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A Year-Long Guide to Coaching, ep. 221

Front view monthly calendars with colorful magnetic letters. These words are in the middle "A Year-Long Guide to Coaching".

What does instructional coaching look like across the school year?

If you’re a coach, you’ve probably wondered what you should do each month to set yourself and your teachers up for success.

In this episode, I walk you through a year-long guide to coaching with monthly action steps and PD topic ideas to keep you on track! I also share how my coaching planner can help you stay organized and focused throughout the year!

This podcast is part of a new series about developing a coaching action plan. It’s a topic I get so many questions about and I’m excited to provide resources to support you!

Coaching at the Beginning of the Year

To help coaches plan for their year, I recommend they do some thinking about the first 20 and 90 days of coaching.

The first 20 days of coaching are a lot like the first 20 days of school. You’re either setting yourself up for success or struggles!

In my Instructional Coaching Start-Up Course, we look at those first four weeks of school and what to prioritize each week to set yourself up for a successful school year. Let’s take a brief look at each week. Click on the links for each week to learn more!

Week 1: You want to situate yourself in the school by reviewing data, setting goals, getting aligned with your administration, and creating a plan for meeting teachers.

Week 2: You’re going to build relationships and give teachers some quick wins. During this week, you’re going to host an event where you introduce yourself and your role. You’ll also meet each teacher, visit classrooms, and have a positive interaction during the visit.

Week 3: This week you’re going to focus on learning – your learning and teachers’ learning. You’ll look at standards, state assessments, beginning-of-the-year data, and teacher surveys. Then, based on this data you’ll see where teachers are at and what they need to learn more about. This will provide you with a really good idea of what types of coaching support you need to provide and how you can offer it.

Week 4: You’re going to focus on classrooms this week by starting some coaching cycles and building the tools you need to document your work. Plus, you’re going to create your proactive PD plan.

Setting Goals and Checkpoints for the First 90 Days of School

After you have all this in place, it’s time to focus on your first 90 days, which is roughly your first semester. Think about what you want to accomplish during this period in relation to the goals you set in week one.

Start by taking your three big goals for the year and dividing them into three tasks for each semester. Then, use the five high-impact strategies checklist in my coaching planner to break those goals down into manageable steps for each month and week. Next, build time for them in your coaching planner. I recommend breaking everything down into three because you really can’t juggle more than that!

To stay focused on what matters most, write your big three at the top of every calendar page. In my coaching planner, I’ve included the big three at the top of every monthly and planning calendar, so you can keep your priorities front and center.

At the end of the month, reflect on whether you’ve met your goals. Consider what adjustments you need to make, and use your reflections to create your plan for the following month.

Then, repeat this process for the next semester, making adjustments along the way.

A Year-Long Guide to Coaching

During the episode, I share a year-long coaching calendar, providing an overview of tasks coaches can focus on each month, along with possible PD topics. To get all the details, be sure to grab the planner. It offers a comprehensive roadmap to guide you through the year.

Here are a few ideas for each month to get you started!

August
Teachers are in anticipation mode. They have more energy now than they are going to have all year. We can take advantage of that by building relationships and making a plan for instruction and management.


Action Steps:

  • Review the previous year’s data and set your goals
  • Meet with your administration to clarify your role
  • Plan your Coffee with a Coach meeting to introduce your role to teachers


Possible PD Topics:

  • Setting expectations for lesson planning and curriculum
  • Conversations around grading and homework policies
  • Digging into curriculum and resources

September
Teachers have some routines and systems in place. They’re learning about their kids. Behaviors have become clear and consistent. We can look at what to do to respond to these behaviors and set these kids up for success.

Action Steps:

  • Assist teachers in setting goals
  • Identify high-impact strategies that you can work on during PLC meetings, PD, and classroom modeling

Possible PD Topics:

  • Engagement strategies
  • Lesson planning and lesson design
  • How to accommodate kids who are not responding to Tier 1 instruction

October
Teachers are really in survival mode. They’re familiar with their students’ strengths and weaknesses, but they are probably seeing kids fall behind. When we look at data this month, we want to think about what changes we need to make to our Tier 1 before we think about what Tier 2 can look like.

