Using Coaching Data to Inform the Present and Plan for the Future

Using Coaching Data to Inform the Present and Plan for the Future: Coaching Corner Series

 Joyce Escorcia: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Before the webinar begins, please... please make note they may want to print out some of the resources from the resource widget, including the PowerPoint handouts and the note-taker handout. I am Joyce Escorcia with the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning, or the NCECDTL.

Thank you so much for joining us today for our latest installment of our Coaching Corner webinar series. I'm joined in presenting the webinar today by my colleague Sarah Basler and Melisa Jaen. And this is a reminder—the Coaching Corner webinar series occurs every other month, and we invite you to just go ahead and mark your calendars for our next episode that's going to be on September the 25th. That's another Wednesday, at 3:00 p.m. Eastern.

And the goal of every episode is to support you in your role as a coach by exploring specific topics that are relevant to you and your role, to identify resources and strategies specific to that topic, and then also just giving you a chance to put it into practice through scenarios, videos. An opportunity to ask questions and have some group discussion. So, again, we're so glad that you joined us today. Before we kind of get into our subject for today, I just wanted to go over some information about the webinar.

So, we'll be using some of the features on this webinar platform to help us interact together. So, at the bottom of your screen, you're going to notice that there are some widgets. If you have any questions during the webcast you can submit them through the purple Q and A widget. So, we'll try to answer those during the webcast. Please just know that we do capture all the questions, so if you have a tech question, please enter them here, as well. And then a copy of today's slide deck and other resources that we have for today—I think I actually have four handouts—are going to be available in the Resource List which is that green widget, and we really encourage you to download any of those resources or links that you think you might find useful for you and what you're doing.

So, throughout the session we're going to be using the Q and A chat to kind of talk back and forth with you and kind of get some feedback and talk about some of the questions that we have. So, we encourage you to jump in there with us. You can also find additional answers to some of your kind of technical issues located in the yellow help widget at the bottom of your screen. You can also find the closed-captioning widgets in both English and Spanish. Each of the widgets are resizable and movable. So, you can kind of customize your own screen and your own experience for the day. So, simply click on the widget, move it by dragging it or dropping it or resizing it using the arrows at the top corners.

And then finally, if you have any trouble, try refreshing your browser by pressing F5, and then be sure to log off of your VPN or exit out of any other browsers. I know, for me, that helps a lot sometimes to make sure that things, that there's not a lag. And so, today, we're going to try something a little different, so thank you for kind of playing along with us.

We're going to use the last 15 minutes of the webinar for what we're going to call Coaching Corner Q and A. So, during this time, we're going to address any questions that you might have about data that relates to PBC. So, during the webinar today, please send us any of your questions through the Q and A widget. We're going to discuss some of the questions during our time together. But if there's a question that comes up that we don't get to, we're going to try to capture those and talk about those during our Coaching Corner Q and A at the end. So, again, thanks for trying out something different with us today.

So, at the end of this presentation, we really want you to walk away and be able to use data to communicate coaching progress, successes, and plan for the future with coachees to explore how data can be used to reflect on your own practice as a coach and to be able to plan for the future and to be able to plan for future professional development. And then also, identify resources and strategies that can support using data to inform PBC implementation in your program.

So, we'd like to start the conversation day by just kind of getting some insight from you. So, again, using that Q and A widget, how do you close out the year of coaching with your coachee? What does that look like? What activities and practices do you use as a part of closing out that coaching year? So, if you want to use that Q and A widget, we're going to kind of give people a couple of minutes to kind of get some responses in there. But we just want to hear from you. So, what does the end of the coaching year look like for you? What do you do to kind of close out the year? So, we're going to give just a few minutes.

So, we're excited to see. You know, when I was looking through MyPeers, there's been some conversations about kind of closing out the coaching year, all MyPeers, as well. And there was some comments about, you know, some did an end-of-the-year survey and they actually posted that in MyPeers as a resource; so if you're looking for something like that, please feel free to go to MyPeers because somebody posted their sample survey there. Brenda—Hey, Brenda!—says that she reviews the goals, successes, and input for next year. And then, Sonya says that they have a formal exit form that they complete together.

