Building Your Coaching Personality with Jessica Zimmerman, ep. 240

Building Your Coaching Personality with Jessica Zimmerman, ep. 240, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran  00:01

Hey, Coach, how do you start the year as an instructional coach? How do you set yourself up for success in the first month of school? To a new coach, these questions are huge, and even to an experienced coach, the New Year can bring butterflies and back to school nightmares. I know I’ve had plenty well. If you’re feeling like this, I’ve got you I have the course that’s going to change your life. Instructional coaching startup helps you start the year with a roadmap that tells you exactly what to do each day for the exponentially important first 20 days of school, the things you do the first month of school will make or break your coaching year. So let’s do the right things together. Head to buzzing with Miss beast com slash startup to join the wait list for my instructional coaching startup course. The course opens soon, but if you join the wait list, you’ll receive a coupon code for 15% off when the course actually opens up. 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Iris connect pathways are an amazing way to support all of your teachers, so you can focus your one on one coaching time where it’s really needed. Head to Iris connect.com for a free trial, plus, when you mention this ad, you’ll get 10% off your first user license. Get started with Iris connect to make a bigger impact more efficiently. Welcome to instructional coaching with Miss V where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach, and every coach does too. I’m Chrissie Beltran, an elementary teacher who became a coach, and I had to create my own coaching program that worked. Now I teach coaches how to design their coaching programs, build a school wide action plan and use differentiated strategies to support teachers. Plus, I’ve got a special spot in my heart for literacy coaches. Now let’s dig into the Episode Hey, coach, and welcome to episode 240 building your coaching personality with Jessica Zimmerman, this time of year is a great time to start thinking about the kind of coach that you want to be and how you want to approach your coaching work this coming school year. If you’re listening in real time, if you’re not, you can do this work any time of year, because it’s something that we refine in an ongoing manner. But it’s a really great thing to have the school year started with an idea of the coach you want to be and have a really strong idea of your coaching identity. So that’s why this whole, this whole series that we’re doing right now is instructional coaching startup your coaching identity. If you want more support in getting your coaching identity rounded out before the school year starts, you can grab my free jumpstart program that’s at buzzing with myth b.com/jump Start, and it’ll give you all the tools you need to figure out your vision, your mission, and everything you want to get set up before the school year starts. Definitely grab that for free, and I’m going to be speaking to my guest Jessica Zimmerman today. Jessica was on the podcast a couple of years ago talking about using student work as data. So I’m really excited to hear her thoughts about building her coaching personality. So let’s welcome her to the podcast. So welcome to the podcast, Jessica, and thank you for being here.

Jessica Zimmerman  04:33

Hey, Chrissy, I’m so happy to be back. I just listened to your last few podcasts. They’re amazing, a really great way to keep me grounded. So I love being a part of this, because you’ve helped me so much.

Chrissy Beltran  04:46

Well. Thank you so much. I appreciate that, and today, I’m sure you’re going to help some people who are thinking about their coaching vision as they want to start the school year kind of establish themselves as the coach that they want to be. So before we get into that, I would love to hear a few things about you. I know you’re you’re a repeat guest, but who do you help and how do you spend most of your time and energy at work?

Jessica Zimmerman  05:06

Yeah, so I am now. It’s my 15th year in education and ninth as a coach. So man, as you go through you’re like, I can’t believe I’ve been doing it this long, but it’s, it’s amazing work. I feel great, and most of my time spent coaching my teachers, coaching my admin team. I am a k8 instructional coach now and next year, going into k8 instructional coach at a Gifted Academy. So I’m really excited. A lot of my personal passions I spend with trying to help train teachers and educate those on bringing equitable education for my gifted and talented and high achieving students. So I’m the vice president, President Elect for our state network for gifted here, Arizona association for gifted and talented. And so a lot of my time is supporting with differentiation, which, as you know, as a coach, that’s one of the big questions that they have is how to do it and and just trying to also stay anchored as much as my as much as I can in the classroom. I still pull some small groups here and there, teaching all the time, but a lot of the time it’s just however, however I can boots on the ground, especially this crazy time

Chrissy Beltran  06:21

of year? Yes, yeah. We’re recording this towards the end of the school year so we can have it ready for the summer, as people are thinking about next year. And it is definitely a crazy time. Which leads me to my other question, because so many times coaches invest so much time in their work at school, and they don’t really make the time for things that they love. So what is a hobby that you love to do?

