Coaching Goals: Would you rather?

Goals are great! They help us grow! But how we phrase them makes a big difference in how we feel about the goal and whether we’ll stick with it. Thinking about goals from a teacher’s perspective, would you rather:
 
Try not to repeat student answers
OR
Ask a student to repeat their answer
 
Reduce students’ off-task behavior
OR
Stay aware of student movement in the room
 
Stop using slides with lots of words
OR
Include more visuals on slides
 
By now, you get the idea – it’s more inviting to have an approach goal than an avoid goal. Stating goals as a positive outcome rather than lack of a negative one wins out every time.
 
Negatively-phrased goals focus on steering clear of undesired actions. These avoidance goals are often preceded by fear of failure. When a goal is negatively worded, it’s more likely that we won’t stick with it. We’ll feel funky every time we think about it. We’ll probably procrastinate.
 
On the other hand, approach-oriented goals involve reaching or maintaining desired outcomes. People are more likely to commit to completing tasks and taking part in activities that are positioned in a positive light. Approach goals become more potent motivational goals because they focus on action and activity around what can be done.
 
As coaches, we can help teachers choose approach goals by reframing concerns as possibilities. If a teacher states a goal in avoidance terms, flip it around to word it more positively. Reframing a goal positively makes it more likely that she’ll persist and achieve the goal.
 
Want more good news? Approach goals are more associated with happiness. 😊

This week, you might want to take a look at:
 
This short video about approach and avoid goals:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVVwpPRT2GY
 
 
The power of one-on-one conversations in coaching:
 
https://studysites.corwin.com/highimpactinstruction/videos/v1.2.htm
 
 
Instant mood-boosters:
 
https://aestheticsofjoy.com/2020/10/17/8-quick-things-you-can-do-right-now-to-boost-your-mood/
 
 
The intricacies of learning to write using mentor texts:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/the-beauty-of-imitation/
 
 
Microteaching as a coaching process to support teacher (and student) growth:
 
https://www.edthena.com/visible-learning-micro-teaching-2-ways/
 
 
That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!
 
Was this helpful?  Please share!
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Follow on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch and Twitter and Instagram @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com
 
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Want more coaching tips? Check out my book, Differentiated Mentoring & Coaching in Education: From Preservice Teacher to Expert Practitioner, available from Teachers College Press!  I’m so excited to share it with you! TODAY you can use the code: FDNS24 for 20% off! Click  here  and I’ll email you the free Book Group Study Guide that includes questions, prompts, and activities you can use as you share the book with colleagues.  I hope you’ll love this book as much as I loved making it for you!

Be Bold (when needed)

This week, I read Michael Sonbert’s EdWeek article* that claimed “getting a teacher to a place of being highly effective” is NOT “like trying to answer a confusing, ambiguous riddle.” Instead, what to do is “surprisingly straightforward” (even though execution is not easy). The author called for coaches to give clear feedback based on schools’ agreed-upon vision for instructional excellence.

 

Sonbert says that, in the schools where he works, things are extremely urgent. He purports that, “Strong relationships and trust come from providing value for someone (quickly),” rather than making teachers spend their planning period “trying to guess the answers to the coach’s questions when the coach could simply tell them instead,” or assuming that teachers are “too fragile, overly sensitive, and unable to receive straight feedback.”

 

While Sonbert’s claims feel a bit overstated, the article made me wonder whether, in our desire to honor teachers’ professionalism and agency, coaches sometimes withhold recommendations that are just what the teacher is looking for. I know that providing opportunities for teacher reflection and asking good questions can often get teachers to a helpful next step. And there are also times when clear feedback and recommendations are more helpful and expedient.

 

Sonbert’s description of feedback reminded me of my equation for effective recommendations:

 

Evidence + Advice = Recommendation

 

Because the effectiveness of a coaching recommendation rests on a teacher’s perception of its relevance, the reason for a recommendation needs to be clear. That’s where the evidence comes in (what Sonbert calls clear feedback based on schools’ agreed-upon vision for instructional excellence).

 

Here’s an example: In a debrief session after observing a lesson that had very limited student discussion, the coach offered this advice: “You might try using sticks with students’ names or some other random name generator to call on students.” What made the recommendation effective, however, was the evidence that preceded it: “When you called on only students with their hands raised, most of the students didn’t contribute to the conversation.” This evidence provided the warrant for the recommendation. The teacher first saw the need, then heard a possible solution.

