Planning a good, authentic, PD can be difficult. Adding on layers of differentiation, personal choice, assessment, and alignment with district initiatives makes this coaching skill even tougher to master. This episode will kick off a short series focused on designing quality professional development that creates sustainable teacher growth. On today’s episode, listeners will dive deep into aligning professional development with school and district initiatives as well as how to structure a year’s worth of targeted learning from day 1.
Links mentioned in the show:
Follow Brooke on Twitter
Follow Emily on Twitter
Podcast Team
Hosts- Katie Ritter & Justin Thomas
Editing Team- Megan Whitacre, Mallory Kessen, Michael Roush
Social Media/ Promo Team- Annamarie Rinehart, Lisa Kuhn, Molly Lutts
Creative/Content Team- Brooke Conklin, Emily Cowan, Tracee Keough
Research & Logistics Team- Mark Gumm, Tyler Erwin
Producers- Tyler Erwin & Katie Ritter
Planning a good, authentic, PD can be difficult. Adding on layers of differentiation, personal choice, assessment, and alignment with district initiatives makes this coaching skill even tougher to master. This episode will kick off a short series focused on designing quality professional development that creates sustainable teacher growth. On today’s episode, listeners will dive deep into aligning professional development with school and district initiatives as well as how to structure a year’s worth of targeted learning from day 1.
Links mentioned in the show:
Follow Brooke on Twitter
Follow Emily on Twitter
Podcast Team
Hosts- Katie Ritter & Justin Thomas
Editing Team- Megan Whitacre, Mallory Kessen, Michael Roush
Social Media/ Promo Team- Annamarie Rinehart, Lisa Kuhn, Molly Lutts
Creative/Content Team- Brooke Conklin, Emily Cowan, Tracee Keough
Research & Logistics Team- Mark Gumm, Tyler Erwin
Producers- Tyler Erwin & Katie Ritter
hit the restart button
Justin Thomas:to recharge those batteries
Unknown:Aloha everyone, I am Katie Ritter.
Justin Thomas:And I'm Justin Thomas. And this is the restart recharge podcast, a podcast by coaches for coaches. We will bring you tips and tricks to help you in your everyday work as an instructional technology coach, or you know, whatever they call you in your district.
Katie Ritter:So hopefully you're gonna leave this episode today feeling a little bit less on your own coaching Island.
Justin Thomas:We have a really good episode here today it is part one of planning for a year in PD. So planning a good authentic professional development can be really difficult adding the layers of differentiation personal choice segment and alignment with the district initiatives make this coaching skill even tougher to master. This episode will kick off a short series focused on designing quality professional development that creates sustainable teacher growth. On today's episode, listeners are going to dive in deep into aligning professional development with school and district initiatives as well as how to structure a year's worth of targeted learning from day one. So we have a really, really awesome episode lined up here today.
Unknown:Yeah, so you do Thanks Justin for kicking us off. So
Katie Ritter:I'm going to introduce our first guest with us here today. It is Brooke Conklin, you may recognize her she was on our fourth episode about being held hostage by testing. And Brooke is a technology coach here with us at forward edge serving pre K to 12th grade teachers in a Southwest Ohio region school. Before entering the world of Ed Tech, Brooke taught seventh grade social studies. She is originally from Northwest Arkansas and has since settled in Liberty Township, Ohio with her husband Alan and three kiddos. Brooke works as a teacher and a technology coach is fueled by her love of empowering others to pursue their potential and dreams at full force. So welcome back. Brookey we're glad to have you.
Brooke Conklin:Thanks for having me.
Justin Thomas:And I have the pleasure of introducing Emily Cowan. Prior to her coaching role. Emily taught for six years as a middle school language arts and science teacher in Charleston, South Carolina and Columbus, Ohio. Currently she is working across multiple districts to support K through 12 teachers in the Cincinnati area. She is also providing 100% virtual coaching to a school district in Kentucky. Emily is a Google certified educator, trainer and coach. Welcome back, Emily.
