The Three Parts of Your Spring Action Plan, ep. 215

The Three Parts of Your Spring Action Plan, ep. 215, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran 00:01
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Chrissy Beltran 01:03
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Chrissy Beltran 01:49
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 02:15
Hey coach and welcome to episode 215 the three parts of your spring instructional coaching action plan. Today is the second episode in our series on your second semester action plan. In the last episode, I actually chatted with Dr Kim ramadon, and she’s from Sibme, which I you know, I love Sibme, and so she was sharing with us some of the things that you can do to reflect on your fall semester to set yourself up for some really great thinking about your spring semester and what you want that to look like. So today, we’re going to dig into the three things that you need to do this spring in order to be prepared for a really great spring semester and to develop a really strong action plan. Now I do have a few resources that would be helpful. I have a reflect reflection guide. Have a reflection guide. Excuse me, the reflection guide you can get in the show notes for this episode. So if you go to buzzing with Miss b.com/episode 215 you can get that reflection guide at the bottom of the show notes, and it will give you some questions to think about in order to reflect on your coaching and make some changes for the spring. I also have some feedback surveys that are super helpful whenever you are trying to figure out what teachers need from you, and you can get that at buzzing with Miss b.com or in my Teachers Pay teacher store. They’re just teacher feedback surveys. They’re I’ve actually seen a lot of good results when using these surveys with teachers, because they give you the information that you need about where teachers are and how you can best support them. So we’re going to talk about a few things that you’re going to do in order to prepare for your spring action plan. And so we’re going to think about the three tiers of your action plan. If you listen to the Action Plan series A couple months ago, then you got a lot of great information on the three tiers of your action plan. And before we get to those three tiers, we need to figure out, Okay, what’s going to go in the three tiers, right? So before you even start developing the three part spring action plan, you need to figure out where you are as a school and so different coaches have different responsibilities, and some of their jobs look more like school, professional development, facilitating PLCs across the campus. All of this, some do not as much include those larger groups of coaching. But to me, all of that is coaching work because you are using it to grow teaching and learning on your campus, and really it’s just about how we leverage those opportunities, like I talked about in our coaching strategy toolbox series, how you leverage those opportunities will determine how effective they are. Some are going to be more effective than others inherently, just because of the nature of the work you’re doing with teachers. But before you. Can figure out what you’re going to do with your PLC before you figure out what your PLC meeting topics could be looking like. Before you know what your professional development learning could look like. Before you know your individual coaching work, you need to get a good handle on where you are. So we’re going to do some investigating and and kind of a needs assessment to gather the information that you need. Moving from fall to spring. What are the big changes that happen from fall to spring? Well, in fall, you know, we spend so much time getting to know our students. We are digging into new content. Everything is new, new new right. In the spring, we do a little more review the fall, it’s a lot of new information. Students are settling into their rapport with their teacher. They are learning about how the classroom is structured. You are building structures and systems with your teachers, so that in the spring you’ve got them in place and you can use them more effectively, right? You’re building the habits in the fall that in the spring we can use to actually support teaching and learning. So what you really want to know is, where are you teachers, and what do you need the most? So there are a few things that we’re going to do to develop this needs assessment so that you really understand where your teachers are. One you’re going to talk to your administrator, and I know that sometimes

Chrissy Beltran 06:13
you know, depending on how your administrator is and what your school structure is like, this may be more or less effective. Some administrators don’t spend enough time in classrooms, and that’s just the truth. When they don’t spend enough time in classrooms, they don’t have as good of a handle on teaching and learning as they should. So, you know, take what they say with a grain of salt. But of course, they are steering the ship. They are the captain, and so you do need to hear what they have to say. What are they observing in classrooms? What are they seeing going on and where do they plan to go by the end of the school year, you have goals that you set towards the beginning of the year, talk to your admin about them, see what has been accomplished to this point and what you still feel needs some work so that you can really retarget those things and kind of hone your your coaching work to make sure that you are achieving those goals with your teachers. So that’s your administrator conversation. You also need to hear from your teachers, and there are a couple ways to do that. You can do a survey, which I highly recommend. I mentioned those feedback surveys that I love to use with teachers. You can also actually just speak to like a grade level representative, but I feel like a survey is helpful because you can kind of get an idea of how many people feel a certain way and what goes in the survey. Well, you need to know where they are instructionally. What are some of the things that they would like to work on, but haven’t really yet. Where