 

In our recommendation equation, evidence is information about how instruction is working. It is a form of feedback. When we give feedback, we are hoping to provide “information about an action, event, or process to the original or controlling source” (that’s Webster’s feedback definition).

 

Evidence is most effective when it is tied to student outcomes rather than being focused solely on the teacher. Such feedback is deliberate, explicit, and opens the door for a recommendation.

 

Rather than including an evaluative comment, information that lays the groundwork for a recommendation is provided in a non-judgmental way. It is not criticism. You might note that criticism is not a step in the GIR model – because it doesn’t work. Criticism shifts people into survival mode, which impedes their learning.

 

Effective, non-evaluative evidence awakens awareness of the need for change and increases the teacher’s receptiveness to advice without pointing a finger of blame. Providing neutral, goal-related information about performance in relation to a goal is an important “part one” of a recommendation. Effective recommendations begin with careful observation that yields evidence.

 

Sometimes, providing a silent sounding board is all a teacher needs from a coach. And sometimes that’s not what they want or need. Effective coaches are curious, sincere, and humble AND credible, consistent, and courageous. So, when needed, be bold.

 

*”It’s Not Complicated. Instructional Coaches Should Give Clear Feedback.”

 

 

This week, you might want to take a look at:

Ideas to support teachers’ resilience (and avoid burn-out):
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/building-resilience-preventing-burnout
 
 
This one-minute video that highlights mailboxes as a way to organize for SECONDARY students and keep feedback private:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/belonging-in-a-school-community/
 
 
Values for sentence-level writing instruction:
 
https://writing4pleasure.com/2023/09/29/sentence-level-instruction-our-viewpoint/
 
Teaching children to fail well:
 
http://time.com/4025350/brene-brown-on-teaching-kids-to-fail-well/
 

We need teachers, not materials:
 
https://ccira.blog/2018/10/16/playing-the-school-game-without-sacrificing-our-star-players/

 
That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!
 
Was this helpful?  Please share!
Want to know about new posts? Click “Follow” (bottom right)
Follow on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch and Twitter and Instagram @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com
 
---------------------------------
Want more coaching tips? Check out my book, Differentiated Mentoring & Coaching in Education: From Preservice Teacher to Expert Practitioner, available from Teachers College Press!  I’m so excited to share it with you! You can use the code: FDNS24 for 20% off! Click  here  and I’ll email you the free Book Group Study Guide that includes questions, prompts, and activities you can use as you share the book with colleagues.  I hope you’ll love this book as much as I loved making it for you!
 

Coaches: Lay the Groundwork for Modeling

In earlier times, most of the world’s work was learned through apprenticeship. The wheelwright, the farrier, the carpenter, all learned their professions by watching and listening to skillful practitioners. In the coaching and mentoring process, modeling plays this role. When coaches model, they demonstrate techniques and instructional practices to offer up possibilities.
 
Laying the groundwork before a teacher observes you modeling a lesson will make the experience a more meaningful one. Selecting a specific focus beforehand with the teacher, so that she has something to watch for during modeling, provides a target for her attention.
 
Pre-Modeling Conference: An Example
 
Let’s look at how the elements of selecting a target and taking objective notes played out in a pre-modeling conversation between Alice, an instructional coach, and Crystal, a fourth-grade teacher. Alice was going to be modeling a lesson on using text evidence to support inferences about characters. In their pre-observation conference, Alice walked through the lesson. She described how she would begin with a thumbs-up self-assessment of students’ confidence about citing evidence for their inferences. She said she’d take a quick inventory of students’ confidence, and she suggested Crystal could note not only how many thumbs were down, but also how she adjusted the lesson based on that information.  Alice said she would be asking herself, “Do they need me to go back and review our anchor chart, or are they ready to move forward?”
 
The next part of the lesson was a read-aloud of a Time for Kids article about a child inventor. Alice said she would be paying attention to whether students seemed engaged. If not, she might encourage them to follow along on their copy of the text or on the projected copy on the screen. The setting for the article was a remote village in Africa, very different from her own students’ experiences. Alice knew she would be looking for signs of understanding or confusion as she read. She would be asking herself, “Are they getting this?”
 
