Steve [Intro]: 00:00 Hello, and welcome to the parents as learning coaches edition of the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. Parents and caregivers play many different roles, and even sometimes conflicting roles as they support children’s development. The pandemic has shown a light on the importance of parents supporting learners. In this podcast, I’ll share my experiences as a teacher, educator, parent, grandparent, and continuous learner that can support your coaching efforts.

Steve: 00:35 I started this podcast series for parents early into the COVID quarantine as students were schooling from home. My initial purpose was to untangle a message that I was hearing that suggested parents needed to become teachers. In most cases, teachers were providing learning content and activities for students. The role that I envisioned parents taking was that of a learning coach. I saw a learning coach being a person who provided guidance, encouragement, and feedback around the learning process while the teacher at school provided the content and the learning tasks. Years back, my work with teachers took a new focus when I zeroed in on the learning process as the key element of teaching. I realized that teachers didn’t cause student learning, but rather students cause student learning. Performing arts teachers and sports coaches created a great example for me. I realized that as a teacher, I can’t teach you how to play an instrument, I can teach you how to learn to play an instrument.

Steve: 01:54 But if the student doesn’t engage in the learning tasks that are provided, the learning won’t be reached. I can’t teach you how to play soccer, I can teach you how to learn. You need to do the work of learning. I label that as learning production behaviors, the things that one does that cause the learning outcome to be reached. Consider that if you went to a trainer at the gym and shared a goal that you wanted to reach, perhaps in stamina or weight loss or strength, the task of the trainer is to identify the behaviors, actions, and task that you need to engage in in order to achieve your goal. Successful performing arts and sports trainers know what the learning production behaviors are that will generate the successful outcome and they provide the motivation and feedback that keep the learner engaged in the learning production behaviors.

Steve: 03:09 My realization was that the same concept of learning existed in content areas. I don’t teach you math, science or reading, I teach you how to learn the knowledge and skills through the learning production behaviors. This changed my work with teachers when observing in their classrooms, I now spend less focus on what the teacher is doing and more on what the students are doing. My conversations with teachers are about what they need to get students to do – learning production behaviors, and what the teaching strategies are to gain those behaviors. The performing arts and sports example fits well for most parents in identifying our learning coach role. Few of us are teaching our child how to do the skill. We’re learning coaches. We keep the learner engaged in the learning task that the instructor has designed to cause the learning. I just spent several days with my grandchildren and provided some learning coaching for their behaviors.

Steve: 04:19 I was at the swim meet where my granddaughter performed extremely well in one event and not so well in another. Just being at the meet, which meant two hours in the stands before her event was scheduled, sent a message to her that her goals around swimming are important. On the ride home, we discussed the input that she received from her coach and what were the next learning production behaviors on tap for her. When my daughter gets up at 6:00 AM on a summer morning to drive a teenager to the long-course swim training, she is an effect being a learning coach. After my grandson shared his art journal from comic drawing camp with me, I was full of questions about how he created certain effects. And as he shared the information, he was reviewing the critical learning production behaviors. As this school year begins, consider how you can identify with your children, what learning production behaviors are critical in order to reach their desired learning outcomes.

Steve: 05:31 As the year progresses, you might check with your child’s teacher if you’re unsure of the most important learning production behaviors for your learner to engage in. When I was visiting a school with a focus on improving student writing performance, I met a young writer who taught me and reinforce this need to know what the learning production behaviors are. As he was showing me his writing portfolio, I asked him if he had a writing goal and he said he did, it was to raise his writing score from a 2.5 to a 3.0. And I said, “terrific, what will that take?” And he said “I need to have fewer punctuation mistakes and a greater variety in my words.” And I said, “oh, that’s great. What will you do to make that happen?” And he looked straight at me and said, “I have no idea.”

Steve: 06:33 My response was, “you need a learning production behavior. What is it that you engage in while writing that would cause that to happen?” So I shared with him that he should request from his teacher, a list of all the places he should be using a comma and that he put that in his writing folder and that when he finishes writing drafts, he pulls out that list looks at places where commas are used and checks to see if he has any of those in his most recent writing. And I suggested to him that if he did that for a month, he would begin to find that he used commas in the right place. That was the learning production behavior. Here’s another learning production strategy that you can share with any of your learners who struggle from time to time procrastinating or avoiding getting started on a task. It’s shared by Deborah Farmer Khris, from an earlier podcast I recorded with her.

