412 - Boost Your Coaching Impact with Data Insights

In this episode of Restart Recharge, we are joined by guest Elizabeth Sillies to discuss the crucial role of data in instructional coaching. Elizabeth, with nearly two decades of experience in education, shares her insights on the most important data points for measuring teacher and student growth. The episode covers strategies for building relationships, presenting data, and fostering sustained positive change in schools. Co-producer Celine Thomas also joins the discussion, adding to the team's collective wisdom on effective coaching practices.

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Transcript

Matthaeus Huelse: 0:01

Calling all Instructional Coaches, Curriculum Specialists, Teachers on Special Assignment, or whatever they call you. I'm Matthaeus Huelse.

Katie Ritter: 0:09

And I'm Katie Ritter. As Instructional Coaches, we are often responsible for our own professional learning and can sometimes feel pretty isolated in our role.

Matthaeus Huelse: 0:17

That's why we're here, bridging the gap with a wealth of tips, tricks, and building a community of coaches.

Katie Ritter: 0:23

So hit the restart button with us.

Matthaeus Huelse: 0:25

Recharge your coaching batteries.

Katie Ritter: 0:26

And hopefully you'll leave feeling just a little bit less on your own coaching island.

Matthaeus Huelse: 0:34

Welcome back to another episode of restart Recharge, dear listeners. Now, before we get started, I'd like to introduce our co host for this episode, Celine Thomas, right here.

Celine Thomas: 0:45

Oh, hey, how's everyone doing?

Matthaeus Huelse: 0:48

Celine is our co producer and yeah, she has recently joined us in the production of this show. She's another instructional coach here at Forward Edge. And yeah, do you want to say something to introduce yourself?

Celine Thomas: 1:00

I'm excited to be here. This is awesome that I jumped in and now I'm here. Actually doing a co host podcast episode. I wasn't expecting to do this, but I'm excited. Yeah. Let's do it.

Matthaeus Huelse: 1:10

Up until an hour and a half ago, nobody knew.

Celine Thomas: 1:12

It's fine.

Matthaeus Huelse: 1:13

All right. And today we're focusing on the role of measuring your impact of data. As a teacher coach, we'll discuss crucial data points, relationship building strategies, and methods for ensuring sustained positive change. Now get ready for a data deep dive. Celine are you ready for data deep dive?

Celine Thomas: 1:31

Let's do it.

Matthaeus Huelse: 1:32

Let's do it.

Celine Thomas: 1:35

Alright, so our guest today is Elizabeth Silas. She has an impressive background spanning nearly two decades in education. Elizabeth has worn many hats from substitute and classroom teacher to title one supervisor and literacy coach. Currently, she is leveraging her extensive experience at a next generation curriculum company. So let's welcome Elizabeth to the pod. Welcome Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Sillies: 1:58

Hey, happy to be here, thanks for having me.

Matthaeus Huelse: 2:03

Yeah, Elizabeth, thank you so much for being here. We have been thinking about this episode for a while because it is one of those really, really important things. As coaches, we feel like we often have to prove the impact that we're making and a lot of that comes out of data and collecting the correct data and making sure that, you know, we can make some insights out of those. So, we wanted to Pick your brain a little bit today and see what you got for us. Maybe we can have something for our coaches to take home from here.

Elizabeth Sillies: 2:29

Sure, let's do it.

Celine Thomas: 2:31

dive in here. Got our swim trunks on. All right, question one. So what specific data points do you believe are most crucial for teacher coaches to track in order to effectively measure their impact on teacher growth and student learning?

Elizabeth Sillies: 2:48

So I rely heavily on, first layer being the benchmarking data for the platforms that the district uses. I think that having Being in the field, being hands on with your teachers, that's the data that they're using daily to drive their instruction. So if you're supporting that, you're going to see that reflected in their scores as well. As a coach, I can say over the years now, When I started as a coach, COVID hit. So my first year as a coach did not go as coaching was planned. And so then, you know, going into years two, three, and four, I feel like I didn't do the same thing each of those years because I had to shift to meet the need. So there wasn't a magical tool for me from the coaching lens that I could fall back on, but I had to rely heavily on that benchmarking data because that was the teacher expectation. And if I'm going to support the teachers. That's my expectation too. So that middle of year, beginning of year, middle of year, end of year benchmarking piece, whether it's we used MAP, we used DIBELS but also helping them come up with those short cycle assessments or what are those touch points in between the benchmarking phases that can also show the growth that they're seeing in their students. Because if the teachers aren't growing, The students aren't growing. So for me it was relying heavily on the benchmarking piece. With everything changing so much year to year, curriculums, staffing, class sizes, student needs, emotional needs, that to me was the one thing that stayed consistent year after year. That was the biggest thing that for me that could give an indicator of the work that they were doing and what I was doing and is it working.

