Teacher to teacher conversations are powerful when they expose us to perspectives we would not generate on our own. Left to ourselves, we tend to revisit familiar assumptions, interpretations, and solutions. We think within the boundaries of our current mental models. Dialogue creates the opportunity for those mental models to be challenged, refined, or expanded. How do instructional coaches, teacher leaders, and administrators support those dialogues?

Listen to Naquin’s podcast, “What educators should know when talking with one another” here.

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Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.340] – 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.

[00:00:22.120] – Steve
Why Teacher Conversations Matter More Than Meetings. Have you ever sat in a staff meeting where everyone seemed to agree, only to discover later that everyone walked away with a different understanding? The facilitator discussed the importance of differentiation in student learning tasks. Everyone nodded. Everyone agreed. But when you visited teachers’ classrooms, differentiation had been approached with very different meanings. The problem wasn’t a lack of commitment. The problem was a lack of shared meaning. Recently, I encountered Rod Naquin’s work concerning professional discourse. He writes, “Talk in schools needs to be understood as a technical practice, a science, not just a social one.” That statement captures something instructional coaches and school leaders experience repeatedly. Productive collaboration does not emerge simply because people meet and speak. Conversation is not merely preparation for collaboration. Conversation is the mechanism through which collaboration is built. It emerges because intentional dialogue builds shared meaning and commitment. I recall observing 3 5th-grade teachers planning a science lesson that they were going to instruct with their own classes. They planned the initial presentation to students and the hands-on group activity that they would have students complete in groups of 3.

[00:02:21.690] – Steve
Following the lessons, the teachers met with each other, bringing the students’ group results to the meeting. In one of the 3 classrooms, the student outcomes were much deeper and showed a clearer understanding of science concepts. Convinced that they had all provided the same lesson, they began exploring why that one teacher’s students were more advanced. I had had the opportunity to observe in each of the classrooms during the lesson. The students whose outcomes were deeper actually had a different experience. The questioning that occurred as the teacher moved from group to group generated the thinking and perseverance that wasn’t present in the other two classrooms. But that teacher assumed that other teachers had executed the lesson with similar questioning, and she joined in the conversation trying to figure out why her students were more advanced. The planning meeting had produced agreement, but it had not produced shared understanding of the instructional plan. Too often teams move toward solutions before clarifying assumptions. Educators may use the same language while holding very different meanings for key ideas. Consider these terms frequently heard in PLCs and faculty meetings: rigor, student engagement, differentiation, formative assessment, student voice. Without conversation that surfaces mental models, collaboration can become an illusion.

[00:04:16.950] – Steve
Team members may nod in agreement while envisioning entirely different classroom practices. If shared meaning is created through dialogue, then facilitation becomes less about managing meetings and more about intentionally shaping conversations. This is one reason the opening phase of collaborative meetings matters so much. Before teams can coordinate action, they need opportunities to clarify thinking together, exploring questions such as, “What do you observe that suggests additional differentiation is needed?” “What student learning behavior changes indicate that the differentiation is effective?” “What would you observe that would suggest some of the students need scaffolding?” “How do you connect differentiation and rigor?” “What do we as teachers need to use differentiation effectively?” Such conversations are not detours from the desired outcome. They are the work that leads us to focused implementation and increased successful student learning. Naquin recorded a podcast that I’d recommend. It was titled, “What Educators Should Know When Talking with One Another.” You’ll find the link in this podcast lead-in. I have often described professional learning communities as becoming effective only when they function as teams with shared accountability rather than collections of independent teachers operating under a common banner. Shared accountability cannot develop without shared meaning.

[00:06:18.240] – Steve
And shared meaning develops through intentional talk, listening, probing, paraphrasing, questioning, clarifying, challenging, and most important, building on one another’s thinking. If productive collaboration depends on intentional dialogue, then instructional coaches, PLC facilitators, teacher leaders, and administrators need more than agendas and protocols. They need conversational skills that generate thinking. Too often meeting facilitation focuses on keeping the agenda moving, but effective collaborative leadership focuses on keeping thinking moving. This is why coaching skills become essential inside collaborative teams. The same skills instructional coaches use in one-on-one conversations are equally important in PLC discussions and department meetings. These skills help teams slow down long enough to to examine assumptions, clarify meaning, and build collective commitments. Here are some quotes from Naquin and the thinking that they triggered for me as I considered the roles of instructional coaches, teacher leaders, and administrators in supporting teacher growth: “Workshops don’t work without conversations. Sitting and listening produces little change. Sustained dialogue transforms practice.” This statement resonated deeply with me. After decades of facilitating professional learning, I’ve learned that the greatest impact rarely comes from what I say. The impact comes from conversations educators have with one another while processing, questioning, challenging, and applying ideas.