And then, here's that survey Jennifer shared that... that they use a four-question survey that everybody completes. I think that's really great. I've love that you actually put the number of questions you put on there, because I think that's important because sometimes we don't want to overwhelm people with asking too many questions. I think that's great, as well. Here, we are home-based only, and so they don't kind of close out the year but they do a survey for those that received coaching, what their experience has been. So, to kind of finish out your coaching year.

And, again, I know with different program options, you may be year-round. So, I know we've tried to kind of talk about things in kind of coaching years. So, even if you are year-round, what kind of coaching year or that program coaching cycle year, what does that look like towards the end? But I love that you kind of brought up that point, as well. Caroline shared that they even have an outdoor picnic for families. And I think that that's great, as well. Again to kind of help boost morale. Yeah, I'm just kind of clicking through having a lot of responses come through. And Tiffany shared that this is her first year of coaching, and so she thinks that doing a survey would be great for her for upcoming year.

So, Tiffany, I'm so glad that we're just a little bit into our webinar today, and that's something that you've already got an idea to kind of take away with you. And then Karen shares that she has kind of reflective conversation with teachers about the work they've accomplished. They discussed strategies that were utilized, what worked well, what maybe could be changed for next year, kind of wrap up a new year. And then also tying it in to kind of outcomes for the year. Ooh, Brandon says that they do awards with staff to celebrate success towards their coaching goals. And they have staff complete that survey to see how they felt about coaching. I love that, kind of different awards that you can print out little certificates and all kinds of things there, so...

And then Brenda also followed up and said that they kind of compared growth and using the [Inaudible] tool from the beginning to the end of the year. So, I think that's great, as well. And then, Chuck shared that... that they kind of go through and have... Again, what they use is kind of some strategies from reflective supervision, about talking about what went well and then... I'm clicking through here. What went well, what... Maybe what needs to be changed. So, thank you for that.

And then, I have a question, actually, from Carolyn, that said she's a teacher—Is it okay that she be on this webinar, and Carolyn, I say definitely. We welcome you here. We talk about all things related to practice-based coaching, and you and your program you may be participating in coaching, whether it's going to be receiving coaching or in the future you could be a coach. So, I think it's great that you're here. We'd love to hear from you. So, thank you for joining us today And I think that's kind of an overview of kind of some of the responses and stuff that we've had so far.

So, I think I'm going to go ahead and move through. I'm going to keep looking through here in just a little bit once Melisa and Sarah come in and see if there's any questions from you that we can pull for our Question Q and A. So, again, we encourage you to send us questions via the Q and A widget that maybe you want to talk about at the end of the webinar, too. So, send those our way, as well. And now what I'm going to do is actually turn it over to my amazing colleague Melisa, who's going to talk to us a little bit about sharing progress with coachees. So, Melisa, take it away. 

Melisa Jaen: Thank you, Joyce. And hello, everyone. So, many great ideas that you guys shared, regarding what you did at the end of each coaching year. So, I want to take us through that process of sharing the data with coachees. So, we know that there are a variety of data that could be collected within the program but the question is how do we decide what we should collect, use, and share with coachees.

So, we know that coaches collect tons and a lot of data—right?—over the course of the coaching year, but it isn't always clear how they should be using that data or even what they should be sharing with the coachees. So, some of that data that coaches collect include focused observation and how the coachee is implementing practice. They collect data on how often the coach and coachee need to complete coaching cycles such as the focused observation or the reflection and feedback.

Also, some data on types of support, some coaching strategies that they provide, and then the number of action plans that are either in progress or that have been completed. Coachees also—Coaches also collect information on coachees' strengths and needs as well as some of information. Coachee satisfaction surveys. So, as we think about and in that closing—coaching—As the coaching year comes to an end, it's really important to think about what information or data that we're going to share. So, again, thinking about those wonderful, amazing things that the coachees have accomplished over the year as some of you mentioned that in the chat box.

