Episode Transcript

Announcer: This podcast is produced by Benchmark Education.

Kevin Carlson: Co-planning and co-teaching. These are go-to techniques that help literacy coaches support both teachers and students across the school year. In this episode: “Tips, Tools, and Templates for Dynamic Coaching.”

I'm Kevin Carlson and this is Teachers Talk Shop.

Julie Wright: When there's two adults in there helping think about what kids need, it's this reassuring, supportive feeling that teachers crave most of the time. I always say to coaches, “If you don't know how you can be of service to teachers, ask them.”

Kevin Carlson: That is Julie Wright. She has over 25 years of experience as a classroom teacher, curriculum specialist, instructional coach, and educational consultant. For Julie, each day's work is an inquiry along a learning journey. She cultivates change with and among stakeholders, and this approach remains at the center of her work each day.

In today's episode, Julie shares tips, tools, and templates you can use to coach at the planning table. And she talks about how these plans come to life for teachers and students in the classroom. 

Benchmark Education’s Dr. Jennifer Nigh spoke with Julie recently to learn more.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Julie, welcome. Such a pleasure to have you again for part two of our conversation.

Julie Wright: Thanks so much for having me again, and I'm super excited to share some extra things about coaching that might help coaching continue throughout the year.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: All right. So for this episode, we're really going to dive a little bit deeper into what is happening at the planning table and really talk about some tips and tools and templates that can really facilitate the dynamic coaching that you talk about.

But before we do that, let's just recap what we talked about in our last conversation. So in our last conversation, we really focused on kick-starting that relationship, just getting started with the coaching relationship. So what are a couple of those tips that you provided?

Julie Wright: We talked a little bit about building those thinking partnerships and relationships so that everyone is centered around working in service of kids, but also bringing their own skill sets to the table—being able to use their strengths and their own assets and leaning on others as we gather ideas in ways that we might support the students we serve. We talked a little bit about the idea of creating clarity around the work that we do, because when we're clear about the work, it is easier to stay focused and also to meet the goals that we've set. And we talked a little bit about co-planning in ways to create clarity, which I think we're going to jump into today a little bit deeper. And then we also talked about the idea of working alongside of our principals and making sure that we're inviting them into our work, and I shared some ways that coaches can go about doing that. All of those ideas were in service of helping teachers and students meet the goals that we've set.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Great, great. Thank you so much for that. And I know one thing that really stood out to me in the conversation that we initially had was that element of time, and really, throughout all of what you were saying, it was valuing the time it takes to become a thought partnership, to get to know one another and build those relationships, the time needed to build in different roles and voices to really facilitate that work that is going to meet those end goals.

So let's then bring that down. Now we've got those relationships established, we've done all that initial work to kick-start that coaching relationship and that thought partnership that you talked about. So what happens next? What happens at that planning table?

Julie Wright: Yeah, it's my favorite thing too. I mentioned in the last podcast that I have a couple of go-to coaching habits. The two I hope to talk about today are two of my absolute favorite. And they kind of go hand in hand. So I think of them as like a dynamic duo.

When we get ready to come to the planning table, I really think of it as, like, setting a table, right? So the planning table might be in the coach's office, or it might be in the teacher's classroom, or it might be in the library media center.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: And so when you're saying planning table, you're talking about an actual table.

Julie Wright: Exactly. And then some of the things, just like when we set a dinner table, we need certain things there. So as a coach, I'm always thinking about, “Do I have that pile of Post-it Notes? Do I have the highlighters we might need? Do I have the computer or the screen that we might need to project something? Do we have the curricular resources that we need? Do we have the pieces and parts that are going to make our work really efficient, really effective, and very equitable, so that we can be thinking about the kids in our care?”

