With effective facilitation, individual PLC members come together combining each one’s unique strengths to promote optimal team performance. Without effective facilitation PLC conversations often stray without a focus and disappoint PLC members concerning the payoffs for their invested time. Angela Buckingham and Elena Sammon share strategies for building PLC leaders facilitation skills and model coaching conferences with PLC leaders.
Contact Angela & Elena: coachingcollectivepower@gmail.com
Find Angela & Elena’s workshop resources here.
Read Steve’s Blog, “Super Facilitation: Maximizing PLC Benefits” here.
Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!
Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00.300] – Steve [Intro]
Hello and welcome to Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud. Together, we’ll explore ways to support teacher growth, elevate your coaching practice, and boost student success. Each week, I’ll share my own insights as well as conversations with inspiring guests to help you lead with confidence. Thanks for listening.
[00:00:29.700] – Steve
Coaching Facilitation Skills for PLC Leaders. With effective facilitation, individual PLC members come together, combining each one’s unique strengths to promote optimal team performance. Quality facilitation can integrate diverse expertise, promote equitable contributions, and cultivate trust among teammates, generating collective intelligence, a group’s ability to solve problems together. Without effective facilitation, PLC conversations often stray without a focus and disappoint PLC members concerning the payoff that they’re gaining for the time they’re investing. I spotted an announcement that Elena Sammon and Angela Buckingham from Austin City Schools in Texas were offering a workshop for coaches titled, “Super Facility facilitation for PLCs,” and I invited them to join me for a podcast. I’ve worked with Angela and Elena over the past several years, and I was anxious to learn more about their workshop. Angela Buckingham is the Academic Coaching Specialist in Austin Independent School district, with almost 20 years of experience coaching teachers, teams, and leaders. She’s passionate about supporting educators in deepening their learning through connection and intentional practice. She loves exploring how coaching can transform both classrooms and the humans inside them. Elena has spent 23 years in public education as a secondary ELA teacher, instructional coach, curriculum coordinator, coach, and consultant for advanced collaborative solutions, and most recently, as a secondary ELA academic coaching specialist in the Austin Independent School district.
[00:02:36.100] – Steve
She’s passionate about partnering with teacher teams to explore, experiment, and discover pragmatic approaches to what she calls, “probletunities.” Ladies, thank you so much for joining me.
[00:02:52.420] – Angela
Thank you.
[00:02:54.800] – Elena
Excited to be here, Steve.
[00:02:57.480] – Steve
I’m wondering if we could start with talking about how much are PLCs in existence in your district?
[00:03:08.920] – Elena
Yeah, for sure. PLCs in the Austin Independent School district have been an established part of our district’s culture. And by that, I mean that all of our campuses have PLCs, and there’s a clear expectation that they meet regularly. I think our district sees PLCs as a core part of our professional practice with the intent rooted in creating equitable educational outcomes for all of our kids.
[00:03:43.760] – Steve
I’m wondering, what were you seeing and hearing about PLCs that led you to put together this workshop session?
[00:03:52.020] – Angela
We decided to offer this session just after talking with coaches about their PLCs. I think what seeing and hearing is that every PLC can be very different depending on the day, the humans in the room on that particular day. And I think coaches were really sharing how hard it is to facilitate PLCs when they are so different. And I think they want to really build the capacity of their teams. I love sharing your quote – I share it all the time: “Coaches went into PLCs and they never came out.” And I think that’s a reality for them. And so how do they keep this balance between facilitation and building capacity? And then I think as teachers, what you said in your intro, they just want the time and space to be valuable for them. They don’t want to waste their time. They don’t have a lot of it. And so all these conversations were bubbling up at the same time we read your blog around super facilitation, and we just made the connection of, I think this would really help coaches figure this out because they were talking… It’s like it reminds me of Goldilocks, right?
[00:05:17.320] – Angela
You can have a PLC and it can be super highly structured, but then maybe not a lot of dialog. And then you can have a PLC that’s not structured at all and feels like a waste of time. And so what’s the happy Goldilocks meal? And how does a coach facilitate that when the teams are so different? And so that is what inspired us to offer this session, just to support based on what we were hearing their struggles were.