Matthaeus Huelse: 4:34

And do you, so you mentioned also collecting data on, on teachers specific, like besides benchmark data, what kind of metrics were you thinking about in that regard?

Elizabeth Sillies: 4:45

So we would have ongoing, agendas essentially. And when we would meet with our teams every Thursday it was during their plan time. And that was just a running record, honestly. And you could see it was sometimes there were very frustrating weeks based on what they were putting on there as talking points. And sometimes it was like a data celebration. Hey, we did really great on such and such. So that was kind of the ongoing pulse. And that was somewhere where you could put your resources that they could get to at, you know, the snap of a finger. It was something that you could put on the docket that maybe they would have to start discussing before you showed up. So that way you had constructive conversation from the time you would get there. And while they, they probably didn't see that as a coaching tool, it's what I use as a coaching tool because I constantly had a running record of where have we been, And I could put on there of where we're going without them really even knowing that. So it wasn't like it looked, it didn't necessarily to them look like it was like me critiquing them. It was, here's where we're going next. So coaching sometimes can look scary to some. I found that the newbies are like, come on in. I'd love to have you. And the ones who are the more veteran teachers are like, You want to tell me how to do what? So so this being the one tool that everybody unanimously, unanimously used, and it was not a scary feature, I found to be extremely helpful.

Matthaeus Huelse: 6:19

That's awesome. And then you, you mentioned that that the veteran teachers and the younger teachers and newbies, they have a different, different kind of dispositions to that. Did you notice that they have different dispositions about data in general? Does one group

Elizabeth Sillies: 6:35

percent.

Matthaeus Huelse: 6:35

more than the other?

Elizabeth Sillies: 6:37

100%. Yes, yes. I mean, we still, we still have our teachers who want to keep, you know, the pencil, paper, record book style for grades. And, you know, they're very I don't want to call them paper pushers, but they want that hard data in front of them. Whereas, I feel like our newer generations of teachers are very much on like an informal assessment range. You can look out into your, your class and you can see are they getting it? Are they not? It can be a very simple thumbs up on your thoughts of, you know, or the range of, you know, on a scale of one to three. One being super secure. Let me see the ones. If we're still struggling, let me see the twos. It's, so it's That's not necessarily, that wasn't taught 50 years ago in college prior to having now 20 plus years of experience. And, so it's, it's very different. I think it's shifted even since I was a classroom teacher to now being a coach. And I look back and I think, man, if I was still in the classroom, I would do so many things differently. So, you know, it's to each their own and every, you can't, you can't. You can't force change. You can't. And I learned that as a coach. And I have to meet them where they're at. So if they are still wanting some kind of paper pencil assessment, well then it's my job to help them figure out what that looks like. And I need to make it look like the ones that the other ones are doing on their team that aren't so much doing a paper pencil assessment. So you're the coach, you're the player, you're the coordinator, you're the, you have to play all the roles to try to keep them on the same page.

Matthaeus Huelse: 8:22

I gotta give some flowers, some props to Elizabeth because I had the honor to watch her in action. And she really does wear all the hats. The emotional support, the instructional support, but she does it with so much pride. It's just like a graceful, like, almost like a ballet. Like, it's just a smooth transition to each and being able to meet all her different teachers. So, I feel like everything she's saying is true because I saw it live and in action. So, gotta give her some

Elizabeth Sillies: 8:52

Thank you.

Matthaeus Huelse: 8:54

Yeah, so, at our placement, we were in the same office. So, it was myself the other tech teacher for the elementary, and then Elizabeth. So, the office space was room enough for me to also have an office space in there. So we're all three roomies in one room,

Elizabeth Sillies: 9:15

hmm.

