Advice from an Olympic Coach

It’s time for the Olympics! – A good time to reflect on the role of coaches. Bob Bowman, who coached swimmer Michael Phelps to his record 28 Olympic medals, offers some advice about coaching that applies in educational settings, too.
 
1. Abandon the “one size fits all” mentality. Swimmers have different approaches and gifts, and so do teachers, so coaches should individualize their support. The Gradual Increase of Responsibility Model for Coaching (described in previous posts), can help instructional coaches pick an effective coaching tool.
 
2. Determine the gold standard. Bowman suggests being process-oriented and focused on the things you can control. “Be a little better today than you were yesterday,” he said. Doing that day after day leads to remarkable change. As coaches, we can focus on individual goals (for ourselves and others) and also organizational goals (for the school or district). Establishing clear targets and keeping them in focus is an important coaching task.
 
3. Continue to develop your skills. For Instructional coaches, reading professionally and being part of professional networks supports our own continuous improvement. Then we can find opportunities to put these new ideas into practice. If you don’t have students of your own, don’t be afraid to borrow another classroom. Modeling, even when things don’t go as planned, is a learning experience for everyone involved. Bowman points out that we learn more from mistakes than from successes, so don’t be afraid to take a risk. And encourage risk-taking in teachers and students as they develop new skills of their own.
 
4. Accept that there will be daily challenges. “The more successful you are, the more headaches that come with it. The stakes are higher,” Bowman says. “The fun is overcoming (the challenges).” It is easy to sit back and be satisfied with the status quo. Difficulties come with quests for change. So expect it, accept it, and view the challenges as problem-solving exercises.
 
Like Bowman, instructional coaches can sit on the side, cheering and supporting those we are working with. By keeping Bowman’s four tips in mind, we’ll also have victories to celebrate!
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

Build classroom community with a “Where I’m From” poem:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/linking-literacy-and-community-at-the-start-of-the-year/
 
 
Video shorts of classroom makeovers:
 
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/film-festival-learning-spaces-classroom-makeovers
 
 
Teaching the Writing That Students Need Now:
 
https://ccira.blog/2024/07/16/teaching-the-writing-that-students-need-now/
 
 
A Calendar of “National Days” (both serious and goofy) to celebrate throughout the year:
 
https://nationaldaycalendar.com/calendar-at-a-glance/
 
 
Ideas for easing back into the school-year routines:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/cheat-sheet-first-days-school-jose-vilson
 
That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!
 
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 still use the code: JUL2024 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!
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Follow on Instagram @Vicki_Collet_Educator, on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch and Twitter @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com.

Try This at Home: Read the Room

This is part of my summer series posts of, “Try This at Home,” that focus on coaching attributes you can practice now and carry into the school year. Let’s think about reading the room.  
 
During one of my previous jobs in a district-level position, my supervisor caught me by surprise when, after a meeting with a group of decision-makers, he cautioned me that I needed to take better care to “read the room.” What he meant was, I needed to attend more to how people were responding, using their body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice, in addition to the words that were said.
 
I was surprised by my supervisor’s suggestion because I thought that attending to these features was something I’d refined while coaching. I thought I had learned to proceed with caution, listen for openings, and recognize what was hidden. I thought I had learned to be totally present and give others my full attention. I thought I had learned to use all my senses to guide me through a conversation. As I reflected on my supervisor’s suggestion, I realized that in my district position I often felt I had to fight for what I believed in when it came to literacy instruction. I had gotten into the habit of being on the offensive, and it had impacted my “listening” skills.
 
There are so many roadblocks to reading the room. If our focus is on our own thinking and opinion, we will miss too much. But if our focus is on others, we will notice their eyes, their smile or scowl, and their posture. Their messages will speak loud and clear to us, even if they are silent. And in that listening, we can find a way forward.
 
