Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Descriptions of effective teaching often depict an idealized form of "perfect" instruction. Yet, pursuing perfection in teaching, which depends on children's behavior, is ultimately futile. To be effective, lessons and educators need to operate with about 75% efficiency. The remaining 25% can be impactful, but expecting it in every lesson, every day, is unrealistic. Perfection in teaching may be unattainable, but progress is not. Whether you are aiming for the 75% effectiveness mark or striving for continuous improvement, this podcast will guide you in that endeavor.
[00:00:00] Welcome to Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, a podcast for teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, and anyone else who supports teachers in the classroom. I'm Gene Tabernetti, the host of this podcast, and my goal for this episode, like all episodes, is that you laugh at least once and that you leave with an actionable idea for better teaching or coaching.
A quick reminder, no cliches, no buzzwords, only stuff that works. My guest today is Linda Rhine. Linda is the owner of Rhine Consulting, and she is the founding president of the Reading League of North Carolina. Linda is an award winning educator with over 16 years experience in education, including the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, which is one of the nation's 20th largest urban school districts located in Charlotte, North Carolina.
She has [00:01:00] over 10 years of instructional coaching experience and believes everyone deserves a coach. In her free time, you can find her playing with her two boys, hanging out with her husband, reading, and working out. Linda, welcome, welcome, welcome.
Yay, thanks for having me, Jean.
It is, it is, it is my pleasure. You have Boy, you are right in the thick of things with regards to what's happening in education. I mean, the whole science of reading thing you have you're an instructional coach, you say you're an instructional coach, but you really entered in into this through reading.
Yes.
Could you talk a little bit about your experience as a reading, reading coach, consultant whatever terms you, how you would describe yourself there?
It depends on where you are, right? In terms of the title, the title that you're given. But at the, at the core, right? Like literacy is one of the loves of [00:02:00] my life. When I graduated college, I knew I wanted to have the opportunity to be a first grade teacher. That was one of my favorite grade levels. And I knew I didn't have the tools in my toolbox to teach first graders how to become readers.
So I stayed and I got my master's in reading. Fast forward. And I got my, you know, my first teaching job and I was lucky enough to be a reading teacher for small groups of children for third, fourth, and fifth grade. So that was my first year of experience. So it was like bonus student teacher time.
Cause I got to be in other teachers rooms and observe reading. Great teaching at play too. Then after a few years in the classroom, I had the opportunity to move into what we call down here in Charlotte, a literacy facilitator role, which can vary depending on the school, but my, I was basically tasked with being a literacy support for teachers of all, of K 5 in our building, [00:03:00] meeting with them, working with them side by side during planning, and then having additional literacy responsibilities to support.
Like I was in charge of our book room and stuff like that. And then. When we switched leadership, we had a really heavy focus on coaching. And so we did actually for our entire, I was included in the admin team. In terms of, we would meet with the admin team. We would talk about like, how are we doing with our school improvement goals?
Where are we seeing pockets of need, that type of thing with teachers. And instruction. So we moved to a coaching model where everybody on the admin team had someone, like a caseload, right, of people that we worked with, supported. That was who did like walkthroughs and stuff. So we really worked on, you know, From a systematic lens, how is everybody getting the opportunity to be a part of this coaching experience?
So that's what really I think kick started my lens on. My job [00:04:00] is not just to help people do better with planning. My job is to help us as a collective in our school really look at what instruction is looking like, beyond just the evaluative expectations of We have, you know, expected observation times and rounds where an admin is going in and doing evaluation.
But how are we lifting the level of instruction for people on behalf of kids? And how are we getting better? Fast forward even more, I had the opportunity to move and do that type of work at the district level. So I moved into a role where I was instructionally focused, K 12, knowing that the team knew Literacy was my jam, right?
Like I have a better understanding of literacy. And then what started happening was our district was one of the districts that for many, many years used a balanced literacy approach. And as we started [00:05:00] shifting into using new curriculum, we realized that what we had been applying number one, hadn't been working for years, not for all kids.
