Session 3 of our series for distanced coaching teachers during coronavirus, and creating personalized professional learning plans.

Here is a transcript of this webinar.

– Hello, welcome. Thank you so much for joining the third session in our Kitchen Table coaching series. We are presenting live from our homes for this series, and my five year old son is sitting next to me and he’s working on his own distance learning. As we are delivering the content in this session today, feel free to share any comments or feedback that you wanna share with the group inside of the chat, and then also, if you have any questions for us, we will be stopping at the end for question and answer, so feel free to share those as well. So our third session, what we’re gonna be focusing on today, is coaching logs for distance coaching. We also have a fourth session, so we hope you are able to join us for that session as well. We are creating a website, pltogether.org, and this website is going to be the home for this content and other resources. Please feel free to check it out, and if you are enjoying the content and the resources, please feel free to share a link and use our hashtag #PLtogether. So let’s talk a little bit about our agenda for session three. We’re gonna start out with some introductions, and then we’ll have the opportunity to really discuss who is the coach and the type of support a coach provides. Then we’re going to look at different ways and how does a coaching log look, and then we’ll be able to really see in action coaching logs with virtual coaching. So a little bit about me, my name is Heather Purzner, I was a classroom teacher, I taught elementary school. I also worked in literacy coaching and consulting and that’s really where I saw firsthand, the power of video. And that’s why I’m so excited to be a member of the Edthena partner success team.

– Hi everyone, my name is Rob McCreary. Welcome back to those of you who are joining again that attended the other sessions and welcome for those of you who are coming the first time, we’re really excited that you are here. Again, my name is Rob, like Heather, I am a former classroom teacher, I taught middle school. And like Heather as well, I also am a member of our partner success team here at Edthena. What is Edthena? For those of you who maybe don’t know, or have not attended our sessions, Edthena is an online tool that allows teachers to analyze their video, through a combination of online collaboration and online video. And what we’re gonna discuss today is how teachers can take ownership of their professional learning plans inside of Edthena and track next step action items. Let’s talk about what the purpose of a coach is. And in order to do so, we have a quote from famed educator, researcher and instructional coach, Jim Knight. For those of you are Jim Knight fans, feel free to respond in the chat, if you’re familiar with his research, feel free to respond in the chat, chat with your colleagues about what you know about Jim Knight. We’d love to have that participation, so go ahead and respond in there if you know about Jim Knight. We sure here at Adthena are fans of him and the reason we chose this quote here, which is, “When teachers stop learning, so do students.” The reason we chose this is, just as teachers are hoping that their students become lifelong learners who are continuing to try to gather knowledge, so too do teachers need to be these lifelong learners. They need to continue to get better and hone their craft and acquire other skills. And that’s why we have instructional coaches who are there to continue to give feedback to teachers to hone their practice.

– So, a coach. A coach does not exists in isolation. A coach is the center of many relationships across an organization or a school, and really works with many different people inside of an organization or a school. To accomplish all of these initiatives, a coach will wear many different hats. One of the main priorities of a coach, is to help teachers reach and achieve their goals so all students can really feel and see success. The relationship between a coach and teacher is so important in the work that the coach and teacher do together. A coach could support teachers by providing feedback on their instruction, or perhaps their planning and co-teaching together. A coach has the ability to look across all classrooms to see trends and inability that directly impact student learning. A coach also has relationships with the administrators. In many cases, the coach will partner with the administrators, to set the building’s goals. And these goals many times are based on instructional trends and student data within the building. Now, the coaching log is one of the tools that communicates individual class trends, as well as building trends. The coaching log is one of the artifacts that shares the progress inside of the school. So, I wanna just see with our participants, are you using coaching logs? Feel free to share your thoughts and comment in the chat. Great, thank you. Now, I remember as a coach, many times I would visit classes and essentially use the pen and paper style, really taking notes inside of a notebook. Now, there were some cases, I remember there were some summers where I supported teachers, and in that role, I would be taking notes on my laptop, perhaps in an Excel sheet, or maybe in a Google Doc to really capture the instructional trends in the classroom and building wide.

– Okay, so, I see it’s awesome that people are responding in the chat here about coaching logs, and it seems like a lot of you guys are using coaching logs. We have some Jim Knight fans as well. So appreciate you guys responding in the chat here. And one thing we’ve kinda noticed about coaching logs as a potential problem, is the idea of who should have ownership of the coaching logs. So we used this example here from that old “Drew Carey Show,” “Whose Line is it Anyway?” But we’ve changed the line to, whose log is in any way. And the concept behind that is, who should really have ownership of a coaching log? In our mindset, we think it should probably be the individual who is actually honing their skills. So the teacher, as opposed to maybe the instructional coach, when in some settings, that could be the case, if you’re doing it in kind of that old paper way. So in Edthena, we’re gonna show you how the teacher can actually continue to control and have ownership of that coaching log. So right now, we’re gonna hop into Edthena, I’m gonna share my screen and show you guys how the teacher can have ownership of their professional learning plan. Okay, so we are inside of a video and in Edthena, I’m an instructional coach here, my teacher has provided me with a video, so we have already gone through the phase of her sharing the video and into a group that I’m a part of. That’s how a sharing happens inside of Edthena, you know you share a video into a group. Before we watch the video here, we’re gonna let the teacher in this scenario, Heather, give a quick background of what the video is.