are the areas that their students are struggling what kinds of instructional support they need? If there’s classroom management support they need, what resources are lacking? Sometimes in the fall we’re teaching teachers to do all these new things, and then they go, I don’t have any of that stuff, so we have to make sure that we provide it. So we have to know what teachers need, and that’s why we’re going to do our teacher survey. Then from there, we’re going to visit classrooms. We’re going to visit every classroom by the end of the semester. And sometimes teachers are like, Oh, this is the worst time to visit. Is there a good time to visit? Honestly, there’s always something chaotic going on. There is always something. Oh, we just had a fire drill. Oh, we’re on our way to art. Oh, we, you know, my kids are in the middle of a project. You’re not going to see any instruction. Oh, there’s always something. But when you go to classrooms, you can see what’s going on beyond just the instruction that’s happening in that moment. There are artifacts in a classroom that tell you what teaching and learning is like. There. You can look at the walls. You can look at student notebooks. You can look at work posted outside or in the classroom. You can identify what centers or stations or independent practices going on when you’re in the room, even if there’s not direct instruction happening, we can get a feel for what instruction looks like, even if we’re only going to be there for a small piece of time, it doesn’t mean it’s 100% accurate, but certainly can give you a picture of some of the pieces that are going on in that classroom, and that’s what you need to gather information about what’s happening in classrooms. What do we see in in action? What do we see that we have taught teachers to do that they are implementing? Where? What areas do they ask for help that you can see that, yes, there isn’t an issue here. We are struggling in this area. All of those things can help you figure out where exactly you are. You can also look at data, data numbers. It’s just information about what your kids know and can do in that format on that day and it count gives you like a snapshot. That’s all it is. Is a snapshot of information about your kids. Where are our kids struggling? What do we need to keep in the forefront as we move into the spring? These are all things that we’re going to make sure we do to develop our action plan. So we’ve got these four different pieces of information. We’ve got data, which is, you know, facts about what kids no one can do on that day. It is not the whole picture. So then we have to round it out with our administrator conversations, with our surveys to teachers, and with your classroom suite, where you visit every single classroom. From there you can identify your needs. From there you can say, okay, now I have all these four pieces of information. I can figure out where we need to go. So you’re going to take those four pieces of information and you’re going to turn them into the focus areas for the spring. I recommend choosing three, and this is how I recommend doing it. You’re going to need something for PD, for your whole school. You’re going to need something for PLC, teams, smaller groups of teachers, such as grade levels departments. And then you’re going to need to think about your individual coaching and what that needs to look like. Your individual coaching goals often are more about what you’re planning on doing as a coach to support teachers than they are about what teachers are going to work on, because teachers are going to work on different things. Now there are going to be some classrooms that stand out to you, right? Whenever you do your classroom sweep, you are going to see classrooms that you’re going to say, Oh my gosh. How has this gotten away from me? Already, this much time has passed, and we are still working on things that should have been established the first week or second week of school, right? It’s going to happen if you are seeing this and you are really concerned about how to approach providing support to so many different teachers when they all need you in different ways. I want you to check out my episode about tiering teachers for support. When you tier teachers, T, I, E, R teachers for support, what you actually do is you are visiting all your classrooms, just like we talked about in the classroom suite. You can use your data and you can use your surveys, but what you’re doing is you’re putting them into three groups, teachers who are fairly independent and will seek you out when they need you, teachers who need some support. So maybe you know occasionally you’re going to check in by weekly something along those lines, and teachers who really need intensive support. Not every coach’s role looks like that. Not every coach has the autonomy to say I’m going to make a point of getting into this classroom more often, because I can see that there’s a need. But if you do have that and you’re not sure how to go about it, tear your teachers, that’s the way to go. So look at teachers and decide, okay, where does my individual coaching support need to go? So as you’re looking at the three parts of your spring action plan, we’ve got your PD, your PLC and your individual coaching. The thing that you want to work on for PD is something everybody needs. And keep in mind, you’ve got a semester. This is not a whole year plan, although spring is the longer semester usually, this is not a plan for the whole year. This is a plan for just between January and May, or June, or whenever you get out. And the horrors if you get out in July, I’m so sorry. I would never do that to anybody, but some people do. So this is about what you can accomplish in those months. So make sure that the goal that you are setting for PD for that month is small enough that you can actually do it and see an impact and a turnaround on it by the end of the school year. Okay, keep in mind what kids are going to be expected to do by the end of the year, and look at the gaps that you’re having and set a goal that will support kids and teachers in that area. Then you’re going to look at your PLC teams. Your PLC teams