Jessica Zimmerman  06:41

Yeah, so I’m right now, I’m a baseball mom. I have a five year old, and he’s doing the T ball, and then dad coaches high school baseball. So right now I’m the lady in a camping chair screaming in the afternoons, but I have an intense passion for creating things. So I do, I just shifted. It was taken me forever, but shifted all of my PDF I used to do in person on to online. And that, if you’ve ever done anything like that, trying to take what’s in your head and making it make sense to someone on a computer is really difficult. And so that’s something I’ve been doing, is is creating courses for, you know, those on differentiation for gifted and talented, for coaches, on the pesky for fourth question, because I find a lot of my coaching friends asking me, What do I do for the kids that already know? Or how do I go through some of these pieces? So that’s my creative outlet. And I’m also writing a children’s book that was something that I said, I’m going to do this for myself, and I have like, four pages left, and so I’m hoping I will have that done too. So I love that you asked that, because sometimes, when I was a new coach, all I did was coaching. I just poured myself into the work, and then as I went through and went along, realizing you have to have that outlet for yourself absolutely. So gotten a lot better at work life balance than I used to be. That’s awesome.

Chrissy Beltran  08:12

Yeah, that’s something I think we’re all working at in different ways. And I’ve actually lived that life of I was not the mom, but I was like, they called me second string because I was like, second string mom in my family, because my brothers are a lot younger than me, and so my my second brother, second, you know, youngest, and second in line. He was a baseball player since he was little. He started in T ball, and was like, competitive when he was 10. And then now he’s a baseball coach, a high school baseball coach as well. And so I have spent so many hours at ballparks and on fields and, like, our family vacations for years were just baseball trips, because that’s, you know, that’s just how it went. So, yeah, I can totally relate to that life. And it’s, it brings back a lot of memories.

Jessica Zimmerman  08:54

Yeah, it’s a whole it’s a whole thing. I didn’t know I was getting

Chrissy Beltran  08:58

myself into it. It is a whole thing. Once you start signing up for stuff, yeah, the whole thing, yeah.

Jessica Zimmerman  09:04

Okay, so I would love to talk today about coaching personality. So as a coach, how would you describe your own personality? Yeah, well, you know, that has just been an answer that has changed. If you ask me in different weeks, in different years, man, does that change. But I really so I like to start off with thinking, Do you have a song that, like, plays in your head over and over again? You’re like, that’s kind of my song. What’s your song? I just want to know. Boy,

Chrissy Beltran  09:31

I have no, I that that is one I would need in advance. I mean, sorry, yeah, I tell my kids we have a song of the summer each year, and this year, I already picked the song of the summer. It’s fun, fun, fun. By the Beach Boys. So that is not like me, but that is why I aspire to be. So that’s, that’s our song of the summer. The best I can do on short notice. Yes,

Jessica Zimmerman  09:49

well, mine is pocket full of sunshine by Natasha bingfield, and that’s a song that if I’m having a hard time or whatever, I’m just I’ve got a pocket Yeah, just on Re. Pete over there. And I really do try to be the sunshine leading with positivity. Never the person that you walk by and you get the get the ghost look. I lead with a smile. I think it’s important. I do. I have a bad poker face. If I feel something, you see it. But I, I think in my personality, I love what I do, and my teachers can feel it. My kids can feel it. I A big part of my personality was back in the day, people pleasing, now being turned to servant leadership. So that was a Healthy Transition from some, you know, trauma in the past, to be able to cultivate that in a positive way, being able to do the work and show up for teachers, because it’s really hard and and I think when you say like, personality, something that I found really important in in my journey in becoming a coach, I did a lot of personality tests, a lot of like, who am I? What makes me me? Right? We’re all searching for what makes me who I am, and so I’m a Gryffindor, I’m an advocate, disruptor, developer, right? So we’re trying to figure out who we are, and I think that work, and trying to understand your own personality or character and your actions that all connect to that is just is so important.

Chrissy Beltran  11:21

Yeah, I love that idea of personality test too, because I think that there are some sort of innate components of our personality, but like you said, we can change them into things that are maybe, if they’re not always the best qualities, you know, like I can there are things about myself that I have had to work really hard on as a teacher and a coach and a parent over the years to become just not as much myself, if that makes that sounds terrible, but you know like Right is right and wrong is wrong, and black and white, and that is my nature, and so I have really had to work on that, to hold on to the good qualities of having a strong code of ethics, but not being judgy about that Code of Ethics and so and being accepting of different, you know, ways of doing things. And so I think that that, yeah, I love that idea of doing the personality test kind of give you a starting point. Yeah, it’s the

Jessica Zimmerman  12:11

good toe into the water when you’re trying to understand yourself. Because, because there’s a lot of deep work that goes into becoming a really, really good coach, that that’s a good, nice little starting space now. Yeah, I

Chrissy Beltran  12:26

like that. So then how can we give some thought to the values that we want to share through our actions? Because I really, whenever I think about personality, it’s like, okay, what are your actions and words and where are they coming from? What is motivating those actions and words? So how can we do some thinking about that as a coach?

