306 - Finding the Balance: Large School Districts - with Cammie Kannekens & Rachel Porter

Our role as coaches is an interesting one. We get to work with the administration, educators, and even students. But it can sometimes be complicated to show your value and importance to the district. How do you prove your worth when you are in a large district with multiple buildings that are sometimes many miles apart? We’ll tackle those issues in order to find the perfect balance when working with our educators and to show our value to the district!

Cammie Kannekens

Rachel Porter

Podcast Team
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Transcript

Brooke Conklin: 0:00

Calling all instructional coaches join Forward Edge coaches camp in summer 2023. Coaches camp is packed with high quality professional development exclusively for you. Attendees will work with like minded coaches on creating strategies for building teacher relationships, executing coaching cycles and building a culture of coaching and tech integration within their district. There are two opportunities to attend coaches camp in the summer of 2023. You can join us virtually June 12 through 14th or come visit us in Cincinnati on July 27, and 28th please visit forward hyphen edge dotnet slash coach camp to reserve your spot today.

Katie Ritter: 0:53

Aloha, I'm Katie Ritter.

Justin Thomas: 0:54

And I'm Justin Thomas. And this is the restart recharge podcast, a podcast by coaches for coaches, we bring the tips and tricks to help you in your everyday work as instructional coach or whatever they call you and your school district.

Katie Ritter: 1:05

So hopefully, you're gonna leave this episode with us today feeling just a little bit less on your own coaching Island.

Justin Thomas: 1:10

And our role as coaches is an interesting one. Because we get to work with administration, we get to work with educators and even students. But sometimes it can be complicated to show your value and importance in a district especially if you were in such a large school district in terms of both student population and even geographical sense. So how do you prove your worth when you are in that large district with multiple buildings that are sometimes many miles apart? We're going to tackle those issues today in order to find the perfect balance with working with our educators and how to show our value in our district. So we have a couple of guests on here today. The first guest is kami Ken Eakins and she is in her sixth year as a district instructional coach in a rural school district in southern Alberta, Canada, which is a small population but very large geographical area of over 11,000 square miles. Whoa, yeah, that's large. Prior to that, she taught high school English and social studies for 20 years and it's concurrently did a five year gig teaching and edtech course to pre service teachers at a local college. She has a master's degree in Educational Leadership and among other edtech certifications is a seesaw certified educator, a Google certified trainer and coach is the community leader and Microsoft Innovative Educator expert. She works in providing learning experiences across great distances for both students and teachers by introducing them to digital tools that help them connect and build relationships and amplify community based projects. She also loves providing virtual ed tech PD for teachers and school board across Canada as a cobblestone collective team member, which was formerly at tech team Canada. So welcome in kami.

Cammie Kannekens: 2:47

Well, hello there. It's great to be here.

Katie Ritter: 2:49

Yes, it is so nice to have you on the podcast. We are really looking forward to diving in the conversation with you, as well as our second guest here with us today. Rachel Porter that I have the pleasure of introducing. She is an instructional design coach here with us at Forward Edge. Prior to joining us here at Forward Edge. She spent the bulk of her teaching career in high school language arts, but also has experience teaching middle school and kindergarten quite the. For more than 20 years in education, Rachel has two adult children one teenage daughter and a grandson. Rachel has a passion for connecting to new and veteran teachers like supporting them in a way that makes them feel safe to learn new things. Outside of education. You can find Rachel at various restaurants playing trivia with friends, growing her family's online editing business, or enjoying a quiet evening at the Quinn chapel, her historical church home in Glendale, Ohio. So Rachel, we are super excited to have you on the podcast for the first time as well.

Rachel Porter: 3:49

Thank you for having me. Glad to be here. Absolutely.

Justin Thomas: 3:52

All right. Well, thank you both for coming on. But let's just start right off with it. So the schools that you coach at are both they're large districts in terms of both geographical sense, but also in terms of student population. So if you don't mind, just kind of talk about how many Stafford students that you are supporting how many buildings you work in? And obviously, can we we talked a little bit it was in your bio, over 11,000 miles in square square miles. That's, that's a large district to cover.

Cammie Kannekens: 4:20

Well, let me Okay, so I did a little wanted to put that in context. So if our district was an American state, okay, it'd be the 42nd largest, we would be larger than Maryland, but smaller than West Virginia. So geographically, we're, you know, bigger than then 20% of the American state. So that that is a lot of geographic area.

