Back to Basics: Revisiting the Practice-Based Coaching Cycle

Back to Basics: Revisiting the PBC Cycle
Coaching Corner Webinar Series

Joyce Escorcia: Hello, everybody. This is Joyce Escorcia with the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning, or the NCECDTL. Thank you for joining us today for the latest installment of the Coaching Corner Webinar Series, Back to Basics: Revisiting the PBC Cycle. Today, I'm joined in presenting the webinar by my colleague Sarah Basler, and we're looking forward to our conversation today. Just as a reminder that Coaching Corner Webinar Series happens every other month, and we invite you to go ahead and mark your calendars for the next episode, and that's going to be on March the 27, 2019, at 3 p.m. Eastern.

And, then, the goal of every one of our webinars is really to support you as a coach by exploring specific topics that are relevant to you in your role by identifying resources and strategies specific to whatever topic that we're talking about and then putting into practice what we learned through scenarios, videos, and also have opportunities for questions and discussion. And before we begin, we want to go over to some of the technology side of things so you can kind of get the most out of your webinar today. We'll be using some of the features of the webinar platform today, ON24. Kind of help us interact together.

And, so, at the bottom of your screen, you're going to notice these widgets, and if you have any questions during the webinar, you can submit them through the purple Q&A widget. We'll try to answer these during the webinar, but for some reason if we don't, we're going to try to capture all questions and answer them as we go along or afterwards. If you have any technical questions, please put them in there, as well, and we'll be kind of on the lookout there. A copy of today's slide deck and the additional resources are available in the resource list, which is the green widget, so we encourage you to download any of those resources or links that you think would be useful.

Throughout our session today, we'll be using the blue group-chat widget and the Q&A widget to have some back-and-forth conversation together with each other. And you can also find additional answers to some of the common technical issues located in the yellow help widget at the bottom of your screen. And each of these widgets are resizable and movable and can really kind of help customize your experience today. So, just click on the widget, move it by dragging or dropping and resizing using the arrows at the top corner. And then, finally, if you have trouble trying to -- If you have trouble, try refreshing your browser by hitting F5, and be sure to log off of the VPN or exit out of any other browsers. That can also help if you're having some issues with joining in.

And then we also wanted to let you know that, at the end of this webinar today, we would love to hear back from you and feedback. That really helps us to kind of steer the ship in knowing what supports, what topics are relevant to you in your role, so we ask to get your feedback, do an evaluation, so you're going to get a link, and you'll also see that on the last slide today. And then we're going to put it in the chat box.

So, we request that you complete that evaluation because we really do want to hear from you, and it really helps to kind of guide what we're going to talk about in the future. The evaluations will be closed three days after the webinar, and certificates won't be available anytime after that, so as long as you do the evaluation within three days, you'll be able to have a certificate kind of showing that you attended and joined us today. So, once you complete the evaluation, you'll be able to directly download that certificate of completion. And, again, thank you for just joining us today. And today what we're really hoping that you kind of are able to walk away with is the ability to just identify the practice-based coaching cycle components and that it's an opportunity also to kind of explore strategies to help you implement PBC effectively and also that you'll be able to walk away being able to talk about some of the strengths and challenges of implementing PBC. And -- Sorry. I'm having just a little bit of lag on my side.

During our time together, we really kind of want to look through the eyes of a coach and thinking about, before coaching begins, what are some of the things I can do to set coaching up to be successful? And as we walk through each component, what are some of the things I need to consider? What are some of the strategies that I can use to implement PBC effectively? And what should this look like in my setting? So, we're really hoping that you're able to walk away with some of those great ideas from the content that we have but also from each other.

And today we're going to introduce you to Faith, and Faith is going to kind -- We're going to walk through a PBC cycle through the eyes of Faith. And, so, Faith is a coach for Cumberland Agency, and Cumberland Agency has both center-based, Head Start, Early Head Start, and home-based. They have all of those program options. She coaches 10 staff altogether. This is her second year of coaching, and her leadership team have used what they have learned from their last year of coaching implementation to plan for this year, so we want to start our time together by thinking about all the things that happen before coaching even begins, because we know that implementing coaching and coaching is so much more than just, you know, kind of going in and -- and starting the cycle. So, first, let's take a look at the plan that the PBC implementation team at Faith's agency has put in place prior to her agency's coaching kick-off that they had in August. And here you'll see kind of several things that they had planned and when they were going to do them. You'll notice that, looking at data to choose the practices that will be the focus of coaching is listed as a task in June instead of, like, the month that school starts. This isn't just an accident, but it really is because we know that making that decision on what the focus of coaching should be should happen well in advance of the start of the new year and that choosing that focus and making that thoughtful decision takes time, and waiting until

