Coaching Q&A

"If teachers have areas in which they can be developed, instructional coaches have the coaching program in our district, and leaders and aspiring leaders have ways to learn - what if we created a way for facilitators to learn? Because whoever is facilitating all of that learning, they need to be poured into as well. They need to be developed, too." - Dr. Jessica Wise

Hello and welcome back to our monthly Coaching Questions episode, where we dive deep into the world of coaching and education. I'm your host, Jim Knight, and I'm thrilled to be joined once again by ICG consultant, Dr. Jessica Wise.

This week, we celebrate a significant milestone in Jessica's journey – her doctoral accomplishment in the field of education. It's a momentous occasion that deserves recognition, and we couldn't be more excited to share in her success.

Jessica's doctoral research encompassed human focus facilitation. In our conversation, she discusses what it means to be more focused on the humans and less focused on the presentation. Listen in as Jessica shares the four ways to prioritize your learners and ensure meaningful professional development experiences where they feel refreshed, rejuvenated, and empowered.

I'd love to hear your feedback about my weekly Coaching Conversations. Please consider leaving a rating or review and subscribing to our channel.  

Keep up to date with everything ICG by signing up to our newsletter by clicking here. 

To learn more about the Paris Institute and how to attend, click here.

Transcript

0:00

If teachers have areas that they can be developed, instructional coaches have the coaching program in our district, and leaders and aspiring leaders have ways to learn What if we created a way for facilitators to learn? Because whoever is facilitating all of that learning, they need to be poured into as well. They need to be developed too. So what happened was we put our heads together. We went on this journey for two years. We researched, we read, we explored, we practiced, we watched ourselves facilitate, we reflected, we coached one another. And then we thought we have something. So we created this beautiful program where we gathered people together to learn more about facilitation, to create great professional development for teachers. And that's it just mattered so much to me because it empowers teachers and great professional development impacts kids too. Dr. Wise, how cool to see you. Congratulations. Less than 24, maybe. Maybe a little more than 24 hours since you got your doctorate. That's right. About 24 hours. And it's some change. Yes, I feel great. And you don't feel much different? You feel like the same person. Yeah. I'm excited that I finished and I achieved the goal. I've been working toward. But it just honestly, it was like, okay. And let's move on. Right. It felt normal to me. A lot of people feel depressed because it's over while they'd had this thing. But that's kind of the north point of a compass for their life and. Okay, so now what do I do? You know, now they move on, and so there's a weird kind of maybe not sadness, but something going on there. Me, I was relieved and it was like, bring on the rest of life. I was happy for it. There is no sadness on my part when it was over. Yes. I kept What I kept thinking is they're going to find out that I didn't write some paper that I needed to do in one of my classes or I missed one. So I'm just going to find out I wasn't going to get it. But so far, nobody's taking it back. So I think it's good. Well, as you know, I want to learn Spanish, so I think I know what's next. And maybe that's why land. I'm okay. Okay. Well, good, good, good. How are you going to learn Spanish? Not sure. Yeah, they have Duolingo. My daughter use that to practice Korean. So I think we'll. We'll do that together. Or Spanish. That sounds good. I'm working on my French in preparation for that. In Syria. So I'm using an app that is flashcards, essentially. And once you learn it, you can move on to the next one and it gives you the conjugation. I like sure. Yeah, it's I like it a lot. And you can just use it. You know, if you got a few minutes, you can use it. It's now. But enough, enough about that. So I thought we should turn the tables on our podcasts. And since you're now a doctor, I need to find out more about the doctor. And I also thought there may be people listening in who are thinking, maybe I should do a doctorate and or what should I look at? So I thought we would try to accomplish two things at once. I'd love to hear about your research, but also just about the whole process of of doing a doctorate. So I'm going to weave questions in back and forth and anything you want to share, please make sure you share those who worked through this. Does that sound okay to you? Sounds great. I'm very excited. All right. So. So what? Why did you choose to do the doctorate? What's what the heck were you thinking? Right. And on top of that, I started in 2020. So definitely. What was I thinking? Right. Right. What led me there was that I had the privilege of leading the coaching program in my former school district, and we had instructional coaches and teacher leaders and department chairs who loved their journeys. They loved being a part of a structured program. They talked about the empowerment and the inspiration, and I watched them go through this year after year thinking, Gosh, I want that. I want to be a part of something that broadens my perspective, that helps me learn more about education in general. And I kept looking for what could it be? I'd read some books and I do some book studies and book clubs, and it just never really felt like enough. I wanted a journey of my own, and that's when I thought, You know what? It's time. It's probably time for me to go back to school. Why did you choose the topic you chose? What was going on with that? Yes. So I want to take you all the way back to my first year of teaching. I as I was shared with