Emily Cowan:Thanks, excited to be back.
Justin Thomas:Awesome. And let's go and dive right into this. Where should we start? Well, it's almost July, and back to school is fast approaching, it's gonna be quicker than we know it. You've got a blank canvas in front of you, what are the first steps that you take as a coach to develop meaningful PD?
Brooke Conklin:I'll take this one, Justin. Brooke here, glad to be back on the podcast this month. PD can be a super tricky topic. And it's something that can get pretty scattered throughout the year. So the very first thing that I would recommend doing is isolating a focus for the year. So typically, as a tech coach, we can find ourselves kind of giving PD on many, many different things throughout the year, we tend to be very tool focused. And that's not always best practice. And it's not always the best thing to do to achieve meaningful transformation in our schools. So for the very first thing, what I like to do is isolate a focus for the year. So you can do this by looking at your district goals or what the big initiatives are for the upcoming school year. So if your district is implementing a new one to one initiative, you might spend your year focusing your PD around the Samer model and Google level one and two training. If your school district is focused on personalized learning, then you can narrow your coaching focus and every PD that you provide and even your appy hours, your formal PDS coaching conversations, they can also all be focused on personalized learning through educational technology tools. So focusing your work for the year or setting an intention for the year that's aligned to district goals. It's probably what I would recommend doing first when you're thinking about designing PD. Once you've got your topic, the next thing that I like to do is gauge teacher readiness. So if I'm choosing personalized learning for my focus for my professional development for the year, I need to know where all of my teachers, staff members administrators are starting with that topic. So a lot of times we'll find that it's not everybody all at one point people are at different level. Understand I think a lot of times we set out and we start PD for square one, everybody at the same starting point. And that's not necessarily where everybody is. So gauging your entry points, your teacher readiness can be done in a couple of different ways. You can do it through like quantitative surveys that you give teachers to before the year starts asking their comfort levels with either different tools, different strategies, or whatever other metrics that might fall in line with your goal. Mark can even be qualitative or anecdotal. So you might talk to your administrators and kind of get what what they picked up on from their last round of observations. Or you might use your own observations from popping into classrooms and seeing where teachers are at along the spectrum of whatever your focus is. So then after that, after you've narrowed your focus, you've got a good handle on teacher readiness and different entry points, then you actually can start creating your roadmap. So over the course of the year, if your focus is personalized learning, where where might the starting point be, and achieving personalized learning in the classroom? And where are you wanting teachers to end up? What is the roadmap that teachers can can use to hone their skills for that particular topic or thing? So those are my first three steps.
Emily Cowan:Good stop. I know you cover a lot very quickly. Yeah, it's kind of hard to follow that and come up with anything kind of unique or original. So I'm just going to echo what Brooke said, you know, identifying what it is your district needs most. Finding that theme or that focus, or that thread that kind of ties it all together. And then that entry level is also really important. And kind of to flip what Brooke said about how not everyone's ready to start at level one. Some people are more advanced, I think it's really important this year to because I think we're going to wrongfully assume that some teachers are more ready than they are because we kind of are forced by fire this year to learn some things. So really identifying who is where and, you know, providing different opportunities for them to start at their comfort level. Yeah, good. So can you guys speak a little bit more? And Brooke, you kind of touched on it? At the beginning about how a lot of times tech coaches are leading PD on really specific tools. You know, and you mentioned not always best practice. So can you guys talk to us a little bit more and expand on that idea, because I think a lot of times as especially if in our titles, there is technology in the title itself for anything, you know, blended coach, or whatever it is, I think that we oftentimes are expected to be like the tool experts on a lot of things. And so we're kind of expected to approach like, hey, leave this Google Drive training and lead this Canvas training or whatever it is. So we could talk a little bit more about why you feel it's so important to maybe narrow that focus and move away from tool specific, but rather like that larger district initiative.