August or September or until that new school year starts can be and is too late. And so, also we're taking a look at the data sources that they looked at because, again, the data sources at your program are going to be specific to kind of the different tools and things that you use, but they could include, like, assessment data, staff-survey data, things like ECERS or ITERS, other tools like the ... or TPOT or HOVRS data.

And so, with all of those things kind of being put in place by the PBC implementation team, Faith can really focus her time on preparing her coachees to receive coaching, because her agency was intentional on kind of doing a lot of the planning before it was time actually for coaching to begin. And so we want to kind of open this up to you. As we mentioned before, when   we talk about beginning coaching, there are a lot of things that should happen or be in place before we kind of start, you know, coaching and working with our coachees, so we want to hear from you. What are some of the things that you do to prepare your coachees to be coached? And we invite you to use the Q&A widget to respond, and so you're going to see a question pop up there, and we invite you just to answer and let us know, what are some of those things that you do to prepare coachees for coaching?

So, we're going to give you a few minutes as responses come in. We know that there are a lot of things that we can think of and that happen in preparation for coaching, and so we just want to -- We want to see, what are some of the things that you do to prepare coachees for coaching. Okay. You should see that question pop up. And I see Sarah Martin said, you know, "One thing is, you complete a needs-assessment tool," and, Sarah, that is so true. That is kind of a great place to start, as well. And just waiting a few more minutes. And we know some of the answers, you know, will be kind of common answers, but there might be some specific things at your agency that you do. You build a relationship. You develop that coaching-partnership agreement. Amy, thank you for sharing that. Esther kind of reiterates that by saying, you know, you build that relationship, getting to know everyone, find out the best ways that you can be supportive to them. And also, Janet just shared that, you know, she hasn't started coaching yet, but she's kind of in that exploration state. And so, Janet, we just thank you for joining us today and hope you can walk away with some ideas on how to best support your coachees, and this is kind of a great place for you to be, to get some of those ideas before you start coaching. And then Pedro says they normally have their coaches fill out a coaching confidentiality agreement form and complete a needs-assessment survey. And so that, again, kind of-- Boy, I kind of see that as, well, it's kind of getting you to the process and knowing what kind of policies and procedures are there. And then also there could be the coaching agreement, as far as, you know, what the responsibilities are for everyone involved. Arlene shares that, you know, the orientation for coachees on coaching and PBC. And that's a great point, Arlene. It's important that everybody knows, like, what's going to happen and how it's going to happen. In the beginning, you should build trust and support. And, Mardiela, thank you for joining us. She said her agency is getting ready to start coaching.

So, thank you for joining us today. And we have Melissa, who also says she's a new coach. So, we're excited to have you guys here. And then Linda shares that, you know, really kind of research and gather information and questions for the coachee, and I think that's also a great idea, that the more you know kind of going in helps you to be more prepared. And then, Nathan. I love this, Nathan. Nathan shares just to talk to them to see what they know about coaching in general, and I think that that is just a powerful tool just to kind of know what their past experiences with coaching and kind of know what kind of coaching they've participated in before.

So, just kind of being able to listen about their past experiences. You see I'm just kind of clicking through here. "Kind of review the ground rules," Arthur shares with us. And that's so important so everybody knows kind of what their shared expectations are. See quite a few talking about the needs assessment and coaching agreement. And then Suzette also shares that they've introduced some initial just observations. And Lisa. We have another new coach. Lisa and Samantha. Thank you, guys, for joining us today. And, again, Tuana shares that it's just important to share about what coaching is to the coachee, and I think that's so important to really be able to communicate your method.

So, thank you, guys, for all these wonderful responses. We'll kind of have our eyes in the Q&A box there. And we're going to kind of keep going with our conversation a little bit. And here, on this slide, what you'll see are a lot of the ideas that you already mentioned, but here is Faith's to-do list for coachee preparation. So, Faith writes each of her coachees an e-mail just introducing herself and then sends it out the first week of August. She makes a point to stop by and visit all the Early Head Start coachees at their schools, and she's already planned on meeting the Head Start coachees, as well as the home visitors at their yearly preservice training in a week. And then, as part of her agency's coaching kick-off, there will be a half-day training to kind of orient education staff to what PBC is, the processes, and what they can expect from coaching during the year.