Katie Ritter: 4:41

Wow. Thank you for painting that visual. Yeah, sure. First of all, I feel like I can understand 11,000 miles a little bit better. But can we actually I'm sorry. I'm gonna interrupt for just a second because just from a clarification standpoint, for our listeners, most of whom come from the US. We have Little bit of a global listenership, but I believe in Canada, you call your like what we call a school district that's kind of reports to the same collective, you know, reporting and superintendent in leadership team, you call them school boards. Is that correct? Is Am I understanding that correct? Yeah. Can you clarify that for us? Before we dive in?

Cammie Kannekens: 5:22

We call them a lot of things. Okay. Well, board would be common. And that's I think really comes out in in Ontario. Here. You could use school board, you could say, what school district are you from what school division? We use them all, like, pretty much synonymously interchangeably. If there's a if there's a distinction, I'm not even sure how we would distinguish. So we use them all.

Katie Ritter: 5:43

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Sorry, I just need to kind of wrap my head around that. That isn't some of those, which we might hear as you as you talk through. So sorry, back back to Justin's question about the size and scope of the

Cammie Kannekens: 5:55

school. Right. Okay. So in our school, criminal school division, I think our name has primo school division for a school district. Now I can't I don't even know if the DS division or district what I think about it, so it's one of those. So we have some geographically very large, if I was going to get in my car, which I do a lot and drive from one end to the other, it would be about three and a half hours between our farther schools. Now, I don't know I don't ever do that. And in well hardly ever do that in one day. So that's kind of our north to south or east to west isn't isn't quite as big. So within that we have 18 Physical schools. And then we have three or four kind of online entities about 20 to 2300 students, and about 210 teachers. Now, the interesting thing is, in addition to that, we also have what are called Hutterite colonies. So think like Amish type colony, but not but lots of agriculture. They do not drive horse and buggy. They have the biggest tractors, and the biggest agricultural equipment that you could imagine like they are super tech, agriculturally. But they live on colonies. And so we have about 18 of those within our our school division as well, because it's very agriculture. So as coaches, we don't go to those schools often. But we do sometimes go to those schools as well. So our The other thing that's really interesting is our the makeup of our schools, our largest school was the high school that I taught that is about 470 students right now that's 10 to 12. But then we have a lot of really tiny kind of remote schools. So we have a K to nine schools that have less than 30 Kids, if you can wrap your head around that. So they're triple graded, we have a couple of probably four or five schools that have less than less than 50. But some of that is small is less than less than 30 for K to nine. So that's, you know, those, it's quite different in the size of our schools, and then their needs are very different as well based on those demographics within the school. So that's a bit about about my situation. I do get I do have a car that comes with my job. So

Katie Ritter: 8:12

that's, that's good, but it sounds like very necessary perk that yeah,

Justin Thomas: 8:16

I still can't get over the fact that you basically are driving like the entire state every day. Well, yeah.

Cammie Kannekens: 8:23

You know, I don't go to all this like, sure. It's You're right. It's not like it's even a every you know, it's not like I go every 18 days around. But some days I'm on the road. Well, most days, I'm on the road all the time. So my office, I do have an office, a desk in a place, but really my office is in my car. You should see the back seat.

Justin Thomas: 8:43

You need one of those vans maybe for next year or something like that. You can actually put like a little bench desk back there.

Katie Ritter: 8:50

Like pull down a little bit if she needs.

Justin Thomas: 8:53

Yeah, exactly.

Katie Ritter: 8:55

A little kitchenette. Awesome. Well, retail tell us about your situation. Okay.

Rachel Porter: 8:59

Well, mine is definitely much more scrunched. My district just spans about eight to 10 miles, but we have 11 buildings that I serve eight elementaries a middle school, a high school, and then what we call an innovation center for high school students. And I support about 5500 students and a little over 700 teachers in my district. So definitely a big population but doesn't take me long to get from place to place every week.

Katie Ritter: 9:36

Yeah. But those those 700 teachers spread out between 11 buildings. There's only five days in a week. Right so yeah, so that that kind of leads in Justin, I don't know if you want to follow up before I jump in to my next question.

Justin Thomas: 9:52

Well, just there's multiple communities, right that are all put together some different little villages and things like that.

Rachel Porter: 9:57

Yeah, so different I would say like Community School. Holzer neighborhood schools in the district and then they all kind of come together for a melting pot when they get to when they get to middle school for sixth grade, our middle school has about 1300 kids. And our high school has about 1700 students so

Katie Ritter: 10:15

great. So that, you know, you both just kind of led me right into this. So, three and a half hours, there's only you know, so many hours in the day, and only so many working hours, there's only five working days a week. So obviously, there it's just it's, it's physically impossible for the two of you to actively be in all of the buildings that you support. Let alone every day, even every week. Kimmy it sounds like maybe even for you every month, it might be tough to get into all of the buildings that you serve. So knowing knowing that, you know, okay, you you can't get to every building. How do you go about giving support to your teachers, when you can't always be there? You can't always see them? How do you kind of, I guess, maybe duplicate yourself a little bit to be there, when you're not physically there? What does that look like for both of you? And Kimmy will will turn to you first and then Rachel?