Unknown:Sure. So this kind of came about my first year of coaching, I went in kind of starry eyed and I was gonna teach teachers about paradox. And I was gonna teach them about these Google Slides, add ons, and I was gonna teach about Padlet. And so I had these appy hours or lunch and learns short 30 minute PDS, they're kind of all over the place. And at the end of the year, I had 10, teachers that could use Padlet. Well, I had five teachers that use Pear Deck well, and everyone was kind of in a different direction, where we were all growing, but it's like, we were an octopus with all these tentacles. And we were all kind of working against each other because nobody was moving the squid in the same direction. Summer is on my mind, guys. And so with that, taking that experience into my next year coaching, narrowing the focus, and specifically aligning it to something that district is already focused on, like personalized learning, or literacy across content areas, community engagement, having one focus area made me it really provided a lot more clarity to the work I was doing. Admin knew exactly why my work was important. teachers knew why that specific tool, what could be important for them. And not only was there more clarity, there's a better understanding of the why there's more buy in, and there is just a greater likelihood of classroom impact. So I don't know Emily, if you have more to say on that.
Emily Cowan:Yeah. So I stepped into this coaching role in a new to us district this year. And what I quickly found was, they rolled out one to one, and with that teachers kind of got device training. And they picked up some tools on their own. I think they were provided with some tools, but they really lacked that direct version or that understanding or that why that Brooke just talked about why they were having the device, why every student needed one in their hands. So for me, that was really important in my conversations with admin, that next year, we really need to narrow in, we need to focus, we need to target our training, so that these teachers understand that why, through the PD that we're planning, so you know, we're going to take some of the tools that the district has purchased, or we're going to take some of the big concepts that the teachers need, and we're going to focus them all back to that four see model. So you know, here's Flipgrid, it's great, but we're gonna look at it through the lens of collaboration and creativity and beyond just here's a tool that you can use in your classroom. And I know we always go back to kind of like COVID, and how things have changed. And we don't want to keep harping on that. But I do think that it is so important right now to keep that in mind. Because I have so many teachers who are like, Well, next year, I'm not going to use this next year, I'm going to drop Texas Tech next year, I'm, you know, staying away from that. And I think that, you know, my planning, at least is here are these great tools that we can use, but focus it back on that the four C's, so it's the why behind the instruction, so that they're not dropping tech for the wrong reasons. And you know, just really changing the environment.
Justin Thomas:I really liked that idea about understanding the why because I think that's so important for teachers really have all these professional development. And sometimes teachers can't get the idea of like, What is my purpose for listening through this professional development, that they leave with it with kind of just like an aggravated like, I just feel like a waste of my time. So I really think that that's awesome, where you, we gotta get this to district initiatives, we have to find a way to really actually help the teachers understand the why. Because sometimes there is a disconnect between district administration and you know, the teachers on the front lines, if you will, and you being the ambassador, being the one that's kind of, you know, the liaison between the two, being the person that can actually really take the district ideas and provide a professional development that teachers are able to understand and understand what the why is so important.
Katie Ritter:Absolutely. And I think, you know, especially not only like getting back to the why and Emily, you're talking about having those conversations with the admin that are super important. And Brooke, you're talking about what are these other district initiatives that are already going on? Nothing, nothing you said said technology, but yet, you're still aligning like all of your plans, in your PD, to those district initiatives. And I just think that's so valuable for a coach to consider these other ways that you can plug yourself in because part of it is just helping people see the why behind it right. Like this is the purpose of technology. It will help you achieve personalized learning, it will help you achieve better understand where students are at with student mastery and just all of these different concepts so you can make yourself more valuable and essentially more marketable that way I think it also lends a lot of credibility when you tie it to those types of things and all back to a common thread, rather than just hey, here's this random technical training that you know, I think we've all been there for sure. I know I have plenty.