And so, at this training, they scheduled a time in the next two weeks to meet and create an action plan with each of the coachees. She also provides them with some documents that can help prep them for their next meeting and kind of a "getting to know you" survey. So, this is a one-page document that they've created that ask them questions about the coachees, kind of like, what's their favorite snack? What are some of their favorite hobbies?

So, this document really helps Faith to get to know her coachees a little better just starting out, and it can also come in handy down the road when Faith wants to, say, celebrate a birthday or an anniversary or any other kind of fun life event. And then she gives them a needs assessment with the practices of their agency, the practices from the Teaching Pyramid Observation Tool, or the TPOT, and the Teaching Pyramid Infant-Toddler Observation Scale, which is the TPITOS. And then also for home-visiting, the Home Visit Rating Scale-Adapted, or the HOVRS-A. And so the implementation team, including Faith, review the TPOT, TPITOS, and HOVRS-A data, take it in the spring and decided which practices that their program really needed to work on for this year of coaching, and they created three needs assessments, so they created a needs assessment for Early Head Start or Head Start and then also for home-based. And so Faith explains the form to the coachee and tells them, you know, this will really help them to determine the focus for their action planning. She lets the coachees know that they can reach out to her via email, text, or phone if any questions come up between now and their action-planning meeting. Faith also reaches out to her coachees the day before their scheduled action-plan meeting to see if they have any other questions or just to kind of confirm that they're still set to meet. Faith knows that, from her experience from last year, that when coachees are prepared and understand what PBC is and kind of what its purpose is and how it looks for them, the coachees, they're more likely to buy into coaching and see its value. And so it's also important for coachees to meet Faith and just know who she is.

So, those are some of the things on Faith's to-do list, and I saw Crystal ask about a "getting to know you" survey, and that's actually one of the documents in your resources included for today. And then also I failed to mention this in the beginning, but also there's a note-taker handout. It's just a little extra document that you could use to kind of take notes during our webinar today but kind of sectioned off kind of based on our conversation, so you might find that useful, as well.

And then, Danielle, thank you for making that MyPeers connection. Danielle just reminded us that ... Sarah just shared the note-taker document in MyPeers, as well, so it's posted in MyPeers, and it's also posted in resources for today's webinar. So, thank you for that. Sorry. My -- I had just a little bit of lag. It took me a second. And so here again, there are some of the ideas that we already talked about in our kind of Q&A chat. And then when kind of thinking about Faith, you know, she really is putting in the effort early on to make sure that her coachees are prepared for coaching, and so these are just some of the strategies that you could try, some of the things that she tried, which is introducing yourself to the coachees, and that can be, again, just email, text, or phone, or even in person, really having an opportunity to kind of just orient them to PBC, whether it's, like, a presentation or a handout. Really getting to know the coachees, whether it's via that survey that we talked about.

And then just really establishing yourself as a resource early on or someone that they can come to for information about PBC and just letting them know that you're accessible and that they know they can come to you if they have any questions about kind of the PBC process or things that can kind of help them in their position. There's just some things to think about before coaching starts. And, so, now Sarah is going to kind of take us through the cycle. Again, we're walking together with Faith through that PBC cycle. So, Sarah, I'm going to let you take it from here. Sarah

Basler: Hi. Hi, everyone. So, now we're just going to follow Faith as she walks through each component of the cycle with her coachees. All right. So, collaborative partnerships are the context in which all other components of PBC occur. Faith has already started building partnerships with her coachees prior to the beginning of the coaching year. What you see on the slide are the characteristics of a collaborative partnership.

So, let's see how Faith embodies these. For shared understanding, the coaching partnership is established for a purpose. Coach and education staff should both be clear about why coaching is taking place and the hoped-for outcome. Faith orients all staff to PBC and its purpose prior to the year, as we discussed. She also uses a coaching agreement that lays out her role as a coach and what the coachee's role in coaching is. They review the coaching agreement at their first action-planning meeting. Faith and her coachees sign. She also gives them an opportunity to ask questions about the document, and they can add to or change to meet the individual needs of each coachee, so she really goes over this with them in person.

