What Do You Think? Coaching With Questions

Presenter:

Kim Schmidt is an instructional coach with more than 20 years of elementary and middle school classroom experience. She has a passion for supporting teacher professional development and creating engaging and authentic learning experiences for students.

Transcript:

Kim Schmidt:

Thank you. Hello, everybody. Like we said, my name is Kim Schmidt. I am an instructional coach in Milford Public Schools, and this session is going to be focused on really instructional coaching and how we can use questions to guide our coaching.

So a little information about me and my position. I am stationed at an elementary school in Milford, and you can see on my little map where Milford is. Fun fact, we are the largest elementary school in Massachusetts. We are a three to five school and we have just over a thousand students, so it is quite large and I think even larger than most of the middle schools in the areas and some high schools. So our demographics, we have about 40% EL, 57% low income. And just interesting for my position, when I started here six years ago, we were at about 15% EL, so we’ve seen a really big shift in our population, which really impacts my work as a coach. Prior to coaching, I was an elementary teacher as well as middle school humanities before switching into the coaching role.

So our goals today, we’re going to look at why questions work in coaching, we’re going to look at how to be prepared with questions and how to promote teacher reflection. But just to help me as the presenter, I’d love to know who’s in the room. So you should see a poll popping up and if you could just check off who you are. I apologize if your role is not on there. I really had no idea who was going to be here, who was coming to the conference, but it’s really helpful for me to see who I’m speaking to. I know from the chat, we saw a couple of people with different colleges, supervising student teachers, which is great to know as well. So if you could just check off who you are, and we have a lot of others. That’s what I thought, so instructional coach, district admin, classroom teachers, and then others. And if you want to throw in the chat if you haven’t already what your role is, then that’s great. If not, that’s okay, but it’s nice to have a variety of people in the room joining us.

Okay. So when I started in my position as a coach in Milford, I was the very first coach in the district. It was a new position and a new role that we had not had before, so I really had to teach teachers about what instructional coaching is. And Better Lesson has this great article on dispelling four common myths of instructional coaching, and all of these myths were true for me from the start. There were many teachers who thought it was only for struggling teachers, it’s just for the ones that are on improvement plans, but we know that’s not true. Many thought that it would just be extra work they can’t fit into their schedule. They’re too busy for it. Many thought that coaches were just for the new teachers. If you’re a veteran, you don’t need coaching. We know that that’s not true.

But the biggest one that affected my work was this idea that coaches tell you what to do in the classroom, and that really impacted two ways. One is some teachers were not wanting to work with an instructional coach because they didn’t want to be told what to do. But what I saw more here was I go and sit down with teachers and meet with them for a coaching cycle, and they’d say, “Okay, here’s what’s going on. So what do I do? How do I fix it?” And we know as coaches that that’s not really what we want to do. We don’t want to be giving them the answers or just telling them what to do in the classroom. That’s not our goal.

So that leads me to this, what do you think is the goal of instructional coaching? I’d love if you could throw your thoughts into the chat. If you could define what is the purpose or what is the goal of instructional coaching? What do you think? And I’ll share what I think my goal is. I’ll give you a minute to throw that in the chat. What do you think is the goal of instructional coaching?

So Karen says to help teachers reflect upon their practice. Thinking deeper and outside the box. Good. I love that, help teachers find the answers themselves and supports. I like that reference of a sous chef, that’s great. Awesome. It seems like we’re all on the same page here.

I really like this definition of this goal of coaching from Zachary Parker, who’s a coach, and he says, “Prompting teachers and leaders with a few critical questions and the space to solve their most pressing problems allows them to arrive at conclusions on their own, causing the solutions to stick better and longer than if I made a recommendation, and builds their capacity to be problem solvers in their building.” So I think I saw that in the chat too, the idea of solving their problems or having them be able to learn how to solve their problems, not solving the problems for them, because we want to be able to increase their capacity as teachers and not just put Band-Aids on things.