Although subtle, the ability to read a conversation with all of our senses is a valuable coaching talent. As with any talent, it takes time and practice to develop. The good news is, we probably have many opportunities daily to practice this talent, so you can try this at home (or at the family reunion, pool, or vacation location). Any conversation, in any context, can help us develop the full-body listening skills that will make our coaching stronger. If you try this at home, you’ll be a better coach when the school year gets underway.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

A beautiful, printable poster with tips for new teachers:
 
http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/siteASCD/publications/TipsForNewTeachers_Poster.pdf
 
 
How mentors help first-year teachers:
 
http://neatoday.org/2017/06/19/lean-on-me-how-mentors-help-first-year-teachers/
 
 
Moving coaching relationships from social to professional:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/failure-to-norm/
 
 
Poetry for kindergartners:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/poetic-writing-kindergarten
 
 
A Pinterest board with lots of relevant links for instructional coaches:
 
https://www.pinterest.com/alysoncarpenter/instructional-coaching-partnerships/?lp=true
 
 
That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!
 
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 still use the code: JUL2024 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!
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Follow on Instagram @Vicki_Collet_Educator, on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch and Twitter @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com.

Try This at Home: Don’t Interrupt!

This is the first in my summer series of, “Try This at Home,” posts that focus on coaching attributes you can practice now and carry into the school year. Let’s start with not interrupting.
 
According to Brené Brown, interrupting gets in the way of psychological safety – which is necessary for taking risks, expressing ideas, asking real questions, and making mistakes without fear of being embarrassed or rejected.
 
When we avoid interrupting, we show respect for the person who’s talking. We strengthen relationships. We listen and understand better. When we refrain from interrupting others, they are more likely to reciprocate and listen to us, creating more-balanced conversations.
 
If you want to interrupt less, try to focus entirely on the speaker and what they are saying. Push back the impulse to start thinking about how you will respond. Maintain eye contact to express engagement. Smile, nod, or say “mmmmm,” or “mmmhmmm” to show you are listening. If a thought comes that you don’t want to forget, jot it down. Wait for a natural pause before you respond. Monitor yourself, consciously willing yourself to let others finish.
 
If you’re willing to be vulnerable, ask friends or family to gently remind you if you interrupt. Making a commitment to yourself to avoid interrupting will help you develop better listening and communication skills.
 
When you’re excited about an idea or you feel like you’ve already waited patiently for the speaker to stop talking, it can be hard not to interrupt. But cutting someone off mid-sentence, without letting them finish their thought, shows disrespect and can damage relationships. Being an active conversational partner, a respectful turn-taker, shows that you value the speaker’s ideas and their time.
 
This week, in your personal conversations, suppress the urge to interrupt. Don’t give in. Allow the other person to finish what they’re saying. Prioritize shared communication over your own desire to speak. When it comes to good communication, listening is just as important as speaking. If you try this at home, you’ll be a better coach when the school year gets underway.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

Extending silent think time:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/extending-silence/
 
 
Taking learning “temperature checks” and asking for student feedback:
 
https://www.teachingchannel.com/free-videos
 
 
A podcast episode about preventing teacher burnout:
 
https://barkleypd.com/blog/podcast-addressing-educator-burnout-self-care-in-not-enough/
 
 
The importance of teacher reflection:
 
https://www.thoughtco.com/importance-of-teacher-reflection-8322
 
 
Building positive school culture:
 
https://www.teachingchannel.com/k12-hub/blog/3-areas-to-consider-when-creating-a-positive-school-culture/
 
That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!
 
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 still use the code: JUL2024 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!
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Was this helpful?  Please share!
Want to know about new posts? Click “Follow” (bottom right)
Follow on Instagram @Vicki_Collet_Educator, on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch and Twitter @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com.
 
