Differentiating Coaching Strategies to Meet Teacher Needs, ep. 212

Differentiating Coaching Strategies to Meet Teacher Needs, ep. 212, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran  00:01

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Chrissy Beltran  01:03

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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 212 differentiating our coaching strategies for different teachers. This is a really great episode, and it’s special. It is the fourth episode in our series about your coaching strategy toolbox and all the different ways that you are able to support teachers. If you want to get some support for this, check out this the show notes for this episode at buzzing with miss b .com slash Episode 212 and you can grab the the free opt in that I have for you there, you can get it. It is the menu coaching menu, and I think you’re really going to like it, because it has all the different things that you can do to support teachers. And then you can build a menu of your own to use to support teachers. So this episode is that we are talking about differentiating support for teachers. And I’m going to share a piece of the session that I gave during the simply coaching summit this summer. I do the simply coaching summit every summer. I’ve also done the other ones whenever there are like the winner one. And so I’m really excited to share this with you, in case you couldn’t join us for that. It’s just going to be a piece. The beginning of the session included an introduction to the toolbox, but I’ve already kind of introduced you about the different levels of tools in episode 209, 210 and 211, so in this section that you’re going to hear, we’re going to dig into the ways that you can differentiate for teachers by using different tools from your toolbox, and then you can leverage them into more impactful coaching work. That is, that’s my new thing. ABC, always be coaching. It’s like, always be closing. Like I told you, I sold Cutco in college, and I want you to keep in mind they say always be closing. We say always be coaching. How can I turn this into a coaching interaction? Okay, so I even share in this session about an experience I had with a teacher, in which she said, I want you to leave okay, but I promise you that would be click bait. It all worked out. It was all good. Everything worked out great. And I was actually really proud of her. So listen to this clip, this actually lengthy section from my session this summer, and then I’ll be here to chat with you afterwards. So let’s talk about some different coaching situations, and when to do what? Okay, when you need to get your foot in the door and that door is shut very firmly. Okay? It happens and you have knocked nicely, and you have, like, left little notes, and you’ve done all the things, right? You’re gonna listen. We start with listening right complaints, like I mentioned, make an excellent open door for level one strategies. And once the door is open, you can leverage it into better and more, you know, refined and higher impact coaching work. So from there, you’re gonna listen and you’re gonna you’re gonna identify an opportunity. Yeah, and then you’re going to ask a question about it, at least one, maybe multiple. Because remember, these things happen on the go. The teacher has not usually come to you to complain. It happens. But in this case, we’re talking about passing in the hallway, in the lunchroom, in the copy room, teacher complaining, teacher complaining, teacher complaining. Not interested in you, right? You listen, you question, and you offer that level one strategy. So here’s what it can sound like. The teacher could say, my kids are just really stuck on context clues. They just pick any meaning of the word they already know, you know, and we’ve all seen that, right? Like if the word is plank, and then they choose the meaning of people laying on their stomachs because they’ve seen that online, and it doesn’t make any sense in the context. So instead of recommending something, we’re gonna we’re listening, and then we’re gonna question, oh, that sounds frustrating. What have you tried so far? Oh, I modeled it, but they don’t get it. Okay? So the teacher taught it sounds maybe once a couple of times, modeled it, and then they gave up. So instead of the coach saying, Have you tried? Because that’s what maybe is my instinct, have you tried? You might feel like you want to say, have you tried, but in this moment, have you tried? It’s just, it’s a brick wall. There’s no, there’s no reason to say, have you tried. Instead you could say, you know, I have some resources that might help. Why don’t I come by tomorrow during your planning and we can look at them. It’s a question, but it’s also like, I’m gonna do this. Okay? This is a relentlessly positive attitude that coaches have to have in order to make a difference in these classrooms. They might not take you up on it. They might say, Oh, I’m busy tomorrow. You could say, Okay, after school. Just, you know, use this your opportunity to get in there, so you don’t want to be dissuaded by someone who’s not excited to talk with you. Now, if they shoot you down three times in a row, leave the little thing in their in their mailbox. Put a little note. I know you’re so busy, but I thought you might want to take a look at this. You You have to be relentless and level one