Sherry St. Clair, the author of Intentional Instructional Moves: Strategic Steps to Accelerate Student Learning, shares her work identifying the research behind instructional strategies with the potential to elevate student learning and save teachers time. Sherry breaks the strategies into intentional steps so teachers can move efficiently from theory to practice. Instructional coaches and school leaders will find her work helpful in supporting the educators that you coach.
Email Sherry: Sherry@reflecttolearn.com
Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!
Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00.310] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.
[00:00:29.900] – Steve
Coaching with Intention for Instructional Growth. I’m excited to have Sherry St. Claire return to our podcast. Sherry is the author of “Coaching Redefined: A Guide to Learning Meaningful Instructional Coaching,” and recently released, “Intentional Instructional Moves: Strategic Steps to Accelerate Student Learning.” Sherry and I had the opportunity to reconnect recently while we both presented at Jim Knight’s TLC conference, and and the schedule allowed us to attend each other’s sessions. Welcome back, Sherry, and congrats on the new book.
[00:01:07.760] – Sherry
Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s an honor to be here.
[00:01:11.280] – Steve
I’m wondering, for starters, what was the inspiration behind Intentional Instructional Moves? I’m assuming the use of the word intentional is important.
[00:01:24.690] – Sherry
Yes, it is important. Well, as you know, with my first book, “Coaching Redefined,” I wrote that one for instructional leaders, whether that be instructional coaches or administrators who were coaching teachers to better instruction. And as I worked with school systems, they would frequently ask me for resources for teachers. It was always, Sherry, we don’t have enough time to pull this together. We don’t have enough time to read a whole book on rigor. Can you just give us the nuggets and then some practical steps on how to implement that. Even some school systems had paid me to put together these handbooks for teachers, and I would come and work with them on that. And it was such a massive project that inevitably it would get lost because they just didn’t have the time. And so I just thought this is something I could do for them in my role. I can step back and just look at what makes It’s effective instruction in a classroom. And not that whole books aren’t needed on some of these topics – they’re deep topics, and there are some great books out there. But what I really wanted to do for our school systems is just pull out those golden nuggets of research and the information, and then to also help school leaders and teachers think about, if I were coaching this, what’s the first thing I would do?
[00:03:00.220] – Sherry
Or if I was in a classroom trying to implement this, what’s the first step I would take? What’s the next step? And that’s where that intentionality came as part of the title, because as I wrote this, I was thinking we’re breaking down each one of these components and helping teachers think cognitively about why you do what you’re doing and those little steps that we can take to make our classroom practices more effective. So that’s where the inspiration for this book started, and where I’ve used it so far, I’m getting such great feedback from it. I’m super excited to have it rolled out. This has been a two plus years of research in the making. And when I say research, it’s research from the reading of research, but also on the ground working with schools and what works and talking to students and talking to teachers. And so it’s been a joy to pull it together, but I’m glad it’s released as well.
[00:04:05.440] – Steve
As I looked through the chapters, they address so many key areas for teachers to build their skills. I’m wondering if you’d just give us a run through the list of the areas that you’ve looked at and how you envision it as a resource for instructional coaches and instructional leaders.
[00:04:28.960] – Sherry
Sure. So this book doesn’t address everything that happens in a classroom by any stretch to the imagination. Now, that’s part of teaching. It’s all just so different in every classroom. But what I tried to do is I tried to help school systems think about the things that, according to research, had the greatest impact on student learning. And with Coaching Redefined and with this book, there’s really only three components that I’m pulling in, and it’s the skills that students are going to need for their careers, according to the World Economic Forum research, which looks at Fortune 500 companies and the skills that students need for those, the social-emotional skills so that we can build that student with that self-awareness, social awareness, self-management skills, and then the research on how students retain content so that we are doing less reteaching and more retention of content. And any strategy that I use in this book or coaching redefined needs to meet those three criteria. And then I really thought about what schools were telling me were their needs, and those were needs brought to me by teachers and brought to me by school leaders as well. And I tried to lay it out in a way that made sense as far as if schools were just thinking about implementing effective instruction.
[00:06:06.300] – Sherry
But really, schools can take this book and just use it for the chapter that they are trying to focus on. But some of the areas I address are classroom management, engagement, rigor, relevance, standards-based lessons, direct instruction, assessment for and assessment of learning, scaffolding and differentiation, growth mindset, goal setting, which Marzano and Hattie both agree, it’s one of the top ways that students can manage their own learning and learn. We talk about group work and student presentations, student discourse, and classroom community. And all those components are important in schools. And schools are juggling so much. Like I said, they can’t always… they know these things are important, but they can’t always just do a book study on every one of those. So how do we help teachers understand these important components, but also to not get overwhelmed by them and to be able to think about intentionally how to implement them more effectively?
[00:07:15.850] – Steve
I saw that you have a companion guide to go with the book. What does that do?
