Reflective Questioning for Teachers in Instructional Coaching Conversations with Kim Cofino, ep. 229

Reflective Questioning for Teachers in Instructional Coaching Conversations with Kim Cofino, ep. 229, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran 00:00
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 00:29
Hey coach and welcome to episode 229, of instructional coaching with Miss B today, we are talking about reflective questioning for teachers and instructional coaching conversations with my guest, Kim Cofino. You I’m sure have heard about Kim before. She’s got a million videos on YouTube, and I’m really excited to welcome her as a guest on this podcast, because she was one of the requested guests from the survey that I sent out last year. If you are struggling with having reflective conversations with teachers as part of your coaching cycle work, you can grab my coaching cycle forms in my store or on my website, on TPT, they are full of resources that will help you guide your conversation, as well as focus the work that you do with teachers during coaching cycles. You can also grab my free feedback sentence starters, and that’s at buzzing with Smith b.com/episode 229, you can scroll down to the bottom of the show notes and grab them there, because that’s a handy dandy little guide. If you are feeling sort of uncertain about the conversations you have with teachers and you’re not sure how to make them more than just providing feedback or giving your own opinion, then this is a really great place to start with those free sit and starters. So grab those at buzzing with Miss b.com/episode 229, and before we spend any more time talking about what we’re going to talk about, let’s start talking about it with our guest, Kim cofino, welcome to the podcast, Kim. I really appreciate you being here today. Thank you. I’m excited to be here. Awesome. So as a quick way to introduce yourself, we would love to hear about a few things about you. Who do you help and how do you spend most of your time and energy at work?

Kim Cofino 02:05
Sure, mostly I work with instructional coaches, primarily in international schools, and I also work with schools as a whole and school leaders, and I support them in building sustainable and thriving instructional coaching programs, particularly with an international school lens, the way I spend most of my time is actually talking to those people, whether it’s in person or virtually. Sometimes I am actually creating content for them or for their schools. And a lot of my time is spent having coaching conversations, either with leaders or coaches.

Chrissy Beltran 02:36
Awesome. And then I’m on a mission this year to share hobbies with my listeners? That might seem like a weird question, but I think, like so many times, we invest so much of ourselves in our work. You know, education is so important, and it feels like a calling, and then you don’t make time for the rest of yourself. So what is a hobby that you love and you would love to share?

Kim Cofino 02:55
So this year, I’ve developed a lot of new hobbies because I’ve been having ongoing my parents are aging, and my dad’s been in the hospital a lot this year, so that’s been really stressful. So I’ve developed a lot of new hobbies to cope with the overwhelming mental capacity that I’m at in addition to regular work stuff. But my main hobby is power lifting. I compete in the sport of power lifting, so I squat, bench and deadlift on a regular basis, and then I also love puzzling and journaling and watercolor. So I have like physical hobbies, and then I have like creative hobbies.

Chrissy Beltran 03:28
I love that it’s good to have variety of hobbies depending on what you’re what you’re trying to get out of it at that time, and what you’re

03:34
moving Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah. It’s awesome.

Chrissy Beltran 03:37
Um, okay, so I love that you say that so much of your time is spent on having conversations, because that’s exactly what we’re talking about in this little mini series. Is better coaching conversations. So my first question is about, where does a reflective conversation fit into your approach to coaching, and what can it look like? So

Kim Cofino 03:56
I feel like I’m having these conversations all the time. So for me, this is like an everyday practice, and I think reflection is one of the things that is easy to skip. We get really focused on the planning, on how we’re going to implement, and the kind of pre thinking about the work, but coming back to reflect afterwards is so important, because it’s reflection when we solidify the work that we’ve done, and we’re able to take those intentions forward into a next iteration of whatever we might do. So I think a lot of the conversations that I personally have are reflective conversations, and then also, when I’m talking with coaches, it’s something we talk about all the time is like, how can we prioritize the space for teachers? Because they just want to run right on to the next thing, right? So I think the way it works is very similar to the way any other coaching conversation might work. We’re going to sit down, we’re going to have some kind of check in, we’re going to see how things are going. We’re going to talk about what you know emerged for you over the course of doing that work. What you want to get out of this conversation today ask some good questions to get us to think about implementing for the future, how we can carry this work? Forward, then soliciting some feedback on the conversation and maybe scheduling another opportunity to work together. So that kind of flow is very similar for me in all the conversations that I have. Yeah,