strategies are the way to do it before the teacher is welcoming you into their room. Okay? So that’s how it sounds to take a complaint and turn it into a simple level one strategy, right? This is a different situation that you probably have seen when you need to build alignment, content knowledge or a shared vision across your teams or the school. Maybe everybody’s using their own approach to teaching writing. Maybe nobody’s using common language. When we talk about the assessment, and it’s clear that people don’t know what they’re being assessed on in different grade levels. Maybe some grades are great at using manipulatives. Some not so much. And you’re like, we really need to make this happen. Maybe some grades are using amazing, you know, dialog strategies for kids to actually share their thinking, and some are not. We need to build some alignment. We need to support some content knowledge. This is how you can do it. You listen and you observe. You think about, what do you see in classrooms, and what do you hear from teachers when they talk about their practice? And you’re going to notice a disparity there, right then we question now the way we might question, because we talked about level two, strategies are often team strategies, right? That can be leveraged into individual work, team wait. The way you hear from teams or or people across your campus is surveys. So surveys work really well for this. So if you are trying to figure out what teachers think about their practice, or what they know, what their content knowledge is. About something, ask them what resources they use. Ask them what their favorite lessons are. Send out a survey. Get some information from them, and that might help you figure out exactly where they are and from there, offer your level two strategy such as planning support, looking at student work together, all of these. Build alignment, data review, building assessments or assignments or a book study to learn something. This is what it can sound like, because that might sound kind of strange. The teacher could say, No, I’ve said, I this is literal conversation, okay? I have this conversation. Teacher one says, I’m going to use mind maps for writing. This is literally the gesture, okay? And teacher two says, What’s a mind map? Which was a great question, because I was also wondering that, because it was not what the rest of the school was being asked to do. The teacher one says, Remember that training we went two years ago? I like it. And then teacher two says, Oh, I’m not sure what I’m going to do, because now she’s confused. Teacher three says, Well, what are you guys doing for prefixes and suffixes? And teacher two says, Well, I thought I’d pull out that workbook that we got with a textbook adoption. And teacher one says, I’m just going to teach it in context. So I’m hearing all these different things, right? And we’re like, oh, it’s not that it’s bad for different people to use different things, but clearly teacher two is asking for some support.

Chrissy Beltran  09:43

Teachers three and one are not really supporting the teacher that’s in their grade level. There’s a huge disparity in knowledge about what things look like and what they can look like and what resources are offered. So the coach can say, Well, why don’t we get together and look at our resources to figure out what could. Work well for this unit, we can see what we’ve got. It doesn’t have to be scary, it doesn’t have to sound really complicated. You just want to get together and see what resources you have so that you can pull together some really great lessons. And then you offer your level two support, and then again, that can be leveraged in into individual support. Sounds like teacher Two is prime, ready for some help. This could also sound like if you if your teachers are all over the place, this is some more evidence that maybe those, those level two impactful strategies, might be a good place to go if you’re visiting classrooms and you’re seeing little to no evidence that teachers work on the same campus. This happens. It happens whenever schools have had a lot of turnover, whenever they’ve had very little administrative kind of instructional direction, right? Some administrators really set the instructional direction, and some do not. If you review a survey and it’s got 50 different answers to one question about instruction, everybody’s doing their own thing, right? If you ask, Well, what do you use to teach this? And everybody says something different. Those kids are not really getting the same kind of experience in different classes. Different classrooms. It might be something for you to look at. It can also sound like teachers asking lots of clarification questions like, What does word study mean anyway? Is it like spelling? And that’s one that I’ve been asked myself. We were making plans for Word Study, and a couple teachers were like, we don’t even know what that is. And then the last one is, your data varies significantly from classroom to classroom. When we have classrooms that are doing amazingly well, in classrooms that are really struggling, that is an opportunity for our teachers to support each other. And you can come back to some of these level two strategies, planning support, you know, looking at data together and having people model what they did that was successful, looking at student work together, to have those