I liked the idea of those awards. Some of you mentioned that you did have closing or final coachee meetings with the coachees where you share the information about the successes, and you also use this meeting to gain insight about what went well over the course of the coaching year. You know these types of meeting not only helped the coachees and the impact of coaching that it had over the—on their practice throughout the year but this meeting also informed you as a coach about your own practices as well as what support you could continue to use or modify.

And so, this meeting or this end-of-the-year meeting can also be a time for that reflection, which some of you mentioned, as well, to reflect on those successes, to acknowledge the challenges that were experienced by both the coach and coachee. And also, this serves as a time to plan for the future with coaching and coachees. So, thinking about the data to share, every coach—coachee is unique. And so, their gains and also their progress will be unique. Therefore, the type of data that is going to be shared with each of the coachees will vary So, I'm going to list some examples of data that you might consider or share. This is not an exhaustive list of just some examples and ideas that we wanted to share with you.

So, some of the data that can be shared could be on the number of action plans completed. For some coachees, that might be four, and that might feel like a huge accomplishment, but for others, eight or more will feel like an accomplishment. Maybe if you had a coach—coachee that was struggling to complete action plan goals, the focus could be on the number of action plans completed. Some additional information could be on improvements in implementing certain practices.

So, for example, if the focus of coaching is instructional support domain, where the coach might look at the coachee's class score data by dimension and compare the scores at the end of the year where the coachee scored at the beginning of the year. Another example of data that you can share could be the improvement in child outcomes. So, that can be related to the teaching practice that the coachee has been working on. So, it's definitely helpful for teachers to see this gain in children and also give them that huge motivation. And in thinking about their hard work and their efforts in changing those practices.

Another idea might be that, if you noticed over the course of the year, the coachee—her comfort level with implementing a new practice. It might be helpful to share information on the change in the teacher strengths and me. So, to share the data with the teachers or the coachees, you can either use a graph template—or, graphing template. Those usually can be found on Excel or also on PowerPoint. But if you're not familiar with using these features on Excel or PowerPoint you can just draw your own graphs.

The point here is that we're showing the growth and change of the coaches over time and not really how pretty your graph looked. So, now I'm going—We want to hear from you, and we want you to share, what are some other examples of data that you shared—or, you share with coachees. So, we want you to use a Q and A widget to share those responses. As they're coming in, I'll definitely share what you all are sharing. Just give you guys a couple minutes to get those responses through. All right.

So, I see some coming through. They're filtering in. A little lag time on our end. All right. All right. Yeah, there's more lag time on our—on our end. All right, here they come. So, I see they're coming in. So, some of the responses we have here are a school writing us goals, reports, class reports. Mildred shares how many coaching cycles completed. Also, information about how many class dimensions the coachee has completed, coachee and satisfaction responses from surveys. Our very own Joyce. Yeah, she's just mentioning on—Okay. Never mind. Comparing change. Okay.

So, those good responses. Class observations and school readiness goals. All right. Definitely more coming in. The action planning form. So, Janet is sharing the action planning form. Reflecting on competence level in teaching practice. All right. Lot of great responses coming in. Qualitative data, as well. So, that some other teachers have—So, we have another response here on qualitative data, as well. So, that teachers' responses, stories on their own progress. All right, reviews of goals, successes, input for the next year. We have another response here—coachees' surveys.

All right, lot of information coming in. The update, another one on the action plan, to have staff document progress and needs. Class observations. So, again, this is—As I'm pulling some of these, definitely—We're getting action plan, class data, year end reflection session with each team. Great examples. Goals that were accomplished. All right. So, yeah. We're getting a lot of great responses and definitely lots of sources and a lot of examples of other data that you're sharing. All right. So, thank you all for sharing those examples. I am now going to hand it over to my colleague, Sarah, who will be sharing with us using data to plan for the future. Sarah, hand it over to you now. 

Sarah Basler: Yeah. Hi, everybody. Thanks for your great responses. I'm getting some really good ideas for coaching here. So, now we're going to discuss how we can use that data that we collect over the course of the year and how we can make plans for our upcoming year of coaching. All right. So, we want to ask you, what were some of the lessons learned from your year of coaching, and how will they inform your coaching for next year? So, for most of you, you just ended your coaching year, and you might be gearing up for the upcoming year. So, we want to hear from you.

