Better Teaching: Only Stuff That Works

Welcome to Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, a podcast for teachers, instructional
coaches, administrators, and anyone else who supports teachers in the classroom.
This show is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network, shows that help you go beyond education.
Find all our shows at bepodcastnetwork.com.
I am Gene Tavernetti, the host for this podcast, and my goal for this episode, like all episodes,
is that you laugh at least once and that you leave with an actionable idea for better teaching.
A quick reminder, no cliches, no buzzwords, only stuff that works.
Hello, everyone. It's just me again, and I want to talk about something that
is we call a coaching trap, something that happens that many people believe in
that just doesn't pass the smell test for some of us, and that is that
the best coaching is largely unplanned and unscripted.
Now, the trap exists because people believe that planning a post-lesson debrief too carefully,
and certainly scripting one, makes coaching feel rigid and inauthentic.
Just trust your instincts and have a genuine conversation.
Well, this trap persists for several reasons that revolve around the perception by many educators
about having and or using a script. All the reasons are an offshoot from prejudice against
scripts in education. This applies not only to coaching, but teaching and important elements
of leadership and management. For some reason, if an educator or any educator in any role
uses a script, that person has lost their autonomy.
They have in some way been demeaned and are less of a professional.
Many coaches were never trained in how to prepare for a feedback session.
They may have been given a checklist or a list of questions to ask.
They were told to build relationships, work on communication strategies,
but nobody trained them. Nobody showed them what a well-prepared debrief actually looks like,
an opening that begins with genuine acknowledgement of what worked,
evidence of a precise action step, a planned model,
and an aligned practice task that followed by a clear accountability close.
Without these checkpoints, coaches default to improvisation,
not because they believe it's better, but they don't know what else to do.
An unplanned conversation drifts toward whatever feels safe, feels less dangerous.
You talk, teacher, all listen, sounds respectful,
but it also means the coach never has to commit to specific feedback.
The conversation meanders, the teacher nods politely, nothing changes.
The reality? Everyone in schools have scripts they use for instruction,
for classroom management, for tough situations.
This includes, by the way, those who believe that scripts
developed by other people stifle their autonomy as professionals.
Teachers who are trained in classroom management are provided with scripts.
For example, when giving directions, here's a script a teacher might use
after getting the student's attention, which they also got using a script they learned.
Class, in a moment, but not now, I want you too,
and then don't tell the kids what they want them to do.
The scripts have been developed and shared with teachers because they are effective.
The scripts are even more effective when all the teachers in the building use the same scripts.
Well-composed scripts provide the what, the why, and the how.
There's also a philosophical current running through this.
The same people who believe teaching shouldn't follow a script tend to believe
a scripted or semi-scripted debrief is somehow robotic,
as if preparation and responsiveness were opposites.
They aren't.
A surgeon follows a procedure and reviews a checklist to enable her
to better adapt to what she finds when she opens.
Preparation is what makes responsiveness possible.
If you want a recipe for screwing up a feedback session,
walk in cold and make it up on the fly.
The irony is that most questions asked from new coaches and from administrators
is how to have a conversation with a teacher who taught a lesson that did not go well.
How do they give feedback to a teacher when the lesson did not go well
and they are a much more experienced teacher?
Although most coaches and administrators will not use this word,
the correct word to describe the emotion beneath the question is fear.
They fear confrontation.
They fear the teacher will go to the union.
They fear the teacher will talk in the teacher's lounge about how ineffective,
disrespectful, and a total waste of time it was to work with the coach.
And if teachers were thinking about meeting with coaches,
they should think again and they should avoid it at all costs.
There were instances in my career when having and learning a script
helped me overcome fear in dealing with some emotionally charged situations.
At one time in my career, I was a brand new middle school counselor.
One morning, I saw flyer advertising training
in how to handle kids who had confided they were contemplating suicide.
As a parent, I thought, what could be a worse situation?
I became frightened just imagining sitting across from a parent,
having to tell them their child is suicidal.
I completed the one-day training and my fear was nearly gone.
Maybe not gone, but manageable.
What did I learn at the training?
I learned how to use a couple of scripts in these horrific situations.
Fortunately, I only had to have one such conversation with the parents of a suicidal child.
Instead of me being my head and worrying about my feelings, I rehearsed the script.
Knowing that script allowed me to be there for the parents
instead of having to deal with my fears about what to say.
Another instance where a script saved me
was the first time I needed to discipline a teacher.
I was a first year principal.
A teacher had been assigned to my school after having issues at his previous school.
Dealing with these issues at his previous school had been a long and protracted process.
It was now my turn to deal with a serious issue with the same teacher.
A couple of years prior to this incident, while working with another district,
I received training in how to handle such situations.
Guess what I learned at the training?
If you said scripts, you were very close.
I learned a framework to organize the conversation
along with sentence starters that allowed me to create my own script.
The result? The issue was handled.
My boss was surprised that the issue hadn't accelerated
from a side issue to a district issue and ultimately a union issue.
But I wasn't always so disciplined about using a script.
There was a time when I went off script.
I thought I would be cute and clever and it ended poorly.
I met a very effective and experienced teacher whose lesson I had just observed.
Like most effective teachers who are expert in so many things, the lesson went well,
and I told them that.
But like all teachers, there were small tweaks that would help his students.
So after noting all the things he did well that made the lesson effective,
I went off script and tried to be cute.
I told him, but if I don't give you at least one thing to work on,
Tess will take my coaching license away.
Well, a quick note.
I was Tess.
It was my company, but he didn't know that.
The teacher went straight to the principal to tell him that I had confirmed
what all the teachers suspected, that I was there to only look for bad stuff.
What can we do instead?
After many years of coaching, a variety of teachers have landed on the fact
that we should treat coaching conversations with the same intentionality.
You'd expect a teacher to bring a lesson.
A teacher who walks in the classroom without a plan for what teachers will learn,
how she'll model it, how she'll check for understanding is not being flexible.
She's being ill prepared.
The same standard applies to coaches.
Script your feedback conversations.
Perhaps not word for word, like a telemarketer reading from a card.
Script them away as skilled teacher scripts a lesson with a clear sequence,
plan transitions, specific language prepared in advance.
So when the moment arrives, you can be fully present instead of
mentally scrambling for what to say next.
Over time, as you gain experience with this template,
you will essentially be able to do that.
As you gain experience with this template, you will essentially memorize it
and full scripting becomes semi-scripting, which becomes automaticity.
The structure disappears into your practice.
The way of fully written lesson plan becomes a sticky note
for the teacher who taught the same unit 15 times.
For more information about some of the scripts I use,
as well as some scripts for administrators,
check out my book, Maximizing the Impact of Coaching Cycles.
And it's not cheating.
It's not being inauthentic.
It's called being prepared.
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You can follow me on blue sky at gtavarnetti on Twitter, x at gtavarnetti.
And you can learn more about me and the work I do at my website, testcg.com.
That's t-e-s-s-c-g.com, where you will also find information about ordering my books,
Teach Fast, Focus Adaptable Structure Teaching, and Maximizing the Impact of Coaching Cycles.