[00:05:50.160] – Steve
So are most of the PLCs that are happening in your district now, facilitated by a coach?
[00:05:58.160] – Angela
Most are if the campus has a coach. Not all the campuses in our district have an instructional coach, so those are facilitated by teacher leaders and PLC leads. Even those campuses that have a coach will often have a teacher leader as well, a PLC leader as well, to try to support that role.
[00:06:21.720] – Steve
How about the agendas for PLC? How do those tend to be arrived at?
[00:06:30.640] – Elena
So a lot of times, I think in probably our most effective PLCs that we see across campuses, those agendas are co-created by every single member in the PLC. And one of the things that Angela and I encourage PLCs to do, PLC leaders and instructional coaches to do, is to save the last 8 to 10 minutes of their PLC time to summarize what they’ve done in that particular meeting, think about what’s gone well, and then from there, look at their pacing guide or look at their upcoming calendar and co-create what is most essential for us to talk about when we come together next week or in the coming days. That’s what we see with our most effective PLCs. Where we see, I think, some PLCs that might be still in maybe the storming or norming phase of their development would be maybe just the coach creates the PLC for them and sends it out to them. Or sometimes it is an administrator that will provide some talking points for agendas. But I think one of the things that we do see consistently across our PLCs in our district is the use of an agenda.
[00:07:44.820] – Steve
I’m going to offer up Steve Barkley thinking here and feel free to push back.
[00:07:52.000] – Elena
[laughter] Oh, absolutely. Bring it on.
[00:07:53.830] – Steve
I’ve suggested that until the PLC is coming up with the agenda, it’s really not a PLC. When you say if the coach is coming up with agenda, but they’re coming up from the agenda because of the listening they did in the way the last one ended, that may be different. But if it’s the administration setting an agendas, it’s a grade-level meeting or it’s a department meeting, but I’d have trouble sticking the PLC title on it. It tends to be somebody else’s work that needs to be accomplished. The spin that I use is, I talk about the difference between a PLC and a PWC. The PWC is we’re getting the work done. If the administration has work that we need to get done, and we need to get that work done, it’s PWC. It’s not a bad thing. Sometimes you need to do that. But in the PLC, the focus really is on learning, then the people who are doing the learning need to have a voice in it.
[00:08:55.720] – Elena
We completely agree. Not going to push back on that at all, Steve. [laughter]
[00:08:59.540] – Angela
Agreed. And I will say, I think even that practice of writing agendas for PLC’s come from a well-intentioned place of thinking that they’re doing teachers a favor, not taking something off their plate. The same way I think a coach sometimes thinks, oh, I’m helping, but not realizing that our role really is to empower and build capacity. And so I think that sometimes it’s like we shoot ourselves in the foot in the name of helping, right? And we don’t really create the collaborative culture that we want to achieve.
[00:09:38.180] – Elena
One thing that I saw recently was, I think the PLC lead asked the team members, what’s most important for us to accomplish during our next PLC meeting? And they were composing the agenda with the team for the next meeting. But then the follow-up question, which I thought was brilliant from the lead was, who wants to take on each one of these agenda items? Who is going to lead each point? Because I think a lot of times there’s this assumption that the PLC lead… Even if the agenda is co-created, that the PLC lead is going to be the person that leads everybody through it. And I think part and parcel to interdependence and just shared leadership is really encouraging every single member to take a piece of that agenda and own it. Because I think they’re also showcasing their strength as well. That was a moment that I felt that I really felt like everybody left that meeting feeling empowered.
[00:10:42.380] – Steve
You hit the big word, which is ownership. As soon as those pieces get picked up, then people are now owning that upcoming meeting. They’re owning what needs to be done for that meeting to be successful. You want to just label for us some of the skills that you built into your workshop?
[00:11:01.320] – Angela
Yeah. We definitely wanted to model, in our facilitation, some of the key points of facilitation. We got metacognitive there for a second. I think the first piece is, Elena and I often talk about how we want whatever, just learning or designing, how we want them to feel. We really wanted coaches to feel empowered. Part of the skills of super facilitation, one of them was really around the opening and how important it is in a collaborative space that everyone speaks as soon as possible. And so we created an inclusive welcome around, what is your superpower? And we gave them a little think time. And then we just used a simple structure of a web around so that every coach could speak to their superpower. And it was a really quick way to open, but everyone spoke in the space. And that was a key point for us to talk about what you just said, the co-ownership. I think that everyone’s speaking in the very beginning, automatically determines who owns this space. And so if it’s just the facilitator, the lead speaking for quite some time, then it shows that this space is that person’s space, and it’s their agenda.
