All the Coaching Feels, Ep. 88 Buzzing with Ms. B: The Coaching Podcast

All the Coaching Feels, Ep. 88 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 Chrissy Beltranto 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 Chrissy Beltrandot 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.

Chrissy Beltran[00:01:20]:

Happy New Year, coach. By this time

Chrissy Beltran[00:01:22]:

of year, you might feel like your coaching is a little out of your control. 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.

Chrissy Beltran[00:01:42]:

Can’t wait to see you inside. 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 Krissy 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. Welcome back to Buzzing with Miss b, the coaching podcast. It’s me, your host, Krissy Beltran, and I am so excited that you’re here today. You guys, this is season three of this podcast. It’s season three, and a lot has happened since I made the decision to start recording on season one. There’s been a pandemic, like, a real one that affected every single person on Earth, including you and me. And in my own little bubble, we have a new member in the Beltran Seneceros household. My daughter, our daughter, Eva May or Evie, was born on March 25, and she was born eight weeks early. It was a rough go of it. I actually spent five weeks in the hospital before she was born trying to keep the bun in the oven safely long enough for her to grow a bit more, and we made it to thirty two weeks. Evie decided to join us earlier than planned. So she spent a month in NICU, and now she’s doing great. As of the day of this recording,

Chrissy Beltran[00:03:09]:

she has learned the sign for milk. She babbles mama ma, dada dada, and boo boo boo. I don’t know. She loves that one. She does not enjoy rolling. She has done it, but she does not choose to do it. But she does enjoy sitting, and she loves eating, and she loves watching her big sister Annie jump and dance or do really anything at all. And she is just a constant joy. She is cheerful and sweet and just sunshine and rainbows. So this last year, I’ve been through all the feels for sure. Okay? I decided that this first month of season three is going to be about all the feels, and this episode is about all the feels. So we’re talking matters of the heart all throughout February, and I’m really looking forward to sharing these episodes with you because I feel like right now, coaching is really hard, teaching is really hard, and everybody is just sort of expecting that you act like everything’s normal. It’s like the little, meme of the dog sitting in the office on his computer, and everything’s on fire around him, and he says, this is fine. Everything’s fine. And we’re all just supposed to pretend that it’s fine, but that’s not real. Right? You know, I know I’ve gone through a lot, and I’m not on a campus right now. And I know you have gone through a lot, and that’s what I wanna talk to you about today, All the feelings that we go through and are going through as coaches. Because even on our best day, coaching feelings run the whole gamut seriously. You can feel super excited and proud one minute and then so miserable the next minute. And it’s just constant work to manage our feelings, to feel them and let them go if needed so we can move on to the next thing because coaching is nothing if not thing after thing after thing. As a coach on a campus, I felt a lot of things. And as a coach now who does work with different schools a little at a time, the feelings are way easier con to control, because they just don’t all hit you at once, and you’re not working with the same crowd of people day in and day out. And, really, so much of the feelings that we have

Chrissy Beltran[00:05:20]:

as coaches come from that experience of working with the same team day in, day out. You know the history. You know all the details. Even if you try to avoid the drama, you’ve heard of the gossip sometimes. And sometimes that’s the worst thing that can happen is if you hear what’s going on behind the scenes that you would really rather not know. That’s actually a huge piece of advice. Try to avoid the gossip and drama if at all possible because it makes it really hard to do your job sincerely sometimes. But I can tell you about a lot of the things I felt as a campus coach. So I’m gonna share a little bit about the coaching feelings that I had as a coach and when they seemed to pop up. And then at the very end here, I’m gonna give you a little tip for adding joy to your day in small bits. And I’m super excited about this tip because I learned it from a podcast where I learn a lot of things, and I think it’s gonna really make a difference if you apply it every single day. And it’s a small thing, so you’ll love it. So the first feeling, and this this is very telling, whenever I was brainstorming my list of feelings to talk about in this episode about feelings, the first one that popped up was stress, and that’s not great. Right? The next couple of episodes, we’re gonna talk a little bit about, you know, how we can set boundaries and how we can, you know, support teacher mental health and and, and think about SEL for all. You know, that’s what we’re the topics of the next three episodes are. But even when you’re trying to do all that, there’s a ton of stress in coaching work. Really, you have more to do than it’s humanly possible to do. If you add up all the things that need to be done or, anyway, everything that’s on your list, they are absolutely going to add up to more than the days that you have. They’re gonna add up to more hours than there are in a day. They’re gonna add up to more minutes than there are in an hour. And no matter how many of your lunchtimes you skip, or how many days you work late