Matthaeus Huelse: 9:22

Elizabeth taking charge with the phone and whatnot, you know, getting all the phone calls and things. She was a busy lady. My gosh.

Elizabeth Sillies: 9:29

Yeah, yeah.

Matthaeus Huelse: 9:33

That's great. All right. I have a, I have another question, So. One of the things that you have to do with data especially in a conversation with a teacher, is sometimes break bad news about data to teachers.

Elizabeth Sillies: 9:47

hmm,

Matthaeus Huelse: 9:48

You know, it's not always rosy what you find when you start collecting data. Sometimes the things that you notice there are not the things that you expected and sometimes that might not be something you want to hear as a teacher. Can you give our coaches any kind of advice on how to have that? Conversation with them.

Elizabeth Sillies: 10:04

mm hmm. I think a lot of work has to be done prior to that conversation even, so Hopefully, you have a defined kind of relationship with that person, so that, that's gonna be a little bit less uncomfortable if you already know, like, their conversations with you are a safe space. You're not, it's not your job to critique them. It's not your job to tell them what they're doing wrong. It's strictly just your job to support them, whatever that looks like. So if you're in that safe space with them, you obviously want to start with a positive, so find something about the positive. And even if it's not within that specific set of data, Pick something from before. So start with that and then start with the, the obvious, the uncomfy sticking point, but then it's the, but now what? And just jump immediately into that conversation because you're not going to get stuck there at that uncomfortable space of what might be bad news. You just, you need to move forward. No one wants to dwell in the past, so we can't change that part. But what can we do moving forward? So I think helping them come up with some immediate action steps, but it also has to be obtainable. So start with, and especially your new, your, your newbies who they don't know what they don't know. So just offering suggestions of like. If I were in your shoes when I was a classroom teacher, if this was my comfort zone, this might be where I start. How do you feel about that? And if they're like, hmm, then you gotta go to the next one. Okay, what if You know, and jump to the next piece. And sometimes just offering to be hand over hand with that is what they want. And sometimes they don't want that. So, you kind of set a goal and a time of when do you think, and then you circle back if you ask how it went. And you don't have to hover over their shoulder. So, you think. But you do have to kind of give some kind of, timeline, I guess, just to keep them accountable to make sure they understand that we're going to continue to move forward with this. This is a work in progress. So,

Matthaeus Huelse: 12:12

yeah. Definitely setting attainable goals for them. Right? Something that is measurable again, right? Be but you want to make it something that actually can be achieved otherwise and, and on the timeline, right. Smart goals, right? Is that what you call them? Smart goals? Yeah.

Elizabeth Sillies: 12:26

Yeah, yeah. Smart. That's smart.

Matthaeus Huelse: 12:29

Smart. Why intelligent goals? So do you have a, can you share a story or like, do you remember a story of how you used data to help a coach, you know, make the hump, make a change? improve their outcomes over time and how data made an impact on that?

Elizabeth Sillies: 12:47

Sure. I can speak from a grade level stance because I think that's where it made the biggest impact. So even within one of our platforms that we use for benchmarking assessment, progress monitoring measures, In a time where all the things are thrown at you and you have a hard time on sometimes just reigning in and focusing on something, this, this was a call to action for me to, when I realized that we're all looking at these things at a very surface level because they're not seeing a lot of growth between benchmarks, but they see these numbers and there's this many students in red, and there are these many students in green, and these many students in yellow, and it's, But there wasn't a, but now what? And so to try to train them and show them and coach them on how to dive deeper, you got to dive into the data. You can't just look at what the summary is on the cover page. If you want to see the difference, you have to meet them where they're at, just like we have to meet our teachers where they're at and help them in the now. So to train for me, it was a second grade team and to get them to. literally click into the data, the subgroups of the scores to look at the specific students and what they're scoring. And it was interesting when they finally started making their own realizations and connections that these kiddos who may, they maybe didn't even see as being problematic are scoring because they're green, have red sub based scores in some very early foundational reading skills. And they're like, Oh, That explains a lot because they don't want to volunteer to read. They get very antsy when you pull them into a small group setting. They, but on the paper, they're green. So it was kind of like, Oh, okay. I really do have to dig deeper into this. I can't just, we did the test. Here's the data moving forward. Let's jump into next week's lesson plans and we're moving on to unit 52. So, I, I, yeah, I mean, I, Nothing is standard anymore. And I think for, especially for our more veteran teachers who are just used to just, they're sticking to the syllabus. They're going through the scope and sequence. They've got a target of where they want to be within their lessons by a certain date. But I think more are realizing like you are customizing your day for these kids every single day. And if you're not, you're not meeting their needs.