Steve: 07:42 Talk a little bit about why do we find getting started to be so challenging both for young people. And I, I think for adults too,

Deborah: 07:53 Yeah. The way I talk about it with students, they know it intuitively, is that the hardest part of any job is the first step because often we imagine in our brains that it is harder than it is. And that is where anxiety comes is when we have in our brains, oh my goodness, this paper I have to write this phone call I need to make is so big. And so what our brains try to do to protect us is avoid it. We avoid the the thing that might give us psychological pain because our brains try to help us. And so, we get distracted, we suddenly discover there are dishes we need to do. We go on and get distracted by social media, anything but getting started on the task. But once we actually get started on the task one, it kind of helps us reset and realize it’s not as hard as we thought usually.

Deborah: 08:44 But also, we often are driven to finish a task that we started. And so if you can actually kind of hijack the system and just get started, it’s much easier to complete the task. But for kids, this is where it’s so painful for parents and students is the parents trying to get the kid to sit down and start. And that’s where the power struggle comes in. And so the technique that I have found is transformational. I have taught this to thousands of students and parents and it is by far the technique that they come back and say, this is the thing that’s helped me is something called the Pomodoro Technique. And the Pomodoro Technique really is pulling on this system that our brain needs to focus, but also needs to relax and that we can’t focus for two hours straight usually unless we’re really in the zone and that this kind of breaking up focusing and relaxing time is really good for the brain.

Deborah: 09:38 So basically the Pomodoro Technique is simple. You set a timer for 25 minutes and you get started on a task. Any task. You don’t think you have to finish it, you just have to start. And something about having the timer next to you or the app, which I can talk about a little later, having that near you for some reason, tends to be motivating. Also because it’s only 25 minutes. And frankly, if you have a seven year old, set it for 10, like they need to practice piano. It feels overwhelming. Scale it down, set it for five. We are gonna work on cleaning your room for five minutes or when my kids are young, I’d say for two songs, we’re gonna put on two songs and when it’s done, we’re done. And then when you’re done, you take a break, the timer goes off, you stand up, you stretch.And what students so often discover is that once they get started, then they get into the zone after about 15 or 20 minutes. And then they take that break, but it’s much easier to get back into it after the break because they’ve already gotten into the zone. And this is one of those techniques that seems so simple that a lot of people resist trying it. And when they do, they have this “aha” moment.

Steve: 10:54 You can find the link to the Deborah Farmer Kris podcast in the lead-in to this podcast. As you coach your learners in learning production behaviors, you are empowering them for future learning. Learning how to learn is an important life skill, which like other skills, is developed through experience, practice, and feedback. Let me know any questions that you have about being a learning coach. You can always reach me at barkleypd.com. I’d be happy to respond to any questions that you left there. Good luck coaching. Be sure to enjoy the learning process. Thanks for listening.

Steve [Outro]: 11:47 Thank you for listening. You can subscribe to Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud on iTunes and Podbean. And please remember to rate and review us on iTunes. I also want to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter @stevebarkley or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.

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Steve [Intro]: 00:14 Hello and welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. For over three decades, I’ve had the opportunity to learn with educators at all levels, both nationally and internationally. I invite you to listen as I explore my thoughts and learning on a variety of topics connected to teaching, learning, and leading with some of the best and brightest educators from around the globe. Thanks for listening in.

Steve: 00:42 Encouraging teachers to begin the year with a focus on student learning production behaviors. My favorite example of this comes from visiting a kindergarten classroom early in the year. The teacher had students seated in pairs around the room, on the floor using a worksheet and rolling a die.

Steve: 01:03 The worksheet had the numbers one to six across the bottom of the page and above each number, there was a sight word and the pair of students was to roll the die and whatever number came up, they had to read that sight word and then color in the square above the sight word and take turns, going back and forth. As I observed the pairs, I saw a few examples of students reading the sight words, they were mostly just rolling the die and coloring in the block of the number that came up. When I met in the post-conference with the teacher afterwards, I asked her what she had noticed as she walked around the room and she rather quickly share that she noticed most of the students were not reading the sight words. She then quickly added, but that’s okay because what we were learning how to do today was to roll a die and not have it go three groups over and get into an argument or to go underneath the cabinet and have to get the yard stick to pull it out.

Steve: 02:04 You see, she was teaching beginning learning production behaviors. If you visited her classroom a few weeks later, you notice students’ ability to work independently and collaboratively while the teacher was working in a direct instruction activity with a small group. That didn’t happen by accident. The teacher planned and taught critical learning production behaviors to start off the year. You see if you had another teacher who was struggling with classroom management and you sent her down to observe in that kindergarten classroom, she really wouldn’t learn anything from her observation. She would probably respond with, “boy, I wish I had a group of students who would work like that,” because she didn’t have the opportunity to learn how the teacher taught the necessary behaviors. By teaching and modeling how to learn, we really set students on a pathway for success. And early in the year learning success works as reinforcement for continual learning effort. In your coaching role with teachers, consider how you can assist them in identifying the most important learning production behaviors for success in their particular content area or grade level.

