Nicole S. Turner (00:03):
You are listening to the Simply Instructional Coaching Podcast, a podcast for instructional coaches who want a simple plan with simple steps to get started coaching teachers. I’m your host Nicole, and I’m an elementary teacher turned instructional coach with a little bit of K-12 admin sprinkled in. Tune in for simple tips and strategies for what and how to coach teachers. Being an impactful instructional coach doesn’t have to be complicated. Let’s make it simple.
(00:37):
Hey, hey coaches. Welcome back to the Simply Instructional Coaching Podcast. I am so excited about this session or this episode. I always try to bring in some of the coaching gurus of the world, and I have one of my very favorite coaching guru, a mentor, someone who wrote the forward to my book, and someone who has been there through the thick and thin, I guess you will say. When I have the issues or struggles, I get to send him a call or send him a email. Steve Barkley, welcome to the Simply Instructional Coaching Podcast.
Steve Barkley (01:15):
Thanks for having me. Great to be back with you.
Nicole S. Turner (01:18):
Yes, I know, but now we get to actually share some of our conversations with the world this time.
Steve Barkley (01:25):
You got it. You got it.
Nicole S. Turner (01:26):
So guys, I don’t know if you know much about Steve. So Steve, I’m going to let you kind of introduce yourself and kind of just let everyone know who you are and kind of we’ll just go from there.
Steve Barkley (01:38):
Thank you. Thank you. So I’ve got a 50 year history in education, so that gives you some set of why there’s gray hair if you were seeing this on a video instead of podcast. And probably best to say, the thing to know about me is I entered my career in teaching in a coaching teaming environment and it left a forever impact on me. So after 10 years of teaching and those kind of environments then I began working in, teacher professional development and traveling and finding out that there were tons of teachers worldwide who were working in isolation. It led me to work in the area of coaching.
(02:27):
So I started my work initially with a focus on peer coaching, teachers coaching teachers, stepped into mentor training for new teachers, training cooperative teachers who work with universities for new teachers, looking at administrators and their role as coaches. So a lot of years working in that area. And then also a major investment in teachers working as teams and looking at professional learning communities under a definition of where the professional learning community is a team that takes a shared accountability for the students who are being represented by members of that team. So retirement age has come and gone, and I’m still here because I’ve got too much to learn.
Nicole S. Turner (03:16):
Yes, I absolutely love that whole scenario that retirement teachers come and learn. Guys, we just recorded Steve’s keynote for the Simply Coaching Summit, and he is going to share a little bit from that keynote today in our session, but it was so amazing and I cannot wait for you guys to see this and watch this because guess what? I learned so much and I am going to rewind and get to watch it over and over again for six months after the summit releases.
(03:51):
So Steve, we started a little bit in just talking about, I guess you would kind of say the trajectory of working with teachers and working with teachers as they are individual teachers and kind of helping them to become a team and really being able to support one another in this transition. So kind of talk a little bit about where they kind of start and where they’re ending. And because the end goal, I know you were talking about was that we want to not be involved with our PLCs as the coach, as coaches. As coaches, we won’t be super involved in, I don’t think that you understand how much of a music to our ears that could possibly be, because PLCs take a very lot of time for instructional coaches. So really talking about that ownership and facilitation and leadership and all of that, and talk a little bit about that trajectory.
Steve Barkley (04:52):
So it’s funny because Jim Knight and I had this conversation about two or three years ago when we were recording a podcast and the conversation was built around the fact that when PLCs came on the scene, we sent the coaches in to teach people how to do PLCs and the coaches never came back out. And in my mind, a professional learning community is a group of people with shared accountability and shared responsibility for the learning outcomes for kids. So if a coach is in that PLC all the time, then they really need to be a member of the PLC and be taking on the same kind of responsibility that the rest of the people at the table are. So in my mind, the vision we want to get to is that coaches get requested to come to PLC meetings from time to time to provide their expertise and background on what the PLC wants to work on.