Action Steps:

  • Create adjustments to Tier 1 instruction and identify students for intervention or focus support
  • Review recent data and provide support to teachers to plan their responses
  • Focus on individual coaching work

Possible PD Topics:

  • Data-driven instruction and what whole group instruction looks like
  • Hands-on learning activities
  • Formative assessments

November
Teachers are often overwhelmed with data, behavior, and expectations. So if we can narrow what they’re working on and focus on what’s essential, that is one way to help them make the most of the time that they have this month.

Action Steps:

  • Analyze student work samples together
  • Spread some cheer and joy to teachers

Possible PD Topics:

  • Academic vocabulary and language
  • Reading and writing across the curriculum

December
Teachers are trying to squeeze it all in during a short school month. Be realistic in the support that you provide them.

Action Steps:

  • Reflect on the first semester and review your three main goals – make adjustments as needed
  • Plan for the first two weeks when you return from break

Possible PD Topics:

  • Look at the scope and sequence and make adjustments
  • Review classroom management

January
Teachers usually are better prepared to work with their students in January. They have a renewed sense of energy and perspective. Coaches should encourage them to try new things and reflect together.

Action Steps:

  • Look at mid-year assessments and create an action plan
  • Revisit relationships with teachers
  • Use coaching cycles

Possible PD Topics:

  • Growth mindset
  • 3D to 2D – building the bridge from hands-on learning to paper and pencil tasks

February
Teachers are getting stressed about testing and the end of the year. Coaches can encourage collaboration to build on their strengths.

Action Steps:

  • Help teachers refine their intervention strategies
  • Use data to make an intervention plan

Possible PD Topics:

  • Questioning strategies
  • Teacher-led PD opportunities

March
Teachers are about to hit one of the most stressful times of the year. Be the coach who can listen, understand, support, and challenge some of that self-defeating talk. Also, be realistic and honest about expectations.

Action Steps:

  • Go back to 5 high impact strategies
  • Focus on coaching cycle work

Possible PD Topics:

  • Teacher-led PD opportunities
  • Ways to respond to test questions

April
Teachers are in the middle of testing or ramping up for testing. Be patient and purposeful with coaching.

Action Steps:

  • Focus on collaboration between teachers
  • Create a folder of things you want to consider next year

Possible PD Topics:

  • Teacher-led PD opportunities
  • Engagement strategies for test prep

May/June
Teachers can feel relief that testing is over, or they may feel stressed because there’s a lot to do before the end of the year. Try to be in tune with what your teachers are feeling and what they need from you.

Action Steps:

  • Setup one-on-one meetings with teachers to reflect on their goals for the year
  • Ask teachers how you can support them during this time

Possible PD Topics:

  • End-of-year data review or reflections on the year
  • Classroom design and layout for next year

Summer
Some people don’t like to work over the summer. Other people enjoy getting things started while they’re off. I’ve included a few things in my planner for those who want to get some stuff done over the summer.

Action Steps to Plan for Next Year:

  • Think about your three goals
  • Stock up on positive notes or little gifts for teachers
  • Start on your presentation for teachers to introduce your role and begin planning your Coffee with a Coach

Possible PD Topics (if you’re asked to provide it):

  • PD subscription boxes
  • Book studies

I hope this gives you an idea of what your calendar can look like throughout the year and how you can make it both purposeful and really effective.

These are just the highlights of what I recommend each month, along with some PD opportunities. If you want more support, be sure to grab the coaching planner. It’s a fantastic resource that will provide you with a year-long guide to coaching.

Topics and Questions Discussed in Episode 221 – A Year-Long Guide to Coaching

  • A year-long guide to coaching
  • The first 20 days and 90 days of coaching
  • Setting goals and checkpoints throughout the year
  • An overview of what coaches should focus on each month of the school year to effectively support teachers
  • Monthly PD topics

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Podcast produced by Fernie Ceniceros

A Year-Long Guide to Coaching, ep. 221, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran 00:01
Hey, Coach, I can’t wait to share this amazing business with you. Kind cotton is a small clothing company started by a former kindergarten teacher and her husband to help increase children’s access to books. For every item purchased, they donate a book to a child. To date, they have donated over 174,000 books. All of their items are unique, and you’ll find so many T shirts, hoodies and fun, meaningful accessories too. They make great gifts. I purchased the inclusive books tote bag as a Christmas present, and my friend loved it. Head to kind cotton.com and check out their website full of beautiful, kind messages for yourself or for a friend.

