A Back To School Blueprint For Instructional Coaches And Designers

I share a back to school mindset shift for instructional coaches and instructional designers who feel pulled into constant urgency. I lay out practical ways to define our role, streamline support systems, and design professional development that leads to real change. 

• shifting from reactive work to proactive planning 
• clarifying our role so educators use support with trust 
• building strong relationships as the bridge between teams 
• using welcome emails, onboarding, and a coaching menu 
• streamlining communication with templates, newsletters, and surveys 
• creating request forms, auto replies, and a resource hub 
• rethinking professional development with microlearning and choice 
• mapping a PD calendar using school data and real needs 

Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. And please share the love by leaving us a review or even sharing this episode with someone you think will enjoy it. If you want to learn more about how you can elevate your instruction for your school or your organization, check out our website, faithfulteachers.com.

Transcript

Welcome And The Back To School Rush

Speaker 0:00

Welcome to the Faithful Teachers Podcast. I'm your host, Jennifer Riegel. I used to work as a high school English teacher, but now I'm an instructional designer at a local university. I've spent years honing my passion and my devotion not only to education and instruction, but also to my Christian faith. And that's what I want to help you do as well. Summer is flying by. The new school year is right around the corner. And that brings with a lot of anticipation, but there's also a lot of anxiety that goes with it. And not just for teachers, but also for instructional coaches and instructional designers. So regardless of what level you're working at, whether that be the primary, secondary, or post-secondary level, I think there's a lot of similarities for coaches and designers in those areas of how they go into the school year and how that impacts them, you know, at the beginning and honestly throughout the entire school year. So what I want us to really focus on today for specifically coaches and designers is shifting from the focus of being reactive to proactive. Sometimes it's hard to get that, get into that habit again when you're in a different role. Still in the academic field, but it's just a different type of role. So you sometimes feel like you almost have to be reactive rather than proactive. I think there are ways that we can be more proactive rather than reactive in a few different ways that really will help ourselves and the people that we service. Now, just to give a little background on this, so I am an instructional designer and I have never had the pleasure of being an instructional coach. However, I've had the pleasure of knowing some fantastic ones that have amazing approaches in their in their in the way that they help their colleagues. And so I cannot say with definitive, I cannot say definitively that this is what a coach should or should not do. I'm just basing it off of the coaches that I've known in my past districts. So feel free to take anything I say here with a grain of salt or or take it all in, whatever works for you. Because I I just my hope is that anything I say here simply helps you in your work and makes your life a little bit easier, and by extension, the people that you help lives easier as well.