And for professional development, the purpose of coaching, the coaching partnership, is professional development, as we know, but specifically focusing on increasing the use of effective teaching, home visiting, and caregiving practices. So, while Faith's agency provides coaching as a form of professional development for coachees, they also understand how important it is to provide support and ongoing professional development to their coaches.

So, Faith attends a community of practice, so she goes to these meetings monthly with other coaches from the surrounding counties, and they get together to share successes, challenges, and ideas. Faith lets her coachees know that she's receiving coaching and PD, as well, so it's a parallel process. And this helps her to continue to learn and grow, as well. The coach can be a resource, a helping hand, and someone who listens without judgment, so a true partner in learning.

It's important to create a safe space where staff feel free to ask questions, discuss problems, get support, gather feedback, reflect on their practice and try new ideas. Collaborative partnerships are nonevaluative or judgmental. Faith's coachees feel supported by her, and one of the ways that Faith fosters this in her partnerships is by making sure that she sets all judgments aside and focuses on listening to the coachees. Faith had a hard time her first year with this skill as she found herself going into reflection and feedback meetings and telling the coachees her opinion versus sharing objective data that she collected during the focused observation. This was a skill that Faith is continuing to work on because she knows that it's a critical part to PBC. Coaching is not a top-down method of professional development, so while it may be focused on specific program or school-readiness goals, staff still has many choices about which specific teaching or home-visiting practices to try and when and how to implement them. Faith always lets her coachees have a choice in the practice they are working on. She knows from last year that when she pushed one of her coachees to work on a practice they didn't select, they made no growth because they weren't bought into the process.

This year, Faith wants to infuse more choice and really making coaching be coachee-driven, and that's key to really see the outcome that you're looking for. Coachees should work to maintain ongoing communication, and this can take the form of texts, emails, phone calls, and handwritten notes between meetings, as well as planning for clear communication during meetings.

When Faith has her coachees fill out their "getting to know you" survey, there's a question included that asks them to specify their preferred mode of communication. This lets Faith know her coachees, how they like to receive information. She also makes sure to follow through and show up when she plans to meet with her coachees if things come up, or if she's unable to observe or meet, she makes sure to let them know ahead of time. And this seems like a simple step, to ask staff the preferred mode of communication, but it's really important in case you're sending emails, and you might have a coachee that rarely checks their emails. They might not be getting your messages.

And then always look for strengths and point out what's going right. This is one of Faith's favorite ways to keep that partnership going. She makes sure to point out something that is going well. She makes sure to really celebrate. All right. So, as you know, building a collaborative partnership takes time, and it's an ongoing process. It never stops.

There are several pieces that go into creating partnerships that feel safe, supportive, and nonjudgmental. On this slide, we've pulled out a few strategies that can be low effort for the coach but are very impactful to building that partnership. So, we discussed that Faith has her coachees fill out a coaching agreement. The use of a coaching agreement can help to make the coaching process transparent for both coach and coachee by laying out responsibilities or expectations of coaching. When signing the agreement, it's best if you review together so that if any questions arise, you can discuss in the moment.

You can also individualize your agreement to meet the needs of your coachees. We've included a sample coaching agreement in the resource widget for this webinar. Allowing choice can be a powerful tool for gaining participation in coaching. Choice can come in a variety of ways. So, for example, your program could offer education staff a choice in who would like to participate in intensive coaching, but if you've built a culture of coaching within your program, staff understand the purpose and might even feel excited to participate in one-on-one coaching or TLC. Coach choice could also come in the form of choosing the practice that they would like to work on. This is probably a more common practice and might be something you're doing already. Choice could be supports that the coachee prefers to receive during an observation or a reflection-and-feedback meeting, and it could also be choice in the resources that you provide or the types of help that you provide.

As we mentioned before, communication is key to the partnership, but some ways that you can ensure that you're doing this in a way that is best received might be, as I mentioned, just explicitly asking education staff their preferred method of communication, and you also want to make sure that you communicate any changes to your schedule that are going to occur before they happen. This helps the coachee feel respected and informed because it wouldn't feel good to be waiting to meet with your coach, and they never arrive. Now we want to hear from you. Building collaborative partnerships are a crucial piece to implementing PBC effectively, and we don't want to skip this piece, so we want to know, how have you overcome challenges with building collaborative partnerships with your coachee? We're going to type that into the question box here. Let's see here.

