Visit a Colleague, Peer Observations, or Learning Walks, ep. 254

Visit a Colleague, Peer Observations, or Learning Walks, ep. 254, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy Beltran [00:00:02]:

Welcome to instructional coaching with Ms. 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 254. Today we’re talking about visiting a colleague or learning walks. And this is part of the coaching strategy toolbox theme that we started last week. Last week I dug into how to use the mindset of always be coaching to change the way that you approach your coaching work and to really help you support teachers at any given time and move them forward, leverage them into higher impact coaching work overtime. Today we’re going to dig into specifically visiting a colleague or some schools call them learning walks, but this looks different, different everywhere that you go. So in visiting a colleague this is a strategy that you can use in a coaching cycle. You can also use it outside of a coaching cycle if a teacher just has come to you with a question and you’re not kind of going to really spend a lot of time working with that individual teacher but you want to give them the opportunity to check out what’s going on in their colleagues classrooms. So if you do this, you’re going to want to plug it most of the time into a coaching cycle and you can learn more about that@ buzzingwithmissb.com cycles. You can grab the free crash course, it’ll come straight to your inbox and it’ll teach you step by what to do in a coaching cycle. So today we’re going to talk a little bit about what is so valuable about visiting a colleague and why. I have categorized it as a highly impactful coaching strategy. If you have a coaching strategy toolbox which is really everybody has one because it’s really whatever strategies you are able to offer teachers, this one needs to be in there. It is so valuable because teachers are often shoved in a classroom in August, especially new teachers. But this happens to all of us and then we’ll see you again in May. You know, hope everything goes well. Yeah, sure, we have PLC meetings, we have professional development, but when do those teachers get to watch each other teach? Some schools have prioritized, you know, maybe instructional rounds or learning walks, but those tend to be done in more of a team fashion. And so what I’m proposing today is that you think about individual teachers, what their individual learning goals are, and how they can benefit from seeing effective instruction in action in other classrooms that are similar to theirs. Because

Chrissy Beltran [00:02:38]:

they are at your same school. Because meetings and discussions alone are not going to translate into classroom change necessarily. Teachers need to envision it sometimes. They cannot picture the possibilities for their instruction. But we can be the voice to that possibility and say, you know what? I’ve seen somebody who’s doing an amazing job with that that I think you would love to see, and I can set that up for you. Observation that a teacher conducts on another teacher is going to build clarity. It’s going to build confidence in their own teaching because they will see how it’s done and have a better idea of how to implement that. It will help grow their vision. And teachers can really picture what success could look like in their classroom. I have found them especially valuable when a teacher is new to a grade level or subject. Whenever modeling is being preventable is not as effective by me because maybe they’re instructing in a different language or maybe it’s a content knowledge that you lack. So let’s say that you are a high school coach and you are working with a teacher in calculus. Maybe the calculus is not, as, you know, helpful. Like you’re not able to really deliver that lesson in a helpful manner. So instead you can have that calculus teacher go see the teacher who teaches pre cal who does a great job, or the teacher who teaches statistics or whatever that does an amazing job on something that they have a question on. I mean, they can go see, really any teacher. Because the point is not the content. The point is the strategy, the instructional methods. It’s also helpful because if a teacher is not excited about you observing them or about you modeling in their classroom, they might be more receptive to seeing something happen in a different classroom. Because they may just kind of inherently feel like somebody who is in the classroom is going to have something more to offer them. You know, you know what? That is, okay? It is not your job to change that. Over time, they may develop more of a relationship with you that they do see that you have credibility. But if they are not open to that at the beginning, that’s not your fault and it’s not your problem. Really, your problem is how can I support this teacher anyway? So then you can support them by having them go see somebody else do something great. It’s also helpful, like I mentioned before, when a teacher can’t envision a strategy or an approach or they Say, no, that won’t work with these kids. Well, next door, the kids are basically the same. So let’s go see how it works with those kids. Right. So one of the times that I’ve used this that was really effective is we had a kindergarten teacher whose section was closing. We didn’t have the numbers in