– Yes, thank you. So this is an example of Read Aloud, focusing on the strategy of summarizing for kindergarten students.

– Okay, thanks Heather. So we’re gonna go ahead and watch the video. And as the coach, I’m gonna kinda be looking for opportunities to provide comments.

– Hi, good morning boys and girls, Mrs. Purzner here. Thank you so much for joining today’s morning meeting. Again, the skill that we’re working on is summarizing.

– So I’m gonna leave a comment here, I’m gonna leave a strength and the strength that I’m gonna leave is in regards to connecting to the prior lesson. I think it’s an awesome job that you kind of connect what we’ve been talking about in prior lessons, especially in this distance teaching world where you may not be seeing your students as often as you’d be used to, you gotta make sure to kind of go over what we’re talking about, in this case summarizing. To make this a little quicker, I’ve actually had my comments already pasted on a separate clipboard, so I’m just gonna copy and paste it in. Obviously, if you’re watching this in real time, you would be writing them in. So, my comment is, “Great job connecting this lesson to the prior lesson.” I’m also going to tag this comment to a specific indicator of the Framework for Teaching clusters for Danielson, which is specifically used in a coaching context. So I’m gonna tag it to learning outcomes, and go ahead and leave this comment.

– Again, the skill that we’re working on is summarizing. And remember, we’ve been working on our five W’s of summarizing. We’ve been working on our who, what, where, when, and why. And, when we identify our–

– So, I’m gonna leave a question here, I noticed that Heather, she listed off these five W’s that they’ve been working on, and did not use any type of visual representation. So I’m gonna leave a comment here as a question, saying, “Is there a way you could use a visual representative “for a provided task, so that students off screen “could better understand?” I’m also going to tag this to the Danielson Teaching clusters to tasks and activities. And what I’m gonna do here is, I think as an instructional coach, this is a comment that actually could potentially have action for Heather, after she digests the video. This is something that she could potentially work on, so what I would do is propose this as a new commitment. And what a commitment is inside of Edthena is it’s a way for teachers to track next step action items. So if Heather was to accept this commitment, she could then track this as something that she wanted to work on. So I’m gonna submit this as a commitment.

– Where, when and why. And we when we identify our five W’s, that helps us to make this summary of our story. So today, out of the five W’s what we’re gonna focus on, is “who.” And we’re gonna do this with one of my favorite stories, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle. So let’s get started today, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle. In the light of the moon, a little egg lie on a leaf. One Sunday morning, the warm sun–

– So I’m gonna leave another comment here, I’m gonna provide a quick suggestion. I noticed through the Read Aloud here that the book was a little bit off camera, so you couldn’t necessarily see the text or the illustrations. So I’m gonna leave a quick suggestion here saying, that I noticed that the book is hard to see on camera, try holding the book up to the camera, so that the students can see the text and illustrations. I’m also going to tag this to our teaching clusters here and tag it to presentation. But I’m not gonna propose this as a commitment here as a next step action item, as a potential action for her, ’cause I think it’s pretty straightforward, it’s probably something that she can digest on her own. So I’m just gonna submit this as a comment.

– Came up and pop out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry Caterpillar. Hmmm–

– So I’m gonna pause here actually, and we’re gonna skip ahead just for context of our meeting here. I wanna be cognizant of our time and to give you a little background, essentially what Heather does is she continues to read aloud and reads through the entire book, but why I wanna skip to the end of the video is I wanna focus here on how Heather closes out this lesson. So we’re gonna skip ahead a little bit. We’ll start right about here.

– Then, he nibbled a hole in the cocoon, pushed his way out and became a beautiful butter fly. So boys and girls, what I’m I’m going to ask you to do, is to write one sentence about the who in our story, and what the who did. So we know the who is the caterpillar. And so I want you to think about how to write a sentence about the who, and what–

– So I’m gonna leave another suggestion here, I noticed that Heather is asking her students to complete something, an assignment essentially, after this is done, she wants them to write out a sentence. But I noticed she just told them that and didn’t necessarily model it for them. So I’m gonna paste in my comment that I made, which is, “I think modeling, writing a sentence here would be helpful. “Right now you’re telling the students, I think, “it would be useful to show the students by modeling.” And I’m going to also continue to tag this, I think, in this instance, it would be presentation, and I am gonna actually propose this as a commitment. As I think this is potential action that Heather could work on, for her next video. So I’m gonna go ahead and write submit, and this is gonna be a commitment as well.

– What he did. Alright, bye boys and girls, I’ll see you soon. Bye.

– Okay, so that concludes this video here. Now we’re gonna kind of flip the script here, and we’re going to go to the teachers perspective, from Heather’s perspective. And she’s gonna show her actually digesting some of the information that I’ve given to her as both comments and as commitments.