Chrissy Beltran[00:07:23]:

or how many days you come in earlier, how many Saturdays you volunteer to come work with kids or whatever it is that you, you know, you’ve put on your plate, you’re not gonna get the list done. Because guess what happens when you mark something off the top of the list, somebody else or you add something to the bottom of the list. So the list is growing from one end, and even if it’s getting shorter on the top, it’s getting longer by double on the bottom. Stress is so difficult to handle when you don’t have a minute to yourself. So something I would really recommend is, if it is at all possible, building in even just two minutes to yourself of peace throughout the day because there is no way to deal with stress when people are barking at you, when you are running from room to room, when you are dealing with kids that need a lot of support, which often is what happens with instructional coaches is we support the kids who need the most, maybe, academic and behavior support, which takes a lot out of you. It’s impossible to find any peace, and it seems like the only remedy for stress is peace. Right? So we have to find ways to build in moments of peace throughout our day. And maybe that looks like before everybody else comes in, you’re gonna get there fifteen minutes early, and you’re gonna go into your room and close your door and turn off the light so nobody knows you’re in there. And then you’re just gonna sit there and kind of think about your day, think for your day, rehearse it, and just sit quietly and have some coffee. And that is your piece that you have to start with in the morning. Sometimes that little, you know, chunk of time, that that small amount amount of piece is enough to carry you through maybe to lunchtime. And then maybe at lunchtime, you could do it again, and that might be enough to carry you to the end of the day. We have to kind of stop, take a few minutes here and there to find some rest because if not, the stress just keeps coming. It just keeps coming until eventually you’ve got that little you know, in cartoons, whenever they show the characters having

Chrissy Beltran[00:09:17]:

to deal with too much, and they would show the little meter on their eyes, and it would go over to the tilt side. Like you know? That’s what I picture sometimes. It’s like, if one more person drops one more thing on me, I am gonna go right over to tilt. Can’t do it. We have to do it ourselves. We have to find that piece ourselves because no one’s going to give it to us. So stress is the first thing I wanted to talk about because it seems to be the thing that’s on the tip of everybody’s tongue right now and in the forefront of our brains. It’s a stressful time, but coaching work is always stressful, and nobody else is going to make it less stressful for us. Okay? The next episode, we’re gonna talk a lot about setting boundaries and saying no, and I think that’s so important. And, hopefully, that will help you address this first coaching feeling that I have on my list. My second coaching feeling is another one that I’m sad made such a, you know, high part made it to the top of my list, but it did. It’s anxiety. If you’re anything like me, there are certain teachers or grade levels that just stress you out, that when you think about meeting with them, your heart rate jumps up a few notches, and you’re already feeling frustrated. There are it we don’t always get along really well with different types of people. And so some people have a personality type that doesn’t blend well with ours, and it increases our anxiety. We think about, how am I gonna support this teacher in this? They still haven’t done this, and I have to have this conversation. We’re gonna plan for this unit, and I just know they’re gonna have a problem with this. They wanna go back to use these resources that we are not supposed to be using anymore because they’re outdated, and I know I’m gonna have to tell them not to do it. And I cannot tell them one more time that we need to do something different. And we worry about it, and we have anxiety about it. And before the meeting, we feel icky and yucky and a sense of dread. And then the meeting starts, and we’re like, ugh. Right? And it’s really,