Chrissy Beltran 05:10
I like that. I One of the questions that I get a lot is, How do you make time for the post conference? Where do we, you know, fit that in? And I think if we don’t go into the work with a teacher initially as just understanding that that’s going to be a natural part of the relationship that we have. Then we are trying to make time for it, and we’re like, after the fact, going, oh, when do you want to meet to talk about this? And then it’s too late. Like, if you’re setting the date to talk about what just happened, and you’re barely having a conversation about when you’re going to talk about it, then it’s like, it’s already over. And

Kim Cofino 05:40
I think if you one of the things I’ve noticed that I’ve been talking about with so in addition to the work that I do with coaches and leaders, I also sometimes work with whole schools and help them build a coaching culture, because we know if teachers don’t understand what’s happening around coaching, it’s going to be less likely that they opt in. So one of the things I often talk about when, especially when I’m talking to whole schools and teachers, is the fact that the research directly shows that reflection is when we’re able to process and make time for new learning. It’s not actually in the action that gets us better once we’ve masked a certain hours, certain amount of hours for our action, it’s the reflection that actually makes us better, and that makes sense for coaching in general, but it makes even more sense for reflective conversation, because usually coaching is prompting you into a new area of growth, and you need that little bit of time to process what you’ve already done so you can solidify it in your brain. And to me, that is something that resonates with teachers. They kind of have that aha, like, oh yeah, you’re right. I know that. I know that for work with my students, it makes sense that it would be the same for me.

Chrissy Beltran 06:44
I was making a note because I, you know, I’m thinking about how many conversations I’ve had with coaches, and they say I’ve been working with this teacher for months. We’ve worked on this over and over and over again, but it’s just like it’s not sticking. And then I love the classroom, and it’s like we never did any work together. And I’m wondering how much of that is maybe the reflective conversation is not happening, or it’s not, like, purposeful, it’s not, you know, actually impacting the teacher’s thinking,

Kim Cofino 07:08
Yes, and I another question you’re going to ask me later, I’m going to say the same thing. So I’m sorry. I might say it twice, but I think even in that reflection conversation, that’s a great opportunity to build scaffolds that are unique to that individual teacher like, Okay, now you’ve done it. What made that work for you? Let’s write that down. Let’s put it in your unit planner. Let’s put it in your lesson notes. Let’s put it wherever it needs to be, so that when you come back to this same type of thing again, you’ve got that that written down external memory of what worked for you, so you can repeat it. And I that working with the same teacher for the same thing, how many years in a row I know that story myself, and it is very frustrating. It is, it absolutely is.

Chrissy Beltran 07:49
And so I love having that like a record of the thinking you already did. You’ve already arrived at this, and now you just have to keep doing it. Yes,

Kim Cofino 07:58
yeah. And it’s really hard. I understand teachers are so busy it’s very easy to fall back into the habit that you had before you tried this coaching intervention. So that can even be a question to ask the teacher, like, what do you need to make this your permanent practice with this work that you’re doing? Like, is it is it a cheat sheet? Is it some notes? Is it records in your unit planner? Like, what would help you do? You want me to pop back in next week at a certain time? You know, like, there’s lots of ways we can be intentional about ensuring that this reflection has meaning beyond that, like that moment of the conversation, I think that you’re getting

Chrissy Beltran 08:31
at. The next thing I was going to ask you about, which is what we hope to accomplish with reflective conversations with teachers, right? And you’re already talking about, like, well, obviously change, right? And if we’re not creating this change in their practice and giving them something that, and not even giving helping them arrive at something that they are going to now use moving forward, then we’re not really accomplishing much with those conversations. Yeah.

