Defining Roles Within Student-Focused Coaching with Dr. Jan Hasbrouck, Ep. 153 Instructional Coaching with Ms. B

Episode 153 Defining Roles Within Student-Focused Coaching with Dr. Jan Hasbrouck

Chrissy Beltran  00:01

Hey, Coach, when you think about the beginning of the school year, how do you feel unsure to helpful, overwhelmed, you’re not alone. Since the dawn of time instructional coaches have been left to figure things out on their own, resulting in frustration and failure. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Instead, let’s start the year with a roadmap that tells you exactly what to do each day for the exponentially important first 20 days of school. The things you do that first month of school will make or break your coaching year. Let’s do the right things together. Head to buzzing with mfi.com/startup to join the waitlist for my instructional coaching startup course. The course opens in mid July, but if you join the waitlist, you’ll receive a coupon code for 15% off when the course opens up. I can’t wait to help you start strong and coach better this year. My favorite summer coaching event is just around the corner and I want to see you there. This is the fifth year of the simply coaching summit, the first virtual conference for coaches, and I’ve been a part of it every single year. This online conference for instructional coaches is on July 10 11th, and 12th. And it’ll give you everything you need to change your school one step at a time. The summit is three days of keynotes, live workshops and pre recorded session, I’m giving a workshop about what coaches should do the first couple of weeks of school focusing on building your coaching menu from start to finish. But there’s so much more to this summit that you have to see for yourself. Head to buzzing with buzzfeed.com/summit to save your spot. The best part is that you have six months to watch the videos. So if your summer plans didn’t include some cozy PD at home on the couch, you can watch them when you’re back at school. Check out busy with Miss b.com slash summit and I will see you soon. 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  02:13

Hey coach this summer we’re focusing on how you can establish a strong coaching program from the get go this school year. Last week we talked about how to adjust into this new role and being out of the classroom. This week we’re looking at defining roles for our coaching work. We often talk about our coaching role, which is essential but what I love about our guest today is she looks deeper at the different roles coaches serve within a student focused coaching model. And this results in better communication and collaboration. So I’m really excited to welcome my guest today. Dr. Jan Hasbrouck. Thank you so much for joining me today. Dr. Hasbrouck.

Jan  02:50

I’m happy to be here.

Chrissy Beltran  02:52

We’re excited to have you here too. Oh, go ahead. What were you

Jan  02:55

gonna say always happy to talk about coaching. It’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a very long

Chrissy Beltran  03:01

time. That’s great. Yeah, we love to talk about coaching here too. Talking Shop is one of my favorite things. And most people don’t believe that that is true. Love to talk about shop. So could you introduce yourself to our listeners today and talk a little bit about who you are how you ended up here and what kind of work you focus on right now?

Jan  03:19

Yeah, for sure. Well, as I said, I’ve been doing coaching for a very long time, my career has been in the multiple decades now I actually started off originally, as a reading specialist. I did that for about 15 years, mostly at the elementary level and really enjoyed that work tremendously. But toward the end of that time, I had the opportunity to take on a new role that was very minimally described to me, by my boss at the time, he was in charge of all the reading specialists in Springfield, Oregon, actually the district where where I worked at the time. And he had this idea, he told me that he thought it would be a good idea if there was somebody available to work with all the different reading specialists in the various schools and help them you know, help them this way he described it. And then he asked if I would be willing to consider taking on that role. And so that’s what led me to a big shift in my work not just in the district, because I figured out quickly that this job that he was asking me to do was probably something like consultation or coaching. We were using the term consultation more back in those days. But I also realized right away that it was very different from being a reading specialist and I didn’t have very much confidence or even a vision of what I was supposed to do. So that ended, that pushed me to make some connections with folks at the University of Oregon, who were actually doing some training programs in what they called school based consultation, professionals working with other professionals in school based settings to help them, you know, achieve the maximum achievement for their students, that kind of thing. And so Jerry Tyndall actually was the professor who had just started that program. And so I started taking classes from him and found them to be very helpful. And Jerry and I really liked working together. And he suggested I just stay on and get a doctoral degree. So I studied with Jerry, that shifted me I continued my interest in coaching and developing processes for coaching and doing research and coaching. But my original interest in reading never went away. So those two things became the focus of my work as a professor, both at the University of Oregon, and then at Texas a&m University. And I think because of my own personal interest in what’s actually happening in classrooms, I always stayed connected with research and projects and consulting and opportunities to work with people in the field. So, in fact, I’m no longer affiliated with a university. That was a wonderful experience. But I felt too isolated in the ivory tower. So I just work professionally, independently now and work with schools, both again, in that field of reading. And mostly in reading, I work with the foundational skills, kids who struggle with learning to read dyslexia, that kind of thing, as well as coaching.