And number two was coming from this kind of constructivist frame of mind and not grounded in the reading research. So being the literacy geek that I am, I got swept up in all of this, what's, what we're all kind of swimming in right now with this science of reading movement. And realizing, like, there was so much that I had not been taught with regards to literacy and the correct approaches that the research backs, even as far back as my master's in reading, right?
And so I, I'm the, I'm the person who, like, read the companion document that went with our curriculum cover to cover, right? And I was like, oh my gosh, like all, you know, there, there's so much vocabulary in here that's new to me. And then I started down the road of. reading all of the other [00:06:00] books. And because coaching is at my core, right?
I was an athletic coach and stuff too, right? Like I've just always kind of found myself working elbow to elbow side by side with other people when we're working on getting better, right? Like we're just working on doing it better together. So when you pair that with my passion for literacy, right? It just makes sense that we work on improving literacy through a coaching lens. And I would say that's kind of the summary in a nutshell of. How I'm here.
Okay, a couple, couple questions because You were, you got your master's you had all this experience in teaching, and then you became a coach, a literacy coach, and then, if I'm framing this too harshly, you know, correct me, but then you saw the light, you said, oh, wait a second we weren't doing this correctly.
So I, so I have two questions. [00:07:00] One did you have to go back to teachers and say oops, never mind? You know, we, we need to do this differently, and how, you're shaking your head, people can't see you, but you're shaking your head, so how did that impact future conversations with teachers?
So there's, so two things happened, right? One, I, when I, when we were kind of working on this stuff and learning this stuff, I was not, I was no longer in the school based position. So I wasn't necessarily at, at the level where I needed to like, do a 180 during planning, but I was helping to lead that work at the district level. And so what I found myself talking to, cause I supported in that district position, I was supporting the literacy leader, the literacy facilitators at their buildings, right? So we, so what we were doing together was having conversations about, yeah, like, you know what, some of this means that we haven't been approaching it [00:08:00] correctly.
And. that there's not, there's not, there's not much that we can do about where we were, right? At the time we were doing the best with the knowledge that we had and the approaches that we had and the tools and resources, right? That we as a district had chosen to move forward with. And, but we, but we can, that's why I think you see Maya Angelou's quote of know better, do better, right?
Coming up a lot when it comes to the science of reading movement because We do as educators, right? We, our identity is wrapped up in what we do. So we carry a lot of shame about getting it wrong. And I think that's what a lot of people are experiencing through this. And so to me, one of the ways that we lead through that is by admitting like, that we ourselves as the leaders also didn't know or understand, right?
Some of what we're now learning, but now that we're learning it, let's work through how we do, how we do better for the cohort of students that [00:09:00] we, that we have in front of us. And what can we do for this? Let's say I was that first grade teacher, right? Because I think about my last class of first graders a lot and Where, you know, like, God, what if I, what if I knew now?
Right? What if I, what if I could take, took the knowledge that I have now and I could go back? Of course, things would be different. That's true for everybody as we grow in our experience, right? there are things that we can do with the students that we still have in front of us, even if the first graders are now fourth graders.
Right? We as teachers can do some learning and think about, well, okay, what are we learning about their current gaps and what have we learned that allows us to feel empowered and strong about how we respond to that?
You know, I, I agree with every, I agree with everything that you said, because it's difficult. I don't do literacy trainings, but when I do trainings you know, a common, A common refrain from an experienced teacher is, you're telling me I did it wrong for 30 years? And, and it is. You could, [00:10:00] you can only do what you know how to do.
What my fear in this current time is, and talk me off the ledge, is that How do we respond to the teacher says, Oh, well, you know, 20 years ago, you told us this was research based. And now you're telling this, this is the research, you know, what are you going to tell us? What are you going to tell us next year?
And, and I know that my concern is not what we know, but my concern is about what we can get implemented in schools. And I think, and, and, and I, and I don't have a good answer to that, but, but I could see skeptics asking that. Do you have a good answer?