Joyce: Hey, Sarah. I'm typing it in now. I was just having an issue getting into the box.

Sarah: Oh, okay. All right. Let's see. I see already -- Ooh, it takes -- There's a little bit of a lag time. And now I see lots in here. We see Patrice says, "By inviting them to come to your office whenever available and making myself valuable to them when they come in." Let's see. "Let them know that I can be flexible and work around their schedule." That's really important. "Good communication." Let's see here. "Taking some of the coaching from another coach in my organization. We're doing the first visit together." "And I just got some great ideas that I can't wait to get to know my coachees better." That's awesome. It's always great to have someone that you can bounce ideas off of and ask questions.

Let's see. "My coachees have been very receptive since we estimated what form of coaching works best for them. We often review if we feel the coaching is valuable and ask for their input on any changes they'd like to see." That's great. The infuses that choice in there. Let's see. Beth is going to be a new coach, and you've been a teacher with the -- "I will be coaching for years." Oh, so that could be tricky. "I'm hoping that I've already established good relationships with my fellow teachers." You might have already laid that partnership with these teachers. As a coach, you'll be embarking on a new role, so it'll be about maybe using a coaching contract to kind of establish some of those boundaries. "Providing assistance with some task, large or small." "Sometimes making a quick copy goes a long way."

And that is so true. Sometimes, just those little acts of service can make a big impact. I'm going to answer a couple more, and then we're going to move on because we have other components to get to. Let's see. "Making myself available at any time and letting them know I'm here for anything they might need." And, then, let's see. "Going into the classroom and assist often." All right. These are great ideas. Thank you for sharing, everybody. Okay. Faith knows that goal-setting is a collaborative effort between coach and coachee.

The goal is anchored in a conversation about the needs assessment that Faith has given her coachees. So, remember, she gave that to them at their first meeting so they could get a chance to look over it and really take some time to thoughtfully fill that out. She learned from her first year of coaching that the more input the coachee has in setting his or her own goals, the more likely he or she is to be motivated to work on or implement them. She plays a supporting role in selecting and clarifying goals and making suggestions or affirming ideas, assisting with wording of the action plan and helping to make goals specific and achievable. So, you'd want to be careful with the making suggestions, that you've built that collaborative partnership and that's wanted from your coachee, but definitely you have some coachees that would be really open to you making some suggestions. Initially, Faith and the coachees write just one or two goals to help focus coaching and keep goals achievable within a specified time frame. Then, as the goal is achieved, another goal can be written, and this helps keep the coaching cycle going. Faith knows that being organized is a huge part of being an effective coach. She also knows that communication and preparation are key.

Here's a snapshot of Faith's schedule for Monday and Tuesday. You can see that she makes a point to check in either in person, via email or text, with her coachees the day before she meets with them, and this lets Faith know if the coachees have any questions and to confirm their meeting so there are no surprises, and she's able to prepare and gather materials that might be needed. Faith gave the coachees their needs assessment and their favorite-things survey at the coachee training, but she makes sure to bring copies of those documents, as well as plenty of copies of action plans just in case they might not have had a chance to fill them out, or maybe they filled them out and can't find them. That often happens, but she's prepared. Faith has become more confident in action planning with her coachees. Her first year, Faith had trouble knowing when her coachee's goals were met, and that was because the goal-achievement statements were not specific or measurable.

So, this year, she uses her Examine the Goal checklist that she received at the PCTI training. It helps her to reflect on the goals that she and her coachees develop together. You can find the Examine the Goal checklist that Faith uses with her coachees in the resource list. So, now we want to hear from you. What is a tip that you can share with the group that has helped you with action planning with your coachees? So, let us know a tip that you could share with us that has helped you with action planning with your coachees. Let's see here. Tamika said, "I try to give them as much input as possible." That is so important. Jennifer asked, "Is the needs assessment the same as the PBC rubric? Are these terms that are used to describe the same thing I'm thinking?" I'm not sure.

The PBC rubric, that might be something that your program has created, but the needs assessment will be a document that has about 10 to 15 practices that your program has selected to focus on for coaching, and then the coachee will rate his or herself on the use of these practices, and that's how you determine the order in which you might focus on those practices. Oh, Esther says she gives them a pencil or a computer and lets them do actual writing. That's a good idea. I actually like to start out writing the action plans for the coachees, and then as we build that partnership and add it, they're more comfortable as time goes on, then I turn that over to the coachees. "Going over the needs assessment and get clarification on what they feel they need." That's so great.