[00:12:31.320] – Angela
And so that was a key point we wanted to get across in terms of an inclusive welcome to facilitation. And then we focused on, based on what we were hearing, distribution, equity of voice. And really what we loved about your blog was the idea of super facilitation is breaking it down into opening, middle, and end, and closing. And so really, we also thought that connected well with coaches saying they wanted to build capacity because structures help build capacity and consistency and routine. And so the other key point, I think, is we wanted coaches to practice. And so we paired them up with a coaching partner just so that they could self-reflect on their current reality, the strengths and needs of their PLCs, and set a goal they have around their facilitation and coaching PLCs with a partner’s support in coaching them to do that. And so we started there. And then Elena can share where we moved to next in that we also wanted to provide them with some tools and strategies for how to meet that goal that they’re making.
[00:13:54.140] – Elena
Yeah. So I think that the goal setting conversation was really powerful because I think what it allowed the coaches to do is really zoom in on what are their PLCs doing well already, and then what is going to move them one step further, and then what is their role as a coach in supporting that growth with PLCs. And so from there, what we did was we provided a coaching tool for them. And really, the tool focused on what are our coaching moves at the beginning of a PLC meeting, during the middle of a PLC meeting, and at the end of a PLC meeting, and what might be some coaching questions that we can ask at those different points of the PLC. So a coaching move that we suggested and a coaching question at the beginning would be, as Angela mentioned before, having some inclusive welcome, but also thinking about what is one way we can get teachers to really focus in on what’s most important for the day. One question that we posed that we suggested that coaches ask is, “what do you want to take away from today’s meeting?” And asking that maybe after the inclusive welcome once the team has reviewed the agenda.
[00:15:10.200] – Elena
Another question that we paired with the middle of the meeting to spark conversation and focus conversation was really thinking about, well, how have students been successful this week? And what did we do to create that success? And so that way teachers are not just naming successes, but they are having opportunity to share practices. What were your specific moves that yielded these specific positive outcomes for students? And then in the end, when we thought about, okay, how do we queue conclusion? How do we ensure that we’re not just talking, that we’re actually moving from theory to practice. One of the questions that we proposed to coaches were, “what are our next steps and what are we committing to at this point? And so really thinking about how can we, as coaches and as PLC leads, really support teachers in walking out the door with something that they did not walk in with. And so that was our tool in a nutshell. But we didn’t want to just provide them with this tool and say, “okay, good luck with that.” Angela and I really believe in providing lots of opportunity to practice and have a safe space to practice as well.
[00:16:22.880] – Elena
And so within our session, we developed some scenarios, and we had the coaches take a look at these scenarios was find one that was relevant or just felt important to them. And then from there, they used the tool and worked through this scenario with some coaching partners. And those conversations were amazing because I think what it did was it provided this safe space for coaches to experiment and lean into some risk-taking, but also be metacognitive and reflective afterwards. And so once we gave them time to practice those coaching moves and coaching questions in in that scenario format, from there we move to action. We ask coaches to buddy up again with another partner and think about, okay, go back and take a look at your goal and think about, okay, if this is your goal and if this is the tool, and these are the things Is it you practice with a coaching partner? What’s your next best step? What would you like to do? And when do you want to start doing it? And so they had that opportunity to share that with another coaching partner and then be affirmed by their coaching partner.
[00:17:28.560] – Elena
And so overall, we felt the session really did support coaches in not just understanding what super facilitation is, but also thinking about what are the my moves and what coaching questions do I utilize in order to move toward becoming a super facilitator and building super facilitators on our campuses.