you, it was not great, but after it was over, my mentor teacher said, You know, if you're not feeling confident, you can go to professional development. I was completely blown away. I had no idea The this glorious bank of professional development existed for teachers in our district. So I signed up for one and it changed my life. It was the Writing institute. I'll never forget it. And I attended nine days at this institute, and it was spectacular. I'm on my principal. About halfway through, I said, I love this. I can't wait to put this into my classroom. I can't wait to do all this. And she said, Well, you know, if it's so great, you should share it when you come back to pre-planning. And so there I was agreeing to present all this great stuff as a second year teacher. So I did it and it was probably terrible. But what I learned in that moment was that I really liked sharing with teachers. I really liked giving teachers ideas and then hearing how they would change it to make it work for their classrooms and then hearing them get excited and watching them go back and try it. It became this fire inside of me that I want to do this. I want to talk to teachers about their practice. I want to support them in setting goals and trying new things and learning new instructional strategies. So I just kept doing that and my principal kept calling on me and I kept stepping up. And then as I facilitated throughout the district, I ended up in the central office where I was on the staff development team, and there I was able to see that bigger impact of professional development. It's not just about just me and my classroom, it's about the school or it's about the cluster of schools. And so I had a great partner that I want to give a shout out to Marquita Saddams, and she and I facilitated the coaching program together in that district. And so we said, you know, we need to really pour into our learning about facilitation and professional development. And what is it about professional development that teachers like and what is it that teachers don't like? And what we realize is that the more we read, the more we researched, the more we found that if we expanded our learning that teachers who came to the sessions found it even more empowering so that probably poor professional development. I put on my first year of teaching or after my first year all the way to there, that moment where we realized there was research there, we thought this is an area that hasn't been explored. If teachers have areas that they can be developed, instructional coaches have the coaching program in our district, and leaders and aspiring leaders have ways to learn What if we created a way for facilitators to learn? Because whoever is facilitating all of that learning, they need to be poured into as well. They need to be developed too. So what happened was we put our heads together. We went on this journey for two years. We researched, we read, we explored, we practiced, we watched ourselves facilitate, we reflected, we coached one another. And then we thought we have something. So we created this beautiful program where we gathered people together to learn more about facilitation, to create great professional development for teachers. And that's it just mattered so much to me because it empowers teachers and great professional development impacts kids too. So you coined the phrase, by the way, my first professional development sessions, my training, they were like near-death experiences. It was just it was death by overhead. Like I'd show up with those overheads. By the way, are these plastic things we put on projector thing anyway, which I'd show up and I would do the do the I would go through I literally 150 slides without stop, just like one after the other. And sometimes I didn't even really remember what was on the slide, but I had it in my pocket and I've been trained to do this. You got to cover every little bit of the detail and and people just they, they were it wasn't great. So hopefully I've come a little ways along that thing. You use the phrase human focus facilitation. So what do you mean by that? Yes, human focused facilitation was our idea of moving away from thinking about what do my slides look like? Is my presentation pretty and do I have the right materials? Do I have nice handouts? Are they stapled and organized and more toward a focus on the people, the people who are coming to the room, the people who are in this session? How are they feeling? What do they need? So we discovered that if you pour more into the people prioritizing them, you can be more focused on the humans and less focus on that presentation. And that was the the whole premise of it is we wanted to know how the people were and what they needed from us. How do you go about doing that? Yes. So one way you can do that is to develop an awareness for how you show up. So we started with within. If I want to make sure that the learning environment for our teachers, our instructional coaches, our leaders, whomever to be really powerful, I need to look within myself and become more aware, become more emotionally intelligent as a facilitator. Now, emotional intelligence ended up being a foundation from this for this whole program, and it came out multiple times. And our qualitative data from this study and everything too. But we also looked at the environment, making sure that the place where the people came to learn was safe, it was equitable, and that it was conducive to learning. Because sometimes you walk into a session and you think, I can't learn here, there's too much noise, it's too busy, there's too much happening, or the slides are distracting. So we wanted to make sure that the environment too was conducive to learning. And then another thing is to make sure the experience, the learning experience is meaningful. And we leaned on a lot of work from Sawyer and Stuckey about the elements of professional learning to make sure it's active, learning, that it's