little bit of a slow roll into the profession? And it’s like, yes, I would have appreciated that. Okay,

Chrissy Beltran  39:57

yeah, totally Yeah. I’m thinking back to. When I was a new teacher, and it was just sort of expected, in with the people that I worked with, that you would be part of the local Reading Council, and not only part of it, that you would do a lot of things with it. And so I was on all kinds of boards, and what in looking back I that was that would be one of the things that I would change, is I did get a lot of good things from those experiences, but it was so hard for me to, like, stay focused on my classroom work whenever I was also being called to do all these other things. And it just was too much of a workload at the time, especially

Bryan Harris  40:29

if you’re, you know, maybe newly married, maybe starting to have kids, maybe have other responsibilities. And I realized when I use that stereotype, there’s a lot of new teachers who are second career, people who are older in life. They’re not always just these young people, but we do. We throw a lot of demands on them, as if they should be able to balance, just like a 10 year veteran teacher, here’s here’s another thing to keep in mind, it just popped into my mind, is beware, especially early on in the school year of financial commitments, because we often do things at the beginning of the year, we say, Okay, if you want to order your school shirt, that’s $25 and we say, Now, if you’re going to be part of this committee, everybody puts in $25 over here, and it just kind of adds up. And for a lot of teachers, they haven’t received their first paycheck yet, but then they’re asked to shell out. It might seem insignificant to us, what’s 10 bucks right to be part of the whatever it’s the birthday committee. And we all, you know, pitch in 10 bucks. Everybody can have a birthday cake. It just adds up. So I’m gonna, I’m not necessarily gonna pay for that person, but I might just be a little cautious about how I address that.

Chrissy Beltran  41:32

Yeah, I think that’s a good point too. I mean, half the time they don’t even have sick days yet. You know, they’re having such good points. It’s just really hard when they have to earn those dates, you earn half a day every month, or whatever the process is, and it’s crazy. And they’re also the ones who are sick all the time, because now they’re surrounded by children and germ all the time, you know, they

Bryan Harris  41:50

haven’t built up the immunity yet. They

Chrissy Beltran  41:52

haven’t. They gotta earn it. It’s really hard. It’s a process to go through to be a new teacher. And it is the things that sometimes you can kind of forget about, you know, because it was a short time in your life, but it’s currently their life. You know, it’s a huge deal. Yes, well said. So, okay, so you mentioned also mentoring programs, yeah, and how, how can we go about choosing really great mentors for teachers, and what does a good mentoring program look like that supports the mentor and the mentee.

Bryan Harris  42:21

Yeah. So I know I’ve said it a couple of times. These are longer discussions I love to have. If any of your audience members want to reach out, we’ll just talk more. I’ll give you my contact information at the end, please. When it comes to mentors, here’s my belief and bias, and it’s backed up by a decent amount of research trained mentors only is I’m only going to assign someone to be a mentor for a new teacher who has gone through some sort of official, formal training. When I was in charge, that was a 10 hour training. You couldn’t be a mentor until you went through the training with me. 10 hours workshop oriented kind of training. Many schools just default to whoever’s the veteran teacher on that grade level or in that department, they’re going to be the mentor. I don’t default that way. Now, it might be that the most veteran person is going to be the best mentor, but I don’t default towards that because there are some veteran teachers, let’s be honest, they have no business influencing a new teacher. You know, my kind of, my running joke on that you maybe can relate to, it is we have teachers who might not be totally burnt out, but they’re getting pretty crispy around the edges. They don’t have any business influencing a new teacher. No. So just because you have lots of experience doesn’t mean you have the mentality or you’re in the right life stage to serve as a mentor. So mentor assignments are typically done at the site level, which makes sense. A principal knows their staff better than any district person does, but I would say who at this grade level or who around this person is the best form of support, and then I select that person not based on experience, not based on seniority, but based on who’s got the best characteristics. Some of those characteristics that was kind of implied in your question are things like a positive demeanor, a willingness to listen a person who still likes the profession. Is as funny as that sound we do still have. We have some people who are sticking around that they’re okay, they’re not our superstars, and you can kind of tell they’re just tired of kids. Those can’t be our mentors, because they don’t necessarily speak well of the profession? Yeah, I want to have somebody who can model effective instruction for me. I want somebody who is not rigid in their thinking by way of quick story illustration. This happened years ago, when I was in charge of the mentoring program. We had a third a brand new third grade teacher and a third grade mentor. That mentor went into this third grade teacher’s classroom as one of their meetings, and the third grade teacher was proud of the way she did her bulletin boards. She put a lot of effort into it. She showed off to her mentor, and the mentor looked and said, Nope, that’s not the way we do things. You need to take that down totally. Tore her up and. This teacher ended up leaving after a month. I don’t think it’s just because of that bulletin board interaction, yeah, but she wanted, she was so excited about being free and being creative and creating my classroom, and somebody comes in and squashes her, yeah? So even though I saw the bulletin board, by the way, there were some problems with it. And then veteran teacher immediately saw the problem, saying, No, you can’t do it that way. It’s not going to that way. It’s not going to work. And she was right, but you can’t be rigid and squash somebody because then, I know that’s just one anecdote, but it highlights that we have to be open to trying new things, to to listen to saying, oh, that’s an interesting way to do it. I hadn’t thought about, let’s talk, talk it through somebody who is oriented towards feedback, not just direction. It’s easy to direct people to do stuff, it’s harder to sit down and collaborate and and work through them to get good feedback.