What were some of those things that you learned from coaching this year or in years past, and how did they inform what you'll be doing for the next year? Some of the members of MyPeers, we had a survey, and we asked them, you know, what were some of their lessons learned and some of their responses were that one coach realized how hard it is to establish the partnership and that it takes a lot of time on the front end. So, making time to really establish that partnership is key.

And so, they made sure to do that the next year. One coach mentioned that they needed to be more realistic about the number of coachees that they have and time to remain faithful to the cyclical process. So, really managing that number that they are coaching because it takes time to coach. And so being realistic about that and not taking on too many too big of a caseload.

Let's see. Oh, we have—Kelly mentions that she learned this year that a coaching cycle shouldn't exceed more than a few months for her coachees because she felt like they lost interest. So, sometimes if you focus on an action plan for too long, that drive to continue with that goal can kind of be lost. So, maybe next year she'll shorten goals so that they can be achieved because we all have to feel that success, right? Or otherwise, it can feel like, "Well, why are we—Why are we working towards this?" Oh. Karen said that she believes that she could've spent more time with teachers and working with things that they struggle with one-on-one to provide the support needed and remind them that they have support.

So, maybe spending more time getting in their environment and really maybe trying some more supportive strategies to help them implement. And then we have here... Oh. Um... Miss Loveless says that it was very helpful to send frequent e-mail reminders for the reflection and feedback meeting and the day that they'll meet, even so that the coachee is prepared and knows that the coach is coming. The day in the life of educators is extremely busy, so we have to send reminders. I know if something's not on my calendar, I forget.

So, some other responses. Oh, this comes from a classroom teacher, and she says, "I'm a classroom teacher, as well, so when I am coaching, I'm away from my classroom. So, finding a balance between being a coach and a classroom teacher, as well as managing my time between both. So, part of that is really trying to figure out that balance. How do you stay organized and make sure that your classroom is still in order but that you're also giving your coachees the support that they need. So, it's definitely a struggle, but staying organized can really help. So, we have... A home visitor said, using more video of home visit to keep from changing the home-visit dynamics when I go into a home.

So, Brenda uses utilizes video so that it's not as intrusive when she coaches her home visitors, because sometimes when I'm going for a home visit having a new person there. It's hard enough to have a home visitor. It can be overwhelming for families to have an extra person so utilizing video can be a way to help that. So, let's see. One of our MyPeers participants, or, a community member said that they learned to work on more specific goals, because it was hard to know hat to observe, so this year, they're going to work on making goals less broad. So, that's definitely something to think about. Let's see. There's so many great responses. I'm trying to sift through them all. I wish I could read them all. Then we have here—Oh, this is a good lesson learned. It's not your classroom.

To remember that when you're a coach that you're a guest. So, sometimes we can come in with an agenda, and when we come to observe, we might... You know, we might have lots of experience and feel like the expert, but at the end of the day, we have to remember that when we're in someone else's environment that we need to be respectful and make sure that we're not overstepping our bounds. So, remember that when you're in someone else's environment, that's their space. So, trying to not damage that partnership.

So, maybe next year, this coach decided to keep that in mind when entering the classroom. And, yeah. Let's see. I'm going to take one more. Oh, Tracy had some—had a difficult time finding places to meet with her coachees that were confidential. So, that's really important. And we have to plan for that, because you could do that by working with the the director or center managers about spaces that you might could reserve in order to meet with coachees so that it can be private.

And sometimes that takes a little planning. So, these are all great responses. And the point of all of this is that we can learn to implement some new things. We want to make sure that we're adjusting and modifying when we notice maybe something isn't working or we'd like to try it a different way. Thank you for all your responses. All right. So, when we think about data, it's really easy to come up with the different types of data that we might collect. We could collect data at ground level the coachee level, or even the child level. But it's also really important for a program to gather information about coaching implementation. So, some data that can be collected, that can help the program plan for how future coaching efforts are going to roll out. That would be—We can think of fidelity of PBC.