collaborative, that it endures, and then it's focused on goals for the teachers and then finally, to be aware of how the facilitator or the presenter interacts with the people. So those are our four big buckets, is awareness of self, the learning environment, the learning experience and the interactions. And many a little bit more about awareness of self because I wouldn't have thought of that as a part of it. But when you mention it, I'm like, that's so brilliant. So what do you what do you mean by being aware? Tell me more about being aware of self. Yes, absolutely. One of their descriptors we coined under this, this competency of facilitators is a trigger. So of course we know that we have triggers when we're in conversations. Maybe someone brings something up and we think that really bothers me. And we might get into a heated debate as a facilitator of learning for adults. There are also triggers. So if someone interrupts while you're presenting, if someone's on their phone, while you're trying to engage them in a learning activity, if they opt out, if they leave the room too much, there are certain triggers as facilitators, even virtually, that may really get to us. So being aware of how that makes me feel so I can manage those emotions back to emotional intelligence and also so that I don't disrupt the learning experience for others because I know that I'm triggered. So I'll give you an example. I was facilitating professional learning for instructional coaches, and one of the coaches in the room stood up and disagreed with something. I said, The room is full, probably over a hundred people. And in that moment I felt very triggered because there was a disruption in the learning for the whole audience. It could have been a one on one conversation because they were about to turn it into an activity. And because I was very aware that I was triggered, I was able to, okay, this is not about me. This is about him and his feelings about this particular content. Or maybe there is something that was going on in his school and I need to lean in and see if he's okay. So being aware of, okay, this just happened and here's how I'm feeling. But it's not about me. It's about making sure this learning environment stays safe. And what was the fourth? Fourth part? How I interact with the learner. So is it. Tell me more about that. I have I have a specific question I'm curious about, but it may come up in your answer. Right. So back to that example is, if I saw that as a power move that this instructional coach, you stood up to interrupt was trying to get power on him. Right. And perhaps he saw as he was below and I had put myself one up. If we think about status, that might have seemed like a power move for him or a battle of power in that moment. But in my interaction with him, I never made it about status or power or like, you're interrupting me, cannot please. We instead hearing the opposition and making sure that I did give voice to everyone in the room and not just the people who are pleased with the experience, the people who had concerns too. So making sure that my interactions are for everyone, not just one particular learner. Now, do you see noticing as a part of that, reading the audience as your present? Yeah. Is noticing them their energy whether or not they're engaging in what makes them more engaged than other things that we have in this session, or even if it's getting closer, if they're staying late after school and they come in with low energy, what can we do at the very beginning to give them an opportunity to interact with us or each other so that they can be ready for that learning experience? Yes, absolutely. See, I see noticing as a defining characteristic of an effective facilitator, it's almost like the facilitator can feel what's happening in the room. It's like there's a climate or a temperature or something going on, a vibe, and they pick up on and they go, we got to change things here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell a story or we're going to have an activity or in less successful facilitators, just do what they've always done as they work their way through, regardless of what the group does. So I think that fits in with your idea of focus on humans. That's right. Yes. And one of the other descriptors under that particular session section where our portrait we created a portrait of a human focused facilitator, is to follow the agenda of the people. So if I have a very specific agenda or I want to do 10 minutes on this activity and 20 on this one, but something interferes with that plan, Like I said, a moment ago, emotionally emotional intelligence, being emotionally intelligent enough to say this is not what they need right now, and I need to make sure that they get what they need. It's not about accomplishing my agenda. So how did you do your research? What was the whole research part? Yes. I must tell you, Jim, I loved this research and I didn't realize how much I loved research until I did this project. So for anyone out there who say our research isn't for me, I would say give it a chance, because it really did change my perspective on the idea. I conducted a mixed Methods formative program evaluation on our human focused facilitation program. So I used a quantitative survey that our participants completed for us at the start of the year and then another survey at the end of the pilot year that measured their growth in a quantitative element in this particular mixed methods approach. I then layered on a qualitative interview to further explain the quantitative data and to offer our participants the opportunity to put into words the impact this community of practice had on their growth as facilitators. There were many things I could have measured with this group, but since Mark and I were in our first year of the program, the evaluation was formative in nature. It was giving us a chance to see how well we were implementing the activities mapped out in our program