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Evaluating Work to Provide Evidence of Instructional Coaching Effectiveness with Dr. Jana Lee, ep. 258

Top view of desk with a computer, plant, notebook and mobile phone. "Evaluating Work to Provide Evidence of Instructional Coaching Effectiveness with Dr. Jana Lee" is in the middle of the image.

Is what I’m doing really making a difference?

Do teachers seem to be buying in or just complying?

Are students actually benefiting from my coaching work?

If you’ve ever wondered whether your coaching efforts are truly making a difference, you don’t want to miss this episode! We’re talking all about evaluating work to provide evidence of instructional coaching effectiveness.

In this episode of Instructional Coaching with Ms. B, I sat down with Dr. Jana Lee, CEO and Executive Director of Jana Lee Consulting. We break down the often murky waters of evaluating instructional coaching effectiveness. She shares practical ways for coaches to assess their progress, build strong relationships, and overcome challenges that can interfere with effective coaching.

This podcast is part of our series about your mid-year coaching reset. Listen now for evidence-based strategies to track progress and ensure that your coaching leads to tangible results. You’ll get frameworks and ideas to help you evaluate your work and communicate your effectiveness to stakeholders.

Measuring the Impact of Instructional Coaching

While numbers and data points matter, they don’t tell the whole story. Dr. Lee explains that real effectiveness is built on relationships and trust. Developing partnerships and open collaboration are the foundation of successful instructional coaching. Without these, it’s nearly impossible for teachers to feel empowered and confident enough to take risks and try new things in their classrooms.

Barriers to Effective Coaching and How to Overcome Them

Instructional coaches find themselves in the middle of both teachers and school supervisors. It’s not always an easy place to be!

During the conversation, Dr. Lee and I discuss common obstacles to effective coaching and explore strategies to overcome them. Here are a few of the challenges instructional coaches face on campus:

  • Leadership that is not supportive and does not give teachers the ability to take risks
  • Instructional coaches feel isolated
  • Inadequate understanding of the coaching role
  • Lack of alignment between coaches and school leadership
  • School culture is not strong
  • Limited opportunities for ongoing cross-collaboration among coaches
  • School leadership wants instant results
  • Top-down approach instead of a collaborative one

These challenges are often intertwined, and overcoming them requires strong relationships, clear communication, and a shared vision for success across all levels of the school community.

Gathering Evidence and Measuring Effectiveness of Instructional Coaching

So how can you evaluate your work and determine its effectiveness? Dr. Lee suggests looking at data components through two lenses: qualitative and quantitative.

On the qualitative side, she encourages coaches to gather anecdotal evidence from classroom observations, paying attention to student, teacher, and coach moves. Coaches can then reflect on what is working and what is not.

Dr. Lee says we do need some numbers, too. For the quantitative side, she recommends developing shared indicators that provide coaches with a way to track what is happening or not happening when they visit classrooms. She also mentions the value of collecting  artifacts to show student learning.

She highlights that combining all this information gives coaches a more holistic portfolio to share with administrators and stakeholders. It tells the real story of the coaching impact.

Rethinking Teacher Surveys: What Really Works?

During the conversation, we touch on the role of teacher surveys and whether teachers should rate their coach. Dr. Lee suggests moving away from subjective rating surveys because they put the work of one person in the hands of someone else and don’t always reflect the substance of professional growth.

Instead, she advocates for putting it back on the teachers to share more about themselves and the work they’re doing in the classroom. Dr. Lee recommends using a “3-2-1 model” where teachers identify:

3 components or strategies they’ve tried in the classroom
2 challenges they faced in implementing them
1 area they want to keep learning about

This open-ended format provides more insights into teacher development and the impact of coaching. It centers the feedback on the work and not personality or likability. After all, it’s about professional growth, not who is most popular.

Coaching Different Grade Levels and Content Areas

One question I hear often is whether a certain coaching strategy applies to different grade levels or content areas. Dr. Lee says her approach doesn’t change much across grades because the foundational coaching framework (relationship building, shared goal setting, co-developed action steps) remains the same. The content, exemplars, and modeling may differ, but high-impact coaching practices work at every grade.