Matthaeus Huelse: 15:22

Yeah,

Elizabeth Sillies: 15:22

it just is. Like, you have to accept them for how they are when they walk in the door. And you have to meet them where they're at, because it might not be the same place as yesterday. And it's the same way for the teachers, too. I could feel really secure and have this great relationship with the teacher, and I can walk in one day ready to have a conversation, and he or she is not. Because 15 things happened before I got there. So what I had planned to do with them isn't going to happen. And I have to accept that. And that's OK. That's not a me problem. It's not even a them problem. It's just, that's what's happening right now. So, pressing pause is probably the biggest takeaway that I've learned as a coach. It's not my timeline. I, I don't necessarily have control over that. When you are a support role, you have to be on other people's time. And that's hard because I'm a very type A color coded. I have my plans, don't mess with my plans. And I think that's kind of why I fumbled a little bit in the beginning of my coaching piece because I came in with all these big ideas and this was like a dream position of like, this is what I've always wanted to do. I figured it out. I wanna, I know what I wanna do when I grow up. Not everyone's ready for that, you know, so sometimes you have to put yourself on pause and figure out what your next steps are, so.

Matthaeus Huelse: 16:47

You made so many cool and interesting points here. I am struggling to write all my follow up questions down. I think the, the, you made it such a good point about realizing being a type A coach or being someone that has been in the classroom for 10 years and has had their own classroom, very much a lot of autonomy in that, in that space, all of a sudden realizing like, Oh, and as a coach, I'm working on their timeline. That's, that's a tough, tough, transition to make. I think that's fascinating. I also liked the point you made about looking deeper into the data. Cause a lot of us do get stuck on like the summary page and then don't go further into it. And we kind of think that we made some sort of realization. Do you suggest that that that's a big thing that coaches can do? Look at that data deeper and then prepare it and come with that information to them. Maybe. Get them interested in looking deeper into the data.

Elizabeth Sillies: 17:41

Absolutely. You, you kind of have to, you kind of have to bait them if you want them to have constructive conversations. So you need to have looked at it beforehand. And that's where for me, I relied heavily on that. that running team agenda. That was somewhere where I could put a few nuggets for them, what I wanted them to focus on. Leaning on your team leaders is another huge piece because you can't be everywhere all the time, but your team leaders work amongst their team weekly, sometimes daily, if they have common plan time, depending on the team and what their, you know, what their schedule is. So I think, that's That was something else that I learned kind of quickly too. You know, if I want my impact to continue, it's not just me. I'm only one person here. So to have, you know, or sometimes it's your building leadership team, your district leadership team, your principals and assistant principals. They all have to be on the same page with you of what your common goals are. You're going to be working against each other. You can't have your principal walk into a teacher and say, well, I'm expecting you to show me X, Y, Z. when it comes to data, and then you walk in the door and you say, well, I would love to see something completely different. You're, you're going to overwhelm them. So you have to have these conversations, you know, prior to the school year, even starting of what it is that you're, what do you, what are you expecting to get out of them? What's the end goal here? So, that common knowledge between you all would definitely put you on the right path.

Matthaeus Huelse: 19:20

I love that. That's absolutely right. You've got to start with admin, you've got to start with them, and kind of figure out where are the tendencies here right now, and where are we going from here. I think that's a great point. Now, before we continue, we're going to take a quick break hand it over to our sponsors, and then we will be right back with a couple more questions for Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Sillies: 19:39

Sounds good.

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Matthaeus Huelse: 20:54

Welcome back dear listeners, thank you for sticking through the commercials. We have been talking with Elizabeth about measuring your impact as a coach, measuring benchmarks, getting teachers onto the data train and getting them excited to be in there. But before we went into break, we talked about the role of admin and the principles and how you need to pull them into the fold as well. I think that What you made as a point earlier about how we have to adjust our classes continuously for the students that are in there, I mean, this is personalization, right? This is the thing that, admin will come to you. This is the big word they say, Oh, we want to personalize this year. We want to make sure that we differentiate really, really well this year. This is our building goal. So in a sense, Data is just the less sexy version of saying that, right? We've got to collect that data about our students, about their progress, in order to personalize, and I think that is kind of the connection. So, what other potential goals can you imagine? How, how can other goals be supported through data collection? And how can we help teachers collect that necessary data to, to prove their impact to, to the, to the students?