So, fidelity is that—did we implement PBC the way that it was intended? Did the coach adhere to the PBC model? Did action planning happen? Was the observation focused on the action plan? And did a reflection in meeting occur? This can provide us information about maybe why or why not coaching is successful. So, for example, if a coach schedules a focused observation and never follows up with the reflection and feedback meeting, that could be—that could cause the coachee not to understand what to improve or to enhance or even to what—to keep doing. So, it's important that we do all those components every time in order to be fully implementing PBC. So, if any of the components are missing, then we're not adhering to the model. And we have included in the resource widget, for you, the PBC log data Excel spreadsheet and the PBC coaching log.

So, those can be used to help you track the details related to your coaching implementation. So, we hope that you find those helpful with—with your coaching efforts. Another thing that we don't often think about is the types of coaching supports that a coach provides. So, the coach could track the types of team strategies that are used with coachees. So, for example, if coachees' implementation of a practice is low, but the coach never really provides a more supportive coaching strategy—like maybe, say, modeling—that could give us some insight to why the coachee maybe isn't able to implement the practice. Or, it could give us insight about the coach's comfort level about providing that different coaching strategy, or even give us information about the coach's knowledge of the practices. So, we have included another resource here for you, which is a great way to kind of get to know your coachees and what their preferences are.

So, we have a coaching strategy discussion worksheet, and this can be used with your coachees to find out what types of coaching strategies that they are comfortable receiving, what coaching strategies that they definitely don't want to receive. And sometimes it can be a good discussion over time. You might do this—use this worksheet at different points in time throughout coaching, because what a coachee might not be as comfortable receiving in the beginning might change as the partnership develops. So, that will, hopefully, help you with thinking about planning for and understanding the types of strategies that could be helpful to your coachee. And as many of you mentioned, another type of data that we could collect is sending surveys to coachees.

We want to find out what they found most helpful about coaching, what they'd like to change, or if they have suggestions to make coaching more successful, because that can give us really some insight about what we, as a coach, might want to tweak. And then, of course, we could have a coach fill out the coach needs assessment, to determine what supports that the coach might need to strengthen their practice. We forget sometimes about this piece, but a coach's professional development is just as important as a coachee's. So, included in the resources of this webinar is a sample coaching strength and needs assessment. And this will be focused on the components of PBC, and the coach can rate themselves on their—their implementation of each of these components.

So, it's really important to think about not only our coachees' professional development but the coaches' as well and how to support them in a way to—to help coachees to—to continue to implement and—and grow in their practice. As coachees—We could ask coachees to share their thoughts about coaching. So, we discussed—Melisa discussed setting up a closing meeting with coachees. So, during that time, you could ask the coachee to reflect on the coaching year, and this can give us some insights on what types of supports that they found the most helpful to their implementation. If we don't ask and we don't have coachees reflect, we can't really assume that what we provided was enough or even really assume what they found the most helpful. I've found that with reflecting with the coachees, that they often might want more support that—than I realized, so it can be helpful.

So, these data can help him form the type of professional development that a coach might seek out for the upcoming year. They can also help him form and support a supervisor or a person that coaches the coach about what a coach's needs might be, because we really want to continue to grow their practice as a coach, as well. Alright, so, we hope you find those resources helpful. Alright. So, this slide is not meant for you to to answer all these questions, but is more some questions that you, as a coach, and your program might want to reflect on as you plan for the upcoming year.

So, as we plan, we want to reflect so we know what—what we want to do the next year. So, one of the things that we want to ask ourselves, "What practice—practices will we be focusing on for coaching?" Are we going to continue to have the same focus as we did last year? What has the data related to child outcomes, or maybe education staff use of these practices, shown or indicated? And tell us what—what are the areas that might need more support. So, if we review our data, it could show that we still need to focus on the same practices in the following year. It could show us that we've seen improvements, and maybe there's other areas that we want to be the focus.