Chrissy Beltran 00:41
Welcome to instructional coaching with MS B, where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach, and every coach does too. I’m Chrissy Beltran, an elementary teacher who became a coach, and I had to create my own coaching program that worked now. I teach coaches how to design their coaching programs, build a school wide action plan and use differentiated strategies to support teachers. Plus, I’ve got a special spot in my heart for literacy coaches. Now let’s dig into the episode.

Chrissy Beltran 01:09
Hey coach and welcome to episode 221. Your year long guide to instructional coaching. This is the first episode in my series, developing a coaching action plan, and I created it because I had so many questions about, when do I do this? When do I do that? You know, what is? What does the coaching look like across the school year? And so I wanted to share a little bit of that with you all today, and I made a resource that can help you do it, if you had to, buzzing with Miss b.com/planner you can get my year long coaching planner printable. You can decide, obviously, which pages you want to include in it. I included a weekly at a glance calendar. I included some monthly calendar so you can add those if you’d like. But the best parts are that it includes monthly topics for you to focus your work on, some things to think about as you do your work that month of coaching. And then it also includes five really important, high impact tasks that you want to consider every single month as a coach. And so I think that if you are feeling uncertain, if you’re like I don’t know if I’m doing all the right things, this is a really good place to start. So head to buzzing with Miss b.com/planner and you can get the whole year long guide to instructional coaching. It’s a really handy dandy planning tool that I think is going to give you a good sense of what you want to accomplish each month and give you some guidance in your coaching work, as well as a really great place to document some of your coaching successes, frustrations, and also the kinds of work that you’re getting done every single month.

