Time Management for Instructional Coaches Starts with Goals, ep. 243

Time Management for Instructional Coaches Starts with Goals, ep. 243, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran  00:01

Are you ready for some back to school coaching fun and to win some great prizes, play back to school bingo with Miss B this year in my Facebook group, instructional coaching with Miss B, I’m hosting a fun game that will set you up for your first day of school and give you the chance to win. Just head to a Facebook and search for the group instructional coaching with Miss B. Once you’re in, check out the pinned post at the top of the page to join BTS bingo, print out your board, complete the tasks and turn it in. It’s that easy to play, and I can’t wait to share the prizes with you. Let’s make back to school this year a little more fun. Welcome to instructional coaching with Miss B 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 243, of instructional coaching with Miss B today. We’re talking about time management for instructional coaching, starting with your goals. This is part of the mini series for coaching on time management for instructional coaches. We are starting that series today, and we’ve got several different episodes about wearing different hats, how AI can save you some time, and how do we support all classrooms within instructional coaching, which basically is impossible, but we do our best. So we’re going to talk about these different topics over the next few weeks. And the first one I wanted to create about goals, because if we are not scheduling our time in connection with our goals, then our goals are not going to happen. So if you are having trouble thinking about where to focus your time every single month, I want you to grab my coaching yearly planner. You can look at that at buzzing with Miss b.com/planner and it’s a principal planner, so you can decide what pages go in, but it includes five action steps for every single month that I think are really going to help you narrow down your coaching focus each month as because they really helped me, you can also grab a free webinar that will help you define your coaching roles so that you can actually focus your work around that role. Bath at buzzing with myth b.com/webinar and that is totally free. So today we’re talking about how we start with our coaching goals, and we use that to support our time management. And the first thing, like I just mentioned before, you can even have goals. You need to know what your job is. You have to have a clearly defined role, so that you know your purview as a coach and what you are responsible for, where does your principal want you to focus? What needs does your school have? So define that role clearly, using that free webinar, and then I want you to conduct a needs assessment, to focus your goal. Because if we are not focusing our goals on what our school needs and the direction that we want to move in, then we’re just kind of throwing things at the wall to see if they will stick. So first conductor needs assessment. And I have several episodes about needs assessments, because I think that they are so important for instructional coaching, our jobs can be way too big if we don’t know where to focus. And so I’m going to pull up the episode for you, and I’m going to put that in the show notes as well, so that you can actually make sure that you are using all different kinds of information to conduct a needs assessment. And so these are the these are the sources I recommend that you use for conducting a needs assessment that you can learn more about in episode 39 I think you should talk to your principal. You should collect data, like hard numbers. You should collect information from a coaching survey, which is a survey that you’re going to give to teachers and see what they are interested in learning more about. What are their challenges? What are the things that keep them up at night? And then you also want to do a classroom sweep, where you visit all the classrooms and see what’s up. Okay? So those things are so essential to coaches to paint a clear picture of your school, and this will help you figure out where to focus your time, right? Because if you know what your school needs, you know what you need to be doing. So from there, once you have a clear picture of your school with your needs assessment, you want to set goals. I personally prefer three goals. Well, this isn’t even just a personal preference. Pretty much, if you’re trying to do more than three things, you can’t. It’s all that all the research says. So I prefer three goals. And you can create instructional goals that you want to work on as a school, and then you can either embed coaching goals into those, or you can have three separate coaching goals that are specifically for the kinds of coaching support you provide. I personally feel like embedding it a little bit easier, because it’s going to narrow down even further where you want to spend your time. So you’re going to have big three goals. Goals for the year. And