[00:08:44.250] – Steve
In fact, when planning workshops, I often spend more time designing discussion questions and interaction structures than in creating presentation slides. Information may be delivered through presentations. Understanding is built through dialogue. Exactly why the term, “facilitating” a workshop is key. Here’s a second quote: “Understanding requires dialogue. Clear emails can’t create shared understanding. Only back-and-forth conversations can.” That’s the issue I continually point out when exploring feedback that observers are often required to leave for teachers when they’re doing walkthroughs. An observer may leave a note that says, “I noticed students were highly engaged in collaborative discussions.” Or, “Consider increasing wait time after asking questions.” The observer may believe the message is clear. The teacher may understand the words. But understanding the words is not the same as creating shared understanding. What did the observer mean by engagement? What evidence led the observer to that conclusion? What was the teacher trying to accomplish at that moment in the lesson? Without dialogue, the observer and the teacher may walk away holding very different meanings. The note becomes information transmitted rather than understanding constructed. This is one reason instructional coaching conversations are so powerful. Rather than delivering conclusions, coaches engage teachers in dialogue.

[00:10:51.000] – Steve
The coach’s questions surface the teacher’s thinking, assumptions, intentions, and interpretations. Through that exchange, both parties develop a deeper understanding of the instructional decisions being made, and the student learning behaviors being processed. In fact, I would argue that the greatest value of a classroom walkthrough is not the observation itself. The greatest value emerges when the observation becomes the catalyst for a conversation. The observation provides data. Dialogue creates meaning. This doesn’t mean written feedback has no value. Written feedback can prompt reflection, document observations, and invite further inquiry. But if our goal is teacher learning rather than simply communication, we need opportunities for teachers and observers to think together. Learning is more likely to occur when observations lead to questions, reflection, and dialogue rather than one-way transmission of feedback. Too often, schools invest heavily in collecting observation data. Naquin’s work reminds us that improvement comes not from the collection of data, but from the conversations that help educators make sense of that data. The observation provides data, the dialogue creates meaning. Another quote: “New thinking needs new conversations. You expand your thinking by dialogue with people who think differently. One reason conversations are so powerful is that they expose us to perspectives we would not generate on our own.

[00:13:03.840] – Steve
Left to ourselves, we tend to revisit familiar assumptions, interpretations, and solutions. We think within the boundaries of our current mental models. Dialogue creates the opportunity for those mental models to be challenged, refined, or expanded.” That’s what I’ve been calling a mind shift. When a colleague asks a question we hadn’t considered, or notices evidence we’ve overlooked, or offers a different interpretation of a student’s behavior, our thinking is disrupted. That disruption can become the starting point for learning. That’s the power of PLCs looking at student work together. The most productive PLCs are not groups of educators who think alike. They are groups that create enough trust for people to think differently together. When everyone sees a problem the same way, the team’s solutions are often limited by those shared assumptions. When different perspectives are explored through dialogue, the team’s collective understanding becomes richer than any individual’s understanding. Dialogue is also why coaching conversations are often more valuable than coaching advice. Advice can provide an answer. Dialogue can create a new thinking. A coach who asks, “What evidence led you to that conclusion?” or “How might a student describe that experience differently?” That coach is inviting the teacher to view the situation through a new lens.

[00:15:04.330] – Steve
Lastly, Naquin provides an important question for us. Did we really dialogue? In recent meetings, did we create back-and-forth conversations or just share information? The difference is significant. Information sharing can occur without changing anyone’s thinking. People report updates, review data, announce decisions, or provide explanations. Everyone leaves informed, but not necessarily transformed. Dialogue is different. Dialogue occurs when participants build on one another’s ideas, ask questions, challenge assumptions, explore different interpretations, and construct meaning together. Dialogue doesn’t simply communicate thinking. Dialogue develops thinking. Consider a PLC discussing assessment results. Team members might take turns reporting scores and identifying students who need support. Information has been shared, but have participants deepened their understanding of why the students struggled? Have they examined different instructional approaches? Have they surfaced assumptions about learning? Have they left with new insights that none of them possessed before the meeting? If not, the team may have communicated, but it may not have dialogued. Franchise meetings often focus on exchanging information. Team meetings focus on creating understanding. Teams don’t become more effective because information moves around the table. Teams become more effective because members think together. The same distinction exists in coaching. A coach can share strategies, suggestions, or resources.

