High-Impact Instructional Coaching Strategies, ep. 211

High-Impact Instructional Coaching Strategies, ep. 211, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran  00:01

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Chrissy Beltran  01:00

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Chrissy Beltran  01:49

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

Chrissy Beltran  02:15

Hey coach and welcome to episode 211 of instructional coaching with MS B Today we are talking about high impact strategies for coaching work. So we are continuing our series about the coaching strategy toolbox. And the coaching strategy toolbox, like I introduced two episodes ago, is the little toolbox of strategies that you have that includes all of the ways that you can support teachers at different levels. We’ve talked about low impact strategies that are, you know, spoiler alert, not bad. And we talked about moderate impact strategies that you really have to be thoughtful about how you use them in order to leverage them into impact in the classroom. Today, we’re going to look at high impact strategies, which is what everybody wants, but sometimes we don’t invest the right work into getting there, and that’s why we had to think about those low impact and moderate impact strategies that I already mentioned. So if you are curious about those, go back to visit episodes 209, and 211, I’m sorry, in 210 if you are working towards coaching cycle work that we’re going to talk about today, and you’re unsure about modeling, I have a really great modeling checklist that will help you prepare for modeling. I was nervous going into classrooms. I just felt like, how am I going to interact with these kids as if I’m working with them all the time when I am not, and systems were not always set up to be supportive of a guest coach. So that modeling form might be helpful for you if you’re feeling the same way, and you can grab that at buzzing with Miss b.com/episode 211 just scroll down to the bottom of the show notes, and you can grab the modeling form. Over the last few episodes, we’ve been adding tools to our toolboxes, and so we know that we need a variety of tools in our coaching strategy toolbox so that we can pull out the appropriate one for the moment. What distinguishes high impact strategies from low and moderate impact strategies?

Chrissy Beltran  04:09

Okay, here are the characteristics of high impact coaching work. It happens in the classroom with students. It gives the teacher immediate or as near immediate as possible feedback. It helps teachers make adjustments to their instruction and their management. It is relevant to teachers needs and to student needs. And the work that you’re doing with teachers is focused and purposeful. Okay, so let’s talk about these. Why is it so important that the work happens in the classroom with students? Well, we talked a little bit about transference last week, and about how a lot of adults, not just teachers, do not transfer learning from one setting to another, if we are not doing work with teachers in their classrooms, with real life kids. Kids, we hear things like it won’t work with my kids. What do I would I even do? How does that look? I can’t picture it that people struggle to picture things in different settings, and they struggle to believe that things will be impactful whenever they have struggled already with those kids. So because of that, we need to ensure that they are getting opportunities to see things happen in the classroom with students, we need to provide immediate and near feedback. Near immediate feedback, right? We want teachers to hear immediately what they can adjust, you know, what they can do differently. That doesn’t mean interrupting a lesson, but it does meet. Mean meeting with a teacher as soon as possible after you’ve observed them teach, or after that co teaching lesson, so that you can have a conversation and be reflective together. We want to help teachers make adjustments to their instruction and management. We want teachers to be thoughtful about these things during that reflective conversation and say, Okay, I’ve reflected, but now what’s the action I’m going to take if we’re not talking about actions and what will be different in the classroom? We’re probably not going to see a lot of change. It needs to be relevant to teacher and student needs. What do your teachers want to learn about? What do the kids need their teachers to learn about? Those are the things that we have to be focused on in order to make change happen the classroom and they need to be focused and purposeful. We’re not going to go into a classroom and just generally observe and provide a few general words of feedback. We’re going to be targeting something we’re going to work towards something together, and we’re going to carefully choose a strategy to support what it is that the teacher is trying to get better at all of these characteristics, those five characteristics, they can feel like a lot, but there are coaching strategies that are highly impactful for those reasons, and this is what makes them so impactful. These are the five strategies that I love to teach coaches to use, because they make change happen in classrooms, visit a colleague, classroom, visit or observation, depending on what you’re allowed to call it at your school, we were not allowed to call them observations, because that sounded like it was evaluative, like a formal evaluation, model, lessons, coach, out lessons and video coaching. All of those five options can be used inside of a coaching cycle. So basically, a coaching cycle includes a pre conference, classroom, work and a post conference. Those are the three things that three steps that you’re going to follow if you’re doing a coaching cycle, and then that’s just like the most basic mini coaching cycle, boom, boom, boom, right? And you can stack them up against each other to create ongoing cycles. Classroom work can look like a lot of different things, but those five strategies are the most impactful ways to change what’s happening in the classroom. And you can learn about each of them in episode 167, five options for classroom work during a coaching cycle. I gave a really more of a deep dive on what classroom work inside of a coaching cycle can look like in that episode. So if you’re unsure about any of them, dig back into that episode. And I’m also considering a visit a colleague episode all in itself, because I’ve never really dug into that one with you guys, and it is one of my favorite things to do. So let me know if you’re interested in that. I’m going to give a brief introduction to these five options, and then we’re going to talk about how to make them especially powerful for your teachers. So