Elizabeth Sillies: 22:08

think coming up with a common tool that is used building wide is a huge step. While each grade level it can look so different from level to level with what you're doing within your curriculums, essentially your growth goals should be the same. So that's, and that's again, something that can be embedded within those daily. Team building, running record style agendas. Even having a common, it was as simple as creating a pacing guide, a pacing chart, and putting it in their team agendas so that we know between our curriculums, where is everybody? And from a building level, from an admin level, you can look and see quickly. where your sticky spots are, to kind of address the issue and keep a pulse on the happenings that way. Ultimately that's going to affect your assessment data. If the curriculum itself has a lag somewhere, or you see some major, you know, discrepancies from grade level to grade level. So I think those common tools that, again, need to be developed from top down and revisited with the how. This is how we're filling this out. This is the expectation of when we're filling this out. It seems very simple. But I can tell you if those systems aren't in place, it is a choose your own adventure at every grade. And that makes my job harder. That makes the next person's job harder. It's harder to have constructive conversations as a team. It's hard to have constructive conversations as a building leadership space. So you have to have those common tools in place and you have to have that common conversation of what, what it is that, what are your common goals? What are we looking for from grade level to grade level?

Matthaeus Huelse: 24:08

You have a good point.

Celine Thomas: 24:10

So since we're on the topic of common goals and I would like to see like more thinking about instructional practices and let's you're going out to observe teachers. In your experience, are some significant indicators of growth in a teacher's instructional practices over time?

Elizabeth Sillies: 24:30

I, I think some of the biggest ones for me don't, it doesn't collect a number. It's classroom management. It's the routines. It's observational. When, when you're a fly on a wall in a class, and even the kids kind of forget that you're even there, just watching their interactions amongst each other. With the teacher, how the teacher is reacting to them says a lot. And sometimes your instruction as a coach isn't based on teacher instruction. Sometimes you have to support them in how to make relationships or how to have relationships with their classes. And as simple as that sounds. That impacts everything that happens in that space. And you're not going to get everybody to change and see that. There are some who are just stuck in their ways and they run their room the way they're going to run their room every year, no matter what style kid they have in front of them. But for the ones who are willing to kind of step back and just listen of what your observations are and were those are the ones that you can really kind of dig into and see some phenomenal growth and how they make simple changes to help with transitions. You see the kids become more comfortable and secure, which makes the teacher become more comfortable and secure. And then they're ready to receive the instruction. So sometimes you have to start very simple at that relationship level. And it's not about the data, but it's. If data is an issue, you're going to have to figure out what, what is it? What is causing this? And sometimes it can truly be the routines, procedures, the classroom management, the relationships within that room. That's for me, that's baseline where I start every single time. And then sometimes with the data, like I said before, it's as simple as they don't know how to read it. They see the number, but they don't understand what that means, you know, percentiles and growth and national rankings and what? Just teaching, reading and math. What does that have to do? You know, it has a lot to do with it, but you know, just coaching them through all the next steps. And, and a lot of times you'll see that they don't want to talk about that with their team. They don't want to talk about that with their principal because then it looks like they're ineffective. They should know this, right? I mean, that's, that's kind of how they feel sitting in the room. So sometimes it's, they may put on a good face, a good show, like in the moment of like, Oh yeah, this is my data. But if you have a one on one conversation with them, you can kind of quickly tell if they are comfortable. Do they know their data? And if they don't, that's, that's another starting point between the two of you. And sometimes you have to kind of totally flip the script and, Think about a way like you would differentiate in your own classroom. How else can I explain this to them? How else can I break it down? Sometimes it's finding a different style of reporting. If you're the one kind of helping run, you know, the data management systems like I was, I went back into the program and thought, okay, let me look at this data in a different format, in a different way. Would they be able to understand this? And presenting it to them that way sometimes was a much more effective way to help them understand their data, to know where they need to go next.