So the table itself is literally a planning table, and the way we go about setting that table depends on what you're working on, right? So it's not unusual to have anchor charts and chart markers. It's not unusual to have student work at the table. It's not unusual to have assessment data. It's really whatever the work at hand is what's going to be at the table that you're working at.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Okay. So to continue with your example, so as a coach, what you're thinking through is, depending on the context and the work that's supposed to happen here, I might set a very formal dinner party table, or this might be for a two-year-old's birthday party table. You know, there's all these reasons and you're considering as a coach, “What is the context, what is the work that I need to do?” And I'm going to prepare my table accordingly so that that work can happen effectively and efficiently.

Julie Wright: That's exactly right. And often teachers are [so] short on time. Sometimes their planning time to do this co-planning at the planning table might be thirty-five minutes. And so just as, like at a regular dinner table you'll have placemats, in this case you might have assessment data, or you might have student work, or you might have the curricular content that you're working on, or the pacing guide of a piece of curriculum. And so the idea behind it is to be ready and to be at the ready, if and when possible.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah. And I think that kind of reminds me of going back to something you said in our original conversation too is, as a coach, when you're differentiating what is needed according to the context, but you're also prepared, that's going to go a long way for building that relationship between you and the teacher or you, the teacher, and the administrator, or whoever's at that table. So, a good practice to really establish and keep sustaining that strong relationship, because you are delivering in a way that furthers their work.

Julie Wright: Absolutely. And I'm going to mention it—I'll try to remind myself to mention it—that it isn't always the coach who sets the table. So maybe we'll come back to that at the end.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah, yeah. Well, you want to dive into that right now? Go ahead. Tell me about that.

Julie Wright: So we're sitting at the co-planning table, right? And we're thinking about the stuff that we need in order to make that that meeting or that co-planning time as efficient and effective as you mentioned. And so for me, I've learned that because of the time that we have, a co-planning session, if you will, usually has three parts. It usually has a beginning, it has a middle, and it has an end. And the beginning is the time where we kind of set the tone, we make sure that everyone has what they need. We make sure that we might throw in a quick little relationship builder, a little icebreaker, we might revisit our norms, we might share out a celebration, we might share a funny. It's a way for us to gather and orient and then as a coach or whoever is facilitating or leading the meeting, we want to make sure we name why we're there. Like, what is our purpose for this time that we have together? Then everyone is clear about what it is we're trying to accomplish. That beginning part doesn't take very long. It's pretty quick because what we want to get to is the middle. The middle, for me, is like the work of the work. It's the sweet spot of the getting to the thing that we just said we were going to have clarity around our purpose for being there. That might look like us planning lessons, or it might look like us rearranging or modifying lessons. We might be designing units or learning progressions. We might be designing assessments. We might sort student work. I mean, the list goes on and on.

We might be thinking through supplies that we need or instructional resources that we are purchasing or ways to use instructional resources. We might be planning small groups. We might be thinking about kid watching and studying students so we get data that we need. We might be thinking about data that we have at our fingertips. So the stuff we do at the table really depends on the work that we're trying to accomplish. And that bulk of it—and we can do a combination of those things also, it's not like it's just one thing we do during that time. But then as a coach, setting a little bit of a timer and reminding yourself that you need some time, a short amount of time at the end to do some wrap-up. So that's the end part. We might name what we just accomplished. We might name next steps. And we might divide up to-do lists, which might lead us to what do we need at the table the next time we are co-planning, which is how it's sort of cyclical. So you can imagine that one meeting might flow into the next. And that's when we know our work is continual and connected and hopefully student-driven.

Kevin Carlson: After the break: Working on goals. Stay with us.

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Dr. Jennifer Nigh: So I want to go back to the work of the work. Do you find as a coach that you are, because the work is directed by a goal, what the goal is, correct? So do you find that you spend a significant time in reoccurring sessions, or do you find that you are covering a lot of different goals during these co-planning times during that work time? So are you moving around with goals, or do you stay focused on a particular one for a period of time?