Jessica Zimmerman  12:43

So that goes into the deeper dive of first knowing your values. And there’s a quote that I really like, if you have too many priorities, you have no priorities. And I feel that same way about values. If you’re the person that says, But I value this system, they list 15 things, in my opinion, that’s you don’t have your value anchored. You have you. It’s like one or two. So first it’s knowing your values. And so I’ve done over just several years of different PDS and reading different books and doing all these things. I do a values activity with my teachers, and we take a deep dive on an inventory of how we show up in our values. And so the first thing I would recommend any teachers to do is you do this activity yourself. It’s some raw work, but leaders go first, right? We want to go through that identifying your own core values. And when you’re identifying your core values, you think about what happens when I show up in this value? So if my core value is advocacy, and that is so important to me, what happens when I show up as an advocate? How do I feel? And I want to replicate those things. I feel really good. I feel really proud. I feel all of these things. And the most importantly is what happens when I don’t when I don’t advocate? What are those visceral reactions that I’m having that I’m not showing up for myself like I wanted to? And a lot of the times, why we feel viscerally heated is because we have a value we may not have identified that we are acting against. And so when you kind of think about that, a lot of times we don’t stop in the moment and go, Oh, I just acted against the value that I had. And that is why I’m responding this way, self correct in the moment. A lot of it is I’m I’m feeling overwhelmed, I’m feeling this, I’m feeling that. And then maybe if we we are reflective people by nature, it might end up coming out in some journaling or venting or wherever, but it’s not an intentional process. If you make an intentional process and you think, okay, how do I correct if I realize I’ve gone against a value of mine, how do I structure my life and keep my. Work grounded in my values, because the and, and also, I think for a lot of us that maybe have grown up in the same generation, feelings were maybe minimized, or feelings were just suck it up buttercup, right? But, and so we didn’t get taught to listen to your body, what are you feeling? Are you feeling angry? Are you feeling this? What about what? What does that attach to? And so it’s something that might be need, needed to be taught now, and and it absolutely is important, because it does impact your coaching relationship, and it impacts how teachers work with their kids. And so it’s so interesting that you kind of, you see some of this work, and you go, wow, I didn’t know, I don’t know how to connect with my teacher. And even realizing that this is, this is a good place to

Chrissy Beltran  15:54

start. Yeah, that’s interesting. As you were talking about, like, valuing advocacy, just jumped in my head that the things that I regret, most people say, you regret things that you say, you know, so don’t say anything. Yeah, I regret the things I don’t say, Yes. And I struggle with that so much where sometimes finding the right thing, like do, am I going to say this at this moment? Is this the right time? You know, you go round and round. But I have found that whenever I do say something sometimes I regret it, but at least I can apologize for things that I said, yeah, they weren’t the best or they didn’t come out the right way, but things that I don’t say, and the moment has passed, I regret those for years, for years. They just stew in my like, in my soul. Yeah, they haunt you. Yeah, they do because I miss the opportunity to say something to that I felt was important, and so yeah, I agree that we do have, like, things just eat at you sometimes when you’re not in acting in accordance with the things that you value, right?

Jessica Zimmerman  16:51

Yeah, and there’s something important too. I think we forget this as coaches sometimes, when we get into the coaching role, that it’s no different than what you would do with your kids. When you build the relationship with your kids and they get to know you, they learn that you have children and you’re married and and these are things you like to do on the weekends. There’s this connection that happens, and your teachers really benefit from knowing your story. And it might be hard. I had a really hard story growing up. I came from pain and and what was hard is realizing that it wasn’t my fault, but my responsibility to heal and and so from from all of that work, advocacy and growth popped out as my core values, because advocacy, this is, is something that that inner child needed. And so just like you, I regret when I don’t say things. And where does that come from? That comes from my past, that comes from my childhood, and I get some deep inner wounds when I don’t speak up now. And just like you, I will. It’s better for me to correct and say I’m so sorry. What I meant to say was, rather than go on that value, because that value is so important to me, and then growth as a coach, you would think that growth is important and that we would just by nature, be, you know, growth, growth coaches, but also hold that in ourselves. But sometimes we might want our teachers to grow, but we’re not willing to do the work first too. And so it is, it’s tough. It brings but it brings a lot of value and um, and I think one thing that was really important to me was to understand that everyone has their personality, right? That’s the outside. Those are the leaves that everybody gets to see. And then you have the character and and your values, and they’re they’re deeply rooted, so not everybody gets to see that, and sometimes you do a good job at sharing your personality and your characters really reflected in your actions. And sometimes it’s not, and it’s hidden. And where we can support our teachers is allowing them to understand what is beneath the surface, the roots, and how do we re anchor them in their values when things are hard, because that’s when we get on shaky territory when things are hard. And in education and teaching, things are heard a lot.