conversations that really build the content knowledge and the teacher, and kind of calibrate what we’re looking at whenever we grade those that’s really great opportunity to dig into those strategies and to support teachers in meaningful Ways that affect their classroom. Now remember tier two strategies, or, excuse me, level two strategies can be team strategies, and then you can also bring them into the individual classroom. So if you’re working with data in a team, and a teacher says, You know what, I just I need some more help, you can go help them, or you can look at a different assessment with them. If you’re looking at student work in a team, and then the teacher says, Oh my gosh, I want to apply the same approach to this other assignment. Can you help me with that? You can do that so we can bridge from the team into the individual classroom, and then that starts building that coaching relationship really strongly with that individual teacher. This is another scenario that is very common when a teacher isn’t reflective of their own practices or isn’t able to envision something new. This happens in a few different situations, and I’ll share what those can look like afterwards. But basically, what you’re going to do, you’re going to listen and observe, just like we talked about before. You’re going to question and figure out what they have tried, oh, boy, what they have tired. That’s is that that’s what we call a Freudian slip. And you’re going to offer video coaching or to visit a colleague, those are great ways to get teachers to start thinking about their practice by looking at it through a different lens. So let’s look at what this can sound like. The teacher could say these kids just don’t want to do anything. How many times have you heard it? I’ve heard it 70,000 times. And the coach says, Okay, can you tell me more about that? Instead of passing judgment, which is easy to say, well, I don’t know that they don’t want it, right? It’s easy to fall into that trap, especially if you’ve heard a lot of negativity from the teacher. So instead, let’s just honor that she’s frustrated, and try to understand the intention here. Can you tell me more about that? The teacher says, It doesn’t matter what I do. They just have an attitude and they don’t care about anything. And the coach says, Well, what are some of the things you’ve tried that you feel haven’t worked with the kids? The teacher says, everything. I tried a behavior chart. I tried giving detention during recess, not letting them participate, moving their seats like with a new seating chart, nothing works. And the coach says, I hear you’re really frustrated with your students behavior, and you’ve tried several different things. Would you be comfortable recording your lesson, even just the audio? If they don’t want to record video, you can always just offer audio so we can listen and watch it and see what we can do. This is a big leap, right? But if the teacher is having this many problems, we need to do something big. And I’m hoping that at this point, you’ve been in the classroom, you’ve seen the teaching, you know what’s going on, you’ve worked with the teacher in different contexts, maybe level one and level two strategies, and you’re ready to say, Okay, I’m ready to to cash in my chits. I’ve been putting money in the bank every time that I’m interacting with this teacher, and I’m ready to take it and turn it into some real coaching work. This is a big one, and I’m going to jump on this opportunity and turn it into a level three strategy. It could also sound different. So this strategy or this scenario, the teacher is kind of negative, frustrated. COVID complaining about their students right? In this one, the teacher’s just like, I don’t know what else to do. The teacher says, I just can’t figure out how this curriculum is supposed to fit inside 30 minutes. True conversation I’ve had many, many times. The coach says, can you tell me a little bit about what’s taking up your time? The teacher says, yes, it takes forever for the kids to get out their manipulatives, to organize them on the tray, and then half the time they don’t even remember where they are, so they have to hunt around when they need them. It’s just too much stuff for first graders to manage. This was whenever we were moving to a new phonics curriculum. Years ago, my teachers were kind of frustrated because they were trying to figure out how to manage all of the resources that came with it and the stuff that kids needed during lessons, and it was a real routine that they had to build. So the coach can say, it does take some time to get used to managing so many pieces. I think your neighbor has tried out a few things and figured out some systems that might work. Would you like to visit them and watch a lesson? You’re taking this teacher and you’re helping them visit a colleague to see if something’s already in place that they would like, even if they don’t like what their colleague is doing, it might give them an idea. And you can have that conversation with the math afterwards to talk about, what did you see? Okay, what did you like? Okay, you didn’t like this. Well, what could we do that would achieve the same thing? Let’s think about it. You could have a really good conversation with them, because they’ve had the opportunity to go into somebody else’s room and see some new possibilities. Coaches can open doors to