The Coaching Playbook: Strategies for Meaningful Teacher Growth

Erin Stanley:
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Coaching Playbook Strategies for Meaningful Teacher Growth. We’re excited to have you with us and we hope that you leave with some new ideas on how to support your teachers. My name is Erin Stanley. I’m on the GoReact marketing team, and I’m so happy to be joined today by Anne Stark to chat all about teacher growth. But before we dive into that, I just want to let everyone know that registration for our fourth annual virtual event is open. The event is called Reaction, and we’re super excited to have Jim Knight, who is the expert in instructional coaching, be our opening keynote. So we’ll put the link to register in the chat, and you can also find the full agenda in that link. It has tons of good sessions, lots on teacher coaching and supporting teachers from K 12 through higher education. So I invite you to explore that a bit. So Anne, to get us started, could you introduce yourself and then tell us a little about your many roles and responsibilities?

Ann Stark:
Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Erin. As Erin said, my name’s Anne Stark. I am a middle school teacher in California. This is my 25th year teaching, and in addition to being a classroom teacher, I am also an induction mentor for the California Teacher Induction Program. So that’s the second role that I play along with a few others.

Erin Stanley:
And has this induction program been around in California for a long time? Is it something you participated in as a new teacher?

Ann Stark:
I did. I participated in induction when I first started teaching 25 years ago. Definitely the program has evolved and changed along the way to become what I think is much more job embedded, authentic, so all good changes for sure.

Erin Stanley:
Amazing. And I did my teacher training in Utah. We don’t have anything, or at least we didn’t at that time. Anything about induction. So can you kind of explain what an induction program is and what are kind of the goals behind that?

Ann Stark:
For sure. So in California, it’s a two year induction program that takes a teacher from having a preliminary teaching credential, and at the end of their induction program, they can apply for a clear teaching credential. So it is a requirement in California. And what it is is within their first year, they’re enrolled in an induction program and paired with a mentor who they meet with weekly, and it is designed to help them develop a reflective teaching practice across all six of the California standards for the teaching profession. So they work one-on-one with a mentor, and so it’s authentic and job embedded, completing a series of milestones. It’s genuine to their practice. So every teacher’s is a little bit different based on what they feel that their areas for growth are.

Erin Stanley:
So it sounds like you look at those six kind of standards and you can choose to focus on some more than others. I guess depending

Ann Stark:
On what that teacher needs, it’s personalized to the teacher. So they’ll assess their areas where they feel confident and then where they feel like they could use a little bit more growth and then we’ll set some goals around those areas.

Erin Stanley:
So before they enter the teacher induction program, they’ve done the necessary coursework or basically graduated from a teacher education program, is that correct?

Ann Stark:
Correct. They have a preliminary teaching credential and they have been hired by a district.

Erin Stanley:
Okay, amazing. What kind of data are you seeing around induction programs and the benefits?

Ann Stark:
So there is a lot of data to determine do these programs work, is it beneficial? And what the data is showing is that teachers who complete an induction program, their higher retention rates, they stay in the practice longer. Teaching is a hard job. So this support and this coaching through their first couple of years has helped the teachers to feel more successful, more confident, and stay within the profession. And just having that support I think helps them grow across the teaching standards and be more successful in their job.

Erin Stanley:
And that’s so needed right now as everyone’s talking about teacher shortages, retention, retention is such a great focus, right? For sure. So give us a little breakdown of the induction journey.

Ann Stark:
So it really is personalized. You are working with your mentor weekly for an hour a week, and you’ll sit down and we’ll talk about how are things going, what’s going on in your classroom? Let’s look at your data. So it’s not for induction program, it’s really for the teacher, what’s going on in their classroom, and then how can we support what’s happening. So even though there are requirements of the program, it’s all job embedded. So when we sit down and meet and for example, they might say, oh, I’m having such a problem with this particular student, he’s disengaged. So we can then talk about some of the strategies related to student engagement and what are some of the things that we can do to get him more interested in the subject matter. And so all of those relate to the teaching standards, but also to their classroom practice.

Erin Stanley:
So it really is that just in time support, let’s support what you need right at this moment, but also thinking about their long-term growth as teachers.

Ann Stark:
Right, right.

Erin Stanley:
Very cool. How often are these teachers observed or are there self-reflective practices? Talk to me about all of that.

Ann Stark:
Absolutely. We feel like reflection is the key. You can’t just teach. You have to really see if what you’re teaching is working. So not only do we engage in reflective conversations, but observations are a big part of what we as mentors do to help guide our teachers. So as induction mentor, I’ll observe my candidates three times during the school year. That’s separate from the administrator observation. As an induction induction mentor, our role is a hundred percent non evaluatory, so it’s a safe space. We can talk about real issues and when I do my classroom observations, I can be frank and open with them because it’s just between us. And so our observations have a lot of growth behind them.