[00:17:49.080] – Steve
Well, now the pressure’s on me. I heard you say, “create a safe space for those scenarios.” And Listeners, I have to tell you, I was excited when I read the scenarios that they had people practice. I asked Angela and Elena if they’d give a shot at demonstrating that here for you. They’ve agreed, I’m making this a safe space. We’re going to do a role play of two different scenarios. We’ll do the first one and then debrief it a little bit, and then we’ll do the second one. In this first scenario that we’re going to role play, Elena is going to play the role of a PLC leader of a fifth-grade math PLC, and Angela is going to be the coach. Here’s the scenario. The fifth-grade math PLC has made progress since the beginning of the school year. They co-create agendas, analyze data together, and they share instructional strategies. However, their conversations often stay at the surface level, focused on materials pacing rather than on how instruction impacts learning. When a teacher shares a success, others tend to affirm rather than ask probing questions. The PLC leader works hard to keep the group positive but avoids moments of tension.
[00:19:18.120] – Steve
Although teachers lead with general next steps, they don’t always commit to specific instructional actions or follow-up on outcomes. Angela is now going to coach Elena as the head of that PLC.
[00:19:34.380] – Angela
Hi, Elena. I know you wanted to talk with me more about your PLCs and facilitating them. Can we just start with what you’re seeing and hearing in PLCs, just so we can get on the same page?
[00:19:51.220] – Elena
Yeah, for sure. We have a great group, and we’ve been working together for a long time. I think what I appreciate about my team members so much is just their positivity and their willingness to support one another. But I just feel like we can be doing more. Our data is reflecting that we have got some teachers that are, man, they’re just knocking it out of the park. And I think while we have time built in to our agenda to celebrate successes, we don’t ever move past that. Does that make sense? What we don’t do is talk about how those successes are coming to be. And I, for one, really want to know how. And if I can give you a specific example, one teacher the other day, we were talking about how can we support students in becoming active readers. We’ve got a lot of kids who are now moving – we don’t have physical textbooks in front of us. We are reading online text. And so we are trying to get our kids to be active readers with online text. And one of our teachers mentioned out of the blue, she’s like, yeah, my kids now know how to chunk the text, how to chunk it and how to annotate it and write gist statements for those things.
[00:21:09.500] – Elena
And that’s really made a big difference. And then we just moved on. And I was so curious about, how did you teach your kids to do that? How did you teach your kids how to chunk? How do they know how to do that? And so that’s just something that I’m curious about. I’m wondering if my other team members are curious about, too.
[00:21:30.000] – Angela
Yeah. Well, thanks. I feel like you shared a lot of great, awesome things that are happening. So I think starting with all of the successes and progress you’ve made and teachers feeling trust and vulnerability and to share their successes and what they see in their students and what they’ve been doing really speaks to the psychological safety you have as a team. But it also seems like there’s this undercurrent or you’re at this intersection or tension between… There’s all these awesome things that are happening, but I also see this hidden potential we might not be accessing of really how we’re achieving these things with our students. So does that sound like I got that right? It’s like, great things, awesome. Sharing of successes, but still this something that’s poking at you of like, I think we could be more or do more.
[00:22:37.380] – Elena
Absolutely. And I think my worry, too, is that we are going to lose momentum because I just feel like the surface nature of our conversations right now – I just don’t know if the way that we are talking about instruction is sustainable at this point.
[00:22:55.940] – Angela
Well, if it’s okay with you, let’s talk first about how you achieved the psychological safety and the trust for them to be willing to share their successes and what’s happening in their classroom. So can you speak to me more about that? Of really, what have you already figured out as a team to really get to that point of sharing that practice?
[00:23:21.300] – Elena
Absolutely. I think probably one of our greatest strengths as a team is the power of our collective agenda. We have an amazing timekeeper who keeps us on track. And so I feel like while we get a lot done, I don’t feel like I’m the only one talking. I feel like what we worked hard to do is create a shared space where all voices are welcome. I think that one of the things that I’ve observed is some of my team members also encouraging quieter voices to come to the table as as well. So I feel like that’s definitely a strength of our PLC. But I think as a team, we just have a lot of structure as well. And so I think that having that predictable structure in our team setting has allowed teachers to know that we’re always going to have a purpose for coming together.