Chrissy Beltran  08:14

let’s look at visit a colleague. I’m just going to give a brief introduction. Visit a colleague is whenever you have a teacher, and you think that teacher could benefit, or that teacher thinks they could benefit from seeing another teacher teach something in action. So you talk to the host teacher, who would be like the mentor, kind of in this situation, and you schedule a time that would be great for the guest teacher to come observe, watch them teach something, and then to talk to them afterwards. Visiting a colleague is so powerful. Whenever I have done this, I have seen change happen in classrooms pretty much every time, because they walk away with something that their colleague is doing with real kids, a real teacher who is not planning just one model lesson, who is planning their whole day like everybody else is doing something, and then their colleague can see it happen, and it’s realistic. It’s so impactful. A classroom visit is whenever you go and observe the teacher, the teacher will do the lesson. Teach a lesson, you will observe it and record observations. You really, really aren’t going to be focused. We talked about being purposeful and focused. You want them to be focused on a specific thing that you’re trying to work on the teacher with. So that way it’s not just kind of like general notes. General notes have their place to kind of do a needs assessment. That’s fine, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. Model lessons are whenever you go into the classroom and you model a lesson for the teacher, and that’s what I shared that that checklist for you, that is that modeling lesson checklist, because that’s going to help you know exactly what to do to prepare before you go into the classroom. Coach out lessons are whenever you and the teacher teach together. So you really have to thoroughly plan together, identify who does what during the lesson at what point. So you’re co teaching, not just one teaching and one observing, and then switch, and then from there, after you’re done, COVID. Teaching. You can during the lesson, and after the lesson, you can have conversations about what you notice students able to do what you needed to adjust. And then the last one is video coaching. I love video coaching. I have a fantastic episode that we’re going to link in the show notes where I talked to Corey Campos Sydney about video coaching. It’s so good guys. She really digs into how to do it well. And you’re going to love this episode. It was life changing for me, having that conversation. I learned so much. I love to talk to these people on this podcast, because I learned from experts who are really zoned in on one thing and Corey that is her thing, video coaching. So whenever they’re really expert at something, oh, the best. So then let’s dig into these, these different approaches and figure out how we’re going to make each one work, so that this kind of approach is so impactful. What makes it high impact? We talked about the five characteristics. It happens in the classroom with students. It gives a teacher immediate or near immediate feedback. It helps teachers make adjustments to their instruction and management. It’s relevant to the teacher and it’s focused and purposeful. Those are the five things that we need to be considering as we are approaching our coaching work, because just doing a coaching cycle or plugging in one of those things, let’s okay, you’re going to go visit a colleague, fantastic. That alone is not going to change the teaching in the classroom. We have to have a plan about how we’re going to address those five things with that coaching strategy. So we have our toolbox, and we know the tool can be used well, but we have to know how to use it well and what we need to consider as we use it. One of the things that I am going to stress that must happen in order for any of these strategies to be high impact is you have to identify the roles of each person and what they’re going to do during the lesson, even if you think it is so obvious. So for example, you’re going to go model a lesson in a classroom, and so obviously the teacher is going to observe you, right? Nope, that’s not always the case, right? So what we need to do before the lesson. In our pre conference, we need to talk about, how are we going to be during this lesson, what is your job? What is my job? Even in a model lesson, what is your job? Teacher, your job is to watch the lesson, observe, looking for this and this. You’re going to watch for this thing and you were going to record using this organizer, because I have heard stories of teachers who come to observe a modeled lesson and they’re like, I’m gonna run to the bathroom, and the person teaching the lesson is like, I’m not here to cover your class. I’m on a sub. I am modeling for you. You’re supposed to observe. I can’t model for no one. So that is an issue. Sometimes teachers think you’re there to teach the kids that tricky thing that they had trouble with. So you got it. I’ll go do something else. No, that’s not the purpose. So you’re going to want to create a two column chart and identify what are the rules for each person. This is especially important in co teaching and also in visiting a colleague, because you want to stress how. You know we’re not going to interrupt the lesson, but you can get up and ask questions of the kids if the team questions of the kids if the teacher is comfortable with that. You know, you’re going to write your notes in a positive way so that we can have a good dialog with the teacher. But if you have any questions, you may honestly ask them of me, because I will not share them with a teacher. You know, you can really stress the confidentiality there so that they can get something good out of it. But also, if they have questions that they’re unsure about, they can talk to you. So you want to really define those roles. One time, I was working in a second grade classroom, I had been asked to model a small group lesson while the teacher had the other kids doing reading centers, which is what she would have been doing during that time. Model she would have been teaching a small group lesson during the time the kids were doing reading centers, so I thought, well, she wants help with the lesson, right? She’s asking about the lesson, so she wants me to teach the lesson. And so it’s normally during her reading centers time that that’s what she would be doing. So she must have something in management in place already, right? So she’s, I’m sitting in her little kidney table, and I’m teaching lessons of these second graders, and the classroom is starting to get it’s a buzz. Well, we’ll say it’s a buzz with energy and movement. And I start to see this one kid, and she gets up and she runs to the front of the room, and she writes another student’s name on the board, and then she runs back to her center. And I’m like, glancing at the teacher, like, is this like a thing you guys do? Apparently, yes, that was her responsibility. Was to, like, I don’t know, tattle in writing on other students who were not doing what they were supposed to be doing. So then a few minutes later, you know, the kids are like, they’re all talking. The volume’s growing. It’s getting more chaotic. And she gets up again. She’s like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna go put your hand on the bar. She runs, put the name on another name on the board. Runs back to her seat. This child, who is like, tattling on everyone, is doing literally nothing, right? She’s not accomplishing any of the center work. She’s not learning. Anything. She’s just monitoring. She’s monitoring other kids. And whenever they do something that ticks her off, she runs and writes their name on the board, and then she runs back to her seat. So I was, like, shocked by this management system, because I had not expected that. So then, as I’m sitting there watching, it’s just getting worse, other kids are like, hey, Jackie, don’t remain even apart. Go ahead racing. You’re not supposed to put it up there. And she’s like, I was you’re not doing your activity, and they’re just, like, being so mean to each other. They’re yelling at each other. She runs up a race of somebody’s name, right? Somebody’s out. I don’t know. She’s taking bribes under the table. I don’t know what’s going on here. It’s getting more and more crazy. I’m looking at the teacher, like, are you going to do anything? Right? She doesn’t seem to even notice. We get to the end of the lesson, kids go out to PE and I stay for our conversation. She comes back in, and I was like, so what were your thoughts? She says, Well, I thought you were gonna tell him something. I said, What do you mean? She goes, like, the rest of the class, they were, they were like, getting way out of hand. I thought you’re gonna tell them something. And I was like, Oh, you thought I was gonna I don’t know what you have going on here. I don’t know what that kid’s job was, right? I didn’t say that, obviously, but in that moment, I was like, Ooh, okay, this is we did not have a common understanding of what was going to happen here today. And because of that, the management was wild. And I think she just thought that. I thought that was fine, and I did not think it was fine. I also didn’t think the management system was fine. It was not effective, and it was sort of like wild. So please, for heaven’s sakes, make sure that you have clarity on the essentials before you start your classroom work. Have a purpose for your modeled lesson and know how everything will be handled. Who’s going to handle behavior? It can seem, I maybe to you that didn’t seem obvious, right? That’s the problem. It’s not. We each perceive things as being obvious to other people, but they’re not, because we all see things differently. To me, it was obvious that she was going to handle the whole class because I was just working with a small group. But then I realized, oh, maybe she wanted to see how you manage the whole class while you’re working with a small group. Well, that’s a whole other thing, right? That’s not what she told me she wanted to see. She told me she wanted to see reading strategies for struggling readers. So we were not clear on that. Make sure you are clear on how things will happen no matter what kind of lesson it is. And I have an episode that you might really like if you have struggled with this yourself. I have worked with lots of classrooms that had lots of behavior needs, and so I had to create a little simple behavior management plan that I would take into the classroom. I would say, hey, Teacher, do you have a management plan that you want me to use while I’m modeling? And most of the time they’re like, oh, not really. Then I would say, Okay, I have one. If I can use it, that would be great. If not. If you want to handle behavior, that’s fine. But if you want me to do all of the things, I don’t mind doing that. But I’m going to introduce this at the beginning of my lesson. So that’s the episode. Is called a simple behavior management plan for coaches. And I have gotten a lot of good feedback about that one, because, you know, it turns out everybody has the same problems, which is that kids are, you know, they’re working with a new person. They might be a little less than well behaved.

