The First 20 Days of Instructional Coaching, Ep. 114 Instructional Coaching with Ms. B

The First 20 Days of Instructional Coaching, Ep. 114 Instructional Coaching with Ms. B

Chrissy Beltran [00:00:02]:

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 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 twins, sir, 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. I’m going to make an assumption, and you tell me if I’m wrong. You feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. I know it’s true. There are always too many things to do and too little time. If you’re like me, your boss will walk down the hallway and shout, go home, Beltran. That’s why I am telling everyone about the forty hour work week with Angela Watson. Angela was a guest on this very podcast back in season one, and she shared her ideas for managing your time, teaching, and stuff to help you make the most of your time at work while making time for home too. But that was just the beginning. In her membership, the forty hour work week, Angela helps you focus on what matters to have a purposeful and productive work day and then go home. Angela helps teachers find on average eleven hours a week that they can take back for themselves while still being a great teacher. The best part is that Angela has a new membership, especially for coaches. She partnered with my friend and coffee buddy, Nicole Turner of Simply Coaching, to create the forty hour work week for coaches. Check it out at buzzingwithmissb.com/40hourweek and get your time back. You’re listening to Buzzing with Miss b, the coaching podcast, where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach, and every coach does too. I’m Chrissy 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.

Chrissy Beltran [00:02:55]:

Hey, coaches, and welcome to episode 114. This month, we are chatting about all things back to school. I hope you’re excited to be back at school, but I can understand if you’ve had some lingering stress and frustration from last year. A couple of months of reprieve from the everyday grind isn’t really enough whenever you are actual actively working towards getting ready for next year a lot of that time. Before we even get started, I’m going to encourage you to listen to the self care episodes, which are episodes eighty eight and eighty nine of this season, season three. It’s important to put a plan in place to support yourself throughout this school year because nobody else will. Coaches and teachers need to take breaks and take care of themselves so they can keep doing the important work. Burning yourself out, like we talk about in episode 90, isn’t any way to live, and it means you won’t be able to sustain your career in these positions for long. I just wanted to make sure I put out that out there before we start talking about all the things back to school. And I know that self care is not a replacement for systemic change at all. It’s it’s not. It it cannot fix the big massive problems we have in education where everything trickles down to the campus and the teacher and coach level and student level. So it’s not that I’m I’m being unrealistic and thinking that that’s gonna save everything in education. It’s more about what can you do to support yourself while at least you can do these things. This is something you can do. So we’re just kind of like controlling the things that you can control in your life. I just wanna make sure that, you know, before we get started, we’ll talk about that. This month, I have a great series of episodes lined up for you that will help you create the foundation for coaching and ensure that you’ll be able to build on it the rest of the year. Year. In this episode, we’re chatting all about those crucial first twenty days of coaching, which are the first twenty days of school. I’m sure some of you already started the school year back in July, but I don’t want you to worry. Even if you’ve already begun, you

Chrissy Beltran [00:04:44]:

can go back and do these things to ensure you’re ready for the rest of the year. It’s still early days. You have time. K? In episode 115 that comes out next week, I’m talking with Becca Silver about transformational coaching. I know Elena Aguilar has done the space of transformational coaching, and you may have heard about it through her even on this very podcast in season one. But I’m so glad I had Becca on the podcast to talk about this approach to coaching because it was so accessible and real, that I really think you’re gonna love it. Make sure that you join me next week for that episode. In episode 116, I’m talking with the authors of the edge coach survival guide. I am so in love with the way they talk about problem solving around coaching, and it’s easy for any of us to implement some of these ideas. They are practical and doable. So check that one out for sure. And my last episode in August is a conversation with a coach in the field, Rami Royal. She shares the way she uses her coaching menu that she created after finding my coaching menu sample online. She has some great ideas for using a coaching menu to reach her teachers and to help them understand her role and choose the kind of support that they need. So definitely join us for that episode too. Lots of support for setting up a solid foundation at the beginning of the year coming this month. So let’s get started thinking about the first twenty days of coaching. I’m gonna share some week by week tasks that you’re gonna wanna accomplish in the first four weeks, And I actually created a really thorough resource to help you do all these things because as I was planning this episode, I was like, you know, I feel like if you coaches had all the tools to do these things in one place, it would be so much better. So it would save you time. It would save you effort. You wouldn’t have to create all the platforms and all those stuff from scratch. You’ve got it all in one spot. So it includes not only the checklist for the first twenty days and a calendar. It also includes a blank calendar you can edit to make your own and all