Cammie Kannekens: 11:16

Alright, I'll start off with some of the things that happen here. So that aspect of keeping a presence is so important. How do we you know, what does that look like? So we try a couple things. I'm this year, I actually have two other coaches, with me, and I forgot to mention that because that does help. Last year, I was the only one. So you know, it's nice to have some people to share that distance with so one of the things that we've done over the time, so when I started this job, six years ago, I was the first coach. So I you know, I'm kind of the only coach our districts known. We've just, it's evolved with how that's gone. So one of the things we've done is monthly newsletters, and those have become pretty, pretty important to what we do every month, we have a skills challenge in them. So this year, it's all about search skills. Last year, it was Google Drive organization, what year before it was Chromebooks. So we do these skills, little mini lessons, and then teachers and their students can submit their work and they get a little Amazon card. So those kinds of things with those little enticements. Like those little skills, challenges have really pulled people into the newsletter. And so then our newsletter is we have sections like around the district. And so we show you know what's going on. And we have, you know, different sections, because we're not because there's not many of us as coaches, we can we do it all right, like so I do a lot of technology. But I'm also literacy coach and everything else code trade. So there's quite a big breadth of things that I might encounter in a day as far as, as topics. And so that newsletter helps us to, to push a lot of that forward. One of the things in there, we always have something called PD bingo. And so you can imagine in a district like ours, if I'm a PD deliver, I don't get to schools all the time. So we have a PD bingo that we do. And it says, you can, you know, depending on how many spaces you get, then there's prizes, we usually do it as extra PD funds to do things. But that's, that's been really popular as well. And then in that newsletter every month, there's a square of the month. And so if you do the square in that month, we send a$10 Amazon card, and it's amazing how teachers will be pulled in with a $10 Amazon card. So you know, the fact that I that idea of paying people a little bit to do PD is good. And that also really creates community because lots of it's like post a Padlet or post on this wakelet or, you know, record on Flipgrid your answer. And so then what that does is it also builds community around our district as well, because we have lots of teachers that that never meet or don't get to see each other very often. So it kind of helps build that community too. So I

Katie Ritter: 14:01

love that. Would you mind to share like just a couple of the recent things that have been on the PD bingo board, like what what types of PD are they completing to essentially like mark off a square on their board?

Cammie Kannekens: 14:14

So it can be a whole we've got you know, some easier ones and some harder ones. So one might be so when squares to do a single month of the skills, competencies skills blitz that we talked about, and then another square is to do the whole season. Right? So do do the whole season. Put all your evidence into a Google slide and then that's a box another one would be to listen to two hours of podcasts and tell about you know who you should listen to his podcasts and we've got one like that for webinars. We've got a podcasting

Justin Thomas: 14:46

square Yeah, shameless plug.

Cammie Kannekens: 14:49

And then actually so there's that one and then they have another one. We're we are a Canva district. So we're really trying are our teachers love Canva and one of the things that we do as CO She's for our admin in our schools as we do lots of the canvas template design. So we're like, here's a template designed for this exhibition of learning that y'all have to do. You can take this, use it, how everyone edit it, put your colors in your branding, but so we try to build a lot of those templates and things that the especially the smaller schools, you know, what if you're the, if you're the principal at one of our smaller schools, you are also probably a teacher of at least point seven time. So like three quarters of your time, you're probably a classroom teacher plus being the admin. So when we build things in Canva, that's helpful. But then what one of the things in one of the podcast squares is create a designing Canva that shows your four favorite podcasts. So just you know, so that one's your some of them are doing things. So you have to listen to the podcast and have to create a thing. Some of them are easier, like social emotional, kind of, you know, give us a post about the favorite thing that happens at your school to create community or so you know, there's some really easy ones. And then there's some that are we try to hit technology and social emotional and literacy and deeper thinking. So you know, we've got a whole variety.

Katie Ritter: 16:14

Yeah, that's great. And so is it a is it a year lot like the school year long? Yeah.

Cammie Kannekens: 16:20

Yeah, school year long. So we have a board, we used to actually look used to look like a bingo board and had to get you know, like a row or something. And now we just have a list of 30 things and you have 25 is a blackout. So, a blackout. If you do 25 items, we will pay for your registration to a major conference. So last year, when I went to some of the some of the gals that I was with, had gotten their SD paid for because they had done all this thinking like and you would be like, teachers, some teachers, honestly, it's too bad. Couldn't care less about the PD, right? But others, it's like, I want to go to this thing. And I don't get enough money otherwise to go. So I'm going to pay for my at least my registration with Pb bingo. And so they they really just pump out the challenges. And so they like it, the PD bingo. Because it's asynchronous. They do it on their own time. And there's such a variety. So yeah, that's been a fun one that we've done.

