Coaching thru Transitions

Remember when you went to an unfamiliar grocery store and everything was in the wrong place? Did you feel a bit drained by the time you left? Even small transitions like these feel uncomfortable, so it’s no wonder that families and educators are feeling stressed as the school year gets underway.
 
Think about how students, parents, and teachers in your school community are navigating the unknown. A sixth-grader may be walking into a middle school, not knowing what it will be like to have multiple teachers and a locker. A teacher may be using new curricula. A coach may be unclear about expectations for her role. These unknowns can feel weighty. 

Coaches can minimize the unknown for themselves during this time of transition by getting clear about their roles and responsibilitiies (with themselves, their principals, and their teachers). Make sure the district calendar and the school’s master schedule are at your fingertips. Ink in testing dates. These steps make the upcoming year more known. (For a Coaches Guide to Beginning of Year Transitions, click here.)

In addition to feeling unsettled by the unknown, discomfort during transitions can come from at least three other places: extra decision-making, changes in relationships, and changes in identity.*
 
There are so many decisions to be made: What to wear, how to get there, who to talk to first. Students’ families are adjusting their morning routines: What time must the morning alarm be set for now? Teachers are deciding about the structures they want to establish: What do these students need? Coaches are considering how to best allocate their time: What should they start with?
 
At the beginning of the new school year, even when returning to a familiar building, there will be new faces, new relationships to be established. That sixth-grader is hoping to see last years’ friends but finds there’s no one he knows on the cross-country team. There’s a new teacher on the grade-level team that changes the whole dynamic. Similarly, these new teachers are unfamiliar to the coach, and relationships of trust need to be established.
 
For the middle-schooler, the identity shift is palpable. He was the experienced one at this elementary school, but now he’s the newbie. How does a sixth-grader even act? The teacher, at the beginning of the school year, is shifting from her summer persona to the facilitator of learning. Maybe even changing grade level or classes taught. How is a STEM teacher different from a math teacher? How is a first-grade teacher different from a fourth-grade one? A huge identity shift happens for the teacher transitioning into a coaching role. How does the coach view her new self? How do others view her? Will she be considered credible

Recognizing the tensions of the unknown, of decision-making, of new relationships, and of identity shifts can help us face them more intentionally. Transitions require that we get into a more conscious state – we can’t act out of habit. This offers the opportunity for planning, for purposeful creation. We get to design new spaces.
 
Coaches can make big decisions in advance, and make them only once. Coaches can determine a coaching model they’ll use. (Of course, I recommend the GIR Model 😊, which integrates well with other coaching models. If you’d like the GIR coaching conversation plan, click here). We can decide on our coaching master schedule, setting aside blocks of time for planning, observing, conferring, and our own professional learning. We can prioritize to-do lists for when unexpected small chunks of time pop up. Now the decision-making for this beginning-of-year transition feels manageable!
 
The relationships we maintain or establish with teachers are both personal and professional. When we get together in with our colleagues, it’s okay to spend some time catching up – it’s not a waste, because coaching is relational work. As coaches, we are establishing both credibility and connection. Relationships matter.
 
Identity is closely-related to relationships, and we are working on both at the beginning of the school year, especially if we are morphing into coach as a new role. Which of your skills and passions especially lend themselves to your coaching work? How do you collaborate? How do you contribute? How do you lead? How do you promote teachers and students? How do you contribute to the culture and climate of the school? Considering these aspects of identity inform your transition into the new year. 

Coaching identity is also forged by personal attributes such as presence, openness, positivity, and curiosity. Humility, especially, is important, because it establishes a productive horizontal stance with teachers, rather than a vertical, authoritative stance over them. They’ll respond better to a guide-by-the-side than a dictator-from-above. Humility and confidence can (and should) co-exist in the coaching role. (Shame and self-confidence are at opposite ends of one spectrum; Pride and humility are on a different continuum* – and you know where we need to be on both of these gauges!) We can acknowledge and draw on teachers’ expertise and experience while sharing our own.

 
By proactively managing unknowns, decisions, relationships, and identities at the beginning of the school year, we can make this transition a productive one. The Coaches Guide to Beginning of Year Transitions is a tool for sorting through all of these aspects of transition. Click here to get it.

Thanks for Jody Moore for sparing these ideas. 