[00:07:21.650] – Sherry
Yes. Really, the companion guide is another whole book. I really debate it on how to release that. I could have printed a second book. I could have made this one twice as long. But I decided to move that to an online component because I think it makes us stop and reflect about what it is that we need without just rushing through and reading all of it. So basically in the print book, you have the research behind each one of these practices, and then you have intentional steps to implement implement them, just an overview of the intentional step. And then you can decide which intentional step you would like to focus on. And you go to that correlating part in the companion guide, and there you find very detailed directions on how to implement that step and the resources that go with it. So I have over 50 ready to go handouts that go with each one of these resources so that teachers do not have to purchase anything else. They can just pull that down. They don’t have to make anything. It is there. Use it as is and go. And those resources, I’ve tried to address various grade levels so that if you’re teaching elementary school, t there’s resources for you, middle and high schools so they’re grade-appropriate for schools.
[00:08:51.820] – Steve
So I’m wondering, what caught me is your focus on going from research to implementation. I’m wondering if you’d pick one of the strategic areas that you look at. I’m just amazed by the list of what you tackled in one book. But I wondered if you’d pick just one of them and just give a description of if I was working through that chapter and moving from the research on it to how I get it implemented in my classroom? Walk us through that.
[00:09:26.530] – Sherry
Sure. So one of the ones I am asked to I coach in quite frequently is the area of engagement. And it’s a pretty hot topic right now in education, as you know, and it should be. It absolutely should be. And as we dig into it, it is important to be able to break it down and think about engagement at a much deeper level. We’re pretty good in education about throwing around terms and then just expecting people to know what they mean and implement it and sprinkle It’s fairy dust over people. And there you go, it’s implemented. So with engagement, I have broken it down into three areas of engagement. You have behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement. And behavioral engagement is basically what students are doing when you’re in the classroom. So if a teacher asks everybody to follow along on page 49, the students are following along on page 49. It’s the behavior that students are doing. Cognitive engagement is what they’re thinking about while the teacher is leading the lesson. Emotional engagement has to do with, are they emotionally connected to the content? Are they bored with the content? Are they emotionally safe in the classroom?
[00:10:47.060] – Sherry
And all three of those components are important. I know many schools will start with behavioral engagement, but quite frankly, emotional engagement is a key that pulls it all together. If we look at Hatties’s research, if students are bored in classes, the effect size of that is -0.49. So it’s much harder to get students to be able to connect to the content and put in the effort to persevere if they are not emotionally connected to that. So I’ve broken it down with that research and then gone into each one of those areas and broken down intentional steps for implementing those. So if you’re going to be implementing behavioral engagement first, then what three steps might you take and what are the strategies that go with that? And cognitive and emotional also have three steps to them. Not every chapter are there just three intentional steps. Some have five, some have two, some have seven. But I really did try to spend enough time in classrooms and talk to enough teachers and coach teachers to say, this works here with step one, and then you can move to this next step and try to put those in.
[00:12:12.640] – Sherry
I don’t want it to be teaching to sound formulaic because I don’t think it is. You know there is an art to teaching. And so I never want to say, you have to do step two before you do step three. That’s not the case. But I have tried to think about it just in chunks, because what we sometimes do as coaches and school leaders is we go into a classroom and say, well, Sherry, if you could just improve the engagement, then I think the students would be more excited in your classroom. Classroom, and we walk away, and that’s the support the teacher gets, right? I mean, we do that to teachers. Or it might be that we say, your behavioral engagement needs to be better. And if you can work on that, and see you later. And so this book is really a resource for teachers. This one is written to the audience of teachers to say, here’s your support. And instructional coaches and administrators can use it with teachers to say, we’re just going to use this one chapter.
[00:13:19.400] – Steve
That’s what’s jumping out at me, that I completed this chapter.
[00:13:24.840] – Sherry
Yeah. And so that’s another reason I wanted to put the intentional steps online and break them down online. It’s so that I don’t get people just taking this book and saying, here, just implement this and you’ll be good to go. But if we’re going to do an intentional step, they have to go in there and print that one step off and think about that one step and give that to people so that we don’t overwhelm them.
[00:13:52.510] – Steve
Thanks. The message of not overwhelming them comes through, and I think coaches are overwhelmed by the number of different things they’re having to work on. So I’m really hearing that you’ve put a tool out there, both for the teacher, but also for the instructional coach to guide, make it a lot easier for the instructional coach to guide the teacher.
[00:14:15.510] – Sherry
That is my hope. And if we look at Daniel Pink’s research on how people change and what motivates them to change, one of those components is they have to feel like they can master it. And if we just dump something their lap that’s so overwhelming, you know that there’s already a barrier in front of them for implementing it. So I think as leaders, the more intentional we can be, as coaches, the more intentional we can be, the teacher’s the more intentional we can be, that clarity piece comes through, and we can make greater impact, faster.