possibilities. This is the last scenario I’m going to share. It’s when a teacher needs help seeing something in action in their own classroom. So first we’re going to listen and observe and try to figure out what is the underlying issue that they’re sharing about. Then we’re going to question and then we’re going to offer to offer to model or co teach if they need to see something in action and they can’t envision it. And this is what it can sound like. The teacher could say, I use mentor text in reading, but I don’t know what it looks like in writing. The coach says, Well, have you tried? She hasn’t been writing before. The teacher says, I thought about it, but I don’t know exactly what the lesson would sound like. I know how to teach reading skills from a mentor text, but I don’t really think kids are going to get it in writing. It In Writing. The coach says, so it sounds like it’s something you want to try, but you’re unsure if it’s going to be meaningful for your students. And the teacher can say, yes, exactly. Obviously, this is how we hope it will go. The coach says, Would you like me to model lesson, or would you like to co teach with me and use a mentor text to teach writing? So you’re giving options. You’re saying, these are two possibilities that I can provide. These are tools in my toolbox that I’m here to offer you. And you can choose which one you think would work best. They could also technically say, Yeah, I don’t want to do either of those things. And you could try offering something else, but they came with a problem, right? So if you can offer a way to work together to figure it out. They’re more likely to say yes because you’re responding to what they’re telling you. So here are some tips for differentiating your coaching support. As you are starting to add different tools into your toolbox, it can feel overwhelming to have so many different things that you can offer, and you have to figure out how you’re going to do this. So the easiest way is just to choose one or two strategies you feel comfortable with from each level to start. So if you don’t want to offer, you know, 18 different things you do not have to you can just say, You know what. From level one, I will offer sounding board and recommending resources. From level two, I will offer looking at student work together, and data review. And from level three, I will offer video, coaching and modeling. You can do that. That’s okay. You’re building your coaching program right

Chrissy Beltran  18:30

from there, you should build a coaching menu to share the strategies with others and to document them for yourself. Now that coaching menu is a document that you can use to share with teachers at the beginning of the year what you’re there to do, how you can support them, and it’s also a tool that you can use to keep in your the forefront of your brain how you’re able to support teachers, and what you’re able to pivot to in those conversations that we that I shared, and those opportunities that we talked About back here, we’re looking at, what does the coach say in response to the teacher, cry for help. Cry for help is up here. It can sound like lots of different things, even a complaint or attack, right? And then the coach pivots to an offer of support, not an idea that the teacher can try on their own, not something they should do, but instead an offer of help. So whenever we are getting our brains around that it can help to have that document visible and handy. And so you can even keep it in the front of your binder. You can keep it, you know, little version, glued into your notebook or your calendar. You want to have it handy so that you can become comfortable with it. It’s kind of like whenever I was in the classroom, and I would work with intervention students or students in a small group for reading, and I would have prompts that would help me prompt them for different skills. And I taped them to my table because I wanted to make sure that whenever I was having kids, you know, tap it out. What can you do? What sound do you see? What. Does it sound or what letter Do you see? What does it sound like? Make the sound of the letter, things like that. I wanted to see that on my desk so that I had the language handy, and it was really helpful for me to do that so you can do the same thing with your coaching menu. You really don’t want to over complicate it. You want to listen and be responsive to the teacher, instead of suggesting what the teacher should do. Okay, you’re going to suggest a coaching strategy that will help you work together, because that will forward your coaching relationship and will help you build capacity in the teacher. You also want to leverage low level strategies into higher level strategies over time by demonstrating credibility and continuing to go grow that relationship so we can. We’re going to talk a little bit about what it looks like to take a lower level strategy and actually turn it into a higher level strategy. Okay, these are some opportunities to continue these coaching conversations. If you have a level one strategy, let’s say that you did a resource recommendation, and you want to turn that into level two in the moment, whenever you are actually discussing the resource you’re recommending, schedule a follow up. Say you’re going to check back in to see how it goes. It’s very simple. You say, this is the, oh, you know what? This is