here’s a couple of examples of what that could sound like if you’re embedding your coaching goals into instructional goals. The first one is very simple. Include a new vocabulary strategy in each professional development opportunity and follow up with teachers to ensure that it makes its way into the classroom. So every time you plan a PD or a PLC meeting, however you want to, you know, interpret that you would include a vocabulary strategy. Vocabulary can be done no matter what your PD is about, right? So I love that one because it’s broad enough that it’s realistic you can actually do it. And then you’re going to follow up with teachers in some method to make sure that they are using these strategies in the classroom. The second example is encourage the use of read alouds to build background knowledge through modeling. So in this one, it tells me that whenever you have white space on your calendar, you’re going to make a point of offering modeling sessions to teachers to model how to use a read aloud to build background knowledge about a content that can be maybe before a lesson, or before unit, during a unit, or in a content area that is going to support maybe some literacy. So you can do it a lot of different ways, but whenever you have white space, that’s what you’re going to come back to. That’s just a couple of examples of how you can embed coaching strategies, PD or modeling into your instructional goals, which were about vocabulary and read aloud. Next you’re going to look at your year, but your school year, and you’re going to decide what your midpoint is, probably, we’re talking about winter break, depending on where you you know, obviously, depending on where you in, like which hemisphere you’re in, but where in the world you are, but we’re looking at the midpoint of the year, because these are year long coaching goals, right? So then, if we’re thinking about where we should be halfway, we want to create a checkpoint there and say, Okay, if I am going to be if I’ve really done this, if teachers are really taking off with read alouds, what have I done by mid year, and we create some kind of checkpoint, and I find it helps to kind of make these more number driven. The checkpoint goals can be number driven. Some people are, you know, they want them to be measurable, like smart goals. I find the checkpoints being number driven helps me more because I’m thinking about my action steps. So by mid year, I would want to have modeled in at least maybe a third of the classrooms in my school how to use that read aloud, or if I’ve had, if I plan on having eight professional development opportunities throughout the year, I should have modeled four strategies, probably by December, for vocabulary, so then I can check and see our classrooms using that vocabulary strategy that they have been shared with that has been shared with them, have I provided ongoing learning opportunities for them to actually embed them into practice? So you can create checkpoints for your goals mid year, and then you want to break them down into months. So every month, if you’re working towards this goal of having all classrooms use read alouds to build background knowledge. What does that need to look like in August? What does that need to look like in September? In October? What do these things look like? It’s likely that if you’re going to encourage the use of read alouds to build background knowledge, and you’re doing this across your school, by the end of the year, in August, you probably want to introduce that idea somehow, through some kind of PD, right? And then you want to make it available that you can model. So you’re going to start with the ones who want you. You’re going to start with the ones who say that sounds like something I want to learn more about. So you do a PD. Maybe it’s a short one. Maybe it’s a half day on read alouds to build content knowledge and why that is so important for literacy, why we know background knowledge is so supportive and required for comprehension. Then at the end of that, you say, hey, fill out this little form for me here. What do you want to learn more about? What questions do you have? And would you like to come in me to come in and model a lesson. And then they fill out their little form. You follow up with some people. So by September, you’ve modeled in two classrooms. You continue following up with people over the next couple months, and then maybe in October, you have another opportunity to work with teachers, and you do a short one hour session, or you do a PLC meeting and you talk to them about, you know, other texts that they can use. You model a lesson during that PLC meeting, where they’re the kids and you’re the teacher, and then you follow up with them again, and you get even more teachers on board. Right? This is how you have to think about your goals of how you’re going to accomplish them throughout the year. So then you have your monthly tasks that you’re going to do each month to move you towards that midpoint checkpoint, and finally, your end of the year goal.