[00:24:20.040] – Angela
So it sounds like you guys are a well-oiled machine. You have the structures built in. We’re sharing successes because it’s built into our co-created agenda together. You have roles like timekeeper, so everyone knows how to contribute to the conversation. So something that struck me that you said earlier was around you spoke about your curiosity. You said, I’m just really curious about how she did that, or I’m wondering if the other team members are curious about that as well. So how does curiosity enter an agenda? Where’s the entry point for curiosity in your agenda?
[00:25:07.560] – Elena
Well, I feel like because we schedule time in our agenda to think about, to reflect and think about, okay, what did we do when we look at our pacing guide? What did we do in last week’s or earlier this week’s instruction that went well? And then we celebrate that. And then from there, we move to planning forward, right? Like, what are some upcoming things that we need to discuss as a team in order to flush out? And I’m wondering if that is the sandwich that we need to find an entry point for this curiosity piece, too.
[00:25:43.620] – Angela
Yeah. I love that you said it’s the sandwich because as I was jotting that down, I was like, there’s the celebration and then there’s plan forward. And so that’s, to me, then, how do you create space in the middle of that sandwich for the curiosity – to voice the curiosity? What would that look like and sound like if you even modeled that first? If we go back to your active readers, what was the question you wanted to ask that you didn’t ask because you had to plan forward?
[00:26:19.420] – Steve
I think we can pull it together there. Your getting to that word curiosity was really the magic in what I heard. That really opened it up for me.
[00:26:41.380] – Elena
I feel like what Angela was encouraging me to do is really think about if my wondering is about how are we going to go deeper and move beyond the surface conversations, I think what her question was she started with me for first and then thought about how do we now branch this out to the team? What are you curious about, Elena, as a team lead? And then, how do we make this more systematic within the structures that are already existing and already working for the team?
[00:27:18.000] – Steve
I think people exploring where curiosity fits into a PLC meeting is that you could almost have a reserved spot. Let’s stop and collect the curiosity. What are you wondering? What are you pondering? And pull that out. That’s great.
[00:27:38.200] – Angela
I love that, the reserved spot. I’m writing that down. A reserved spot for curiosity. Because I think what Elena described is a lot of really high performing, strong PLCs. I did notice, just from my perspective, that when she spoke about her curiosity, she lit a little. I always think about that as a coach, where does the person light up? Now that you said about the reserved spot for curiosity, I also feel like it could be an opportunity for PLCs to light up as well.
[00:28:18.180] – Steve
Let’s try a second one that we pulled here. On this one, Angela is going to play the PLC lead, and Elena is going to coach her. Angela, in this scenario, is leading a biology PLC that meets twice a month but struggles with consistency. Several members question the value of their meetings saying they don’t have time for another check-in. One teacher often arrives late and challenges the CBA data presented. Another dominates the conversation, frequently pointing out what others should be doing. When conflicts arise, the PLC leader quickly moves on to avoid discomfort. The group rarely finishes the agenda and teachers leave feeling unheard and disconnected. Student data shows uneven progress across the classrooms, but the team has stopped analyzing results together. Go ahead and pick it up.
[00:29:14.540] – Elena
Alright. Hey, Angela.
[00:29:17.540] – Angela
Hi.
[00:29:19.260] – Elena
So you invited me here to talk a little bit about what’s been going on with your PLC. So what’s on your mind?
[00:29:29.400] – Angela
I just feel like they’re going downhill. I don’t really know what to do anymore. They don’t really feel like a positive place or space for us to go to. They feel negative and heavy. I don’t think anyone wants to go to them, but we all know we have to. It just doesn’t feel good. We don’t get a lot done, so it feels like a waste of time. And as a PLC lead, I feel like that’s also on my shoulders and my responsibility. But I’m at a loss of how to shift at this point.
[00:30:17.760] – Elena
Now, that sounds hard. No doubt. I’m wondering, I heard you say that it feels negative, that it doesn’t feel very cohesive. I’m also picking up that it also sounds like that you and the team members don’t really find this time relevant, that there’s not maybe a common purpose for coming together. What do you think is behind all of that? What might be the catalyst for the team members feeling this way and the meetings going this way?