Chrissy Beltran  45:52

Yeah, yeah, that does take time and training, for sure. It’s something that coaches, we have to work on all the time, because sometimes you’re looking at something, you’re like, oh, playoff but yeah, don’t say no. That’s not going to work, because then nobody wants to work with you. Nobody wants to learn from you. That’s the way you approach people. You’re

Bryan Harris  46:10

no fun to be around. Yeah. No. One other issue to address, as we’re training mentors again, train mentors only, and I’m very careful about selecting the right people for the job is address confidentiality with the mentor and with the new teacher. I mentioned earlier that when we started our crew, we could fail in private. Teachers don’t always have that ability anymore. Again, I succeeded in private. Nobody saw my successes. But establish confidentiality so the mentor and the new teacher sit down. They say, these are the things I’m not going to talk to anybody else about. If you have a bad day and you come to me and say, You know what? I just need to vent. Because, man, those kids drove me crazy today. I’m not going to be running to the principal. We all have bad days under Help them understand that the relationship between the mentor and the new teacher is absolutely confidential. That’s why mentors should never be evaluators. I feel real strongly about that. Whoever’s mentoring this new teacher should not be the same one who then writes some sort of formal evaluation. Let them know. You know, most of what we talk about is confidential. I’m not going to run off to the principal if you come to me and say, You know what, I don’t think I’m a good fit for third grade. I The the school down the street has a fifth grade opening. I’m thinking of applying there. I’m not running to the principal, so I’m establishing we’re confidential. This is a safe environment to share and reflect and grow with that. I also say there are sometimes I have to break confidentiality. In the case where I’m concerned that a student is in danger or something illegal or immoral is happening, then obviously I gotta go tell the principal. But the good news is that happens like hardly ever. So help them just understand confidentiality is a safe place. I’m not going to be gossiping about you. That’s an important thing to know, because if new teachers think that other people are constantly talking about them, that’s such an insecure place to be.

Chrissy Beltran  47:59

Yeah, yeah for sure, yeah. And they’re constantly insecure. I mean, that’s just a really, yeah, absolutely, yeah. So then earlier, you mentioned about that the fourth principle, or what fourth colleagues? Yes, about colleagues. And so I was thinking about, okay, coaches specifically can use PLCs to create a really strong environment of support for our new teachers. So what can coaches do to really create the environment for supporting new teachers through their PLCs?

Bryan Harris  48:31

Appreciate the question, it’s a good one. The coach specifically should help them understand what we mean at this school by a PLC. In some schools, it’s PLC light. We just meet together. We call it a PLC, but we don’t really do PLC stuff. We just meet. So how is when we say PLC at this school, this is exactly what we mean. So just help them understand. Because the teachers, if they’ve gone through it, if they have gone through a traditional training program, they might not have ever really experienced PLCs. I mean, I know what the acronym stands for, but I don’t really know what it is. So help them understand. This is what a PLC does. Here’s my role as a coach. Here’s the road, the role of teachers within the PLC. Here’s how you track your progress. All those sorts of things, but the probably the biggest one. I mean, coaches can model lessons and be another ear. All of that stuff matters. But I think the biggest one, if it’s a true PLC model, true, a true PLC model that really looks at data, that spends time collaborating, looking at data, and CO planning lessons, don’t assume that the new teacher knows how to disaggregate data. For some of us, even though we’ve been doing for years, it still is difficult to do. It’s not an easy process. That’s why some schools and districts have people that they call data coaches help them understand that within our PLC, we often look at data. Here’s how we look at data. Let me walk you through what we mean when we say we’re going to look at the data. Okay, what does that mean? Show me, lead me through the process, sit with me shoulder to shoulder, and we do this together, not just drop off their latest formative assessment results and say we’re going to talk about your data on Thursday. Be ready? Well, okay, what do I do with that? So it’s, it’s rather, it’s more with shoulder to shoulder than directive and telling that’s a really important thing.