Chrissy Beltran 02:39
So to get into this topic today, we start coaching at the beginning of the school year, and the way that I help coaches plan for their year is they do some thinking about their first 20 days and their first 90 days. 90 days is common. People ask you about your first 90 days all the time. What your action plan is for that. But the first 20 days of coaching. It’s a lot like the first 20 days of school. You are setting yourself up either for success or not so much, right? So if you’ve taken my startup course already at buzzing with must be com slash startup, instructional coaching. Startup helps you think about every week of that first 20 days of school, those first four weeks, and what you want to focus on each week to set yourself up for a successful school year. Now, if you’re listening in real time, this episode is coming out in March, and you might be saying, Okay, it’s a little late for that, right? There are things that if you have skipped some of these steps, and you can feel the lack of having done them, you feel what’s missing, you can go back and just really focus on the pieces that you were missing so that you can finish the school year strong, or so that you can make a really good plan to help yourself next year during the first 20 days of school. So I’m going to talk about what the focus of each week is at the beginning of the school year to help you be successful. Then we’ll dig into the first 90 days and what that can look like. And then we’ll talk about the rest of the year for the year long coaching plan. So the first week of school, you’re going to situate yourself in the school system. I’m not going to dig in too too deeply into these first few weeks, because I have a series about it already, starting in episode 191 95 about the first four weeks of school. So if you really need more guidance, go check out Episode One, 195 through, I think 199 and that will get you through those first four weeks. So you want to situate yourself on the school system by reviewing data, fitting goals, getting aligned with your administration, making a plan for meeting teachers and introducing your role, and really making sure that you are clear on that role before you go about introducing it to anybody else. During week two, you’re going to build relationships and give teachers some quick wins. And you are also going to plan for an event where you introduce yourself and your role explicitly. You’re going to meet each teacher and visit classrooms and have a positive interaction with teachers. You’re really investing in the relationship building this first month of school, obviously. That’s ongoing, but you’re going to front load as much as you can. In week three, you’re going to start really thinking about the learning, and this is your learning and teacher learning. So you’re going to dig into state assessments, you’re going to look at beginning of your data. You’re going to look at all the information that you have, including a teacher survey that will help you kind of see where teachers are and what they need to learn about and you’re going to give yourself a really good handle on what kinds of coaching support you’re going to provide, as well as how you’re going to provide that support. So what is Teacher What are teachers asking you for in that survey? What kinds of support do they need? What needs you see in the data, all these things are going to come to fruition this week. Week four, you’re going to start digging into classrooms. So you’re going to start some coaching cycle work, and you’re going to build the tools that you need to document it. And you’re also going to build a proactive plan for PD. And I’m actually going to share some suggestions of topics for each month I have in my year long coaching planner, there is a monthly guide, and it includes the five high impact tasks that you’re going to want to focus on each month, as well as PD opportunities for teachers that are timely. So I’m going to go ahead and share about a couple of those, not to overwhelm you, but to give you an idea of what all is in there. Whenever we start talking about the entire school year right now, we’re really just focused on this beginning part of the of the year, after you have all of these things in place, then you’re going to think about your first 90 days. So one of the things that we do in the first 20 days of school is we set goals. Right? We set goals based on data, teacher input. We get aligned with our admin, make sure that they have input as well, and we also just observe and see what we see, so that we can use all of those data points to combine together to set some really great goals for your coaching work. Now, as you are thinking about how you’re going to work towards these goals, you want to think about checkpoints across the year. Your first 90 days is basically the first semester. It’s not exactly but it’s going to be roughly the first semester of school. And so thinking about what are you going to accomplish that first semester in relation to those goals is a good way to start. So the way that I look at my coaching work is I have my goals that I’ve set, and those are year long goals, right? But then I want to divide them up into Fall and Spring goals, or, you know, whatever your schedule looks like, the first semester, second semester. So you take those big three goals, and you’re going to break them into smaller parts. What is that going to look like after one semester? And then how do we reach it the second semester? After breaking it into semesters, you can actually break it down into big three for the month. So I say three because you can’t really juggle more than three things. You can have some smaller projects, obviously. But your big goals, I want you to have about three big goals, and I want you to break those down into three big tasks for each semester and then each month, and then at the beginning of each month, I use my five high impact strategies checklist that I have in my coaching plan, and I use those goals that I’ve created those big three. I look at them every month, and I break them down across the weeks. Okay, if I’m really focusing on this this month, what do I need to do each week to make sure I get there by the end of the month? So then at the top of my calendar, my planning calendar. Every week I have the three things I’m really going to focus on and make sure I build in time for that week. This is beneficial, because you are thinking about, Okay, this is what I have to block out time for whenever I have my calendar and I’ve got white space. What goes in that white space when I have a couple of unexpected minutes, what can I work towards? And if not that time gets frittered away, it just disappears. It happens to all of us. So if you have the big three things written on the top of every calendar page, then that can help you focus your work. That’s why in my coaching planner, I actually included the big three at the top of every monthly calendar, as well as at the top of every at the beginning of every planning calendar that I included for you, I wanted you to have those tools to make sure that you were not forgetting about your big three, right? So we have your goals for the year at the top of the calendar, as well as the big three tasks for the month, to focus that coaching work, and then every month, we’re also going to do some reflection at the end of the month to see if we got there, if we actually did the things we said we were going to do, what adjustments we might need to make for next time. I

Chrissy Beltran 09:30
also remember recommend that you’re kind of collecting information on PD, that you’re providing team meetings or PLC meeting, and then coaching cycle work that you’re doing, because this is kind of like our three tiers of our action plan. Your Tier one is your PD that you give everybody. You also may differentiate PD, but a lot of PD is like school wide, right? So PD you give everyone, then we have our differentiated team meetings or PLC meetings, and then we have our coaching cycle work individually. So we have tiers one, two and three. Those are three ways that we are supporting teachers. So I. Recommend that if you’re trying to figure out what data to collect, you start there, where you record the date, the topic, and then what teachers were affected, what you worked with them on. So that’s what I recommend you do. As you’re working through your year, every month you pause to think about that month, you record the important information that you’re trying to hold on to that helps you think about your success, and then you’re making a plan for next month based on your reflections and your big three goals. Okay, so now I’m going to walk you through a calendar that kind of helps you think about what you can focus on each month of the year, and I’m going to share a couple of things that you can do in terms of PD and a couple of tasks that you’re going to want to do each month. Now, to get all of them, I’m not just going to list off every single one here on the podcast. That would be kind of like a really long list to listen to all at once, but I’m just going to give you sort of an overview of each month, and then I want you to grab that planner if you’re needing some more guidance as you work through the school year.