(05:54):
So some teachers have an avoidance of investing in the PLC because they approach teaching as an individual assignment. So this is my room, these are my kids, and that’s where my responsibility is. And I’ve had teachers who’ve complained to me that the administration sends them to a team meeting, but then still addresses them with their students’ test scores. So what happened to the team here? So the teachers realized it wasn’t even in the administrator’s head that that was a team. And the word that I’ve found that I use with it is franchise. That what people had in schools have described as teams are actually franchises. They’re people who have similar jobs, similar responsibilities, and they meet, and when they meet, they exchange tips and strategies, but when they leave, they still have the accountability and the responsibility for the kids back in their classroom. When teachers are truly a functioning PLC, then they have the accountability and the responsibility of all the students who are represented by that PLC. So if your high school math department is a PLC, then they’re really accountable and responsible for students’ mathematics success across the whole school. And any place that that’s coming up short, in any one of the math areas that comes back to the PLC and the whole PLC is working to bring about a change.
Nicole S. Turner (07:38):
I absolutely love that concept. For the past six years I’ve been in high school. So I definitely understand the department part of it and really working with, I know kind of in the session you talked about working with the biology teacher, understanding the writing component, and then having the math teacher kind of understand maybe some of the science components or the writing in math and then you know that. So everyone is kind of working strategically together.
Steve Barkley (08:12):
So now you’ve moved beyond the PLC being a team to the school being a team. So for example, I worked with a high school that recognized that they had insufficient reading comprehension results for their students. So their students were graduating with insufficient reading comprehension to handle the next level of college or the next level of learning on a work site. So when you got to the bottom line of that, you found out that you had science teachers who realized kids had reading difficulties. So they were finding ways to teach the science content without the student having to do the reading.
Nicole S. Turner (09:01):
Hmm. Okay.
Steve Barkley (09:02):
So now the science scores are there, the science knowledge is there, but I got a kid who’s going off to community college next year who can’t handle the texts that they’re being given to work with. So what we generated in that school was to take a look at reading comprehension became part of every PLC across the school. So the reading language arts department was tracking kids reading progress and reporting it out to the school, but everybody’s PLC meetings had to be finding times that they were addressing how kids are developing those reading skills. It’s not doing me any good to get a kid to pass my science class so he gets accepted at college but can’t handle it when he gets there.
Nicole S. Turner (09:53):
Yes, this is true.
Steve Barkley (09:56):
Our need to come back and work together. Now bring it down to another level in the elementary school, it’s the it it’s the reading specialist and the classroom teacher, the reading coach who’s the team that’s assuming responsibility and accountability for that student’s success. As soon as the teacher thinks she sends the student off to the reading specialist and now it’s not the teacher’s responsibility. The reading specialist is saying, well, I don’t have enough time with this student to really, so what makes you a team is the identification of a common goal. So what people in leadership want to be doing if they’re focusing on building teams is creating those common goals.
Nicole S. Turner (10:46):
Hey, hey coaches. I have a few questions for you. Are you struggling to get coaching cycles completed? Are you still trying to figure out what to coach? Are you confused about how to coach teachers? If you raised your hand and said yes to any of these questions, I want to invite you to join me and more than a hundred instructional coaches inside the Simply Coaching Hub. The Simply Coaching Hub is a professional development resource and community hub that will provide you with practical, relatable, and actionable professional development for new and seasoned instructional coaches. The hub is specifically for instructional coaches, created by me, an instructional coach. In the hub, we focus on providing specific pathways that meet you where you are in your coaching journey. Differentiation is important when we work with students and even when we coach teachers. Shouldn’t it be important when it comes to your growth as a coach too?
(11:44):
Absolutely. And that’s why when you join the Hub, you will be prescribed a coaching pathway that will address your specific needs. The hub also provides a simple framework for you to implement right away. It’s time you start coaching with confidence. And most importantly, the hub is a community. With over a hundred instructional coaches from all over the world, you will connect with someone who can support you through any situation you may be dealing with. And the best part is you have a coach walking side by side to support you in your journey. It’s time to elevate your instructional coaching with the Simply Coaching Hub. Check out www.simplycoachinghub.com to learn more. I will see you in the hub.
(12:37):
Then we have to move individual teachers’ thoughts that they’re moving from just being individual teachers because like you said, back in the day, you would just close your door, I’m going to go in my room, I’m going to close my door, I’m going to teach my kids this is it, and then I’m done. So we want to move away from that and move more to grade level kind of responsibility or grade level team thoughts like those strategies.
