Steplab Instructional Coaching Intensive - Raw Notes

  These will be raw notes taken in real time and undergoing very little editing.  They will be words from the speaker blended with my own thoughts as I process what is being said.  While I will try to note the difference, I can't promise that will always happen.  Don't hold a speaker responsible for anything I put here.  

Steplab is an international platform for professional development.  This is the first intensive in the United States.  

The goal for today is for every participant to leave more competent, confident, and motivated to be a high quality instructional coach.

Giving other adults feedback is awkward and must be learned.  

What is instructional coaching?  A cycle of observation and feedback

How does one start?

Connect and clarify conversation - Helps to build the coaching relationship and clarify the process, a foundation need to help the coached person feel comfortable and open.  Without a good foundation, things are unstable.  

• Connect:  Ask some questions that get deeper than the surface level (motivations, goals, strengths, hopes for the classroom).
• Clarify:  Explain the rationale and process, deal with questions and concerns of the coached individual (observations, scripting, rehearsals, video, feedback)
• Close: Model vulnerability as you talk through the relationship with the coached.  "We are going to figure some things out together.  I'm going to learn from you."

Science of Instructional coaching

Typical "after school PD" runs a wide spectrum of effectiveness.  Rarely, it might bring about immediate and sustained transformation. Often, it is interesting but doesn't effective immediate change.  Most of the time, teachers are thinking about what else they could be doing with that time.

There is no correlation between years on the job and expertise, but there is correlation between effective professional development over time and expertise.

People who are satisfied with their jobs feel three things on a regular basis - Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose. - Drive by Daniel Pink. Helping teachers learn how to do their jobs better will build all three of these.  

PD is often ineffective because:  Teaching is one of the most cognitively demanding jobs that exists, so trying to keep in mind something you want to improve on while doing it is insane.  We develop habits quickly as mental shortcuts, so breaking them is hard.  Whole group sessions have statistically insignificant impact.  Quality instructional coaching shows 2 months gain per year for the students of the teacher who was coached.  (A bad instructional coach is no better than a bad whole group PD.)

Effective PD must 

• Build knowledge (manage cognitive load, revisit prior learning)
• Motivate  staff (setting goals, info from credible source, provide affirmation and reinforcement)
• Develop teaching techniques (instruction social support, modeling, feedback, rehearsal)
• Embed practice (provide prompts and cues, action plans, encouragement and self monitoring, context specific repetition)

If any are missing, it will fall flat.

Three models of coaching were shown and critiqued.  

1.  Gather Evidence:  In the Gathering Evidence phase, you cannot say things like "you gave too many examples."  Give facts about what you observed and lead them to the conclusion themselves.  Notes should be what the teacher and the students are saying, doing, writing, or displaying (time stamps and head counts can be helpful).  Take pictures.

How do you know if a coachee is read to move on from a step?

The right effect is achieved 

• at the right moment for the right reason 
• with the criteria met 
• and has become habitual (at least partly)

If a coachee hasn't achieved their step:

• acknowledge progress and any parts of the criteria that were completed.
• highlight that "students need time to become accustomed to the routine.
• include a consolidating step as a sub-goal

2. Review Progress: Praise and Prompt:

• Praise needs to be specific to the thing they are working on, not generalized to the whole lesson.
• Prompt them to reflect on what success looks like.  It should be a moment of celebration.  Name what part was successful and say, "What do you think the impact was?"
• Quality praise is precise (praise one thing with evidence), linked to the prior step, and includes a prompt to reflect on their success (helps to build insight and form habits)

3. Diagnose

• Always keep the goal in mind and focus the coaching on that thing.  The step is secondary to the goal.
• Form multiple hypotheses about the learning problem.  Don't just coach your favorite technique.
• Search for pivotal evidence that will support your hypothesis and allow coachee to find the conclusion.
• Identify a teach goal to address one problem and suggest a step to help achieve the teach goal.
• Tackle in small steps.
• Pull it all together.

4. Agree on Step - This is the easiest step to do wrong.  And it is the part where the coached individual is most likely to get defensive.

• Decide together - Don't say, "the step I have chosen for you is . . ."  
  
• Ask questions like, "How successful do you think this was?"
• Offer evidence (picture of student behavior or work) if you need to.
• If the teacher is already self-aware, you may not need to provide more.  You can just agree with them.  It is only if the teacher needs leading that you need to give more.  Once agreement has been reached, move on; don't beat a dead horse.

Awareness (Tell me about... I noticed... ) + Agreed Insights (What impact did...?) + Step Plan ( How could we...?) = Successful Change

5.  Modeling - Showing the coachee an exemplar on either video or live yourself will help them to understand what you mean more than just explaining it to them will.

Four steps to effective modeling

Script it ahead of time.

Check against criteria - Are you helping them to implement the step without adding other things in?

Representation - Show a video or model it yourself.

Deconstruction - Explain what it means as you go.  Did you notice when she did this?  What impact did that have?  What did you notice?  Why do you think that happened?

6.  Planning and Rehearsal - Teaching looks easy, but it is so complex that some aspects need to be rehearsed in the same way all performance based professions rehearse.  It helps the teacher establish habits in cognitively non-demanding spaces before going into the messy world of the classroom.  This helps reduce demands on working memory.

• How can you implement this change into an upcoming lesson?
• Script it first.  What do you need to say and do?
• Let's improve the script.  It may take a few iterations to match the success criteria.
• Conduct multiple rounds of rehearsal.
• Feedback between rounds