A phrase I use a lot when I’m coaching in brief reference to students is that the one who’s doing the talking is doing the learning. And I definitely didn’t invent that idea, but I also searched a lot and couldn’t really find who to attribute it to, but the idea that the person that is talking and that’s doing the processing and the work is the one who’s learning. So when I sit down in a coaching session, I want to make sure that the teacher is the one that’s doing most of the talking and I’m doing more listening, because if they’re talking through their problems, they’re learning how to solve their problems and they’re learning how to become a stronger teacher.

So in our district, we decided to structure our coaching after the Impact Cycle by Jim Knight, which basically centers around identifying a problem, learning more about it and strategies, and then improving by implementing those strategies and then going back to a new goal. And we are really using questions to help teachers identify their goals, to make sure that they’re the ones reflecting and making decisions, and that we are learning along with them, not judging. So we’re helping to guide the process, but the teacher is the one in charge of the process. The teacher’s the one identifying the goal and deciding what they’re going to do to move forward with that goal.

So to help them identify that problem or that problem of practice, whatever they want to work on or improve in their classroom, we start with questions. So I love these 10 identify questions from Jim Knight that I’ll let you skim through. I won’t read them all out loud to you, but they really put the ownership on the teacher to identify what’s going on in their classroom and how they could fix that. And they’re not meant to be asked robotically. You don’t have to go from number one to number two to number three and ask all of the questions. That would be a little bit much, but they’re meant to be used as a guide for the coach to guide that conversation and help the teacher figure out what’s going on and what they could do to solve that.

I think right around number eight and number nine, what teaching strategy can you use to achieve your goals? That’s sometimes where as a coach, I need to go in with more support because I’m the one who has that bank of strategies ready to share. So at that point, I might share, “Okay, here’s what you’re thinking your goal is. Let’s look at a bunch of different ways we could work towards that. Here’s a bunch of different strategies.” But then that teacher is still the one choosing the strategy and deciding what their next steps are, but I can guide them in helping them identify some strategies.

When we’re asking these questions, it’s important to let the teacher’s ideas come to light and not the coach’s. So we want to avoid leading questions, so something like, “You don’t think they were engaged, do you?” Because it’s leading the teacher to say, “Oh no, they must not have been engaged,” even if that’s not what they were thinking. My favorite one is this, no advice disguised as questions. “So I wonder if you had grouped the students differently.” That’s basically saying, “Hey, you should have grouped the students differently,” without letting the teacher come to that realization themselves. And the hardest one for me to be honest is don’t interrupt but just let them talk.

And they give it as like, wait time in the classroom. If you wait, somebody usually comes up with something that they hadn’t thought of before. So giving the teachers that wait time, and sometimes that means sitting in silence to really let them think about what they want to say, which can be uncomfortable, but it can be effective once you get going with it.

Instead of these ideas, what we can say to guide teachers is a phrase like, “I think what I’m hearing you say is this,” to clarify their thinking. So, “I think I’m hearing you say that the groupings didn’t work quite right,” or, “What do you think that would look like and how could you accomplish that?” And the how could you accomplish that is again where we might start then providing some strategies or a bank of strategies to choose from.

And one of my favorite questions is, “And what else?” And I’m not sure how to say his name. He’s the author of the Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier I’m going to go with, says that this is the best coaching question in the world. And what else just gets teachers to say more, so that’s something that I always use, to the point that teachers know it’s coming. They say, “I know you’re going to ask me what else?” And we sit on it and say, “And what else?” And sometimes, the what else is related to the conversation, that they come up with something that maybe they weren’t quite comfortable saying at the start or wasn’t sitting well with them, but then they’re able to admit, “Well, I was also not really happy with this part of the lesson,” or, “This is also something that’s going on.” Or sometimes, the what else is something on a different subject related to coaching that can open up different doors.

So when I’m going into a coaching meeting, I want to be prepared to ask these questions. So what I do is I always bring, I’m old school, I bring a notebook instead of a computer, but I bring my composition notebook and on the inside cover, I basically have a printout of questions. That way, if I feel stuck, I have something to quickly reference and pull a question out of my toolbox. But when I’m planning for a specific coaching session, I try to go in with specific questions already prepared.