– Right, thank you so much, Rob. So as Rob mentioned, now I am logged in as the teacher. And so the first thing as the teacher what I’m going to do, I’m gonna really start processing the comments and the feedback that my coach Rob left for me. So I noticed he left me a strength, really about connecting this lesson to the prior lesson. I noticed he asked me a question, and this was actually a proposed commitment. This is about really using a visual representation, so the students off screen could better understand. Then I noticed there is a suggestion, and this is about really ensuring that the book is going to be able to be seen on camera for the students. So this is something I feel is pretty tactical I could easily implement. So I’m going to reply to my coach here. “Yes, I will include for the next lesson.” And my coach is going to receive this comment. Now here I notice my coach Rob also left me a suggestion about modeling. So, modeling I know as a teacher is super important for my students, for them to get a clear understanding and to be able to meet the objective, so I’m definitely keeping that commitment in mind. So now I’m going to go into my commitments dashboard. So inside of my commitments , we’ll notice this was the visual representation really providing that to students, and I actually I have a lesson in mind that I want to work on visuals with. So for now, I’m going to decline this proposal. And I noticed there is another commitment here and this is around modeling, about writing a sentence. And, modeling is a strategy that I want to start working on now, right away. So this is a commitment I’m gonna take some action with. So we see the title, we can see the date. And really, what is so powerful for me as a teacher, is that I have the ability to tweak the language based on the guidance from my coach, and what I know about my students. So I can change this based on some of my own information I have about my students. So I’m gonna share, “I need to show my students how to create a sentence “and not just tell them.” So here you will notice that the framework that I’ve been working on within my teaching craft on of the teaching clusters is here. And then my partner is my coach Rob, and my coach is going to get an email that lets him know that I’m taking action on this commitment. So let’s fast forward bout two weeks. And now I’ve had the opportunity to practice this skill within my teaching, within my implementation. So now since I’ve had some time to practice and take action, I’m going to reflect a little bit about the strategy. So I’m going to share, “My students were able to create sentences “based on my modeling.” So this essentially is going to be my reflection from myself and my coach. And so this log is now completed. So, I want us to imagine that I had been working on these commitments for an entire semester. And if I were working on these commitments, you’ll notice all of these previous months, well, also I’ve had some data. You’ll notice here that I have eight completed for the month of May. Now what I can also do, I can generate report. And as I generate report, essentially all of these different commitments, they’re going to show the areas where I have been making growth and really improving my teaching craft. And this would be my coaching log.

– Awesome. Okay, so this is where we’re gonna stop. We’re gonna take some questions here, Heather’s kind of shown this process as using commitments as her coaching log. I’m gonna go to share my screen and we’re gonna kind of go back into our PowerPoint here and answer some questions. I did notice one question come in, as I’m kind of sharing my screen. And that question was in relation to The Danielson Teaching Framework. So and it’s essentially asking if another framework could be used. And that’s a great question and something we get, and you can use other frameworks. We have a plethora of other frameworks in the system that can be used. So you can check the system to see if those frameworks are already available for you, and you can use them when you’re tagging comments or making commitments. We can also add in other frameworks as well. Okay, another question we have here is in relation to if school leaders, or principals can also be included in the commitments and see these commitments? And that is something as you noticed, Heather had the ability to share her commitment with with someone, she chose me naturally as the coach and that was what auto fielding ’cause I made the comment, but you could hypothetically put someone else in there as well, and then also, if you are an administrator inside of the group. So if you’re a school leader and you’re put as an administrator inside of that group, you also through our group’s stats, would be able to see all the people who have completed commitments inside of that group. Our last question here and related to training, someone essentially asking about, what’s kind of the amount of training it typically takes for someone to be proficient at, giving comments and commitments inside of Edthena? And that’s a great question. I think it varies. The good thing is we have a myriad of resources at support.edthena.com, that has a bunch of help articles, a bunch of videos, that will help people training. We also have an automatic training center that happens as you create an Athena account, you are given specific things to complete. There’s a training sequence that’ll happen through that as well. And then also, for you coaches and for administrators out there you’d be hearing from me and Heather as the partner success team, we will be providing training as well. Okay, are there any other big questions here Heather that you see? You want to answer?

– No

– Okay, so let’s move on to the next part of our slide here. So, this is the conclusion of session three, in related to virtual coaching logs, we do have another session that is, next week, same time, same place, session four, which is based on designing coaching cycles inside of Edthena. So we hope all you guys attend who are here today. And also, share to a friend and have them attend too, we’d love for you guys to be there and we appreciate you being here today. Okay, if you enjoyed our our session today, all of this content is on pltogether.org. So you can feel free to go there and review some of this stuff. If you would like to see session one and two, perhaps if you weren’t there, go ahead and find that pltogether.org has a bunch of other content that I think is in relation to what we’ve been discussing. So if you liked the content today, I think you’d appreciate it. And if you want to share with your friends and colleagues, make sure to use that hashtag #PLtogether.

– And if you do have any questions for us, please feel free to reach out, [email protected] Thank you so much for joining session three, and we hope you can join us again for session four. Thank you, bye.

– Apreciate you guys, thanks so much for your time, thank you.

– [Heather] Bye.

– Bye.