How to Make Coaching Observations Better, ep. 255

How to Make Coaching Observations Better, ep. 255, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

00;00;01;27 – 00;00;21;05

Chrissy Beltran

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.

00;00;21;11 – 00;00;28;26

Chrissy Beltran

Plus, I’ve got a special spot in my heart for literacy coaches. Now let’s dig into the episode.

00;00;28;28 – 00;00;48;23

Chrissy Beltran

Hey coach, and welcome to my little mini series All About the Coaching Strategy Toolbox. We are in episode 255 and this is all about focused classroom observations, how to make them work, how to make them impactful because they are an incredibly impactful strategy when we use them, right? Before we get started, I want to remind you about my free coaching Cycles Mini Crash course.

00;00;48;23 – 00;01;09;05

Chrissy Beltran

You can grab that at buzzing with Miss Bbc.com slash slash slash slash cycles. And that includes a step by step little mini course that goes straight to your inbox and teaches you exactly how to use a coaching cycle with teachers. Observations are a great strategy to stick in the middle of that cycle where you do the classroom work.

00;01;09;06 – 00;01;28;17

Chrissy Beltran

This is a really great way to make an impact in the classroom, and that’s why we’re going to dig into it today, because this month we’re really focusing on some high impact strategies that can be helpful to you as a coach. And we’re going to talk a little bit about why they’re valuable, how to go about making them happen, and how to make them impactful in the classroom.

00;01;28;19 – 00;02;02;06

Chrissy Beltran

I personally have seen using a strong classroom observation, and sometimes it can feel like you don’t know if you are actually giving teachers anything valuable to walk away with. You’re unsure if they are, you know, benefiting from this process or you’re watching a lesson, but then what happens afterwards that that really shows you that there was some value to that, because you may go into a classroom, you could go in every single day for a year and it would look the same.

00;02;02;06 – 00;02;25;15

Chrissy Beltran

Has it happened to you like you will look this it will look the same to you because nothing is changing as a result of your classroom visits. This was something I went through as well and there are different ways to do observations. Sometimes we just do classroom visits sporadically. We just kind of pop in, see how things are going, maybe live a little, live a little note of feedback.

00;02;25;18 – 00;02;40;06

Chrissy Beltran

I find those visits are helpful to me to make sure that what we’re doing during maybe our team meetings where we plan together or look at assessments that those things are actually having a, you know, play out in the classroom, that we’re not just talking in a room for 45 minutes, and then teachers leave and don’t do anything with that.

00;02;40;06 – 00;03;04;13

Chrissy Beltran

I mean, that’s a waste of time. So I want to make sure that we’re bridging what we’re doing in those meetings into classrooms. And that is actually affecting what kids do every single day. However. That’s stressful, right? Watching teachers work with kids and providing with feedback back was part of the plan that we had created to support implementation of best practices, but teachers weren’t very comfortable with it, and that helps.

00;03;04;16 – 00;03;29;19

Chrissy Beltran

That happens all the time, and it’s because maybe they don’t have that level of trust with us that we need. And so it can take time to get teachers to the point where they are comfortable having you in their classrooms, knowing that you are on their side and you’re there. They’re there to support you. You’re not there to tear down or report, you know, maybe any kind of, non following of the school imperative, you know, non-negotiables and all that stuff.

00;03;29;19 – 00;03;50;19

Chrissy Beltran

They need to know that you’re not there as a snitch. You are actually there to provide support and to give them something that’s going to be valuable. So I remember one of the lessons that I visited early on, and it was there was a it was a standard that the teacher said that they were trying to teach, but the lesson was not in alignment with that standard.

00;03;50;20 – 00;04;05;26

Chrissy Beltran

Kids were being asked to do things that didn’t apply in this grade level. It was like completely mismatched. Right? And so I thought about that and I was like, okay, well, that means maybe in in PLC meetings, we need to dig in to our standards a little more and what that can look like. And, you know, how can I get this teacher support in this area?

00;04;05;27 – 00;04;26;05

Chrissy Beltran

But then I noticed management was an issue. Right? And so management was kind of wild and kids were not really responding to anything the teacher was asking them to do appropriately, and they were not having conversations. They were all doing kind of their own thing, getting up randomly to walk on or, you know, sharpen a pencil in the middle of everything and, and on the way back, bopping three kids on the head with a aforementioned pencil.

00;04;26;05 – 00;04;43;28

Chrissy Beltran

And so it was just kind of chaos. And then over time, I started noticing there were no instructional strategies. The teacher was just talking a lot, and the kids were just supposed to listen to me, and she gave them a handout. And then I noticed that student responses were not focused on anything, because she wasn’t really asking them questions or giving them a way to respond.

00;04;43;28 – 00;05;05;19

Chrissy Beltran

It was just kind of like she was doing like fill in the blank answers where she’d say, you’ve probably heard it. So the name of a plant is what? Or an animal that only eats meat is what? And then they had to say carnivore, but they were just kind of like yelling stuff out. And it was just chaos.

00;05;05;21 – 00;05;32;09

Chrissy Beltran

So I noticed all these things. And as I’m sitting there in the room, I’m writing down all these things, right? And then whenever I went to have a conversation with the teacher, I wasn’t even sure what to talk about because that had been chaos in my brain. I had I could not follow what was happening well, and I was so distracted by all these things, and there was way too much going on for me to be able to pinpoint one thing, to talk to the teacher about.

00;05;32;12 – 00;05;54;04

Chrissy Beltran

So over time I realized, okay, I need to know what the teacher is trying to grow in if I’m going to support them in this area and sometimes, yes, the reality is those things come from the top. The teacher ideally should be able to choose something, even if it’s within sort of a category that they would like to grow in, because that’s going to be so much more meaningful.

00;05;54;06 – 00;06;14;24

Chrissy Beltran

And we know that ideally we do give teachers all the choice. But I have been a coach long enough to know that is not always something you are in charge of, right? And sometimes things have to change in some way or another. And that is the reality of working with teachers in classrooms, because those children who are in those classrooms, they deserve it.

00;06;14;27 – 00;06;37;27

Chrissy Beltran

So I know that’s kind of an unpopular opinion, but the reality is some classrooms need change. Now. You are not the one who can say, well, they have to change this and they have to change that. That’s not our job as a coach, but it is somebody else’s job and that is the administrator. So if an administrator has said, well, we need to work on these things, I guess we’ll probably has to work on those things with teachers.

00;06;37;29 – 00;07;01;06

Chrissy Beltran

You. Right. So I’m just being realistic about this. We can advocate for our role, but the reality is reality is sometimes we are balancing a tightrope between what the teacher believes and wants to work on and what the district or administrator has said is going to happen. If we can give teachers a little choice within those, sometimes we can’t control how much choice, but we can control that.

00;07;01;06 – 00;07;19;08

Chrissy Beltran

There is choice. We could say, what would you like to work on first out of these aspects? What do you think would be most impactful? Which one seems the most challenging to you right now that you would like some support in? We can give the teacher that opportunity to voice their choice, and then we can use that to create a goal.

00;07;19;10 – 00;07;41;18

Chrissy Beltran

So the idea is when you go into classrooms and you are there to provide feedback, you are doing so because you have decided on a goal with the teacher, and it’s supposed to be a big enough goal that if this one thing changed a lot, could change without knowing where our kids need to go, we can’t plan a good lesson, right?

00;07;41;23 – 00;07;56;00

Chrissy Beltran

So without knowing what we need, our teachers to do or what they are trying to go to, where they’re trying to go and what they’re trying to do, we can’t give them purposeful feedback on what they’re trying to do. We need to know what great student writing is to be able to give kids really good feedback on their writing.

00;07;56;00 – 00;08;17;09

Chrissy Beltran

We need to know where a teacher’s heading or what she’s trying to accomplish as well, to be able to give good feedback on that lesson. So if we are asking teachers what it is that they’re trying to work on, we might get a lot of different responses right? And completely trying to overhaul classroom practices is overwhelming and unproductive.

00;08;17;14 – 00;08;41;22

Chrissy Beltran

So my principal used to say, meet them where they are and give them just a little push. And I love that because we can say, where are you? What is it you’re trying to do? Let’s see what little push we can do to get you there right? So we can have teachers talk a little bit about what they’re working on and maybe some of the struggles that they’re having, what they want for their classroom that is not currently happening.

00;08;41;22 – 00;08;55;02

Chrissy Beltran

They might say, I want my students to participate in discussions. I want to know that my students are actually learning. How can I do this? This is a conversation I just had with a teacher the other day. How do I know they’re learning? Yes, they’re doing the things I’m telling them to do, but how do I know they’re learning?

00;08;55;02 – 00;09;16;13

Chrissy Beltran

That’s really broad, right? So we can narrow it down and say, oh, well then how do we know people learn? Well, they generally create something that show what they have learned. Right. So what kinds of of strategies can kids use to process the learning. And then what can they write or create to show what they now know? We were able to take that big.

00;09;16;13 – 00;09;39;17

Chrissy Beltran

I want to know if kids are learning that big statement and turn it into a goal to work towards together from there, from having that goal, you can actually plan a lesson that supports the goal, record data about the goal and provide feedback that targets that goal. Now I will have a note here about management. If management isn’t happening, nothing is happening.

00;09;39;17 – 00;09;59;14

Chrissy Beltran

However, if a teacher doesn’t think management is a problem, you are unlikely to convince them that management is not a problem. I’m sorry that management is a problem. What you might do in that case is ask if you can record a little snippet of a lesson, have them watch it, and they may notice how much of a problem management really is.

00;09;59;16 – 00;10;22;25

Chrissy Beltran

Because if you’re focusing on management, whenever they’re asking you to focus on something else, they may not walk away with much from your feedback because they’re going to be so turned off because a conversation was about management. And that can feel really personal. I actually have some podcast episodes that you can check them out, in the show notes that are about management over the years and about the approach that I used to actually figure out how to support classrooms in that area.

00;10;22;25 – 00;10;50;09

Chrissy Beltran

Because as a guest teacher, if there is no system for management and there’s no like, you know, nothing in place and you are trying to support a classroom, it can be incredibly overwhelming. You may find yourself not able to teach a lesson. You may find yourself unsure of how to respond in the moment. All these are very common problems whenever we have classrooms that don’t have anything in place.

00;10;50;12 – 00;11;06;14

Chrissy Beltran

And so if you’re going to actually support a classroom, I would recommend that you have a plan in place for what that can look like. But if you’re observing a classroom that is a little bit different. So that’s something to consider observing. You’re going to really focus on what it is that the teacher is asking you to do.

00;11;06;20 – 00;11;23;20

Chrissy Beltran

Now, if you are co-teaching or modeling, you can actually use what I talk about in episode 130, A simple Behavior management plan for coaches. And you can try that one out. If you are doing the lead teaching or if they say, I just feel like I don’t have a management plan and I don’t know what to do about it, that’s a really good place to start.

00;11;23;23 – 00;11;42;23

Chrissy Beltran

Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about what this can look like. Whenever you’re actually observing. You want to be recording data that is aligned directly with the goal that your teacher set. So let’s say that the goal is about student responses. You’re going to want to record the language used by students verbatim if possible. Let’s say it’s about management.

00;11;42;23 – 00;12;06;10

Chrissy Beltran

What you’re going to want to record, behavior triggers and responses that they but the teacher made. If they’re talking about engagement, you want to record the patterns in engagement or participation. What structures, as a teacher have set up and who is participating and who is not. Even as simple as a seating chart can be helpful. And I actually have some really focused observation guides that can help you with what to record and what to talk about afterwards.

00;12;06;10 – 00;12;30;16

Chrissy Beltran

That includes all the discussion questions that you can grab in my TPT store. That’s Christy Bell or Buzzing Rhythms B. These guides are helpful because they target something really specific, and they can help you in providing very specific feedback and discussion afterwards. So then after you record all your data, some of the general questions that you can ask that can really get the conversation started are did our students meet the goal that you set, the thing that you were trying to do?

00;12;30;17 – 00;12;50;02

Chrissy Beltran

Did it happen? And how do we know? Did the strategy that you used worked work? Or do you think that maybe we needed something different? What patterns do we see in the data? If you’re just looking at, for example, the seating chart and you’ve marked on there who participated and how, what do we notice? Is it all one kind of students that meets a certain category?

00;12;50;04 – 00;13;09;27

Chrissy Beltran

Is it all students in one part of the room? Because that’s where the teacher was really positioned. What patterns do we notice in that engagement data? What patterns do we notice in student language? Well, I see some students are giving one word answers and some students are giving lengthy answers. And the teacher response was the same. So we’re never encouraging them to speak into more complete sentences.

00;13;10;00 – 00;13;26;01

Chrissy Beltran

And then you can also ask what is your next step? Now you mean again, you may need to do some guidance and that’s okay. If you need to guide teachers in any of these areas and provide a little more detail, that’s okay. That’s why you’re there. You’re allowed to have expertise, and you’re allowed to give feedback that is framed in a constructive and supportive way.

00;13;26;08 – 00;13;47;28

Chrissy Beltran

But if we can ask questions to help teachers notice things that is going to be so impactful, because if they realize it themselves, suddenly it has a value, right? So what is the next step? If your teacher is unsure of the next step, dig back into the data and then talk about what you could do possibly to make this to to really get towards the goal that you’re trying to accomplish together.

00;13;48;00 – 00;14;06;11

Chrissy Beltran

Now, one of the things that I talk about is how we need to always be coaching. This is our coaching mindset, right, that I talked about a few episodes ago, and I’m not done talking about it because it’s so important as you are having a reflective conversation about the observation, there are a few follow options, a follow up option.

00;14;06;11 – 00;14;25;05

Chrissy Beltran

So you might say, okay, yes, I see that, but you’re unsure of where to proceed from here. I would be happy to model a lesson or to co-teach a lesson with you, and we can plan it together. Or. Yeah, now that you’ve really narrowed down what the problem is here, that you’re trying to, you know what you’re trying to change and the way things are is not going the way you want it.

00;14;25;07 – 00;14;43;19

Chrissy Beltran

Maybe we can set up an opportunity for you to visit another classroom, or you can lay out all the student work from the observation, analyze it, or analyze data together and make a plan from there. And like I mentioned earlier, video coaching is often a great option if a teacher is not really seeing something or really for any of us.

00;14;43;19 – 00;15;01;10

Chrissy Beltran

I mean, it doesn’t just have to be somebody who doesn’t notice that kids are throwing pencils at each other their whole lesson. It can be for anyone who would like to grow in their practice and is unsure, because painting the picture that you can see yourself doing all the things that is irreplaceable. We cannot always picture what we look like when we do things.

00;15;01;10 – 00;15;17;19

Chrissy Beltran

That’s one of the reasons I don’t love recording my podcast, because I notice things about myself that I did not previously notice. And I’m just sitting here talking to a camera in front of a classroom you notice a lot. And so recording a piece of the lesson is such a helpful way to get teachers to kind of see something that maybe they hadn’t seen before.

00;15;17;22 – 00;15;39;22

Chrissy Beltran

So that’s the basics of providing a good observation. Make sure it’s focused on a goal and then really take that goal target during the lesson, what it is that you’re looking for. And make sure your feedback and questions are really focused around that goal. Now you can bring up another thing or two, but you don’t want to have a list of like 27 things like I did in the feedback that I was trying to write for that lesson, it’s overwhelming.

00;15;39;23 – 00;16;03;00

Chrissy Beltran

Teachers aren’t going to walk away with anything. They’re going to feel terrible about themselves. And that’s not going to benefit anybody. So instead, stay focused. And that’s the main takeaway when it comes to observations. Next week we are talking about how coaches can use co-teaching to support teachers. This is such a valuable strategy, but it is one that really stressed me out whenever I was a new coach, so I can’t wait to share this one with you.

00;16;03;02 – 00;16;13;25

Chrissy Beltran

I have a complete turnaround on it now. I love it! And that will be next week. Until then, happy coaching!

00;16;13;27 – 00;16;22;21

Chrissy Beltran

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