When a teacher is planning a learning activity, what’s the movie that’s running in their mind? Are they mostly seeing what they are doing as a teacher or what their learners are doing? When teachers, like athletic and performing arts coaches, focus on the student learning actions they modify instructional moves as soon as recognizing that the needed learning behaviors are missing. Coaches can observe and build coaching conferences around student learning production behaviors.
Listen to Becca Silver’s Podcast here.
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Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00.240] – 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.
[00:00:30.000] – Steve
Serving and Coaching with the Focus on Student Learning Production Behaviors. I was invited to join Becca Silver on the Whole Educator Podcast to explore coaching teachers with the focus on student learning production behaviors. Becca’s website shares her vision of shifting the culture of educational leadership to be more reflective, more responsive, and more people-centered. I think that focusing on student learning production behaviors supports that vision. Here’s a clip from my conversation with Becca.
[00:01:18.660] – Becca
So today, we are going to talk about student learning. Why do I keep forgetting the P? Student learning production behaviors. There we go. The thing I wanted to talk with you about was in classrooms, when we’re coaching, we walk into a classroom and we’re observing a teacher, the question is, what are we looking for? What I love that you talk about and you write blogs about it on your website, is we need to be looking at the student actions. That’s what I call student behavior, student actions. The relationship of what the teacher actions, how that’s impacting the student actions. I’d love to talk with you about that, what you call the SLPBs. I believe you… Do you have a list? You have a list of most impactful…where do your thoughts on that fall?
[00:02:17.040] – Steve
A starter list – the list came about because I was observing in a middle school that was using what they called station rotation. The teachers had most of the classrooms set up, so some kids were getting direct instruction, some kids were working independently, and other kids were working collaboratively. It jumped out at me that the students needed different learning behaviors every time they change stations, and nobody was making that clear. But to back it up one step further, what really pushed me to that is, enough working with vocational teachers and with performing arts instructors and athletic coaches, they totally get it. If you’re coaching a sport and you got 90 minutes of practice, almost all of your planning time is built around what it is the performers are going to do during practice. There’s this small piece of what do I have to do to get them to do that. When that hit me, I came to the phrase that, teachers don’t cause student achievement. Students cause student achievement. Then when I put that into a backwards planning model, it was, okay, identify what the achievement is your’re looking for. Then identify what would the learner need to do that would cause them to get that skill, and now back up.
[00:03:54.650] – Steve
And so now my planning for teachers is, how am I going to get the kids engaged in that behavior? When I saw PLCs doing what they call unpacking the standards, they would look at a standard, and the question they were asking was, how should I teach this? I came in and said, you got the wrong question there. The question is, what would kids do to learn it? Once you know what kids would do to learn it, now you’re ready to figure out what you’re going to do as a teacher.
[00:04:22.580] – Becca
I didn’t tell you this earlier, but this is actually how I was coached as a brand new teacher. I was using this model. No one I named you as the person, but I was taught in exactly this model. We would look at student data and we say, where’s a gap in data? Okay, what were the students doing to cause this gap in data? What was I doing as a teacher to cause that? And then what do I need, the foundational, do I need knowledge skills or mindsets to change my own behavior? So I love this. And so as a coach, I brought this mindset into coaching. And so I wanted to ask you, when you’re coaching teachers, so you’re in classrooms, right? And you’re observing, you’re looking at student actions and teacher actions, correct?
[00:05:09.310] – Steve
If you were to go back to the beginning of my career, I spent most of my time in the classroom watching the teacher and giving the feedback to the teacher on what I saw the teacher doing. Now, probably 90 plus % of my time is watching the students, according to what the students are doing. Now, if I think what the students are doing is going to cause students to reach the achievement, then I’m looking for what’s the teacher doing or what has the teacher done that’s causing that to happen. If what the students are doing isn’t likely to get me there, now my question is, what would the teacher change in order to get a change in what the students are doing? What I uncovered as I stepped into that was, I never have to tell the teacher what you’re doing is wrong. And very often, what you’re doing is getting a certain group of kids to do the right behavior. Now, you got other kids who aren’t doing it. The reason you need to change is because… I’ll give you a real tidy example. A teacher asked me, she said, “Steve, could you come in and observe fifth period for me?”
[00:06:23.580] – Steve
And I said, “Sure. What is it?” And she says, “I don’t know what it is, but what I do second and third period works, but not in fifth.” So I went in and I observed fifth period, and the first thing I said to her was, “You’re absolutely right. It’s not working.” And her first question was, “What should I do?” I said, “Well, I’m not sure, but I know it’s not what you’re doing in second and third.”
[00:06:50.540] – Becca
Yeah.
[00:06:52.380] – Steve
That second and third period class, your actions got the actions from the kids you needed. Fifth period, it isn’t. So now let’s start digging.
[00:07:01.980] – Becca
That’s exactly it, right. And we start with the student, well, the students are doing this. You’re in classrooms, you’re really looking mostly at what the students are doing, and somewhat of what the teacher is doing. Then you sit down and have that coaching conversation. What does that look like, sound like when you’re having the conversation about student behaviors and teacher actions?
[00:07:31.420] – Steve
A rule that I take into the post-conference is, I don’t want to tell the teacher anything she already knows. A common question I’ll ask to start off a post-conference. When you planned the lesson, there was a movie in your head of what the kids were doing. During the lesson today, when did it match the movie? When didn’t it match the movie?
[00:07:58.660] – Becca
I love that question.