Chrissy Beltran  07:03

I love that I love that, that you’ve been reflected throughout your journey. And you’ve decided it’s important to you know, make sure that you’re really connected to what’s going on in schools, because that’s how we can be the most supportive of what’s happening in schools.

Jan  07:15

Yeah, yes, it’s not theoretical for me, I spent too many years looking into the eyes of children who were struggling learning to read and write. And being due to disconnected with that process, especially I would say right now, because in the area of reading, we’ve had pretty much I mean, it’s an explosion of good evidence that has, actually, in most cases, validated what we’ve been doing for 50 years. It’s not like it’s a whole new body of evidence, but it’s increasing evidence about best practices and reading. And so I’m very excited to do work, through coaching and other models to get that information in the hands of teachers, so we can help as many kids as possible.

Chrissy Beltran  08:04

Well, your focus on kids is clear in everything that you do. And all of the work that you’ve put out in the world. Everything that I’ve read for me was excellent. And it’s very focused on students, which I liked the focus on the student focus and coaching model, I think, is so important. Can you share a little bit about that model and talk about how it differs from other coaching models?

Jan  08:23

Yeah. And that model that we, we’re now calling student focused coaching evolved over, I think it’s about 30 years now. And it really started way back at the University of Oregon with my work with Jerry Tyndall, who was, as I said, doing courses we had, we had a beginning database of beginning research evidence about the consultation process where somebody was often a special educator or a school psychologist. That was the focus of a lot of the research, what were the optimal processes for those people to work with their colleagues to help students so I was learning and doing research from the very beginning, Jerry and I wrote some grants and to do some research and training. And we had to label our model back then. And we originally called it responsive consultation, looking at what the research said, and my experience in the field was that this process, whatever it is, with one colleague working with another colleague, it has to be flexible, it has to be responsive to the situation because in the real world, every situation is very different. So we worked on that model for a while. And then I moved on to the University of Texas a&m University, and ended up working with a woman there, Jan Hughes, in School Psychology, and she had been doing some similar work and she was very interested in what we did. So we kind of melded, what we’ve done together and started calling the process responsive systems consultation, which worked really well in her field of school psychology and a lot of the work that special educators do. But then I also started working with originally a master’s student who stayed on for her doctoral work, Carolyn Denton. And she and I wanted to take that basic model and try it in a coaching process. And we did that and found that this responsive model worked really well in coaching. And we named that model, student focused coaching. And that was back in the that would have been in the early 90s, when we started referring to our process that way, which is, I mean, I think, ultimately, all coaching models have a focus on students. But we wanted to emphasize that that to de emphasize the power structure between the coach and the coachee, or the coach and the teacher, that the research that I’ve conducted, the research that many others have conducted, really make it clear that that process is most effective, when there is a reciprocity, when there’s an even power sharing that if the teacher if what the teacher needs from the coach is is real direction, that goes back to that responsive model. But coach should be ready to do that, if that’s what you need for me, you want me to show you how to do it, to model it, to guide you through it, I should be ready to do that. Now if you’re asking me to model a optimal lesson in advanced organic chemistry or something I may need, I’m going to work with you the content expert because I don’t know anything, honestly, anything about organic chemistry. But I know about learning I know about optimal classroom organizations I know about student engagement, those kinds of things, we can work on that the coach and the teacher together. So if that’s what the teacher wants, some teachers may want what they want from you, as the coach is just a resource. You know, I’m kind of out of ideas, or I’ve been hearing about in the reading field, I’ve been hearing about phoneme awareness phonemic awareness, what how should I, as a fourth grade teacher? Should I be paying attention to that? Or I think some of my kids have dyslexia, what what should I be doing about that. So the the role can be very different. But at the end of the day, making sure that the purpose doesn’t get lost to professionals over here talking to each other about dyslexia. What about the kids, let’s make sure that what we’re doing is very focused on outcomes that will affect students in a positive way. So our Ma, I would say the essence of our model, when I look at some of the more popular models that are out there, the essence of the difference between ours is that we have never used what is really popular and a lot of coaching models, we have never used the coaching cycle. As a centerpiece of our work, it’s available to our coaches, if you want to observe and give feedback to a teacher, of course you can, if that’s what they want, if that’s what you both agree is going to be the best thing to help them help kids, we will do that. But we based on our research and experience, highlight a problem solving model rather than a coaching cycle. And again, we have a fully responsive model, if you want to be observed. And we’ll give you feedback. Yes, we can do that. But we prefer based on the evidence that we have that it’s most effective. We prefer to take a collaborative problem solving process, you and I sit down together, and you tell me Teacher, what your concerns are. And I will listen to what your concerns are, I have to treat that with a bit of skepticism at the beginning because classrooms are complex and busy places. And you may think the problem that you have is this one kid in your seventh period class or whatever. And it may be it may be a behavior issue that we can help that student get their behaviors under control. But it may be a bigger issue than that too. So we we try to identify we work together from the beginning to identify what the real issue is through data observation assessments, if that’s appropriate. We plan to gather to figure out what are we going to do about this concern? The teacher then is going to implement the plan whatever we come up with, with with support from me as As the coach, that’s where really coaching comes in. And in many ways, the modeling the the feedback, the getting resources, whatever it is. And then we eventually we’ve set some goals for this process. And eventually we meet to see if the goals have been met. So that is the centerpiece of the student focused coaching model is collaborative problem solving. We spend a lot of time with our, when we train people in the model, what that Why’d why that is the way they should approach things, why? What are the processes, how to do it as quickly, efficiently as possible, and when to not do that when to do something else, because that would be more appropriate.