Chrissy Beltran [00:06:35]:

of the tools you’ll need to do all of the things. So this includes the data form, checklist for setting up your room and visiting teachers, a coaching cycle document, meet the coach newsletter, the coaching menu, and a blank editable one, a form for dialoguing with your principal to define your role and set goals, and so many more tools. Plus, I include a guide for most of the tasks to give you all of the details you’ll need to make everything you do really purposeful and well thought out. I’m really excited about this resource because it’s one of my newest resources in my TPT score. Check it out at teacherspayteachers.com. Christy Beltran, Buzzing with Miss Me is the store. You can just search for that and look for the first twenty days of coaching resource. Plus, if you’re on my email list, you’re getting a free component from this resource. You can actually scroll to the bottom of the show notes at buzzingwithmissb.com/episode114 and grab that today. You can sign up and get it when you sign up. Or if you’re already on the list, you should be receiving that in your inbox this month. So what’s so important about the first twenty days of coaching? They basically represent that first month of school. And if you think back to the classroom, that first month of school is all about setting expectations, rituals, and routines. So many times when I’m unsure about where to go as a coach or how to structure something, I think back to my classroom experience, and it sort of grounds me in a structure that I’m comfortable and familiar with, and it also worked. In the first twenty days of my classroom, I get to know my kids and help them get to know me. I’d explicitly state what we were there to do and what their job was and what mine was during each component of the day. So So if I was teaching a whole group, I’d explain what my job was and what theirs was during that time. If they were working independently and I was in a small group, I’d explain that too. I’d make sure they have their materials organized, and we set up notebooks in a way that would be helpful to them throughout the year, and we create systems together to help us navigate the

Chrissy Beltran [00:08:30]:

school day efficiently so that everybody can get the most possible learning and best experience through the day. A lot like that. You’re looking at a lot of teachers who are looking back at you saying, what are you here for? What are you gonna make me do? Where do I find this and that? How are you gonna help me? And we have to really purposefully answer those questions. So if you’ve done some thinking about it before the year starts, you can really maximize the frameworks that you’re building instead of going backwards and patching holes. So just like in the classroom, think about when you haven’t created a really good process or system around something, it starts to fall apart pretty quickly. And you can see, oh, there’s a huge gap there. I didn’t really address that right, and I need to go back and fix it. That’s what we’re trying to avoid by having a good plan for your first twenty days of coaching. I broke up the first twenty days into four weeks with a special focus for each week. So the first week’s focus is situate yourself in the school system. The second is build relationships and provide casual support. The third is focus on the learning, and the fourth is focus on classrooms. These are, of course, flexible. If you need to adjust them to meet the demands of your school or your job, you can totally do that. But it helps me to think about an overarching focus for each week as I kinda feel like, am I being productive? Am I focusing on the right things during this time? So what I’m gonna do is talk you through each week and some of the things that you can be doing during that week in order to make sure that you’re prepared for a really successful year. So week one, the focus we know is all about, you know, situating yourself in the school system, understanding the school, making sense out of all of the stuff, the materials, the space, the data, all of it, and introducing yourself, like, putting yourself into that system, finding your spot. So week one task, some of them are review data from last year, and I actually have some data forms for you in this resource, this first twenty days of coaching. But some of the