[00:08:00.840] – Steve
Then what thoughts came to mind or what decisions did you make? Hopefully in the pre-conference, I’ve had the teacher tell me what that movie was going to be. Then part of my observation is helping to look for that movie. Sometimes in the pre-conference, the question I’ll ask a teacher is, “How much of today’s learning activity is one that you could plan? How much of today’s learning activity is one that you’re going to have to be making move by move by move decisions during the lesson based on what’s happening?” All of those things set me up then to be observing the student behaviors. I’m getting the teacher to tell me all the student behaviors she saw first and what she thought about them. Then I’ll start pointing out some student behaviors that I saw that she she didn’t mention. I’m pretty sure the statement from John Hattie on this is that 80% of what kids are doing in the classroom isn’t observed by the teacher. The idea that you can have a colleague or an instructional coach, a school leader in the classroom, seeing and hearing things that you aren’t seeing and hearing is extremely critical.
[00:09:26.360] – Becca
It is for all teachers of all levels.
[00:09:30.000] – Steve
Absolutely. And I say this, see, in my work, the most sophisticated teacher should be receiving the most coaching.
[00:09:40.040] – Becca
Say that again for the people in the back. That is crazy.
[00:09:44.500] – Steve
The most sophisticated teacher should be receiving the most coaching. Why? Because they are working at the most complex level. They’re trying to do 15 different things all at the same time. So the idea that they can ask a coach to watch one of them. The lesson you’re coming into is a calculus lesson, but I have this strong focus on a certain social emotional skill. And so the fact that you can come into my classroom, don’t pay any attention to anything that has to do with calculus – just record that. And matter of fact, it may come down to two kids that I’m concerned about.
[00:10:19.480] – Becca
Yeah. It’s having to look for, right? It’s what am I actually looking for? And you and I are going to talk in another episode about that. I’m so excited to talk, really focus on the pre-conference. But I want to look at… The first part of the coaching conversation is you saying, I saw these student behaviors, right? Student actions. And then there’s a next steps, right? The what are we going to do to improve? What does that look and sound like?
[00:10:48.260] – Steve
Well, so let’s describe the student behavior that you want. Now we’ll talk about what teacher behaviors are more likely to get me that student behavior. So real simple. Actually, I even I wrote about this one. Observed a teacher, and she wanted to be focused on student engagement. And she had the kids off in groups for working on a problem that she gave them. And all during that time, engagement was really good. And about the last 15 minutes of class, she stopped and she had each group report out to the the whole class, and you could see the engagement drop. So then she could describe that to me that she saw it drop. So now what are possibilities? And now I can say out loud, A thought hit my mind. I wonder what would have happened if instead of groups reporting out to the whole class, they reported out to another group, and they heard that other groups. I’m wondering what three of those groups around the room, instead of whole class, would have got you more of what you told me that you wanted. That’s where the coaching now is making the connection between the things that teacher has control.
[00:12:16.820] – Steve
You don’t have any control over the kids’ behaviors other than a behavior that you decide to take on.
[00:12:24.460] – Becca
You could influence it. Yeah.
[00:12:26.220] – Steve
Now, let’s decide what options, what choices are out there. I might start that open-ended with the teacher. Was there a spot in the lesson where you would have liked more engagement than you got?
[00:12:37.080] – Becca
Yeah.
[00:12:37.800] – Steve
You have thoughts about what you would change or modify to get there. I call that then, I’m moving into what I like to call a thinking partner. The coach is thinking out loud with the teacher, and a co-construction between their thoughts out loud turns into an idea that the teacher wants to follow through. Now, my next coaching session, I might come in totally focused on the teacher because now the teacher has told me she wants to change behavior, so she’s looking for the coach to focus on whether or not she changes that behavior. After a while, we may come back now again and now go back to looking at the kids to see whether or not her change in teacher behavior created the change she wanted in student learning production behaviors.
[00:13:23.200] – Becca
love that this is exactly how I train coaches. It’s when we are setting goals with teachers, my favorite types of goals are student action goals and student learning goals. Then when we’re in classrooms, we’re observing what are the students doing and what’s the teacher doing or not doing that might be impacting that. Then when we set action steps, what are you going to do, teacher, to change? Then we’re going back and we’re actually looking much more at the teacher and seeing, did you do it? How well did you do it? How did it impact student behaviors? It’s what I want to say to folks listening, for those folks that get real stuck in giving advice. The advice monster is loud and proud. I think humans, we naturally want to help so badly and fix things. An easy way to not get stuck in that advice pit is exactly what you’re saying. If we can write observations of student actions and share with the teacher what we saw that naturally presents an opportunity to have a conversation about how to improve that versus advice.
[00:14:33.960] – Steve
You hit the magic word, conversation. I use a model, conversation generates reflection. Reflection should generate a conscious action. Coming out of the coaching session as the teacher, I got engaged in a conversation. It led me to this reflection, and I’m making a choice now to walk out of here doing something purposeful because of it. If I create that in an ongoing cycle, that’s where continuous growth comes in.
[00:15:11.820] – Steve
Becca’s description was right on. She said, “Recording observations of student actions and sharing with the teacher what we saw naturally presents an opportunity to have a conversation to improve the outcome.” And that makes for a people-centered post-conference. You can find the entire conversation with Becca Silver with the link that’s posted at the lead-in to this podcast. Let me know if you have questions or would like to have a conversation about student learning production behaviors. As always, you can find me at barkleypd.com. Thanks for listening.
[00:16:31.260] – 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.