Define Your Role And Build Trust

Speaker 2:30

So the first way that you can be proactive in your work is figure out your role specifically and like how the relationships are fostered in that role. When you're a coach or designer, you are pretty much this bridge. You connect like administrators to teachers, you connect the teachers to the students, maybe not so directly, but you give them the tools to help do that. Um, or you're maybe helping them connect tech to their classroom. Like there's so many different ways that coaches and designers are bridges in their colleagues' work, or they help provide the tools that act as those bridges. And I think that's such a beautiful thing. But I I think that with that, you your role is very important because you're really helping the frontline workers, so to speak, to do the best job that they can. And with that, you have to build really strong relationships with the you know, the teachers that you're working with, the professors, and anybody else. So whether that be the IT department, the administration, or anybody else that could be on that list, you are helping to connect those dots. You're helping to connect those resources, anything. So it's really important to, you know, first and foremost, know exactly what your role is and how you help fosters and build those relationships. And on that note, I think, um, like I said before, I have not been a coach, but I've been um the mentee of a coach. So I feel like their role in particular is to help you be the best, best teacher that you can be. And they help you kind of gain this confidence and they help give you brainstorm ideas. So you are kind of leading that charge. So for a coach in particular, I think it's really hard to be proactive because you're so much in a reactive spot because teachers come to you with questions, problems, and you have to kind of take all that in and hopefully give them the best direction that they can. In some ways, you might have things ready to go where you're like, oh, use this resource that I've created, or or what about this list of ideas that I have? Like, I think there are ways that you can prepare for that, but it's really reactive, and it's hard to be proactive in that spot. But I but I think with that, with this first idea of knowing what your role is and how you would foster those relationships is incredibly important. So the first idea that you need to approach is defining what your role is. If your teachers or your professors don't know exactly what you do, they won't utilize you. Or worse, they'll think you're evaluating them. So you want to make sure that you not only define the really the role for yourself, but also for all the people that you're working with so they know exactly how they can utilize you to the best of your job and their job. And I can speak to that really from a mentee's perspective. I had an excellent instructional coach throughout the majority of my career. And while she was someone who, you know, had other teachers that she helped and like first and second-year teachers that she really, really helped and connected with, she was always there as a resource for me where I could just shoot her an email and ask her a really quick question, or just have a brainstorm buddy to work with. So she really defined that relationship well for me, not necessarily stating exactly what the relationship was, but just kind of helping to foster it. So I think with that, the um your the you as the coach as well as the district or school that you work for can really help define that role to incoming teachers and professors. So there's a couple of different ways that you can do this. You could A just send a welcome email to the incoming educators and tell them, like, hey, I'm so excited for you to be here. This is who I am, and this is how I can help you, and I'm looking forward to getting to know you, that kind of thing. Or that plus um a kind of event that the school puts on could be great because the district that I work for, they put on an event, or I wouldn't say an event, I would kind of say it was it was uh welcome/slash professional development for incoming educators and into that district where we got to know the school district more as well as the instructional coaches directly. So those things, depending on what type of academic environment that you will be working in, will really help to foster this sense of who you are as an instructional coach or designer and how you can help service the educators that you work with. Now, as far as going past that and fostering additional relationships or defining role expectations, there's a couple other ways that you can do this. Now, I have not seen these in action, but they could still be ideas that you utilize. Not saying that you should utilize them, but I'm just trying to give you different directions that you can take this kind of approach. So the one might be for your colleagues and teachers that you're working with is creating some sort of uh coaching or instructional design menu. And what I mean by that is just creating a list of choices like co-planning, modeling, data analysis, whatever common um challenges or questions that you get as an as a coach or a designer, and kind of creating a resource, resource menu, resource workbook where A, they could either use that to kind of help them find answers and find resources that will help them achieve whatever challenge or goal that they have in mind, or it could potentially connect to some sort of form where then it alerts you that, hey, this person needs a little bit of help and would love somebody to talk to about this specific topic. So that's one quick way that you could create a quick, easy access uh definition of your role as well as opportunities for relationships. Now, another aspect that you could consider is how your role aligns with the district and then how that kind of works as a top-down sort of thing. So, what I mean by that is first and foremost, sitting with your administration and making sure that the your coaching or your instructional design goals and ideas directly align with the school strategy and ultimate plan that they have for their school district, for their teachers, for their students. And then as you know that, then you know that you and your administration are on the same page. And when you're helping your professors and teachers, then you know that you're keeping that in the back of your mind to ensure that whatever they are doing in the classroom is being reflective of that plan that administration has. So you can help connect the dots and be the bridge in that sort of way. Okay, so that is one of the first things that you should definitely keep in mind as you're going into the next school year is what your role is and how you will help build and foster those relationships. Now,