Katie Ritter: 17:17

Yeah, that's amazing. Rachel, what about you? How are you kind of multiplying yourself?

Rachel Porter: 17:21

I have just learned a lot. notes there. Yeah. I would say my district is very much like a family already. And so just by making myself available as far as putting things physically in the school buildings, like PD on the potty is a thing I do every month, in all of the bathrooms at every building. People know how to find me, I to do newsletters, I usually do two a month where I can give tech tips and a little bit of a difference between my district and camis is my buildings all have a coach. So I am the one single tech coach, I guess they would that's what they call them, because their coaches are literacy. Yeah, they're mostly literacy or the data for math, or whatever. So they're not focused on the tech integration piece. And that's what I'm there to do. Another thing that I like to do is within the district is competitions. So my district has edgy badges as part of their PD. And I do something called Battle of the badges amongst different buildings. They go crazy for the day, they love it. This this past month, I did David versus Goliath with the four small elementaries versus the four large elementary schools, and the small schools won by leaps and bounds. So I found that super interesting. And they like to do a lot of trash talk. And every time I'm in their buildings, they're always talking about it. So also, I would say that just letting them know when I'm available or where I am at any given time we I hop on a Google meet often when I'm not in somebody's building. So if they need to chat about something, or whatever, and they know I'm not in their building that day, they they feel comfortable just making an appointment real quick, we can hop on and I can help troubleshoot something or go through a unit or a lesson or give them tips and supporting them in that way. So I don't physically have to be there.

Katie Ritter: 19:40

Great, Rachel, you have a schedule that you you know, it's kind of a set. Here's when I'm in the building. How do you communicate that schedule to your teachers? Okay,

Rachel Porter: 19:51

good question. In the beginning of the year, I physically give every teacher my schedule on cardstock like a Like a fourth of his eyes a piece of paper, when I see them in their classrooms now all throughout the year, I use Canva to design that. And then I have that in my newsletter all the time. It's always there. And then I also email teachers the day before I'm coming. So they know, I'll be in their building all day. And I just scheduled those emails out in advance, I find that because in the elementary is I'm only there once a month. So letting them know the day before Hey, tomorrow is my day, I'm going to be in your district, then they take me up on scheduling something, and it's almost always my calendar starts to fill up that afternoon.

Katie Ritter: 20:42

Yeah, I think it's smart to send them the day before. Like, when I was coaching, I would do the morning of like, reminder, I'm here today. And then it's like, you know, too far gone, right? Like they've already gotten the IEP meeting the principal's already coming to like, observe them. So they're stressed or you know, whatever else that they have going on, but something about even just the day before, I think that's smart.

Rachel Porter: 21:03

I usually try also on like the Friday before the week, I'm starting at least for the elementary principals, because I'm more consistently more often in the middle in high school. I tell the principal, hey, I'll be there Tuesday, FYI. Just a reminder, you know, I don't know what meetings you have going on all the time. Sometimes they don't communicate that with me. So I kind of say, Hey, I'm here to do whatever you need me to do from there, like our middle school, or elementaries have from eight to 9am. And if they don't have a meeting already scheduled, often principals will say, Hey, if you want to offer something, I'm game like, so I can do that. Yes, please. Yeah, I do. I do it and in many of our elementary, so

Katie Ritter: 21:45

that's awesome. And Kami? I don't I don't know about you. Do you have a consistent schedule? Or? Or how does it work for you to actually, how do you determine what buildings you're going to do? And with Chad,