Chrissy Beltran 11:02
So in August, if we think about where teachers are in August, they’re in anticipation mode. They’re excited. They haven’t met all the hurdles yet. They have more energy now than they’re going to have all the rest of the school year. Do they always have a ton of energy? No, but they’ve got more now than they ever will. So we can take advantage of that to build those relationships. Make a good plan for instruction and management. Kind of talk about some of the challenges that we may face and how we can proactively respond to them before we start to see them come up. We know some of the challenges we’re going to have. What can we do proactively? Some possible PD, that you may consider this this month are expectations for lesson planning or curriculum, you’ve got to get that out in front. You may have some conversations or some work around grading your homework policies, and you probably are digging into some curriculum and resources to help teachers know what kinds of things that they have as they start to plan this year. A couple of action steps you’re going to want to take in August. I did share that first 20 days checklist. Many times that happens in August. But just to kind of summarize some of the most essential you want to preview the previous year’s data to set your instructional and coaching goals and choose three topics or methods you want to support teachers in, and three coaching strategies to focus on. If you are part of my jump start, Jump Start mini course, if you have had that into your inbox already, you know that that’s a couple things that I help coaches do. They’re three by three vision. So if you want to grab that, go to buzzing with b.com/jump start. And that’s a free little course you can use to get an a good foundation for your first 20 days of work. The other thing that you’re going to do really focus on this month is you’re going to meet with your admin to clarify your role. You’re going to have a really great conversation with them, and you’re going to use that information to move forward with introducing your role to teachers and plan your coffee cookies or cupcakes with a coach. You want to have that the first month of school, if at all possible. If you haven’t had one and it’s later in the school year, go for it. Don’t be afraid to re establish yourself, because if coaching isn’t working, it might be time to tell people what you’re there to do again. Okay, so that’s August.

Chrissy Beltran 13:06
In October, teachers are starting to move more into a survival mode. They have some routines and systems in place, hopefully that will help them be successful. They’re learning their kids, but behaviors have become clear and consistent. By this point, we are seeing the habits kids have at school, so we can step in and say, hey, what can we do to respond to these behaviors and to set these kids up for success? Some possible PD, that you may look at are engagement strategies. That’s a really great place to focus your energy at any point in the year. But it’s a good thing to start with the school year at the beginning of the school year as well. And then you’re going to start thinking about, you know, lesson planning, lesson design, how we can accommodate for kids who are not responding to the main tier one instruction, what are they missing? A couple of tasks to focus on. This month, you can assist your teachers in setting goals for their work, because then that helps you help them, right? This gives you an idea of what kinds of support teachers need, so that you can step in and say, hey, I can help you with that. And another thing that’s really helpful to do is to identify several high impact strategies that you can work on throughout the year, during your PLC meetings or team meetings, throughout your PD and classroom modeling. You can refer back to these really high impact strategies if you are feeling like teachers are not really aligned, they don’t have a common language for strategy. And also, if you feel like you see areas where we can improve classroom instruction by diversifying some strategies that that are actually high impact. If you are part of my confident literacy coach course, then you know that I walk you through five high impact strategies that are really helpful for reading and for writing, and that’s that’s something that I did with my teachers, and it helps us to develop a kind of a shorthand for planning together too. In September, teachers are really into survival mode, right? They’re often overwhelmed with meetings. They’re hearing from parents. They are familiar with the kids strengths and weaknesses, but they are probably being kids fall behind. They are probably struggling to keep up with Tier One curriculum, right? And sometimes we end up moving into intervention, intervention, intervention. But when we look at data in this month, we want to think about what changes do we need to our tier one before we think about what tier two can look like. So some possible PD could be data driven instruction, and what that whole group instruction looks like. And then another one that’s really helpful around this time is hands on learning activities. And sometimes it’s fun to do things like a make and take with teachers, but if you do this, make sure that they are making and taking something that is actually helpful to them when they get back into the classroom. Too many times, I’ve sat in a make and take and I’ve made one of something that I will now have to go make a class set of. And it because, if it’s for the kids, she uses a tool, but now I need to make all of them, and I’m like, Oh no, I still get to spend hours doing this, right? Another really good topic for this month is formative assessment, because that can really prove improve your tier one instruction, if we can see where kids are struggling and what they need from us in the moment to make adjustments. So some monthly tasks for you are to review your recent data and provide support to teachers to plan their response, create adjustments to tier one instruction and then identify students for intervention or focus support. And then another really great one is to focus on individual coaching work. Sometimes we get stuck in our tiers one and two. We get stuck in our meetings. We get stuck in PD. But what we want to do is really dig into individual coaching work, focus on individual teachers, because that’s where we’re going to make the impact that it’s going to last for the rest of those teachers careers. So get in there. Don’t be afraid to get in classrooms and ask people to work with you. This month in November, teachers are often starting a low point for a football semester, right? They’re overwhelmed with data and behavior and expectations. And so if you can really narrow what they’re working on and focus on what’s essential. That is one way to help them make the most of the time that they have. Because you know that we start to see assemblies and extra meetings and pulling kids out for things and practice and this and we’re going to do a performance. We see so many other things, starting in November and time gets really short. If you actually count the school days you have in November and December, it might be shocking how few days you actually have to get through so much stuff. So some action steps for you. This month, I would recommend spending some cheer. Let’s see if we can bring some joy to teachers. If there’s a way that you can bring joy to them individually, that you can do something kind you can, you know, really share your positive energy. That’s one way to do it. Also doing something fun during PLC meetings to bring teachers together. Really be thoughtful about how we bring joy to our teachers. This month, another action step that I recommend is analyzing student work samples together. Whenever you have teachers who are trying to talk about instruction, but they’re all saying different things are working in different things or not, it can be hard to have conversations around it, because we don’t really know what each person sees in their classroom. So instead, if we can analyze student work samples together, that really shows us a lot about what kids are actually doing, and it’s an opportunity for people to share something that they did well, that their kids responded to, some professional development opportunities in this month our academic vocabulary and language, I recommend digging into those and coming back to reading and writing across the curriculum. We don’t spend enough time on this, and that will be supportive of all of your teachers. Your math, science and social studies teachers will benefit from reading and writing across the curriculum, because kids who can access the knowledge that they have are better readers, who will comprehend content area literacy better. So I recommend digging in those into those topics in November.