Chrissy Beltran  15:43

That’s so wonderful, because it is your thing. It’s responsive, it’s differentiating, you know, based on teacher need, and the way that we learn and where they are in their career and in their learning curve on all these different things that they have to be really good at. And so that’s I just love the way that you’ve defined that it’s, it’s, it’s not, it’s not saying everybody’s going to go through this process, and I’m going to put you on a schedule and rotate through each teacher, each teacher is going to get two coaching cycles every nine weeks. And sometimes I get questions like that, well, how many coaching cycles? Should I be doing? Every, you know, every school year? How often should I be like, it’s really depends on your teachers and their need and and so much is, is, it’s gonna look different from grade level to grade level even let alone from school to school. And so we don’t it’s you can’t quantify what your coaching program is going to look like, we need to see who we have, that we’re working with, and start from what they need. Just like in your classroom, we have to look at our kids and say, What do our kids need? And we may have to make big adjustments and do things in ways we have never done them before.

Jan  16:47

Exactly right. I’m thinking right now of a colleague of mine, who’s a second grade teacher, she’s in her I think, 32nd year of teaching something amazing like that. And I’ve had the privilege of being in her classroom many times she is I’m sure there are many, many good second grade teachers out there. But Julie Bunnell has got to be the best one ever. She’s just unbelievable. And yet this year, she said she’s having a really rough year, she’s got a child with pretty severe emotional behavioral challenges, which affects the whole classroom. And she said, it’s one of the toughest years she’s ever had. And this is coming from a teacher with unbelievable experience, a teacher who almost Well, at least weekly has people visiting our classroom to see excellence in in action. So if we’ve said to Julie, you know, if we as coaches said to Julie, well, you know, Julie’s fine, she doesn’t need any coaching. Exactly, we differentiate because every, as you say, every year is is different. Your kids are different. And if the focus is on the students, and what help could we provide to Julie? If she asked for assistance? What would that look like for her this year? This, you know, the first part of the year, the second part of the year, it’s all differentiated. That’s the word Chrissy where we have to differentiate this, along with keeping our focus on the students. So we’re not just doing this adult stuff out here that feels really good and satisfying. Maybe intellectually engaging, or whatever. We should all be there for the students, we need to keep that as our focus.

Chrissy Beltran  18:33

Yes, every teacher deserves the coach. And we can’t be the coach for every teacher, if there’s a stigma around coaching, that it’s about whenever you’re not being successful.

Jan  18:45

Very, very true. We work a lot with that, too. That’s another really key aspect, not just of the student focused coaching model, but of all models of coaching is to work really hard to have clarity about what the role is, from the coach needs to have that as much as possible. The administrator, the principal, whoever works directly with the coach needs to have clarity around what is the purpose, because there’s limited time, there’s always limited time, it doesn’t matter. It’s always limited time. And so clarity around what is the purpose? How am I supposed to be spending my time and the flex of and making sure that is that the teachers understand that as well. So all participants in the process, but that also has to have a certain level of flexibility that the model can’t become, or the role of the coach can’t become rigid. It should be negotiated over time as things change as we have, oh, I don’t know a pandemic you know, or a particularly challenging student or a new curriculum. A friend of mine, who is a coach in California is on a year three We, I believe, have a curriculum, adoption. And it, you know, set them back in many ways to step one, and it’s just been dealing with this new curriculum has really been the focus of her work, she’s really anxious to move on to, you know other things. But that kind of flexibility and just what the role is going to be this year for the next couple of years.