 
 

Poetry PD

If you are beginning to ponder opening activities for the school year, consider including poetry. Poetry distills meaning, filtering the extraneous and crystalizing the essential. Poetry with a specific focus related to teaching and learning can clarify thoughts about important ideas and give voice to feelings that might otherwise be left unsaid. PD poetry can include a blend of opportunities for both collaboration and individual composing. Finding just the right words, as required by poetry, can set the stage for deep conversation.
 
I tried this idea as a way to think about coaching, What are its essential characteristics? Acrostic poetry, simple as it is, forces a focus on essential characteristics. Here are my essential characteristics of coaching, acrostic style:
 
Collaborative
Open
Approachable
Collegial
Honors expertise
Invitational
Non-evaluative
Growth mindset
 
Or take a look at coaching through Haiku:
 
Listening harder
Real concerns swirl and surface
We make the current
 
Whether your focus is classroom discussion, differentiation, the standards, or some other important idea, including poetry could be just the unexpected twist to get a professional development day off on the right foot and get innovative ideas flowing.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

The importance of teacher reflection:
 
https://www.thoughtco.com/importance-of-teacher-reflection-8322
 
 
Using checklists and guiding questions in coaching:
 
https://www.schoolstatus.com/blog/using-checklists-and-guiding-questions-in-coaching
 
 
Summer professional growth ideas for instructional coaches:
 
https://simplycoachingandteaching.com/blog/2021/06/16/summer-professional-development/
 
 
Build trust with teachers through clear expectations:
 
https://barkleypd.com/blog/building-trust-with-expectations/
 
 
Coaching teachers’ mindsets:
 
http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol16/num10/mindset-coaching-for-mental-health.aspx
 
That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!

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 still use the code: JUN2024 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!

No More Teaching in the Shallow End

It’s easy to teach in the shallow end. Your feet touch the bottom. You can navigate with ease. But you aren’t fully immersed. You can’t dive in deep. And neither can your students.
 
Teaching in the shallow end might look like workbooks and photocopies. It might look like desks in rows. It might be pushing start on a video and letting it play all the way through. Let’s be honest: It might look like sustained silent reading. Book reading and film clips and the right handout could all lead to learning – but only if we get out of the shallow end.
 
When teachers get out of the shallow end, things get messy. Kids talk to each other, and that can be hard to monitor and control. Students move around the room, and that can cause chaos. Students have agency, and that makes teachers vulnerable. It can be very uncomfortable.
 
Instructional coaches can be a floaty in the deep end, offering support, making sure the teacher doesn’t drown in the details. Don’t push a teacher off the high-dive. Just encourage the jump and be there to tow her to the edge of the pool if needed. Or lull her gradually deeper, treading water alongside. Sometimes you have to get used to the temperature.
 
In my coaching right now, I’m challenging one teacher to go deeper by differentiating instruction. It’s complicated and requires a steadying hand. Another teacher wants to use small-groups more effectively; she’s going to try assigning roles. Someone else is adding conferring to silent reading time. Another I’m nudging to use different seating arrangements. I think she’s ready to dive in. I talked with another about handing out a blank sheet of paper instead of that worksheet. A scary thought. She’d rather have her feet on the bottom.
 
Which teachers at your school are swimming in the shallow end? What are some shallow-end practices you’ve wanted to change? (Please comment below – I want to know!) As instructional coaches, we encourage deep dives and are there when teachers come up for air.
 

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

6 benefits of play:
 
https://thegeniusofplay.org/tgop/benefits/genius/benefits-of-play/benefits-of-play-home.aspx
 
 
Have teachers design the PD calendar:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/when-teachers-design-the-professional-development-calendar/
 
 
Increasing engagement through choice, differentiation, and including students’ interests:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/giving-students-choice-classroom-increases-engagement
 
 
How to slow down the teaching treadmill (especially great to share with new teachers!):
 
http://roxannaelden.com/2017/10/how-to-turn-down-your-teaching-treadmill/#more-2869
 
 
Restore the JOY in teaching:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/article/restoring-joy-teaching/
 
 
That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!
 