Justin Thomas:Okay, so now we want to know if there are some specific examples for how seemingly non techie district's goals can actually really be supported by Instructional Technology coach, but first let's hear a word from our sponsor. Looking for a program that reaches all teachers and learning new tools to integrate in their lessons, and you badges is the answer. And she was an anytime anywhere badging program that is designed to take bite sized tools for instruction and teach teachers how to use them. And she has received the STC of alignment for Educator Standards. And each patch in our expanding library is aligned to the ISTE standards and the Samer model. Learn more about the program that teachers call addicting and for hyphen edge dotnet backslash and you badges. Welcome back. Alright, so before we had went to break, we wanted to know some specific examples on non techie district goals such as literacy, community engagement, SEL, how can you support those instructional as instructional technology coach?
Brooke Conklin:Sure, so I will hone in on community engagement. I think that's a really big one. And I will point out that these goals can be found in your district strategic plan. Most most districts have one of those and they can be anything like community engagement doesn't even specifically tied to learning in the classroom. So the work that you do as a coach can support really any district initiative or goal so like Justin said, literacy across subject areas is a great one to get involved with. Community engagement, SEL, equity and access are all great goals to get behind. So if you're looking at community engagement, specifically just as an example of how you can advance that goal as a tech coach, you can you can work with all levels and all stakeholders and community engagement so for teachers, tech coaches can help teach is better understand how to digitally communicate with families via Apps like seesaw, or the clever family portal or Schoology messaging. So just advancing teachers understanding of technology and communication, the tech coach can support admin, maybe encouraging them or supporting them and recording like a little loom video, or Screencastify video, welcoming the parents or the community members to the week and including that at the top of their weekly announcements. So that way, when community and when family members get the the weekly announcements from the elementary school, they see the principal's like actual face telling them like Welcome to the week and you feel like you get to know the people that are in charge of your children. Tech coaches can also help coordinate virtual art shows. So working with art teachers to set up a virtual opportunity for community members to view the hard work that students are doing in art classes. Technology coaches can even connect local business owners, to classroom teachers and set up virtual classroom meetings via zoom or Google meet and have business owners come in virtually, to talk with students about their field of work. So connecting students to people in the community that might not have otherwise been invested in, in the classroom or what's going on. So all of these things are advancing the school's goal of of community engagement. But without the tech coach, they wouldn't be achievable. So that's one example of how you can get creative and advance your district and initiative goals through PD. Yeah,
Unknown:great ideas.
Justin Thomas:Oh, yeah, I think it's one of the things too, with district administration, when you can kind of put it you know, face to a name or when they're visible more, that definitely makes a really good connection to the community. And you got to feel better about the school district as all because you can kind of you know, they're willing to go out and kind of talk with what's going on with the district out to the community. Yeah. So Brooke, you
Katie Ritter:touched on it, you gave us some great examples about engaging all levels of stakeholders alike, and including them throughout the year and throughout the process. But if we think specifically about the planning process, so when you're kind of choosing that focus for the year, that common thread, and sort of deciding, you know, maybe what that thread will be, who needs to be included? Who's going to deliver certain pieces? Who needs to attend certain pieces? How do you both go about and engaging different stakeholders within the school? To even come up with the plan in the first place? Or do you?
Emily Cowan:Yes, definitely do? I believe questions? Right, I can't imagine making decisions without their support or their guidance. Um, me personally, when I stepped into one of the schools that I'm working in now, that was kind of preset for me, that was kind of, you know, you had had the opportunity to work closely with the, the assistant superintendent and kind of make that plan. So I had like the summer preset for me, but starting the school year, I kind of had a weekly check in with the principals in the building. And that was just to make sure that I got FaceTime with them, it gave us an opportunity to discuss both what they were seeing and what I was seeing, it was a chance for them to voice what they wanted to see my role kind of Phil, but also, you know, they hear a lot from the teachers what their needs are, what's going well, what what they need support on. So those meetings were extremely valuable and kind of allowing me to plan for those professional development opportunities. It was a great way to kind of also share back with him some of the bright spots. So he knew what maybe some of the things that he wasn't seeing when he was going into classrooms, I could share that. And that kind of gave us an outlet for kind of pulling more people in to some of those skills or those those activities that teachers were doing. Yeah, so those meetings were really important. And then moving into next year, spending less time with the principals and more time kind of with the superintendent, the assistant superintendent, talking about what the big goals are for next year we addressing those district district goals and what thread we're going to follow for the for the upcoming school year. Yeah, Emily, I love that you. With the building principals. I love that you mentioned that you're having weekly meetings, and whether it's weekly or at least just regular meetings because I think that's such a good like check point throughout the year one to touch base like on the current progress, keep them in the loop, keep them engaged in the work that you're doing. But then also it's like such a good baseline for you to pull little nuggets throughout the year like thinking about next year what needs to be done. It was really nice in the beginning of the school year too, because I know we keep going back to it but it was almost like every week it was like okay, What do our teachers need? If we were to end up remote? What do our teachers need? If they were going to be hybrid next week? Like what small piece of nugget? Can we get them quickly? And what is like the best means like, is it a short video sent via email? Is it just an email with directions, but we were just kind of, you know, back and forth constantly making sure that if something were to change in our learning environment, what were the teachers going to be ready for that quick shift? Because we were just kind of waiting, sitting and waiting like everyone else, we had no idea what the next week would look like. Yeah,
Brooke Conklin:I just wonder, Emily, this is a hypothetical left field question. I just wonder, in a normal year, if we, every week we met and we talked about what might our teachers need next week? If we were that hyper focused on supporting teachers? How might their lives be different? How might their job satisfaction be different? And how might like student learning be different? It just kind of makes me sad that we only did that during a pandemic. Otherwise, are we ever checking in and asking What do teachers need? Not? What can we give them today? I don't know. Yeah,
Katie Ritter:quick, quick tips from either one of you. You know, Brooke, that's a good point, like this happened during a pandemic. But like moving into like school starting to look somewhat more, whatever normal was, is going to be now without that having to be the hyperfocus quick tips for coaches that might not have that relationship with their admin to have those regular meetings during the school year planning meetings, any kind of quick tips that you can give.
Emily Cowan:I mean, I would say it's just like building rapport with those tough to reach teachers, it starts with a conversation about what they did over the weekend, or, you know, you stop by their office and you notice their kids and you ask questions about their personal life. I noticed those kinds of conversations, warm them up. And then that kind of opens the door for the conversation of, you know, tech and planning for PD and their teachers and kind of getting your foot in the door that way.
Brooke Conklin:Yeah, I would totally echo everything that Emily said, relationship is key admin are super busy all the time. So starting out the report of just getting to know them on a personal level. And then beyond that, and those weekly meetings, I found it's most helpful to always start out with asking them what what they've noticed throughout the week, or throughout the month, however, frequently, frequently you're meeting, what are they noticing or the needs? What are their goals for their school this quarter? So always like starting the meeting off by taking care of them before even talking about your work? Or what you're wanting to accomplish has been a huge mover for me.
Katie Ritter:Yeah, no, I would add to your point of they're super busy, come with the plan, like let them just bless it, like have a schedule, have an outline, like you know, after you've had some of those conversations, and you're coming back to bring them kind of the final plan for the following year, have it ready to go where they just need to make some suggestions, tweak it
Unknown:a little bit, add some feedback, but but make it just so they can just bless it. And it's already done for them.
Justin Thomas:I can second, I can secondary as well. So you kind of both have already talked a little bit about it. But just out of curiosity, you've prioritized your focus for the year, how are you going to not create that action plan for the professional development that you're going to be lining up all year long, and then communicate that plan to other stakeholders, you kind of talked about connecting with admin talking with teacher leads, but reaching those, those teachers that the doors always seem to be locked, and you're not sure if they even exist at times?