Chrissy Beltran[00:11:11]:

really hard to get through those sessions sometimes or sessions with individual teachers that you’ve had a million times and you just know that that they’re not responding. Right? They’re not responding to you. Coaches, we spend so much time trying to give to our teachers. It’s time to do something for yourself. The teacher Care Crate by the designer teacher is such a fun way to treat yourself, and the best part is it’s delivered right to your home. Even though it’s called Teacher Care Crate, it’s full of things that coaches will love. Each month’s crate is a different theme, and it includes items to brighten your mood, day, and home. Self care items include artwork and decor, fun supplies, cute teacher stuff, wearable items, treats, and more. Head to buzzing with missb.com/teachercrate to get your first box. Using this link doesn’t add anything to the cost, but it does mean I will receive a small amount from your purchase that buzzing with missb.com/futurecrate today. 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’m 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. Something that helps me deal with the anxiety of of working with a with a crowd of teachers that I know isn’t

Chrissy Beltran[00:13:23]:

that excited to work with me or may not respond all that well to what I have to share with them, One is I do rehearse. I rehearse certain things that I need to say. So things that I know are going to be tricky, I rehearse them so I know how I can say them. It doesn’t always come out like that in the moment, but at least I have a plan if I need it. So the rehearsing really helps a lot. The other thing is I take a moment to sit in the anxiety and notice where it’s coming from, and I just sort of feel it. And I think, okay, well, my stomach is kind of hurting right now, or my heart rate is kind of speeding up a little bit right now, or the thoughts in my brain are racing around way too fast right now. And I just sit for a minute, so I kind of feel like it’s okay. This is gonna pass. I’m not gonna feel like this all the time. In In a few minutes, they’re gonna come in. We’re gonna do the work we need to do, and then we’re gonna move on. And sometimes that is helpful in preparing for these meetings or sessions that I know are going to be challenging, and I’m having anxiety about them. My third how sad my third my third feeling. I’m gonna tell you what it is. It’s avoidance. I don’t know if that cons is considered a feeling, but I feel like it’s a feeling. Sometimes going into the classroom to work with somebody that I know didn’t want me around made me feel like I wanted to stick my head in the sand and pretend like I didn’t know I was supposed to be doing that. And that is because certain classroom environments were incredibly stressful for me. Very specific rooms, just I walked in and I thought I have to plaster this smile on my face because I am not happy right now, and it’s gonna show. So I wanted to avoid it. Right? But if we’re coached, those are the rooms that we really have to be in the most sometimes. Right? The rooms that that we are needed. And I’m not saying go busting in and change everything up. But whenever you have been asked or whenever

Chrissy Beltran[00:15:22]:

they have have said, well, I’m struggling to do this, and it’s never gonna work, and you have kind of made your positive offer and said, well, let me help you. I can get in there and help you. We’ve gotta follow through and do the thing that’s hard to do. Nobody else can do it but you. Nobody else is gonna do this work. So tackling that classroom work, as stressful and and scary as it can be, and is as anxiety inducing as it can be that really makes me feel like I wanna avoid it entirely, might be the most important thing that I do that day. But how do you do it? How do you get in there and do it whenever you think this teacher does not want me around? The thing that I tell myself that might be strange I tell myself a lot of strange things to get through the day sometimes. The thing that I tell myself is, I say, this teacher doesn’t even know the real me, so how could she not like me? How could she be angry at the real me if she doesn’t even know who that is? She only sees the part of me that comes to school. She only sees the part of me that’s in her room. She doesn’t see the rest of me. So how could she be that angry at me if she doesn’t even know me? I don’t know if that makes any sense to anybody else, but it definitely helps me put it into context, put it into perspective. The people that you’re working with right now that might stress you out more than anything, honestly, down the road in five, ten years, you may not even know them anymore. You may not be working with them anymore. All that personal stuff that makes it really hard to get into those rooms sometimes can get in the way of good and important coaching and teaching. And if we pull out that personal stuff and we say they don’t even know me, so how could they possibly be this upset at me? They’re upset at the role. They’re upset at what they’re being asked to do. They’re upset at the change. They’re not upset at me because that’s this isn’t me. If we can pull all that personal stuff out and just