Evaluating Work to Provide Evidence of Instructional Coaching Effectiveness

What an enjoyable conversation! I really appreciated how Dr. Lee advocated for taking a wide view of coaching work and letting evidence from various sources decide coaching effectiveness.

Test scores are only a piece of the puzzle. The bigger picture includes observations, artifacts, and ongoing conversations. When we evaluate coaching through a portfolio lens, we see not only where we are, but how far we’ve come and what we should focus on next.

If you’re ready to rethink how you evaluate coaching effectiveness, be sure to listen to the full episode. It’s packed with practical advice and ideas for evaluating your coaching work.

Topics and Questions Discussed in Episode 258 – Evaluating Work to Provide Evidence of Instructional Coaching Effectiveness with Dr. Jana Lee

  • How coaches can evaluate the effectiveness of their work
  • The importance of building relationships and trust
  • Obstacles that interfere with effective coaching
  • Collaborating with school leaders and avoiding isolation
  • Why admin support is critical for success
  • Limitations of relying solely on test data to measure coaching impact
  • Evaluating your coaching using qualitative and quantitative evidence
  • What to include in a coaching portfolio
  • Using school-wide surveys to measure coaching effectiveness and why open-ended self-reflection prompts are better than simple ratings
  • Navigating coaching across different grade levels and content areas
  • How to reset your coaching mid-year
  • Collaborating with other coaches to identify patterns and solve shared challenges

Grab the Action Plan Toolkit

Want some help with your mid-year reset?

Grab the Action Plan Toolkit! It’s filled with practical resources that build on what we talked about in this episode. You’ll get tools to help you conduct a needs assessment, set clear priorities, and create a focused plan so you’re not spinning your wheels or just crossing things off an endless to-do list. Instead, you’ll make real progress at your school!

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Evaluating Work to Provide Evidence of Instructional Coaching Effectiveness with Dr. Jana Lee, ep. 258, Instructional Coaching with Ms. B Podcast

00;00;01;27 – 00;00;21;05
Chrissy
Welcome to Instructional Coaching with Ms. B, where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach and every coach does too. I’m Chrissy Beltran, an elementary teacher who became a coach, and I had to create my own coaching program that worked. Now I teach coaches how to design their coaching programs, build a school wide action plan, and use differentiated strategies to support teachers.

00;00;21;11 – 00;00;28;16
Chrissy
Plus, I’ve got a special spot in my heart for literacy coaches. Now let’s dig into the episode.

00;00;28;18 – 00;00;50;12
Chrissy
Hey coach, and welcome to episode 258 evaluating instructional coaching work to provide evidence of effectiveness with my guest, Jana Lee. This is the one of the last episodes in my Mid-Year Coaching Reset mini series around this time of year. It’s really helpful to think about how things are going. If things are working in the direction that you want, what you can do to make some changes.

00;00;50;19 – 00;01;18;23
Chrissy
And so I brought my guest today to help us think about how we can evaluate our coaching work in some different ways, and actually provide evidence as to whether it’s working, as to whether we are seeing change in classrooms, about whether student outcomes are improving, which is our goal. So if you are looking for, a resource that’s going to help you work with teachers in classrooms that have not been open to you prior to this, check out my coaching coaching resistant teachers free mini course to go straight to your inbox.

00;01;18;27 – 00;01;29;28
Chrissy
You can get that addressing with miss b.com/resistance. And now let’s go ahead and welcome our guest. So welcome to the podcast Jana. Thanks for being here.

00;01;30;01 – 00;01;34;27
Dr. Jana Lee
Of course I’m really excited. It’s so nice to, be part of this. So thank you.

00;01;35;03 – 00;01;46;24
Chrissy
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay, so I would love to get to know you a little better. And our listeners would love to get to know you a little better. So could you share a few things about yourself? Who do you help and how do you spend most of your time and energy at work?