Erin Stanley:
Well, and I can see as a teacher being in that kind of environment, you’re not going to pretend like everything or you’re not going to pretend like you have it all together. Yeah, because what did you call it, non-evaluative? Like this is really support, this is really mentor relationship.

Ann Stark:
Yeah, for sure. We grow really close. So it’s a trusting relationship. It’s having a partner, it’s having a coach. So the observation process, whether it be in person or on video recording is a really effective tool and seeing what’s happening in the classroom and then where to go from there.

Erin Stanley:
So you do both in-person and video and have you found one to be less effective than the other?

Ann Stark:
So I think that both are important and both sort of serve in a different way. So when I go and do my in-person observation, I do get a feel for the classroom. I’m sort of in it so you can really pay attention to who’s doing what and how they’re reacting. And you really get the vibe, you get the feel a little bit. And then video recording provides a whole nother set of dynamics that really help the teacher because when I can record the lesson and then go back and watch it, I pick up on a whole lot of things that I wasn’t able to pick up while in the classroom because when I’m in the classroom and frantically writing notes and trying to take it all in without missing something, and then when I sit down and meet with the teacher and go back, it’s like, well, I took this note.
I’m not quite sure. Having the video recording is really an opportunity to see it again and again and again and let the teacher see it. And so you can really pick up on the strategies that are happening and the behaviors and the disengagement or the engagement or all of those things. And then I can comment on it when we use GoReact just at that time in the video when it happened. And so it’s all really authentic and really meaningful and a lot of great conversations can come out of that. And I don’t have to try to be like, okay, remember this point in the lesson and it’s right there, so it’s really, really valuable.

Erin Stanley:
Yeah, that’s very cool. You have that. They can do some self-reflection, but then when you talk about it together, you know exactly what you’re talking about. You can see it.

Ann Stark:
Yeah, so we can see it. For me, I like a combination of both. I like to be in there and I like to record it, but sometimes time doesn’t permit to do both. And so having the option of the video recording really, really beneficial time saver for sure.

Erin Stanley:
Talk to me a little bit about your strategy behind providing feedback. I know sometimes that can be tough to not just fall into saying the same phrases over and over, making it really meaningful and also providing feedback that’s not going to put new teachers on the defensive or that they’ll be open to it. What kind of strategies do you use?

Ann Stark:
So I always want to make sure that I start with something positive for sure. And then if we have the recording, I’ll have the teacher watch it ahead of time and then I’ll say, how do you feel the lesson went? Tell me some of the positives that you found come out of the lesson. What are some things you’re feeling confident on? And then tell me some areas where you feel like more growth is needed or you’d like to talk through something you felt maybe was a little rocky. And we can look at that portion of the video together and kind of come up with some strategies. So having the data, using the data as my opening points is really helpful. And then it leads into mentoring conversations where sometimes hard conversations may need to be had, but usually if I have the video, they’re the one that will bring up, oh, that didn’t really go how I pictured it.
I didn’t notice that happening. And so then it’s there. There’s no denying what’s on the video. And so it really was game changing because it did make things feel a little less evaluatory because they’re the ones that brought it up instead of the mentor bringing it up. And then we can talk it through, well, why do you think that happened and how can we address that? Let’s talk about some strategies that we can try for next time that might help. And then if we do another observation and observed the lesson, the growth is right there. Look how much better they responded this time when you approached it from this way. So it’s very beneficial for a teacher to watch themselves teach.

Erin Stanley:
I love all the benefits you mentioned, especially that idea that they can see the growth over long term because I think that’s really normal as humans. We often don’t understand how much we’ve grown or how much we’ve learned, and sometimes that process is kind of slow. So to go back and be able to watch maybe your very first video as a new teacher and say, oh my goodness, look how much data I’m doing is huge. That’s really huge. Yeah.

Ann Stark:
Good.

Erin Stanley:
What are some of the current challenges do you feel like are happening with mentors?

Ann Stark:
I think that one of the things is as teachers, we’re always really, really busy. There’s always those time constraints. And for mentors like myself who are in the classroom to try to get release time to go do observations on my new teacher candidates, that’s always a challenge. So having the GoReact option of recording the video has been a huge game changer for me to be able to not have to be out of my classroom so much to do my observations, and then having the data to look at together to help ease into some of those hard conversations so that they then have a partner in improvement and somebody to work with to come up to collaboratively find solutions for them to be able to grow across the standards.

Erin Stanley:
I mean, I was wondering, I talked to a lot of mentors that are retired teachers, so you are a current teacher who’s teaching all day and still also have these candidates that you’re mentoring. That’s a pretty big workload.

Ann Stark:
Yeah, this year’s been busy, but I feed off of it. I truly love working with the new teachers and being able to see the work that we do together and how it builds their confidence. And we know when we try new strategies and then it works and it’s rewarding, so I do enjoy

Erin Stanley:
It. You’ve already mentioned a lot of benefits of using GoReact and how it kind of enhances the process. Is there anything else that we need to talk about?

Ann Stark:
Well, this year, GoReact has added a new feature to the video. When you’re setting up your GoReact assignment for the new teacher, they have a new feature where you can turn on the AI marker. And so the AI marker, if you choose to use it, it takes the video and it does a few things. It will provide you a full transcript, which is just interesting. And then it also, depending on what markers you select, will point out and comment on, say for example, student engagement or listening techniques, or I’m not thinking of all the markers right now, but it will provide areas for growth as well as praise for the teacher. And so the AI marker will come up with an area for growth in a certain area, and I’ll be like, oh, interesting. Maybe I didn’t even think of that on my own.
So then the AI marker helps me to be like, that’s an excellent idea. We could try that. If instead of just responding good job when a student answered a question, if you repeated their answer, that’s just reinforcing it and maybe the students who hadn’t heard it will hear it again or whatever it might be. So I can then add on my own comments to the AI comments. So my comments have gotten a lot more in detail since I’ve had AI as a partner in providing feedback. And if I don’t like the AI comment, I can just remove it so I don’t have to keep ’em. Sometimes I’m like, eh, it doesn’t apply to us, and we can just get rid of that before we even review it. So it’s been like having a mentor partner in reviewing the video. So I do like the AI feature. It’s not perfect yet. It’s not a human replacement, it’s just one other piece of data to look at when I’m doing my observations. So I do like it, but it’s just one component.

Erin Stanley:
I love to hear that because really the whole team’s goal with the AI was to even more humanize the observation and coaching process. So I love that you say that it’s like a partner, because that’s our hope is that it’s not replacing anything, but it does allow you to go a little deeper or allow you to maybe give it a second thought or allows the new teachers who are doing some self-reflection to think about things maybe they wouldn’t have come up with. So just kind of a different perspective.

Ann Stark:
Yes, for sure,

Erin Stanley:
For

Ann Stark:
Sure. I love that.

Erin Stanley:
I love that. I would love to hear any examples. I mean, of course we want to keep the teacher candidate’s privacy, but I just would love to hear any examples you could give of some successful teacher candidate moments you’ve had.

Ann Stark:
It’s all the little moments I feel like that I get, that I really enjoy. But one particular teacher I had a few years back, he was a big gruff football coach, came in to teach PE at the junior high, and he came in with a coaching mentality and he really liked his athlete students and approached it from a coaching standpoint. And by the time we went through induction and had all our collaborative conversations and everything else, he realized that the kids that needed him most and the kids that he’d have the opportunity to make the most impact on weren’t the athletes at all. It was the shy, overweight, uncoordinated kids who really needed to learn physical education and coordination and all of those components of fitness that as a teacher, not a coach so much as a teacher, he could provide them with strategies and teach them things that they could do even at home. And instead of doing so many team sports, he did a lot of individual things that we worked on to help the kids grow in their individual physical skills versus being on a team. So at the end of the year, he told me, I started this program as a coach and I’m ending this program with a teacher who now knows his own teaching style and why he’s here. And I thought, that’s good. That’s a success for me. I want every teacher to know their style and know what they’re here for.

Erin Stanley:
Yeah, they shouldn’t all be teaching in the same way. Exactly.

Ann Stark:
It’s a journey and everyone is different, and everyone finds their own style, and what works for one teacher doesn’t always work for the other. So that’s fun. Helping them find who they are in teaching and just making sure that everybody knows that every kid needs them and no two kids are the same.

Erin Stanley:
And such a good reminder that teaching is not just about the discipline you’re in, that there are these fundamentals to teaching that all teachers really need to learn. And because of the personalization of the induction program, you can kind of help them become the best teachers. Even if you aren’t a PE teacher, you can coach that PE teacher to be the teachers.

Ann Stark:
Yes. Yes. Really just letting all the kids know that you care about them, you care about their learning, you care about them as a person that we’re here for them go so far with any subject

Erin Stanley:
Matter. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing and sharing some strategies and all of that. Any final wrap up thoughts in general about strategies for coaching, mentoring new teachers?

Ann Stark:
I think that as a mentor, one of my main goals is to make sure that it is always authentic and job embedded With the induction program. There are requirements that you have to meet, and sometimes we just have to pause and be like, wait, are we doing this for induction? Or are we doing this for what’s really happening in your classroom? Being real and being authentic, it is really, really important. And it’s sort of what guides our work. And sometimes you just have to pause and be like, okay, wait, we’re not doing this to get it done. We’re doing this for your own growth. So just like sometimes refocusing, anytime we have a requirement we have to meet, we want to make sure that we’re not just doing it to meet the requirement that we’re doing it to get some real, authentic, meaningful growth out of it. So anyway, GoReact is a great feature because having the option of watching it and talking about it together has really been game changing, really beneficial. I love

Erin Stanley:
That. Well, thank you Ann. Thanks for sharing.

Ann Stark:
Oh, you’re welcome. Thanks for letting me share.