[00:14:53.790] – Steve
Sherry, you work in many schools with lots of instructional leaders and coaches. What are you seeing and sensing now as some of what we might label as the most critical teaching-learning challenges that need our attention?
[00:15:14.530] – Sherry
Literacy. Literacy is one, even that it just breaks my heart when we see students who are going through our entire school system not being able to read and write. We know the impact that has on society and whole, and we know what an impact it has on the lives of those individuals. They are more likely to be on social services, not vote, be incarcerated. They are more likely to earn a lower income. So I really feel strongly that we have to do everything we can to raise literacy rates. And you will see in Intentional Instructional Moves that I have very intentionally put strategies in there that require students to read, write, and speak, because I think we have for years told teachers to integrate it into their classrooms, and yet they get maybe a week or two of instruction on how to do that in their teacher prep programs. Some of them get more. If they’re ELA, they will get more. But sometimes that’s all they get, and that’s been years ago. So the literacy is on my mind heavily. And then I think the social emotional skills. And it’s just where our world is right now.
[00:16:42.170] – Sherry
But we have lost our way in terms of connecting with humans and remembering that we’re all humans and we’re not perfect and that we’re all trying to learn how to navigate this world. So that’s why I feel strongly only about bringing those social emotional skills also into the practices.
[00:17:05.540] – Steve
So to tie this together, what are you seeing as some of the most important skills for instructional coaches and instructional leaders to be developing? And how do you see the best way for them to go about doing that?
[00:17:21.890] – Sherry
Well, I think, one, I think we cannot forget the importance of relationships with those that we serve. I frequently say, you cannot serve those who do not know. And the better you can know them, the greater you can serve them. So in Coaching Redefined, I talk about doing a listening tour and making sure that we truly know the needs of those that we are serving. That would be a key. And then I also think there’s a difference between having a personal relationship with people, which I think it’s important for to have personal relationships with those they serve, but also to have an instructional relationship with those they serve. And by that, I mean, we need to be strong enough in the science of learning and knowing how students learn so that those that we serve know when we walk into their classroom, we’re not just giving them a different idea, but we’re collaborating with them on a better idea, and that we’re not walking into their classroom expecting perfection, but we’re walking into their classroom and hoping to see their growth and hoping to see them try new things that are going to sometimes fail that will lead to better learning.
[00:18:41.820] – Sherry
It makes me so sad when I walk into school systems and teachers get so nervous about having somebody in their classroom because they’re so focused on being perfect versus understanding that teaching, it is an art. And it’s not going to be perfect. That’s part of being a teacher is just trying and keep growing and keep trying new things. Leaders who are looking for growth versus perfection, I think when they have those conversations with teachers, they set up a different culture in their school than leaders who are just looking that standards are on the board and this checklist of things that they can go down through and see.
[00:19:28.840] – Steve
Yeah. I’ve been moving more and more towards describing a large part of the role of the coach as a thought partner.
[00:19:39.220] – Sherry
Absolutely.
[00:19:40.430] – Steve
Because teaching is exploring possibilities, as you said there’s no one right way. This is going to solve the problem. It’s a thought partner that plays a role in designing the next experiment that the teacher is going to run.
[00:20:00.260] – Sherry
Absolutely. It’s not always going to go well.
[00:20:07.020] – Steve
That’s just part of teaching.
[00:20:10.630] – Sherry
It’s part of learning, a part of leading. It’s not always going to be perfect. But yes, the more that we as leaders can push that idea of we’re partnering with you, we’re walking beside you, we’re just looking for growth, then I think- learning with you. And, Stephen, I really do think that this book that I’ve put out is just that. It is the learning that I have done with teachers. I mean, almost every strategy that I have in here has been co-developed through my work with coaching. It’s an honor to get to do that work with teachers.
[00:20:54.200] – Steve
Well, Sherry, thank you so much for sharing the book. I put the recommendation out there for folks. Matter of fact, my recommendation is in the front of the book to encourage folks to pick it up. Would you tell folks the best way that listeners can connect with you?
[00:21:15.010] – Sherry
Yes. I’m most active on Facebook right now. I don’t know about you, but I have trouble keeping up with them all and doing my daily work. But I am on X, Sherry St. Clair. As of right now, I am on Instagram, Sherry St. Clair, and Facebook, Sherry St. Clair. But mostly Facebook is where I get to interact with people. And individuals can always reach out to me on my website. It’s reflecttolearn.com and connect with me there. And I do want to say to this publisher has been awesome about giving discounts on book orders of 10 or more, which I think makes it really be reasonable for schools if they’re trying to do a book study with their teacher. So if you have people on your podcast who are looking to do that, have them contact me before they go to Amazon.
[00:22:16.880] – Steve
We’ll be sure to put your website in the lead-in and encourage people to connect with you there.
[00:22:25.880] – Sherry
Thank you very much, Stephen.
[00:22:29.400] – 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.