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

High fives for teachers:
https://www.facebook.com/attn/videos/1479756855393102/

Building belonging in school communities:
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/belonging-in-a-school-community/

Formative assessments that inspire creativity:
https://www.edutopia.org/article/creative-formative-assessments/
 
During coaching, seek first to understand:
http://barkleypd.com/blog/coaching-questions/

Books about books (for all ages):
https://www.alitlife.com/2023/08/08/books-to-celebrate-book-lovers-day/
 
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: AUG2024 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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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.

Using Coaching Notebooks

You get more of what you think about. The things that are in your thoughts manifest in your actions. As coaches, we can take advantage of this truism: by encouraging reflection on what works, we foster more of it. Coaching notebooks can be a tool for this purpose.
 
In a recent post, I suggested giving a notebook to each teacher you’d be working with as a back-to-school gift. Now it’s time to put that notebook to work! At the beginning of a reflective conversation, whether or not you’ve been there to observe a lesson, ask the teacher to reflect, in writing, on a successful moment from the lesson – a learning highlight (if you were able to observe, this is a great time for you to reflect on a lesson win, too).
 
Writing is a tool for thinking. The process of writing encourages us to classify and organize our ideas; Our thoughts are clarified; our understanding is less shadowy. Writing crystalizes the words.
 
Reflecting in the coaching notebook provides this opportunity. As the teacher writes about a success, the experience is being captured for exploration.
 
When you notice that the teacher’s pen stops moving, say something like, “Let’s take one more minute to add details about what happened.” When the pen stops again, you might even say, “Let’s take a few seconds more and add at least one more detail.” The final minutes are really the gold of this practice. Counterintuitively, the more specific we can be about our stories, the more generalizable the message. The more deeply and detailed a teacher’s thinking about a successful teaching moment, the more likely the moves underlying the success will be repeated, perhaps intuitively.  
 
The details on the page could be thought of as the “What” of a What/So What/Now What protocol. When those final seconds of writing are over, move on to the “So what?” by asking the teacher something like, “What seems important about that teaching success?” After identifying the underlying aspects of success, the rest of the conversation is the “Now what?” phase – focusing on how the success from that lesson could guide future teaching: “Where could you do more of that?”
 
As coach and teacher revisit and ruminate on successes, they deconstruct the instructional moves that made an impact. Interpreting the success supports effective instructional decision-making. The teacher’s future capacity expands.
 
Writing about times when things were going well increases the frequency of such times. Noticing and naming successes settles them in our brains so that we can call them up again when the situation warrants. There’s a proverb that expresses this: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Teachers get more of what they think about – and even more when the thinking is clarified through writing in the coaching notebook and expanded through a coaching conversation.
 
This week, you might want to think about:

A short video about why getting students’ names right matters:
 
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/video-getting-students-names-right-why-it-matters/2016/05
 
 
Gradual release of the classroom library:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/gradual-release-of-the-library/
 
 
5 risks for new teachers to try:
 
https://www.teachingchannel.com/k12-hub/blog/new-teacher-risks/
 
 
Tips for starting the year as a new (or continuing!) instructional coach:
 
https://www.smore.com/e54a8
 
 
Suggestions for seeking feedback as a coach:
 
https://www.schoolstatus.com/blog/seeking-feedback-as-a-coach
 
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! Use the code: AUG2024 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.

Principal-Coach Agreements for Smoother Sailing (encore post)

For many of us, the school year is getting underway. If you’ve had clear expectations for coaching in place in the past, you can smoothly step back into old routines. But if coaching is new for you or your school or there has been confusion about the coach’s role, a principal-coach agreement might make for smoother sailing in the year ahead.
 
A partnership agreement between principal and coach helps to define the working relationship between the coach and the principal and outlines expectations for the coach’s work.  Codifying these expectations removes the fuzziness that sometimes surrounds a coach’s role.
 
A principal-coach agreement might consider the following:

·       How and when will the principal and coach communicate?

·       How many and which teachers will the coach work with? (preferably all!)

·       What is the scope of the coaching work? (subject areas, topics, etc.)

·       What are the coach’s roles? (modeling, co-planning, data discussions, etc.)

·       How will time be made in the teachers’ day for coaching work?

·       How will confidentiality in the teacher-coach relationship be maintained?

·       How will we measure the effectiveness of the coaching work?

·       What resources are available to the coach?

Principal leadership is a key resource for coaching. Research suggests that teachers participate more in coaching when principals trust the coach to manage their own time, publicly endorse the coach’s expertise, and explicitly affirm how all teachers’ benefit from coaching.*  Principal support and clear job responsibilities are instrumental to coaches’ success.**  Partnership between a principal and coach is crucial.