One tip that Josephine said, "I would ask what went well and what you would improve." For action planning, Pedro says, "I found that when there is equity in the workload, the coach and the coachee have an action plan or part of an action plan that works toward the goal." That's great.

You can often infuse the coach into maybe an action step. Maybe the coach will be bringing a resource or taking data. "Do not set too many things to focus on at one time. It can be overwhelming." That's right, Rita. We really want to make sure that these goals are specific, measurable, and then also achievable within a certain time frame.

We don't really want to pick a goal that's too big, or else we might not be able to accomplish it within a few cycles or within a few weeks. "Sharing the action plan form and real-time feedback, asking them to sit with writing the action plan in their own words." That sounds like a great way to do that. "Refer back to their needs assessment in helping develop goals." That's a great idea, Gretchen. I like to refer back once we have met a few goals, and maybe we've numbered them by priority on the needs assessment and we gone through a certain number of -- We've written goals on those priorities. It might be time to revisit and rerate yourself on the needs assessment. Let me answer a couple more. "Allowing time for the teaching team to discuss the needs of the classroom and complete action plans together." That's a great way to think about it, seeing the classroom as a team.

Brandon says he likes to spend the whole day in the classroom and review the needs assessment as well as a Fidelity checklist from teaching strategies prior to developing goals and action plans. All right. So, you have a lot of time to devote in the classroom.

All right. Thank you for your responses. At the end of the action-plan meeting with her coachee, Faith goes ahead and sets up a time to observe in the coachee's setting. She tries to meet with her coachees every two weeks for observation and then the reflection-and-feedback meeting, and she tries to schedule those closely together. Before she goes to observe her coachees, she makes sure to review their action plans and the coaching logs from the last session, and this helps her stay focused on the coachee's goal and the action plan and to be prepared to implement any coaching strategies or support that she and her coachees have agreed upon. She also prepares for any data that she's going to collect. Faith checks in with her coachees via their preferred method of communication to remind them of their observation. The coachees are well aware of what Faith is observing, and there's no surprises. Last year, Faith made the mistake of going to observe one of her coachees without setting up a time with them, and this caused her partnership with that coachee to be strained for a few months.

So, this year, Faith is mindful of how this impacted her partnership with that coachee, and she tries to stay very organized with her planner and sends reminders to her coachees so that she can avoid the same thing happening this year. So, here are some strategies that Faith used that have been effective for her in completing a focused observation. She sets up a time to observe during the prior reflection-and-feedback meeting. Scheduling can be a battle, especially when you're trying to coordinate with multiple people.

So, if you plan for observations and meeting in-person, that can be easier than trying to find a time that works via e-mail or through text or over the phone. Things happen, and schedules change, but this can help save you some time. Reviewing coachee action plans and logs. You want to make sure that your observation remains focused and that you follow through with anything that you might have agreed upon in the last meeting. So, reviewing all those documents before time can keep you focused. And then check in with the coachees prior to the observation. This helps to remind them that you're coming and so that they're not surprised by your arrival. It's also helpful to you as a coach. So, if you know that you might need to reschedule, that can be pretty time-consuming for you to show up for an observation, say, if you're off-site and you traveled to the location for the observation and the coachee isn't there. So, checking in to help save you some time.

All right. So, we want to ask you this poll question. What are some observation coaching strategies that you have used during the observation that has been successful? We've got side-by-side, verbal or gestural support, problem-solving discussions, video taping with assigned consent, modeling of practices, or other help in the coachee's setting. What are some of these coaching strategies that you've used that has been successful for you? It looks like we have 41 percent of you saying that modeling of practices. So, we have lots of modeling. It's changing up a little bit here. There's several that do problem-solving discussions while you're observing, and it's important to remember that, with problem-solving discussions, you want to make sure that you're not interfering with what's happening in the environment. So, you don't want to take attention away from children that are present.

Modeling of practice is a really popular one. We have some of you that said that videotaping has been support that's been successful. Side-by-side verbal or gestural support. And side-by-side verbal and gestural support can be an easy way in to delivering coaching strategies. It's not as intense in some ways. So, it's important to remember that you always gain consent before you try any coaching strategies with your coachees. Modeling.