[00:17:21.320] – Steve
And valuable as those may be, coaching becomes most powerful when dialogue helps a teacher discover new possibilities, examine assumptions, and generates new learning. Perhaps a useful question at the end of any meeting might be, “What new thinking emerged today that wasn’t present we started?” Or, “Because of our conversation, I now see.” If no one can identify new understanding, we may have exchanged information rather than engaged in dialogue. If people cannot complete I now see, the meeting may have only provided an information exchange. Conversation is not valuable simply because people talk. Conversation becomes valuable when it creates shared meaning. Shared meaning leads to coordinated action. Coordinated action builds collective efficacy. And collective efficacy improves outcomes for teachers and students. Be observant in your upcoming meetings, PD experiences, and coaching sessions. Are people learning and growing from dialogue? Or is information simply being exchanged? I’d love to learn about your strategies for increasing dialogue in your coaching, leading, and facilitating roles. You can always reach me at barkelypd.com. And thanks for listening.

[00:19:12.450] – 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.

In an earlier blog exploring the facilitation of PLC sessions, I identified that one of the purposeful elements facilitators should focus on is the ending of a PLC meeting.

Tight timelines, such as the start of the next class period, can lead to rushed endings that at times leave members feeling stressed with what was left “in the air” or sensing that their time was just wasted. That blog suggested these ending strategies for PLC facilitators:

• Cue the close– By cuing members to be narrowing the conversation, the likelihood of ending with things “up in the air” can be decreased.
• Call for the decision– Is the group under a fixed deadline for a decision to be reached in this meeting or is there time to leave the meeting to explore further and decide at the next meeting? Is the decision a critical one and time is available for coming to a consensus or is a majority view decision agreeable to members.
• Outline next steps and open questions– If a decision was reached and action is to begin; it is critical that next steps with a suggested timeline are stated. If the decision was delayed, what are the questions that still need to be explored? What research does the group desire to gather? Nothing is worse than starting the next meeting with different expectations of what was agreed to be done or data to be collected and brought to the meeting.

       “Most teams don’t struggle with ideas—they struggle with ownership and follow-through”

(Karin Hurt and David Dye)

A blog post by Karin Hurt and David Dye adds the critical elements of ownership and commitment to the “ending conversation.  They describe a situation most of us have experienced. You’ve been in a meeting that seemed productive. There was great discussion and lots of agreement. But two days later, no one’s sure exactly who owns what. Someone says, “Wait—was I supposed to do that?”

Hurt and Dye suggest creating a habit of ownership into team meetings. Each PLC conversation could end with a summary of “Who will do what by when—and how will we know?” When this is a ritual part of the ending of PLC sessions, it is not interpreted as micromanaging but rather as a focus on making decisions that stick.

Here is an example of a PLC meeting wrapping up.

Middle grade teachers from ELA, science, social studies, and math have been discussing how to reinforce writing expectations across their courses. They’ve looked at recent student samples, identified inconsistent expectations, and explored the idea of agreeing on two schoolwide writing habits students will focus on everywhere:

• Clear sentence structure
• Evidence-based explanations

Facilitator: “Here’s what I’ve heard so far: We’d like students to experience consistent expectations for clear sentence structure and evidence-based explanations, no matter the subject. It sounded like everyone agrees that starting small—with two shared habits—feels manageable.”

Facilitator: “Before we leave today, are we ready to say, ‘Yes, to the two writing habits being reinforce over the next semester? Is there anything we need to look at before making it official?”

(Seeing positive nods, the facilitator continues.)

Facilitator: “Great. Let’s map out the ‘who will do what by when—and how we’ll know,’ just to make sure we’re aligned.”

• “Who wants to take the lead on creating the one-page student-friendly visual we all said would be helpful? (English teacher volunteers)
• “Thank you. What’s a realistic timeline?” (Teacher responds: ‘I can have a draft by next Tuesday.’)
• “Perfect. We’ll all look at it next meeting.”
• Facilitator: “We said it might help to bring a few samples from each subject after students have worked on the two habits. What number feels doable? (Team agrees on three samples per teacher.)
• Facilitator: “Great. When do we think we could have those?” (Team agrees: one month after implementation)
• Facilitator: “Everyone felt comfortable introducing the two habits in their own way. Would it help if at the next meeting in two weeks, we each shared a thirty-second reflection—what we did , what we noticed, any student responses?” (Team agrees.)

If PLCs have minutes taken and distributed following each meeting, another reminder for individual commitments is communicated. Part of the minutes should be spelling out the agenda for the next meeting. This communication of expectations creates the opportunity for trust to build among PLC partners.