Chrissy Beltran[00:17:12]:

focus on the work and say, well, this is what we gotta do here. We’re here for kids. This is why I’m here. It can really help you stop avoiding the hard work of getting into those classrooms where there’s a lot of reluctance and help you motivate yourself to say, I’m here for the work. I’m a professional. This is my job. I’m gonna do what I have to do. Another coaching feeling that I frequently had, and I it’s too bad that it took me four feelings to get into a positive one, but here we are, is excitement. When I started a new project or a partnership or I had something new that I wanted to try out and I was excited, or I was planning for a PLC because I love planning, I was super excited to do these things. And it’s kind of strange to go from being super excited about one thing and then the next minute to be absolutely dreading something. But that is the work of coaching. Right? We go from one extreme to the other sometimes. So whenever I started a new project and I was excited, those were the best days. Sometimes following through and finishing the project was a little bit trickier, but starting something new and exciting, a new program with a librarian or figuring out a new unit with fourth grade, and they were excited to try it too. It’s so motivating. Those moments of joy and excitement, you really wanna hold on to them because not every day includes those moments. Right? And so the moments that are are special and joyful and cheerful and exciting, hold on to those moments for the difficult times, and remember that those moments will come again. You maybe are testing or you’re working on strategies that are just like, test taking strategies, or you are categorizing the book room or, going through the whole school and handing out workbooks, and it’s just terrible. But you will be excited about something again. So get your brain around, what can I look forward to? I once heard someone say, and I I don’t know that this is accurate, but it was something to think about, but depression is not having anything to look forward to, not looking forward to anything. And I do that kind of does, resonate with me because

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I always want something to look forward to. So, for example, this is a silly example, it’s a personal example. After my daughter’s birthday in October, I started thinking, okay. Maybe I can have a little New Year’s party for her little friends, and we can invite them over in, you know, in early January. And then we had our New Year’s party in early January, and I thought, okay. My other daughter’s birth first birthday is in March, so I can start thinking about that. I think I’m gonna do a rainbow theme. Always having something to look forward to gives you that fun personal project that can motivate you through difficult times. Because if you’re really frustrated with something, you can turn to this thing that you’re excited to work on and, start focusing your energy there and kinda give yourself a boost. Another feeling that I felt frequently was nervousness. And, you know, people have always told me, oh, you speak in front of people, you know, in big groups, so you’re comfortable doing that, and you always seem fine. You, you know, you talk in front of crowds that you don’t know and, you know, you have a podcast. But it doesn’t mean I don’t get nervous. I say a lot of things. A lot of things come out of my mouth, and many of them are probably not great. And so I’m always nervous I’m going to say something I shouldn’t. Even in small groups, I think, what did I say today that I put my foot in my mouth? That’s just who I am. I’ve come to accept it for the most part, but every now and then, I say a real winner that I wish I hadn’t. So whenever I used to model in front of a new class, that always made me so nervous. I was nervous because I didn’t know what the management was going to be. And it’s kind of like, you know, before school started in in, August or July, wherever you are, I used to have these nightmares. They were teacher nightmares, and it was always about management. It was always that I was asking kids to do things, and they were just like, no. We’re not gonna do that. We do what we want here. That was always what my nightmares were about. I remember distinctly, one

Chrissy Beltran[00:21:19]:

year, I had a nightmare that my this is so weird, That my school had been moved into a mall, and so it was like a two story mall, and you could see down like, you know, in the middle of the mall, you look down, from the 2nd Floor, and you can see the 1st Floor. And so my I was my fourth grade classroom was upstairs in the mall, and my principal had also decided that I was going to start teaching kindergarten, in the mall. And so I was I was having to move it was a first day of school, and I was having to move my classroom from the fourth grade room to the kindergarten room, set up the kindergarten room while I was responsible for managing both the fourth grade classroom and the kindergarten classroom, and I was moving things from the second story to the first story. This had to have been ten years, twelve years ago that I had this dream, and I still remember it pretty vividly. So it was incredibly traumatic for me, and it it freaked me out because the kids were running wild. Every time I left the room to go get something from the other classroom, they would lose it, of course. I mean, it was kindergartners on the first day. It was chaos. So that feeling of nervousness, of not being in control, because I’m a I’m big on control. I like to be in control. It makes me feel safe. That’s something I also have come to accept about myself. That feeling of nervousness, it it perpetuated whenever I would model or co teach in front of a class that I hadn’t worked with before, especially if I could see that the management was not really in place. And the teacher spent a lot of time yelling at the kids or redirecting in very loud and unhappy ways, and that used to stress me out. I was always nervous. And so what I started to do to really help me through that is I used to have a frank conversation about management, not critical, but I would say, what is your management system? And if the teacher was like, well and then they didn’t really have one, or if they said they had one but it wasn’t working, I would say, can I implement this