Streamline Systems Before Time Vanishes

Speaker 10:13

the second area is uh streamlining systems ahead of time. So when the school year hits, your time disappears. And I think everybody in education knows this is that you have all this time in the summer to, you know, work on your plans, reflect, take on all the challenges in the world. And when the school year hits, you're like, where did my time go? It is it is the cold hard truth of education. And one way I've kind of helped to improve this for myself is having systems and I would say templates in place because they save so much time in helping me to create things and helping me to fast track anything that I need to overcome. So I think having something like that will really help you to streamline any challenges that you are facing or that you faced in the past and that you hope not to face in the future. So a couple of different ideas that you could possibly put into action would be to have a streamlined form of communication. So that could be if you are in charge of some sort of newsletter or something like that, where it's just a um a broadcast to all educators, then where you tell them, like, hey, these are some tech tools that you could use, these are some resources that you could use. I think that's a great form of communication to A, keep your colleagues up to date on all of the best practices and ideas for that they could implement in their classroom. And then for you, you can have a specific layout that is already all ready to go. All you have to do is type in the new stuff for that month or semester or quarter, whatever timeline that you have for that. Um, another way that you can help streamline communication is having surveys set up that are just easy to set up or they're just plug and play. The second area that you could uh take to approach the school year to save your sanity a little bit is by creating streamlined systems ahead of time before the school year starts. And there's a couple different ways that you can go about this. I want to say that um one, two areas that you could really utilize to streamline and that I think um your educators will utilize and you will utilize as well, is first communication and then like a resource inventory or hub of some sort. Now, for communication, there are so many different ways that you and and your administration and your teachers communicate with each other. I think one, you know, common way is email. That's great. You know, we've utilized email, it's a great form of communication. It gets straight into their inbox, but sometimes people get bogged down with hundreds and hundreds of an email email today. And I wish I were exaggerating on that. And unfortunately, it's hard to get back to those emails when they call come in one at a time, and you don't have time in the day to answer it because you are answering other emails or going to meetings or whatever the case is. So having some ways to streamline communication that's not just emails, because I still think that's a great tool to use, will help to first and foremost keep your teachers up to date on the new happenings that are in the academic setting, and then also receive information from them of how you can better their lives and better your job as well. So perhaps maybe implementing a sort of newsletter that's is sent out on a monthly or quarterly basis where you keep them updated on new tools that are in the academic setting, um new ways to use the learning management system, or great strategies that they can implement in the classroom. And maybe each quarter or each month has like a new theme instead of just like new tools. It could be one month is tech tools, one month is um behavior management strategies. Like you can switch it up to whatever you think your district, your school needs. And with that, you can really streamline that process on your side by just having a newsletter that is automatically set up and all you have to do is just plug in the information. And I want to go back to um how teachers can better communicate with you in our first idea of building those relationships. So in the first

Faster Communication And A Resource Hub

Speaker 14:59

idea that I had, in the first idea that we had, we talked about like a coaching or instructional design menu of sorts. And with that, you could have like an inventory of resources or and or you could have like a quick contact form. So then with something like that, you can really streamline who needs to talk to you and what they need to talk to you about. And perhaps maybe with something like that, then as in addition to reaching out, then you could have like an automatic email reply of like, this is so great. I'm so glad you reached out to me. I will try to get back to you within the week. In the meantime, you could look at these resources. So there are different ways that you can kind of set that up, but it does take some time. But honestly, I think taking the time now will save you so much more time in the future. So that's one way that you could not only have a quick form of communication for you and your colleagues, but it's also acting as kind of like a resource hub right there because you're already leading them in the right direction without having to physically reply to an email a day or two after they got back to you. And unfortunately, in the educator session, in the educator setting, time is of the essence because you know, I remember when I used to teach, I would have a question or an idea, and half the time I would be like, oh, I want to be able to implement this next period, or I have this problem right now, and I need someone to help me right now. So I think having something like that is so helpful to you as the coach or designer because you are in meetings and have so many emails to reply back to that you can't always get back to anybody, everybody in a timely manner. And then as the teacher, your time you have so few minutes in the day, and you might have these ideas that you want to implement ASAP, and with something like that, then you might actually be able to. And now, with that kind of transition into having like a resource hub or a or inventory of some sort, I think that in itself will be very helpful towards professors and teachers because you know they as we just talked about, they have so much time that they have to do in lessons and in conferences and in grading, and they have very little time for their own professional development to explore strategies and and check out new resources and play with new resources. So I think having some sort of inventory or hub where they could look to when they want to try something new, not just look forward to the next professional development day would be beneficial for them. So that could be going back to the newsletter of being a quick connection of like, oh, this is an idea. So it kind of gets their wheels turning, but then with that newsletter, then maybe it could reference a specific, you know, webpage that your school has or a specific spot in the learning management system that teachers can go to and then they can connect with those ideas in more depth when they have time during their planning period, for example. So that could be done in um like a Google Sheet workbook, it could be done in a learning management system page just solely for the teachers, not for the students. So there's a couple different ways that this could be approached, but teachers just need not only the communication that kind of leads them there, but being able to have a quick reference point of not only how to get there, but how to use it to the best of its ability. So those are a couple different ways that you could streamline systems ahead of time. Now, I do recommend whatever specific scenarios that you have in mind, do your best to create a template or a quick procedure that will help streamline your job as well as your colleagues' job. Now, the last pillar that I want to go into is kind of rethinking

