Always Be Coaching: How to Leverage Every Interaction, ep. 253

Always Be Coaching: How to Leverage Every Interaction, ep. 253, 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. Hey coach and welcome to episode 253 of instructional coaching with Miss B. The title of today’s episode is always be coaching, leveraging every interaction. I am so excited to share this episode with you because it is the first one in our series about the coaching strategy toolbox. The coaching strategy toolbox is actually a book that I am in the process of having published with ASCD. Super excited to share that with you. And so the idea is that in your toolbox you have tons of different tools that you might not even realize are in there that you can use as a coach to leverage every interaction, move it forward into higher impact coaching work with teachers. We’re going to really dig into this idea today. Before we get started with that, I want to share with you. I have a free mini course on coaching cycles. This is one of your teacher tools that you can use with with teachers to create some really high impact change in classrooms. And so if you go to buzzing with Miss b.com/cycles you can grab a free coaching cycle Crash Course. It goes straight to your inbox. It’s like five days, and it teaches you exactly what to do each step of the way through a coaching cycle, you’re going to love it. It’s very practical, and it’s like very focused on what you can do right now, that’s most of my work is right. So let’s talk a little bit about some of the challenges that coaches have and what we can do about it. One of the biggest challenges that coaches have is getting into classrooms to do coaching work, right? So many doors are just closed. So many faces of teachers give us the impression that their door is closed, even if it’s open. So many times we interact with people and are like, I just, I don’t know how to build the bridge to this person, right? And you try everything. Maybe you pop in, maybe you you know you’re cheerful, you offer to help out with things, and we still can’t get in there to do a coaching cycle, which we know, as someone once described, it, is the bread and butter of coaching, right? This is right? This is our big picture idea that we are doing coaching cycles of work with teachers to support them in changing things for the better in their classroom.