Chrissy Beltran  19:19

Yeah, that’s I like that, that idea of bringing people back to the values you mentioned, using a value, like activity or like survey or something. What do you have one that you

Jessica Zimmerman  19:27

recommend? Yeah, I I have one that I’ve used. I do a presentation. So I have Google Slides. I actually have it on my TPT shameless plug, hey, great. But yeah, and I do it every year, and it’s a presentation. And and I won’t give too much away, but I I have them really, really grapple with what values are, the values okay? And that’s important, because that that sac thinking of sacrificing a value, and if you’re able to let it go, and that feels okay, I feel okay with that, because this. Values more important to me and and how much they fight over that one value, and then at the end of the day, when it’s down to the one two, and those are the ones that feel viscerally right, and then doing the work on the actions that correlate with that, because you can have the values all day long, and it’s grown under there, but the actions is what we see, and sometimes there’s a mismatch. So

Chrissy Beltran  20:22

then, can you give us some examples of the values that we might really consider embodying as coaches, and then how we can share them with our teachers as part of our personality? Yeah,

Jessica Zimmerman  20:31

absolutely. So I think one thing I talked about was like the growth, right? Growth is really important. But growth mindset, understanding that everyone can grow, no matter the age, no matter the experience, and it can be hard. You might, you know, there’s that, oh, they’re a veteran teacher. They are pretty stuck in their ways. They might not want to move out of their comfort zone. I guarantee you there is something going under, under the service value wise, that is, that is at play and and so I think the first thing is growth mindset. First, you can’t write off everybody. You have to be able to say, okay, I can help them, just as you would with a kid in your class. Though, the kids really struggling. And, you know, you give them humility and grace and love, but when we get older, we have this mindset of adults should know how to dot, dot, dot, fill in the blank. And that’s so unfair, because so often these adults might have continued to grow and get older and older without the support, without the center work without a person or a champion to see them for their values or or their strengths, and so seeing their strengths first. I have worked with administrators before that have said things like, Ah, this teacher, blah, blah, blah, and then list the things. And I said, but do you know how creative they are? Oh, they’re so creative. Have you seen how they’ve blank, blank, blank. And they said, No, I don’t see that, because I just see all the other stuff. As a coach, you have to see the strengths first, just like you would with your kids, and that’s why, whenever I talk about a coaching relationship, you have to see your teachers, like your babies and I and my teachers, they feel paparazzi by me, because I’m always up in their face taking pictures of them being so cute. You know, they get the little goodies from me. I see them in the halls and give them hugs, give them like that whole loving relationship, that supportive mentor relationship. It’s the same as if I were their teacher, and and you have to believe, you have to believe your teachers can if you if you don’t like who would learn from someone that clearly looks like they’re out to get them, or clearly is holding judgment, because you might not have been judgmental, but they can feel it. Everyone knows the vibes. You know,

Chrissy Beltran  23:01

Elena says, she says nobody wants to learn from somebody who thinks they suck. Yeah? Basically,