All right. Okay. So, here are your results. I'm going to go ahead and keep moving because I want to make sure that we have time for all our slides. All right. Here are your results. It looks like modeling. A majority of you feel pretty comfortable with modeling practices, and that's great. That's a great way to really show the coachee the practice in real time. Thank you for participating in that. All right.

We're going to move on to talk about reflection and feedback. So, last year, Faith felt like her reflection-and-feedback meetings did not go well. She thought she was prepared, but she had a hard time focusing her thoughts and providing the coachees with time to reflect or giving them feedback that was specific.

So, this year, Faith created a coaching log to use during our meetings, and this has been a great tool for her to help prepare for the meetings and keep her on track. She almost uses it kind of like an agenda or a checklist to keep her focused during the meeting. One of the other things that Faith wanted to have more time for was preparation prior to the meeting. So, she gave herself a minimum of 30 minutes to prepare, but prefers an hour when she has the time. She uses this time to gather resources that she wants to share, plan questions that she wants to ask that may prompt reflection, and organize her thoughts about what she has observed.

With implementation of the coaching log and time to prepare, Faith has been able to pull out specific and intentional snapshots that she's gathered from the observation to share with the coachees. She writes that, last year, she was just telling coachees all the things that they did well and then giving them suggestions for what to do better next time, but realized that providing constructive feedback was a two-part formula.

So, when she provides the coachees with objective and specific data about what they did and combines that with suggestions or resources to help them, it really enhances or refines their implementation, and then coachees begin to make progress. So, we really want to make sure to not only focus on telling them all the things that are going well, but we also want to -- We can deliver constructive feedback by just specifically stating what was happening in a nonjudgmental way.

So, we're going to share a resource and some strategies that can be helpful to effectively conduct a reflection-and-feedback meeting. So, creating or the use of a coaching log. This can be very helpful. We're going to share with you in the resource widget the observation and reflection and feedback coaching log that you could use during your meetings. You can use this log for your own, or you can use this log to help you customize one that fits the needs of you and your coachees.

Coaching logs can also be a helpful tool for those of you that support coaches. You can use this log to check for Fidelity's PBC implementation. You also want to designate time to prep for the meeting. We know that being prepared for the meeting helps to make the meeting run more intentionally and smoothly, so this is definitely a step you don't want to skip. As we mentioned on the previous slide, Faith prepares the reflective questions that she's going to ask, so we can't stress enough how important it is to be prepared with those questions. All right. So, all components of PBC are important, but the reflection-and-feedback meeting is where we see planning for improvement happen, and this is really an important piece of the puzzle. So, we want to give you some time to ask any questions that you might have about conducting an effective reflection-and-feedback meeting.

So, let us know what are some of the questions that you have about effective reflection and feedback meetings. Let's see here. John says he works at leading the teacher through learning to practice self-reflection. "This means letting them do most of the talking with occasional prompts from me, otherwise it can turn into a training." That is a really important comment to make, John. We really want to be careful that we're not providing them with too much information.

Reflection can be powerful for coachees to reflect on how the use of their practice went and where they want to go. Cynthia says, "The reflection-and-feedback log is in the resource list." "Is there a time frame for completing reflection after conducting a focused observation?" You definitely want to do it. If you can schedule it the same day or the day after, that's the best because the information is fresh. If you go more than a day apart, you start to forget what you observed, and also the coachees forget maybe what it was that you observed, so it's best to -- There's not a set timeline, but the best time frame is the same day or the day after. "How long should these meetings last?" There's not a set time for how long meetings should last. It depends on what you're doing. If you're action planning in a reflection-and-feedback meeting, it might take more of your time. It also depends on the practice that you're working on.

So, if you're working on a really in-depth practice or if maybe you're implementing coaching strategies, it's really hard to put a time frame. But I would say in general, you know, 30 minutes. I think much more than that, you might every now and then have an hour meeting, depending on the content, but I would say 30 minutes or less. "How do you properly give coachees constructive feedback?" That's a great question. I want to point out that when you give coachees constructive feedback, it's really a two-part process. You want to state what it is that the coachee did in a way that's not objective or judgmental and then provide them with suggestions for how that might be improved.