00;01;46;27 – 00;02;22;12
Dr. Jana Lee
Sure. So I am the CEO and executive director of Jana Lead Consulting. We provide professional development and training to school leaders and teachers nationwide. A lot of my my background is special education. I was a founding special education teacher in a high need school district in the South Bronx of New York. And, while there, I was part of the building, I guess you could say of, the different, you know, systems and protocols and, teams that we had.

00;02;22;14 – 00;02;37;25
Dr. Jana Lee
And so that inspired me to build consulting in a way where I could take what I learned in that endeavor and impact as many teachers and students as possible through particularly through special education. Lens.

00;02;37;27 – 00;02;52;13
Chrissy
That’s awesome. Yeah. Next question is it might seem unrelated, but I’ve been asking everybody about their hobbies this season because my thinking is we invest so much of our time in education and we don’t always make time for the things that we enjoy. So what is a hobby that you love?

00;02;52;15 – 00;02;59;25
Dr. Jana Lee
Sure. So I mean, you say that the first thing that comes to mind are my kids, but that’s not really a hobby.

00;02;59;25 – 00;03;03;09
Chrissy
That’s just kind of like, right.

00;03;03;09 – 00;03;27;29
Dr. Jana Lee
I know it’s kind of like just what we have to do. That’s a really a hobby. I really enjoy. So I play soccer and I, run. And that is a way for me to just be outside and kind of just let loose and run around like a little kid, and not think too much about, you know, our what we have going on professionally and personally.

00;03;27;29 – 00;03;29;24
Dr. Jana Lee
So those are my hobbies, I think.

00;03;29;24 – 00;03;32;19
Chrissy
Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Anything to get to outside is nice.

00;03;32;21 – 00;03;34;27
Dr. Jana Lee
Yes, absolutely.

00;03;34;29 – 00;03;49;01
Chrissy
So today we’re looking at how we can evaluate our instructional coaching work and see if are we actually being effective. And so my question it to start is when we’re talking about coaching effectiveness what is it that we’re actually looking for.

00;03;49;04 – 00;04;25;07
Dr. Jana Lee
Coaching effectiveness I think one of the first things that we’re looking for is the relationship building piece. Every effective coach has, somewhat of a relationship with the person that they are collaborating with. And I think alongside that comes, partnership. So, you know, I think we’re quick to see when we think about the evaluation, I think we are quick to look at, well, what is the what are the numbers saying, and how does you know, how are the teacher moves changing based on what we’ve talked about.

00;04;25;07 – 00;04;57;20
Dr. Jana Lee
And are they doing what we’ve you know, what I told them to do. And it more so has to be come through the lens of is there trust here? Is there collaboration here. Is our you know, the evaluation component reflective of this person feeling like I’m guiding them, for what’s in their best interest and that we have mutual conversation in our sessions and that, you know, we are trying the things that we talk about, but also coming back to the table and saying what’s working versus what’s not working.

00;04;57;22 – 00;05;26;17
Dr. Jana Lee
Because true, true growth through a coaching lens is not just about, of course, it’s about students moving and trending in the right direction and teachers, you know, feeling like their practice is shifting. But it’s also about teachers feeling more empowered and confident and feeling like they are, able to take risks in their practice. And we can only do that through the building of a relationship and true partnership in that sense.

00;05;26;19 – 00;05;32;28
Chrissy
That’s interesting. Yeah. So what are some of the things that really get in the way of that, that interfere with this kind of effective coaching?

00;05;32;28 – 00;05;58;23
Dr. Jana Lee
Sure. So I think leadership not being involved and not giving the okay. For teachers to take risks, there needs to be, leadership. Language has to be grounded in, hey, I know that this is what you’re working on. And when I’m in your classroom, I want to also be able to support you in that. And it’s okay if it doesn’t go as planned.

00;05;58;25 – 00;06;26;24
Dr. Jana Lee
Not everything needs to go the right way. And I think when leadership is not on board with that and leadership is not, sort of also reflecting the or, I should say, continuing the feedback that instructional coaches are continuing when they work with their teachers, then there is a shift in, you know, you’re you’re missing opportunity to build collective growth all together.