the book that I mentioned about teaching inferences. You know, it worked really well for whatever grade level, and I thought you might like it and talk a little bit about how they could use it, what that plan could be, and then say, Yeah, I’ll check back in on you next week to see how it went. Or say, I’ll come by on Friday morning, and we can talk about how it went. The more specific you can be, the better you want to take that strategy and turn it into Level Two by setting the expectation that you will come back and you’re going to have a conversation. So you’re taking that level one strategy and you’re turning it into a level two by saying, Okay, there’s level one. I’m here recommending resources, and whenever I check back in, I’m going to look at student work with you. You don’t have to tell them that. You can just say, Hey, how did that book go? Yeah, what did the kids do? Oh, you have some responses. Let’s take a look at the responses. Right? You could say, Oh, you took an assessment. You want to look at the data with me. You could say, Oh, I saw that you were working on this. Maybe we can plan a lesson for next week to continue that top that topic that you’re working on, you want to take the strategy that you provided and do what you can to propel it forward into more coaching work. So that’s the first example. Second example, turn level two group strategies into level two individual coaching. So for example, let’s say that the group strategy that you used is you looked at student work together. Everybody had a writing sample, and you analyzed the writing sample, and now you’re going to take that group work that you did into individual work. You could say, Okay, we all look at this. Would some would you guys like to plan a lesson together? Who would like to work with me on that and create another assignment for students to practice what they’ll learn next? So we’re going to do some lesson planning. We’re going to look at assignments to see and then we can always come follow up again with another group session looking at that student work together. So you can use your PLC meetings to turn that topic into individual coaching work, and then you can come back in as a group again and follow up. Another way to do this is to turn level two strategies into level three strategies. So in this case, you’re going to offer there’s a couple different possibilities if you plan something together, That’s level two, you can offer to model or co teach that lesson with a teacher. For level three, if you did a data meeting, which is level two, you could set up to visit a colleague, because maybe they did something really well that they shared in their data. So this is what that looks like. You’ll have maybe we’re looking at a math assessment, and somebody taught the kids to find the least common denominator, and it really worked. Whatever they did. The kids got it in that classroom. Well, let’s go visit them and see how it looks. Let’s go watch them teach it. So then you can set up that visit colleague opportunity, if you are working on a student work review or creating an assignment together in a group, then or even individually, you can then say, well, I would love to actually work on this in the classroom. This is so fun. We created this assignment, and I want to see how it goes. Can I come observe? Can I come watch you do this lesson? You can ask to see how things went. And then you can continue to build that relationship with a teacher by having that debriefing conversation, by talking to them about about how it went, about what’s next. And then you can maybe possibly do some co planning, and then do some co teaching. You can keep moving it forward. So here are the strategies that I’ve shared about level one, level two and level three. I want you just to take a couple of minutes and think about which ones you are already pretty comfortable with. Now, again, we want to look at each level and make sure we have strategies from each level. So let’s just start out by identifying the ones that you already feel really good about, and you can just highlight those. Text or mark those somewhere that you feel like those are strategies that you could very comfortably offer, that you feel confident in, that you know what to do. Then I want you to take a minute and think about something you can add to your toolbox after today. And if you really want to be strategic about it again, make sure you have strategies in each area. So maybe you’re really comfortable with some level one and level two strategies, but level three has kind of an empty space. Let’s choose two of those to add to your toolbox today. Maybe you have a lot of level two and three, but you don’t have any level one. Well, we got to get into that room. So what can you start practicing? Can you practice being a better sounding board? For example, the other thing you can do to be strategic is to think about okay. What are some really great strategies that I could easily leverage into future work? Think about your faculty. Think about your school. Think about Okay. What are some of these things that I know if I was able to offer these, I could turn that into a higher level strategy. So for example, let’s say that maybe you have a lot of behavior issues at your school, and teachers are constantly complaining about student behavior. You could actually offer to go in together and build student expectations