This #coachbetter episode is part of our special series featuring real-life coaching conversations with one of Kim’s amazing clients, Vicki Heupell, who, at the time of recording, had just graduated from our course for classroom teachers moving into a coaching role called Getting Started as an Instructional Coach. HUGE thank you to Vicki for being willing to record this session to share with all of you!

We are excited to share this conversation with you because the topics Vicki and Kim talk about are exactly the kind of questions that we get asked all the time, particularly from experienced classroom teachers who are either moving into a coaching role for the first time, or curious about moving into a coaching role. In fact, this exact conversation is an extension of many of our previous chats in the Getting Started as an Instructional Coach course!

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Show Notes

Kim: Tell us about your work as an educator

Vicki: Teach in a small town in northwest Montana. 6 sections of biology, teach 4. Teach astronomy in the fall and forensics in the spring. Been teaching since 1994. Been teaching at this school for 18 years. Started mentoring a few years ago. I’ve really enjoyed working with other teachers and then started working with teachers in the building a little bit more. Our mentoring program works with teachers from smaller schools that don’t have anyone in their department so that they would have a way to help teachers want to stay in teaching and not feel so overwhelmed. 

Kim: The first question you wanted to start our conversation on is how to get away from that feeling of needing to fix teachers. 

You have a complicated situation here, because on one hand you’re learning about instructional coaching and you’re learning about how instructional coaching works, but you’re also specifically a mentor for teachers with the intention of helping them grow into a teaching role, maybe from not having any experience teaching before. 

So tell me a little bit more about what you’re thinking about in terms of fixing teachers and let’s see where we go. 

Vicki: I think because for the last 10 years I’ve just been studying best practices and realizing even simple mistakes that I’ve been making where you can just tweak it a little bit in what your instruction is and you see such a great difference. And then if you either hear a student saying, here’s what happened in my class, or if you hear teachers complaining about the same thing that you had struggled with, but you know some suggestions of what might make that better and what you could try. Sometimes, not all the time, my initial thought is, “I could fix that”. It’s still kind of my default setting.

Kim: As you’ve been wrestling with this, what have you already started thinking about to be able to transition away from the concept of fixing into more helping them uncover what is work gonna work best for them?

Vicki: I’m aware of the fact that I’m saying that my inner voice is saying that. and I know that’s not what coaching is, just from taking your course and understanding it from an overview. I know coaching is helping them develop their capacity and their potential, not fixing or judging.

Kim: On the conscious competence ladder, what you’re talking about now is conscious incompetence, maybe you’re aware of it. So I’m wondering when you’re having that moment where you’re like, I want to tell them how to fix it, what do you say in your head and what, what do you then say out to the person

Vicki: When it’s just by myself thinking about the situation and I think of two or three, three things that I could suggest to them. Sometimes I am asking them more questions, but I may be using that coaching light scenario in my head. Maybe I need to ask for more clarification from them so I can determine for sure what they’re asking. 

Kim: So when you think back to those conversations and you’re kind of thinking should I have asked another question, what kind of question would you ask?

Vicki: Let’s see. I’m wondering if it would’ve been best to have said, what have you already tried and just listened longer

Kim: What I’m hearing you say is you have these moments and you kind of automatically go in your head to, oh, this would solve that problem. But you’re conscious of trying not to do that. And so you’re thinking, I gotta ask another question. But sometimes in the moment the questions that you’re asking are not as direct about the work that’s happening in the classroom as you might want them to be, to uncover what they’re really asking of you. 

So what you’re saying is you need to really better understand what exactly the teacher has already done and what exactly they’re asking in this moment in time so that when you’re either asking the next question or potentially offering to provide them an idea, a solution, an inspiration, whatever it is, you know that that’s actually what they want. 

Vicki: Right. When I reflected on what’s gone on in the meeting, I have thought, I probably should have asked a few more questions or even shared data. So I do feel like I’m maybe offering suggestions maybe too soon 

Kim: What makes you think you’re offering them too soon? What is happening in the moment?

Vicki: Part of it is determined by how much time you have to meet with the person and how much you’re wondering how much you can help them. Or maybe you’re thinking what’s their perspective of how long are we just gonna ask questions. 

Kim: Everything you just said is exactly what goes through every coach’s mind. And I think you didn’t say exactly this, but the thing I was thinking as you were talking is like, how can I prove my value to them? How can I make them yeah I want to keep working with my coach?

There’s this constant pressure of “if they don’t feel like they’re getting a solution like this in every conversation, then they’re not gonna wanna have another conversation with me.” And we happen to be recording this call at the time of another podcast conversation going live, about the power of intentionally slowing down coaching conversations. And it’s been something that has been really like just circling in my brain and resonating with me for months since I had that conversation with that particular guest, Sasha Robbins, who’s another amazing client of mine. 

There’s this tension in coaching calls between solving the problem and actually building capacity within the person. Because a lot of times there is a problem that’s tangible and we can solve it in five minutes and then they’re gonna be happy and they’re gonna walk away. But you know, the quote that I referenced in the course, because I say it all the time, is if we’re, if our goal is to build capacity, then providing solutions and just answering questions falls, flies in the face of that. And that’s from a conversation with Laura Lipton, another podcast episode. 

So I’m wondering if you’re feeling this pressure and you’re feeling this tension of how can I get them to want to keep doing this more if they don’t get solution after solution? 

Vicki: I’m probably gonna need some sentence stems on the asking them for clarifying and repeating back to them what I’m hearing. 

Kim: How does that feel if you tried to say something like that? How would that feel to you? 

Vicki: I think if I were to paraphrase back to them just to double check with them, would you like to hear some suggestions or are you asking for some, I would get some clarification on what they’re asking for.

Kim: I would split it into two questions because you’re really asking two things. You’re really clarifying what they’re saying and then you’re asking them pretty directly what they want. A lot of times people are gonna say, I just want a solution, but sometimes when you paraphrase what they said a little bit, you can see that they’re still thinking it through and still figuring it out, which often gives time for another question to emerge in that conversation. 

And that is exactly what this podcast episode is about. The power of intentionally slowing down coaching conversation gives you a little bit more time for your coaching partner to process their thinking (and not feel rushed). But it also gives you, as the coach, the time to actually think about, well what is the question that’s going to prompt them to say, oh, good question. 

Because that’s kind of what we want. As opposed to, oh yeah, that’s a solution I can just write down in my notes, oh, that’s a question that’s gonna get me to think about my own thinking and possibly change the way I do things in my classroom. We all know what it’s like being a teacher, writing down our notes from going to a conference or whatever, those notes get put in a book, they get put on the desk, they never get looked at again. So the question you ask has to be something that helps them make the click in their brain. And usually, it’s not just giving the answer that helps them do it, it’s actually giving them the question that prompts them to think differently. 

Vicki: Part of that, maybe even just learning to put less within the agenda would probably help slow down. My worry is that if we don’t get to all their questions, I feel like that maybe would make me feel like I didn’t support them enough, or that they didn’t get what they needed from that session. 

Kim: What’s your gut instinct if someone came to you and they gave you a list of things that was like gonna take you three hours, but you have 45 minutes, what’s your gut instinct about what you might say in that context?

Vicki: I probably would say which of these things is the most important for us to, to dig into today and to accomplish today?

Kim: In coaching conversations, when you directly ask what a teacher might need or want to prioritize, what you are doing is giving agency to the teacher. You’re not telling them what’s most important or what to do first, you’re asking them. You don’t need to take that agency away from them.

Agenda planning is like packing for a trip. Pack what you think you want to bring, and then remove 60%. That’s what I think about meetings. You think you can pack 10 topics into this meeting, but you can really talk about one.

Vicki: It’s good to just have that said out loud and process it through. Even though it sounds like something that I already know, it’s the freedom to know that that’s the right thing to do. 

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Show Notes continued…

Kim: Asking what was the most important thing or what is your biggest takeaway at the end of a coaching conversation has been so valuable for me. It’s important for the teacher to be able to tell you what the most important thing was so you know what they’re taking away. And it helps me feel that I don’t have to get stuck in the “prove your value trap” because they’re telling you what was valuable. I also found that that leads really directly into what their next steps might be. I really like them leaving with something that they can act on. 

A takeaway that’s surfacing in my brain right now is you already have a lot of ideas for questions and strategies that you can ask to help slow down the conversation. It’s more about you feeling confident that that instinct that you have is the right thing at that moment. 

Even what we talked about today doesn’t mean you’re never gonna give them a solution, it just means that you’re giving them the choice in deciding if they want advice or a solution, or if they want to process more. Whatever it is, it’s more about giving that person agency to determine the next step in the conversation that will then uncover what it is that you say next or you ask next. 

The clarity piece cannot be understated. It’s crazy to think about how many assumptions we make in so many different settings and how much more quality of our conversation we can get if we’re taking the time to clarify. 

As you’re thinking about this as your first question, how to get away from the feeling of fixing teachers. What are your thoughts now? What are you thinking about this? How is this feeling for you? What questions are still surfacing in your mind? 

Vicki: I definitely feel more confident about it. Your goal is to help them build potential. Now I’m wondering what is that piece of the observations and how you interact with the teachers around whatever data you’re collecting.

Kim: Okay. I’m hearing multiple things there. Let me see what if I got it right. First thing is I know you’re still struggling with some direct strategies that you know you just want them to know because their lives would be easier if they knew those things. Do you ever get over a feeling that like, I just want to tell you this easy thing that you could be doing? And then the second thing I heard you say is about observations when you see a thing happening in the classroom and it maybe is not the thing that you’re there to talk about, but it’s a thing that’s like indirectly causing some kind of problem. How do you bring that thing up? 

Vicki: I think I have an idea about the first one. I think I have less ideas about the observation one. 

Kim: Okay. So that’s the one where you wanna get into like, you’ve seen a thing in the classroom, and you believe it needs to be addressed and you don’t know how to bring it up. So tell me a little bit more about that. Like, what is happening and what is that context that we’re in right now 

Vicki: So it can be anywhere from, just calling on one student (less engagement) or never providing a student choice on writing or reading material where you can tell the kids are not engaged.

Kim: I think we’ve got a couple layers that we’re talking about here. There is an aspect of your role as a mentor that is really to help teachers make it easier in their first couple of years of teaching. I can totally understand what you’re saying is like this tension, Am I like holding back information from them? I would say if you’re mentoring a new teacher and they legitimately don’t know about something, that seems like an obvious path to be more direct, in that very specific context of being a mentor. 

Now, thinking about you’re working with teachers who are experienced teachers, they likely know these things, but they’re not bringing these strategies for inclusion or differentiation into their classroom practice, even though they probably already know them because they’re experienced teachers and you kind of wanna re-highlight that. How are you currently prompting that conversation in your coaching conversations now? 

Vicki: Occasionally, I’m giving advice that I felt they either weren’t ready for or they weren’t expecting, so then that just stopped the conversation. 

Kim: When you felt like it happened too fast, you told them too fast. When you look back on that, what do you wish you did in retrospect?

Vicki: I wish I had asked them a question instead. I felt like maybe I was doing a lot of the talking.

Kim: The question that you said that you wish you had asked was how many students would you like to hear answer questions? Do you feel like that’s a question that almost any teacher, regardless of their level of experience could answer? 

It’s important to note that coaching isn’t that you magically ask a question and then somehow they know the answer to the question. We still have to be able to figure out what the person already knows. 

So that’s more like an ideally question like when you’re reviewing with students, ideally, how many of them would you like to have answer? 

What do you think would change the shape of your conversation if you ask that question instead of saying, I only saw two students responding, or I noticed very few students are responding, here’s what you should do. How would asking that question change the next phase of your conversation? 

Vicki: If they’re giving an answer, I guess that probably leads to the next question of Why would you like more than one kid to respond And do you have any ways, already in your mind that you’re thinking of, of how to try that 

Kim: How does that feel when you’re trying to like transition that conversation something that’s best for student learning that you think they should be thinking about?

Vicki: I’m gonna feel a lot more confident of asking those questions with someone that’s definitely my mentee and that’s new. I might feel a little bit less likely to address that if  they’ve been teaching a long time. I do think it would be more effective if that, if that relationship with that teacher was better. So, developing the relationship even more first, asking if there’s things they’re struggling with and just listening, taking way more time on the, the coaching light and just trying to hear what they’re struggling with before asking questions

Kim: So we’ve got, again, our two pathways, which is if it’s a teacher that you’re mentoring, you feel pretty comfortable asking any sort of question with them because they’ve already opted in, compared to your colleagues that you’re trying to build a coaching relationship with, but their experienced teachers and they have their own areas of expertise and they may not be super jazzed about someone telling them what they’re doing wrong. 

So you’re recognizing that having that really intentional development of that kind of coaching relationship with them will help them feel more safe to be vulnerable and interested in a deeper coaching conversation with you. I

Even in those teachers who you feel worried about potentially offering up some opportunities to engage with you on a deeper level. Do you think that those teachers want to improve student learning in their classroom 

Vicki: Yes.

Kim: So do you have a shared goal in your work and their work 

Vicki: Yes. 

Kim: So if you have that shared goal of improving student learning, if your conversations are about what students are doing in the classroom, does that feel less confrontational than having a conversation about what the teacher is doing in the classroom? 

Vicki: I think that’s a a really great way to turn our attention to your goal for what the students were gonna do today

Kim: That gets right back to your original question of how to get away from the feeling of fixing teachers. 

We kind of got to it in a bunch of different ways in the conversation today:

• is we know that our goal isn’t directly to fix teachers. 
• We know that our goal is to improve student learning and 
• we know that the people we’re working with in whatever capacity our mentor, our mentees or our coaching partners is we wanna improve student learning. 

So we all have a shared goal of how can we ensure that our students are learning.

Shifting your mindset around what’s not really so much about fixing teachers, it’s more about improving student learning. That can also change the language you’re using when you’re asking these questions. 

I also recently interviewed Steve Barkley for the podcast and he’s been on previous times also talking about the same thing. He talked about when he first was a coach he was focusing on what the teacher was doing. He had a big mental shift at some point, and now really what he focuses on is what are the students doing And that also connects to Diane Sweeney student-centered coaching model. 

It all comes around if we can talk about what students are doing, what we want them to be doing, what we want the classroom to look, sound and feel like we are getting at whatever might be holding the teacher back. But we’re getting at that from the perspective of improving student learning and that is everybody’s shared mission in our school community. 

Vicki: In some of our meetings we’ve been talking about even maybe trying to end PLC meetings with how has this meeting improved certain learning and what do you see that might come out of from this meeting to improve certain learning. Maybe even trying to move more of the teacher’s thinking to that just in general, even just about teachers meetings so that it doesn’t seem odd when you bring it up in other situations. 

Kim: It’s a fallacy to think that if we just talk about what students are doing, we’re never talking about what teachers are doing. Because at some point the teacher is going to do something different to help the students do something different, but it’s a lot more comfortable and more aligned when we look at it from that perspective. 

Vicki: It even makes that, that discussion about assessment data more, no less, less stressful for the teacher because it’s not about what you did, it’s about here’s how my students did, here’s their scores, here’s these other scores, and we’re just looking at the data of what the students did and not, not putting so much pressure on it that way. So I think it’s from lots of different levels. a a way to keep conversations going in a positive manner. 

Kim: And you don’t have to address every single thing, every single conversation. Even, you, as a coach, in the moment and prioritizing, so in this conversation I am gonna be coaching them through a part of the one thing and that means the next time we have a conversation they’re gonna feel a level of success and they’re gonna wanna come back and maybe they’re ready to move on to something else, that’s totally fine. But that processing has helped them move forward in their thinking in the way that, you know, is going to get them to where they ultimately want to go. 

Alright, having had that conversation, what was most helpful for you today?

Vicki:

• Having a name to put on the prove your value trap is a way to help me process what’s going on in my mind
• Being reminded that I DO know the right thing to do
• Having someone ask me the question, hearing someone say the question I know I would ask
• Keep in mind the different ways you would interact with different teachers – maybe you would provide different support to new teachers vs experienced teachers
• Shifting mindset to how we can improve student learning is the biggest goal or purpose to our work together

Kim: It is really helpful for other teachers to process what it’s like to transition from a classroom role to a coaching role. It’s not like, it’s not just an automatic thing. Coaching is a concrete skill. It’s a skill anyone can develop if they so desire, but it’s a skill you need to learn and practice. It’s not something you just roll out of bed and suddenly know how to coach. so I really appreciate having the time with you to go through some of that thinking because tho all of the thoughts you share today, you know, you’re not alone. People moving into this role and wanting to develop into this role. These are the kinds of thoughts that are ruminating in their mind. So thank you for surfacing those and thank you for letting us have this conversation in a visible space. 

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