are your differentiated instruction. Instead of looking at your whole group, you’re looking specifically at, okay, this is my third grade team, and I need to know what they need. You’ve got your surveys, you’ve got your data, you’ve got your admin conversation, and you have your classroom suite of third grade so you know exactly what you need to focus on, because all of those things will come together to paint a picture of what’s happening and what is needed. So you can differentiate your support at that PLC team level, right then you move into your individual coaching goal. And I mentioned a little while ago that your individual coaching goal is more about what you are planning to do to support teachers. So here’s where I would take a hard look at the strategies that are in your toolbox. In episodes around 209, to 10 to 11, I introduced a coaching strategy toolbox, and that strategy has like 19 different strategies that you can use with teachers. I’m sorry that toolbox has like 19 different strategies that you can use with teachers. Think about what strategies you’ve been using with teachers to this point, how effective that has been, and what you could do differently to refocus your work on the rooms that really need your support and the places that maybe have been neglected to this point. And that will help you think about what your goal can be for your individual coaching in the spring. So for example, if to this point, you’ve been really focused on building relationships, right now, I recommend you build relationships through coaching work by interacting with teachers about content, because we’re trying to build a coaching relationship, not just a friendly relationship, right? If that’s been your focus, and maybe you’ve been in a couple of classrooms to this point, right? It happens. It happens that we find ourselves in November going, oh my gosh, where has the time gone? It happens, if that’s where you’ve been, then I want you to choose maybe three strategies for the spring that you are going to make your best friend and you are going to always be coaching. Offer this idea of how you can support the teacher all the time in your coaching conversations, any conversation you have with a teacher can become a coaching coach. Conversation, you can turn it into the work that you are working on together and to forward and leverage that work into greater coaching work. So every conversation you have, you can bring up one of these strategies. You can say, Okay, I’m focusing on making sure that I get my colleagues to visit each other. Great things are happening in classrooms, and nobody sees it. I need my teachers to learn from each other. So then I’m going to focus on visit a colleague. I’m going to make sure that whenever I have the opportunity, I’m going to say, hey, so and so. Would you like, could you model that for somebody else in your grade level or on a different grade level? Hey, could you would you like to go visit Miss so and so, because she’s doing such a good job at that, if you keep your strategies to the forefront of your mind, you are more likely to bring them up in those coaching conversations and share them with teachers at a time that will leverage the conversation you’re having into better and stronger and more impactful coaching work. So just to sum up, those are the three pieces of your spring action plan you’ve got your whole school. PD, and of course, that can be differentiated. But you know, we want to keep in mind, what is the point of all of this? We have differentiated teams for PLC, and then you have individual coaching, and those are the three pieces that you are going to develop once you conduct your needs assessment and set your goals. I challenge you to share this plan, this approach, with your administrator. I really think that administrators appreciate a thoughtful, organized, structured approach to the work that you’re doing, because it can kind of seem like we are just wandering around helping people, right? If you don’t know what’s going on, it can seem a little messy, and it is messy. Coaching is messy, right? That is just the reality, because you are trying to reach lots of teachers. I one piece I would not share with your administrator is your tiered teachers. You don’t need to share that. That’s for your own thinking about how you’re going to focus your individual coaching. They may have something to share with you about the classrooms that they think you need to focus on, and you can take that into account. But I wouldn’t say, Oh, these

Chrissy Beltran 16:53
are the way that I tiered my teachers. This is, you know, who really needs my help right now? They will have ideas on that, and you can listen to their ideas. So there you go. There’s your spring act, spring action plan. There’s your challenge to share it with your administrator. I think that getting their input on it and getting them on your side is going to help you actually accomplish the work that you’re trying to do this spring. Don’t forget to check out that reflection guide. You can grab that at buzzing with Miss b.com/episode 215 and next week, I’m actually gonna share a fun way that you can share learning with teachers. I’m gonna talk about PD in a box. And I know you’re like, how does this have anything to do with my spring action plan? Well, the truth is, in the spring, a lot of our PDs are taken up by like, testing and, you know, administration type tasks. Oh, we have to do our tell pass. We have to get from the kids. These are the ones that are acceptable. These are the ones that are not. You’re going to turn them on this day. That’s a lot of PD time in the spring that is taken up by learning how to do stuff that really is just not benefiting kids, except gathering information, right? That’s the whole point. So I’m going to share PD in a box with you, because this could be a great tool that you can use to support your teachers in learning and teaching in the spring, even if you’re not able to schedule really great quality PDs for your teams. So I can’t wait to share that with you next week, until next week. Happy coaching.

Chrissy Beltran 18:18
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!