Julie Wright: Yeah, that's such a that's such an interesting question. And the answer is, it depends. It might vary depending on grade level or content. And so probably the key factor for a coach coming out of that idea is that you have to kind of know what it is you're going after. You either have to be following a directive—sometimes a district has an assessment that they need not only administered, but they need the data analyzed. In that case, the goal is super clear because it's been handed to a team of teachers, and that's part of the work.

Other times we might be designing a unit or a mini-unit around a certain topic or around a set of learning targets for kids or standards or using a curricular resource. And when we do that, we might be working on different things. There could be teachers that are trying to unpack the mini-lessons or the direct teaching part. There could be teachers that are trying to hone in and figure out how they might create small groups so that they can differentiate. And so while it might look like we're all eating the exact same meal at a table, sometimes we are and sometimes we're not. Sometimes we're dividing and conquering based on either our own professional needs and our growth plan, or what we need in our classroom to help our kids succeed.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah, the more that we have this conversation, the more how much I'm appreciating the multifaceted aspects of what a coach is doing, especially today, and how that can really extend your own personal growth. But yet it's still this larger goal-oriented thing that is happening and that, as you mentioned, can look a lot of different ways. So that's fabulous. I want to go—

Julie Wright: If you don't mind, I just wanted to mention something. I apologize for interrupting you. The interesting part about coaching today is that to name all the things you might do at a planning table when it's not all exactly the same, is in order to build capacity, we have to trust that teachers are smart enough to be able to work together to figure it out. Part of coaching is to trust the people you're working with. And that didn't used to be; the role of the coach was more of the expert in the past. The role of the coach today is to pull people together and yes, of course, be the expert in some things because that's part of the role, but to really be able to pull people together to say during this time, in this space, “What resources can I give to you or what do you need from one another that can make the goal of, say, hosting small groups or unpacking a mini-lesson? How will we make that work and how will you be able to manage that?”

And so sometimes it's just the time and space is what's needed for teachers. And as a coach, that part is really exciting, that we don't have to be in every single conversation, that teachers are really, really, for the most part, wicked smart and really want to do well. So they'll figure it out, or they'll know that they can lean on the coach for resources.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: You know, I'm thinking there was a book that was recommended to me recently called The Art of Gathering—and full transparency, I haven't read it all yet, but it's on my to-read list. But one of the things that I know from it is that it's really important when we gather, however we gather—in this case it's for a coaching relationship at the co-planning table—but however we gather, it's really digging into that why of gathering. So not just this superficial, “Oh, we're getting together because we have this PLC time and we need to do something meaningfully.” No, we're digging down into the why of that and how unique that why is and how you are kind of facilitating working towards that why, but also almost releasing too in a lot of ways for teachers to continue that work both with their colleagues but independently. So really juggling a lot there.

Julie Wright: You are going to love that book.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Oh, good!

Julie Wright: I often share that book with coaches because I have enjoyed that book and I've applied it to my personal life, but also to my professional life. And I remind instructional coaches and department chairs and team leaders and even principals and assistant principals, if I share that book with them, I remind them that they think about what lens do you want to take when you read it. And then I'll put a little bug in their ear and I'll say, “When you think about the work in schools, think about all the different ways that teachers and kids can gather, whether you're there or not.” And I think that's a beautiful connection to that book, because it really is about the art of gathering.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah, I love it, I love it. Great to read it for sure. So let's go back. You had originally, I don't know if now's the time, but let me ask you. You had, when we were talking about setting the table and setting that table for different contexts and being prepared and establishing that relationship, you mentioned that you wanted to talk a little bit about who could be setting that table also. Is now a good time?

Julie Wright: Yeah, it is.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Perfect.

Julie Wright: It kind of connects to the book you just referenced, that you are about to read. So the leaning on the coach, at least at the onset, makes a lot of sense because the coach is there to help gather and facilitate and organize. That's a huge part of the coach's role. But I've learned over time that if you want to build capacity, you have to make sure that the teams that you're working alongside of can function if you're not there—in fact, can highly function and that you are one team member—you're not the reason the team gathers. And so in order to build capacity, when we're looking at that wrap-up at the end of our meeting time and we name, “What are we doing next?” I'll often say, “Let's think about our to-do list.”