Chrissy Beltran [00:05:07]:

kinder, but we did in fourth grade, and somebody actually ended up leaving shortly before the school year started. So we had an opening in fourth grade. So this teacher was moved from literally one week to the next. It was right before school started. Like, she had been setting up her kindergarten classroom. Okay. And it was immediately. It was the week of professional development and teacher, you know, teacher work days. And she was moved from kinder to fourth grade. And she was. I was amazed at her positive attitude, anyway, when I was around. I’m sure she completely fell apart sometimes. And she did, over time, like, open up a little bit more about how difficult this had been for her, which was no surprise. But I think she felt like she was getting a lot of support, so at least she had people who were trying to help her. So she tried to be positive about it. She was still overwhelmed and unsure and just was like, what am I? What is this even gonna look like? So what we did is we set her up to visit one of the other teachers the first week of school. And so she had, you know, we were helping her set up her classroom. I helped her with her classroom library, all these things. But we also needed her to see what fourth grade can look like. And you know what? She ended up being one of our strongest fourth grade teachers. She was amazing. I would put my child in class with her in a heartbeat. And I don’t say that very often. She was able to see in this other classroom what students can do in fourth grade, what expectations you can have of them, what management looks like at that level, what the daily flow of instruction and lessons can look like. She was able to see instructional strategies and methods, what the curriculum looked like whenever it actually played out in real time. It was a short visit. We had many of them, you know, across a week, but they were short, in short little chunks of time to make sure that she could see different parts of the school day with minimal coverage on her classroom because we still had to provide class coverage for her kids. Right. But I could talk to her for this for hours about these things, which we did. We did talk for hours. Right. We made plans. We discussed. But giving her a picture of what it could look like in a classroom, that’s what really changed her perception of fourth grade. And so I feel like without that, she would have been really lost and it would have been really hard for her. So I. I cannot. I know this is kind of my soapbox. Visiting colleagues is something that we need to work into teachers regular routines, because that is how you can grow schools

Chrissy Beltran [00:07:32]:

is by using your best resource, the person down the hall. They’re the people who figured things out in the classrooms. Just get other people in there to see it. It’s amazing. Another really great reason to use this strategy is that you are building a community of learners. So teachers are often isolated in their classrooms. They’re doing their own thing. And whenever they come together during meetings, team meetings, PLC meetings, professional development, they are not always speaking the same language of instruction in their classroom. For example, one teacher can say, oh, we do a daily editing passage, right? And another teacher will say, yeah, we do that too. And it will look completely different in each classroom. We don’t always know the fine details of what makes something work until we see it in action. And sometimes we say, yeah, I’m doing that. I’m doing all of that. But it’s not the same thing because we do not speak with such specificity. And you would literally have to replay an entire lesson sometimes to make clear what that lesson would look like. So in this way, getting teachers into each other’s classrooms really helps them develop a common language and go to relationships with colleagues. You do not want to be the go to person all the time. You, you cannot be the one who solves all the little problems, right? Or who gives teachers all the answers and ideas. That’s not our job. If we can set our teachers up to be the experts for each other, how amazing is that? If they can ask questions of each other on their own and develop these relationships that are supportive and mentoring, that’s amazing. You can be the facilitator of that. It also encourages collaboration at all times of the day. So yes, we want them to collaborate during PLC meetings and professional development, but this encourages them to collaborate in the hallways, when they’re on their way to class, when they see each other at lunch. It gives those teachers who are hosts real leadership opportunities, and they can contribute to the school culture and really grow the faculty in a positive way. And it also creates a shared instructional vision across grade levels and content areas because you can get teachers to observe each other in different grades and in different contents, and there’s still so much value. I had a fifth grade teacher who was struggling with management come down to see a second grade grade teacher. And she walked away with so much about specificity and clear expectations that were very supportive of her in fifth grade. So then how do we do it? Right. Okay. If you’re doing this in a coaching cycle, even if you’re not you, I mean, a very informal coaching cycle is still the same thing. At the beginning, you’re going to be like, well, what, what is it that you’re having a hard time with? Right?

Chrissy Beltran [00:09:59]:

You’re listening for a problem, you’re identifying what the challenge is, and then you’re going to set a goal. Because the idea is, okay, what are you going to get out of this visit? We need to know what the purpose is. You’re not just going to go sit there and see what you see. What is it that you’re trying to learn? Right. What do you want to see in action then? As the facilitator, you’re going to select the right classroom. And that classroom needs to be well managed, it needs to be welcoming. I mean, you want the teacher to feel safe and, you know, welcome. I hope this is not noise. I can hear in my background somebody using a leaf blower. So I hope you can’t hear somebody using a leaf blower. Sorry. It is lovely outside. I will say the weather is gorgeous. And so I totally get being able to do yard work in the middle of the day. So you also want this classroom to be attainable and relatable. Teachers need to be able to say, okay, yes, I, I think I can make this happen. In my room, we had one, I had one, worked with one teacher who was just amazing. But the way she thought was so far out of the box that a lot of people didn’t always get much out of the lessons. When they went to observe her or whenever they talked to her because she was so, so creative. They were like, I can’t do that. That’s not me. So you want teachers to kind of, you want to stretch what they can do for sure, but you also want it to be something that they may be able to do. You also would like it to be close in grade level and subject. If this is somebody who’s new to the grade or subject, because you want the content and the level to be something that they’re getting out of it. But you can have teachers of all ages visit teachers of all ages and levels, you know, and subjects to get out general management or instructional practices. So then your job is to find the classroom and then coordinate the logistics. You want to plan the lesson, timing when Is the lesson going to start? Do we have coverage for the guest teacher? That teacher is leaving their classroom. Right. And so you may have to provide coverage, but that’s not ideal. It would be great if you could set up a visit to the library or computer lab or whatever, or if it’s maybe during a PE time and they will already be in one of those places and you can just, you know, scoop up that teacher, walk them to the host teacher’s classroom, and then you also want to set up a post conference to have a discussion and really reflect on what they saw. It would be nice if