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 still use the code: JUN2024 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!
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Was this helpful?  Please share!
Want to know about new posts? Click “Follow” (bottom right)
Follow on Instagram @Vicki_Collet_Educator, on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch and Twitter @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com

Big Reflection

At the end of the school year, teachers often pause to think back, reflecting on the year just past. To provide context, it can also be helpful to zoom out – to consider how this year fits with previous ones. Seeing the bigger picture offers perspective. How does this year track with others?
 
Looking at the long run bridges the past and the future, helping us to see patterns of change that might offer hope to help us weather the next storm. Understanding how this year fits within our career trajectory might help us stay the course.
 
I recently read about a career reflection process that could prompt useful discussions at an end-of-year or beginning-of-year faculty meeting.* Here’s how it goes: Each teacher will need their own piece of chart paper or a similarly-sized piece of bulletin board paper (turning it sideways works well). Draw a vertical line near the left edge for your y axis. Draw a horizontal line near the bottom edge for your x axis. Label the x axis with tick marks representing each year of teaching/education experience (novice teachers might look more closely, labeling semesters, quarters, or months). Label the y axis with tick marks for rating how well you think you did as a teacher/educator. Now, take some time to plot a point for each year. Next, annotate the graph with brief explanations (teachers with a long teaching history may choose to mark and annotate just those years that stand out). Annotations might include circumstances, mentors, new curricula, students, etc. (Creating your own graph in advance so that you can show it as a model might be helpful.)
 
Next it’s time for a gallery walk. The group walks the walls, visiting the charts and offering questions and noticings on added sticky notes. After the walk, give teachers some time to ponder their own poster again, with the ideas of others added. Then ask what they noticed about teaching’s low points. Were there commonalities? End by thinking together about patterns noted in the peaks. What made the high points high? How could we recreate those highs as we move forward?
 
This timeline is like an EKG that shows the heartbeat of your teaching life. The peaks and valleys tell a story with a plotline that will continue as the new year gets underway. Whether you are ending the year or thinking about how to start the next one, this look in the rearview mirror offers opportunities for big-picture reflection and panoramic insight.  
 
* https://triciaebarvia.org/2017/07/11/slice-of-life-embarrassment/

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

A word cloud generator to summarize teachers’ reflective responses:
 
https://www.freewordcloudgenerator.com/
 
 
Transitioning from teacher to coach:
 
https://blog.teachboost.com/establishing-trust-transitioning-from-teacher-to-coach
 
 
This video about high-quality discussions:
 
https://www.teachingchannel.com/free-videos/
 
 
Sidewalk Chalk math arouses curiosity:
 
https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/55961/how-sidewalk-math-cultivates-a-playful-curious-attitude-towards-math
 
 
A 10-minute podcast on engaging teenage learners:
 
http://www.coolcatteacher.com/beat-boredom-engaging-tired-teenagers-critical-thinking/
 
That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!
 
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 still use the code: JUN2024 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!
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Was this helpful?  Please share!
Want to know about new posts? Click “Follow” (bottom right)
Follow on Instagram @Vicki_Collet_Educator, on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch and Twitter @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com
 

Ruminate or Reflect?

May is the time for remembering. Whether the year has already ended or you still have a bit left, you have probably been thinking back – on your own and with the teachers you coach – about the experiences of this year.
 
Let’s start with you.
 
Is there something you’ve been brooding about? Something you didn’t like and can’t get out of your head? Is there a thought playing on repeat, like the last song you heard with a refrain that hangs on? That might be fine if you love the tune, but if you’re stewing about something and it reruns again and again, it’s probably not productive.
 
Maybe it’s that conversation you had that you wish had ended differently. A PD that lacked energy. An idea that fell flat. A lesson that didn’t go as planned. A time when you lost your temper. A time when you missed an opportunity. If you’re not feeling this way now, it has probably happened to you sometime in the past. You know the feeling – it’s called ruminating.
 
