Coaches as Listening Partners or Thinking Partners?

Whether it’s unloading after a challenging day or talking out loud to find their own solutions, sometimes all a teacher needs is a listening partner.
 
Coaches take their cues from the teacher to determine the most helpful stance. If a situation seems emotionally charged, being a listening partner helps to de-escalate feelings. When my veteran first-grade teacher friend had “the most challenging group in (her) 27 years of teaching,” she had plenty of her own ideas for supporting students, but the support she needed for herself was someone to hear her.
 
I was also primarily a listening partner when Brittani, a more novice teacher, thought through students’ formative data on the math lesson she had just taught. As she vocalized the misconceptions she saw on their papers, she made connections to points in the lesson she’d taught and started formulating a plan to reteach. I did a lot of nodding.
 
When teachers need a listening partner, follow these five steps:
 
1) Listen to hear. Hearing implies a deep level of understanding.  It takes effort. Hearing is an active verb. It requires your full presence.
 
2) Let them know you care. The speaker feels understood and valued when empathy is expressed. “That sounds hard” acknowledges emotions.  
 
3) Thank them for trusting you. When teachers feel safe enough with you to do an emotional dump, share shortcomings, or express half-formed thoughts, acknowledging the trust this took affirms the relationship.
 
4) Reflect back what you heard. Paraphrasing validates the emotions and ideas the teacher has expressed. It also helps the teacher examine their own experiences.
 
5) Ask what they want to do. This open-ended question helps the teacher move past the initial download and potentially unpack the situation.
 
After listening, your response might sound something like, “That sounds hard. Thanks for trusting me with those feelings (thoughts). It sounds like you….What are you thinking you might want to do?
 
If it seems appropriate to offer ideas, you can ask, “Do you want to hear my thoughts?” If you get an affirmative response, you can then shift to “thinking partner” stance. But when emotions or ideas run high, be a listening partner first.
 
This week, you might want to take a look at:

Cultivating a Coaching Mindset:
 
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/learning-from-lasso-cultivating-a-coaching-mindset-in-new-literacy-coaches/
 
This short video about learning synthesizing with construction paper and glue sticks:
 
https://www.edutopia.org/video/synthesize-information-from-multiple-sources
 
 
This podcast episode with 5 conditions for effective formative assessment:
 
https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/effective-formative-assessment/
 
 
Brené Brown on teaching children to fail well:
 
http://time.com/4025350/brene-brown-on-teaching-kids-to-fail-well/
 
 
How to stay in the profession:
 
https://ccira.blog/2019/09/24/teacher-lost-and-found/
 
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! You can use the code: OCT2024 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!