00;06;26;26 – 00;06;54;13
Dr. Jana Lee
And that really requires leadership being involved in, you know, not not just, coming down and evaluating teachers and instructional coaches, but also aligning in the feedback that they are giving. And I think from, you know, an instructional lens, what gets in the way of, of, you know, all of that, our instructional coaches feeling isolated and feeling like they don’t have a team and kind of feeling like misplaced.

00;06;54;13 – 00;07;16;06
Dr. Jana Lee
Right. What plc are they part of what you know, how are they also collaborating with leadership. So it’s interesting because I do think instructional coaches are sort of in the middle. They find themselves in the middle of both teachers and building or supervisors, you know, building leadership for supervisors and kind of at times can get lost in the sauce.

00;07;16;06 – 00;07;38;09
Dr. Jana Lee
And so we really need to make sure that we’re intentional about communicating with instructional coaches. This is where you are in the grand scheme of things. You know, this is how I’m also going to support teachers when you’re not necessarily there. And this is how we can collaborate to bring and just strengthen, overall our, our instructional, our, our instruction.

00;07;38;12 – 00;07;56;02
Chrissy
Yeah. I completely agree with the, you know, administration has to be in line with coaching. Like they have to have the same vision for it. They have to know what they’re working towards. And then they have to understand that change is not just linear and that it’s not going to be like, oh, you do this PD and now I should immediately see everything happening everywhere.

00;07;56;04 – 00;08;13;23
Chrissy
Because that is really disheartening whenever you have an admin. And that’s a common issue that admin, they don’t know what the role is, they don’t understand what the goals are, and they don’t understand how coaching kind of changes teaching over time. Not immediately. So like this is coming out actually in November. I should have shared that with you.

00;08;13;26 – 00;08;42;17
Chrissy
But so if a coach had started at the beginning of the school year and we are now in November, you are not going to see a complete turnaround in your school. You know, they’re still figuring out who you are. Some classrooms are going to have responded immediately, some are not. And even the ones that are responding immediately, things still take time to change, because shifting practice takes time, because you’re that you’re working with people who the majority of their day is spent in front of kids, and they’re making decisions all the time in the moment.

00;08;42;20 – 00;09;01;26
Chrissy
And, you know, I remember as a, as a coach, they would you kind of mentioned having like a PLC team or something that coaches can work with. And I feel like our, our district leadership tried to do that at a district level. And they would bring area patterns together like feeder patterns and be like, okay, these are you know, these are the school, the kids, the schools that are leading towards Ysleta High School.

00;09;01;26 – 00;09;20;18
Chrissy
So we’re going to bring you together. And but they did it only during PD opportunities. So it was like we’re going to provide you PD on coaching and you’re going to sit together. And so still it wasn’t like often we didn’t really talk a lot. I only in response to like what they were having us talk about, you know, during PD.

00;09;20;21 – 00;09;27;24
Chrissy
So I feel like a lot of these things are like not really understanding how people learn and how people build relationships and bridges. Yes.

00;09;27;27 – 00;09;56;03
Dr. Jana Lee
And it’s such a missed opportunity to create a lot of cross collaboration and identifying patterns and what they’re seeing and, and really engage in solution oriented dialog, because I’m sure what one instructional coach is going through is similar to what another instructional coach is going through. Right? And, or, you know, similar challenges or how do you get through to this teacher or, you know, what’s a move, what’s what’s an instructional move that I can make to better support, you know, our veteran teachers?

00;09;56;03 – 00;10;17;28
Dr. Jana Lee
I mean, you know, there has to be so often I see, too often I should say, I see, building leadership sort of or district leadership using coaches as like, okay, these are the people that are going to change instruction within our school. Right? And that is partially true in that they are instructional coaches are a resource to help develop that.

00;10;17;28 – 00;10;40;03
Dr. Jana Lee
But building leadership and admin still need to be part of that puzzle. It really takes a holistic movement for change to occur. And especially when we talk about, you know, the the amount of time that it takes, instructional coaching is not just about the end result. It’s not just about the you know what? What is the end product?