A tip that I always have for a coach is, “Make sure you set that timer. Make sure you set the timer. If you're worried that you spend too much time in the beginning of a meeting—building relationships is taking too long, even though it's important and you can't get to the work of the work, set a timer. If you want to make sure you have time at the end to do a wrap-up and set some goals and some talk about next time, set your timer.”

So this idea of having a timer at the end for you to be able to say, “So next week, I'm wondering what we need to bring or who needs to bring what and where we would like to meet.” And being okay as a coach, if you are not the one always setting the table—

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Is that hard?

Julie Wright: I think for some coaches it is. I think sometimes it is. And there's a delicate balance, right? Sometimes the teachers are so busy that they want to over-rely on you to set the table. And so the way that I balance it out for myself is I remind myself that people in my professional circle, we all have to practice different roles, so that the change that we're trying to make is not dependent on one particular person.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah. Yeah. And it's empowering too, right?

Julie Wright: Yes.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Again, thinking personally, that’s a hard thing for me sometimes, is to give up that control, or you have the good intentions to empower people but sometimes it's like, “Well, I'll do it,” right? So what an important way for you to build capacity and to value that and bring everybody in so they all feel part of the process and again, empowered, so that they can continue the work if you're not there, which is, I think, really important as a coach to go in trying to build that capacity so that that work could continue as long as possible.

Julie Wright: I learned that about myself when, long ago, I was a coach in a building every day. And if I and my children were young, and if I had to take a sick day because someone had an ear infection—

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Oh, yeah.

Julie Wright: Sometimes none of my collaborative planning time teams would meet together, and I realized that wasn't a reflection on them—it was a reflection on me. I had been holding too many of the structures too close to me and not giving them—they might have met, but some of them wouldn't meet at all, and some would sort of meet about other things. And that's okay too, sometimes that's super healthy. But I realized that it wasn't that they were not doing their job or not doing right by kids. I had created a structure that was so dependent on me and it was not a healthier, productive way. So I started—

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: But what a great learning experience for yourself, right? We’re all growing, we're all learning.

Julie Wright: Absolutely.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: And you know, we're having this conversation about coaching and education, but I think one of the throughlines between our conversations that I'm hearing as somebody listening and learning from you is, so much of this applies in so many aspects of our personal professional lives. Like, this is just good advice that can be applied in so many different ways.

Kevin Carlson: After the break: Co-teaching and some tips to make it work better. Stay with us.

Mid-roll announcer: The work we do in schools is too complicated and dynamic to go it alone. With her book, Side-by-Side Instructional Coaching, author Julie Wright delivers an essential resource for instructional coaches. Side-by-Side Instructional Coaching presents ten habits instructional coaches should have to be collaborative leaders and bring out the strengths of the teachers they serve. These include: develop relationships, communicate plans, help teachers set goals, and prioritize across the year.

Julie Wright: I wrote this book because every student deserves a teacher who has a thinking partner.

Mid-roll announcer: Find out more about this and other titles at PD Essentials dot com. Go teach brilliantly.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: So we talked a lot about co-planning, but let's also talk about co-teaching, because I know that's a big hat or role that you play as a coach. So tell me about co-teaching.

Julie Wright: It's super important. It's the dynamic duo for co-planning. So we often spend all this time planning at the table. But the execution of the plans is really tricky for everyone involved. That doesn't mean that teachers don't know what they're doing, but you make this plan, and then you get in front of twenty-five, twenty-eight students, whether they're eight years old or eighteen, and it can feel a little overwhelming, like, “What did we say we were going to do?” and “How is this going to roll? It sounded good on paper.” So it's the way to close the gap between the distance between idea and action. And so sometimes co-teaching can mean a lot of different things. It might be that we've made a plan for a little mini-unit, which is a week long. And it might be that during our co-planning time, I can use a coaching entry point to say, “Is there a time where you would like me to come into your classroom during those five days that we've planned instruction? Would you like me to kid watch or study kids? Would you like me to use a lens of professional curiosity or concern to figure out if kids are grappling with the content or the skills or strategies the way we thought that they would?”