Steve Barkley (13:06):
I’ll stretch you one beyond that.
Nicole S. Turner (13:08):
Okay.
Steve Barkley (13:08):
My suggestion is that as teachers, we need to make at minimal, a three year commitment to kids. So we’re working in a team fashion with teachers who have kids the year before they come to us. And we’re working with people who are working with kids the same year we have them, and we’re working with kids the year after. So if I can give you an example, one of my strategies I call end of the year goal setting. I’ve got some schools doing it right now, being led by instructional coaches. So we’re coming to the end of the school year, bring your fourth grade teachers together with your fifth grade teachers. Look at student fourth grade progress status where they’re at. And the fourth grade teachers together with the fifth grade teachers set goals for those kids for the end of fifth grade.
Nicole S. Turner (13:59):
Okay.
Steve Barkley (13:59):
So that the teacher who spent a whole year with the kid is influencing the goals that are being set for the kid the next year. The teacher who knows next year’s curriculum and content, is setting that up. Just this afternoon I was working with a school that I’m, I’m going to be coming into their science department looking at science grade five through 12, figuring out what kind of teamwork does it take for the teachers in the science department to have an understanding of what you want to identify as power standards that next year’s teacher can count on. And how do you work with next year’s teacher and last year’s teacher to set what the power standard should be.
Nicole S. Turner (14:50):
So I love this idea, but I can hear some of the teachers that I’ve worked with, how do we deal with high mobility schools in that instance?
Steve Barkley (15:03):
It’s even more critical. Are you talking high mobility kids?
Nicole S. Turner (15:06):
Yes, high mobility kids. So I have kids coming in and out, in and out, in and out, in and out. If a kid comes in October and I’m setting it in, do we go back? I could hear some coaches or some teachers, do we go back and now all the planning that I did in August, how do I work through that?
Steve Barkley (15:28):
That new kid coming in doesn’t change the goals that you have for everybody else.
Nicole S. Turner (15:31):
Okay.
Steve Barkley (15:32):
So what you’re figuring out is where does this kid fit in? And to me that’s a decision. It’d be nice if four or five teachers made that decision instead of one.
Nicole S. Turner (15:42):
Yes. Okay.
Steve Barkley (15:44):
So I’m going to bring that student’s work to the PLC meeting and my colleagues are going to help me figure out where’s the best spot to plug that student in.
Nicole S. Turner (15:56):
Now I have a question. When the student leaves, so say for instance, I had a student come in in October, they leave in February or early March, do I send some type of documentation with them with their records as they transition to kind of say, Hey, this is kind of where they are. Or do I just, you know, where does that roll for me?
Steve Barkley (16:19):
Well, now you’re talking about let’s make teams across districts.
Nicole S. Turner (16:25):
I’m just asking cause that’s some things people going to ask.
Steve Barkley (16:29):
Well ask it. You’re describing where we need to be.
Nicole S. Turner (16:32):
Okay.
Steve Barkley (16:33):
So let me go back. Andy Hargroves, Andy Hargraves and Michael Fullen wrote on this years ago when you looked at what is our commitment. Okay, so do you think that as teachers we should have an investment in all the kids in the school? Do you believe as an administrator you should have an investment in all the kids in the district?
Nicole S. Turner (17:00):
Yes.
Steve Barkley (17:00):
Do you believe as superintendent you should have an investment in all the kids in the state?
Nicole S. Turner (17:08):
Yes.
Steve Barkley (17:08):
Do you believe as a state department you should have an investment in all the kids in the nation?
Nicole S. Turner (17:16):
Absolutely. Yes. We should answer those questions. I remember that book. I think I read that book in my I’m doctoral class.
Steve Barkley (17:25):
I’m sure you did. I’m sure you did. Because see, actually when I’m trying to explain franchises to people, the easiest example for people to get is the building principal. It’s probably the most franchise job in education. So many districts are setting up so principals are in competition with each other. So I the test scores come out, the first thing a principal does is look at his or her test scores and the next thing they look at is the two schools who were behind them.
Nicole S. Turner (17:54):
Behind them or where they fit in.