and a behavior plan together. I separated that out from planning support because it’s not about content, it’s about management. So you can build student expectations together and a behavior plan, and then from there, you can turn that into an observation. You could turn that into video coaching to see how it went. You can turn that into visiting a colleague who is also using a similar behavior system. You can take those expectations and turn it into something even bigger. So think about what are some strategies that okay, they’re great on their own, but then I’m not done with them, because I’m going to take them and leverage them into a higher level strategy and make sure you add those to your toolbox too. So hopefully, by the time we’re done today, you’re going to have at least six strategies in your toolbox. You You can have more you don’t have to that you feel comfortable sharing with teachers and offering at any given time.

Chrissy Beltran  27:07

You also might be really strategic, and start thinking about certain grade levels or teams that those level two strategies would work really well with. For example, if you have a grade level that is, like we mentioned before, all over the place there’s very little alignment, you might start thinking about, how can I best support this team to get some alignment, to get those conversations happening, to help teachers help each other. And so maybe what you could do with those teachers is something like looking at student work together to develop a baseline. Sometimes student work is a little less scary than data review. If you haven’t started data review. It’s important that you do, but if you haven’t, and you want to start with looking at student work together, I can see why you might go that route, because teachers might be more responsive to it. On top of that, you can also think about teachers who might be great for Level Three supports, in terms of visiting a colleague, who would be a great model of something at your school. It’s helpful to have in your toolbox an idea of teachers who are really great at certain things. So let’s go back to that building student expectations example, and let’s say that maybe a teacher wants to build student expectations and a behavior plan, but they are unsure about how to go about that because they can’t envision a different way of doing things than what they’ve already done, you can set them up to visit a colleague in the school who has a really unique way or a great way of approaching management that works well for them, so that your teacher that you’re working with can see different options. So sometimes having those model classes doesn’t mean everything’s perfect. It means that they can share something. Having a model classroom setup and knowing what different teachers are really great with different things can be helpful, because you’ll feel feel confident knowing that whenever you recommend visiting a colleague, you have a great place to send them to. That is a really good way to feel comfortable adding that to your strategy toolbox. You might also think about, okay, these are strategies that I want to get better at. I’ve already marked the ones that I am comfortable with, and I’ve chosen three that I am less comfortable but I want to get good at them. How are you going to do it? It’s time to make a plan. So think about how you are actually going to build your own skill in those specific areas. So I want you to take a minute look at the specific options that you chose, and then decide which one requires more learning of you, and what are you going to do in order to be prepared to offer that to your teacher next year? Like I mentioned, I have tons of resources on the site. At buzzing with Miss b.com you will find information about many of these different strategies, and I’m adding to it every single day, as well as podcast instructional coaching with Miss B. So you can always do that and grab one of those, you know, podcast episodes to get a little better at one of these ideas. And then you can also investigate it further online. Tons of coaches are offering support online that never were before. So identify some areas that you would like to grow in. In so that you will be prepared to offer these strategies with your teachers next year. I’m actually going to leave you with a little story of how I pivoted and tried a different strategy because it was something that my teacher wanted. So when I was an instructional coach, I was a literacy coach at elementary school, my first school that I coached at, and I was working with a teacher who had been moved into fourth grade suddenly, about five days after school started, it was not a fun experience. She was from kindergarten, and they had to close her section and move her up, and she did a great job, but it was very stressful at the time, right? So then whenever I was working with this teacher, my principal said, Look, this is what I want you to do. I want you to go in there, and I want you to co teach with her for like, four weeks, just straight, co teaching for four weeks. And I was like, okay, so then I went and approached the teacher, and I was saying, I’m prepared, prepared to offer the support with you. And for four weeks, I will come in almost every day, because not every day. Would work with PLC, meetings and things, but I will co teach with you in reading and writing, and we will get you set