The Real Life of an Instructional Coach: Beyond the Coaching Cycle, ep. 295

The Real Life of an Instructional Coach: Beyond the Coaching Cycle, ep. 295, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

Chrissy (00:02.018)
Hey you, welcome to episode 295 of Instructional Coaching with Miss B. Today we are talking about the real life of a coach beyond the coaching cycle. And this is part of our series, Coach Tober. And guess what? It’s actually October! It’s October and it’s gorgeous. Well, I’m hoping it’s gorgeous. And actually, October 5th is my anniversary. So happy anniversary to me. We’ve been married for 13 years.

And so we are officially a teenager today. today we are digging into what coaching really looks like beyond the coaching cycle. That’s not the only thing that we do, and how we can shift our thinking about coaching to actually encompass the reality and the totality of what coach life really is. So I am also sharing this because part of parts of this come from my book, Expand Your Coaching Toolbox.

And you can check that out at buzzingwithmisb.com slash toolbox. It’s a really great guide to help you go back you can go back to this over and over again, full of twenty strategies that you can use to support teachers in relationships, in knowledge and alignment building, and in classroom skill building and instruction. So check it out. I really hope you love it. I love it. It’s been a labor of love and I can’t wait to get it out to you. It’s available for pre order now, but it’ll be out for, you know

real order in November. So so many of the coaching conversations I’ve had with coaches around the world really center around the coaching cycle, right? And this is what we’re told is coaching, right? Coaching is you and one other person in a room and there’s a certain structure and they have to be done a certain way. And coaches are like, okay, how can I squeeze these in? I need to do this many a year. I have this many teachers.

I have this many rotations I have to get through. They each have you know, the this is their schedule, this is their reality, and I also have to have them each be six weeks long and we follow a certain structure where we start with an observation, I give them feedback, we take choose a goal, we do all these things.

Chrissy (02:14.234)
And then also I have all the other hats I wear as a coach, right? So you’re thinking, okay, I’ve got lunch duty and I have to be testing coordinator and I am a part-time coach and I work in the classroom at part of the day and I also coach in the afternoon. And so coaches are wearing so many hats. The real life of a coach does not look like you show up in your office in the morning and you see your beautiful crisp calendar with your three appointments on it for the day and you take your lunch break and it is chaos. It is

Dodging the principal because you know they’re gonna want you to sub so you hide in the bathroom for a few minutes. Okay, don’t do that. But I did do it one time. It is, you know, I have 15 minutes. I should probably check in on this teacher because they had a question about this and I don’t know if they figured it out yet. It is, supposed to plan that event with a librarian. It’s our readathon next month. Let me pop in the library because I have, you know, 45 minutes between planning periods here.

It is, I have that PLC meeting tomorrow. We’re gonna dig into data. I need to make sure I have all the data ready for teachers to dig into and all of the guides that we’re gonna use and all the tools. It is so many things. And those are that’s just like four examples of the chaos that instructional coaching can be. Because you’re a school employee and school employees do a little bit of everything, especially when you don’t have a classroom of your own. Things land in your lap that are not that are not your job. And then it can make it really hard to put boundaries over what your job is.

So the truth of the real life of a coach is that we have got to value different kinds of interactions as coaching. Coaching cycles are not the only tool in your toolbox. You have got so many strategies for classroom skill. You have got so many strategies to build knowledge, to build alignment across your teams, and even to build relationships with those teachers who are maybe not super excited to have you around. If we are not

looking at coaching with a broader view, then we are probably selling ourselves short and not taking advantage of all the many opportunities that we have because that day that you have that’s full of PLC meetings, you are coaching teachers in their thinking around the knowledge that they have in the content, in standards, in assessment, in data. You are coaching those conversations in your teachers. That’s an opportunity to to support them in building knowledge and alignment.

Chrissy (04:29.514)
You have opportunities at the end of the PLC meeting to say what is it you’re gonna apply? And then you can pop back in the next day or the day after that to see how it’s going. All of those things are opportunities. And if we don’t have the right mindset around coaching and broadening out what it looks like, we’re gonna miss them. We’re gonna check the box of a data meeting and not really g use it to the full benefit that we could be using it to if we had a co a mindset that all of this is coaching. All of those interactions you have with teachers are opportunities to coach.