So, we want to constantly be assessing what it is or what the focus. Not constantly, but each year, we want to make sure that we are addressing practices that need to be the focus. So, we also want to ask ourself, "Who will be coached, and what delivery method are we going to use?" So, will coaching delivery methods remain the same? Will they be modified? It's important to think about what coaching will look like for all education staff, based on their needs. So, PBC is not "one size fits all." It's really important to think about who would benefit the most from each delivery method of coaching and—and who would benefit from the different levels of intensity?

What training and support will be provided for coaches? As I mentioned before, on the slide before, we—we really tend to hone in on education-staff training, but we need to think about what training or supports that a coach might need. Maybe the coach could benefit from some more training on—on the practices that is the—are the focus of coaching. So, really thinking about what their needs are to help them grow in their practice, as well. Another thing that can come up through coaching is what—what policies or procedures that you have in place. So, do we need to change or a revise these policies and procedures? What worked well? What other documentation is needed? It could be that we started out coaching and we don't necessarily have any policies or procedures in place.

So, maybe developing those procedures would be helpful. And then one thing that I think often isn't as—we don't put it as high on the importance level, but another thing to reflect about, is how are we going to communicate our coaching plans with—with education staff about the upcoming year? How can we improve our communication related to coaching?

So, this piece is a—is key to really helping build that culture of coaching and in building an environment that supports professional development. We want to be transparent about the process and, of course, the purpose of coaching so that staff don't feel like coaching is something that's done to them, but it's something done with them and to help support their growth. So, really thinking about, "Are we going to plan a kickoff for coaching? Are we going to train everybody on what PBC is and what it looks like?" So, really building that culture, in some ways, to do that is to really kind of set the tone that everybody receives coaching in some way or another. Not that everyone gets the same intensity, but building that culture of, "We're all improving our practice." And that's going to look different for each member of—of the affected workforce.

Alright. So, as you're reviewing your data and making a plan for the future of coaching, it's important to think about what your support for each coachee will look like for that upcoming year. So, for example, for coachees that received intensive coaching this year, will they continue at the same level of intensity for next year. So, if you coached, if you used expert coaching for coachees, are they ready to move to a less intensive type of coaching? Or—Or will they continue with that intensive coaching the following year, and what will that look like? Will you coach them in a less-intensive way? Meaning will that be, we see—visit them and do this cycle with them but maybe less frequently?

Maybe, you change who is delivering the coaching. Maybe they coach peers. Maybe you set up some peer coaching. Will they participate in maybe some group coaching? And it could be that maybe, after a year of intensive coaching, they could coach themselves. Maybe you could set up some ways to help them identify their own goals and continue implementing new practices. So, as a reminder, TLC—or together learning and collaborating—and expert coaching meet the intensive coaching requirement.

So, the Head Start Performance Standards require programs to implement a research-based coordinated coaching strategy. So, programs must also assess all education staff and which staff would benefit most from intensive coaching. So, the standard does not indicate that everyone must receive intensive coaching. It just means that some of the members of your program receive intensive coaching. I think, in looking through some of the lessons learned, some of those lessons learned were that they tried to coach maybe too many people and realized that it was too much of a stretch to do that and implement PBC with fidelity. So, it's really important to—to decide what types of coaching that your coachees would benefit most from.

We wouldn't really want to have someone that—that needs lots of support participate in self-coaching, because that might be overwhelming for them and—and it might be hard for them to—to know where to start or to develop their own goals. But someone who has strong practice and has been implementing practices with fidelity, those might be good candidates for self-coaching. If you have people that are really motivated to work on goals, you might have them do work as peer coaches.

So, there's no right or wrong answer for how this works. You have to kind of assess the needs of your staff, and you also have to assess the needs of your program to—to identify what it is that would be that perfect recipe for delivering PBC. As I mentioned, no matter the coaching format that you use, coaching takes time, and you need to plan for the time that it takes. So, the times on this slide, as you see this graph shows, are approximate and they're based on research and experience implementing these coaching methods, but they're not—they're not the end-all be-all, and times might vary. But they offer us a good baseline for kind of planning. But it's important to remember that each program is unique, and so are the time needs. So, those time needs will—will certainly vary from program to program.