 
To help you think through what your principal-coach agreement might look like, I’ve put together templates and questions that get at core needs, plus some varied examples of completed agreements. If you’d like me to send you these supports for creating a principal-coach agreement, complete this form and you’ll get them in your inbox.
 
Once you and your principal have arrived at agreement about these important ideas, plan for how this information will be shared with teachers. When the principal and coach model a collaborative relationship, the tone is set for similar collaboration as coaches and teachers undertake their shared work.
 
I became a literacy coach in the early years of coaching and neither my principal nor I initially had a clear vision of what coaching could look like. We figured out what my role would be as we walked the road together, and fortunately we saw eye to eye about the big things. We informally asked ourselves questions like the ones above. Today, there’s substantial experience with coaching, but what a coach does runs the gamut, so it’s quite possible that you and your principal may have different ideas about a coach’s role. That makes the principal-coach agreement even more important. Having a shared understanding of the work at the outset of the school year can set a tone for inquiry that makes coaching effective.
 
* Matsumura, L. C., Sartoris, M., Bickel, D. D., & Garnier, H. E. (2009). Leadership for literacy coaching: The principal’s role in launching a new coaching program. Educational Administration Quarterly, 45(5), 655–693.
 
**Matsumura, L. C., Garnier, H. E., & Spybrook, J. (2012). The effect of content-focused coaching on the quality of classroom text discussions. Journal of Teacher Education, 63(3), 214–228.
 
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Hooray!!! My book, Differentiated Mentoring & Coaching in Education: From Preservice Teacher to Expert Practitioner is a available from Teachers College Press!  I’m so excited to share it with you! You can order the book now and use the code: AUG2024 for 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!
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This week, you might want to take a look at:
Letters from home - Letting family & friends teach us about students:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/letters-from-home-letting-families-and-friends-teach-us/
 
 
The Bedley Brothers’ podcast episode on collaboration:
 
http://bedleybros.podomatic.com/entry/2015-05-30T01_00_00-07_00
 
 
Retelling rubric for themes and ideas:
 
http://chartchums.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/image-2.jpg
 
 
Make a mantra:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/mantras-matter/
 
 
A podcast episode to share with parents: Back-to-school tips:
 
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/podcasts/item/back_to_school
 
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 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.

Gift a Coaching Notebook

Stores are flooded with school supplies, so now is the time to stock up on a gift for teachers that supports planning, problem-solving, and reflection – a coaching notebook. Whether it’s the marbled black-and-white kind or something fancier, having a place to hold and clarify thinking enhances coaching outcomes.
 
Gifting a coaching notebook is a gesture that signals the value of your collaborative work with teachers. You could give a notebook to teachers at a start-of-year faculty meeting when you explain your coaching role or save it for the first time you meet one-on-one with a teacher. When you offer it, say something like, “I’ll be keeping notes on our coaching conversations so that I don’t forget anything important. If you’d like a place to keep your own notes, here’s a notebook where you could do it.”
 
Later, when you sit down to plan with a teacher, you could say, “Let’s both independently brainstorm some ideas and then share.” When a teacher describes a challenging situation, suggest she do a quick write to dump all of the emotions on the page. During a reflective conversation, you could prompt, “Take a moment to write about what you noticed,” or “Write about one of the most positive things that happened during that lesson” (these often get overlooked!).
 
Although we frequently use digital tools for our writing, having a tangible thing that is specific to our coaching work sets it apart. A notebook makes it easy to think back together on where we’ve been in our coaching work and plan for where we’re going. Plus, research suggests that there are cognitive benefits to the good-old pen-to-paper experience.
 
If you’re reading this after the schoolyear gets underway, no worries! You can wait until teachers settle in and comp books go on clearance! When both you and the teacher you are coaching have a notebook in hand, you’ll be prepared for deep thinking that supports meaningful dialogue. 

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

Protocols for data exploration:
 
http://mycoachescouch.blogspot.com/2016/08/be-data-explorer.html
 
 
6 Co-Teaching models:
 
https://barkleypd.com/blog/coaching-co-teaching/
 
 
Teaching empathy through reading:
 
https://ccira.blog/2024/07/30/from-empathy-to-compassion-reading-to-make-a-difference/

 
Ideas for helping students who are in the fight or flight mode:
 
https://www.teachingchannel.com/blog/fight-flight-freeze
 
 
Writing-at-Home resources for young children 4 – 8 (great share for parents):
 
https://kidwriting.nwp.org/
 
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: AUG2024 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!
---------------------------------
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.