So I’m gonna share three shifts with you today that I hope you take away and kind of apply as you are thinking about your coaching work in order to really reflect how what what it is that we believe about coaching. So my first shift that I want you to take away is that excuse me, coaching cycles do not have to be a certain length to be meaningful. There are lots of different guidelines around coaching cycles, right? There’s like six week cycles, there’s like two to four weeks, there are, you know, there’s all different ways.

Of looking at how long a coaching cycle should be. And I, when I am asked, how long should a coaching cycle be? I really struggle to answer that question because I have no knowledge of the teacher and their needs, what kinds of strategies and work you’re doing together, how often you’re meeting together, what kinds of work you’re doing when you meet together. I have no clue. There’s no answer to this question when it’s just how long should a coaching cycle be. It’s like asking someone, how long should my hair be? Right? That’s a big question. I don’t know. So

Coaching cycles don’t have to be a certain length to be meaningful. They have to be purposeful. They have to be reflective and thoughtful. You have to apply them to classroom work and use strategies that the teacher can benefit from. But they do not have to be a certain length to be a meaningful experience that will impact the teacher’s instruction. And that’s the point, right? It’s to impact instruction and management in the classroom positively. The second shift I want you to think about is.

Something that someone recently told me. They were working with teachers and they were having trouble getting buy-in is what they were saying. They were having trouble getting teachers excited to work with them. And they said, you know, they just they don’t want to do the observation at the beginning. And I said, tell me about that. And they said, well, I start out with an observation and then we move into a coaching cycle. So from the observation, I we identify a goal and then we we start our work together. And I said, Do you have to do the observation first? And they said, I guess not. I guess I don’t.

Chrissy (06:54.028)
I thought I did, but I think I’m the only one who thought I did. So if we you don’t always have to do them the same way. Coaching cycles should be responsive to the teacher because this is the most personalized coaching tool we have. Even in a mini coaching cycle, which is what I teach about in my book, Expand Your Coaching Toolbox, a mini coaching cycle is a pre-conference. It is some kind of classroom work, and it’s a post-conference. That’s it.

And then you can stack them up if you want to work together with that teacher for six weeks and you stack up six weeks of those little rotations, those little cycles, knock yourself out. That’s awesome. But if you have a week to spend in a classroom, you could stack up three or four of those and find meaning in that. And the teacher can walk away with something. And maybe that’s all they needed. So you don’t always have to do an observation first. You d a coaching cycle doesn’t have to start with modeling and then move to co-teaching and then move to observation. None of these things have to be the same.

The best coaching is the coaching that your teacher needs in the moment. So we want to see where the teacher is and be responsive to that teacher. So for example, if you are gonna work with a teacher and you are working with them in a coaching cycle structure, even if they don’t know it, but you know that’s what you’re doing, right? You’ve met with them already to talk about what it is that you wanna work on together. You identified a goal and figured out what the kids will be learning at learning target that day. You can to decide with the teacher.

What kinds of strategies you’re gonna use in the middle of that cycle? And these are coaching strategies. So you’re gonna say to the teacher, Well, I could model a lesson, or we could co-teach if you’d rather work on this together. You could say, would you like to visit a colleague and see how this teacher is teaching the same exact lesson in their classroom? And the reason we choose different strategies is because of the teacher’s needs.

If a teacher is struggling to envision what something looks like, they need to see it. They need to see you teach it. They need to see the neighbor teach it. They need to see somebody teach it. They need to watch a video of it. If you have a teacher who is more resistant to coaching, visiting a colleague is an easy way to get that process started without you being there invasively in their space when they’re not ready for that yet. If you have a teacher who is trying something out and they’re not sure how it’s going to go and they want your support, try co-teaching or try in the moment coaching.

Chrissy (09:10.122)
If you have a teacher who’s like, I just I’ve been working on this and I cannot figure out where it’s like the kids, it’s just not clicking, something’s not right. Do an observation, or even better, record them on video and show it to them so they can see what’s happening and they can make decisions around that. Choose your strategy for the teacher. Choose a strategy that is going to get the teacher where they want to go and be thoughtful about it. Don’t have such a rigid structure that limits the kind of work that you can do. Shift number three.