So, perhaps, when you have reviewing your data from the previous coaching year, as I mentioned, one of the reflections of lesson learned was, you determine that you didn't allot enough time for each method of coaching, or maybe that the caseload was too large to manage, or even that you could coach a few more teachers. Maybe your caseload was lower than you anticipated, or lower—you could add more to your caseload. These are all things to consider when planning and scheduling coaching for the upcoming year.

And time—It takes—It takes time to coach, and sometimes we realize that even if we—we plan for the time to—to do the observations and do the meetings, we still need—need time—time to prepare for our coaching meetings. And if you have multiple roles, you'll need to consider that all in whenever you're determining types of coaching or the delivery method that you're going to use. Alright. So, during your time together, we've discussed ways to use data that most of you collect over the course of the year for planning.

So, the data that you collect is going to be unique to every program. And there's not one answer to how the data will be used, but we hope that during our time together today, you were able to gain some ideas for how you can use the data that you collect, or maybe even gain some ideas for the types of data that you might want to start collecting. So, now we are going to test out our new Coaching Corner Q and A. So, before we wrap up, we're going to use this last 15 minutes of the webinar for the Coaching Corner Q and A.

So, during this time, we're going to address any questions that came up, related to the use of data, that we didn't get to, as well as answer any new questions that come in. So, it's time for our Coaching Corner Q and A. You can type your questions into the Q and A widget. 

Joyce: And then, Sarah, I've also been pulling some questions that have been coming in through the Q and A, as well. So, I have those ready for us, as well. 

Sarah: I found it. I see one here, it says, "All based on data, what other venues besides class and conscious discipline, are being followed?" So, I know that it will be different for every program. And you can use a variety of data. I know that some programs use TPOT, or Teaching Pyramid Observation Tool, data. We can use tippy-toes data. We can use HOVRS. We can use curriculum fidelity tools as a measure to—to collect data. Joyce, can you give others? There's so many. 

Joyce: Yeah, I think those are kind of some of—maybe some of the standard ones, as well. And then even with this, I know, a lot of times, we hear about a class in HOVRS. But I also say, even within those, you can to kind of break down the data even within those two, because it's—between class and HOVRS are kind of easy to say. But when you say that, that's a lot of data, so you could really kind of focus in on, say, within a class like a specific dimension, and then within that dimension, like, specific aspects of behavior markers within that dimension, even, to kind of help break it down even further. Like, what exactly are we looking for? 

Sarah: Mm-hmm. That's a great point. So, there was a question that came up that's, "Where can I find some samples of written coaching plans or action plans?" 

Joyce: And I think—you know, we love MyPeers, so I would definitely say, check out MyPeers, because there we have—well, one, we have all of the Practice-Based Coaching Training Institute material in the File tab there, and so there are some sample action plans and a bunch of sample documents there. But then also, if you go in MyPeers, and if you are within our PBC community, and in the—in the top tab, where it says "Search," you can search for things like action plans or even things like that came up today, like surveys. And so if you just put whatever it is that you're looking for, like an action plan, then it will pull up any posts that have "action plan" in it. And then, from there, you can look at specific resources and posts that people have. I would definitely say, start there. 

Sarah: Alright. Here's one. So, we had someone ask, "Isn't there a guide for PBC or predefined for how PBC should run? So, PBC sessions, what it might look like for a program?" She says, "I'm not finding it in current—current paperwork." So, is there a guide to PBC, for—for how this might look? 

Joyce: One—Well, one resource that I kind of think of real quickly is the "Program Leader's Guide to implementing PBC. And that's actually located on the ECLKC. And, now, if I can... Melisa—I know Melisa's on here. Melisa, would you mind going to the ECLKC and just—if you can find that link to the "Program Leader's Guide," we can maybe post it in the chat. 

Melisa: I'll do that right now. 