Steve Barkley (17:57):
Hoping they’re hoping they’re still there.
Nicole S. Turner (17:59):
Yeah. This is true. This is true. You got to beat out the other schools.
Steve Barkley (18:06):
Where in effect, if there’s a struggling school in the district, the needs of that school should be owned by all the administrators in the district. Just the way a struggling third grader’s needs should be held by everybody on that third grade PLC. I know that’s beyond what we’re asking instructional coaches to do.
Nicole S. Turner (18:27):
But that’s the bigger vision. That’s the bigger vision.
Steve Barkley (18:30):
I understand how I fit in.
Nicole S. Turner (18:32):
That’s where we should be going,
Steve Barkley (18:32):
Yeah, understand how I fit in. But right now, I was just working this week with a district that has 16 elementary instructional coaches and they’re coming together as a PLC. So I’m describing to them, well, if you’re really a PLC, what you’re saying is that the quality of teaching in each of your 16 buildings is being owned by all of the instructional coaches in your PLC.
Nicole S. Turner (19:01):
Yeah.
Steve Barkley (19:02):
So I should be able to bring something that isn’t working in my building to the coaches’ PLC, and the coaches ought to be willing to tackle that issue as if it was theirs. Because in effect, it is. Struggling teachers in any building in the district belong to us as an instructional coaches, not just the struggling teachers in my building.
Nicole S. Turner (19:27):
I love that. I love that sense of team. I know that sometimes or a lot of times, we can definitely get off into the competitive, the competition, the looking to see where we are and all of that, but to know that our center of all of that should be student growth, right. And we should be looking at student growth and teacher growth as well, and us as coaches, our growth. So everyone’s growth. Well, Steve, I always ask everyone the last question and the last question is if you could give us two or three suggestions for coaches right now, or some words of wisdom, whatever it is that you want to say and close us out.
Steve Barkley (20:15):
I guess a short word of wisdom that kind of pulls a whole lot of the pieces together is to model the model. It’s my leadership phrase. Whatever it is you’re looking for the teachers in the building to be picking up, to what extent are you a model of that? So I describe instructional coach should be the most coached person in the building. They’re asking and requesting to be observed and get feedback on all the elements of their job more than other are as a way of modeling that out there. One I’d love to share with the leadership teams on that, the start of the school year, first faculty meeting, your administrative team passes out their individual professional growth plans to the staff. So the teachers are sitting there and they got a copy of their principal’s growth plan, their assistant principal’s growth plan, their structural coaches growth plan. Now we’re going to ask you to leave the meeting and go write your growth plan.
Nicole S. Turner (21:12):
Yeah.
Steve Barkley (21:13):
You got that model out there. And I guess one other of my favorite overalls is stay curious. Curiosity is what will drive your learning and then that curiosity will drive other people’s learning. So I find that a ton of my coaching is driven by my curiosity about teaching and learning. So when I sit with a teacher and the teacher can describe to me something that she wants to make happen with her learners and she begins to explore all the different ways of how she might go about making that happen, my curiosity is piqued and very quickly, I’m highly engaged with the teacher. Being driven not by the need to fix something, but by the need to be a curious partner with the teacher. Yes. And I hope that that teacher’s going back and modeling that for her kids. The teacher who can be a curious partner with her learners in the classroom has headed down a great path.
Nicole S. Turner (22:17):
Well, thank you so much Steve for joining me on the Simply Instructional Coaching Podcast. It is always a joy and a pleasure to spend time with you and I hope that all of our listeners got some juicy information and some things to implement right away from your work and conversations. And make sure that you join Steve and me at the Simply Coaching Summit this summer, July 10th through the 12th 2023. Thank you again so much, Steve for joining me.
Steve Barkley (22:49):
Take care. Appreciate it.
Nicole S. Turner (22:51):
Happy coaching y’all.
(22:57):
Thanks for listening to the Simply Instructional Coaching Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode and you’d like to help support the podcast, please share it with other coaches and teacher leaders, post about it on social media, and leave a rating or review. To catch all the latest for me, you can follow me on Instagram @SimplyCoachingandTeaching_ and on Twitter @Coachandteach. Thanks again and I’ll see you in the next episode. Happy Coaching.