This is something that I feel like many of us have struggled with, and I know I struggled with this, especially as a new coach. I always felt like I had to be the expert in the room. And if I couldn’t do it, it was almost an embarrassment, right? So an example of this, and something that maybe many of you have have have felt as well, is whenever I started coaching, I had taught upper elementary. I had never taught primary grades. And I was like, I can’t go model in a kindergarten classroom. One, I it was it would have been challenging, but I could have done it at that time.

But I didn’t have to do it immediately. I could have benefited from the expertise of teachers in that grade level and just observed until I felt like, okay, now I’ve got an handle on this. I could have done some co-teaching. So I lie, I I rely on the teacher’s expertise in the classroom and their knowledge of their students. And then I can facilitate certain pieces of that lesson. And another thing I did that that I’m really glad that I did to this day, and I’ve mentioned it before, it’s

I am not fully bilingual in Spanish. I can speak some Spanish. I am not bilingual. The best way for me to have some kind of modeling done in a dual language classroom, which was being instructed in Spanish, is I would use one of my dual language counterparts. So there was an interventionist who was very fluent in Spanish, and she was a dual language teacher prior to becoming an interventionist. And I would ask her, can I please schedule you for this meeting?

Can I please schedule you because you have expertise in this area? we’re going to dig into phonics curriculum, you know, for in Spanish. And I would love you to be present because that will help make sure that’ll help me make sure that they’re getting the information that they need. Phonics in Spanish, phonics in English, two very different animals, and they’re instructed very differently because the languages work differently. And so her knowledge helped me learn about the syllables in Spanish being the primary building blocks versus like phonemes in English that are so much more complicated in than phonemes in Spanish.

Chrissy (11:35.003)
In in using her as a model in modeled lessons. I was able to be present, observe the lesson, have, you know, a conversation, coordinate that dialogue with them afterwards, but she was able to use her expertise to be the model in the room. So you don’t always have to be the expert in the room, but you do have to figure out who the experts are so that you can use these people in their expertise to support you in your areas of weakness.

And that is okay. So even within a coaching cycle, you can bring in the people. Let’s plan a lesson collaboratively. I’m gonna bring in the expert here who’s gonna help us plan this lesson in your content area. You’re teaching anatomy and I never taught anatomy. Okay, I’m gonna we’re gonna pull up the curriculum guide. We’re gonna watch some videos, we’re gonna ask your counterpart that teaches anatomy as well, what feedback they have or what ideas they have. And then we’re gonna plan around those things so that you can bring in the expertise that is needed and still be the coach and the support for that teacher.

So those three shifts that I want you to think about moving forward. Coaching cycles do not have to be a certain length. To be meaningful, you can adjust them as you need to and be flexible based on the needs of your teachers. You do not always have to start out with an observation or whatever strategy it is that you feel pressured to start with. You can adjust based on the needs of your teachers. And you do not have to be the expert in the room. Use colleagues as experts to meet the needs of your teachers. So basically, the idea is.

Coaching cycles are supposed to meet teacher needs and they’re supposed to be responsive. And if we put everybody in the same little box, we’re not meeting teachers’ needs, right? So instead of throwing yourself and the teacher into a massive, heavy, oppressive cycle that is following a rigid structure, just start small, build from there, and you will be surprised how much more likely people are interested in working with you and also how much more actually doable it is, given the logistics and constraints that we have as actual coaches in real schools.

That are essentially just chaos every day. If today’s episode r resonated with you, you’re gonna love what’s coming and expand your coaching toolbox. The entire book is built around one idea. Coaches need more than one strategy to meet teachers’ needs flexibly. Inside, I share 20 practical coaching approaches from quick relationship building conversations and building knowledge to high-impact classroom skill building. So you can meet teachers where they are and make every coaching interaction count. Next week, I am really looking forward to this.

Chrissy (13:59.66)
This episode all about practical coaching. We’re digging into mini coaching cycles and high impact strategies a little more specifically. And so I’m gonna give you the basics that you need to know. If you are unsure about how to make coaching cycles happen, if you are feeling un maybe a little unconfident about the strategies that you use in the classroom work operating moments, then this is gonna be a really good episode for you. And until then, happy coaching!