Chrissy Beltran  20:24

That’s a good point, we do need to redefine that role frequently. Because every year does look different. And, and our admin all have different ideas of what we do. And whenever we don’t have that clearly defined role with admin than we are usually we’re like fighting an uphill battle, because we think we’re doing what we’re meant to do. And we’re not doing what admin has in mind. And then we’re just, we’re, it’s like a tug of war, like, this is what my job is no, this is what your job is. And so it’s very stressful. And so many schools are going through what you described with a new curriculum, you know, rolling out new programs, or pulling back on an old program and kind of creating their own over time, which is another a completely different process, and takes a lot of time to write that curriculum from scratch. And so we really have to define what is our place in that. So in those years, I’m sure that you serve more of a consulting professional development role, rather than maybe the the coaching work that we had been used to doing in the past. Yeah, we have to kind of change that. Definitely, we should. I I’m glad you brought up role. Also, I did want to know a little bit about many of our coaches are pulled into sort of admin as an administrative role they get, they start to feel more like an assistant principal than a coach. And so could you share a little bit about the differences between a coaching role and a supervisory role? Because I know that’s one of the things that you’ve you’ve written about?

Jan  21:43

Yes, we did highlight that, because I think it’s universally true in all coaching implementations for a variety of very understandable reasons. But principle, one being that most principals don’t have an in their training in their preparation, nobody really explained the role of the coach to them. And if they did, it might not have been well defined, etc. So what do principals know, they know their job really well. And they know that they don’t have enough time, or days in the week or hands to get it all done. So oh, look, here’s a person who’s smart and capable and resourceful and lovely to work with and not with kids all the time. Hmm, what could I ask them to do that will be good for the school and helpful to me. And yeah, lo and behold, pretty soon, that is the role the coach still call, the coach is an Assistant Administrator. So there’s no real fix to that except information and an agreement that there is a role for coaching and it should be well defined. We tried to do that in our book of talking about, you know, our definition, but we we definitely recommend to the coach and their admin, to have conversations and we actually structure conversations about what that what that should be, what should the goal be? What should the rules be in having those conversations initially, before the role is even introduced to the school? Or in the reality of many places, the coaching has been introduced to the school, but now they’re thinking, Oh, this isn’t really going very well. So how do we do a redo, and how to take on that process. But it starts with conversations about choosing, ideally choosing a model of coaching because there are many different sort of vague ways of doing it. Let’s, let’s pick a model. Let’s do this. Let’s talk about what are the essences of this model? Let’s talk about the realities of who our school is, what are what are the needs of the children in this school? What are the needs of the teachers in the school? What are the goals of the administrator in this building? Using those kinds of things? In some cases, actual data, we can survey that teachers what is it that you would like in terms of your own professional growth and development? Let’s look at the data from the kids. What Where are kids thriving and where are they struggling? And let’s have conversations about how my time as a coach, which is never enough, always limited? How do I focus my time to address these concerns that we have identified and then continuing to have those conversations we recommend at least at minimum three times a year that you have conversations specifically around your role? Here’s how I’m spending my time. Let’s look at student outcomes. Let’s always maybe survey teachers again, that continuing to break Have Li and purposefully have those conversations so that we do draw a line the big the biggest line, you ask what are the differences? The biggest difference really is power and authority. We talk about that a lot in our trainings in our book why I often joke about Teach dude, coaches should have a T shirt that says I have no power and no authority. And that statement kind of shocks and scares some, some coaches sometimes and principals, you know, what do you what do you mean by that? I’m, you know, I think it’s a fact. So I don’t think it should be scary or shocking. In fact, I think it should be a relief to coaches to think that they don’t have power or authority to make teachers do anything, they are not the administrator, they are teachers in a in a supportive role for teachers, they should align themselves more with their teacher colleagues than their administrator. And it does come down to power and authority administrators have, through their training and credentialing and their job description and often law, they have the duty, not just the ability, but they have the duty, the responsibility to evaluate the teachers, that’s their job, if a teacher steps way out of line is not teaching or doing something that is destructive to children, you know, we think about neglect or abuse. Certainly a principal has the responsibility to take care of that. And of course, most things in schools don’t don’t get that extreme. But the job of the principal really is to help each teacher be optimally successful, which is similar to a coach, but at the end of the day, that principle gets to has to has the responsibility and legal authority to say you’re doing fine, or you’re not, the coach should not be involved with that evaluation decision in any way. In any way, it is really problematic when a coach and a principal have a conversation about the quality of a teacher, you know, I’m really worried about, you know, Jessica, in grade five, what do you think about Yeah, I’ve been in her classroom, and that’s a concern, that is crossing a line that this fifth grade Jessica teacher, she has some legal protection, it’s personnel law, that’s, that is that is tells all of us when we are in a in a job, that only certain people have the power to make evaluative decisions about us, and that the information around that is confidential, legally confidential. Unless, Jessica, this fifth grade teacher says it’s okay for you guys to talk about me, I, you know, I’d like more feedback, I would like the principal and the coach to observe me together and the three of us can talk about with permission, then we can do these conversations without overt permission. And if things are really tense and, and high stakes, we should probably get that permission in writing. But coaches can and have been and will be sued for stepping over or even being perceived to step over into that realm of evaluation. We need to work really hard, that’s part of role definition, I will watch a teacher I will give that teacher feedback. But unless the teacher gives me feed permission to share that with the principal, I really cannot that is a confidential process. Unless that teacher steps out of bounds into neglect or abuse of a child. And then as mandatory reporters, we have to do something about that. But that line can be very gray. You know, I often tell the story because it’s so clear in the 30. Some years I’ve been involved in this I was in a classroom and I watched a teacher pull a child’s hair right in front of me. And so that was clear, absolutely clear. She knew it. I knew it, you know, no confidentiality there. But there’s so many other in 30 years I’ve seen as every coach will see things that make them uncomfortable. Things that they think ooh, that shouldn’t have happened. Now, what do I do about that? Those are difficult, challenging, but important conversations because if you coach long enough, you’re going to be in that situation and what what do you do? What do you do with that? How do you handle that? Here’s another thing to put on your list of things to have a conversation with about with your principal. How do we, how do we talk about teachers? How and when? And why and why not do that? Complicated? It’s fairly complicated.