There's a, there's a, there's a perfect example of this actually in the literacy world. So, so the, the skills associated with phonemic awareness. And and our phonological knowledge, a lot of the research for a long time has pointed us in the direction. There's actually a term that so I don't know if this is cliche, so I apologize podcast listeners.
I don't know. I'm [00:11:00] nervous. I'm nervous to say
I'll let you know. I'll let you know.
I don't know. Maybe it is for literacy. I don't know. But there was this idea that. All your phonemic awareness work, like, it could be done in the dark, is kind of the saying that went with that work, right, because it was all auditory, you were working on students oral language, having them think about the sounds that they hear in the word.
Right? And that was kind of what the research was pointing to for a long time. So let, so if I were a teacher, right, and I had the research 20 years ago, that's, that's probably how I would be conducting phonemic awareness activities in my classroom. Well, more recently, in the past few years, numerous studies about phonemic awareness are pointing to that there is a higher effectiveness of learning when phonemic awareness happens with letters.
present visuals, right? So making that connection, continually solidifying that alphabetic principle of sounds and letters and [00:12:00] connecting those phonemes and graphemes together, right? So What happened, right? We have to remember that we are relying on researchers to be asking the questions that help us answer what to do in classrooms, and we are often doing the best we can with what the research is showing to make those interpretations and begin to implement what's, what, what we can do in the classroom.
And we need multiple studies with large numbers of participants, right, in order to best know that they are going to have an impact. And there's different types of research, too, that we are learning has more of an evidence base versus the type of research that might be a case study, for example. Right?
It's all research, but it has different implications for what we do in the classroom. So my answer to someone who says, well, 20 years ago, that was research, too, [00:13:00] right? I would say, you're right. right, we know that the research base continues to grow or technology continues to grow with us, right? We didn't have the same access to seeing what's happening in the brain when we read in the nineties, right?
But we do now. So what do we do with our growing base of knowledge? We grow alongside it.
I think if we are introducing the research that is going to be most helpful to teachers, you just see them in the trainings just shaking their heads agreeing, yeah, this is what, this has been my experience, this has been my experience, thank you for giving me something to try, to try now. Yeah, so I can see why you have a vast knowledge of, of literacy and, and coaching as well.
So here's, here's one of the things that. So you are known for literacy. That's, that was the beginning of your career. And then you go into instructional [00:14:00] coaching, which is more broad. Is it difficult when you, when you go into a school and you work with, with, Support, support staff. We'll call them instructional coaches, TOSAs, whatever we call them.
They may have been just literacy coaches, and now they've broadened their, their scope of duties to become instructional coaches. Is that a difficult thing for them to, to broaden that? Or, or how, how did they get so that the teachers just don't see them as a certain, certain type of
Or like as a content specialist.
Yes. Ha,
Yeah, that's a great question. I think, well, I have personal, I have personal experience with this. So, as somebody who has a stronger elementary background in terms of experience and who is a literacy geek, when I had to join my district team on [00:15:00] visits to schools, in high school math classrooms.
It was quite a struggle, because, right, I, I, what's difficult for me is knowing whether what they were doing, what they were teaching about math was accurate or correct, right? So I didn't necessarily have the expertise to offer that type of lens. My lens had to be broader from an instructional perspective.
Am I seeing effective instruction play out? Am I seeing pedagogy? Am I seeing, you know, is the teacher setting up the instruction in a way that students seem to be grasping it? Right? When the teacher is going, is the teacher checking for understanding as the students are working, right? And how is the teacher responding to students in the moment?
Those started to have to be some of my look fors when I didn't necessarily have the content knowledge to be responsive to that in the [00:16:00] moment for my notes. However, I also was able to, after, right, after leaving that classroom, because I'm the geek that I am, and I do love all subjects, okay, like, and as my friend Rob would say, we are all math people.