Matthaeus Huelse: 28:01

Yeah, I love that too because I can imagine just being a teacher and knowing that I'm struggling. That's why I'm glad you touched on that point and thinking about, Yeah, I know I'm struggling with these students in this way, but how do I even say that? How do I express that I'm struggling? And to have a coach like yourself come in and say, Okay, Here's an approach or, you know, thinking in that perspective, okay, how do I approach this teacher and give them the right resources so that they don't feel that way? Because I, I think that's the hard part is, which I think you touched on magnificently is developing the report with that teacher so they know, hey, you can come to me. Let's talk about the data. Let's talk about how we can approach this. Let's work together to get to the next point. So, yeah, any, like, additional, like, ways that maybe you've developed, like, a specific plan for a teacher or a group of teachers, even? I know you talked a little bit about, about a specific team that were struggling to get to their data points. Like, what are some, what are some resources or strategies that you've used that you feel like, Okay, this is, like, in my tool belt. I'll bring this every time I'm struggling with. Helping a teacher get to that point.

Elizabeth Sillies: 29:25

For us in my previous district, we were pretty new within our curriculums. So I relied heavily on the resources within those curriculums because that part wasn't going to change. If myself as a coach, my role changed. If teammates amongst themselves retired, switched to a different grade level, and that was another thing too. You, you do often have teachers who will move up or move down a grade level and you'll have those shifts. If they have to learn a whole new set of things. to function within their space, that's just a whole other stressor. So if you can pull out those embedded resources within your curriculum sets, that's going to give you that continuity that you need amongst the grade levels. And sometimes it's, again, surface level, they'll say they know it, but when you dive deeper into those resources that are in there, You'll quickly find that some of them are like, Oh, I had no idea this was here. But again, curriculums are so robust and you just give me what I need to know to be able to produce this and look like I know what I'm doing in front of front of these 20 plus faces that come to me every day. So sometimes it's using the tips and tools and tricks within. Those curriculums, whether it's, you know, looking at the scope and sequence and helping them get their planning on track, coming up with when are we going to assess? Can we use the assessments that are embedded here? Or when we're looking at it, is that not a fair assessment? And we want to tweak it as a grade level team to make it fit our needs a little bit better. I, for me, I've, in my years of doing this, I have figured out that. I have to simplify. There has to be continuity. There has to be the baseline norm for me. And with me, I rely on curriculum. I rely on my benchmarking data and it's communication from the top down. And I, those three pieces of consistency are what I start with every single year, because that doesn't change. Your benchmarking, you know, platforms aren't going to change in the middle of the year. Your curriculums are not going to change, in the middle of the year. So just finding those pieces that are going to, that are going to be the same. It's going to be comfortable. It's going to be, you know, typically you don't have a big shift from year to year within some of those things. So you start the school year fresh. There's always change, you know, year to year. However, Our systems that we use for assessing, those likely aren't going to change. So how we talked about data and the form we used for that data last year, we're going to roll it over into this year. Oh, you're a third grade teacher this year instead of the second grade teacher. Guess what? Most of this is going to be the same. the, you know, content might look a little different, obviously, because now you're a grade level above. But, yeah, I, I rely within curriculum resources. I do. And if I, if I present that to them and they're like, I don't love, then we work on it together to change it. But at least we know the original, the root of it started within the already created tool that matches what they're doing in the classroom. I don't want to recreate the wheel unless I have to, and that's what I tell them all the time. That's going to do nothing but stress you out. It's going to make my job harder to support you if I don't know where you got this from, for our admins or anybody else walking in the door. You know, if what you're doing looks completely different than the teacher next to you, like sometimes that raises concerns. Sometimes it brings some really valuable discussion to table. But it, it, While you are personalizing within your space to meet the needs of your kiddos and yourself, you should still have some framework outside of that that is the same. And that is so that the supports that are in place can best support what's happening within those four walls.

Celine Thomas: 33:35

Yeah, such a solid answer. I Just told you all she is a pro.. She's amazing.

Elizabeth Sillies: 33:42

You're I don't know about pro.

Celine Thomas: 33:44

I'm a huge fan.