Jessica Zimmerman  23:09

absolutely, yeah. And I think something coaches have to that have the humility that teaching is hard. I’ve heard some coaches say, like, coaching works hard, yes, but it’s a different hard. It is such a hard, it is a cognitive hard. In a lot of ways, working with adults can be very, very challenging, but as as a coach, making sure that you’re getting into rooms and keeping your reality alive, because a 10 minute observation is totally different than taking over the class and teaching the lesson at every different grade level every week, because our kids in our grades, in the every year, they change expectations, change things, change and and I think the most important for a coach is understanding other people’s values and honoring and then adjusting your coaching based on their values. And so you said something earlier about like, like flexibility, and how you had to kind of adjust, maybe some more rigid boundaries, right? And so what for one teacher, flexibility and compassion might be one of their values. And I would need to know I need to show up a little more flexible for this person, because they value flexibility, and there’s something validating about understanding and doing adjusting my actions slightly, because I know you need that, and that makes you feel validated and heard and seen. But then I have other teachers, so an example of how that might look in a coaching relationship is I have a teacher that they want compassion, empathy, flexibility, they’re wholehearted people. They’re on the color test. They’re my blues, right? My blues that are just heart. Hearts and care and love. Those are the ones that I’m checking in. Hey, do you have an emotional space for us to meet today? Because I saw you this morning, and you kind of seemed a little like, you know, vibes were off, and they go, thank you for reading that. I’m actually going through a lot. Can we move our meeting to next week? Mm, hmm. And, and that value of the flexibility, compassion aids my actions, whereas I have teachers that are they want, they value reliability and efficiency, right? That teacher is not going to want to move the meeting because they conquer time. This is what for me. This is important to me, and no, I’d rather keep it where it is, no matter of what I’m going through. They’re your golds. They’re the ones that I have that, nope, I need to check it. I plan for that mentally. I can, I will be good. And so you have to adjust. And a part of that is being able to make space for permission slips, both non verbally, which we’ll talk about in a little bit, but also like verbally. So Brene Brown does this the the thought of permission slips, and so it’s especially when you’re working with humans that are elevated, and we’re tired and it’s Wednesday afternoon and no one wants to be in a PLT right now because they have just been through testing, or all the other thing, and you feel the vibes when they enter the room. And you just go, oh, man, I can feel the energy you’re bringing. And you think, Okay, let’s start with permission slips. And the permission slip is, hey, right now, I’m, I’m going through a lot. I have some family stuff going on, so I might come off a little shorter than I’m normally am, and it’s not you, it’s it’s what I’m going through. So first the permission, because then everybody around the table goes, Oh, okay, I won’t take it personal, even though you probably shouldn’t take it personally anyways. But it’s a it’s a good refresher. Oh, it’s not me, it’s them. They’re going through it. I can have more grace today. And then the other part is holding people accountable for what they do bring and saying I’m going to give myself permission. I’m going to look at data today, and I might feel really frustrated that data doesn’t look how I want it to, and I’m going to give myself Grace today, because I know I’ve been working really hard and the data might not reflect the work that I’ve been putting in, and so the making those spaces for permission too kind of comes into that growth mindset and and advocating for your teachers to hold themselves accountable by you holding them accountable, but with supports.

Chrissy Beltran  27:39

Yeah, I love that, because there are so many dynamics in a group, so many dynamics that go on and because of differing teacher personalities and different teacher values and philosophies, and it can be hard for people with a history to be forgiving of each other. And you see that a lot. You see that in teams that have worked together for years, that there’s just, like, a grudge or, you know, just something ugly. And usually, if you read enough fiction, you know, there’s an, usually a really good reason. There’s a back story, right? And that’s why they say people who read more fiction tend to be more empathetic, because they can imagine people’s backstories, right? They can imagine that there are things going on that they don’t know. But if we can be upfront about those things, we don’t have to imagine why. Or have the rumor, rumor mill start to say, well, this is what’s going on. She’s got this, right, you know? And it’s all this, you know, gossip around it. If people will just say, I’m having a hard time because of this, you know, I like it

Jessica Zimmerman  28:38

and making the intentional space, because some of us are extroverted enough to be like, what right? This is what’s going on. But if there’s a strain relationship, or if there’s not that emotional safety, you you have to be the one that intentionally makes that space, and it’s not going to happen organically. Mm, hmm,

Chrissy Beltran  28:56

yeah, like that. So I’ve been following your account for a while your Instagram account, and you posted a few things that I would love to ask you about, to kind of share a little more about them. The first one is that the coach carries the weather, and I totally agree, and I would love to hear you talk about that for a couple