Chrissy Beltran  02:34

What I would encourage you to do is, instead of thinking about, how am I going to start a coaching cycle with this teacher. We’re going to change our mindset a little bit and reframe coaching with this always be coaching mentality. It’s a mindset shift. Instead of thinking about coaching cycles, coaching cycles, coaching cycles, because they are one powerful tool, and so I get why we think about them all the time. They are not the only powerful tool, and every interaction with a teacher instead can be a coaching opportunity. So think about every time that you interact with a teacher, those are opportunities that you have for coaching and for leveraging those moments into future coaching work. Impact doesn’t happen just because you spent a week in a classroom. It doesn’t happen only because you’ve done a coaching cycle with a teacher. Change can happen over time if we are thoughtful about our interactions and we are using them to move us forward into more impactful coaching work. So let’s talk a little bit about what that can look like. You’re kind of looking for stealth opportunities. And these stealth opportunities are like you flying below the radar. People don’t even know that you’re showing up. You’re showing up to always be coaching, right? But you are always be coaching. Is it reminds me of, the reason I thought of it was because whenever I was in college, I sold Cutco knives. Who else sold Cutco, right? I mean, so many of us did. You found the flyer on your your desk at in one of your classes. You went to the meeting and found out you were going to be selling knives for a small commission. I still have my cut cone, by the way. So you are when you’re when you’re trying to close a sale. The idea is that you’re always closing. Always be closing. ABC is what they teach you. You want to think from the first interaction that you have, how you are moving this interaction towards a sale. I’m not the best at that, because to me, it’s a little corny, and I don’t like to like manipulate people. I don’t know some people love it, not my game, but I do like the idea that we are entering into a conversation with somebody with an intention, and in this case, our intention is to be coaching. It’s going to help us frame our responses. It’s going to help us think about what is valuable that we can use in this moment to support the teacher. It helps make us better listeners, because even a small interaction in the hallway can be a coaching opportunity. Every interaction is an opportunity to move the coaching relationship towards higher impact work. So you can look for opportunities in any interaction you have with teachers. It could be a professional development session, it could be just a conversation in the hallway. It could be even a teacher complaint. Because we’re not just thinking about coaching as coaching cycles. Coaching is every interaction we have, how we can use that to support the teacher and to build our relationship towards higher impact work. So let’s low let’s talk a little bit about what this could look like. Let’s say that you have a teacher and they are complaining about their students. They’re frustrated. The kids are not punctuating correctly. They don’t use capital letters, they don’t have complete sentences. Everything is a run on and B, and they put a period right, and there’s like 65 ands throughout their writing. So the coach, because you are always coaching, you’re going to listen to the teacher, and you’re going to relate to the teacher. You’re going to understand the struggle that they’re having. You’re going to ask questions to find out more about it. We’re not just going to say, I know they can be like that. Have you tried using the textbook? Have you tried using this lesson? We’re not going to do the how going to do the have you tried at this time, because that’s going to be for later conversation. In this case, we’re going to listen, ask questions, to understand, and say, I would love to come by and see what you’re working on with them. That takes you into the classroom and forwards that interaction into coaching work in the classroom, instead of making it a hallway conversation or maybe a conversation during a P LLC meeting, that doesn’t build the teacher into anything. Whenever we give a quick answer, we don’t get the outcome we’d like. Teachers are not going back to their classroom and completely revamping their instruction based on one thing you happened to say in the hallway, right? We need to keep moving forward into higher impact work. So we can say, I’d love to come and see what you’re working on with them. And then you can go visit and while you’re there, instead of giving a band aid answer on what they could be doing differently, you’re going to interact with a teacher. You can discuss some possibilities and present some coaching options. You can have a coaching menu and say, Hey, maybe we can take a look at these choices here and see which one would work for you. Would you like to watch a colleague who’s teaching grammar? Would you like me to come in and model a lesson? Or would you just like me to observe your lesson and give you a little feedback and see what we could do next? Keep it simple and less stressful, especially for those resistant teachers who might need more low stake, low impact strategies first, because we don’t want to immediately turn them off to our coaching. Some people are going to be ready to go. Some people are going to say, yes, please come in and watch my lesson. I don’t know what’s going wrong. Some people are going to say, oh my gosh, I would love to go see Mister so and so, because I know he’s really good at grammar. And some people are going to be immediately turned off when you say, hey. You want me to come and teach a lesson alongside you, and they’re gonna freak out. So in certain cases, you’re gonna go back to your low impact strategies. And I actually share about those strategies, starting back in episode 209, how to leverage low level coaching strategies into your coaching, into higher impact coaching work. You can check those out, because that’s a really good place to start. And then the next, next episode, I talk about medium impact, and the next one is about high impact. So these strategies can help you move your teachers into higher impact work. So if you need to go with a lower impact strategy, maybe you just serve as a sounding board, maybe you give them a resource recommendation, and then you can come back and follow up on the resource recommendation, because you’re always coaching and you’re always going to follow up, you have to take the action to follow up. You’re going to show back up, check them out, see how things are going, and then move the needle a little further towards high impact coaching strategies. You also want to keep in mind that the reason people are going to respond to you is if something you’re saying, for one, sounds like you care about what they are talking about, so that you demonstrate empathy, right? But for another, give them a win. You have to demonstrate your credibility, and giving a small win is a great way to do that. So a quick resource recommendation. If a teacher’s like, Oh, I’m struggling with this, and you know, there’s a really cool activity, you can give them that small win by sharing that activity, but then you’re going to keep coaching and moving into further conversation. You’re not just going to give the activity and then drop it and never show up again. You’re going to come by and see how that activity went. You’re going to look at a student work sample. You’re going to say, Hey, I’d love to see what your kids wrote. You’re going to keep following up. You might offer some technology support if they need a small win. Sometimes you are just there to provide the support that the teacher is missing, but you’re but you’re there, and you can provide that support. You don’t want to get stuck in technology support, but it is a good way to start building that relationship and moving you more into better conversations. You can serve as a thought partner, as a sounding board. You can turn an interaction or a complaint into coaching cycle work like we just talked about. You can say, hey, like I hear that you’re having this problem. Let’s what can we do about it? Let’s figure out what we can do about it together. If we have the proper mindset, this always be coaching mindset. We can move teachers into future coaching work. We just can’t get stuck with the trite answer and say, Oh, I know, right, and then not do anything about it. We. Also can’t pretend that we have actually solved a problem with a quick resource recommendation. That is the first step in a conversation. The conversation may continue over days and weeks. It’s not the last part of the conversation. It’s not the final word, right? We’re not expecting that they’re going to go back and change everything. So we want to keep this mindset always be coaching in our minds, because we want to move teachers forward to where we are doing that high impact coaching work of co teaching and visiting colleagues and modeling and all of those things. So as you’re thinking about, Okay, well, what kinds of conversations do I have with teachers? How could I actually use this idea in my coaching? You want to consider what’s in your coaching toolbox, and one of the things that I teach people how to do is to create their coaching menus, right? Well, the reason we create coaching menus is it really nails down, not just for you, but for your teachers, what you’re able to do as a coach, what supports you’re able to provide, where you’re focusing your energy. And so if you think about all the different kinds of strategies that you’re able to provide to teachers. There’s a lot that you can do right? You want to make sure that you have different strategies for different teachers, because not everybody is going to need the same support, and not everybody is going to want the same support. They’re not always ready for that really high impact support, and that means that we have to be willing to provide a lower level and less stressful coaching strategy to the teachers who need it. I actually talk about this in Episode 68 providing different levels of support to create access points for all teachers. The idea is that not every teacher is ready to jump in, and not every teacher needs to jump into a coaching cycle.