Later in the lesson, students would be working with partners to match character trait cards with evidence from the text. Alice would be listening in on conversations, asking herself if students were able to justify their responses. She realized the cards could possibly be matched in more than one way, and the rationale provided was her window into students’ understanding. Alice suggested that Crystal listen in on students’ thinking and also make note of the probing questions Alice asked to assess and support them.
 
Students’ independent practice during this lesson would be to lift their own evidence from the text to justify a list of character traits. Again, Alice cared about the rationale; again, Alice encouraged Crystal to listen in on the questions she was asking and students’ responses.
 
Wrapping up the lesson, Alice explained that she would ask the self-assessment question about students’ confidence with citing text evidence, just as she had at the beginning of the lesson.  As she monitored students’ responses, Alice would be asking herself whether there had been enough change in students’ responses to justify moving on, or was more practice warranted? Crystal would be noticing this, too, as she watched how the lesson concluded.
 
When it came time for the lesson, Crystal’s observation was supported by the chart she had created during their pre-observation meeting (see below).
 
Crystal was prepared with her own questions to guide the observation as Alice modeled this lesson on citing text evidence. Her awareness was raised about the questions Alice would be asking herself while teaching. As the lesson unfolded, both Alice and Crystal were more aware of their own instructional thought processes.
 
Just as it did for Alice and Crystal, a pre-modelling conference can prepare coaches and teachers for a thought-filled observation and a productive post-modeling conversation.

This week, you might want to take a look at:

 
Teachers observe teachers: Collaborating from Shanghai to Nashville:
 
http://tn.chalkbeat.org/2015/01/28/from-shanghai-to-collierville-collaboration-model-boosts-teacher-performance/
 
 
Why teachers don’t ask open-ended questions:
 
https://tomakeaprairie.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/looking-at-the-elephant-in-the-room-our-fear-of-losing-control/
 
 
This video demonstrating individual whiteboard use during a math lesson:
 
https://www.teachingchannel.com/free-videos/
 
 
56 lesson plans for teaching statistics and probability:
 
http://www.amstat.org/education/stew/
 
 
A podcast about substantive conversation in the classroom:
 
http://www.idra.org/images/stories/CN-130.mp3
 
 
That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!
 
Was this helpful?  Please share!
Want to know about new posts? Click “Follow” (bottom right)
Follow on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch and Twitter and Instagram @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com
 
---------------------------------
Want more coaching tips? Check out my book, Differentiated Mentoring & Coaching in Education: From Preservice Teacher to Expert Practitioner, available from Teachers College Press!  I’m so excited to share it with you! TODAY you can use the code: OCT2023 for 15% off plus FREE SHIPPING. Click  here  and I’ll email you the free Book Group Study Guide that includes questions, prompts, and activities you can use as you share the book with colleagues.  I hope you’ll love this book as much as I loved making it for you!

5 Steps to Recommending

There’s an old song by The Byrds that’s been running through my mind. In part, it goes like this:
 
To everything, turn, turn, turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose
 
Though not as weighty as the events in this song (“Turn! Turn! Turn! based on Ecclesiastes 3), there are times and seasons for the various moves in the GIR model. When it’s time to recommend, keep this sequence of steps in mind:

      1)    Acknowledge their trust
2)    Validate their experience
3)    Let them know you could add value
4)    Ask permission
5)    Let them decide*

Let’s walk through these steps with a (kind of) hypothetical coaching example:
 
Amber is a sixth-grade language arts teacher. You meet with her to talk about students’ pre-writing assessment, required by your district at the beginning of every semester. The district databoard breaks students’ scores down according to the parts of the rubric.
 
Amber opens her laptop to show you the scores. After scrolling through, she throws her hands up.
 
“These scores are all over the place,” she says. “I’ve got 90 students. Some of them are already scoring advanced in every element. Then there are students who have just one lower area – and which one is low is different for everyone! And then there are kids who scored low across the board. I don’t see any patterns. I’ve stared at this and thought about it all week, but I have no idea what to do with this data.”
 