00;10;40;03 – 00;11;04;07
Dr. Jana Lee
It’s also about the process. It’s about, you know, really analyzing how are we doing what we’re doing to ensure sustainability and continuation of this work far past the actual coaching component. How are we creating longevity in teacher practice, where when I’m far gone and not involved in the instructional coaching with this teacher anymore, that the work still continues.

00;11;04;09 – 00;11;34;21
Dr. Jana Lee
And so that happens when there is a relationship there through, you know, not just the instructional coach themselves, but also the building in the and the admin, administration, everybody collecting collectively, wanting to buy into a school culture where instructional coaching is seen as a positive, motivational, empowering, uplifting, resource. Not just this like top down approach where I’m going to tell you what to do and how to do it.

00;11;34;24 – 00;11;42;06
Dr. Jana Lee
And that’s when I think you tend to see teachers be like, wait a minute. You know, like, I don’t know about all of this, you know? Yeah.

00;11;42;08 – 00;11;55;11
Chrissy
Yeah. So as a, as an instructional coach, if they’re looking at their work here in November and they’re like, okay, yeah, I need to determine if what I’m doing is working, how can they go about that? How can they evaluate their own work to determine how effective it is?

00;11;55;13 – 00;12;34;11
Dr. Jana Lee
Sure. So I tend to look at that data component that progress monitoring into lens to two lenses. Lenses, lens. You have the qualitative piece and then you have the quantitative. So when I say qualitative I’m talking about what anecdotal information observations are. You taking through three moves student moves teacher moves and your own moves. So what are students when you’re popping into classrooms and seeing what’s going on, what are students saying and doing and what are their behaviors, that you are anecdotally collecting?

00;12;34;13 – 00;12;59;18
Dr. Jana Lee
Same thing with teachers when you see that teacher, when you’re popping into classrooms and you’re having planning conversations or coaching, you know, engaging in those coaching cycles, what do you see teachers doing and saying, that are, you know, worthy of you collecting that information on? Right. What notes are you taking on that? And then through your own, sort of reflection and observations?

00;12;59;18 – 00;13;27;14
Dr. Jana Lee
You know, I think it’s important that as coaches, we are also reflecting on what’s working and not working for us, so that we can be, you know, so that we can shift and change and modify and tweak based on just that information. So anecdotally, I think those three components are those three, pieces are really important. That’s the qualitative end of things quantitatively we need we do need some numbers.

00;13;27;14 – 00;13;57;27
Dr. Jana Lee
We need to be able to concretely say this is this is what the data is showing from a numerical perspective, I always I love a good indicator success criteria. Look for those that are collectively developed with teachers based on a specific initiative that everybody is working toward. So those indicators are, agreed, mutually agreed upon between, you know, the teacher and the coach.

00;13;57;29 – 00;14;20;14
Dr. Jana Lee
And that’s what the coach can use when popping into classrooms so that, they’re almost tallying, you know, what are we seeing and what’s the evidence to support that these indicators are happening or you know, not happening? It allows us to then from a very concrete perspective, take an look at these indicators to say, these are these are the numbers.

00;14;20;16 – 00;14;43;29
Dr. Jana Lee
These are the indicators that we’re really thriving in. And these are the areas where we want to continue to sort of, you know, grow in. And collectively, all of that information tells a story about. It’s almost like a portfolio tells a story about the impact from the coach. Right. And it’s not just about the coach, but it also involves student voice and teacher voice.

00;14;44;01 – 00;15;11;17
Dr. Jana Lee
I’ve even, you know, started to really engage teachers when it comes to their coaching on grabbing student artifacts. What what does student work also show us? Because I think so quick, we are I think that even though coaching is through a coach and teacher lens, the student work also speaks to that impact. And we want to make sure that we’re not forgetting it.