Matthaeus Huelse: 33:45

I have one more question before we jump into our top three tips for our listeners. One of the things that I've noticed, a lot of us are tech coaches around here, when I talk to some of my literacy coach or math coach, Colleagues, one of the things that I've noticed they've not maybe complained or maybe have noticed before is that sometimes the only thing that they do tends to be data at some point, and they happen be amazing former educators, and they have so much instructional knowledge that they're just sitting on, but they feel like they're only talking about data the whole time. Do we have any advice for them on how we can maybe, like, you know, give them some pieces of advice to get them out of that data specific role alone and help them grow into be in an instructional position here.

Elizabeth Sillies: 34:34

Yeah, so I struggled with that also. And I found that, you know, Depending on what your district initiatives are, is where the teachers have to focus, is where then you have to focus to support. And if it's not instructional based necessarily, if it is data driven for one reason or another that year I would come up with some sort of like a coaching menu that I could share with my people at the beginning of the year. would list specifically the instructional pieces, because they're going to hear from me when I see them, what I'm going to do to support them through the data lens. But I think just to continuously have that little reminder for them via email, through a printed out handout, these are some things that I can help you with. I might even, like, look ahead at a lesson, like, let's say, within their ELA curriculum and put something together just to showcase, like, hey, if you wanted to switch things up a bit, or if you wanted, you know, wanted me to come over and co teach with you on XYZ, like, here's some things. So, it's almost like giving them a sample. to look forward to, to see in action, like, Hey, this person actually got into the curriculum using something that I'm going to be doing ahead of time. And you know, you have to kind of bring it to life because right now it's just an email that fell to the bottom of the inbox, or it's just a paper that you put in my mailbox and I stuck it in the shelf on the shelf when I got back to my room. So sometimes it's, It's being that model and bringing it to life for them, if it's something that you want them to look at instructionally, because they are going to get bogged down by the data piece. And that's not always something that they want to come to you with, you know, because then I will, I did see that in the coaching sense, it's like, well, what makes you better at this than me? Me, I'm the one in the classroom every day, but you're saying your idea is better than mine. Some people do view coaches that way, unfortunately. So you constantly have to, it's constant relationship building, and sometimes it's doing the work for them, for them to see what it is you're talking about. So,

Matthaeus Huelse: 36:54

I, I, I tend to sometimes forget that I'm there to teach people how to fish rather than do it for them. But at some point, especially in the beginning, you got to just kind of get that buy in and show them this is what you're missing. This is something that we could be doing

Elizabeth Sillies: 37:10

Yep. That's it.

Celine Thomas: 37:13

demos

Matthaeus Huelse: 37:14

Yeah.

Celine Thomas: 37:16

samples samples.

Matthaeus Huelse: 37:17

Free samples. Free samples. Yeah, that's it. Free

Elizabeth Sillies: 37:19

Free samples. That never hurts. Sometimes, too, it helps to, if you're having, if you have a really difficult teacher that you're, in the sense that she's just not very open minded, he or she's not open minded to your role, what you could bring to the table for them. Sometimes in a team meeting situation, for your champions who utilize you and your coaching abilities and resources, if they are comfortable enough to speak up about The relationship and the, the, the vibe that the two of you, you know, have been able to do. Sometimes that's what they need to hear, want to hear that they finally get it like, Oh, you two did that together. You know, it's so sometimes it's finding your, your champions of relationships that you've built with other teachers and getting those teachers to share their experiences, can sometimes kind of be a selling point, too. Beyond just you coming up with samples of and tangible products that they can see. So spread the word kind of a thing if you had a good experience. So,

Matthaeus Huelse: 38:32

All right. So we always end our episode with top three tips that our listeners can take away straight from this episode. So we're ready for you to fire off your three tips.