Rethink Professional Development For Impact

Speaker 19:08

professional development. Now, I've had so many professional development days where you sit in some sort of scenario and you get professional development. And you're listening to a lecture and it's great. The whoever was up there had good things to say, but the implementation's a whole nother thing. And I've had other professional development days where it's more active and interactive where I've I've attended like breakout rooms. I've also had some where I kind of had like a just an open discussion with my colleagues. And I think those were great because it was a lot more opportunity to explore and share. But I think there's still a lot of improvement that could occur in professional development. So, in your role as a coach or designer, it's kind of your job to lead that charge, to lead what professional development looks like for your colleagues. And quite frankly, it's super important because we look back on those days as educators and we are like, wow, that was a bust, or wow, that was amazing. And of course, you want the latter, you want that to echo around the school of all of the teachers being like, that was an awesome professional development. I wish we had more like that, and then they get more like that. So I think it's super important for you as the coach or designer to really take that professional development seriously over the summer. Now I know that takes away from your rest time, and you just definitely deserve rest. Take some time to rest for yourself, but also take some time to really consider what your professional development in this upcoming academic year will look like. And possibly try a diff a few different ways that could be done. So, for example, you could do micro learning opportunities. So maybe you have either teachers that are willing to volunteer to share some of their what they've learned over the summer or last school year, or maybe if you are solely in charge of facilitating it, having like micro videos that you record and you share the stuff that you've learned over the summer. So having something bite-sized and then offering time to explore and interact with it are so beneficial. And I'm sure you already know that. I don't think I need to repeat it. But I think having exploring different ways that professional development can be done is so important for your colleagues and how they grow as professionals. So the first thing I think you should do as far as rethinking professional development is map out what your professional development calendar looks like for. The next academic year and do your best to base it on school data. Because by reflecting on that, seeing where the pitfalls are from the last academic year, you can start to plan out what the professional development could look like for those professional development days in your academic year. And then you can, by having that already, those plans sort of in place, then you can use the new data that you're getting with the new year and add that in there to really enhance the learning experience. Because I mean there will be some changes, but I doubt there will be super drastic changes from one academic year to the next. Granted, I could be wrong, there might be a variety of scenarios where that is plausible, but for the sake of your planning and your sanity, try that out. Consider what successes and pitfalls that your district is facing and how your professional development can help aid or solve those problems. And then as you're considering, you know, what kind of topics we need to hit for those professional development days, then you can start looking at exactly how those learning experiences will occur. And I'm sure being in the position that you are in, you know that active learning is so much better than passive learning. Granted, we all have to experience some lecture in some way, shape, or form, but I think there's a variety of different ways that that can be facilitated where it is interactive and it is more active learning instead of passive. So if you are forced to do something passive, then maybe try something like micro learning where you're batching little videos or little learning opportunities that are facilitated by other colleagues within like a roundabout situation, breakout rooms. There's a variety of different ways that you could create this. Anytime you can give your colleagues choice is so necessary and so beneficial because then they can really go to the heart of what they think that they need based off of their own reflections. Now, I could go on and on about different professional development strategies, and perhaps I should save another episode in the future for that. Um, but for right now, I'll leave it at that is just planning out your calendar and experiment with different learning opportunities for your colleagues.

Preparation Beats Perspiration Closing And CTA

Speaker 24:28

What I want to end with is that preparation beats perspiration. In the roles that you have, being either a coach or a designer, your role is so reactive. But there's different ways that you can better prepare yourself, and that will save you so much more time in the future and so much more stress in the future. Before this summer comes to an end, I recommend that you reflect on some of the challenges that you faced in this last academic year and how you can streamline how you can make those challenges easier to overcome with a tool, with a procedure, with a new approach, a new framework of how you take on this challenge. Because most likely you will face it again. But if you can have something in place that will help curb that challenge, it will be incredibly beneficial for not only you, but also the people that you are a bridge to. Thanks for listening to the Faithful Teachers Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. And please share the love by leaving us a review or even sharing this episode with someone you think will enjoy it. If you want to learn more about how you can elevate your instruction for your school or your organization, check out our website, faithfulteachers.com. Until next time.