Amber takes a breath and looks your way, expectantly. So you say, (1) “Wow, thanks for sharing that with me. (2) It’s complicated. I can see why you’re feeling discouraged. (3) I’ve walked through the data with some other teachers and have a few thoughts. (4) Would you be interested in hearing them? (5) You could take them or leave them.
 
That’s the five-step process in action. Let’s unpack it a bit.
 
When hypothetical-you said, “Wow, thanks for sharing that with me,” you were acknowledging that Amber was trusting you by sharing her concerns in the first place. It’s a win that she’s open enough to communicate this struggle to you.
 
When hypothetical-you said, “It’s complicated. I can see why you’re feeling discouraged,” you were witnessing her experience, showing empathy, and confirming her feelings. Giving emotions a label sucks some of the power out of them, giving the feeler more control. You were acknowledging how complicated and challenging the situation is and also showing that you are on Amber’s team.
 
When “you” said, “I’ve walked through the data with some other teachers and have a few thoughts,” you were giving a reason for Amber to trust your judgment. You were demonstrating credibility. You were opening the door for an invitation.
 
When “you” said, “Would you be interested in hearing them?” you were asking permission to share. This is probably the most important and powerful step. Giving unsolicited advice reduces the possibility of uptake. Asking permission gives the teacher a chance to shift to a receptive mindset – maybe.
 
When “you” said, “You could take them or leave them,” you were leaving it to Amber to decide. She maintains agency for whether she even wants to hear your recommendation. That’s the first fork in the road (see the decision diagram below).
 
If Amber said something like, “I can’t think about this any more right now. Maybe we can talk about it later,” you just got a soft no. You still did your duty. You listened. You offered.
 
You could close this imaginary “no thanks” conversation by saying something like, “You got this. I know you’re going to figure it out.  If you decide you want to talk more about it, I’m here for you.” A response like this demonstrates your faith in Amber’s capacity. It leaves a good feeling and creates a strong possibility that she’ll be back for more.
 
If, on the other hand, you got a response like, “Sure, what are your thoughts?” You’d have a chance to speak from a place of experience and knowledge, reframing the problem so that it doesn’t seem so heavy. You could close with something like, “So, it’s something to think about.” In this scenario, too, you would demonstrate your faith in Amber’s capacity. “I’m sure you’re going to get this untangled,” you might say. You’ve added value, played on Amber’s team, and left the options open.
 
Then, of course, there’s another fork in the road (also illustrated in the map below): Amber could try your suggestion or she could decide not to. Either way is okay. Your recommendation was a gift freely given, and you’re not going to feel offended or hurt if Amber doesn’t take your advice. Amber received the gift, which was an act of humility. What Amber does with the gift is up to her. Again, she is maintaining her agency as the decision-maker for her classes.
 
Wherever the forks in the road lead, following this 5-step recommendation process with teachers shows respect. You are seen as an asset, not a liability. You demonstrate that you believe in their capacity and that you’ll be there for them in the future.

 
*Thanks to the What Could Go Right?” podcast, episode 2, for spurring these ideas.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

October is the month when new teachers struggle most. Here are some tips on coaching a novice teacher:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/coaching-novice-teacher
 
 
This short video: Gestures and facial expressions for whole-group participation:
 
https://www.teachingchannel.com/free-videos/
 
 
Getting to know students as digital learners:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/getting-to-know-digital-learners-how-playing-with-technology-helps-facilitate-our-identities-as-learners/
 
 
Supporting students on independent writing projects:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/independent-project-hiccups/
 
6 Benefits of play:
 
https://www.thegeniusofplay.org//tgop/benefits/genius/benefits-of-play/benefits-of-play-home.aspx
 
 
 
That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!
 
Was this helpful?  Please share!
Want to know about new posts? Click “Follow” (bottom right)
Follow on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch and Twitter and Instagram @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com
 
---------------------------------
Want more coaching tips? Check out my book, Differentiated Mentoring & Coaching in Education: From Preservice Teacher to Expert Practitioner, available from Teachers College Press!  I’m so excited to share it with you! TODAY you can use the code: SEPT2023 for 15% off plus FREE SHIPPING. Click  here  and I’ll email you the free Book Group Study Guide that includes questions, prompts, and activities you can use as you share the book with colleagues.  I hope you’ll love this book as much as I loved making it for you!