Cammie Kannekens: 21:55

we've tried a lot of things. But you know, because of the the driving really that consistent schedule, it just doesn't doesn't work out. And again, this smaller schools really, really love it when we come because we're a sounding board. We're another body, we're another set of hands. And so, you know, not every school is as the bigger schools don't don't need us as much. We still go there lots and we do lots of great things. But the smaller schools are like yes, yes. Can you please come? So with the sketchbook, I'm kind of the boss of the schedule. So we have a shared Google Calendar, but it's kind of on as, as need or as asked basis. And so a school say, hey, we want to do a thing with coding or we want to do, can you help us with Google Sites or something? So I might start with the teacher, and then we'll book that in. And then what'll happen is, if I'm doing other coaching cycles, or other coaching work with other teachers, I'll say, Hey, I'm coming to your school on Tuesday, the, you know, 27th of March, do you want to do the next? Like, should we get to do the next step in the thing that we've been working on. And so typically, before the days and over, I'll have a whole day built out of, you know, little projects that I'm pushing along with different teachers, or in our further school, so there's kind of a whole community about two hours away that I, that, you know, we we will drive back and forth to on a day, but often when I go there, I'll stay overnight. And so I'll say to the schools, I'll say, Okay, I'm coming on these two or three days, what do you want? What do you want to do? And so then, okay, we'll, we'll do this and this, or I'll talk to the individual teachers. So it's kind of a, it has to be something that I see or that we schedule as coaches because that driving time, it's like, okay, well, if I'm here in the morning, I've got enough time I can drive to this school, in the afternoon. And so you can't you can't put that on a schedule. So, you know, it's just, and then there's, you know, with meetings, and all the other things have happened. So we don't have a set schedule. And so that might mean that, you know, for some schools were there quite a bit in a little bit of time. And then the other other schools we haven't gotten to for, you know, could be a month or two before we get to some schools, but then we'll be there three times within three weeks, because we're working on a project. So it's, there's there's an ebb and flow about how all that works. Scheduling wise here did say something, though,

Katie Ritter: 24:15

that I have another follow up question. Sorry. Justin, but how so I Rachel, I know you do. And Kami. You mentioned it as well. I was wondering as you were talking and then you said like your coaching cycles. So I'm curious to hear from both of you. What does what what do coaching cycles look like with you know, Rachel, so many teachers you know, we know we've got a lot of schools like our Texas schools or you know, you've got even, you know, quadruple the number you know, that they're supporting. So what what does that look like recruiting teachers and carving out time to have a consistent coaching cycle when you have so many buildings, so many teachers or so many miles to cover? What's that look like? Rachel will go to you first on Okay,

Rachel Porter: 25:00

I typically have only really done coaching formal coaching cycles at the middle and high school level, because I'm there once a week. And can can sustain that where I see them often. I do have a couple of elementary teachers who we do meet every time I'm in their building once a month, and they're working on specific things, I guess you could call that a formal coaching cycle, although it's not necessarily dedicated to one specific goal that they want to achieve. It's multiple goals that are kind of month long, and then we check in every month. So that's, that's really how I have worked it into my schedule. And found that it's been pretty successful. So awesome. Thank

Katie Ritter: 25:43

you, Kimmy, what about you?

Cammie Kannekens: 25:45

Well, Rs Rs aren't what you would call really, they might be somewhat formal, but they're certainly not structured. You know, like, when you look at lots read lots of books about and coaching. It's like an eight week cycle, and you get on the bus and you do your thing, and off the bus. And maybe even with the cohort, ours are very loose. So as a teacher has a goal, we will kind of onboard them. And so actually, Rachel was talking about Google meet. And that has made the world of difference for us. When I started this job, like, nobody would want to go Google me. In fact, there's hardly anything right. And then so COVID has been great for that. Because teachers are like, Well, no, don't come out, we'll just Google meet. So for coaching sessions, you know, we might, they might, they'll email and say, hey, I want to, I want to work on this. Or when I'm in school, they'll say, Hey, can we start to work on this? I'll say, okay, great, let's start. So we might, we might actually have a couple of Google meets, where we're setting the stage, we're talking about the, you know, the problem of practice, and, you know, getting a few ideas down, and then I'll come to the building to co teach or, you know, work with students or something like that. And so we've already done all this work on Google meet, we've met during a prep period, or right at the end of school or, or before school. So Google meet has just really helped multiply the amount of work that we're able to do in a coaching cycle. So it might be half and half over Google meet and half in person or if the schools are really far away, it might even be like two thirds Google meet 1/3 in person, but it's just really, we can do a lot of work in a Google meet. And again, because of the district distance, our teachers are like, Oh, well, that's a better option than, you know, waiting till you get here. So that, you know, they don't have to wait to do a coaching cycle. So that's really kind of sped that process up. So

Katie Ritter: 27:33

that's awesome. I love watching and embracing that. So that's awesome. Okay, my line of questioning. Gonna bring it to a close here as we take a quick break from our sponsor, and we will be right back.

Brooke Conklin: 27:46

Who is in your coach community. The EDU Coach Network is a professional learning community designed specifically to help instructional coaches, connect, learn and grow together. With free and paid options available, there is a space for all coaches in the EDU Coach Network. Join today and access coaching content that will help you impact teaching and learning and your school go to www.edu. Coach network.com to join

Justin Thomas: 28:15

instructional coaches support teachers, students, administrators, and really everyone in the district. In fact, research shows instructional coaching is one of the most impactful forms of professional development that results in improved teacher instruction and student achievement. But who is supporting the coach Forward Edge provides multiple year long mentorship options recommended by the Google for Education certified coach program to help you gain the value and support you need as an instructional coach, visit Ford hyphen, Edge dotnet to start getting PD to the ultimate PD providers.