Chrissy Beltran  18:09

You would think they’d be more, not really, if they don’t know what the system is, you know, it just kind of they could be. They could lose it. That’s episode 130 you could check that out if you’ve had some issues with that as you are setting up your pre conference, you make sure that you have a target of what you’re going to work on, identify the goal that you’re going to work towards together, the coaching strategy that you’re using. So are you going to model, CO, teach, observe, and then figure out who does what during each lesson. That looks a little different depending on your strategy. But that’s the basic premise, who is doing? What? What is the teacher doing? What is the coach doing? What is the guest teacher? All of those things, right? So definitely be thoughtful about your pre conference before you go into one of these coaching strategies. In order to make them so impactful, don’t forget to grab that modeling form if you go to buzzing with must be.com/episode 211 you can get at the bottom of the show notes. And then I have some coaching cycle forms that include the tools that you need to do these things right to do this kind of work. It has forms for modeling, for observing, for co teaching. I think you’re really going to love them. You can get those at buzzing with Miss b.com if you search for search coaching cycle forms. Or you can get them at my Tbk store as well. So check that out. Next week, we’re going to talk about differentiating our coaching, support for teachers, using our toolbox, and I’m going to share a little bit of the session I gave during the simply coaching summit this summer. I’m so excited to share with you I got some great feedback about this, this session, and I really think you’re going to like it. Until then, happy coaching.

Chrissy Beltran  19:42

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