Jessica Zimmerman  29:11

minutes. Yes, that that whole concept shifted, shifted my life as a coach, and has empowered me in so many ways, and so this is what I think about. Take you on a little guided, guided journey. Here you get out of your car. You’re walking up to the gate of your or your door to your school. You see all the adults out on duty, right? Picture everybody walking around with a little weather cloud above their heads. Picture that for everything you can do it with your family. Do it when you get home today, picture it. You see the kids with the little sunshine. You see the little storm clouds. You see the teachers with the tsunami right? You see that weather above the head. It’s very there’s a lot of verbal communication happening. And. Um, that as a coach, you have to tune into and so I think of it like I’m a meteorologist, and I’m doing my morning scan, and I scan, and I have to brace emotionally for weather. So I think about, what am I going to wear? That’s what we do as a before. Hey, what’s the weather like today? Oh, I got a plan for this. And so you do the same thing, because you have to what you wear is what armor or what you prepare yourself for. And so I think of it like this, if I see I’m going to use my principle, because he, he doesn’t mind if I rag on him a little bit, he’s going to listen to this and be like you never mentioned me. So here’s his, here’s his. Gonna get what Eric for? There he is. I see him, and he’s over there sometimes, pocket full of sunshine. Natasha Bedingfield, I’ll be lying right over to him. Hey, how’s it going? Days that he’s a little storm cloud. I go the other way, and I give him a minute, and I give myself a minute, because I’m not ready for that weather yet. I haven’t mentally prepared. I haven’t gone up to my room, dropped my stuff off, opened my computer, looked at what I had done for the day, and taken a sip of coffee. So I have to emotionally protect and that’s not just for him, it’s for anybody that I see with that weather. And so sometimes what happens is we’ll engage, we’ll go out into the weather first thing before we’ve mentally or physically prepared for it, yeah. Then it just and then there’s something within our own values, of whatever we’ve just done to ourselves, of not protecting our emotional safety there. And then there’s just this, this ick, because you weren’t prepared for that,

Chrissy Beltran  31:38

like, immediate like, yeah,

Jessica Zimmerman  31:41

and then there’s no patience, that excitement to then go, want to coach a teacher that’s like, it, it goes away a little bit, and you’re like, Man, I and then then there’s things that build and it’s all avoidable, with the ability to have that cultural competency of reading the room. And I’m going to say this is probably the most important soft skill as a leader, whether you’re a coach or an admin, to have is to be able to read a room, take a temperature. Um, but I also call it out, and that’s something my teachers were really unsure of. My ones that are are new to me. I’m like, Hey, you seem a little irritated, a little different than you normally are. Is everything okay? And they look at me, like, how did you know that? Or, yeah, I am feeling irritated, and because I’ve already scanned and I’ve asked for that, I’m like, okay, weather, bring it, because I’ve mentally prepared. I have my weather jacket on my boots, and I’m ready to receive the weather because I’ve elicited that conversation. And then they and then they give it to me. I had a really hard weekend, and this is really frustrating, and this, and then it’s just raining on me, and I have my raincoat on. I’m just enjoying the rain. And then they’re done, and they go, I feel better. I go, that’s great. And they walk away, and I do a metaphorical like, boom, it makes everything kind of flies off of me. And then I’m good, and I’m ready to go on, because I’ve mentally and emotionally prepared. And so my biggest thing is, like I and when the weather gets on me and I’m not prepared, I do a little Mental Cleanse. So when I walk away, I go, Okay, I wasn’t ready for storm cloud. Ouch. I I’m feeling and then I go through my my feelings, inventory go through that I this is what I’m feeling. This is what I might have done that went against a value of mine. Maybe I reacted in that situation. And then what do I do to self correct? Because that’s where I want to do that, or I’m not ready to self correct any. Go lick my wounds a little bit, because that was a rough interaction, right? And so there’s a lot of that adjustment that you have to do for as a coach, so that when you go into your next coaching conversation that happens in 30 minutes, that you’re available and fresh and weather free, and you’re not bringing the little storm cloud over them and plop it in on to them. So it’s our just, it’s the big piece of it’s your responsibility to carry your own weather, and also training teachers about carrying their weather and then calling out the weather when you see it, because sometimes they don’t realize they’re being little storm clouds and and how they’re taking that into their classroom. And so it’s, it’s just it’s changed my life to think about it that way. It’s really empowering. I love

Chrissy Beltran  34:24

that. It reminds me of what you talked about, like with your raincoat and your hat. Whenever my daughter was really little, she would, I mean, kids have meltdown, yeah, and so she’d have a meltdown, but she was like, the I’m just going to sit here and scream at the top of my lung meltdown. That was what she did. And some, for some reason the screaming just like was like scraping my brain apart, like it was just, you know, and I remember reading something about how you picture your child’s scream as like, little balls from a ball pit, and they’re just like bouncing off of you. And picturing it that way helps so much, you know, because it was like, Okay, no, it’s just going to bounce off. Off. It’s, it’s, it’s not, nothing’s happening because she’s screaming, everything is okay, you know? And so like having that kind of a visualization can help,

Jessica Zimmerman  35:08

yeah, yeah. I think of like a mallard duck, right? I mean, yeah, water drop is just dripping off. Yeah, that visualization is so important, absolutely.