Chrissy Beltran  09:42

The way that I like to do it is I like to have my big three goals for the year, and then I have my big three for each month. So I derive action steps for each month from each goal so that I know where I’m working. Not every month is going to move you towards every goal in a major way because of other stuff. Let’s say you’re testing in April, okay? You’re probably not going to get a lot of people on board to model read alouds that month, right? You might get more people for the vocabulary strategy, though, because they might be desperate. They might be excited to try something out right last minute. From there, you might have to say one of your goals that month is going to be to support testing or to support preparation for testing, and you can also figure out how that could be aligned with one of your goals, but it might not work out, and that is okay, because that is the reality of the kind of job we have where things are very cyclical and calendar based. We start the year, we know what’s going to happen. We know what the year is going to look like by the end of the year, right? That’s okay, but try to keep it front and center so you’re not forgetting about it. When you do have white space, maybe it’s not one of your big three, but when you have white space, you have a place you could plug something in. Maybe you can record yourself doing a lesson somewhere and put that in a bank, right from your big three for the month. Whenever you plan your week, use those big three. Okay, so this is what I do. I have my big three for the month every month. I say in April. This is what I’m going to focus I’m going to focus on, 123, in March, I’m going to focus on this. In October, I’m going to focus on this. And every week, I look at my little sticky where I wrote my big three, and I stick it on my new month, my new week. For that calendar, I like to look at my calendar on Friday so Monday, I know what I’m doing, because if not, I walk in Monday and I have no clue what’s going on. Have you had that feeling before I leave Friday, I like to have my calendar open on my desk ready to go for the next week, so I have my little sticky on there, and I know what are the things that I’m really going to focus on this week, and I plug in time for them. When I have white space on my calendar that way, I know I’m ready to actually get there. Month is not going to pass and I’m not going to know what I was supposed to be working on. So I have my three for the week that I want to focus on. I want to have white space. I plug in those big three to focus my time. So for example, in my read aloud, example, maybe this week I’m going to approach a teacher that hasn’t asked me to do support in their classroom. But I know I could do something to create modeling opportunities if I just build that relationship with her. So I’m going to work on building that relationship. I’m going to visit the classroom. I’m going to recommend a read aloud that I think she would love that ties into the unit she’s doing in science. Okay, that’s a task I can do this week. What else am I going to do for my vocabulary strategies? Well, I am going to send out an email, ask if anyone has used any of the vocabulary strategies in their classroom, or if they are planning to use them this week, and I can come record and make a video so that I can share that video at my next PD opportunity, I am going to already on my calendar, I have booked out that I’m going to model a vocabulary strategy in a classroom, or that whenever we Plan collaboratively, I’m going to pull strategies from our vocabulary bank and say, which ones do you think you would like to try this week, every week, when I have white space, I can intentionally use that to accomplish those goals, not your whole calendar is white space, right? You’ve got leadership meetings, you have PLC meetings, which may or may not be able to be used to further your goals. You have lunch duty. You have to help the librarian unbox the new or the the book fair. You have documentation that has to be turned into the state. There are things that are not in your control, but there are spaces of white in between those, and that is where the coaching happens. If we purposely decide that’s where it happens. So make purposeful decisions about that white space to decide how you’re going to get to those goals every week, if you are having trouble with a principal or school leader who is kind of not sure what you do those very specific tasks that you’re planning every week to help you achieve your goals can also be used to help justify your work. So it shows that you’re managing your time around things that are important. And if you have communicated with them about your goals and they’re on board, then you should be actually really justified in doing those kinds of things and saying, This is the kind of work that I’m doing to move towards these goals that we have agreed on. So keep track of the kinds of action steps that you’re taking towards your checkpoint, and how you broke your goals down for each month in order to really let them know. Hey, I am doing some good things here, and this is how I’m moving towards the goal that we have established. It can be a really great way to demonstrate the kinds of things that you’re doing that might go unnoticed because they are not on the radar of school leaders. So that’s basically my time management tip. Start with your goals. Break them down into your that you have big three goals, break them down to a checkpoint for the first semester and second semester, and then you have monthly big three tasks. Use those to guide your weekly planning, set your calendar every week, and use that white space to achieve those goals in some small way. I hope that helps you. It has really helped me kind of redefine the way that I use that time. I’m not looking at that time going, what do I do? I’m looking at those goals and going, where do they fit? Where can I fit them in? Next week, we are talking about something that is relevant to this topic of time management. Managing the many hat of an instructional coach like I just mentioned, you do so many different things, not all of them look like coaching, and so how do we juggle all of these hats and also all the different roles that coaches serve, even within coaching, a lot to manage, and that’s what we’re talking about next week in Episode 244 until then, happy coaching. You.

Chrissy Beltran  15:24

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