[00:30:52.180] – Angela
I think sometimes they don’t really feel like we own that time, like what I have to put on the agenda that basically I’m told to do or we’re told to do. Sometimes it just feels like, oh, here’s another thing we have to do, another thing on our plate. I think that contributes to the atmosphere that we all walk into expecting, and then it just digresses from there. We never even, sometimes even finish the agenda because I think it already puts people in a bad mood as they enter the space together. It’s like, here’s these things we were told we need to talk about.
[00:31:43.340] – Elena
No, I can see how that definitely feels disempowering, right? And I can definitely see how that might fuel some dread coming to the meeting. I guess I’m wondering, I think one thing I’m curious about, too, is because you and this team, you all have worked together for a while now. And I think one thing that I’m wondering about is, when have you had conversations that felt relevant and authentic? When have those conversations occurred?
[00:32:12.260] – Angela
It’s so funny and ironic is we have those all the time in each other’s classrooms, in the hallway. And it mostly comes from something that’s immediate or relevant to us in the moment. We just saw this. We just had this class, and we saw these kids struggling on this, and we try to talk that through with each other and help come up with solutions. And all those conversations feel positive, but they’re more informal, and they’re more like, right now, this is what’s happening. So it’s funny that then we come into these formal meeting day and time spaces, and then it’s like, none of that even exists or something.
[00:33:05.840] – Elena
Well, and what I heard you say just now is that when you all come together informally and talk about a problem of practice or talk about something that specifically relates to students learning, it’s relevant in the moment, and that you and your teammates are having conversations that are responsive to student needs in the moment, that those conversations are life-giving, if you will, that those conversations conversations fuel your energy. So I guess I’m wondering, how might you create that structure, or how might you create the conditions for those conversations within your current PLC? Because you guys meet twice a month. So how might we transfer what’s going on informally into this formal twice a month PLC setting?
[00:33:53.640] – Angela
Yeah, I feel like I wish we could have more opportunity to have those conversations in PLC because I think we would hear more perspectives around what we’re going through and what we’re trying to figure out. It makes me want to build in time in the agenda for a problem of practice or something that’s relevant in the moment so that we can bring some of that into our PLC.
[00:34:30.580] – Elena
No, I love that idea. I know one thing that you mentioned to me before is that you do have a PLC member that sometimes tends to dominate the conversation, right? So what is maybe a structure that you could provide during your PLC time that would elicit ideas for a problem of practice, but at the same time, ensuring that one person doesn’t take over the conversation?
[00:34:56.600] – Angela
Yeah, this is just making me realize that I almost want a reset, a PLC dedicated to some reflection and resetting. And it makes me think, too, of how I would do that with my students. I would give them some independent think time. I think it might be cool to have a current agenda and give them some independent time around what on this agenda do you feel is valuable and what would you change? And then do Round Robin our way to really look for patterns and trends around what everyone’s dealing with and co-create a new and improved agenda that’s more around what we want it to be. Because I think we’re just stuck in a rut. And so it makes me want to just hit the pause button and do a reset somehow and to do it in a way that I do in my classroom where everyone has independent think time, a structured share time, and we look for commonalities.
[00:36:07.960] – Steve
I think we can stop there. Elena, what do you think it is that you did that caused her to go to that idea of a reset? I mean, that was a cool spot to get to.
[00:36:22.520] – Elena
I think Angela and I were talking about this a little while ago. I think she and I, as coaches, really like to focus on strengths-based approach. And so I think when we can ask our teacher leaders or ask our fellow coaches if they feel like they’re stuck in a rut or if they feel like they are experiencing some tension in their PLC coaching, where have you been successful in the past? And to really be able to build off of those experiences and not just reflect on them and be like, oh, that just felt so wonderful to me, but also to really get meta about it and think about, well, but what were the conditions that created that? What were you talking about? What questions did you ask and what action did you take based off of that conversation? Because I feel like when we can draw from those experiences, it can provide insight into where are we right now and how can we move from where we are to where we want to be.
[00:37:24.540] – Steve
Angela, you really labeled you got good PLC conversations going on that just aren’t happening during the I see. When you said that, I thought, wow, that’s magic. The teachers are interested in doing it. Now we just got to find a way. Then when you went to resetting, I thought that was just a perfect spot for a person to be at. I’m guessing there’s quite a few listeners thinking that they’d like to sign up for coaching on their PLC time. I think we’ve identified an area here that PLC lead is a big job. In a lot of schools that I work with, it’s a job that’s tacked onto a teacher without the teacher getting any support. In many cases, not even any training to step into the role.