Chrissy Beltran  11:49

Instead, we want to meet teachers where they are, not where you wish they were, which is a real challenge for some of us. Okay, it’s a challenge for me too. The idea is is, is, instead of trying to push for this higher impact strategy, because we know that’s the way we make change, we offer a variety of supports, especially to start with, and then we move up in the food chain towards this high impact strategy. So kind of take a look at your day to day, and this is something really valuable that you can do to sort of evaluate your coaching work and your toolbox. What coaching tools are in your toolbox that you rely on the most? Where does most of your coaching time go? Or whenever you have interactions with teachers? What do they usually look like if you find yourself spending a lot of time in LLC meetings? Okay? That’s like a moderate, medium impact strategy, right? If you find yourself spending a lot of time doing resource recommendations or quick conversations in the hallway or checking in, popping in, those are very low impact strategies. If you find that you spend a whole lot of time on coaching cycles, but maybe with like three people, that’s very high impact in certain classrooms, right? So what we have to think about is, okay, how can we add in other kinds of strategies so that I can reach teachers that I’m currently not reaching? What would be beneficial for them? And I don’t want to just read a list to you of all the strategies that you could choose from, but I will share a few that you might not be adding to your toolbox. And then over the next few episodes, we’re actually going to dig into some of the higher impact strategies that I have been asked about over and over again. I also have some of these episodes very early in the podcast, like episodes 345, I think are about high impact strategies that are you can use in the coaching cycle. So you can check those out too if you want to. But we’re going to add a couple new ones this month. So your lower impact strategies are going to be your recommending resources, tech support, sounding board, right? Your medium impact strategies are more about things that you might do with teams to build knowledge and alignment across your school. And these are all opportunities to grow teachers and to leverage into future conversations with individual teachers. You’ve got a team here. You can move into one on one support by being really thoughtful about your responses and giving them a response that moves them into, hey, I can come by into your classroom. So those level two supports, those those medium level would be about, you know, creating assessments, looking at student, work together, super powerful data review, doing a book, study, planning, support, like if you’re planning collaborative lessons, those are your level two. Your high impact strategies are visiting a colleague, classroom, visitor, observation, model, lessons, co taught lessons in the moment, coaching, coaching cycles, like mini cycles and video coaching. So those are all the kinds of support that you can provide that are really high impact. So look at your toolbox. Think about the kinds of things that you currently provide to teachers that seem to be providing support to them and that help you kind of move that relationship forward. And then see if there’s way that you can diversify what’s available. Bowl in your toolbox so that you can reach some teachers that maybe have been unreachable to this point. Think about those teachers that are holdouts. How can you be a value to them? So that you can start moving the conversation forward into really high impact coaching work, and it takes time, and that’s okay. That’s just the reality. We have to be okay with that, or else we’re going to be really frustrated. So think about the ones you’re overlooking. What can you add to your toolbox that will help those teachers grow next week? I’m actually going to start digging into a specific strategy for each episode for the next few weeks in this series. And so we’re going to talk about visiting a colleague, or some people call them learning walks. This one is so overlooked and so essential, and I don’t think we use it enough for individual teachers. So I cannot wait to share my experience with visit a colleague with you. In the meantime, definitely check out that that coaching cycles Crash Course buzzing with Miss b.com/cycles and until next week. Happy coaching.

Chrissy Beltran  16:07

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!