Chrissy Beltran  30:20

It is, yeah, that you bring up a really good point, because there are things that you see that you think it’s not good. It’s really an issue, you know, and I wouldn’t want that happening with my kid. And that’s whenever, you know, there’s a real problem. And it is, it’s difficult. And sometimes you can address that directly with the teacher. And sometimes it might be an issue that you have to take up somewhere else. Right. So how can we, we’ve gone through this process with our admin, and I’m really glad you brought up power, because as a coach, you know, I was often you know, put in those positions, I felt more assistant principal ease sometimes. And that was, like you said, just a staffing issue really, too many teachers, too many kids, not enough adult. And, and so there were I can remember one time, my principal saying Well, I tried to empower my my leadership team. And I said, Well, I am empowered to make the decisions that I need to make and all these things, but I am not in a position of power. And I think that was a bit surprising to her because I think she kind of felt that I could serve as a proxy, and say, Well, you have to do that you I asked you to turn this in. So you have to turn it in, that is required. But I that was not my position. It was if there was anything that anybody that had to lay down the law, it was not me, there are things that we can do to like Team accountability and things like that. I’m selfies. But we’re not like an administrator powerful type position.

Jan  31:41

No, and it’s in my experience, the more that the principal is clear about that. And the more that they build a very overt firewall between that talking about issues around confidentiality, talking about the difference between their role and the coaching role when principals get it. And they commit to that, and they make it clear to all the other teachers things, just coaching is more successful. I’ve always seen it be more successful, it’s when it’s sort of wishy washy, and and not clear. And the principal, the teachers aren’t sure. What are you doing here? Are you really a spy? For the principal? Are you sharing things behind my back when it’s not clear? I mean, if I felt that somebody was in my classroom, and I wasn’t sure of their role, I would sure work real hard to protect myself and my kids, I wouldn’t share with them, I would not want them there, I would minimize our contact. So it’s all part of making coaching as effective as possible for that clarity.