When you were stuck in a circular rut of cerebral repetition, dwelling on what was or what could have been, you were looking back. Your mind kept reverting to the past. That’s not productive.
 
Of course, we want to recognize things that didn’t go well – it’s part of the improvement process. But a more productive path, as we summon up even the negative experiences from the past, is to contemplate how we will move forward. When we weigh past experiences, analyzing what could now change, we disrupt the possibility of reproducing an undesirable result.
 
When we deliberate with wonder and curiosity, we can think back as a way to move forward. That is the difference between ruminating and reflecting. Reflecting involves forward motion. If we take a learning stance when we summon up the past, we are reminded of not just the what, but the why. The why is where discovery happens. To stop the cycle of rumination, we consider not just pasts, but possibilities.
 
If you or a teacher you are working with is stuck in rumination, here are some practices that push toward reflection:
 
Talk
Talking gets us out of our head so that we can move on. This week, I was dwelling on a frustration. It was after the fact, and I couldn’t do anything about it until next time. But that didn’t stop it from replaying in my mind. I finally called two people and told them about it. Just saying it out loud got me unstuck. Saying it blocked the repeat. You can be there to listen to a ruminator, or you can find someone to listen if you’re the one that’s stuck.
 
Write
For some, writing is an antidote to unproductive cogitation. Like talking, writing gets the words out and can move thinking forward. Even writing the never-ending refrain out a few times, if you don’t yet have anything else to say, can offer a start. Writing can invoke critical thinking, opening up new angles. It helps you stand outside the experience. Writing encourages you to question assumptions and consider alternative perspectives. It gets you out of a grove by taking the thinking deeper. Writing might be just the thing to help a teacher you know move forward.
 
Written reflection affords the opportunity to make beliefs and orientations more explicit, supporting change. Including description might help teachers link their experiences to professional knowledge, making inferences and generalizations about what took place. Moving from the particular event to generalizable inferences about practice supports future instructional decision-making.
 
Ask Questions
Talking and writing can include asking questions. Asking questions promotes reflection. You can interrupt the rumination rhythm by leading with the “5 W’s and an H.” Like an investigative reporter, consider who, what, when, where, why, and how. You can do this for someone else in a coaching conversation. You can ask yourself these questions or encourage a stuck teacher to self-question. Self questioning promotes reflection.
 
Shift to Problem-Solving
Instead of dwelling on a past experience, shift the focus to finding solutions. Break down the situation into small pieces and determine one action that could be taken. For example, if you’re ruminating about that PD that fell flat, you could order a copy of Sit and Get Won’t Grow Dendrites (I love that one – just had to throw it in!). By actively taking steps to address the issue, you can redirect your energy (or the energy of a teacher you are working with) from rumination to constructive problem-solving, empowering you to make positive changes and move forward.
 
As the school year draws to a close, coaches and the teachers they work with pause to recall their experience. Help yourself and the teachers you serve break free from ruminating thoughts and move toward productive reflection through talking, writing, questioning, and problem-solving.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

Read alouds for saying goodbye:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/end-of-year-read-alouds/
 
 
The art and science of teaching reading:
 
https://ccira.blog/2024/05/20/the-art-and-science-of-teaching-reading/
 
 
Summarizing strategies:
 
http://digitalliteracy.us/summarizing-strategies/
 
 
Teaching place value with paper cups:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnUPHO5oiWQ
 
 
End-of-year reflection to next year’s writing teachers:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/end-of-the-year-reflection/
 
That’s it for this week. Happy Coaching!
 
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 still use the code: MAY2024 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!
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Was this helpful?  Please share!
Want to know about new posts? Click “Follow” (bottom right)
Follow on Instagram @Vicki_Collet_Educator, on Facebook at: facebook.com/mycoachescouch and Twitter @vscollet for more coaching and teaching tips!  You can also find me at VickiCollet.com