[00:38:17.500] – Angela
Yeah, we agree.
[00:38:19.400] – Steve
Any closing thoughts you want to share here with things that people ought to be looking at in building the quality of facilitation in PLCs?
[00:38:31.660] – Elena
I think one thing that I always like to start with as a coach is thinking about my why when I’m thinking about being a facilitator. I think there’s lots of time to focus on the what. I think in public education, we are full of what’s. But I think really thinking about, okay, what is my why for leading this team and facilitating our dialog. And I think really, when I think about my core and a value of mine in a way of being would be, I really want to facilitate connection. And I really want to think about how am I facilitating connection between myself and my team members, and then also supporting connection between team members themselves, and helping to create this interdependence in my us. But I also think, too, there’s the way of being, but then there’s also the how. How do I do that? When I think about what is important with becoming a super facilitator, because I certainly don’t consider myself to be one, this is an aspiration, if you will. This is something that I’m going to be always working towards to the end of my career as a public educator.
[00:39:47.400] – Elena
But I think just the technical skills of really listening empathetically, practicing powerful paraphrasing, and then thinking about, okay, if this is what everybody is saying, what what is the common thread? What is our common opportunity to take collective action? And then really thinking about what questions do I ask to facilitate dialog to move the team towards that collective action? I don’t know. Angela, what do you think?
[00:40:17.480] – Angela
I think I agree wholeheartedly. I think that something that stood out to me today is, and we share this belief, taking a coaching approach. What you just said, I really think every PLC lead deserves a coach, and we often coach them as teachers, but how often do we coach them as PLC leads? And thinking through just any transformation happens first with a conversation and a coaching conversation. And also just thinking more about not trying to fix. I’m not trying to fix this PLC. There’s nothing to fix. Awesome things are happening. But I think every educator always… That’s what stood out to me in the scenario. There’s always this little thing like, oh, it could be better. How do we still take the strengths-based approach and think about improvement? But the other part that stood out is it’s not the single vision of the PLC lead. And that’s what I think is different about coaching one-on-one. And even if you’re coaching a PLC lead, it’s really about the collective vision for improvement, and how do we all come together about what we want from this space and time and come to this consensus, versus I think a lot of PLC leads hold that weight on their shoulders of this is my responsibility and what’s my vision for this team.
[00:41:55.680] – Angela
And so I think through coaching, I just think how valuable that would be and how when I was a PLC lead, I wish I had that to really think through, like you said in the beginning, how do we create this co-ownership of a vision for PLC versus them feeling like it’s solely on them and their shoulders. It’s my a-ha from today. It’s just that how much coaching can benefit.
[00:42:23.900] – Steve
When you said, PLC leads deserve a coach, in effect, I’ve only had a couple of chances to do this, but in effect, PLCs deserve coaching. I’ve only had a couple of chances where I’ve actually been able to sit in on 30 minutes of a PLC meeting and then have 10 minutes to give coaching feedback, because the reality is being a collaborative collegial team member is not anything that’s built into our basic teacher training. It’s a new set of skills people are looking take on. What’s the best way that listeners can check in with you if they’ve got questions and would like to continue a conversation with you?
[00:43:10.060] – Angela
Yeah. Well, Elena and I actually created an email address. It’s coachingcollectivepower@gmail.com. That way you could email both of us at the same time about anything that we talked about today. I mean, we are always talking about these things. So even if it’s just like, we’re curious about this. We’d love to hear from anyone and are willing to have conversations about this work. I’m so grateful for you as well to have this conversation.
[00:43:40.280] – Steve
We’ll post that contact in the lead-in to the blog, make it easy for people to go back and find.
[00:43:46.420] – Steve
Thank you so much.
[00:43:48.120] – Elena
Thank you, Steve. This has been awesome. Love collaborating with you.
[00:43:52.015] – Angela
Thanks, Steve.
[00:43:53.140] – Steve
My pleasure. Thanks.
[00:43:57.480] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.