Katie Ritter: 28:48

Welcome back to the restart recharge Podcast. I'm Katie Ritter with co host, Justin Thomas here. And we've got Rachel and Kami with us today. And we are talking about finding a balance and really large districts either geographically or a number of buildings or a number of staff members that coaches support. So we've been we've been digging in, and I'm going to turn it over to Justin to kind of take us to the next step here, beyond teachers that you all support.

Justin Thomas: 29:19

Yeah, because obviously you got to support the administration as well. And also, just, it's difficult, especially with both of your situations to always touch, you know, touch base with the administration in the schools that you're in. So how do you work with administration knowing that you're not always going to be in their building or get a chance to actually have a meeting with them? Because, you know, sometimes you might be at that building, but they have like a seminar or something that they're doing so they might not even be in the building that day. So how do you keep a presence in those buildings, working with the administration, when you might not always get a chance to actually sit down with them and kind of show what's the amazing things that are happening in their district?

Rachel Porter: 29:56

I'll start, if that's okay. Um, I would say, first of all, just building rapport and relationship with them, getting to know them, trying to accommodate whatever their schedule is, which is crazy, crazy busy. And I kind of, I prepare little, like five minute spurts of things I want to say. And I will when I'm in a building, I just pop in an office and just say, hey, I want to run something by you do you have a second. And I started doing that at the beginning of the year, not necessarily knowing their schedule, because like, for example, our high school, we have one main principle, but we have a ninth 10th 11th 12th grade principle as well. So there's tons of administrators that I still don't always know. And so trying to figure out, first of all, who's going to be my person that I talked to, and then once I start that relationship and build that rapport with them, then I can kind of just pop in rather than scheduling a formal meeting, because their schedules are unpredictable often. And it's I don't want to be seen as a nuisance. To them are one more thing that they have to take on. I also would say that anytime I need a principal to communicate something or anytime I would like to communicate with the staff, I write up in advance what I need them to communicate and ask them if they could just copy paste that send that out to their staff and saves them time and kind of lightens their load, I would say. And then I would also say because my our buildings have coaches in them having the relationship with the coach, often the coaches like the right hand of the principal. So meeting with the coach, often they have the ear of the principal, and can communicate, when I'm not in the building. Oh, I met with Rachel, you know, this past Monday. And then that's how I've kind of gotten now to my next little part of the answer is invited to building leadership team meetings, or principals, meetings with the curriculum, directors, and just kind of have a voice at the table where they might ask my opinion about things, and only being there for a year and a half. I've had to really work hard at relationship building with principals. So yeah, I think

Katie Ritter: 32:30

that's an interesting way to it's kind of like, insert coach, like insert whoever, right like peer influencer, for the admin, it's a building, we talk a lot about that and think about that with teachers, like some of our teachers who maybe, you know, maybe they don't want to work with the coach there, you know, what, for whatever reason, and a lot of times, like working with their peer influencers is really helpful. So when you said, you know, the coach often has their ear, it just kind of made me think like, that's a good spin to put on, like, find the building principals, peer influencer, if you're struggling to connect for whatever reason schedules, they don't understand what you do as a coach, you know, whatever it may be. So I think that's a great idea.

Justin Thomas: 33:09

Yeah. Kami, what do you use, like to help kind of communicate with the administration.

Cammie Kannekens: 33:15

So we're fortunate in that, as coaches, we get invited to this school leader meeting. So every about every month, we have a school leader meeting where all the leaders traveling together, and we're faced, usually face to face in person. And there's, you know, kind of a morning where there's lots of admin PD and admin, you know, like, I like leadership support, like growing them as leaders. And then the afternoon has this list of all the agenda items of all the things right, but so we get to go to those. And so we're, we're sitting in the room. And so that's a great time to, you know, sit beside a different leader every time and get to know people. And so because I've been in the district for six years, I, I do know all the leaders really well by now. But again, those small school leaders really especially find value in what we do. And so I, I often joke that we're as a coach, I'm on speed text. And so you know, if they have a question or a thing, they'll they'll text me. And if it's one of those small schools, principals, I do just about everything to get back to them. As soon as I can, you know, other people, you'll see that email and come in and say, Okay, well, I'll do that tomorrow morning, or I'll get to that tonight. But if it's one of those small school, I'm like, I tried to support them, because I know like, they've been teaching all day, and they're trying to fit these things in between, you know, their, their teaching time. So having developed that relationship, where though they'll shoot us off a text and say, Hey, I know you're coming on Friday, can you do this too? Or can you can we squeeze this in and so that, you know, that real quick communication would be one thing. And then like Rachel said, when we're in the schools, if we're there to see teachers, always making sure to you know, get into The the coach or the sorry, the principal or the admin and say, Hey, I'm here today, and I've met with some of your teachers. And of course, there's confidentiality and you don't necessarily go into all the things that you've been working on. But if let's say I've been, you know, working on, oh, like, this year, our whole district is doing exhibitions of learning at their schools. And so that's been a brand new thing. And the schools are like, wow, what is this thing? And how do you do it? And so as coaches, we've really been supporting that. And so the teacher or the admin, at the end of the day, love it when I say okay, so I was working with this teacher on their project, and this teacher, and they just, oh, thank you for doing that. Because that's been quite a, quite a new thing. And so everyone's a little uncertain of how to go forward. So when they know that we've been in the building, and we've been moving some of those, those projects, along with teachers, they love, love to know that and so, you know, we want to, like like, like Rachel said, lighten their load and kinda support wherever we can.