His favorite thing to say. And I believe him. I, I would go and access the curricular resources that our district had for that math classroom or some, if I knew we were doing it, I would do it beforehand. But if I, if it kind of was a surprise where we were going, I would pull it out afterwards and I would ask myself, was I seeing the math, right?
Was I seeing this play out in the classroom? So I think if you find yourself being asked to support teachers. from an instructional coaching lens and the content area is less familiar, then your focus is probably just going to be on the tenets of effective instruction. Right? Are you seeing explicit [00:17:00] teacher modeling?
Are you seeing opportunities for guided practice? Are you seeing students offered the opportunity for independent practice? And is there a formative assessment at play throughout this lesson in a way that allows the teacher to make sure that students are mastering the learning objective that they have outlined for this lesson? That, that was my best way of being instructional and not just content based.
Do most schools that you support and you're supporting, you're either supporting directly in in the literacy or you're supporting coaches? Is that accurate? So when you're supporting coaches in most places where they have coaches and the coaches do not feel the confidence, just like you just described, I didn't feel, I, I didn't feel confident.
Is there someone else to go to in the, in the site usually for content knowledge that you might, that they might be able to steer somebody to so that you don't have to feel that you're the content specialist?[00:18:00]
Yeah, that's such a good question. So, so yes, I think that in most of my experiences with, with schools and or districts, there's normally a department specialist, right, Okay. Related to that content area, and depending on the size of the district, right, that might vary in terms of who do you go to for content support.
There might also be somebody in the building, right, who has more, either has more experience with that grade level and the content, or and that might be the coach, or somebody else on the admin team, or it might even be another teacher. Like, hey, you were, you've done fifth grade, right, for this many years.
Fifth grade math is a new content area for me. Can I sit down with you and make sure that I'm giving accurate feedback for this math standard, right? I think that that type of work is perfectly appropriate and demonstrates that that little bit of vulnerability that a coach needs to in order to keep developing [00:19:00] that trusting relationship.
We don't want to give inaccurate feedback because we're too prideful to ask a question of somebody, right? So I would say your first go to person is going to identify, it's, you're going to want to identify as who's the con, who is the content specialist? Is there somebody on your campus or do you have support at the district level that you can ask?
for help. I know for us, we in my experience, we had like the math department, we had the science department, we had the social studies department. So all of those specialists were people that we could connect to. And then in, in house at schools, many, principals would hire a math facilitator or a math and science facilitator and a literacy facilitator.
So then you had people spending time in those content areas who, even if I went into a classroom and I ended up seeing something with math that I had a question about, I could then go to my colleague. And ask them a [00:20:00] question.
And I think most, I think most people who are at a site or in the district in those positions that you just described those support positions. I love it when somebody comes and asks for assistance because for the most part, the systems aren't created in a way that that they're actually working full time.
And there's a lot of criticism from, from teachers that they go, those coaches, you know, they just spend their time in the office. They want to get out and work. And I think as you expand your network, That will work both ways and, and, and every, every, everybody will be doing a better job to support the teachers and the teachers, the teachers will, will appreciate it.
I agree.
Tell me about as you I'm going to go back to your first answer. You talked about when you were in the district, you worked as being, you said, we were part of the admin team. How was that as a coach? Because that's always one of [00:21:00] the things that come up. Oh, you're just a spy for the administration.
You're just, but you actually were part of the admin team. So how did that work with teachers and your relationship with them?
Well, I had the added challenge of transitioning within the same school. So people who were peers of mine and we, you know, with like, I don't know, go out for drinks and stuff. Like, all of a sudden I had to be very careful about that being on the admin team. Although for me, I was like, come on, like, I can't go grab a drink with my friend.
Like, come on. But neither here nor there. So I think it's all about how you approach it and what level of transparency you have about what is being said. Like, I was never walking into an admin meeting and gossiping about teachers. that I was coaching or supporting, and any information that we had discussed or that we had seen that was going to be shared with admin, [00:22:00] teachers knew.