00;15;11;19 – 00;15;34;09
Dr. Jana Lee
And so I think holistically, that is really, building that portfolio with all stakeholders is really important in measuring whether the work that we are doing is being impactful or not. And and in what ways is it being impactful? How are we, you know, how are we analyzing those patterns to make sure that we’re tweaking and modifying, for further growth?

00;15;34;12 – 00;15;55;29
Chrissy
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. You know, I had a conversation a while back with somebody I just happened to be sitting next to at an event, and she was a board member for one of our local school districts, and she said, I, I can’t help but especially with board members, I can’t help but like, get in little pieces there that I hope might be beneficial as they make decisions.

00;15;56;01 – 00;16;12;26
Chrissy
So yeah. Course. Yeah. So she was talking about about schools and I said, you know, the issue with looking at a data with schools is it doesn’t tell you what’s going on at the school. It tells you how the kids did on that test on that day, but it doesn’t tell you, you know, the whole story of the school.

00;16;12;26 – 00;16;34;14
Chrissy
And she said, no, I can look at data and tell a school is a good school. And I said, that’s funny because I’ve been in education for a long time and I can’t, I, I know that that is one piece of the picture that’s like the outcome of certain factors. You don’t know what the factors are and the the data is like the symptom of something, but you don’t know what the causes.

00;16;34;14 – 00;16;48;21
Chrissy
So until you visit the school you don’t know what’s going on. There are schools that have great data that I would not want my child in, and there are schools that have data that’s less than perfect, and I would be much happier having my kids there because I believe in what’s happening there. So yeah, I just thought that was interesting.

00;16;48;21 – 00;17;07;23
Chrissy
And so I love the approach of taking a portfolio like a, like a wider view. I think so many times, like I was held accountable for student data. And so like looking at test data as a coach, I was it was I know that there were coaches who were put back into the classroom from like removed from the coaching positions when their schools were not making progress.

00;17;07;23 – 00;17;25;22
Chrissy
Now, with that, the only indicator that was used? Probably not, but that was kind of the story that got around, you know, oh, her school wasn’t making progress. So they put her back in the in the classroom. And so I think that whenever we only use those numbers as an indicator of what’s happening at a school, we are missing the big picture.

00;17;25;22 – 00;17;31;07
Chrissy
It’s just not we’re not taking the whole story of the school. We’re just getting a tiny little piece.

00;17;31;10 – 00;17;57;00
Dr. Jana Lee
That’s why the anecdotes are so important. Whether you are even surveying your teachers or you are, you know, asking students when you’re in their classrooms, you know, what are you learning? How is it going, what it is representative of a culture and climate that is just as important, I think, to, to student growth as, you know, as anything else.

00;17;57;02 – 00;18;26;03
Dr. Jana Lee
And if you want the true story or a more realistic story of the impact that coaches are having, you cannot just rely on one data source. And you can’t just rely on those performance and benchmarks. I’m hearing a lot from teachers about how and and leadership about how this testing is not exactly, realistic because students are entering into it, just not taking it seriously, not having the motivation to test, not wanting to test.

00;18;26;05 – 00;18;51;17
Dr. Jana Lee
I mean, you know, I have a lot of conversations with teachers around, like, what’s in their control and coaches around what’s in their control, right? You can’t control, how your students approach a test on testing day. You can’t control from an instructional point of view. You can’t or instructional coach point of view. You can’t control how your teachers come into a planning session with you, whether they’ve had a good morning, a bad morning.

00;18;51;17 – 00;19;13;25
Dr. Jana Lee
Want to take your advice? Don’t want to take your. But there’s only so much in your control. And so we it is incumbent upon leadership to ensure and coaches to ensure that they are collecting a well-rounded amount of information that speaks to a story, not just, a particular point in time.

00;19;13;28 – 00;19;42;13
Chrissy
Yeah. I think that’s such a good point. And you also mentioned something that I’m curious about, which is teacher surveys. So I would love to get into those. I’ve spoken to coaches who have done a piece of their effectiveness is measured by statements on a school wide survey. And so sometimes it’s like those statements on a scale of 1 to 10 or like, you know, just they’re different frames, but, they could sound like something like someone cares about my growth and development as a teacher, or I have opportunities to learn at my campus.