Chrissy Beltran 18:51
In December, teachers are trying to squeeze it all in. It is a tricky time, right? And there’s so much pulling them from instruction. So be realistic in your support that you provide. Think about what is going on and what teachers can actually do in the time that they have. This is also really good time to reflect on the first semester and review those three main goals that you said at the beginning of the year. Look at how you can adjust them for the spring to make sure you will be working towards them and reaching them. So identify those big three that you’re going to focus on in the spring semester, and you can also review the scope and sequence of instruction and make adjustments for the spring. You want to have a plan for the first two weeks when you return from break, because if not, you walk back into the classroom, you walk back into the school, and everybody’s doing their own thing, and everybody’s kind of scrambling make sure you know what’s going to happen those first two weeks after the break, some possible PD opportunities this month are helping teachers review their scope and sequence and making adjustments and also revisiting classroom management. Sometimes we see things starting to fall apart. We. Teachers resorting to yelling or just, you know, threats and punishments, and we know that isn’t actually supportive of student behavior. It happens to everybody. It happened to me every year. Certain times of year I would find myself being overly critical of student behavior because I just had sort of run out of patience, and I had to stop, take a deep breath, take a step back and say, Okay, what can I do to re shape the way my classroom works, and one of the things that I did is praise the good set clear expectations, make sure instructions are clear and that kids understand them before I ask them to do anything. So once we got into that frame of mind, things always improved. Okay, let’s talk about January. In January, teachers are usually better prepared to work with the kids they have, and they’re better able to differentiate because they have had a little break, and they come back and they have maybe a new perspective on the class that they’ve been working with. A break sometimes gives us a really great perspective. So to help teachers try new things, even if they don’t work, and reflect together, because you’re not going to figure things out if you don’t try a lot of things. I things this month, I would recommend focusing on looking at mid year assessment data. How can you help your teachers and working through the curriculum, but getting their assessments done? How can you support them in reviewing this data and creating an action plan? And then I also recommend that you individually revisit your relationships and your work towards bridge building with individual teachers who have not wanted your support, because this month is a good time to start over. People often have a renewed sense of energy, not completely, not like August, but better than December. So you can start to use coaching cycles with teachers who maybe have not been excited about them before. Some possible PD opportunities this month our growth mindset, this is a great time to revisit that kind of thinking as well as this was a good one. And I don’t know if you are familiar with it, but it’s called 3d to 2d which is building the bridge from hands on learning to paper and pencil tasks. Sometimes we have teachers who are great at hands on learning, but then kids cannot replicate that learning on paper with a pencil. Sometimes we have teachers who are great at paper pencil tasks, but are not so good at hands on learning. So what we want to do is help teachers know you can teach in a hands on way, and then you need to bridge that to paper and pencil, because that’s the way we’re having kids demonstrate their learning. Let’s look at February. In February, we have a focus. Our teachers are faced with increasing text test expectation. They’re starting to feel a little stressed that the end of the school year is coming and then testing is also coming. So some things to consider are, you want your teachers to collaborate, to build on their strengths. So making a plan for them to learn from each other is a really great way to do this. You can do pineapple PD, just classroom visits with different teachers visiting each other. You could do a teacher led conference where teachers lead sessions through a PD day. I did that one year, and it was really well received, and teachers loved it. You just want to get teachers in front of each other and talking and learning.