Chrissy Beltran [00:12:15]:

they could communicate with a classroom teacher as well and they can share their ideas and ask the questions and how did you arrive at this? And what do you think about this? All of those are really valuable conversations that will support that guest teacher in growing in the area of their goal. If you want teachers to be able to have a good conversation afterwards with you, you’re probably going to want to provide an observation form that’s focused on the learning goal. And it could be just a generic, you know, what does a teacher do, what does the student do? But you could also use something more focused, like my focused observation forms that you can grab in my TPT store. And those are just, they are focused on specific things. So if a teacher is struggling in management or outbursts or how to respond, if a teacher is struggling in academic vocabulary or student engagement, those forms will help you kind of target specific things that the teacher can observe. But you don’t have to use a focus form. It can be more general so the teacher can see all the different things that contribute to that one goal that they’re looking at. And if possible, you want to observe alongside the teacher to make it especially effective. So then after they have visited, they’ve taken notes, you’ve taken notes, you can have this reflective conversation and ask, well, what strategy was used, what languages, language or actions were leading to student success in this area? What are your big takeaways and how can you translate this into your own classroom? You can also support by saying, you know what, now that you’ve seen this, I would love to help you plan how to implement this into your room. Or you want to try it out and I can come see how it goes. Or we could co teach it. We could both kind of try it together. You can really take this if you’re always coaching, always be coaching and leverage it into more coaching work together. Because somebody can go see a classroom, go back to their classroom, think that was great stuff and then not necessarily do anything with it because maybe they’re overwhelmed or they don’t know where to start. And you can support them in starting or in having follow up conversations with that host teacher and say there’s unsure of where to start. What should we do first? If you are struggling with coverage, with getting people in the right place at the right time, because logistics are challenging in many schools, especially when we’re short staffed, one thing you can do is a video observation so you can record and analyze the lesson together. If you’re not able to visit in a live, you know, live format or method, another thing to do is a team visit. So this is like, okay, we’re gonna have third grade visit

Chrissy Beltran [00:14:37]:

fourth grade because we’re going to really support the alignment of those third grade lessons leading into fourth grade. We’re gonna have fourth grade visit third grade so we can see where the kids have come from and what foundation should be in place. Another variation on this. If you are trying to get teachers into each other’s classrooms, but this is kind of scary, you can start with something called ghost visits. Ghost visits are basically empty classroom walkthroughs. So the classrooms are empty and people are visiting classrooms after school to explore the environment and the structures that are in place and what evidence of student learning there is before they are confident enough to observe each other teaching live. So that’s a really great way to get started. That’s actually how we got started at my school and we did find a lot of value in it. It supported alignment in ways that were kind of surprising to me. So I do recommend those. So basically what I’m really hoping you walk away with here is that peer observation or visiting a colleague is one of the most impactful coaching strategies. It doesn’t take a ton of effort from you, it’s more of facilitating. But you are building a school community who can learn from each other. You’re creating a culture of collaboration and openness and shared growth in your school. And that is invaluable. And those relationships and the learning they do with each other, that will outlast your tenor, your tenure as a coach for sure. Okay, so before we wrap up, I just want to remind you about that coaching cycles mini course. You can grab that@ buzzingwithmissbee.com cycles. Next week we are digging into classroom observations. Observations can be very impactful, but sometimes it might feel like you’re not sure how to make them have meaning. At the end of your observation, maybe you’re looking at them going, oh my Gosh, what a I start talking about this too much. Or maybe you’re like, I don’t know what feedback to provide here. What am I doing? We’re going to talk about all those things next week. And so until then, Happy Coaching. Now that you’ve got so much to think about, head over to BuzzingWithMissB.com to grab some free downloads, become a VIBee, and check out the podcast show notes. Happy Coaching!