00;19;42;15 – 00;19;49;15
Chrissy
So what do you think about those statements, and do you have recommendations for what surveys could look like, or what kinds of questions could be included?

00;19;49;18 – 00;20;24;29
Dr. Jana Lee
Okay. So, you might have some people who who, disagree with me on this one. I don’t I don’t love those statements, because I think it puts the work of one person in the hands of someone else who, again, it’s just very subjective. And I just it’s it’s almost like allowing somebody to place a judgment on someone else, not necessarily taking into consideration all of the other pieces that we just spoke about.

00;20;24;29 – 00;20;55;10
Dr. Jana Lee
Right. So the way in which I think these surveys are effective is when we put it back on the teachers to share more about themselves and the work that they are doing. So I like a three, two, one. So, what are, three? Components or strategies that you have tried in your classroom? What are two challenges that you had in attempting those strategies?

00;20;55;10 – 00;21;27;11
Dr. Jana Lee
Right. And what’s one thing that you want to continue to learn about? And I think that when we put that back on teachers, it speaks about the work. It doesn’t speak about the coach themselves. Because there is a fine difference between the two. I can not necessarily love this person in front of me, right? But I can still be like, okay, well, I’m going to try these things and I’m going to, you know, try these strategies out.

00;21;27;13 – 00;21;59;04
Dr. Jana Lee
And that is what matters. Not the person, not the characteristics or the the personality differences between two people. And I think that when you give teachers an opportunity to rate someone else, it becomes more subjective. Instead of, you know, really placing it on them to explain how you know, how the work or how they have, made moves based on, the work that they’ve encountered and engaged in with the coach.

00;21;59;06 – 00;22;21;23
Chrissy
Yeah, I like that. I like the, but it’s open ended as well, because then teachers are able to really do some thinking and figure out what kinds of things that they’ve how they’ve been impacted, you know, what things have made their way into their classroom. And so I think that, it’ll give you a better picture of what teachers are thinking and how they are working towards, you know, their own goals.

00;22;22;00 – 00;22;24;25
Chrissy
I think that those kinds of questions and can be really helpful.

00;22;24;27 – 00;22;50;28
Dr. Jana Lee
And if and if I may, you know, you could do that on a Google form. And with AI these days, you can easily just have I also, you know, sort of aggregate synthesize and come up with themes and patterns, particularly if you’re coming from, you know, a bigger district. But I think that that’s a really great starting place in terms of coaches being able to see, you know, how what are the commonalities across the board.

00;22;50;28 – 00;23;00;27
Dr. Jana Lee
And listen, if you’ve got coaches or if you got teachers that were really like, there was absolutely nothing I learned here. They’ll tell you, you know, and there’s space to do that with the 3 to 1.

00;23;00;29 – 00;23;22;06
Chrissy
Yeah. For sure. So whenever you’re going through this process, if you’re helping a coach evaluate their own work, do you expect differences. And maybe this is differences in result or differences in process depending on like the grade range of the person is working with, whether it’s elementary, middle or high school. Because a lot of the questions I get are like, but does this apply to high school and does this apply to such and such?

00;23;22;08 – 00;23;48;09
Dr. Jana Lee
Yeah. So I am a big believer that content drives the rigors. So the strategies that, or the way in which I’m coaching with elementary versus middle versus high doesn’t change that much, because at the foundational level, I’m building a relationship. I want to learn about you. I want to ask you questions, and I want to, you know, engage in what your challenges and goals are.

00;23;48;09 – 00;24;16;09
Dr. Jana Lee
And it doesn’t really matter what grade or content you teach. As long as, you know, we are building that relationship now from a content perspective, if we’re working on reading instruction, right, the way in which that the content that we use to, to, to bring into these conversations is obviously going to be different based on K to one versus even, you know, 4 to 5 or elementary and high.