Chrissy Beltran  32:48

So once we’ve established this, how can we get this out to teachers and our faculty? You know, how do we share this and make sure that everybody is on the same page? Well,

Jan  32:59

putting things in writing really helps as somebody who does a lot of writing, I know that my thoughts get much clearer and clearer over time, because the first draft is never the final draft. So I’ll write something down. And maybe this is these are the kinds of things that Jan is going to do in her coaching role. And the principal looks at it, we looked at it multiple times, maybe there’s a leadership team that can look at it. And as soon as we have as much clarity as we can right now, because it will change. What we suggest is optimal, because of the power and authority issues is that the principal shares that rather than me going from teacher to teacher or even talking about my role in a faculty meeting, if the principal does it and says, we have a coach, this is what she’s going to do. If you have any concerns about this at any time, come to me, because this role is important. And these are the things that Jan is going to do. And these are the things that she’s not going to do. And we will revisit this at any time. But we’re here for the kids, she’s going to help you be the best teachers you can for our students. So ideally, it’s in writing, it’s that clear that we can write it down. It comes from the principal with real authority. This is what we’re going to do. Teachers hear it, they have copies of it if it’s in writing, and we are all very willing to revisit it. Let’s revisit it at the end of the trimester or the middle of the year or whatever logical time. Let’s read through this again, is this actually are we doing it? Is this what’s happening? Are we doing something? We wrote it down, but we’re not we’re not doing it? I think that kind of work. And we don’t need to do that. I always find it funny in school settings where, you know, schools are evolving. Certainly schools are not organized exactly the same way. They were when I was in kindergarten, you know, so long ago. But there is some, but they haven’t changed radically the role of principals pretty much the role of principal when Mrs. Moore was my principal when I was in kindergarten, it’s it, we don’t have to visit it and talk about it and, and write it down and visit it again in the middle of the year, we really don’t, or, you know, the fifth grade teacher or the seventh grade math teacher, and we kind of know what that role is. We don’t have to have these big discussion, but the role of the coach is new. And, and it’s been done poorly and ineffectively and incorrectly in a lot of places. So we’ve got we got a lot of unclarity, that’s not even a word. We’ve got a lot of fuzziness and issues to work through. And we’re going to end because the role should be flexible. It’s going to vary from school to school and district, a district. So yeah, that feels like a very different task than we’ve been asked to do in schools. Because we don’t have to, we don’t have to have these long discussions about what is a third grade teacher supposed to do? Like? Yeah, like kind of know. But with the coach? We don’t know. So let’s talk about it.

Chrissy Beltran  36:14

That’s such a good point. So as people are trying to define and establish these roles, what are some big mistakes that are most commonly made?

Jan  36:26

I think allowing things remain fuzzy is the biggest one, because you can predict what’s going to Well, one of the things you can predict is going to happen is that the role is going to change into an assistant administrator finds a lead defined coaching role. That’s what happens every time. The other is that coach just because coaches every coach I’ve met is a human being that we as human beings have fears and anxiety, and strengths. And what a coach will then do if left in a fuzzily defined role, they will just do the things that they like to do and the things that they’re already good at, which may be optimal for the situation, but they may not there are coaches who are much more comfortable being in an office, analyzing data and making charts and reports, which may be an important thing for that school. But what about the face to face? What about being in a classroom? And there are coaches who that’s what they want to do. They just like interacting with the teachers, and they spend lots of time but it’s sort of ill defined. So they’re just sort of hanging out in classrooms. But so there’s all kinds of ways that things can go wrong, but they’re often driven by the needs of the system, ill defined role. And then what happens? I mean, I’ve just seen this so many times is that, yeah, the coaching role evolves to what that individual coaches comfortable with and what they like to do. And for better or worse,

Chrissy Beltran  38:09

they ended up taking a lot of small groups, I do see a lot of coaches, kind of interventionist. That way, that’s maybe your comfort zone if you’re newly out of the classroom. Exactly. Kids, you know, yes,

Jan  38:20

I would have loved to have done that, oh, I’ll just take this group and how many groups you need me that? That would have been my, that would have been my comfort zone going in and watching a teacher teaching giving them feedback? Oh, no, no, no, I did. I did not want to do that. And until I got much more comfortable and realize that it wasn’t I wasn’t watching them to give them feedback in the same way a principal watches to give feedback. And I don’t and it also as our the clarity around our model evolved. I don’t even do that. I don’t watch and give you feedback, unless you ask me to is not something in our model that we impose on a teacher. Okay, coaching cycle time. What dog and pony show are you going to put on for me? Because I’m here to watch you teach? We don’t do that?