up for the year. And she said, Okay, that would be great, because I need so much help. Then whenever I got there and I started working with her, she was like, okay, so I know we said we’re going to co teach, but I would rather watch you teach a little bit before I start doing that. So we made our first adjustment, and we did a little bit of modeling. We did about a week of modeling before she started to work with me and do more co teaching at the same time. Then, after about a week or two of co teaching, she said, Okay, I have to ask you. And I said, Yeah, what do you want? What do you want to tell me? Whatever you want to tell me. And she said, I think I want you to leave. I was like, Okay. And she said, No, it’s not bad. I just feel like I want to try some things. Now that I’ve seen you do it and I’ve worked with you, I feel like I need to take a few days and just try some of this stuff out. But then I want you to come back. I said, Okay. She said, I want you to come back, and I want you to watch me after, like two weeks, because I want about two weeks to just really work with the kids and see if I can do what I’m trying to do with them. I said, go for it. That’s a great plan. So then I left, and then I came back in about two weeks, and I observed, and I provided her with some feedback, and she felt pretty good about it. That’s a great way, actually, to kind of use a gradual release model, where first you’re the teacher is the coach, in this case, right? The teacher does it, and the teacher and the the actual teacher watches and observes. Then you can do things together and work together, and then after that, you can just observe and see what they do on their own. That was what the teacher needed, and I was responsive in the moment. And so I recommend that you think about, how can you support teachers better? By being responsive to what they’re telling you that they need, even if they’re not as direct and able to verbalize it as this teacher was. Listen through the cop the complaints, listen through the frustration, and get to the heart of what they need so that you can respond with what they really would benefit from. And that is a strategy to further your coaching work, and not just an idea, a one off idea that they could try, that would solve all of their problems magically. So again, build your coaching toolbox. Make sure that you have all of your strategies in there and that you are able to take the strategy that you need out in the moment. The last tip that I have is sometimes five or six or seven or eight things can be overwhelming to teachers. So if you are working with a teacher, and maybe they’re new, or maybe they’re overwhelmed, or maybe they’re frustrated, narrow the list of strategies for them. This is what I coached a friend of mine into doing with her, with her teachers. She just took a piece of paper and she was working with a teacher, and she said, Look, I have three different choices. I can model a lesson. I can have you visit a colleague, or we can plan it together. She wrote it down on a piece of paper and literally sent it across the table to her, and then the teacher looked at it and said, I want to visit a colleague because the list was narrow, the teacher was able to pick what would work for them. When the teachers are overwhelmed, they’re not always able to figure out what they could benefit from, and they might just say no, because decision fatigue is a real thing. Let’s limit the number of decisions that they have to make by eliminating some of the choices that might not be relevant in that moment from your toolbox. So if you have a coaching menu, use it to share with teachers what you can do, and you can use it to offer support as well. But if you need to really limit and bring down the number of options for teachers, please do so so that teachers are not overwhelmed and they don’t feel like they have to say no, no, no to so many things before they get to the support that is actually going to impact their classroom. So build your toolbox, decide on your menu, figure out how you’re going to share it with teachers, and this year can be so great. I actually have a tool that will help you build your toolbox, and I want to share it with you today. It is a tool that will help you build your coaching menu for free if. You go to buzzing with Miss b.com/coaching menu, you will get access to a guide to building your own coaching menu with three different levels of strategies. An editable template. I almost always say editable, editable template. You cannot eat it. Please do not try to eat it, where you can actually type in all of your stuff. It’s there’s this format is available, but I also added a new format because I thought it’d be fun to have something a little more modern. And then you’ll also get emails with information about using different strategies to coach. So many of the information, many of the strategies that I shared about here, I dig into them, and I teach you how to do them in the emails. So grab that coaching menu for free, buzzing with Miss b.com/coaching menu because it is a really handy tool, and you can use it in a few different ways to share your role with teachers. One way that you can share your role with teachers is by simple email, and you can attach your menu and you can also put it on your website. Those are the standard ways that many people can do before the school year even starts.