Katie Ritter: 35:56

Yeah. And Kimmy, if you wouldn't mind really quick, what's an exhibition of learning in case anyone's not so

Cammie Kannekens: 36:01

think like? Sometimes when teachers don't know we say, like, think like science fair, you know, where everyone's kind of got their, their thing, but it'll be not net, it could look like lots of different things. So basically, throughout the year, the goal is, at the end, we're going to celebrate some learning. So it might be like, some schools are publishing a book, and some schools are doing like, you know, like, like a learning Fair, where here's the best thing I learned this year. And here's how I learned it. So it's the final product, but we're really focusing on the process, the learning along the way that reflection, and so we're also trying to grow our schools and our teachers in that kind of that deeper, that deeper learning process, where it's iterating, and reflecting on something that they're doing. And so that's, you know, as a school, they are all responsible to have a an afternoon or an evening where they all come together, and they have a show a learning showcase. And so that's what we're calling these exhibitions of learning. And so that's something that a few schools have done, but it certainly hasn't been kind of a district wide mandate. And so that's really pushing the thinking and pushing the learning in a good way. And so that's been a real avenue for us as coaches to do lots of support.

Katie Ritter: 37:16

Yeah, sounds like a great way to duplicate yourself. Well, kind of, yeah, I'm I recent, I just kind of on the same line of thought with this admin, I recently heard someone say, they do not have a coach, this particular group of schools, and someone said, we don't think our teachers really understand what an instructional coach is, so we don't think they'd be used. So aside from just going down a soapbox there, I would argue that it's more important for the building principals to understand what the coach is like starting off, because they can really just be such an advocate. I mean, I, anyone who's a loyal listener knows I say this all the time. But just this week, I was reading additional coaching research around like systemic change in a district and how do coaches support systemic, like instructional transformation in a district. And it just goes, it goes right back to admin support. And it starts from the top. And it's so critical at the building level for those building principals to understand. So I think some of the things and advice that you both gave are really great starters, to helping form those relationships and help those building principals, or, you know, the building leaders, whatever they're called, you know, help them understand what your capability and places that you can plug in and support teachers, because once they understand, they'll help their teachers understand the value of the coach. Yes, and how they can utilize them.

Rachel Porter: 38:45

Yeah. And I think too, like helping the principal with something they're working on, like a small example is one of the principals at the element at an elementary was trying to learn Canva for her weekly staff bulletin. And I did what kami talked about, in creating a template for Black History Month, and just created that and froze all of the text boxes. So she couldn't mess it up. Because she, yeah, and she has now pushed that out. And now all of a sudden, I am super valuable to her teachers. And she's like, when can we plug you in? And just one little tiny thing for me to support her went a long way. So

Cammie Kannekens: 39:30

yeah, I agree. Canva is a great gateway for coaches. Like, oh, yeah, in our district, like every teacher, every admin wants to know more and learn more about Canvas. So a lot of the work that we've been doing this year is like, Hey, can you teach your teachers Canva? And so lots of the PD that we've done, you know, both in person and, and video PD and asynchronous, it's been around Canva. And it's like, that's been a door opener in a lot of ways, actually. So Oh,

Katie Ritter: 39:55

yeah. It's so nice when you find that like, it's so I feel like it's rare to find the like, Golden Ticket does so much. So when teachers actually invest their time them and their students, they just get to learn so much. But we're big fans of Canva here too, but okay, sorry, it's landing on me, Justin, you've got to get it back to you.

Justin Thomas: 40:18

All right the other time.