Chrissy Beltran  39:12

Yeah, you make it of me all the different tools in your toolbox available to your team? ailable. Yeah, I like that a lot. That’s kind of I have a coaching menu that I use. And it has a bunch of different kinds of things that I can do with a teacher like CO planning, you know, learning about a new topic, being a sounding board, sometimes it’s all that they need. But then it also does include the traditional coaching cycle modes of modeling, co teaching and observing.

Jan  39:37

Yeah, absolutely. It’s a powerful, it’s a powerful process, and we need to have that available on a menu. Let’s exactly we use that terminology as well.

Chrissy Beltran  39:47

Oh, great. Okay, so what are some of the different roles that coaches can serve within this model? Because you’ve mentioned some teachers need a little more direction and I totally agree with that. I feel like sometimes coaches are taught to do only asked the question. And then sometimes teachers are like, if I knew the answer to that question, I would be doing it already. So they need the support in a different way. So what kinds of roles do you serve within your model?

Jan  40:16

Well, we have defined three. So this again, this model is decades old and very, has been created both from actual research as well as field based implementation. So the three roles that we defined for our student focused coaches, the first one is the role of facilitator. The second one is collaborative problem solver. And the third one we’ve labeled as teacher learner. So the facilitator role is one that really does distinguish our model from others. I have not seen in other formally described models of coaching, acknowledgement of the important role of of that the coaches can play. When we’re working with teachers, like the one I mentioned, Julie Bedelia, superb veteran teacher who could teach almost all coaches a whole lot about good teaching. The fact that if she’s already doing good work, shouldn’t the role of coach be to facilitate that good work, if we put that up front and highlight it, because it helps us acknowledge to ourselves and to our colleagues, I’m not here to fix bad teachers. This is not my role. I’m here, first of all, for students. And I will work I can only do that through you through my partnership with you. But part of the time will be to facilitate the good work you’re already doing, how can I do that? And how can I find some materials you need or maybe make some phone calls that you don’t have time to make or, or set up meetings or some little things and we don’t want coaches to spend all their time doing that, because that can become just a time suck of going around and making people feel good and facilitating their work. But it’s an acknowledgment that, that it’s valuable for hard working, skillful teachers who work in isolation, a lot of the time to facilitate that work, we also put within that category, all the things we do to to get relationship started, because I’m not going to be a very effective coach, if I don’t have some kind of professional relationship, not not friendship, but a professional relationship with you. So how do we get that started? That’s the facilitator role. The collaborative problem solver role is where we do hope actually that our coaches spend most of their time this is engaged in sometimes very lengthy and multifaceted process with a teacher where I start or the teacher, it may start with a teacher contacting me to say, I’m really struggling with my you know, I’m a seventh grade math teacher, my third period class is really, really struggling, I can’t seem to, you know, the the kids or have behavior issues, I’ve just have need help with that. So that’s they approach us with that problem, then we go through that systematic process of collaborative planning, collaborative problem solving, where we actually talk about what their concerns are, we gather some data, I might come in and do an observation. We, you know, look at the curriculum, whatever would be irrelevant that we come up with a plan, we implement the plan, the teacher implements the plan, I support that, and we evaluate whether it’s working. So most of our coaches start all their work that way, if in the plan implementation, one of the things that the teacher wants us to do is, you know, model and observe lessons and give feedback, we will do that, but it’s all within that context of a structured, systematic problem solving process, because that’s what the research on coaching says is the most effective, but the third role that we have, is the one that we call teacher learner. And that’s where we put all the activities that are more the typical job of the coach. That would be I’m going to do the teachers have said they’re they’re all struggling with reading fluency. I’m going to do a series of after school workshops, we’re going to do a book study. We may do some classroom visits around reading fluency. So I’m going to do some PD around maybe one time maybe we’re going to focus this whole semester on fluency, whatever that would be. That is also if a teacher says just, I want you to come in and watch me teach this lesson and give me some feedback that’s under the teacher learner role. This is where if we’re not if but when a coach needs to deepen their own professional knowledge by taking time to read an article or attending a webinar, or going to a conference, that would they put their learner hat on. So they can be a teacher, a provider of directions of professional development, or, and they should be a learner, even when they’re doing that they should be learning from their colleagues. So that’s why we call that third role the teacher learner role. It’s not like I am the person who knows all these things just asked me I will come and show you know, Coach, don’t worry, you don’t need to be that person, you but you need to be willing. You need to whether you’re willing, or not share your professional expertise and a helpful way to teachers. But during that process, you’re also a learner. So those are the three roles. And then of course, there’s the other the other stuff, the uncategorized stuff of the coaches have to do like, Ooh, you know, the, the the person that comes in and observes the class or watches the lunchroom is not here today. Would you go do that? Yeah, of course, I Well, would you monitor, you know, go out and supervise the bus loading because the principal’s usually does that. And she’s busy right now, of course, I will do that. So that’s that other stuff. We do have a time tracking system that we use to so that we can track how our coaches are spending their time. And it becomes very interesting to see if the other area is eating up all their time. That’s a concern. Yeah,