Chrissy Beltran 23:02
Something else you can consider doing this month is helping teachers refine their intervention. Will they tutor after school? Do they have a Saturday camp? Do they do intervention during the school day? Do they share students? Do students, you know, go to like other classrooms to meet with similar students who need to work on similar things? Use this data that they have, that they’ve been collecting all year to make a really solid plan for intervention this semester, a couple of PD opportunities questioning strategies. It’s a good time to visit that, because teachers sometimes have fallen into some habits, and they may or may not be effective. So what questioning strategies can we share with teachers? And then I also recommend that you look at what I mentioned before, which is teacher led PD opportunities. Teachers share about what’s working in their classrooms. They can lead a PD session. They can do a little 10 minute intro, something at the beginning of a PLC meeting. All those things are valuable ways to help teachers learn from each other. In March, teachers are about to hit one of the most stressful times of the year, and if you were a classroom teacher, what in this position, I would hope you had been, think back to what that was like. That was not easy, so be the person who can listen, understand, support, challenge, some of that self defeating talk, but also be realistic and honest about what are realistic expectations during this time this month, I would recommend you go back to your five high impact strategies that you shared before, because sometimes we can slip into test prep mode and it’s not good teaching anymore. Good teaching matters during test prep. So you could do a video on these strategies. You could do a quick PLC meeting where you practice them together. You can use a strategy as a model during PD, where you actually use it with teachers to learn about something else. But come back to really solid teaching strategies and make sure teachers know how to integrate that with their test prep. Moving forward, if that’s what they’re working on, again, focus on your individual coaching cycle work. It can be really tempting to push into class or to pull kids out, help men, help them and provide intervention. But if we’re going to grow teachers, they will be better able to grow their kids. So when we pull kids out, we’re putting a band aid on something. Instead, if you have to provide support in classrooms, push in with a small group of kids so that a teacher can see what it’s like with their children in their classroom, and they can hopefully walk away with some of those strategies, a couple of PD opportunities this month. Again, come back to your teacher led PD opportunities, because they are more likely to listen to each other at this time. And a really great one is ways to respond to test questions, helping teachers think about different ways to use their test prep materials in an engaging way. So that’s a fun one too.