I might think about using a note catcher, which I think we're going to provide to the listeners as an added benefit for this podcast. We might collect on-the-spot, in-the-moment data around what it is, what we see and hear kids are doing and why we think that matters in relationship to the goals we've set for them. We might name their assets or areas that might need a lift. We might just simply take notes of observational data in our notebook. We're going to try to then use any of that information during that co-teaching time where I might be studying kids, then bring it back to the planning table. I'm using that as one example. Co-teaching has a lot of different possibilities, which I'd be happy to talk about in a moment. But I'm honing in on that one idea of kid watching or studying students as one go-to, to take that cyclical process. We co-planned something. We then went and we were co-teaching together, meaning I was in the classroom as the coach with the specific intent of kid watching. Then I can take that data right back to the co-planning table and say, look at the data that I collected based on what we thought kids might do.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: I like that. And that keeps that, like you said, that coaching cycle happening. But also using data to make our decisions, which we know is so powerful.

Julie Wright: I was going to lean into the idea of being able to then connect those to, then, teachers and coaches—we get this sense that our work is ongoing and there's nothing better than that because nobody really gets much smarter. Nobody gets very smart with these one-and-done things. Every once in a while we get smart about it, but we really need to connect it and do it and see it and feel it and think about it and kind of live in it in order for us to feel that transfer.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Absolutely. Well, and you bring up a good point, like we've known for a really long time in professional development research, that the sit-and-get-one-and-done does not move the needle. Like you said, you might learn a couple things and that's fantastic. And we all enjoy that sometimes that speaker, that one-and-done and whatnot, but to really make that meaningful change, it has to be sustained and it has to be meaningful, and it has to be embedded in what we as educators do day in and day out and just, I'll throw in there because you mentioned, is driven by data. And that data may look like a lot of different things. It might be observational, like you mentioned. It might be looking at more summative data that a teacher is collecting on their students or whatnot, but using that data to inform what's next, it's essentially like progress monitoring or teaching and seeing what works.

Julie Wright: Absolutely. That’s right. It definitely counts. And then, as we think about co-teaching in, in a broader sense, studying students is one way. It doesn't sound like co-teaching. Someone might be like, “That's co-teaching?” When I use the word co-teaching, I mean we're in the classroom together. And we really are. We can be co-teaching because we're in the classroom together, we don't actually have to be teaching something at the exact same time. That's a twisted definition, a little bit, about the word co-teaching because it means different things to different people in different models.

But when we're co-teaching in the classroom together we might co-teach a lesson together. That's sort of the typical definition, the older definition of co-teaching. That's an important thing to do. We might share back and forth, share that responsibility. I might, as the coach, I might actually do the teaching while the teacher is kid watching or studying students. We can swap roles. They might see things differently than I do. And so that's a really important piece of data that we could be talking about. We might together decide how we're going to collect evidence in the classroom, so while we're co-teaching and being in the room together, we might have a data protocol that we're going to use.

I could be modeling for students as the coach. I could be modeling for the teacher. The teacher could be modeling and I could be observing that modeling and then intervening and helping kids if there's a gap in what they can do. We could co-host or host small groups happening at the same time. We could do half groups. Or we could work one-on-one with kids. I mean, the list goes on. Yeah, it’s a real broad definition. But I want coaches across the land to know that when they go into classrooms to be of service, teachers are so appreciative because they really, ultimately, they want their kids to succeed, and when there's two adults in there, helping think about what kids need, it's this reassuring, supportive feeling that teachers crave most of the time. And so I always say to coaches, “If you don't know how you can be of service to teachers, ask them. Give them a list of all the things you could do and say, ‘What do you want me to do?’ Let the teacher be strategic in that decision, at least at the onset.”