00;24;16;11 – 00;24;41;09
Dr. Jana Lee
Yet the way in which we do that is not necessarily going to change, because I’m still going to use a similar coaching framework around, the way that we interact. And, you know, we’re always going to co-develop next steps. We’re always going to develop an action plan together. But what gets inserted into that action plan is going to be based on whatever initiative we’re working on.

00;24;41;11 – 00;25;22;17
Dr. Jana Lee
So whether it’s reading instruction or, you know, high school math or, you know, physics or whatever it might be, that is going to obviously be what gets interchanged. But the, way in which we approach that is going to be similar, because at the crux of it all is there’s some just core foundational components that you can’t you shouldn’t as a coach, I believe, you know, go without, which, you know, stems from just common goal setting develop, co-developing next steps, building trust, you know, getting at what are the challenges that we’re facing, what’s working versus not working.

00;25;22;24 – 00;25;25;29
Dr. Jana Lee
All of that is going to remain pretty similar across the board.

00;25;26;02 – 00;25;44;26
Chrissy
Yeah, yeah I agree. That’s great. Yeah, that’s that’s just a question that I get a lot. So I wanted to kind of start on it because, I think that it can feel hard to take and this is a human thing to take information that shared in one context and imagine it in another context. The transition of that information can be tricky.

00;25;44;26 – 00;26;02;10
Chrissy
So I wanted to see, you know, what your thoughts were about, if something is presented more on like a middle school model or something, what does that look like in other grade ranges? But I agree, it’s really just the content and the kinds of lessons that you’re working on with teachers. But the things that we know about coaching and the impact on teaching should be consistent.

00;26;02;13 – 00;26;26;06
Dr. Jana Lee
Absolutely, absolutely. And listen, you have to you know, teachers want to see exemplars. They want to see how it’s done. So obviously, the exemplars and the way in which you model are going to be slightly different based on your grade level and content. Right. But overall, there’s those consistencies which are just part of a, a strong coaching framework.

00;26;26;08 – 00;26;35;18
Chrissy
Awesome. Well thank you so much for everything that you shared today. And I would love to let people know how they can continue to learn from you. So where can they find you.

00;26;35;21 – 00;27;10;14
Dr. Jana Lee
Sure. So, started my website, dot Jana Lee consulting.com. I’ve got a ton of resources there. I’ve got a subscription service that allows, coaches and leadership, to be provided with, you know, done for you PD on topics of, you know, that are that are popular, across the board, a way for me to be able to just give back to, to schools and, and partner in, in that way, you can catch me on Instagram at Jana Ackley.

00;27;10;14 – 00;27;19;08
Dr. Jana Lee
I’m on Twitter and LinkedIn. All of that information can be found right on my website. Yeah. So I’m excited to engage with your audience. Absolutely.

00;27;19;13 – 00;27;21;13
Chrissy
Well, thank you so much for being here today.

00;27;21;16 – 00;27;25;20
Dr. Jana Lee
Thank you so much, Christy. Please.

00;27;25;22 – 00;27;46;00
Chrissy
Now, that was good stuff, right? I love the honest conversations about taking a wide view of coaching work, instead of focusing just on one narrow piece of it, and basing your evaluation of your effectiveness on the evidence that you can gather from so many different sources. I love that. I’m so glad that Jana was here today to speak about that.

00;27;46;02 – 00;28;08;15
Chrissy
My next episode, next week is actually going to be the, Is it the last of the season? Hold on. Yeah, it’s the last week of the season. It’s going to be episode 259 troubleshooting coaching. So then this little mini series we’ve talked a little bit about, you know, resetting yourself, taking evaluations and kind of like figuring out where to head next.

00;28;08;17 – 00;28;28;10
Chrissy
Next week I’m going to give you some very basic like if this is a problem you’re having, try this. And we’re going to keep it really simple. So you have a really good game plan for whenever you come back in in January. And until next week happy coaching.

00;28;28;13 – 00;28;37;07
Chrissy
Now that you’ve got so much to think about, head over to buzzing with Miss Beacom to grab some free downloads, become a vibe and check out the podcast show notes. Happy coaching!

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