Chrissy Beltran  35:18

The other thing you talk about is a coaching mantra, and I teach people how to do this as well in my jump start course at buzzing with speed com slash jump start, it’s a free little email course you can grab. But I would like to know how you encourage people to write a coaching mantra and what that can be like.

Jessica Zimmerman  35:33

Yeah. I mean, honestly, where was this when I started? Exactly, yeah, some years ago. No, I love I love that you do that because that is the most important work you have to do it. Um, so honestly, Elena Aguilar, i She should get some paid things for how much she shouted out, but that she did the art of coaching the book, but then she did the workbook. And that thing that’s that’s chunky if you’ve never seen that guy and and you gotta do the work. And in that workbook, she steps you through very similar it’s just you gotta, you gotta put some time, time aside for that. And then I think with my coaching mantra or creating your manifesto, it’s, it’s, what are your commitments to yourself and what are your commitments to your teachers, and being very clear about those and and what people don’t realize, it’s your boundaries. What are my emotional and mental boundaries? And some of those boundaries for me were like, these kids can I will never be okay with you starting these kids can’t with any sentence. You’re going to see my eye twitch, and I tell them at the very beginning, don’t start a conversation. These kids can’t but then I also give them my mantras of what I want them to hold me to. I believe you can, and I believe I believe you deserve a coach that believes in you. And so those things I always say, if I ever and here are my values. I I value advocacy, and I value growth. And if you don’t feel like my actions are anchoring to those things, I want you to check me. I want you to come to me. And so I think a big thing is, when you’re when you’re going through that work, when you’re identifying implicit bias, is something that is also really important work to do. I have a guide that kind of gets gets you through some of those questions of, what do I believe about education? What do I believe about making mistakes? And some of those things you don’t realize are some ineffective lenses that you’ve been wearing throughout your life that deeply negatively impact the work that you do with your teachers, or the work that your teachers do with you. And so going through some of that implicit bias that you need to bring to the surface to check really helps you in like, how do I move forward and communicating with my teachers, if I’ve always ever passively communicated with people, how do I not take that experience, that blueprint, and lay it over my coaching job? If you don’t do that work, that’s bound to happen. Yeah. And so when you go through that, you you uncover your inaccurate or incomplete or ineffective paradigms. That’s the first thing that you do and and it changes how you see the work that you do teachers, because you realize there’s some stuff you have to own internally. And then you think, Okay, do I believe adults should already know how to do this and know this? That’s one big one. If you remove that, that they’re an adult, they should know how to blank, blank, remove that from your vocabulary, and truly believe that just and give them the same grace as you would a child. And I know it might seem condescending, it’s not. It’s the it’s not treating them like a child. It’s giving them the same grace you would with someone that has zero experience. Because I don’t know why we can give that grace to children, but we don’t give that grace to adults, and so some

Chrissy Beltran  39:06

adults don’t even give it to children. That’s so like, like in fifth grade, for example, they’re in the fifth grade, they should know how to walk down a wall. Well, they are not doing it, so just teach them how to do it. So so it makes sense to me, like, if I want a child to learn how to do something, or if I expect a child to do something, no matter what procedure it is, I’m going to have to teach them how to do it. Doesn’t matter what they should know, because they don’t, so I’m going to teach them how to do it. But it’s, it’s absolutely harder for me to translate that to adults, and it’s something I’ve had to work on, because sometimes I’m like, we all went to the same training like, this is whenever I first started coaching. We all just, we’re in the same district, right? We all went to the same trainings. We sat in the same room and got the same information. How did it not translate into anything in your classroom? But that wasn’t helpful at all, right? It was so unhelpful that, but it was, but it was culture shock for sure, right? Like it was a big shock seeing other classrooms outside of my bubble, yeah. And so I had to do. A lot of adjusting in order to be able to coach people where they were, and finally. And, I mean, I finally, I’ve gotten so much better at it. Obviously, it’s been years, but, but I remember my my principal saying, No, you know, you’re meeting people where they are. And I was like, okay, good. Because sometimes, I mean, I’ve had to work really hard at that. That is not natural to me at all.

Jessica Zimmerman  40:19

And and that that’s where it comes from, the implicit bias, and you helping teachers uncover that, because they might not even know that. That’s why they’re behaving with Yang. And when you know the value, you can connect the value to the bias. So I know you said you value advocacy, however your action or the bias that you have that people should just know and just follow, doesn’t seem like blindly follow compliance and advocacy seem like they’re opposite ends of the spectrum. So do Do we like? What do you think about that? Have you thought about that before? And I’ve had teachers say, Oh, I didn’t really, I didn’t think about that. I didn’t like a blind spot, yeah, it is, yeah, yeah. I think that’s a great visualization thing too. You’re walking around with little, little mirrors, yeah? And you’re just helping everybody try to figure out the blind spots, yeah? But if you haven’t done that work and looked at your own blind spots and how you add to that. It makes it hard.