Kim Cofino 08:54
I mean, it’s all about building capacity and independence, because we don’t want that cycle of the teacher coming back to us, to me, to you, for the same thing every year, every month, or whatever it might be, we want them to feel like a, there’s things that they’re already doing that they can keep doing that’s getting them to their goals. And B, here’s the tiny tweak that we can make a little bit this next time, maybe a little bit more the next time, that’s going to keep getting us closer and closer to where we want to go. So feeling like I’m doing as a as the teacher, I’m doing things well, and I have exactly what I need to tweak and improve and keep doing things better. Mm, hmm,

Chrissy Beltran 09:31
yeah. So we’re building that capacity like but and also the understanding that teachers can do this like you can do, yes, you know you can be also. You can be reflective on your own. Because if we create the habit, and we create those conversations over and over and over again, the idea is that they can start to reflect on things that we are not directly working with them on right like they can say, Oh, well, I, I worked with them in this lesson in math. But you know what I can be thoughtful about my lesson in science as well. And, yes.

Kim Cofino 09:59
Yes, yeah, and that’s why coaching is about asking those just right questions, right? Because we want to help our partners recognize that reflection is something that they are capable of, just like you said, in addition to actually doing the work that they know they can do. So like we almost want them to hear our voice in their head, what would what would she say when I come with this question, like, what would my coach say? Yeah, yeah. And I have that too. I told you, I a power lifter, so I have a coach. And a lot of times when I’m about to send her a question, like, what would Carly say before I send her this question? What would she say? Like, I can figure it out for myself. So, and anything you can do to build that sense of capacity build that sense of independence.

Chrissy Beltran 10:42
I like that. So what are some things that we should avoid during reflective conversations that are kind of getting in the way of creating this lasting change? Okay, I

Kim Cofino 10:50
have one. I have a couple things to say about this. I have one thing that’s going to be like a no brainer, but then I have something that I think may be controversial, and I can’t wait to hear your opinion. So my no brainer one is, as with any coaching conversation, avoid judgment or evaluation. It’s not your job to say whether they did a good job or a bad job, or what you think about what they did. It’s about what they think about what they did. So do your best to stay away from judgment style language, and let’s look at the data, or let’s look at the experience, or throw the question back to the teacher. And then my one that is maybe more controversial, and I I’m so curious to hear what you think. I’ve been having a lot of conversations with coaches who are new to coaching, and they have come out of being an expert in a specific discipline, so like multilingual learners, or math, or whatever it might be, and they’re really struggling to stay away from their area of expertise, and so I’ve been talking about try to avoid being an expert in a certain subject area. Try to avoid being perceived as an expert. Can you lean into the fact that your coaching partner is the expert in their subject area, in their grade level and their students, and your expertise is in the act of coaching? Can you assume that the choices they make have thoughtful reasons and hold that mindset throughout the conversation, so that you’re not being the consultant all the time that they have to lean into so that you’re building that independent feeling? So that’s my like, controversial one.

Chrissy Beltran 12:16
Yeah, I mean, I can see where you’re coming from with that one. Because I think, like, I was introduced as the expert of the new coach, and it really undermines a lot of the work that I was trying to do. But on the flip side, I also know that before, like you mentioned, like dual language, many times teachers have not been trained in things, and so they’re looking for somebody who has some ideas that they have not been able to come out, come up with, or arrive at. But I think that you can also, like, Okay, let’s look at this source like you. You can also be like the one who can direct people to different sources. And we can absolutely, because you have that knowledge base, you can, like, triangulate, and so it’s not like just you telling them what you know exactly,

Kim Cofino 12:58
yeah, and equipping them to keep growing without having to lean on you, because you are just one human. You cannot be the expert for every single person in every single classroom that you work with. Schools are never going to be staffed that way. That’s just the reality of the situation we’re in, right? So, yeah, I think, of course, there is times when there is a gap and we don’t this teacher doesn’t have the skill to be able to do whatever the thing is, right? So it is valuable if you do bring some expertise, but especially in reflective conversations, I think the more you can lean into the teacher made intentional choices. They had a belief behind what they were doing. Let’s unpack that rather than judge this fit my vision of what this should look like, or it didn’t.