Like, I wasn't being sneaky about that. So yes, I'm a, I'm a big believer in confidentiality that supports building a trusting relationship, but I also think that 100 percent confidentiality doesn't work in schools. Because People, admin, principals, and assistant, like they have to know what's happening instructionally, right, and they do rely on the other people in their building who are out and visiting classrooms and stuff to help be a gauge of, are we doing okay?
Like, are things going okay? Anything we need to be, like, mindful about? Anything that we need to support, right? And on the, and then, so when that's true, And 100 percent confidentiality is not possible. I aim for transparency. Like, how can I be transparent with all parties so that I'm not hiding anything and I'm not sneaking around, right?
Like, I can tell the team, for example, when we were [00:23:00] doing systematic coaching as an admin team, we had a walkthrough form that we filled out, but it was with the people that I was coaching that the walkthrough form like went to the principal. So, I was having coaching meetings with them, and I was visiting their classrooms informally, right, in between those walkthrough times.
And then I knew their classroom. So my walkthrough felt safe because I wasn't going to be saying like, Well, you should see what's happening in this classroom. It's a mess. I would never, I owned that as the coach. I wanted them to be getting better and improving and stuff. So it was like the walkthrough was just going to highlight our progress, me and the teacher.
So I think if you find yourself and I also think to. There was an agreement on our admin team that we, that for me, for me, at least, like, that's how I handled myself, right? Like, I, I was not going to be, I was not going to act as a spy and I wasn't going to be [00:24:00] asked to act as one either. So I think that that's important is that there is a shared agreement about the coach's role and the expectation of what's being shared between all parties, teachers, coach, principal, and anybody else who does evaluations. and then it's really just about carrying that out with integrity. Like, are, you know, are you gossiping about people outside of, you know, where, like, you know, on your phone to yourself? Right? Like, sometimes we, sometimes we need to, sometimes we gotta get it out and be like, oh my god, that was rough, right?
But, you know, like, are you, are you doing that or are you acting with integrity and from a place of support,
Well, you brought up something tangentially with respect to the administrator. It shouldn't be a surprise. I mean, if a teacher is struggling, your job as a coach is to support that person. It [00:25:00] shouldn't be a surprise to the administrator. The administrator's job is to provide the coach to support the teacher.
So that type of, I like the word transparency much, much, much better than confidentiality. Where I think the confidentiality Exists with the coach is between staff members. If I coach Linda and we talked about this, then I'm not going to go tell somebody, you know, Linda is struggling in this. Unless I tell, I would also tell Linda, you know what?
I've been in three classrooms today. This is a common thread. We're going to talk, we're going to have a short PD on this, you know, but, but, but yeah, that's. Traditionally, you know, you've closed your door, nobody knows what's going on, what's what's happening, what people are talking about in the staff room, eh, that might not be reality, and I think that's one of the biggest, the biggest slap in the face of [00:26:00] reality when a teacher becomes a coach,
Oh, yeah.
and, and to see all the things that you thought were happening in classrooms are not.
And, and so, and so, and so that's a tough one. So that, that's my take on confidentiality. So I'm going to change my vernacular after today to transparency. And, and the and I give you credit. Did you come up with that?
I, you inspired me, I think, because I had the, like, Teachers Maintain Confidentiality on my assessment, and I think you pushed back on that the first time. So I've been, like, spending time reflecting on that. So we can call that a collaboration.
All right. All right. It's a CoLab. It's a CoLab. We'll have to edit that out. CoLab. So tell me, okay, so now that you work with coaches, what, what, what's the biggest question that they have? What's the biggest obstacle that they have that, what are the things you start with, with them when you start to work with them?
Well, one of my first, okay, I have, like, two big things. that if we can work [00:27:00] on this, this initially and get this right, then I think coaches will continue to grow and be successful. So we'll talk about both of them. Number one, coaches need to look for evidence, not judgments in their classroom visits, which means probably you've had some kind of pre conversation and you know exactly what you're looking for, or the school has identified this is how we do things instructionally here.