Brooke Conklin:Sure. So as far as creating an action plan, I and I will venture to say we love a good digital roadmap. And when I say digital roadmap, it's it's just a level guide to get to your end goal. So if your end goal is personalized learning, what does personalized learning look like? If a teacher is totally mastering it, like what is the vision and then working backwards? If a teacher is brand spanking new to personalized learning? What are they? What are the skills that they need to start learning? And then what's the middle ground so it's basically providing a growth trajectory so that every teacher no matter if they classify themselves, as techie or not techie, has an entry point and has a path forward? So so that is typically what I will do to create the action plan. And like Katie said, First, I get to focus with the building admin or the district level admin. And that's something we plan together what what my focus will be, what district initiative or goal I'm working towards, I go back and I map out the plan, the growth trajectory trajectory, and then I might bring that back and just get their blessing on it. Typically, I encourage them to be the ones to communicate that plan for learning. Just because I think it comes from a place of a authority, if it's coming from them, I'm there to support teachers in their growth not to mandate it. So typically, I would encourage the district admin, or building level admin to roll out the plan. And then I will just check in with them bi weekly or quarterly, whatever we've set up to make sure we're making movement towards that.
Emily Cowan:Yeah, and to kind of go off what she said, for me, it was kind of planning with the admin ahead of time, you know, getting their feedback, their ideas, what their vision is. And then like Katie said, like creating the schedule for them, like you tell me what you're thinking, you tell me what you want, I'll go do this for you, and then bringing it back so that they can either say like, yes, they can say, no, let's revisit, I want to switch this, that and the other. But you know, definitely including them in the process, but taking it off their plate. Nice. So thinking about, you know, you guys mentioned about assessing where teachers are to begin with, so you know, where you're even starting on some of these initiatives. But how are you measuring teacher growth? Or are you throughout the year so that we as coaches can determine like, have we been successful? Does this initiative need to continue? Are we where we want it to be? How do you go about that?
Brooke Conklin:This is a very tricky one. Because the easy answer is, like we do, or maybe in a classroom with a pre to post test, which translates to survey and the teacher world. And you definitely don't want to survey people to death. So I would say to various strategically design your pre and post assessments, if you will, maybe if you know that your year's focus is on personalized learning or comfortability with with Google with the Google Suite, maybe that is makes sense for a pre assessment at the very beginning. But then you follow that up and in each time you have a PDE. Or maybe it's quarterly, you just do a five question, measure of confidence in those skills that you've been working on that quarter. So you're not constantly giving them this this full blown survey, but maybe you're checking it out. And then I would say sometimes, surveys don't make the most sense. For the example I said before community engagement, I off the top of my head, have no idea what survey I would give teachers about community engagement, that I think would be more anecdotal. So another route that you can go to measure pre and post growth is just doing informal Poppins. And very specifically looking at what level of Samar kids engaging in if I, if I go to 30 classrooms, and one day just kind of aggregate really across the board, and do that throughout the year, and share that aggregate anonymous data with admin to try to communicate how the group is moving or growing as a whole. There are also some really good tools out there that can actually measure ad tech analytics. So if you are not familiar, Google's transformation report is a very cool one, it does come out kind of on a schedule. So it's not something that you can just do any time you want. But that is a great one to check into. It actually shows you how Google tools are being used by teachers and students in your building and also measures how they're engaging in the four C's. So critical thinking communication and creativity. And what's the one on a station collaboration? Yes.