Chrissy Beltran  46:49

I like that the there was a recent episode on this podcast about tracking your coaching work and kind of color coding it into different categories. And those would be great categories, to use to see where your time is going. And if you’re spending a lot of time on other tasks, or if you’re spending all your time on teacher learner stuff that really not, you know, working with individual teachers as that, that collaborative problem solver. So that’s, that’s a really great way to approach that.

Jan  47:14

We have found it to be very effective.

Chrissy Beltran  47:17

I’m sure. This has been so much great information. I just so much resonated with, you know, the realities of I’ve seen of coaching and I just think that it’s going to be really meaningful to people. So I want to thank you for all of that. And I also want to ask you a fun question. I’ve been asking all of my guests What is your favorite thing right now and it can be you know, a book, a TV show, a product, anything that you’re enjoying? Well,

Jan  47:43

I live in Seattle, Washington. And true to its reputation. We have long dark grey, drizzly rainy winters. So it’s spring right now, I love the fact that we have a few sunny days, it looks like today is going to be one of those. So I love just spending a little bit of time if I can in my garden is nothing formal or fancy. But I like getting out and weeding and looking at the flowers and taking walks. I’m dog sitting right now for my son and daughter in law. So I am taking my dog for the walks just being outside is my favorite thing to do right now.

Chrissy Beltran  48:32

I love that too. I live in El Paso, Texas, which is called the Sun City. So we are kind of your polar opposites because we have fun the majority of the year, lots of it. And in the summer, it’s kind of unbearable, starting in, you know, mid June all the way through probably the end of August, possibly September. But in the spring it is absolutely gorgeous. And my kids you know, I take my kids outside every day we play in the backyard and it’s just we just love we love to be out when we can so so yes, I can completely understand that. I would love people to be able to find you online and you mentioned your book. So if you want to share a little bit about that, that would be great. Yeah, we’d love to well finding me

Jan  49:14

online I do have a website cleverly Jan hasbrouck.com So if you can figure out how to spell Hasbrouck you can find me and some of my stuff there. I’m probably most available on Twitter and that is also at Jan Hasbrouck I have found a really lovely community of people. A lot of the activity on my Twitter feed is around reading but also about around coaching and I just find it amazing. In turn my teacher learner hat I connect with a lot of people and find good articles and conferences and webinars all kinds of things on Twitter. So at Jan Hasbrouck my book I have co authored this version of the book I mentioned Carolyn Denton earlier she was my first co author. We wrote a couple of books on coaching which are no longer in print. But Darrell nickel is Mikkel M IC. H E L, is my co author for the book called student focused coaching. It’s published by Brooks. And it’s been out for a little over a year now. And it really just goes into more detail about the things that we talked about here today. What is the origin of that model? Where did it come from? What are the different roles, how to do those, the role of the administrator, and all kinds of helpful things about our model? So thanks for asking about that.

Chrissy Beltran  50:49

Yes, absolutely. I’m sure that there’s some people are gonna want to grab that because they the way that you’ve described, this model is just so realistic, and practical. And I just feel like it’s going to help a lot of coaches kind of define what their coaching work looks like. So thank you so much for that.

Jan  51:04

You’re welcome. Thanks for letting me share that. Yeah,

Chrissy Beltran  51:07

we loved it. Thank you for being on the podcast today. I loved everything that Jan shared because it is so realistic, so practical, and it just really does. I really did find so much in what she shared that resonated with the way that I’ve approached my coaching work. So I just loved it. And I hope you did too. And episode the next episode, which is going to be episode 154. We’re going to do something different and we’re talking to several different coaches about how they schedule their time. Scheduling is one of those things that looks differently for different coaches even at different times of the year. So I’m going to have different coaches share their schedules, and I will share what a little bit about what my coaching schedule looked like when I was on a campus as well in the next episode, so make sure you come back and listen to that one and until then, happy coaching

Chrissy Beltran  52:07

Thank you for listening to buzzing with Miss B the coaching podcast. What more coaching ideas. Check me out at buzzing with Ms. b.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!