Logic model. I was looking at two specific research questions. First, I wanted to know if the two artifacts Marc Wheatus and I had were effective tools for any facilitator to be able to pick up and use to grow one of those tools, which is self assessment and goal setting form. It showed the competencies we uncovered inner learning, and it offers a chance for people to look at this and say, Yes, I'm doing those things. I'm beginning to do those things or I am not doing those things yet. This self-assessment sets up an opportunity for goal setting. So I recruited a focus group who had not participated in our pilot to help determine how effective that tool is for anyone to use. The second question that guided my research was about the processes we used in the program. Our program involved gatherings where we learned, practice reflected and planned, and then we had peer coaching, implementation and reflection. So I used the mixed methods approach to evaluate how effective those activities were and to evaluate if we were actually doing the things we said we would do in our program theory. So I used all of that to create a comprehensive process evaluation of our pilot year, which informed decisions we made about how to improve our artifacts and what parts of the logic model are most effective to support the growth of facilitators. Did your reading and your research change how you interact with people personally? It absolutely did. I can tell you these and already know I'm a bit of an introvert and it's challenging for me to walk up to people and have small talk or just kick off a conversation. That's really challenging for me. But in facilitation, even in Zoom or in person, I do push myself to go talk to people and make sure that I'm interacting with the audience. But I'd be very nervous and it was very surface level. Hey, how are you? How's your day going and what happened? And all of this research is a shift began to occur and both my Cleetus and I, my research partner, we've realized this in our own learning, is we went from checking in, Hey, how are you? How was your day to how are you feeling? What's on your mind? What's important to you right now? If it was in the middle of the session, we'd want to know, How are you feeling about this idea? What strategies are you interested in trying? So personally, it allowed me to dive deeper into conversations. It gave me permission, I guess, to really be vulnerable and get to know people and to really see them as humans with dignity and not just, okay, there's someone you have to go do small talk with. You can do it. And then I do it and say, Great job. Now I'm really seeing them as humans and and people who are going back and doing great work for kids. When you say humans, you mean you mean you see them as a full person, not just an object or What do you mean by that? I think so, yes. And that sounds bad, I think, but maybe not an object. But I'd be very nervous to talk with people and just strike up conversations often didn't know what to talk about, but when I leaned into what really matters to them or Hey, I have 5 minutes and we're in between activities or we're on a break, or you're just coming in, or you're getting ready to leave. I'm genuinely interested and curious about how they are, what they're taking away, what might they need support with as they go and implement this? What potential gaps do they see in their practice that I could support with in between the next session? So I think like it opens me up to really want to get to know people better that attended the sessions. What do you think is the most important finding in all your research? And can I pick two things? Yeah, you can do two. Okay. You can do as many as you. I think the biggest we had is that professional development facilitator. Adult learning facilitators also need a place to go to grow. So like I mentioned, we have opportunities for teachers, we have opportunities for instructional coaches, we have opportunities for leaders, aspiring leaders. What about the people who are responsible for leading the work for all of those people? So a big finding was that when we opened up the opportunity for people to come and learn about facilitation, practice it, reflect on a record themselves, get peer coached, that they grew and they flourished in their role. And they they really found that they became more confident, more emotionally intelligent. So if I could say, Hey, here's one thing world listen in, it would be make the space, make the opportunities for facilitators to gather, to talk about their craft, to practice and to grow so they can deliver great professional development for whomever they're working with. And then the second thing I was going to say, you got more than one, so go ahead. It is peer coaching. We had a great program. Marquita and I launched this wonderful work. It was fantastic, but it would have just been another professional development if we had come to the sessions and they had learned with us. And then we said, Good luck, go implement whatever you want. Instead we had them peer coach team up with someone, develop protocols that they could use when they met every other month, bring artifacts back, videos, whatever that might be, and co to each other. On what's going well. What would you like to do differently? And then share suggestions too. So it was this beautiful dialogical gem because we are always inspired by dialogical coaching from you. This beautiful dialog of what are you learning, what are you trying, How's it going? What could we do differently to keep it moving forward? So the peer coach element was really a big support for them. It helps them implement it, I think successfully. So it sounds like the human focused facilitation was energizing and helpful. I think so too. Yes. I coming in so much professional development. There was an old joke that when I die, I hope it happens during professional development activity because the transition into death will be