Chrissy Beltran [00:10:24]:

things that I recommend you looking at, depending on your grade level, of course, the range that you serve in your school, are your school data by grade. You can look at your school data by grade and then identify different, passing rates, like, which could barely pass, which could exceed expectations, which kids were way below the mark. You can sort out that way. You can look at your data by subpopulation, which is how many of your ELL students passed, how many special ed students passed, how many GT students passed, and then kind of compare that to your total passing to see where are your your gaps. You can look at your school data, by grade and whatever, passing marker you have in your area. Like, if you look at raw numbers passed versus percentage passed versus if you have maybe a distinguished or some other sort of criteria that they can reach. Like, we had kids had advanced academic achievement levels, which means that they, reach really high levels. And if they’ve had multiple tests where they scored that on, then they can, earn different distinction. And so you could identify the kids who had reached that distinction. You can compare your school data to the district or the area, which is actually interesting to see. Granted, we know that because of, systemic issues and socioeconomic issues and, you know, the way that our school system is set up and the way that our society is set up, that we do tend to see patterns where kids who come from backgrounds where they have less income and fewer experiences outside the home and more limited language experiences sometimes, they do tend to that, yes, that tends to play out in test scores. Right? We do often see that, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t get some kind of information from comparing our school to the district and kinda see what’s going on or what’s at play. That can be helpful information. Again, not to guilt anyone, not to say, oh, you’re so much farther below the district, which is obviously the way data is often used against teachers and schools. It’s not for that purpose. It’s so we can understand what’s happening at our school so maybe we can do something about it. That’s the point. Not to guilt anybody, although I do know that

Chrissy Beltran [00:12:32]:

it is often used as a weapon and a punishment rather than a tool to help us understand. You can also sort your data by, teacher and by their test. I recommend looking at, you know, in certain classrooms, are their strengths, are their weaknesses? Do they do really well in math? Do they struggle a little bit more in reading? What’s happening here? And that can be informative as you’re thinking about who needs what kinds of support next year. You can compare your growth from last year on each test. So, for example, last year, as a school, maybe you had 67% passing. You know, the previous year, you had 62%. That’s an increase of five percentage points. You could also look at growth, from last year by teacher. So you actually look and see which teachers showed growth and which teachers are are showing some differences. Now, again, that doesn’t necessarily mean that one teacher did terribly last year and there was a real problem with them. Doesn’t necessarily mean the teacher has an issue, but it can be informative because it can, you know, alert you to any of those red flags that you need to be aware of in terms of the way that your school is functioning and what supports your teachers may need. From there, you can kind of look at that data and and look at your strength, look at your areas to grow, plan some next step. Think about, you know, if you’re meeting with teachers, having observations, and getting kind of their general feedback, seeing if you can identify some root causes for what you’re seeing, figure out what common language you can build as a campus, what PD opportunities you have based on that data and where you can go next, and then you can make a plan together to how to address it. Also helpful to have that data reviewed before you go and just speak to your principal or before you set your coaching goals, which is actually the next couple of points that I want you to do week one. During week one, I want you to set goals for your coaching work and have a conversation with your principal to really define your role clearly. And, according to in the resource, there is a guide to help you do that. But if you’re not using

Chrissy Beltran [00:14:24]:

the resource, think about how you can engage with your principal, share the goals that you were thinking about, share some of your reflections from the data, and really get a good solid defined role on paper so that you will be able to introduce that to your teachers. Another thing I recommend you do is after you talk to your administration, you go back and refine your goals and kind of, you know, take what they told you, mesh it together to come up with the best possible, most realistic goals for you for the year, and then create some sort of written document with your goals on it and post it somewhere. You will see it all the time. You should create a coaching menu, which just gives your teachers information about what you have to offer just like a menu does. It’s all the things that you can provide to them. You should meet with each teacher briefly. Now this is a social call, if you will. It’s like you’re gonna pop by the classroom. You’re gonna say, hi. I’m so and so. I’m the instructional coach. I’m so glad to meet you. In the resource, I actually included a little guide that helps you think about how you’re gonna introduce yourself and come up with, like, a one or two liner that you’re going to use whenever you introduce yourself to teachers. Because the issue is when we meet teachers and they’re like, and you are? And we’re like, I’m the instructional coach. And they say, and that is or, oh, we had one of those, and all she did was x y z or anything along those lines. And you’re stuck saying something. And so what you scramble to say isn’t always the best way to introduce yourself. You might find yourself saying, well, I’m just here to help. I’m here to help you. I’m here to, you know, to help out. But what does that mean? Are you here to make coffees? No. Are you here to, like, monitor the kids while they go to the bathroom? You might do that sometimes, but that’s not your job. You wanna really know what it is that you’re gonna say before you ever introduce yourself to teachers so that you can have a good solid introduction that will facilitate the foundation you’re trying to build. It

