 It's what we do. My name is Heidi Rethmeyer and I'm going to talk to you a little bit about instructional coaching at ESU 8. So what is or isn't instructional coaching? So maybe you've heard the coaching term before when you've heard of a reading coach or an MTSS coach, but what do they do? What exactly is their job? So instructional coaching really lies on a continuum. You can have coaches that are more directive in their work or coaches that are more reflective in their work and their goal for each of those is a little different and how they go about interacting with teachers is also very different. So we're going to start on the more directive side of instructional coaching and that particular support function we call calibrating. So the purpose of instructional coaching that is more directive or calibrating is really to assess or to judge or to rate. Oftentimes coaches may come in for fidelity checks. Again that's more of a calibrating and the decision making lies with the evaluator or the coach and at ESU 8 this type of coaching may fall under MTSS coaching. Now as we move to the right on the continuum you would see some more consulting. So typically this happens when we have someone come in with expertise in a particular area and again the intended outcome for really all of these is to increase the knowledge and skills and the practices of our educators. So the person coming in is the expert and they are going to consult with the teacher or the administrator. So perhaps you want someone to come in that has a great deal and more experience in tech integration or some tech tools that you want to incorporate and you need some new ideas. We know as educators that you often don't have time to really spend looking at the latest research or what's the the neatest thing that's come out lately in terms of tech integration. So you want someone to come in that has that time in that training to share that and that expertise with you. So at ESU 8 that type of coaching again might be MTSS or maybe we bring in a tech integrationist or maybe you just need some support with content area. Maybe perhaps and the new social study standards came out and you need someone who's more experienced in that and some of the instructional shifts that go along with those standards and how that might look in your classroom and in that case you might bring in an instructional coach that acts as a consultant. The third type again moving more to the right is the collaborating and in this particular case we have two or more individual individuals that are just like it sounds collaborating they are sharing equally ideas and learning together and again this can fall under tech integration or content area and this may even happen naturally in your district where you have two teachers that are collaborating together on a lesson or a concern they have in their classroom. And again we are hoping that this is going to build skills and knowledge for both individuals involved and then as we move to the right the furthest right in terms of our instructional coaching continuum we have the reflecting support function. Okay now the purpose of this is really to help the individual the educator to reflect on their own practices reflect on their data what the data is telling them and then to hopefully make some decisions about moving forward so the person being coached is the one that is making the decision. The coach is there to facilitate that reflective practice and that reflective conversation ultimately we want the person being coached to feel self-directed self-managing self-monitoring and this type of coaching is often called cognitive coaching. In cognitive coaching we are trying to coach the educator in their thinking practices thus the term cognitive coaching and ultimately if we do a really good job with our cognitive coaching we will coach ourselves out of a job in this area because now we have taught this person to be very self-reflective and self-managed in helping them move forward in their skills and knowledge as an educator. So to really summarize this instructional coaching continuum if we start on the directive side we have the calibrating and often times this is done with MTSS coaching where we see fidelity checks also your formal evaluation would be considered more of a calibrating in terms of the coaching continuum then we have the consulting again typically someone comes in with expertise and is going to consult with the educator so MTSS coaching again can be more consulting maybe they're having conversations about interventions to use the tech integration coaching again what are maybe some great tech tools to use to help in moving my kids forward as well as content area coaching and then as we move further to the right there is collaborating again we have two individuals that are sharing in the ideas and hoping to move forward in their skills and knowledge and again tech integration content area can all be considered collaborating and then furthest to the right would be again the cognitive coaching where the coach coming in is really there to help the individual self-reflect asking very reflective questions avoiding any judgment so when I come in to do some coaching I try to stay as far to the right as I can in terms of the reflection because I do want to build some autonomy in on our educators but I also understand there are times where I may have to slip into collaborating or the consulting because the individual just needs specific information that maybe I have more experience on but then I would also try to slip back into the reflecting to help build in the self-reflective skills of that individual so again cognitive coaching again I'm on the far right on the reflective scale it is not about evaluating there may be as I mentioned a little bit of giving advice so I might slip a little further to the left on that continuum if the individual needs some support and maybe a little bit of collaborating maybe we want to share some ideas together and team teacher lesson plan a little bit but ultimately the cognitive coaching the more reflective coaching is hoping that we transform teachers through self-directed and very reflective practice so as you think about the instructional coaching continuum you may find that you have specific needs in specific areas maybe you need someone to come in and do some more consulting work maybe you have someone that just wants to reflect on a particular lesson or reflect on on how to plan for a lesson and you need someone to help facilitate that conversation those are all things that we would be happy to do at ESU 8 so please let us know ESU it's what we do