Chrissy Beltran[00:23:24]:

simple management system with your class while I’m there? And it was very basic. It was kind of adapted from a GLAAD strategy, the language acquisition strategies, where we would I would introduce, three basic principles of of behavior that were expected. They were called behavior expectations. While I was there in the classroom, this is what is expected. And, it was about, controlling their comments because I would see lots of shouting out and saying unhelpful or inappropriate things. It was about, choosing a positive attitude, and it was about being engaged in their own learning. So those three things were what I taught. I explicitly introduced them, we rehearsed them, we talked about what they meant, and then I actually would give points to teams in the classroom as they demonstrated these behaviors. I would record points on the bottom. Nobody got anything for their points. It was really just an acknowledgment, I see you doing this thing. Teachers embraced it because it was explicit. It was simple. It wasn’t they didn’t have to buy stuff. It was just about, this is what is expected, and I’m gonna notice when you do it so that you can notice when you do it too. And we’re gonna practice it every day. And so many times after I introduced that in a classroom as a tool that would that would be supportive of me as a teacher in the classroom for that short time, the teacher would roll it out with their class in a larger way over the next few weeks, and it would make a difference in behavior. So, that was a really great strategy that I tried, very simple. I have a blog post about it, and we can share that here in the show notes because it made a huge impact on my feeling of nervousness. I knew that when I walked into that room, I had a plan that was going to be supportive of me as a teacher and supportive of the kids as students. Okay. My next feeling was boredom. I was not I’m not, like, a bored person. It takes a lot for me to feel bored because I always have something I’m excited to do. I always have a project I’m excited to work on or a new idea that I’m excited to try or whatever it is. But sometimes, you

Chrissy Beltran[00:25:27]:

are not allowed to do cool stuff, and that is when I feel super bored. So, basically, when I am monitoring tests, I am bored out of my mind. Now in Texas, at the time, we were trained in how to monitor tests. You had to walk around the room. Now this is not the when whenever I first started teaching, it looked nothing like this. Okay? Security got really great really, really crazy over the last few years I was in the classroom and more so whenever I was an instructional coach in on a campus. But you had to walk around the room, active monitoring is what they called it. We had to record time out, time in for the bathroom. We had to, do very specific things to make sure that kids were on track. You weren’t allowed to say certain things, you know, obviously. I mean, you know, I can’t answer that for you. Just do the best you can is ingrained into my soul at this point because that was the line that was in the booklet that everybody highlighted because that was basically the only thing you were allowed to say if you could ask you a question. So it was pretty awful, and you had to be aware. You couldn’t sit on your computer because my computer had to be locked in the closet. Couldn’t have your phone out, had to be locked in the closet. You had to sign your life away that you wouldn’t touch your stuff because they didn’t want anybody cheating or spreading answers or any of those kinds of things. So I was I mean, it was just not good for my brain. Super boring. So I used to have to think, okay. What problem am I gonna figure out in my brain today? I had to keep my brain engaged somehow because it was such a terrible thing. And you weren’t allowed to look at the test either, so it’s not like I could peek at the test and just entertain myself that way. I you had to monitor without observing the test. But make sure the kids are working on the right part of the test, but don’t look at it. Make sure they bubble their answers, but do not look at the it was it was ridiculous. Anyway, I used to say, okay. I’m gonna

Chrissy Beltran[00:27:21]:

think about my classroom layout. And as I was actively monitoring, I’m walking around the room, and I’m thinking about the flow of the room. And I was thinking about how I have things organized and what big changes might be supportive and what systems do I need. And I wasn’t supposed to write anything down, but, you know, whenever the kids were on a break, maybe they go to lunch, then I could write down my list of things that I wanted to change for next year. So having something in my brain to do helped somewhat, but, honestly, those were the longest days of my life, and they were the very like, they were the days that I was the most tired, which is crazy because I didn’t do anything except for walk 18,000,000 steps, but in a circle. So so, yeah, I used to, keep a thought in my brain to where I could plan for something so that I at least was engaged, and I didn’t feel like I had just thrown a whole day of my life away whenever I was monitoring tests. So another feeling that I had frequently, not so much at first but over time coaching at the same school, was frustration. Sometimes you look at the classrooms and you’re like, you know, we have the same problems we had two years ago. We have the same issues we had six months ago. This teacher is doing the same thing we talked about not doing, you know, a year and a half ago, and you don’t feel like there’s any change, and it can be really frustrating. Or when teachers, push back on certain things that they not necessarily even your ideas. It’s not that you’re telling them what to do, but sometimes we are responsible for supporting them in new initiatives that come down from the top, and they push back on things that you know would actually benefit their classroom if they could envision it. Or they are not wanting to learn something new, and you can see that the kids in the room are suffering. So all of those things can result in lots of frustration because you feel like there’s been no growth, no change. That was a hard feeling for me because it was hard for me not to be irritated with individuals that I felt like

Chrissy Beltran[00:29:26]:

were perpetuating this. So my best recommendation for that is to really look back at progress. I kept a notebook every year that I was a coach. Each year, I started a new notebook, just like I started a new school calendar, and in my notebook, I would write down observations and ideas and thoughts and things I learned and stuff we could try and possible lessons and everything just went in one space. If I have too many different spaces for things, I will never look at it. But if I have one notebook, I can flip back and see what was I thinking about. So sometimes it’d be really helpful in, you know, April or May when I was feeling super frustrated to look back at October or November and see that things had changed, and maybe it had been so gradual that I hadn’t noticed it. But there were certainly, classrooms where there was tremendous growth, where teachers were doing great things, and I could see the evidence of that just in looking at the change in the notes that I had made. There were classrooms that maybe hadn’t changed as much, but it wasn’t all of them. And so by focusing on that handful of classrooms that I felt had not made growth, I was robbing myself of the joy of seeing the growth that teachers had made and that kids had made, And I was just, like, like, immersing myself in frustration and swimming in it, and it wasn’t good for anybody. Another really good thing to do when you’re feeling super frustrated is go into a classroom that is, like, really awesome and that makes you happy to be in. So if you go into a classroom where the teacher is just on it and they are doing great things, whether you plan them, whether or not, whether you had anything to do with it or not, Go look at the great teaching and go look at the kids’ learning and fill up your soul that way because a soul that is full of joy cannot be full of frustration. Another feeling that I had, and I had it pretty often, was happiness. When something went well for a teacher and they were proud of their work or they were really happy with something they did, I was so happy for them because they

Chrissy Beltran[00:31:31]:

tried something new, And then they came and told me about it, which is even better. I got I get to celebrate with them. Really hold on to those moments. And if you find yourself struggling frequently with frustration or boredom, write them down. Write down those positive, joyful, celebratory moments so that later you can look back at them and say, I have done something. I have done something. Miss Anderson brought me, you know, the the piece that her children wrote after we did that really cool poetry vocabulary, you know, post it activity, and she had her kids create this piece, and she was so proud of it, she cried. That’s a moment that actually happened, And I can remember that. She was so proud of her kids and so happy that they had had expressed themselves in new ways and used new language to shape new ideas in their writing. And I helped her do that. And if I hadn’t been there, that wouldn’t happen. Kind of like an it’s a wonderful life moment. If I hadn’t been there, that moment wouldn’t have happened. Right? So we have to take the good with the bad. We can’t just focus on what’s not working. We have to hold on to those moments of happiness. Okay. My last feeling that I’m gonna share with you is camaraderie. And, again, I I think that’s a feeling. That’s I think that’s categorized as a feeling. Sometimes you work so well with somebody and you feel so good about this project that you put out or this PD that you did together, and everything just comes together. And I wanna encourage you to savor those moments. If something has gone well where you have worked with a partner, a co teaching partner, you’ve done a really great coaching cycle, you’ve planned some great intervention with somebody, savor the moments and express it. I have loved working with you. This has been great. I really enjoyed this. Maybe we can work together again. That is how you build your team. That’s how you get more people on your coaching team and you build a culture is by expressing that the work that you do together is valuable and it matters and it’s great. So those moments of camaraderie you know, that’s a cheesy phrase, but teamwork makes the dream work. Right? So