Chrissy Beltran [00:16:17]:

also helps you you also it’s also time to set up your coaching space, and I have a guide that helps you do that in the resources as well. So with the second week, we’re looking at building relationship and providing casual support. Okay? So you can build your coaching schedule. Again, your schedule is not necessarily gonna be what you’re tied to all the time, but it does give you an idea of recurring things that happen every week that you need to block off time for. You can build in time for your little tasks that have to be done weekly or daily. You can add in, you know, your morning routine, your afternoon routine, things that you know have to get accomplished. And then you have these chunks of time available where you know you will have coaching time in those those time frames. So you have to kinda know where where the demands on your time already are so you can see what’s left for you to work with. You wanna create any documents needed for scheduling. So, like, if you wanna use an online calendar like can Calendly or Pic Time, teachers can actually, you know, choose their little time frame out of the ones that you’ve made available so that they can request your support. That’s one way to set up a really good system that will make sure that teachers have access to you, and they will know how to get ahold of you when they need it. You also can do a copy. What I really recommend is getting a copy of teacher schedule so that you know what’s happening in classrooms at what time. It doesn’t mean they have to be tied to them to the minute, but it is helpful to know, okay. They you know, reading usually happens around this time. Mass is around this time. During this time, they’re at PE. This time on Wednesday, they have fine arts. You wanna know where teachers are and what’s going on. So whenever you go into classrooms, you know what you’re looking at. You can also visit classrooms this week and leave a positive note. Great that you see already going on, classroom setup, maybe building in rituals and routines with the kids, working on management, some basic introductory lessons that are hands on and engaging, teaching kids how to

Chrissy Beltran [00:18:15]:

use manipulatives, setting expectations. Any of those things that you see right at the beginning of the year, that’s a good way to start building a relationship with teachers and say, hey. I don’t just come in to push you. I also come in to see, you’re doing amazing things, and I want you to know that, that I value that. You can also build a virtual classroom or a newsletter and create a getting to know you form and an introduction to yourself. So however you’re gonna introduce yourself to teachers, whether that’s a newsletter or an email that’s gonna go out, or if you have a virtual classroom and you wanna have an about me page, this is a good time to make sure all of that is ready to go so that teachers will have access to it as the year is underway. In another cup a couple other tasks that go in week two, you’re gonna wanna schedule and plan a coffee, cupcakes, or cookies with a coach to introduce your role to teachers, that role that you clearly define with your admin, and you’re gonna wanna build norms collaboratively with teams of teachers. So here’s the deal. You probably are not gonna gonna be doing a ton of, really in-depth work with PLCs that first week or two, but you’re gonna want to make sure that whenever you meet with PLCs, they understand that there’s a certain way that they’re gonna work together. So building norms collaboratively, working with groups of teachers, whether it’s vertical alignment or grade level teams, you it’s gonna be so essential to your supporting those teachers throughout the year. And if you skip it, it’s one of those things where you’re like, ugh, I never taught my kids to work in group, then it shows. My last tip for the the the two weeks second week of the first four weeks of school is provide classroom setup support as needed. So school is already underway, but you know that there are teachers who do not have things done in their rooms. For example, maybe their classroom library is still unorganized, and they would like some support in figuring out how they can best organize it for kids. Maybe they don’t have a really good system for where kids can turn in their work during every class period, and they would

Chrissy Beltran [00:20:09]:

like your support in figuring that out. Maybe their, their desk layout isn’t really working and they’ve had time to try it and they’re like, I do not like this. I tried a u. I don’t like the u. Can we go back to maybe Teams? Or you can actually work with them and figure out what’s gonna work for their kids. Week three tasks include organizing your coaching and curricular tools so you have easy access to everything and you know where everything is, reviewing state standards for the grade levels that you will work with to really familiarize yourself with those expectations, reviewing state and local assessments so you know what they’re being held accountable for, review curriculum to familiarize familiarize yourself with resources and with the pacing guides, and review state standards. Oh, I already said that. For grade levels that you will work with. You don’t have to do it twice, but that’s how important it is. I’m just kidding. So you also want to look into and make a plan for your BOI data. Okay. So different schools, different grades, different contents, they’re gonna have different kinds of BOI data of of beginning of your data. And so for some schools, they’re using, maybe phonemic awareness assessments in certain grades or using maybe comprehension assessments later. You know, there were years when when we did the Flint Kuder, which was a screener, or years whenever we did the DRA, or years whenever we did you know, everybody’s done a million and one assessments at the beginning of the year. Maybe you do a writing sample. Right? Maybe you do a numeracy assessment. You have to figure out how that’s gonna be administered, how the data will be collected, when it’ll be reviewed together, what you’re gonna do with that information. So you’re gonna wanna make a plan for that data. When you actually meet to review the data, it’s important to make a plan for implementation. So what are you going to do with that data? Now that you have it, you have to figure out how are we gonna do something about it or else it’s just numbers on a page that serve nobody. You might wanna provide the data already disaggregated, which means that as soon as that data is turned into you, you have to kinda break it down. During this time

Chrissy Beltran [00:22:01]:

this week, you can also create a survey for teacher support and ask what kinds of support will be most beneficial, what goals are the teachers working on. Can, it can be printable like the one that I include in this, search twenty days resource, or you could create a Google form which is free and easy to do and people, you know, pretty much know how to use those. Week four tasks include initiating coaching cycles with teachers who wanna try them out. So if you are really familiar with coaching cycles, yay for you. Right? If you are not, then you can go back to the first few episodes of this podcast where I introduce the basic steps to a coaching cycle and tell you a little bit about how you’re gonna do each thing. It gives you different options for coaching cycle. So it talks a little bit about how you can, you can model. You can co teach. You can provide feedback with an observation. So it got there’s different ways to approach it. So that those are in episodes, three three let’s see. Three, four, five, and six. So I recommend you go back to those if you’re really unfamiliar with coaching cycles. The good part is though, we actually have, a whole series of coaching site on series of uncoaching cycles coming up in October. So that whole month is gonna be all about doing coaching cycles, and I cannot wait to share it with you. I think it’s gonna be so beneficial to you. So definitely come back and check that one out. You also wanna build a documentation binder or a virtual log for your coaching cycles and your coaching work, And you can organize that easily. I used to use kind of like back in the day when we would organize our guided reading binders with those plastic pockets that were really big and they had tabs, and that was each grade level. And then behind each grade level tab, I had the normal size dividers, and that was for each teacher. And that’s how I organized my coaching cycle information. You can add to your virtual classroom what tools teachers need based on your survey that you sent out. You can identify PD opportunities based on school goals, teacher feedback, and classroom visits that you’ve had to this point. And

Chrissy Beltran [00:24:01]:

you can check-in with your principal. It’s been four weeks of school. You wanna check-in regularly and make sure that you are still working towards that plan with them that, will help you accomplish the goals that you set in the dialogues that you had together. So we wanna always be checking back in with the principal. Probably, I would say every month at least, if not every two weeks. So that’s the basics on getting started. That’s gonna be your first twenty days of coaching. And so I wanna give you a free, download that will help you start the year strong. And I mentioned it before, if you’re looking for more resources, I cannot recommend enough that you go to buzzing with missb.com, episode one fourteen. Okay. So it’s buzzing with missb.com/episode114 and that episode has a capital e and grab the free checklist download at the bottom of the note. Check out the resource on TPT as well. That’s the first twenty days of coaching. It includes everything we’ve talked about today and so much more. All the tools that you’ll need to do to work checklists, forms, invitations, binder covers, a newsletter format, data tools, and so many more things that are gonna help you start with a really strong foundation. And if you want to learn more about back to school essentials, I have two episodes that I really would love to share with you. Episode 69 is about organization and systems from a traveling coach. And that’s with Laura Williams. Who’s down river resources on T B T and episode 74 is building relationships with teachers. So check those two out because that will really help you, initiate some good practices for this year. Next week, like I said before, we have episode one fifteen Becca silver of the whole educator. So she’s going to chat with us about transformational coaching, what it is, what it isn’t and how using this coaching model impacts your school, your self tremendously. So definitely join me for that next week. And until then, happy coaching.

Chrissy Beltran [00:26:02]:

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!