Steve: 03:31 For example, if students are new to learning a second language, what should they know about how to study and how to learn? What are the best, most important things to do? Do they need to know that making mistakes is a critical, initial part in learning how to speak the language? Perhaps an early learning activity that this teacher might implement would be to have students in small groups or individually spend some time researching best ways to learn a language and coming out of that activity, they could create their own personalized guidelines for learning how to learn a language. How does learning history or geography differ from learning math or science? One of the keys to learning history is making connections between facts. What questions should I as a student be asking myself as I’m reading a history assignment or listening to a history lecture? Knowing how to ask those questions is a critical learning how to learn skill.

Steve: 04:39 Many of the tasks that a teacher assigns are designed by the teacher around her understanding of best ways to learn. By clearly identifying teaching and coaching those learning behaviors for students, students gain a better understanding of the reasons behind an assignment or a task and that allows them to approach it as a learning task rather than as work that needs to get done. Some teachers are working with students in grade transitions that are more difficult and demanding than others. Students in these settings may need to begin the new year with new learning production behaviors. A common one is that transition from second grade to third grade. It’s often described as quite difficult. I’ve had parents talk to me about the difficulty they had as parents recognizing that the completion of the grade two curriculum did not necessarily prepare their youngster for third grade. Often in third grade, they were tackling reading and writing assignments that were substantially longer than previous ones that they had done second graders or they were expected to do more independent or more homework tasks.

Steve: 06:04 How do you explore and teach these students the new learning production behaviors that they need to implement? Entering middle school and now working with a team of teachers or high school with raised expectation can catch some students off guard. Encourage teachers to take extra time to build the new needed learning how to learn skills from the start of the year. This school year we’ll have some students continuing in virtual learning settings. When COVID closed schools last spring, teachers and learners were kind of thrown in to a learning and teaching environment that were new for many. Getting material up and getting students working was the immediate demand. This fall may be the time to start the year with new students building how to learn virtually skills that are critical. Help students identify, what are the key learning behaviors when I’m watching a video lecture at home? What are the learning behaviors for working in a breakout room with a small group discussion? When working virtually, how do I seek support when I’m confused?

Steve: 07:34 How do I look at creating a time management structure for myself and prioritizing tasks when I’m working among different teachers with different courses? Here’s some coaching questions you might want to use to explore with teachers, how to go about teaching student learning production behaviors. You might explore these questions with individual teachers or within a PLC. What student learning behaviors are most important for initial success in your first unit of study? You might break this down to what learning production behaviors are critical during instruction versus what behaviors are critical during independent learning. Probe for specificity. If a teacher says that doing their homework is important, ask the teacher what does the homework usually require as student learning production behaviors? How does your content impact the needed learning behaviors? Are there learning behaviors that you have historically students transitioning into your grade or content to be missing? How do you envision presenting teaching and coaching these necessary student production behaviors.

Steve: 09:10 You need to scaffold this work for some of your students and not for others. If you’re beginning the year virtually, or perhaps may end up going back to virtual at times during the year, how does that influence the student production behaviors you need to teach? If students are in school part time and virtual part time, how similar or different are the learning production behaviors when at school versus when at home? As a secondary team, do you want to share the teaching of specific learning production behaviors among the departments? Should some of this occur during an advisory or home room structure? How might we inform parents of the most important student learning production behaviors that they can support at home? Teachers focusing on identifying teaching modeling and coaching the critical learning production behaviors are empowering their students. Some students arrive in our classes knowing and having mastered the critical learning production behaviors.

Steve: 10:31 Others who have not are at a disadvantage. Closing a learning gap often requires teaching critical student learning production behaviors. I have my own personal example of that in that I went through high school not knowing that people were studying. I didn’t find out until I got to college and lived with folks who did. You see as a high school or I did the homework, but I never realized that others spent time learning through things that weren’t assigned. Some students actually tackled on assigned math problems or they reviewed their notes from class. At best, I waited till the night before a test to try and study. Homework and assignments often sound to students like authority statements. You as a student have to do this because I, the teacher am in charge.

Steve: 11:45 When students understand the reasons for an assignment similar to understanding the reason that the coach assigns laps to be run or the band director asked for music to be practice and reviewed, they can take increased ownership of their effort while teaching student learning behaviors is always worth the time and effort. I believe this new school year, it is especially critical in most schools learning will need to be accelerated. Students having the learning, how to learn behaviors will be critical to that increase success in learning that we need. Thanks for listening. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Steve [Outro]: 12:23 Thanks again for listening, you can subscribe to Steve Barkley, ponders out loud on iTunes and Podbean and please remember to rate and review us on iTunes. I also want to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on twitter @stevebarkley or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.