Katie Ritter: 40:20

But we're gonna end this episode with your top three tips for finding a balance in a large district, be it geographically building number, students staff population. So, Kimmy, we'll start with you on this one, to kind of round us out here.

Cammie Kannekens: 40:37

Okay, so number one, and in no particular order, of course, would be to use Google meet or zoom or whatever your your product is to, to do lots of things to move coaching cycles along, to have those meetings with teachers or admin to provide that support. For my case, it saves a lot of driving time. But you know, even for Rachel, it's just, it's just that time. And so you can get teachers on and off real quick. And so our teachers like to just do that, because it saves, it saves everybody time. So number one would be to use Google meet to take advantage in person was important. But the support with Google meat or whatever is really important, too. So a second one, we didn't talk about this as much, but would be to clone yourself with the power of video. And so I do lots of you know, lots of when people have a question, or I say, Oh, I've had that question twice this week, I'll make a really quick Screencastify recording. So I have that and then send that out. But then I'll do a lot that are just a little bit, you know, better quality videos, and record PD or videos, we do a lot of after school PD, mini PDS and then I'll record those are there's a video people can watch later. So that use the power of video for that asynchronous, you know, people at their own time, that's been important. And then the last one, I would say would be arrive early and stay late. And for me, I don't know what it's like for you, Rachel, but it's like, Oh, I've been meaning to email you and Oh, right. So that's when teachers have time, it's not during the day, but if you're there before or after, then their their teacher load is kind of off. And they're like, Oh, I've been wanting to email you about this. And so that's when I find that my calendar grows is before school and after school, when teachers are like, Hey, I've been wanting to talk to you. And so then, you know, we either probably just make a schedule to talk in the future, but it happens because I'm there, I try to be there in the building before the day starts, and if possible, to still be there at the end of the day. And that's when a lot of the best coaching happens. So those would be my three. Awesome, thank you.

Rachel Porter: 42:43

Okay, well, I would say my first tip is to find a way to let people in the district get to know you before you even step foot in their building somehow on a personal level, so that when you do get in the building, they already feel connection in some way to you. And one way I do that in my newsletter is just get to know your tech coach, just personal things. And I have teachers respond in flip. And they connect with each other that way, but then they that's a point of conversation when I come in the building, like Oh, I didn't know you had a dog or you know, whatever. My second tip would be actually to set boundaries for how many people you can work with. Because I think that when you're working with people in coaching cycles, teachers, you if you spread yourself too thin, then I think you can lose effectiveness in coaching them. So kind of trying to set those boundaries and just set you know, having a limit to how many can sign up to do a coaching cycle specifically would be my second one. And then my third is to work smarter, not harder. And similar to what can be said where you can repeat things do so doing the same mini PD for several of the buildings or videoing one it's an eight out to the rest. And then like like CAMI said the small videos when you get something asked more than once go ahead and just make a video and send that out. People find that to be valuable. So those are mine. Awesome.

Justin Thomas: 44:21

Those aren't really good tips. I love your your little quote for that tip CAMI clone yourself with the power of video. It's like the presentation title or something. Awesome. Well, thank you both for coming on. This has been definitely a really good episode in terms of I'm still I still can't get over the fact that I mean like I've been through West Virginia multiple times and it's pretty large state for terms of how you're covering that in West Virginia

Cammie Kannekens: 44:48

is bigger. Oh, it's almost twice the size of us. So yeah, all those little

Justin Thomas: 44:56

like Vermont Rhode Island Yeah.

Cammie Kannekens: 45:00

New England. Yeah,

Justin Thomas: 45:02

that's, that's mind blowing. But thank you both for coming on. Hopefully this has helped a lot of folks in very similar situations, whether it's geographical, or student population,

Katie Ritter: 45:14

large ideas. Thank you both for coming on.

Rachel Porter: 45:17

Thanks for having us.

Justin Thomas: 45:18

So we have another episode coming up next in two weeks, that's going to be really good. It's going to be an episode about coaches working with teachers who struggle with classroom management. So we know that classroom management can sometimes be difficult. So we'll talk about ideas that coaches can assist teachers with to get a little bit more edtech in there and hopefully get students engaged and interested in those lessons.

Katie Ritter: 45:38

Yeah, so be sure to subscribe to restart recharge wherever you listen to podcasts, we would love a rating and review if you have a couple of seconds. Just help other educators and coaches find our podcasts It would mean a lot to us. And you can follow us on all the social media at our our coach caste,

Justin Thomas: 45:55

and feel free to reach out to us and let us know if there's any topics that you want us to discuss here on Restore recharge. So press the restart button, recharge your coaching batteries and leave feeling equipped and inspired to coach fearlessly with the restart recharge podcast attack coach

Unknown: 46:09

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