so slight, you know, But it sounds like what you're talking about is something where people feel this is meaningful, but they also have a relationship built out of it, like connection. So they find useful tools in an environment where they feel empowered. That's right. And we had a mission. We wanted people to feel refreshed and rejuvenated and empowered. We had an associate superintendent early on in this school district come to one of our sessions and and he said, What is this feeling? And he would always just try to grab the whole room and he'd say, What do I feel when I'm in here? When I'm in this room? I don't feel it other places. And for a long time we couldn't put our finger on what it was that he was talking about. And so we spent that time researching and reflecting and watching videos and talking to our participants and collecting quantitative and qualitative data. And that's when we realized it's because we're not worried about us and we're not worried about our presentation, what the slides look like. It's a white background with black font. We don't care if it's fancy. We really want people to come and feel welcome here. We want people to feel like this is where you belong and we've got you and you're going to go do great things and we'll support you along the way. So human focused facilitation was developed for all of those people, and it sounds like it's shaping how you do virtual professional development. It is. And I'm curious to see what these practices would look like if I were to do some research in Zoom. It's been in the back of my mind, but it absolutely has changed the way I think about any time, even a coaching conversation. I've been blessed to be able to talk with coaches in different parts of the world, and when I do, I always pull up that human focus facilitator portrait. And I think how even in a coaching conversation in my showing up as a human focused person and if people want to see you, they just have to take a virtual course that I see because you're are you are you're a core facilitator for virtual courses. So a dissertation takes years of work. It's so much work and it's overwhelming and hard in many ways. Are you glad you did it? I'm so glad I did this. I had wanted something for so long and I didn't quite know how I would do it with kids. I had small kids and I started. They're still small, but a little older, and I worried to if my schedule would permit. And did I have the capacity? Did I have the focus? I have the time and I did. I made it happen. And I would say I'm so happy. I said yes. But I also think that believing in myself is what got me here and I can do this. And yeah, I have some doubts, but I want this and I can do it though I'm really happy. Well, I'm happy to this. I'm thrilled to see you accomplish all this. But we're just scratching the surface as this has got to become a thing that people do everywhere. This human focus prefers facilitation. So sort of my last question is, what advice do you have for anybody who wants to do a doctorate? But I think my best advice would be conditions are important. When I first said I'm going to do it and my husband and I made that call and I applied and I got in, I had to make sure that the right conditions were in place for me to be successful. And that meant carving out 2 to 3 hours twice a week, three times a week. So I actually practiced at Jim, my advisor at the college, said, Are you sure you have 15 hours a week? I said, Absolutely. So I carved out time every other day. I did every other day. And I would sit down and I'd read or I'd create my own quiz on something just to get used to having that time dedicated to learning. And because of that, having papers or classes to take. And then my dissertation to write I won't say was easy, but it was easier because I had that habit of this is my dedicated learning time. And when the girls go to bed and Robert's doing something else, this is just for me. So the conditions for success are really important. Yeah, I would say keep working, you know, keep moving. But that seems that's built, built into the habit. You're describing the conditions of making a habit. The other thing I would add is choose the right advisor. Yeah. So my advisor was Don Tessler, and he's my mentor and friend and inspiration, and his constant support has had a lot to do with me being successful. So I think if you have the right advisor, you get to have that the wrong advisor, who would be one who makes you feel small and who, you know diminishes versus a multiplier. So I think getting the right person is really key to anything else you want to tell us about your dissertation? You haven't shared or any of this. Now that you're at the end of the journey and you're looking forward to learning Spanish, anything else you want to ask? Okay. I would just say if anyone is listening and they're thinking how I want to do that, I would say an easy first step is just to reflect on how you show up as a facilitator. And as you talk about Jim often, his video is so powerful. I think if it weren't for video, I probably wouldn't have grown as a facilitator watching the video coaching one another in my team and with is really helped me to see myself. And when I saw myself, it's like you say in the book that focus on teaching it opened my eyes. I had no idea what I was doing as a facilitator. I thought, like how pretty my slides are. What more could I do? So much more? So I think just anyone out there who, like, I want to do this, start with watching yourself and get that clear current reality and then just try new things. And every time ask people how it's going, what they think and believe in yourself. Well, I think you're opening people's eyes with human focused facilitation. So I'm going to be excited to see how it grows and spreads and what people do with it. And thank you for your time. Thank you for your research, and I'll see you Monday. Next, our next virtual Institute. Go ahead. Thank you. Yeah, thanks.