Unknown:Emily got that one. Because I was like, as soon as you looked at me, I'm like,
Brooke Conklin:of course everybody. Tells you how actually shows how, according to the foresees students are engaging with those tools. Clever ed tech Analytics is a fairly new one as of this year, I believe. And I do believe that that is free. It so you might also look into that if you're interested in tech tool integration, specifically,
Emily Cowan:awesome tips. So I would speak to some of the maybe the less formal opportunities for you know, measuring teacher growth or what they've learned. And so kind of, like Brooke said, like just popping observations, checking out what's going on in the classroom. But I always and I'm sure Brooke does it as well at you know, at the end of the PD session or just in conversations with teachers. It's opening that door for one on one meetings for following up or offering to come meet with a small group of teachers to co plan for a lesson or to even co teach and so to me, that's one way to evaluate like, did they understand it? Did they get it? Are they using it without being so evaluative, especially, you know, we're just kind of one more thing on their plate sometimes certainly. stuff the way they feel. So kind of taking that off and making it a less pressure whole situation to use the tools and the strategies that we've, we've gone through together. Yeah. And I love that you kind of pointed out, like making sure that we're not evaluated, because, like I have used in the past to measure growth, observation data, but it was a part of it had to be very carefully crafted and communicated. And it was a part of like coaching cycles and regular reflective conversations where we sort of like, agreed on where they landed. And it was just basically a four C's rubric and in different things. And so we were able to sort of measure what what stage they were at, in these different ways. And it was very clear that this was, like not being shared with administrators that this was non evaluative. And so coaches just have to be really careful about that. Because that can be such powerful data, we have to be very careful about like how you go in collecting that. So they don't feel like you are evaluative in any way, if I had$1 for the amount of times I use that phrase this year alone, you could probably retire because I'm always like, Can I come in? I promise, it's just between you and I, I'm just coming to see the great thing. So yeah, it's definitely it's hard to have those conversations and not feel evaluative. Yeah, we're not.
Justin Thomas:Okay, let's let's sort of kind of collectively bring this all together, what are your top three tips that you give another coach creating a year long schedule for PD.
Emily Cowan:So you've heard it already. And you know, Katie, kind of pulled it out of me earlier than earlier in the episode. But to have a plan for PD, before you go meet with those stakeholders show up with some ideas. I know, they may tell you like, Oh, I know what I want. But even coming up with a plan just in case things go haywire, or you know, they got busy, but having something for them to see ahead of time. Or to see while you're in there, so that you're not going in blind is a really good idea. Um, we talked about in the beginning kind of having that thread that theme, that topic that carries throughout the year, so everything connects back, you have your why. So that's really important on the teacher and when planning for PD. And then one of the things I've learned is to build in some like flexibility or like some flex PD in your schedule. So whenever I look at the year, if I'm doing you know, a monthly Lunch and Learn, I'm going to leave a few months blank so that if a need pops up, maybe we purchased a new tool, maybe there is a latest greatest learning strategy, whatever it may be that I have the ability to be flexible, and you know, provide support in real time when they need it. Yeah,
Brooke Conklin:I totally agree with everything that Emily said, I think that have narrow your focus would be one of my tips, just to really create movement and transformation. And make sure that your Y is very clear. With a narrowed focus for your PD for the whole year. Make a level of plan, digital roadmap, have you so that everyone can can see where they need to start. And everyone feels like they have a place in the plan, that they are not excluded, because they are, quote, not techie. And then I would just say make sure you're communicating growth and meeting with your admin constantly. I think this plan is most likely going to be awesome, but it can very quickly become out of sight out of mind, if you don't have those regular meetings and make sure that everybody stays invested and moving the plan forward. Great. Yeah,
Justin Thomas:that's wonderful. And as we mentioned before, this is the first episode of a mini series that we have. So our next episode that's coming out on July 13, is going to be talking about differentiation and how you use it in your professional development. So once again, that's coming out July 13, two weeks from today.
Katie Ritter:Great. Thanks, Justin. So this will wrap us up today for our part one hour PD series. So be sure to subscribe to restart, recharge wherever you listen to podcast, restart, recharge podcast.com And follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at our coach cast.
Justin Thomas:And as always make sure that if there's something that's on your mind, I mean, feed it our way, reach out to us on our social media platforms. Let us know what the topics are that you want to discuss and we'll feature it in one of our upcoming episodes. So press the restart button, recharge your coaching batteries and leave feeling equipped and inspired to coach fearlessly with the restart recharge podcast
Unknown:a tech coach collective