Chrissy Beltran 13:44
Yeah, that’s a good point, because I think that that that sharing that expertise or sharing those resources, it comes maybe at a different place in your coaching relationship, not at that moment in the reflective conversation where you’re like talking about what just happened, you’re talking about this lesson that they just taught, and you’re helping them think about it, rather than say, Well, you know, you could do this and you could do that, that’s not that may not be really helping them do the work of reflecting on their practice Exactly, yeah, yeah. Just comes at a different point your cycle or your work, yeah, yeah. That makes it okay. So then if a coach is feeling maybe frustrated, or they feel like their conversations are fruitless, or they just don’t know where to start. How can coaches get better at having these conversations?

Kim Cofino 14:29
The best thing, I think, is practice with a friend. I know it sounds really trite and like super easy, but I think if you have a colleague that is willing to practice a conversation with you, practice with someone that you feel safe with, and someone I know this sounds like sensitive, but someone you feel like you’re not wasting their time. And I’m not saying that coaches are wasting their time or teachers are perceived that their time is wasted, but just like you don’t want to be taking somebody’s very valuable time and feeling like you’re not really making. Making good use of it. So if you have that friend that is willing to give you that time, that you feel safe with practice, and then you can really leverage that practice, and you can bring the reflective nature of what we’re talking about to your own practice by recording your conversation. You can record it audio, you can record it video, and then listen back. And as you listen, stop and take notes. When you notice a really positive outcome, when did your coaching partner say, Oh, that’s a really great question, or, Oh, I hadn’t thought of it that way, or whatever it is, you had a good moment. And play back or think back, what did you do? What did you say? What’s the question that prompted that? What’s the way you acted? What’s the move that you made note that down for yourself, and then watch or listen for times where you feel like, Oh, that was that, that that series of questions did not get me anywhere. That felt like a really long time before I got to where I wanted to go and script out what you might have done differently. And those are kinds of scaffolds that you might use with teachers to help them make the practice that they learned with you intentional for the future. You can do the exact same thing for yourself, and you can do it with the recording. And of course, in that practice conversation, or any coaching conversation, you can ask your coaching partner for feedback. And I usually ask the question, what was most helpful for you today? And that always gives me a little bit of data on like, wow, we talked for however many minutes, and this three minutes was the most important part of the conversation for them. How can I get to that three minutes faster, or make that three minutes into four minutes? Or, you know, whatever it might be. Mm, hmm,

Chrissy Beltran 16:28
yeah. Do you have any, like, a structure or an approach that you follow whenever you’re you’re communicating with teachers in these conversations? Do you say, Okay, I want to, you know, like, Are you like, going to, like, follow these three points each time? Or how is it that you structure them? Or are they pretty loose? Usually,

Kim Cofino 16:44
I follow that same kind of structure that I shared with you earlier today, which maybe is kind of loose, but I like, like you. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I feel pretty comfortable in how I’m going to navigate my conversations, but usually I do like some kind of check in. I ask for what’s going on, what’s happening lately, set a goal for the day, have whatever the conversation might be, do intentionally, do some kind of summarize, wrap up, takeaways, actions, then I ask for that feedback, and then I schedule the next meeting. So that’s kind of like a general flow that I use for every conversation. Okay, great.