Chrissy Beltran  35:58

Another really fun way to introduce teachers to what you can do and what strategies you can provide to support them. Is to have a coffee cookies or cupcakes with a coach event. And so that happens towards the beginning of the school year. You set up, usually during one day, in your space. You have, maybe coffee and cookies or cupcakes, some sorts of treats. Alliteration is fun. It doesn’t have to be alliterative, but it is better that way. And you invite teachers to come visit with you throughout the day, you individually introduce what you’re there to do this year, what your goal is, and your coaching menu to them to provide them with a copy. And you also hear from them about what they’re working towards and what their goals are. If you kind of make notes of this, then you can identify some teachers you can start working with right away, probably jumping into level two or three strategies, depending on how receptive they seem. And then you can also identify some teachers that you might want to really be deliberate about, identifying some opportunities for level one strategies you can use to build that relationship throughout the year. So I really recommend having that kind of an event if your teachers do not know what your role is yet, and they don’t know how you can help them, because it will help you get information about what they’re working on, what they’re interested in learning, what they feel about coaching in their classroom, and it will also give them information from you about what you can do to help so that’s coffee cookies or cupcakes with a coach. It’s a fun event, and people love treats, so they’re more likely to come by if you provide a treat, plus you can use it as an opportunity to get something from them about their goals and what they plan to accomplish this year, what their challenges are that they perceive with the current classes that they have. And then you are there to be the support, the partnership, the person that’s going to help them figure these things out while building capacity in teachers through a variety of strategies. Thank you so much for joining me for this session. I hope that you walk away with some tools to add to your toolbox and a really great handout the coaching menu that download that you can grab for free. If you are interested in following me and learning a little bit more from me, you can check me you can check me out at buzzing with Miss b.com you can also listen to instructional coaching with Miss B the podcast. Or you can join the Facebook group instructional coaching with Miss B. If that’s your preferred mode of communication. There are lots of great coaches in that group asking questions and answering questions for each other, as well as opportunities for free things. I tend to drop them in the group, so check that out for sure and happy coaching. Enjoy the rest of the summit. I know it’s full of amazing stuff, and thank you for sharing your time with me and watching my session. Alright, Coach. I know that was so so so so much information, but I just want you to think about it in the frame of that. ABC always be coaching. Like I said, when I was a college student, I sold Cutco. I told you about this a couple episodes ago. If you missed it, they are the fancy knives, and yes, I still have my starter set, and it’s amazing. So anybody who’s been in sales in any way has probably heard always be closing, and that means you’re always working towards getting the customer to say yes to the sale. So from the moment you start interacting with them, you put your game face on, and you are working towards a sale. You’re being thoughtful about how to make it happen. So it happen when your coach, you’re not actually selling anything, but you are. I mean, you can say it if you want to be cynical about it, right? But you are offering the opportunity to grow and learn together. We are always working on leveraging our interactions into more impactful interactions. Always be leveraging. Always be coaching. So how can we take this interaction and turn it into more meaningful coaching work? If you approach your work this way, you will always have teachers to work with. In my next episode, I chat with one of my coaching students, and she’s a fantastic coach, and I loved working with her one on one, on building and using her coaching strategy toolbox. I just had such a good time working with Gina, and I cannot wait to share that episode. Share that episode with you until then. Happy coaching!

Chrissy Beltran  39:49

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!