So, I often hear, when I do Fidelity, coaches kind of prepare their coachee for receiving constructive feedback, and they'll say, "And now for your constructive feedback." I'd really shy away from doing that because it's almost like saying, "Brace yourself. Here comes the constructive." So, really, just weaving it in. "How do you break the ice when you have a difficult client?" That's really going to go back to focusing on that collaborative partnership that happens throughout the whole process of this, but you want to make sure that -- Often, when I see other parts of the cycle being less effective, it's that I haven't taken the time to develop the collaborative partnership.

So, some of those feelings of uneasiness or maybe not being brought into the process play into that. "How do you celebrate successes while still engaging the ETE in committing to continuous quality improvement and PD?" So, you want to -- It's important -- So, you're saying -- It's the question, how do you celebrate but make it known that you aren't done with this practice, that you still continue to use it? And if that's what you're asking here, I think that you just state that. I think that you really praise them for where they've come and point out where they were before and what they did and how, you know, how exciting it is, and then you can say, "And now it's going to be easy for you to implement this all the time." "How often will you do the observation every week based on the action plan?"

And that's going to be something that your implementation team will decide. We often see cycles about every two weeks, but you could certainly do coaching every week, but you want to make sure to be mindful of fatigue. If you're visiting your coachee every week, you want to make sure that that's the type of support that they would want. It could be too much, depending on what the goal is. Let's see. And I'm going to take a couple more. "I'll have the staff complete a feedback form before we have our coaching conference." That's a great idea, Kathy, assuming you send some questions to prompt reflection and get them kind of thinking about it before you head to your meeting. That's a great way to do that. "Examples of data collection during observations."

So, the observations data that you collected is going to really drive how well you're going to be able to reflect and give feedback. So, some examples would be direct quotes that maybe the teacher said or the home visitor said or the family or the children, direct quotes of what were happening, taking tally of how many times something occurred. Can you think of any more, Joyce, that I might be missing, other types of data collection that we might want to think about?

Joyce: Things like staff surveys.

Sarah: Yeah. Let's see. All right. One more, and I think I'm going to move on. Let's see. Actually, we have a couple more minutes. Okay. "How do you do effective reflection with someone that has been there for a long time and is set in their ways and doesn't like change?" This is something that we might face, but as I mentioned before, that's where you can work on building that collaborative partnership. I also think that this is going to come in play when -- So, if you have a needs assessment and you're really letting them select the practice that you work on, choice is really going to help with buy-in here. So, really infusing that choice, because if you're imposing a suggestion on them, and they're already resistant to change, it's going to be hard to get them to move towards making changes.

So, really work on that collaborative partnership and infuse choice there and be prepared. Often, you might ask questions for reflection, and they're open-ended questions, but you get a more close-ended response like, "It went well," or things like that. Being prepared with questions to volley back to the coachee can help you to really be intentional and also get more information and have them reflect deeper. All right. Any of these questions jumping out to you, Joyce?

Joyce: No. I saw a couple of times, or a few times, in the group chat, and then the questions that came up, like, "When should you do reflection and feedback?" And I think that part of that is, like, a program-specific question, so kind of when kind of coaching was being laid out and kind of talked about, like, was that discussed? And then also depending on when you're doing your observation, does it follow a time that lends itself to maybe afterwards for, you know, kind of that reflection time, or is there a certain time of the day that's better for the coachee? So, I think that's, like, an individual kind of answer, depending on the program and also depending on that coachee and then depending on even the time of day. I just saw that come up a few times in here, as well.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right. Well, Joyce, I'm going to turn it back over to you.

Joyce: Sounds good. We just want to thank you for joining us today as we explored the PBC cycle through Faith's eyes. It's her second year of coaching. And we want to use these last few minutes to kind of tie up any loose ends, any other questions you may have, and then please, as a reminder, use the evaluation link that you're going to find on the next slide.

We really want your input. You're also going to find that link in the chat box. So, we ask that you complete the evaluation within three days, and then also you'll be able to download your certificate for the webinar once you complete that evaluation. And join us on March the 27th at 3 p.m. for the next episode of "The Coaching Corner Webinar." And also we want to remind everyone about the Dual Language Learner Celebration Week.

There's going to be great resources spotlighted and things, so there's more information about this DLL Celebration Week on the ACLPC. So, we invite you guys to kind of take a look at some of the great things that are coming up around that. And there you'll find the evaluation link that you can just click on, and it's also going to be put into the group chat.

Thank you for joining us today. And we will see you on MyPeers. 

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