Chrissy Beltran 17:14
And then this is something you mentioned a little earlier as well, about bridging the things that you talk about in these conversations into actual classroom implementation. Because, you know, every coach has had that experience. You know, you do a coaching cycle. You do this amazing pre planning together and the pre conference, everything sounds like it’s going to be great. You do the lesson, whatever your mode you choose to, you know, whether you’re observing or you’re modeling or whatever, and then you have the reflective conversation. You’re like, okay, it’s coming together. Yeah, it’s working all right? And then you visit the classroom next time, and it’s like, you never were there. And so you gave one suggestion about having something written down, that the teacher is like, Okay, I’m going to put this in the place where I’m going to need it, which is, yes, exactly what we do for ourselves. Like, if I need to remember something, you know, the next time I take my kid to the doctor to get their shot record, I’m going to put it in something that’s going to go with me to the doctor’s office. Yes, you know, yep. Um, we have to do like I said, alarms for myself constantly. My phone went off 10 minutes before our conversation, because it was like in a strange time for me to have a conversation, you know, a yes yes. Recording my alarm went off to remind me to put myself in the right place, because we have to help ourselves with these things. Right? Absolutely. Teachers are so overwhelmed, and they have to remember so many things, yes. So I love that having that written that written intention, yes, of this is what I’m going to do, and I’m putting it in a place that’s going to help me when I do it, yes. Do you have any other thoughts on helping them bridge that? Yes.

Kim Cofino 18:44
So I have another piece to that one too. One of the things I like to do with the writing things down is I actually like to say, before we do the practice, whatever it is that they’re changing in their classroom, I like to say, now we’re the intention of this is that you continue doing this. So as we’re planning for it. Let’s put structures in place to make sure, as you’re doing it during the lesson, you’re writing down what worked and what didn’t work. So we’re kind of carrying through this piece of intentional sustainability from the planning all the way through to the reflection. And then maybe in the reflection we might come back to, well, what did you write down as you were doing that? What were you thinking about? What were the structures you put in place when you were actually doing that work, maybe even right after and then, let’s make that more concrete for you by putting it into the lesson plans or whatever might need to be. Other simple things are asking this specific question, like, what do you need to make this happen next time you do this? How can I support you right now? How can I support you? Then, what do you think might come up as an obstacle or a challenge for you when you’re trying to do this again? How can we make sure we remove that barrier before you get into that situation? And then, depending on the teacher, some teachers like to be held accountable. And so you could pop in. You could say, When are you doing? This again, I’d love to come in and see you do this. And you know, I’m so excited to see how it works for you, so you could actually go to the classroom. Or that might be too much, and you might say, I’d love to follow up with you the next time you do this. When are you doing it again? Can I come by later that day? So just that idea of like you’re going to check in and you’re going to see how things went, some teachers really don’t feel like they could do it on their own the second time. So it might be an opportunity. Let me just pop in and be in your room for the 20 minutes that that thing is happening. So it might feel more like a support rather than accountability, but you can kind of navigate that, that distinction between like being there to continue the support versus the like check in to see how you did. And then, of course, you can always schedule the like next time you’re doing this, let me know when you’re planning, and I’ll pop by during that planning period to make sure you have all the things that we talked about last time. Not to be a dependent, but to be like a reminder.

Chrissy Beltran 20:54
Yeah, yeah. I like that. I want to go back to what you said about the intention is that you’re going to continue doing this. I think sometimes we don’t spell things out explicit, yes, because we think like, well, obviously, if we’re working with this person, it’s because things are supposed to change, you know, for the better, and we’re going to keep making those positive changes. But that’s not the way everybody it’s the more you learn about how other people think, the more you realize we all think so wildly differently. And yes, it’s we don’t have a shared understanding of what coaching looks like. A lot of the time people are not familiar with coaches. They haven’t had them, or they haven’t had them really support their classroom instruction. They’ve been used more as other roles on campus. And so I think that being really clear about this is why we’re doing this. So, like, let’s keep that in mind as we move through this process, so we can help you actually do the whole point of the process.

Kim Cofino 21:49
Yes, yes, I love it, and it’s hard to remember, like you say, because everybody thinks so differently. It’s hard to remember to be explicit about all the things that are so expected or natural for you to be able to think to say that, but, yeah, it’s important.