So on the right is an image from my notebook before a coaching session that I had last week, and to give some background, this was a meeting with a new teacher who I had observed last week, and she had, like many new teachers, realized that she needed to really firm up her transitions and routines in the classroom. So we had met previously, we had talked about some different strategies that she could try. She had a plan of things that she was going to implement. I went and observed a lesson looking specifically for those things, and then we were meeting to reflect on that. So my questions that I was prepared to ask her are on the left. I didn’t necessarily get to all of those questions because sometimes I didn’t need them, but I have them ready to go and then I can take my notes on the right.

So I started with one of Jim Knight’s identify questions of just, “How do you think that lesson went on a scale of one to 10, 10 being the best lesson you’ve ever taught?” Because that gets the teacher talking about, “Here’s how I felt about this lesson.” Another question I often use at the start, especially if it’s more of a newer relationship that I haven’t been in the classroom a lot, is, “How does that compare to a typical lesson or a typical day?”

I think it’s important to note if something was like a unicorn experience that maybe was so fantastic to the teacher, their kids were doing things that they’ve never done before and it was so amazing but it’s not usually like that, or the other end where the kids were totally off, it was a full moon and that wasn’t a typical experience. For this teacher, we started with the one to 10, and then what made it that? I had anticipated that that number was going to be pretty high because from my observation, there was a lot of growth in terms of the transitions and the routines. So after what made it that, I think she gave herself an eight, asked what is working? So which of these strategies that you put in place are working right now? And then leading into what’s next and how to get there.

So on her own, this teacher was able to reflect on that, the things that she’s put in place to help with her routines and procedures are working and that her students are more productive going into the classroom. She’s not using as much time on transitions, and she was able to recognize that she wants to continue those but April break is coming up, and so she’s thinking that they might fall apart after April break. So her what next is she’s going to, after April break, reteach all these routines and procedures and start fresh and go from there. But she was able to come up with all those ideas without me coming into the coach meeting and saying, “Hey, you really improved with the transitions and this is what I noticed. But don’t forget, after April break, you need to do this.” It was all teacher guided.

So we’re going to practice a little bit, and I have a video of a classroom that we’re going to watch, and I want to imagine that you were coaching this… Typo, sorry. You’re coaching this teacher and observed this lesson. And in this lesson in particular, the teacher has discussed prior wanting to help students explain their thinking in math, that she’s thinking the students aren’t showing enough math. This course, she really wants to get them talking more. So we’re going to watch this little video clip and what I want you to do is think about or jot down, what are some questions that you would ask this teacher during your coaching session afterwards? And we’ll talk about that.

If you can get your teachers videotaping, I think that’s awesome. I will say while I pull this up, my teachers are not there yet. They’re not quite comfortable with having somebody videotape them and then watching it after. A nice workaround that we’ve figured out is I’ll go in and audio record and then write a transcript of maybe a 10, 15 minute chunk of the lesson so that we can look and reflect on that, but if you have a video, that’s even better. So before I play, just a reminder, we’re looking for what questions you would ask this teacher who’s focusing on student discourse.

Teacher:

All right. What are some things that we’ve noticed so far?

Student:

We need all the denominators that are forced. We’ve got to, what’s the word, convert, convert them into eighths, and then we need to put one eighth, two eighth, three eighth.

Teacher:

Which is what I see Roberto started. So why is it important for us to number our number line one eighth, two eighths, three eighths?

Student:

Because then we can just put X’s that we used to use last grade, and because how many fractions there are.

Teacher:

Okay, so to keep a list of how many fractions that we use, it’s easier for us to see. Are we going to just stop at one?

Student:

No.

Teacher:

Why not?

Student:

Because I noticed that some of them, it goes to one one fourth, which is equal to one pound and two eights, so that is greater than one.

Teacher:

Excellent.

Student:

Therefore, you need to go further.

Teacher:

All right. So I’m going to give you some more time to mark your data and then we’ll come back, okay?

Student:

Yes, ma’am.

Teacher:

All right. So do you guys have a direction of where we’re going from here?

Student:

Yes. Convert all of them, and now we’re going to see what kind of order.

Teacher:

Why is it important for us to put that data in order?

Student:

Because it tells us how much amount that we’re going to have. Is it going to be bigger or is it going to be small?

Teacher:

So it’s easier to compare least to greatest? Okay.

Student:

Tell how much we have. Do we have more than one [inaudible 00:16:53]?

Teacher:

Okay. All right. So a couple of questions. I noticed that you guys created a number line from one eighth to two. So why did you guys decide to create your number line from one eighth to two?

Student:

Because there’s one. Because there’s mixed numbers.

Teacher:

Okay. So what does that mixed number tell me when you’re comparing it to a whole number?

Student:

That they’re going to get greater.

Teacher:

That it’s greater. Okay. And you guys have noticed you’ve already started plotting your data.

Student:

Mm-hmm.

Teacher:

So can you explain to me how you decided to plot the three fourths?

Student:

We’re converting them all into eighths because three times eight.

And the big paragraph up here, it says nearest eighths.

Teacher:

Okay. And then explain to me how you converted into eighths.

Student:

Here, two times three is six and two times four is eight, so we checked that out.

We’re timesing it by two for-

Teacher:

And why do you have three Xs above that six eighths?

Student:

Because there’s 1, 2, 3 fourths.

Teacher:

Okay. So there’s three fourths that’s listed. Okay, sounds great. Sounds like you guys are on the right track.

Student:

I thought there was four for that one.

One is five eights.

Actually, how did I get three? I meant to put two.

Teacher:

Were there any disagreements about your line plots before we put it on a final presentation?

Student:

Yes.

Teacher:

Okay. So what was the disagreement or something that we need help through?

Student:

Angel said that before, he said that this equals three eighths, and I’m like, no. No, it didn’t equal three eights. It equals six eighths, and I showed him why. And then he…

Teacher:

So it’s important when we rename our numerator to a six, mathematically, what’s actually happening is that we’re renaming the whole fraction, not just the numerator, okay? So that was a really great suggestion that you brought out.

Student:

I forgot two, because I multiply this by two, but I multiply this by one off the bottom.

Teacher:

So that would in reality be three fourths times one half, and we don’t want to do that. We want to rename it to an equivalent fraction. Okay, great suggestion. So you guys are going to put together your final presentation? All right, so you can get started. I would suggest that you guys can do it with a marker, so…

Kim Schmidt:

We’re going to stop there. Just a little plug for this site. I do really like this site. It’s Inside Mathematics because it has clips of actual video lessons, and then it has a transcript that you can print to go along with it. I don’t use that necessarily with coaching teachers, but in professional development, we do that.

So let’s throw into the chat. What are some questions that you might ask this teacher who’s focusing on increasing discourse? You’ve observed this lesson and you’re sitting down with her afterwards, and maybe you have the video of her teaching, maybe you don’t.

Some questions that I was thinking that I would bring to this teacher where I could use the, “On a scale of one to 10,” I think that’s always an easy one to throw out there. Also thinking about how did her questions help support the student discourse? And seeing what she thinks about that, how her questions either made students talk more, made them explain their answers more, but I’m curious to see how she thought her questions were. I’d also like to know what successes she saw with the student discourse. What seemed to go well for her and what needs does she still see with student discourse? Where would she still like to see more growth? And from there, we could talk about what supports she could provide to increase that student discourse.

But like we said before, and I think somebody had put this in the chat in terms of their definition of what coaching is or why we coach, is it’s all about reflection and that teachers who engage in that reflective practice can develop a deeper understanding of their teaching, assess their professional growth, develop informed decision-making skills, and become proactive and confident in their teaching. And that’s really what we want, is we want this long-term growth and to develop reflective educators. I don’t want to lose my job, but what I would love is for teachers to not need me because they can sit down after a lesson and really think about, “Oh, this is what really worked well. This is where I might need to make some tweaks and here are some things I’m going to try to do that and here’s how I’m going to monitor that.” It’s definitely helpful to have another person to do that with, but if we can get teachers to be more reflective and doing that on their own, it’s absolutely going to impact their teaching practices.

So I’d love to know what you’re thinking. I do know there’s a question as well that I’ll address. How does this align with your current practices? What new ideas do you have? What challenges might you face, or any other questions that you have?

And I did see one question about how might you adapt this for pre-service teachers? I find that sometimes, they lack some of the knowledge to recognize things and make suggestions that in-service teachers tend to have, which absolutely makes sense. They don’t have that experience of being in the classroom, right? I think a couple of things. One, I think is if you focus your initial questions on their feelings and how a lesson felt, because I think even if they can’t identify perhaps what was strong or what could be improved, there’s that feeling of either comfort or discomfort that you can identify, like. “That felt really good,” or, “Something felt off about that.” And if you can get them to identify those feelings, that I think you could lead you down the line of, “Okay, why are we feeling that? What changes can we make and what do we need to do?”

Another thing I’m thinking is if you are coaching pre-service teachers, and I’ve never done it myself, so I’ve had student teachers. As a classroom teacher, I’ve had student teachers, but I imagine that there’s some sort of document that you have that’s almost a rubric or an evaluation tool of what success looks like in the classroom. And I think if you could take a document like that and put it in front of a teacher and say, “Okay, here’s this rubric or this evaluation scale. Which of these bullets do you feel really good with right now and which of these bullets do you think that you could improve?” That that’s a good way to get them started with identifying where they need to grow.

And we actually use that with some of our math teachers right now. We have a list of math look-fors of things that in an ideal math classroom, we’re in a productive math classroom, things that we’d want the teacher doing, things that we want students doing. And so often, I’ll have teachers look at that and say, “Okay, what’s one thing your students are doing really well right now and what’s one thing we want them to improve?” And then we can use that to guide our coaching. So I think a document like that could be helpful.

And if there’s any other questions or comments, you can throw them in the chat. I’ll give another minute in case there’s anything else out there. Also, I think on the conference site is a document that has links to different articles that I referenced here and also my contacts, so if you think of anything later, you can absolutely email me.

So what type of questioning do you like to use when you’re seeing a disconnect between what you’re seeing and what the teacher or teacher candidate is seeing and reflecting? That’s a great question because we know it doesn’t always go perfectly and that they don’t always maybe have an accurate portrayal of what’s going on. I think with that situation, I try to ask for evidence. So, “Okay, you get that [inaudible 00:25:37] really well. What evidence do we have that that went really well? Can we look at some student work samples? Can you give me some examples of things that students said or students did?”

And I think that helps teachers maybe recognize like, “Oh, I thought students were getting this, but I don’t have any proof that they got it.” So they could start to recognize that there’s that disconnect there. I think if you could also, if your teachers are comfortable with videos, that’s a good way of putting it right in front so that they could look at it, or having transcripts as well is a great place to say, “Okay, let’s see if we can find some evidence of this. So you thought that your students were doing a really good job collaborating. Let’s look at this conversation between students. Where do we see the collaboration?” And oh, actually it was all just this one student doing all the work. Okay, so now we can start to talk about that disconnect.

Any other questions or comments? And I apologize if you hear any background noise on my end. Our third-graders are coming back from lunch and they’re a little antsy because it’s raining today, and they’re third-graders and we go on April vacation in two days so they’ve been really hyped this week.

Right. If there’s no other questions or comments, then you’re welcome to reach out to me via my email. I’ll throw it in the chat as well, but it is on the site as well.

Kelly Fitzgerald:

Awesome. Thank you, Kim, so much for a great session around best practices in coaching. I think it was really fantastic to have some of these examples that you gave as guides and inspiration to get everyone thinking about better questions that they can be asking during their coaching process, so thank you so much.