Chrissy Beltran  50:23

Danny had thought fun how we can support as I think that’s so good, even honestly, for a lot of our existing teachers, yeah, because we, we do often expect, people do often expect, oh, this. They just whenever we look at writing, for example, let’s say we’re looking at writing pieces and we’re going to score them, and then, you know, you say, Well, why did you give this a two? Well, because the punctuation was this, okay. Is that the only reason like that, and that’s what you looked at. That was what you focused on. And this other teacher was like, Well, I looked at this. And so like calibrating, you know, those conversations are so important to have and and I feel like whenever we do that, whenever we have a lot of new teachers, we’re more likely to do those things, and then they benefit our veteran teachers as well, you know. So if you think of anything else that would be good to kind of support the environment in terms of, like, the way that our teachers work together during those PLCs, because I think you need to step all over, like you mentioned, step over the new teacher voices, and also they just might stay quiet because they, like you said they might think I’m just a new teacher, you know? Yeah,

Bryan Harris  51:22

such a valuable question. So I’m a big fan of the norms of collaboration. If you’ve not heard of the norms of collaboration, developed by garnston and Wellman 30 plus years ago, I think. And there’s seven of them. If you just do a Google search for norms of collaboration, garnston, j, A, R, M, S, T, O, N, you’ll see all sorts of posters and things out there, but the norms of collaboration are guidelines for how a group collaborates, for how a group get along gets along. What I don’t do is just assume that four people, because they’re all at fourth grade, they’re going to get along and play nice, right? Most of them will, because teachers generally are pretty nice people, and they understand the importance of getting along and collaborating, but the norms outline the behaviors of what the people will do. They include things like pausing. They include things like paraphrasing. I’m going to forget all seven of them if I try from memory. But they’re including things like presuming positive intentions, right? So I don’t just put people together and say, now you’re a PLC, play nice and be productive. Plan lessons together. I train them on this. These are the behaviors that are going to get us to the best result. So the norms of collaboration, a huge fan, a subset, although it’s not one of the seven norms, a subset of that is helping them understand conflict. And the fact that, if I’m going to be meeting with this team once a week for the next school year, there are going to be times we just disagree. We’re going to be in conflict. How do we work through conflict? In fact, that’s of the of the workshops I do understanding conflict is is one of the more significant ones I do training with schools is understanding that not all conflict is bad, some conflict is actually really good, and how do we work through it so that we’re productive even when we disagree vehemently about something? How do we work through it so the norms of collaboration are a wonderful tool, and then helping them understand conflict is just going to happen. You’re going to be spending 180 days with these people, meeting once a week for an hour. They’re going to get on your nerves. Let’s just be prepared for they’re going to get on your nerves. So let’s figure out how we work through that.

Chrissy Beltran  53:24

That’s such a good idea. I love that, and I feel like I may have to invite you back if you’re able next season, to come back and talk about understanding conflict, because I think that would be a really helpful topic for coaches, too.

Bryan Harris  53:34

God, God willing. I’m here for you. Alright,

Chrissy Beltran  53:37

great. Okay, so people are going to want to grab your book. They’re going to want to learn more from you and where you. And where can they do

Bryan Harris  53:44

that? Yeah, well, thanks for thanks for asking. So I have a website just my name with a hyphen between the Brian dash harris.com just a hyphen dash between my first and last name, www dot Brian dash harris.com My email is on there. My email is just Brian at Brian harris.com so that’s the easiest way to get a hold of me. I do quite a lot of trainings in this topic. I do a lot of trainings in the last five to seven years, much of the work I’ve done is helping teachers manage stress. In fact, my latest two books are on stress management, one for teachers, one for administrators, so helping them understand, how do I build resilience? How do I manage stress? It’s huge, huge topic. So anyway, I can support your people, your your listeners. I’m there for it.

Chrissy Beltran  54:23

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here today and you shared so much good information. It’s going to help people really think about how we support

Bryan Harris  54:31

our new teachers. My pleasure. Thank you.

Chrissy Beltran  54:36

I hope you enjoyed that conference conversation with Brian as much as I did. He had so many great points and so much good information to share, and also, which is really nice to talk to. So you should definitely check out his book. I think that it would be a really great place to get all of the details on retaining new teachers. And I also have, if you have any of those teachers that that Brian mentioned, that are getting a little crispy around the edges. So I do have that free email course for you, that coaching resistance course, so you can grab that at buzzing with Miss b.com/resistance and then, of course, I have my resources for you called coaching new teachers. And you can get that at buzzing with Miss b.com or you can get it on Teachers Pay Teachers in my store. Chrissy Beltran, buzzing with miss b. Next week, we are going to continue with some really great episodes. I have been working on coaching strategy toolbox. It’s a collection of strategies that will help you differentiate the support you provide to teachers meet their needs, and leverage those smaller, lower impact interactions and strategies into larger, more high impact strategies and coaching work, basically coaching cycle. So I would love for you to join me on this series that we’re starting next week with Episode 209, it is a big one. It is really special to me because of the work that I’ve done around coaching strategies, and I cannot wait to share it with you next week. Until then, Happy coaching!

Chrissy Beltran  56:08

Now that you’ve got so much to think about, head over to buzzing with miss b.com to grab some free downloads, become a VIBee and check out the podcast. Show Notes. Happy coaching!