And the coach therefore knows, like, I'm looking for examples of explicit instruction, or I'm looking for evidence of student responses or student groups, whatever that, whatever the thing is, that's what we need to be pulling notes on. then, Our feedback should be grounded in that. I've recently been thinking about how we often leave feedback, and I'm guilty of this, where we say like, I love how you [00:28:00] did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And many coaches use like glows and grows, which is probably a cliche. So sorry, but I'm, I'm actually, I'm advocating for us not to, to do glows and grows. So that
Thank you. So we, okay, we're, we're together. We're on
we're moving, we're moving away from, from that cliche. And it's because when we, when we speak that way, we're basically saying like, What I think is good as a coach is effective, is therefore effective instruction.
And I, I worry that number one, not all coaches that, right? Like sometimes you move into a role because you've demonstrated leadership or whatever, but like sometimes Not all coaches have been effective in the classroom, you know, and and so I guess I am encouraging coaches to pull back, to spend time being clear on the evidence that they're, that they're seeking in visiting [00:29:00] that classroom, like what, why are you visiting this classroom?
Right? Let's get clear on what you're looking for. And then when you debrief that with the teacher, you pull out that evidence so that the two of you can share in that experience and take a look at it together. Because that lends itself to curiosity and analysis. And then it's grounded in data, which is proven to improve practice.
Mm
I, one of my big overarching themes when I work with teachers is respect. And if I'm telling a teacher, Oh, I love that. I'm kind of putting myself on it at a different level in that level of judgment. And I, and I always think of Oh, in the primary grades. Let's say an ELA teacher, they're teaching adjectives, and the kids have been given a sentence, and then they've been given an adjective, and the teacher says, Okay, Linda, let's hear your adjective.
And you read your sentence. Oh, that's a good one. That's a good [00:30:00] one. Gene, what's your sentence? Oh, I love that one. And then, and then they go to the next one. How was yours? Oh, okay. You know, so here this, this judgment, this evaluation with no criteria. And again, and so what happens, what develops with the students, they don't know if anything's good until somebody judges it.
to be good. So I, I am absolutely with you. I know the coaches that I train, I say, you know, get rid of that immediately. You know, get rid of, I, I loved it. Say, it was effective when, and then you're providing the evidence. Boy, when you said that, when, when you made that comment, that was so effective, the kids did this.
And then bringing it back to what the, what the performance was but it's a, that's a tough one to break. That's a tough one to break for teach coaches.
It really is. And it's natural to want to share a celebration or a positive, right? And I think we [00:31:00] find ourselves, especially if you're kind of flying by and doing classroom visits. This happened to me when I was in that district level position, I was supporting 29 schools. So my level of like getting into the weeds with people was, I didn't, I didn't always have the capacity to do that, but I hated the idea that we were visiting classrooms and I was never leaving them a note.
Right? Of something that acknowledged that I was there. So initially, I found myself saying, like, I, you know, I loved blah blah blah blah blah. And I started changing to just, like, Thanks for letting us visit your classroom. Right? Or, like, Thanks for letting us come. Because I, again, like, teachers are nervous.
with somebody visiting their classroom, they do often seek that immediate feedback, right? So, I think if you find yourself wanting to do that, you could, you, like, pull, pull something out and say, like, saw blank hands raised, or something, right? Like, something that just, like, tells them something that you [00:32:00] saw and witnessed.
So, I, I, I mean, that's the other thing is, one of the reasons it's hard is because we feel like we invaded a teacher's space But shifting to a practice of collecting evidence will allow us as coaches and the teacher to start shifting and knowing, like, the teacher won't be nervous if you've met with them and you've talked about, okay, great, then we're going to, I'm going to come in and I'm going to be looking for these three things.
And then you're, if you're writing something on the side or in the back, or you're walking around to, you know, look at student work or something, then they know exactly what you're writing down. Okay. And it eliminates the need for, what are they thinking about me?