Joyce: Alright, thank you. And then I also say, so, that's just kind of looking at what—what are some things to think about, as far as implementing PBC across our program and thinking about systems implications and thinking about things like job descriptions and, you know, who's going to be coach, that kind of thing. I will also say that we're in the midst of revising that—that guide. So, soon we'll have an updated version. But we do have the current version available on the ECLKC. And so I will post that in the group chat, and then we'll also post it to that specific question. I have that question highlighted, but we'll have to find it for DeLynn. I'm so sorry if I'm pronouncing your name wrong, but we'll—we'll also kind of answer your question here in the Q and A, so you'll get that link directly. Anything else? 

Sarah: Here's another one. Here's one. "So, how do we know what info to share with supervisors to show our work with coachees, but, at the same time, maintain coachee confidentiality?" So, data sharing. 

Joyce: I'm sorry, could you repeat that for me, Sarah? 

Sarah: Yeah, so, how do we know what type of info to share with supervisors—a coachee's supervisor—to show—to show the progress of coachees or to show the work of coaches, but at the same time, maintain that coachee confidentiality? So, how would we do that? Joyce, Yeah, that's a great question. Sorry, I was looking at the group chat for questions and, like, trying to kind of walk and chew gum at the same time. I was having a moment there. I was spacing out. Sarah: Yeah. 

Joyce: Well, I—Well, my first—Please jump in here, you or Melisa, either one, but I'm saying my first inclination is to be sure that, well, one, you know, you know what you're coaching on, and kind of the focus of coaching has already been decided. So, say if we're focusing on practice and support, so emotional development, and then, from there, I think then you have to discuss with your coachee, right? Okay, so, these are, you know, what are some things that we're comfortable with sharing? You know, could it be the practices and the needs assessment. That's something that's, you know, kind of public knowledge?

Like, you know, this is the set of practices that everyone that's participating in coaching is working from? So, that would be one thing to show. You could even talk about, I would even think sharing things like, you know, how many coaching cycles was completed or how many action plans or that kind of thing. And then I think a certain level of it really depends on what the coachee is comfortable with. And that's something that I think will—will change from beginning of the year through mid- and end-of year, as far as what they're comfortable with sharing out, outside of that coach-coachee kind of collaborative partnership. Anything to add in there, Sarah? 

Sarah: Yeah, I think that you did a great job with that. I think we—Let's do one more. And then I think we'll probably need to wrap up. But someone asked, "Is coaching voluntary?" 

Joyce: Yeah, I saw that question pop up a couple of times. And that's—that's always kind of an interesting question. And I think, when we're talking about Practice-Based Coaching, so we can talk about it a couple of different ways. So, I think it—coaching—definitely best-practices coaching works best when people feel like it's happening with them and not just to them. So, in that sense, I would say, like, best practice would be, like, you know, definitely, you know, if coaching is seen as something that I can participate in or something I'm being forced to participate in, is, you know, definitely a plus. I will kind of just reference the Performance Standards, too, a little bit.

The Performance Standard, the guidance that we get there is that every program has to have a research-based coordinated coaching strategy and, as a part of that kind of coordinated coaching strategy is that there is a process—and I'm paraphrasing here—there's a process for identifying those that would benefit most from intensive coaching. So, coaching in a program is mandatory.

So, every Head Start program has to provide, or has had that research-based coordinated coaching strategy. Now, kind of the details on how that happens and who is deemed to benefit the most from it, that's an opportunity for your program to kind of explore and discuss and put the other kind of policies and procedures there.

So, I hope that helps just a little bit. And I know different programs kind of take different approaches, as far as, like, who will participate in coaching, you know, whether some programs say, "Okay, we've—you know, we've decided that, for us, coaching our new staff that those are the ones that are going to benefit the most or kind of looking at our data, or even geographically, we've identified the, you know, staff from this specific center could benefit the most. So, I hope that helps them a little bit to kind of clarify that question.

Sarah? 

Sarah: Yep, I think that answered it. 

Joyce: Okay, well, I think we are coming right up on 4:00. 

So, we want to—4:00 Eastern. So, we want to wrap it up and just say, "Thank you for joining us." I hope—and please let us know what you thought about our Coaching Corner Q and A. And maybe we'll just kind of—We're going to put it out there in MyPeers, and just we want to hear from you, what did you think about kind of leaving these last 15 minutes open to kind to have this open-ended conversation.

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