Chrissy Beltran[00:33:38]:

whenever the it does go well and you actually can see the value of working with somebody, put that in your pocket and carry it around with you because whenever you need another go to person, there’s your person. Everybody needs somebody to work with. Everybody needs a partner. And if you don’t have one, that can be really tough. If you do not have a partner, I would recommend you taking a look at the Coffee and Coaching membership because that could be a great place for you to find a partner really anywhere across The States or anywhere around the world. It’s coffeeandcoachingmembership.com, and you can join us there to get support for your coaching, lots of videos that will help you learn how to do new things, some downloadable resources, and a Facebook community just for coffee and coaching members. I’m gonna share with you my last little bit here is the best tip I’ve ever heard for adding joy to your day. So I listened to Jenna Kutrick’s podcast, The Goal Digger podcast, and she had on a guest who was talking about, like, kind of, you know, envisioning your your life and making it the way that you want. And the guest said this is what they said that was I thought so poignant. It just really stuck to me. She said, okay. Think about your day and think about something that you are not looking forward to. Okay? So, you know, for example, you have PLC on Tuesdays like I did, and you have first, third, and fifth grade that you’re gonna be working with that day, and, you know, fifth grade is gonna give you pushback because they got test scores in, and they’re gonna be really upset about it, and they’re gonna want to do a 100,000,000 passages of drill and kill to prepare their kids for the next round of the tests. And so you’re not looking forward to it. Right? She said, envision this part of your day and think about what could you do to make that part of your day more joyful, to add something to add joy to that part of your day. Anything, what could add joy to that moment? And I was thinking about my example because, I mean, it’s totally legit happened, and I thought, well, I could probably share a really cool strategy

Chrissy Beltran[00:35:46]:

at the beginning of PLC that might cheer everybody up, first of all, but that I would also enjoy, okay, that I would get joy out of. In sharing something new with teachers, in trying something different, in giving them a tool in their toolbox, that feeds my soul. Helping somebody, giving somebody a new idea, you know, doing something hands on, that really does bring joy to my day. So if I could do that, to bring joy to my day, and it’ll bring joy to their day, everything can feel a little bit better, and I have added joy to that moment whenever it would just be full of dread and anxiety like I mentioned earlier. So think through your day, think about what are the moments you are not very excited about, maybe the moment that you are the least excited about for the whole day, and what can you do to add even a tiny bit of joy to that moment. Because if we do that, we have raised the amount of joy that we have every single day, and over time our average joy goes up, and we are living a more joyful life. So I love the advice. I wanted to share it with you today. It was beautiful, and I really hope that you can implement some of that. So these are the next few episodes that I’m that I’m sharing of I talked about earlier. They’re about setting boundaries. They’re about, supporting teacher mental health on our own as well, and also about, SEL, social emotional learning for the whole campus. In the past, I have actually shared episodes about self care, and so I wanted to kind of highlight those for you so you can go back and listen to them because I think they’re so valuable. We’re gonna dig deeper into boundaries and supporting teacher retention, but these are these are, like, a good start to get you ready for the rest of this month where we’re talking about matters of the heart. So in episode 45 of season two, I talk about, self care for coaches. I gave coaching strategies for this. In episode 46, my guest, Sarah Forrest, shared about her book, The Teacher’s Guide to Self Care, and she talked about how that’s relevant for coaches as well. And then in episode 47, I interviewed my friend

Chrissy Beltran[00:37:53]:

Celeste Nevarez, who is a counselor. She’s a, licensed personal counselor, I believe, and she talked about mental health and mindfulness. So those three episodes are a great place to dig in if you are struggling to kinda get yourself in a good place for the spring semester. And then next week, I’m going to talk in episode 89 with Caitlin of the teacher self care club. So you can learn about how to set boundaries, and I’m super excited because as a coach, I hardly had any, and I can guarantee that it was to the detriment of my coaching and my life because boundaries, we need them. We need them. We don’t know how to do them. She’s gonna teach us. Okay? So join me next week for episode 90 89 where we learn about how boundaries can make you a better coach. 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.