You know, I over, I overthink things a lot. And, and you met, and you mentioned oh, you know, thank you for allowing me in your classroom or whatever you set up on that note. And that's even something that. I've tried to tell coaches that, you know what, [00:33:00] I respect that teacher space, but that's not her classroom.
And when they get used to people walking through, I know, I don't know how things were, you know, in North Carolina, but in California when the high stakes testing came, I mean, there were schools that, you know, were under some sort of sanctions. The teachers were just used to, to groups of people marching through the classrooms and and the students were just used to it and it wasn't it was just this is this is the way it is and that's what i tell the coaches that i work with that's the way you want that teacher to feel when they walk in when you walk in it's just natural
Normal practice.
normal practice and guess what i'm not going to give you let's say it's a bad day in that classroom.
I'm not going to give you feedback on that. You know, one of the things I tell coaches or that, and that I tell coaches when I'm working with teachers is [00:34:00] just, you know, thank you for being you. I got to see a real person instead of trying to, instead of trying to put on a show for me. Thank you, you know, because now we have something to talk about.
So now let's talk about, you know, now I'm dealing with a, with a real person, but it is, it is so difficult to, to get rid of the, I love, I loved it when, I loved, I loved
is. It's so hard. Jean, you just, you just said something that really got me thinking too, like, about knowing that it's, somebody is just having like an off day or a bad day. The only way that you know that is if you have been in there more regularly. So I think that's also something that's really key is coaching does not happen in a one time cycle, right?
Like you, like, yes, you could work on improving one thing, right? But like in terms of education and the work that we do in teaching is so complex, it deserves [00:35:00] long term relationships, long term work together, even if the short term focus changes over time. And the only way to know What is normal practice for that teacher is by spending time with them.
Otherwise, you might find yourself judging or giving feedback about something that is really out of the, out of the norm and then might be why the teacher is uncomfortable with your presence in the room.
And teachers, the personalities are so diverse, and there is no one teacher personality that is more effective than another, and so if I'm, if I'm going to make a suggestion to a teacher based on you know, the, the pre approved notions of how we do things at this school or anything, I need to give those suggestions within the personality of that, of that teacher, And if I don't, it's gonna be, it's gonna be disregarded.
The only way to know the personality of the teacher [00:36:00] is to be in the classroom. I don't know, you've probably had this this experience as well, Linda. I'll be doing a training. And I will have the quietest teacher that I've ever seen just in the, in the training, neither. I can't tell whether they're with me, whether they hate me, whether whatever.
And then I go watch them teach and they just become a whole nother person. Their teacher persona comes out. That's the, that's the person I need to coach. I don't need to coach the person who's just sitting in the training.
Right. A
So you, you can't say it more. You can't say it too much. You have to be in the classroom and you only need to be in the classroom for a few minutes at a time, you know, to see all of those different times.
And you want to, how did the kids come in? You know, how are transitions happen? How, how are these things? And so yeah, I'm with you. You, you need to be in there [00:37:00] and, And so does, so does the admin. So, so does the admin. Because not only are you going to be sharing with the admin things that we may need to talk about as a staff, an admin may say, Oh, I was in, I was in Miss Ryan's class and wow, what a, You know what a disaster that was.
And you say, you know what? That's not my experience. That must have been a bad day. So you, you, you need to know and it's funny. I'm going to ask you what has been one of your coaching, not failures, but ever, but for me, it's always when I break that rule that I just told you. When I don't know a teacher well enough, and then I give advice, and then it's like
Yep. Okay,
What's something that hasn't been the
so I think I and I was glad to have some time to reflect on this because I think it's like I would [00:38:00] center my own experiences and my own classroom work as a teacher. in giving advice. So like I would go into a conversation and I would spend time saying, well, when I was in the classroom, I did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Right. And like, it's like the second that I say, when I was in the classroom, like their ears just shut off. And looking back, I realized why, because I was centering myself, right. And I was putting like base. I was like, I can't turn other teachers into Linda minions. They're not, they're not meant to be, you know, other versions of myself.