Chrissy Beltran  41:26

It’s a little hypocritical,

Jessica Zimmerman  41:29

just a little bit yeah, and so I’ve guided myself with some questions, and those things help me anchor in my daily and in my interactions with teachers. And I don’t know about you, but I do like a daily personal reflection, a verbal one. When I was early in my coaching days, I did a written one. Now I just like in the way home, in the car, reflect, reflecting on my values, my implicit bias, my experience, my blueprints, my effective paradigms, ineffective paradigms, and how they’ve kind of impacted my day, but all of those things can absolutely be continued and intentional practice that if coaches do that work, their their their personality is going to change. And a lot of this work was very changing in my personality. My personality wasn’t like this when I was my first year coach. My personality, I think, for a lot of first year coaches is we have to seem professional and maybe more rigid and and in that professionalism, a little bit of it is keeping your cars close to your chest and and listening. And I think listening is important, but also sharing your story and who you are and what you believe, all of those things I’ve had teachers tell me, I know you said at the beginning of the year that you’re a coach’s teacher, you’re a teacher’s coach, and you are supportive, but I didn’t really believe it until I saw it like a few months in, and I was like, well, thank you for that feedback. I didn’t and and I didn’t expect you to believe me when I told you, I knew my actions would would share that, and if it didn’t being that space where that in person conversation can happen, hey, you upset me with something. You said I had a teacher say that yesterday. I said, Oh my gosh, I didn’t know I upset you. She came right up to me. We talked about it, and it was smashed. She goes, Oh, it was a miscommunication. I’m so sorry. I should have said something. But a few years ago, she had told me I would just, would have been mad at you, and I would have stopped talking to you. And then I’m just like, look how far we’ve come. Just like, laughed about it, and we hugged, and she left, and I was like, Look at, look at how in it, and we’ve had past you have like you talked about, there’s, there’s things that happen in a coaching relationship and with the teachers, but with coaches too, that you’ve gone through stuff. Things have been said, you know, people have been hurt. How do you move through that so you can continue to do the work for kids? Because ultimately, at the end of the day, that’s who we have to continue to show up for. And you can’t just write your teachers off like, oh, well, that that was hard. Not going to do that anymore. How are you going to continue to come back and and show up for your teachers? Because if they have one person there, and it’s you to go to, they deserve. They deserve that teaching. Teaching is hard enough to do it alone and to know you always have someone in your corner makes the job a lot easier.

Chrissy Beltran  44:22

I think that’s a beautiful summary of why, why this is important, why it’s so important to decide on our values and make sure that our actions reflect our values. Because all of this is our personality. It is the way that we interact with teachers, and we can be more supportive of teachers if we do this thoughtfully. So thank you so much for sharing everything today. How can coaches keep learning from you.

Jessica Zimmerman  44:41

So yeah, I have my Instagram coach with Jess Z, and I have links to mini lessons I’ve done. I just do some random little tidbit videos. I link things there, learning about values, reflective activities, coaching surveys to get to know. Your teachers to adjust your your coaching journey with them and so yeah, they can find me. Find me on Instagram, for sure, awesome. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you so much for having me. Chrissy,

Chrissy Beltran  45:16

so many things to think about with that episode. I hope that it gave you some insight into kind of how you can approach your work around this, and you can do some really good thinking before school starts, and then kind of analyze your interactions with teachers over time. I think that’s so valuable. Next week, I am continuing our series about instructional coaching. Startup, your coaching identity with your back to school. Instructional coaching checklist. It’s kind of, it’s not a favorite things thing, but it’s kind of some of my favorite things, really, that can really help you do a great job as a coach and be set up for anything we’re going to talk about. Some books you can invest in that would be really helpful, some digital and like physical things to invest in, like you could actually use to do all the documenting and recording and tracking and all that stuff. And then some things you’re going to want to decide before we get started with our school year. So we’re going to talk about values, goals, strategies and your elevator pitch until then. Oh, also some tasks. We’re going to talk about tasks you want to invest time in at the beginning of the school year. So this is your big back to school checklist. I’m going to give you a little handy dandy document you can download everything so you’re prepared for your gear and until next week, happy coaching.

Chrissy Beltran  46:37

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