Chrissy Beltran 25:32
In April, which we’re going to come up on April soon. If you’re listening in real time, teachers are possibly in the middle of testing, or they’re ramping up for testing, depending on your state calendar. So really be patient and purposeful. Make sure that if you have a meeting with teachers, they are walking away with something practical. This is not the time for theory. Unfortunately, this is the time for this is what you can do tomorrow. Whenever you are thinking about your action steps this month, focus on collaboration with teachers. There’s too much to do for any one teacher to manage everything, so they need to share the burden of planning. They need to share the burden of intervention. How can they help each other? And then this is a silly one that you probably maybe not a thought of. This one, create a little file folder. It can be like a physical folder and an electronic folder on your desktop, and label it with the next school year. I did this every year, stick items in that folder over the next month or two that you want to consider at the beginning of next year or as you plan your back to school. PD, so just having all that stuff in one spot so you can look at it again next year is so helpful. So that’s just a little organizational tip that I recommend this month a few PD opportunities. Come back to teacher led, PD, opportunities they want to hear from each other and not as much from you, usually. And then I you can also do engagement strategies for test prep. How can teachers keep kids engaged whenever they are trying to squeeze in so much review at this time of year, in May, and I have may slash June in the calendar, because these months are generally the last month or months in the school year, and that might look different for you, but at this time, they may be Once testing it’s over, experiencing a sense of relief, like, okay, that’s over with. The pressure is off. We can actually do some cool stuff again with kids. Or they may be having to really ride that stuff hard till the last day of school, depending on what your calendar looks like. So you have to kind of be in tune with what teachers are needing from you at this time. A couple of end of year tasks that could be really helpful is setting up one on one meeting with meetings with each teacher to reflect on their goals for the year, how they went this year, and then what they’ve accomplished, and then you can celebrate and think about what they’d like to work on. Like to work on next year. What are some reflections that they have? Another great task is to ask teachers how you can best support them during this time. Now, if they are pull asking you to pull kids out of the classroom, don’t give that as an option. Really, I don’t recommend that you do unless that is your job. If you are pulling kids out of the classroom, you are not helping teachers in the classroom, so give them choices, maybe, and you can ask a few trusted teachers about some different ideas for that, and then ask teachers what they would like you to do, and make a plan to address those requests. When you can a couple of PD tasks for this month, or PD topics, one great way to do, thing to do is end of your data review. So thoughts on what went well? What can change next year. It might not even be data, just reflection that you’re talking about and another really fun one is classroom design and layout. What is a plan that you can create for next year to support yourself you support teachers in creating classrooms that are are organized and purposeful and best for student brain. There also I included in the calendar the monthly coaching plan, monthly coaching planner. I included some summer break to do’s. Those are optional. Some people like to do summer break stuff. Some people are like, anti summer break stuff. I used to set a certain date at over the summer, and I’d say, Okay, I’m not going to think about school until this day. So I would go do my fun things. I would go do my my vacation, and then I would think about school on that day, I’d look at my or my folder, I would start thinking about back to school. PD, I would talk to my principal, all that stuff, but I didn’t do it until a certain date, and that made me feel like I had a real break. So if you need a real break, give yourself a real break. I mean, I think most people do, but some people do enjoy getting getting started and thinking about the next school year. And so I have some action steps for you. You can think about your three goals that you would like. You can start working on those based on your reflections at the end of the school year. You could stock up on positive notes or little gifts to give to teachers once the year starts, and to kind of serve as pick me ups throughout the year. And you can actually start on your little presentation that you’re going to use to share with teachers about your role, or start on your coffee with a coach, or cupcakes with a coach. Planning, that’s a fun thing to do, too. You can design all your cute materials over the summer. Possible, PD, if you are asked to provide PD, you can do PD subscription boxes, like a little box of PD. Or you could do um. Book studies. Those are fun things to do over the summer. They’re more low key. They’re not everybody comes in a room and stare at each other wearing nice clothes. It’s like fun ways to do PD, and let’s, let’s honor teachers break and try to give them some time off so they come back the next year with energy to serve kids. So those are just the highlights of the things that I recommend that you do each month, and some PD opportunities, again, if you want to grab that whole entire planner, it’s a really great resource. You can go to buzzing with the feed com slash planner and grab it there. And I hope that this gives you kind of an idea of what your school year can look like as you’re moving through your year, and how you can make it purposeful and and really effective. Next week, we’re continuing our action plan series with an episode about teacher surveys. I always share about asking teachers for their input, but how do we create a survey that actually tells us what teachers need in a way that we can provide it, and it’s not just like complaints or it’s not like pie in the sky that is real stuff, actionable things whenever teachers might be stuck, sometimes it’s hard to know what you need when you’re stuck. So I’m excited to talk to my guest, Amanda su chair, about this next week, and until then, happy coaching!

Chrissy Beltran 31:19
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 VIB and check out the podcast. Show Notes. Happy coaching!

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