Chrissy Beltran 22:03
Yeah, I think it’s very important. I love that. Another thing that I think you could do with, like, a follow up artifact, you talked about accountability, yes, people are like, well, let’s after you do this thing with your kids. You’re going to have some written samples, you’re going to have some work samples. Why don’t we look at them? After that, like, you can absolutely look at your work samples, and so like, you can pop in, like you said, you can check in, or you could be there for planning to support. You can, you can really provide support on either end, on any end of the process of them trying that thing out on their own. But I love that, that you give a few different options there, because I think people get stuck. There’s not one way to do this all the time, absolutely, you have to be responsive. And

Kim Cofino 22:44
you talking about samples. Made me also think like, if this is something that a teacher really feels, that they have grasped and they feel really good about. I mean, are there ways you could celebrate them, not only on their team, but in a larger space? Because that also reinforces behavior, right? Like it. Do you have a weekly bulletin Do you have a bulletin board like, how do you celebrate? Obviously, with the permission of your coaching partner to say, like this, this tiny tweak led to this improvement in student learning, or led to this outcome, or whatever it might be. Because that also engages other people in getting curious about, oh, what is this coaching like? What? What can we do? Oh, you know, so and so did it? Maybe I could engage in that? Yeah,

Chrissy Beltran 23:22
it does. It builds. It built that teacher’s capacity as well, to share things like, if you have time at the beginning of a team meeting or a PLC meeting, yes, say hey, you want to share a little bit about this work that you did, you know, and that that can build your leadership and your teachers. And it also looks helps teachers look at each other as resources. Yes, and we don’t capitalize enough on like co workers. Yep, we just everybody goes in their room and closes their door and does their own thing, and then we wonder why it’s so

Kim Cofino 23:48
hard. Yes, exactly, absolutely, yeah.

Chrissy Beltran 23:51
So if we can get teachers to share more about these things and make it like a natural thing, like this is something that really worked, and you can share it with your colleagues, yes, I love that. And it does reinforce their behavior, and it also supports other teachers in like, just the idea that, Oh, I could try something different.

Kim Cofino 24:07
And if you have this kind of culture, things like that can lead to teachers visiting each other’s classrooms. And that is the best way to spread good work, right? Like, just to see it in action. I tried this. I learned this. This is how it’s working in my classroom. I’m doing it on this day. Pop by if you can.

Chrissy Beltran 24:23
Yeah, yeah. I love that. Visiting colleagues is like my favorite thing, setting that up, you know, finding a colleague who’s willing to have somebody come see what they’re doing. I just that’s my favorite way to get it works well for teachers who are not excited to learn with you. Yes, they might be excited to learn from a colleague? Yes, absolutely, kids. It’s real teaching. It’s in action. It’s in their own building. Yeah, yeah. It’s it’s

Kim Cofino 24:47
hard to buy into the person who’s not teaching is the one who’s going to help me be a better teacher. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve worked there, how long you’ve known people, the second you step out of the classroom, you’re a different category of human beings.

Chrissy Beltran 24:58
Absolutely, yes. You’ve gone to the dark side. That’s Yes, pretty much. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for all of this. I just it was like so packed full of little pieces of things that people can absolutely add to their their process and coaching. How can people keep learning from you?

Kim Cofino 25:14
I also have a podcast. My podcast is called coach better. I would love to have people subscribe to the podcast. You can find on all of your players, or you can go to the website@coachbetter.tv and my company is called edurolearning, so you can find me on social media everywhere, at E, D, u, r, O learning and iterolearning.com Awesome.

Chrissy Beltran 25:33
Thank you so much, Kim. My pleasure. I know that was jam packed with lots of great tips for reflective conversations. I know that Kim has shared that, you know, just creating a list of questions doesn’t really help you become better at coaching conversations, and that is true. You gotta get in there and practice it. And over time, things become more natural, and you will find opportunities if you’re listening to what people are saying to really respond to the heart of the issue that they’re having. And I love the bridge building ideas that you gave as well. If you are looking for some support in your coaching cycle work, remember, you can grab those coaching cycle forms from my TPT store, which is Chrissy Beltran, buzzing with MS B or from my website. And next week, we are actually starting a new series, a new mini series on the podcast, it’s going to be about school wide behavior and management approaches that work, and I’m really excited to share that with you, because this is a topic that I think is an ongoing issue for so many schools and so many teachers and so many coaches are trying to figure it out on their own. So can’t wait to dig into that series with you, and until then, happy coaching. 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!