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah. That's wonderful. Well, these are all such phenomenal recommendations. And I just want to comment on the kid watching that you talked about. It’s been quite some time since I've had my own classroom, but I imagine how valuable that would have been, because as hard as you try, you can't see everything—twenty-five kids doing many times different things in the classroom simultaneously—that other pair of eyes to say, “I noticed, I saw,” and then, “Let's talk about the impact that has on how we're going to reach our goals and how we're going to help move that child, or that group of children forward in their learning.” So what a valuable resource, and opportunity for growth that that provides. So I love that and I—that would have been something I would have loved to have experienced myself when I was teaching—so glad to hear that that is part of co-teaching, not just the traditional “I'm going to stand in front of the room and we're going to kind of go back and forth with the lesson or the activity or the explicit instruction that we're providing.”

Julie Wright: It’s really fun to think about kid watching. That idea comes from Yetta Goodman and Gretchen Owocki, who coined the term “kid watching,” and they were studying pre-schoolers and kindergartners, and they were focused only on literacy. And I was working alongside my former colleague, his name is Barry Hoonan, and he's in the Seattle area and we were both working in New York at the time, and we were studying middle schoolers and he and I were like, “What do we want to call this?” And I'm like, “Well, you know, and we both, we both had work.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: They're kind of kids, but they're not!

Julie Wright: And we're like, “Well, we could just call it ‘Kid Watching 2.0,’” which is what we did. I encourage every educator—name something!

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: I love it.

Julie Wright: And then let everyone borrow it because it's not a new idea. There are very few new ideas.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: And educators are the best at borrowing, so…

Julie Wright: Right! And the idea, the freedom is what it gave us—that's sort of the point, right? Like, the freedom of being able to say, “We're going to study kids, we're going to name their assets and areas where they might need a lift, and it's going to impact our instruction in real time.” And I think that's the beauty. If you couple that with some numerical data, you've got a really nice picture of a kiddo and what you might do, which would impact your co-teaching and would impact your co-planning.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Excellent. I love that. Well, Julie Wright, thank you so much for sharing your expertise and your experience with us. I know that our listeners, coaches, and educators alike are going to take away so many great tips and tricks from this conversation and our first session, where we dove a little bit more into establishing the relationship. So, any last words of advice or comments that you'd like to make before we close out our chat today?

Julie Wright: I think if you're a coach and you're working beside students and teachers in schools, alongside principals and specialists and even people at the at the district level, take a moment to just breathe and look around. Schools are really, really great places, filled with kids who come to school every day ready to learn. And even when kids are having a hard day, they're just telling us something with their behavior that might shape the bad day, but they still show up. And so in the schools that are there, we're there to receive them, and to look around and to really take a moment to enjoy it because educators mean a lot to kids these days, and I'm so thankful to be a part of that profession.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Excellent. Wonderful words to end on, Julie. Thank you so much. On behalf of Teachers Talk Shop podcast and Benchmark Education, we greatly appreciate your time and we look forward to having you again real soon.

Julie Wright: Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Kevin Carlson: Thank you Julie Wright. Thank you, Dr. Jennifer Nigh. And thank you for listening to Teachers Talk Shop. Our previous episode also featured a conversation with Julie Wright: “3e ways to Kick-Start Your Literacy Coaching.” If you enjoyed today's episode, I encourage you to check out the previous one, as well. Visit our website to learn more at Teachers Talk Shop dot com.

If you are new to teaching, or a seasoned coach who wants a restart, Julie Wright's book, Side-by-Side Instructional Coaching, is for you. It will help you feel confident in your coaching, it will help you take on the task of shaping a school community, and it will help you focus on helping all children meet their highest potential. Go to PD Essentials dot com to get your copy today.

For Benchmark Education, I'm Kevin Carlson.