Elizabeth Sillies: 38:44

okay. Number one, I would say trust first. And I mentioned this earlier about building relationships. And I think back to this might age me a little bit, but the movie field of dreams, if you build it, they will come. That's essentially how trust works. in every capacity. If you build that trust with your teachers, they will come to you for support. So trust first. My second tip would just be that you have to maintain that communication and relationships and sometimes that's the hardest part of your job because when you do have actual Projects that you're working on, like those things take time, but you also have to keep a pulse on, Are you keeping up with communications in between coaching cycles, in between meetings with your teachers? You have to have to kind of do a check in. Sometimes it's informal and that's just to show them that you care and it wasn't just a one and done or it wasn't just a She needed to check the box that she met with me is why she came with me. So you have to maintain those relationships, not just physically you there in the, in the moment, but it's, it's an emotional role that you play as well. And you have to continue to, you know, Continue to build the trust, let them see that they can keep the trust to maintain those relationships in between. And then the last one I would say would be just to channel your focus as a coach, working with multiple grade levels, if that's your thing. No matter what setting you're in, honestly, education looks so important. It's vastly different from what it used to, and it is sometimes hard to, hard to keep focus when you are spread thin amongst all the needs. And sometimes as a coach, it's hard because you carry the weight of a lot of people, whether it be your admins. your teachers themselves, the people who support the classrooms the paraprofessionals and things, because they can sometimes come to you too with how do I support them in the classroom? And then you have that extra load of individuals and it can get overwhelming. So for myself, I developed my own method of, and Celine probably saw it on the board in the office, but I have two very simple columns, must do's, think throughs, What do I have to do right now as a non negotiable, and what can I put, like, on the back burner, because I need to think through it. I can't do a knee jerk reaction. That's going to require 15 other steps and other conversations with other stakeholders before we can come to a decision. And sometimes I, I, I use this all the time, and even for my teachers who get overwhelmed with whatever the task might be that they are very flustered with. I see. Start with that. What must we do right now? what can we press pause on and think through before we take an action step for that next piece? So there's my three tips.

Matthaeus Huelse: 41:49

Great tips. Yeah. Well, we're good.

Celine Thomas: 41:50

I'm taking all those with me.

Matthaeus Huelse: 41:52

Yeah. You saw the table yourself on the whiteboard?

Celine Thomas: 41:56

Yes. Every day. She's a very organized person in general. So.

Matthaeus Huelse: 42:03

All right. Thank you so much for being here, Elizabeth. How can I mean, brag a little bit. Do you have anything exciting you want to share with us? What about your Instagram Twitter handle? We call it Twitter, not X. I don't know.

Celine Thomas: 42:15

I know, it's Twitter. It's fine.

Elizabeth Sillies: 42:18

I am not good at social media, I can tell you that much. I post things about my kids and my family and that is one thing I continue to say is professionally I need to get better at this. Like I, you know, there are so many cool things that I could capture within class. I always had intentions of, you know, putting out there but I also did our, our elementary school newsletter, and I would always just stick it in there. And so then I didn't feel like reworking and putting it somewhere else. So, but I just made a huge transition into a new work setting, and I'm trying to get my footing within that, and it's, it's, Extending my reach beyond what I ever thought my capacity would be as an educator, and for that I'm so excited. And I don't, I don't know what that all looks like moving forward as of just yet, but it's It's pretty neat to just have, you know, my coaching experiences and what I've gone through with that. And now I feel like I get to do that on a much grander scale. I'm working with multiple districts between Indiana and Ohio. And it's groups of administrators and groups of teachers and supporting them, coaching them through curriculum decisions and instructional choices with those curriculums. It's amazing. It's a very dreamy job scenario. And that's kind of my brag moment of just being super excited for something new. And just like I would always preach to my people, preach to my teachers, my admins, like sometimes change is what's needed and that's hard and it's hard to take risks and it's. And now all these things that I found myself telling others, I'm like coaching myself through this transition. So,

Matthaeus Huelse: 44:11

well, congratulations on your, on your transition. That's awesome.

Elizabeth Sillies: 44:14

Thank you. Thank you.

Matthaeus Huelse: 44:18

All right. Well, thank you so much, Elizabeth. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Congratulations on

Elizabeth Sillies: 44:22

Hey,

Matthaeus Huelse: 44:23

uh,

Elizabeth Sillies: 44:24

you.

Matthaeus Huelse: 44:24

thanks for being here.

Elizabeth Sillies: 44:26

Absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Matthaeus Huelse: 44:32

Thanks for spending time with us today. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with an educator friend.

Katie Ritter: 44:38

And connect with us on social media at rrcoachcast to let us know what you thought of the episode and what topics you want us to discuss next.

Matthaeus Huelse: 44:46

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Katie Ritter: 44:52

So press the restart button,

Matthaeus Huelse: 44:54

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Katie Ritter: 45:01

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