That's not my job as a coach. My job is to enhance what they're doing and what they're already doing and for us to think about how do we continue to enhance their work. It's not about how does Linda make other people do what Linda did in the classroom. And so I think that I, I probably went awry leaning on, it's a very natural way to start out coaching, [00:39:00] right, is to kind of think about like, oh, I went to this classroom, I know exactly kind of what this teacher needs to do, because I lived, I lived through that too.
And that's not to say that a coach's experience isn't important, but that's not why the teacher is working with you, is to, to get better at what you did. It's to get better at what they're doing.
You know, it's, that's the second thing I tell coaches. Don't say, I loved it and nobody cares how you used to do it. And even, even if you were the expert in this lesson, I always tell them, you know, I saw a real good teacher do this once. That real good teacher could have been you, but we're putting it on another teacher, and it's even better if it's another teacher in your building. So yeah, I've been there with you on, on that one, Linda. And it's interesting how common Most of these issues, [00:40:00] these issues are, you know, because one of the issues that, that teachers who do not want to work with coaches, and there are a few, one of the criticisms is that, you know what if they were so good, they'd still be in the classroom.
And that's another thing that you have to face if, if you say, well, let me tell you how I used to do it. And so don't be, don't be surprised if that's the, if that's the response you get. So,
Yeah, I
Linda? Yeah, we could go on and on and
We could,
Any, any, any Any, anything else? Advise things to stay away from this year?
New coaches?
So the only thing I can share was a tough lesson for me, especially because when I shifted into that leadership role as a coach, I was again, shifting in the same school. It's very easy to be surprised by the shift with people who [00:41:00] were colleagues. Whether you want it to be different or not. And so there's this perceived power shift that happens when you move into a coaching role.
And the only way around that is by how your actions, right, like what you do about it. If you kind of, you know, puff out your chest and act like, yep. My stuff doesn't stink. I'm the coach now, right? People, people need to like get with the program and sign up for coaching cycles or whatever, right? You are making that power dynamic even stronger and creating a gap between you and your colleagues.
But if you can understand that your job is simply to be a thought partner alongside your colleagues or former colleagues, right? That is an opportunity for you to shrink that power difference and instead just serve as a thought partner alongside other colleagues, [00:42:00] knowing that you offer the, the experience in growing practice together.
And I wish I had done a better job of that. when I first started and understood that you know, it would, it would change friendships for me and, and stuff like that. So I always share that with people because it can be a loss too. When you move into that role, you can, it's like the, one of the most exciting things and one of the most exciting opportunities.
But it can be hard too. That's
you know, coaching? Well, let me back up. Teaching is hard. Coaching is hard. It's, it's, it's just hard. You don't, you can't go into coaching thinking that it's going to be easy because it's, it's not going to be easy. You're not going to be successful and it's not going to be any fun.
Yeah. And if you don't understand adults, it'll be even harder.
which means you have to be an adult
That's
ish, adult ish. I, I, [00:43:00] I, I, I don't know what people would say if they knew I said that. At any rate Lydia. It was a, it was a pleasure, and I have six, six different social media sites that people will be able to find you, and I'm going to put those in the show notes is there anyone in particular, though, that you would like to share before we go, or a couple, or all of them?
Y'all can, I'm on, I'm on all the four big ones. You can come connect with me there. Search Linda Rhine Consulting. The only one that's weird is my Twitter because, or my ex, because I haven't changed from my maiden name, which was Schultz. So I'm Linda Schultzy on ex, but you can find them all on my website.
So go there first, and then you can scroll down and click on all the things.
Linda, it was a pleasure, can't wait to talk to you again.
Thanks for having me.
If you are enjoying these podcasts, please give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, and you can find me on Twitter, x at G [00:44:00] Tabernetti, and on my website, tesscg. com, that's T E S S C G dot com, where you'll get information about how to order my books, teach fast, focused, adaptable, structured teaching, and maximizing the impact of coaching cycles.
Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon.