A Simple Classroom Management Plan for Coaches, Ep. 130 Instructional Coaching with Ms. B

A Simple Classroom Management Plan for Coaches, Ep. 130 Instructional Coaching with Ms. B

Chrissy Beltran [00:00:01]:

Hey, coach. Don’t worry. We’ll get to your episode in just a second. I just wanted to let you know that if you’re listening to this in December or January, it’s time for instructional coaching with miss b to take its little holiday hiatus. Every year from December through January, I take a a season break. Then in February, the new season comes roaring in, and I share all the latest coaching strategies, troubleshooting, and ideas with you. I plan the season starting in January. So until then, I’d love to hear from you. Head to buzzing with miss b dot com slash survey to share your thoughts on the podcast. You can help me plan episodes and chat with guests that really help you with your everyday coaching work. I want these episodes to be meaningful and helpful, so please tell me what you’re thinking. If you complete the survey, you’ll also be entered to win a $25 gift card from a place of your choosing as long as I can grab it online. Head to buzzing with missb.com/survey and let me know what you think about instructional coaching with miss b, the podcast, and enter to win the survey the giveaway. I’m also using this hiatus to share some of the most popular episodes from the last six years. I know. Crazy six years. Maybe you’ve missed some very special gems that would help you out in this next semester. So keep looking for an episode every week in your podcast player. And, of course, you can listen on the blog at buzzingwithmissb.com/podcast. Happy holidays and happy coaching, everybody. Happy New Year, coach. By this time of year, you might feel like your coaching is a little out of your control.

Chrissy Beltran [00:01:25]:

You might be spending days on random tasks that don’t actually impact teaching and learning. You might have taken on responsibilities that are keeping you from coaching teachers. Let’s get your coaching on track in ten minutes a day. Head to buzzing with missb.com/newyear. The five day challenge starts January 12. Can’t wait to see you inside.

Chrissy Beltran [00:01:45]:

Are you new to coaching? Starting out as a coach can be incredibly overwhelming, especially when you aren’t given much direction from your administration. That’s why I created the new coaches playbook. It includes a roadmap to help you start building your coaching foundation and a guide to seven podcast episodes in order that will give you the steps and ideas you need to build relationships, define your role, communicate with your admin, and make a plan to start coaching. Coach, what’s your instructional coaching personality type? Have you ever wondered what superpowers make you a really strong coach and what areas you can strengthen with just a little bit of direction? Well, now you can find out. I created the what’s your instructional coaching personality type quiz to help you answer this very question. Just head to buzzingwith missb.com/quizwithacapitalq to take the two minute quiz and get your coaching personality type sent right to your inbox. Even better, you’ll get a playlist of podcast episodes handpicked just for you to help you hone your superpowers and strengthen your areas of growth. I’m so excited to share this quiz with you, so don’t wait to take it. Go to buzzingwith missb.com/quizwithacapitalq and learn so much about your coaching style. You’re listening to Buzzing with Ms. B, the coaching coaching podcast, where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach, and every coach does too. I’m Crissy Beltran, an instructional coach, resource creator, and coffee enthusiast, and I’m your host. Stay tuned for practical tips and honest coaching talk that will help you coach with confidence. Hey, coach, and welcome to episode 130 of buzzing with miss b, the coaching podcast. This is the last episode of season three. After this, I’ll take a little hiatus until February, and this really gets me to dig in and do some good planning for season four of the podcast to make sure that it keeps providing you with the support and all of the information that you need to be a great coach and that it actually meets your needs. So I’m I want you to help me out. As I think about what would be most helpful to you next year, it’s so important for me to know what’s helped you the most this year. So I have two ways that you can share with me about this podcast so I know

Chrissy Beltran [00:04:13]:

what to plan for for season four. The first one is just really easy. Share your thoughts on Instagram. Just share your story with your favorite or best takeaways and tag me at buzzing with miss b. It doesn’t have to be you talking to the camera, but it totally can. You could just screenshot this episode and type text over it and tag me at buzzing with miss b. I’d love to hear from you about the podcast and how it’s helped you as a coach, and that’s really the easiest way to do it. It’s just to share it with me via social media. The second way that you can help me out is I, need to start figuring out my content for season four. So there is a survey at www.buzzingwithmissb.com/feedbackwithacapitals. So if you take the survey, you can give me the feedback that I can use to plan the content for the next season. It’s not too long, and it’ll be super helpful to me. You just go to www.buzzingwithmissb.com/feedbackwithacapitalf and share your thoughts. Fill it out. It submits automatically, and it will be so helpful to me in figuring out what it is that you wanna learn about next season. Oh, and I just realized there’s one more way that you can share your response to the podcast with me. It’s a review. If you leave me a review on iTunes or or because it’s Apple Podcasts, I will be forever in your debt. You just let me know what you think, and it’ll help me reflect on the podcast. Plus, it’ll help other people find it and really continue to grow this coaching community. Because the more voices we have, the better we can all grow together. This is the last episode of season three, but it’s also the last episode in our series on behavior. I hope that some of the previous episodes have helped you kind of frame your thinking about behavior and how you can support teachers through implementing something new that can change the way their classrooms work or make adjustments or have a different lens for viewing behavior and management. But this episode is just for you, coach. And as a coach, one of the most stressful things, the thing that I personally used to have nightmares about, was modeling or co teaching in a classroom that had zero

Chrissy Beltran [00:06:20]:

behavior plan. It was just awful. I won’t remember once. Okay. I’m gonna share this story with you. A horror story. Once I was modeling a small group lesson in a classroom where the kids were never redirected. The teacher just didn’t adjust their behavior. I assumed during the lesson that the teacher wanted to handle behavior. And, I mean, if I had it had been my classroom, I would have handled the behavior because I was doing a small group lesson as a coach. I was modeling a small group lesson, and the other kids were working independently on something she had set them to do. So I thought she would handle their behavior. So the problem is that she assumed that I was going to handle the behavior for the rest of the classroom. We didn’t talk about it. Right? That’s I mean, that’s like coaching one zero one. Right? But I didn’t. So one student had been put in charge of writing the names of other misbehaving students on the board. This student was working in her center. It was a reading center. And as soon as someone ticked her off, she’d run to the board and she’d write their name with a with a dry erase marker. Then she’d run back to her center and keep working for a while, you know, working, I put in quotation marks. Because, really, she was just paying attention to what all the other kids were doing. That was what the teacher told her was her job. So then she’d run back to the board and write somebody else’s name. And if the original kid wasn’t bothering her anymore, she’d erase their name. And then she’d, you know, quote, do her center work for, like, forty five seconds, and the whole process would start over with her running back to the board and running back to the center. And the volume was growing because kids were complaining about, you know, Darcy, stop writing my name on the board. And Darcy was like, and it was just chaos. So the volume was growing, and kids were shouting to her to tattle on each other. And I waited to see what the teacher was gonna do because she was the one that had put this into place, so I thought surely she would address it. But she was apparently doing the same

Chrissy Beltran [00:08:15]:

thing and waiting for me to respond to the situation. So in the end, after the lesson, she gave me some feedback on the lesson I taught, and then she said, I thought you were gonna tell the other kids something because they were getting rowdy. So this was, like, a total face palmed. My lesson was learned. Always make a plan for behavior with the teacher before you work in the classroom because we assume a lot of things, and we’re not assuming the same things about how behavior will be managed during those lessons. Another time, I was modeling a lesson in the classroom, and this classroom totally stressed me out. You know which classroom this was. You can picture it. It’s the one you walk past without making eye contact because the kids have zero control over anything coming out of their mouth. They just say whatever they wanna say. They do whatever they wanna do, and then the teacher handles the behavior issues by yelling at certain kids and not at other kids. So this is a classroom where zero learning is taking place because everybody’s doing whatever, and then the only management strategy is to yell at somebody. I modeled the lesson, and I used these whole brain teaching strategies that I’d worked on the previous year when I was a classroom teacher, and I had a class full of kids with challenging behaviors. So I was like, okay. What am I gonna do to survive this year? And I did whole brain teaching strategies, and it really helped both the kids and me. So I was on top of every behavior in that classroom where I was modeling. I was redirecting. I was, keeping kids engaged to try to keep the misbehaviors at bay. I would bring them back to the learning if I saw them starting to stray. And at the end of the lesson, I sat briefly with the teacher to hear her thoughts, and this is what she told me. Well, they were a little better, but it was just because you were here. But I was shocked because I thought it was obvious that I was proactively doing things to support student behavior. It wasn’t just because there was another person in the room. Other people had been in the room before, and the kids still did whatever they wanted.

Chrissy Beltran [00:10:07]:

It was because I had specifically designed my lesson and my management strategy in such a way that it would support their behavior based on the needs that I have received. K? But she didn’t see that. It just sort of surprises me to think about it in this way. But from that experience, I did learn a couple of lessons. You really need to make a proactive plan that you purposefully will teach during the beginning of your modeled or co taught lesson because it needs to be apparent to the kids. And prior to that, you need to ensure that the teacher understands that this is what you are doing, that you are deliberately instituting a behavior approach based on what you see. So I actually got the opportunity to try out my new learning a couple of months later, and I wasn’t super excited about it. This is one of those, responsibilities that coaches often have that you kind of wish you could avoid, but it tends to become necessary towards the end of the year. Our state assessments were coming, and the principal was concerned about the learning in one of the classes that had demonstrated consistent misbehaviors and still had no recognizable behavior management plan. And it was actually the second class that I just described. It still hadn’t changed despite my model lessons and co planning with the teacher because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to make help that teacher make changes in the way behavior was handled in her school because behavior always seemed like such a personal thing to me. It seemed like such a thing that it it was in keeping with your philosophy on students and on learning, and it was tied up in lesson design and classroom design. And it seemed like this mammoth thing to undertake, so I didn’t know how to start having the dialogue with the teacher. But I should’ve known she was frustrated. I did see it, but I thought she was just blaming the kids. In truth, she was just complaining the only way she knew how to ask for help. So here’s the truth. The principal asked me to pull students out and give them remediation to help them prepare for the test. And I you know, I like I mentioned before, I don’t love to do this

Chrissy Beltran [00:12:13]:

because I believe that the learning doesn’t really transfer, and kids sometimes lose their respect for their from the for their teacher that they had before. But it was apparent that something drastic needed to be done because kids were gonna be held accountable for their results on this assessment, and they were not prepared at all. So I set up my coaching room, and I organized my space specifically to support the students. I still kept them in groups. I really do believe in that as a teacher, and I believe that there are things that you can do to support students working in that setting. So more than classroom design, more than lesson planning, more than anything else, I spent a good chunk of time creating a really simple, proactive, positively framed behavior management plan for the students because I knew that I had to have something in place before they ever walked in the door. The hardest part for me about working with kids in a model lesson or in a coach taught lesson or in this case, in short bursts of test support, because it was, like, forty five minutes or an hour a day, for, you know, a couple weeks, is that it’s not like working with your own class. As teachers, we all had ways of working with our own students. Right? You build relationships with them and you know them and you know what they need and who needs a nudge and who needs nonverbal communication and who just needs a reminder and who will who will redirect themselves in just a minute. But when you’re a guest teacher in a classroom, you don’t usually have the benefit of those relationships. You’re kinda starting from scratch the first day that you start teaching content. So this was one of the reasons that it was so important to me to get the behavior plan right. I was gonna have to fill in for the lack of the relationship that I had with students and for their lack of self management that had been demonstrated to me all year long in this classroom down the hall. So this this approach had to be clear and purposeful and explain what was expected every minute of the lesson, but it couldn’t be too complicated. I didn’t have them for all day. On top of that, it wouldn’t

Chrissy Beltran [00:14:08]:

just need to support their behavior. Honestly, it would have to support my behavior in those tough situations where I didn’t know what to do. In those moments when students are not doing what we’ve asked them to do, sometimes when we don’t have that relationship with them or really in any situation, we might fall back on the way that we were raised or the way that we were taught, and we try to assert our power or our position. It’s it’s expected you should do what I’m telling you to do because I am this position that I am and you are not. Right? But that’s that’s really not okay, and that often pushes students to do the same thing, and you end up with a power struggle. I know that if I come at my four year old daughter in a very assertive, frustrated tone and body language, she’s gonna match me and exceed it every single time. That is just who she is. She’s like, you’re gonna bow up on me. I’m gonna bow up on you, and you are gonna be shocked at how big my four year old frame can get. So knowing that, you know, knowing that I am the one that would introduce that into the dialogue, well, I’m the one that has to make the change. Right? I cannot get involved in a power struggle, especially by being the one who introduces the power struggle to begin with. That’s just an immediate fail before you even start. So I had to create a plan that would give me a positive, purposeful, specific language to use with kids when they needed to be taught and to be redirected. So I first had to identify what kinds of behaviors the students were frequently demonstrating so I could build a plan that would help support them in those areas. Basically, there was a lot of shouting out, a lot of disengagement with learning. They’d find other more interesting things to do, like in their desks or around the classroom. They’d get up and kind of wander around, sharpen pencils as an excuse to, like, take a tour. They were making inappropriate or unnecessary remarks to their students or to the teacher, and there were lots of physical outbursts where students would, like, toss school supplies at each other or poke each other. And sometimes

Chrissy Beltran [00:16:02]:

there were more significant physical interactions as well, and I had to create the stage set the stage in a way that none of that would happen. They were all really in disinterested in learning, and they complained about everything they were asked to do. And I’m not describing any classes here. I’m sure that you’ve seen classrooms like this before. So the first thing I did was create the expectations that I felt would address those behaviors I was seeing, and I came up with three things. I didn’t want more than three. I felt like three was what the kids could manage, keep track of, and actually attempt to do. The first one was have a positive attitude. The second is be engaged in your own learning, and the third is control your comments. So just to note here, I have since used this approach with other classrooms with the same exact expectations, and it’s been very successful even though they were designed to meet those students’ needs, turns out most kids have these needs on some level one way or another. However, I do know teachers who have loved it, the actual approach, but they’ve changed some of the behavior expectations to match the challenging behaviors that they saw in their own classrooms or language that they are more comfortable using, and that’s great. This language isn’t super specific and is the problem that you might be perceiving, and students know how to don’t know how to do all of these things. Okay? Like, be have a positive attitude. What does that even mean? Right? And I don’t want you to worry. I’m gonna get to all of that because we have to make it crystal clear for kids. So on the first day that I work with the students, I shared a set of classroom expectations. These are the expectations. And I know we usually ask students to contribute to the expectations to build them, but I was like, okay. No. We need to make it clear. This is what’s happening. They’re coming in here for a short period of time every day. I didn’t even have time to build the expectations with them if I wanted to. So I needed to replace those behaviors that I was seeing that they didn’t have. I they were they was replacing the negative behaviors with more positive ones.

Chrissy Beltran [00:17:57]:

So I charted them out exactly the way that I just stated them, and I left space in between each one. Have a positive attitude. Be engaged in your own learning. Control your comments. So then as a class, we discussed what each one looked like and what it meant. Have a positive attitude. What does that look like when you have a positive attitude? Your face might look pleasant. You might be if you you approach a problem, you might feel like, I believe I can do this. We talked about things like that. And then I added a gesture for each one. And I also added absolutely terrible sketches or details under each expectation to help students recall what they look like. For have a positive attitude, we took our hands and we made, like, two, like, kind of like l frames with our thumb and first finger. And we framed

Chrissy Beltran [00:18:42]:

our face and we rocked our

Chrissy Beltran [00:18:43]:

face from side to side with a smile on it. Have a positive attitude. That was how and we chanted at the same time. Be engaged in your own learning. I put my fist on my hip with my left hand. With my right hand, I raised my pointer finger and tapped my brain because we wanted to show that our brains were engaged in the learning. And control your comments, we took our hands and made them into kind of a little megaphone around our mouth and said control your comments. It was not rocket science, people, but it was really impactful. The first day took a little bit longer to really review each expectation, but it was totally worth it. It was investment of my time, and I absolutely had a return on that investment. Each morning, as we began our work together, we reviewed the expectations in one way or another, whether we chanted them and used gestures, having students act out examples or nonexamples, or brainstorming words to describe what the expectation looked like. During instruction or working time for the students, I would look out for those three things. Honestly, I taught the content, but when it came to my dialogue with students, a lot of it was focused on observing those behavior strategies. Because if kids cannot be in control of their own behavior, they’re not gonna learn anything. So I would I would notice a team, and when I saw a group demonstrating one of the expectations, I would say something like, team two is really working on being engaged in their own learning. Each team member is participating by sharing their thinking. And I’d add a tally point to a table that I had made on the bottom of the expectations chart. I just wrote team one, team two, team three, team four, and the next to it, I would put a point on there if I saw them demonstrating one of the behavior expectations. There were no prizes. There was no reward. Sometimes we would do a little clap, like a special clap that we would do. Whenever everybody observed that another team was doing something great, we’d all go, like, with our hands in the air, and it was like a one second celebration. Okay? It was quick, and then we moved on. But it was just for recognition. It

Chrissy Beltran [00:20:41]:

was not and for recognition, I see you doing this great thing. I see you working on this strategy, this behavior expectation that I haven’t seen you do before. Great work. Keep it up. I know what you’re doing. You can keep trying. After about a week of this, students were able to identify when they were or weren’t following an expectation. And so at this point, I introduced the goal setting aspect of our classroom expectations. Each team each morning would choose one expectation to focus on and work on throughout the day, And they discuss for maybe two minutes about which expectation would be their goal, why, and how they would practice that expectation during the day. And then I just write them on index cards and tape them to their group supply bucket to their table. I guess you could make them each a little ring, like a binder ring, and then whole punch some index cards and write be engaged in your own learning, have a positive attitude, control your comments on each one, and they could just flip the one that they’re gonna focus on to the front. But I didn’t do that. I did not plan ahead. I just wrote it on I kind of did this on a whim, actually, and I wrote it on index cards for them, and they just taped it to their supply bucket. So during their their work that day, whenever students worked on that expectation, they could prompt each other for it in a respectful manner. Like, remember, we’re trying to control our comments, and we talked about how we could prompt each other. At the end of the day, the groups would evaluate their progress toward their goal, and then they would decide on tomorrow’s goal. Would it stay the same or would it change? And they could think about, well, what do we do today? What needs did we have today that one of these expectations would help us accomplish? So I heard a conversation once that I was like, okay. This is this is working. I remember one of my students said, I still think we need to work on controlling your comments. And one of the other kids said, I don’t think so. I need to be engaged in my own learning. The first student said, but you made a lot of comments

Chrissy Beltran [00:22:28]:

today that weren’t related to the story that we were reading. And he said, yeah. And if I was engaged in my own learning, I wouldn’t have been saying that stuff. And I was like, wow. Oh my goodness. That is such a good point. And so they did. They set their goal as being engaged in their own learning the next day, and that’s what they practiced. So then how does this bridge to modeling or co teaching? During the pre conference, whenever I meet with teachers at the beginning of coaching cycle, I now ask the teacher about their behavior management plan. I say, is there a specific behavior plan I should follow during the lesson, or will you handle the behavior? Teachers who have a consistent plan or a class that’s fairly well managed or whatever their approach is will usually say they’ll handle the behavior that they’re not really that concerned about and they’ll handle it. Teachers who do not have a plan or at least they don’t have one that works so they can see that their management is not happening, they will usually say they would like to see what I will do. Some of those is like, well, I wanna see how you handle it. And some of those are sincerely saying, I don’t well, maybe what what can we do? They’re asking for help. So that’s when I share the behavior expectations plan regardless of whether it’s a threat or it’s an opportunity to collaborate. They’ve never said no. They always say, go ahead. Try it. Yeah. I wanna see. At the beginning of my modeled or co taught lesson, I introduce the behavior expectations to students briefly, and then I have a very short discussion about what each of them looks like. And then I add team points to the bottom. If the students aren’t seated in teams, I just designate which kids would be part of which team. Like, oh, wait. Hey. You first four on the on the right, you’re team one. Second four on the right, you’re team two. And I explained that their team can earn these points for demonstrating these behaviors. Drop a lesson. I point out when the behaviors are being demonstrated by saying, you know, team three is demonstrating. Control your comments. Everything they’re talking about is focused on the work, and they’re doing

Chrissy Beltran [00:24:23]:

it together. Go team three. And we do the class cheer at a point and move on. They get nothing from the points except a celebration. I don’t give them prizes or anything. Over time, they need less celebrating, and they don’t need you to point it out. But when you’re a guest and you’re only there for a short time and you’re introducing something new, it’s so important to be very obvious and transparent about what they’re working on and and when we see it in action. Most of the time, when I debrief with a teacher, they tell me that they wanna implement the system too. I’ve even had teachers who have, like, pretty decent management say, you know what? I like something about this, and I’m gonna try it out. And that’s honestly how behavior changes. We give the teachers the tools to work with the kids, and the students need the tools as well. We show both groups of people what they look like when it works. And it’s also how to stop having nightmares about modeling in other classrooms because I have been there, and this is so supportive of coaches going into different rooms. It doesn’t take too long. I mean, it takes, you know, maybe fifteen minutes the first day, maybe five days after that. So if you’re interested in implementing this approach yourself, you can grab the free download classroom management for coaches. It includes the details on how to use this really simple behavior plan when you’re coaching in a classroom, and it also includes a picture of the chart that I build with students. Nothing fancy. I mean, it’s really not fancy at all, but it’s, an easy reference for you. If you wanna learn a little bit more, you can check out episode five, your modeling career, episode six, teaching with a partner and episode one twenty three, analyzing behavior data with teachers. Now, remember, this is the last episode of the season. And so don’t forget to tag me on Instagram with your takeaways from this season, season three, or take the survey at buzzingwithmissb.com/feedbackwithacapitals. Or remember, you can leave me a review on Apple Podcasts. I read every review and they seriously make my day. I would love to hear from you because you are the reason I create this podcast and you don’t know what happens

Chrissy Beltran [00:26:25]:

when you put it out in the world. So if you can tell me about how it’s impacting you, it will give me the fuel that I need to to keep going. I would love for you to join me in February for season four. And until then, happy coaching. Thank you for listening to Buzzing with Miss b, the coaching podcast. Want more coaching ideas? Check me out at buzzingwithmissb.com and on Instagram at buzzing with miss b. If you love the show, share it with a coach who would love it too, or leave me a review on iTunes. It’s free, and it helps others find this show. Happy coaching.