Coaching to Support Children’s Emotional and Behavioral Self-regulation

Coaching to Support Children’s Emotional and Behavioral Self-Regulation

Joyce Escorcia: Thank you for joining us for our episode. We're going to be talking about coaching to support – to support emotional and behavioral self-regulation. We are so glad that you are joining us today. My name is Joyce Escorcia, and I am with the National Center for Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning. And I am here with my wonderful cohost and colleague, Sarah Basler. And we're excited to spend this hour together with you. We are also excited about trying out some different things this year. We've got some goodies planned for the hour.

And one of the things that we're trying out is threading the same topic across different webinar series that we do as a National Center. Teacher Time, the Ed Managers webinar, our Coaching Corner and Home Visiting and also with Inclusion. We're all trying to thread the same topic area across our webinars and to really make connections as it applies to those different roles that could be watching each webinar series. And we hope that this approach really applies – really offers opportunities for learning and collaboration across those different roles within your program. That you could watch the webinar and then come together and talk about what was discussed in the different webinars. You could take clips and have conversations, all of those fun things. That's one new thing for this year.

And also, as we're moving into this new webinar year, webinar season. We as a Coaching Corner webinar, we wanted to change things up a bit because our goal for our webinar is really to provide you with information and practical strategies that you can use in your role so that you can use it to support your coachees. You can use it to support yourself as a coach, and you can use it to also support coaches that you are supporting. Keeping that in mind, we really wanted to introduce some segments and things that you can always look to expect when you are watching our webinar or participating in our webinar. Here, that's what you see listed.

First, we have the Mindful Moment. During that Mindful Moment segment, we're going to be connecting the topic of the webinar of our time together and sharing information or strategies that you can try or that can help you reduce stress, manage your emotions, bring awareness to yourself, or to just be present in the moment. Next, we're always going to provide you with some coaching and practice time. This is going to be a space where you have the opportunity to walk through a case study, hear tips and tricks from coaches in the field, or even practice a coaching strategy. We're intentionally building in that segment into our webinars. And then we also have the Eye on Equity segment. And that's going to include tips and strategies on coaching considerations related to equity for children, families, and/or education staff.

And then finally, we want to introduce Koko's Corner. Just like the iPD has Professor Panda, and we also have the DLL llama, the Coaching Companion now has Koko the Koala. During this segment, we're going to share ways that can help you get the most out of using the Coaching Companion platform. Today, you're going to meet Koko, and he's going to be sharing some info about the Coaching Companion. That's just a few of the new goodies that you can expect from us moving forward.

For our time together today, we really hope that you'll be able to walk away being able to identify ways to promote emotional and behavioral self-regulation skills of infants, toddlers, and preschool-age children. And we also hope that you can walk away with resources that can support coachees in using these skills. Again, we're just looking to add to your toolbox and your treasure box of things that you're using at your program to support others and support yourself. And we also want to introduce – we're putting a lot of new things out here for you – we also want to introduce and call your attention to the Viewer's Guide. And that is going to be in the Resource widget, that teal resource widget at the bottom. That Viewer's Guide is going to be a tool really to help you engage in this webinar.

This guide is really a place for you to take notes, write reflections, write down strategies that you hear that you want to take back and use at your program, or you want to try out, and also a place for you just to write questions as well. And we're always going to include a resource section in the guide to help you take a deeper dive into the content and the topic that we're talking about. Please let us know if you have any ideas or thoughts about how we can make this guide most meaningful to you and something that you will really use moving forward. Also like to just mention that this guide is also being used across those other webinars that we just mentioned as well. They have their own version of those guides.

Again, lots of new and good things happening. This year, our Coaching Corner series is really going to focus in on Approaches to Learning, that domain within the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework, or the ELOF. Many of you are familiar with that framework. The ELOF really describes the skills, behaviors, and knowledge that as programs, we want to see children thrive in and do. The framework is really grounded in research about what young children should be doing to succeed in school. And it really describes how children progress across those key areas of learning and development. This year, we're going to be focusing in on the Approaches to Learning domain. All that information, learning more about that and digging into that will really help us as adults and those supporting children to really understand what we can be doing to provide those effective learning experiences and really support those positive outcomes.

And as I mentioned, we're going to be focusing in on Approaches to Learning. Approaches to Learning really focuses in on how children learn. It's really about the “how.” It refers to the skills and behaviors that children use to engage in learning. And Approaches to Learning, that domain really incorporates that emotional, that behavioral, and that cognitive self-regulation under that one umbrella to guide those teaching practices that support the development of those skills. And that's really where we're going to be focusing in on. This domain, Approaches to Learning, it also includes initiative, curiosity, and creativity. And we know that really by supporting children's skills in that, by just supporting children to be curious and to support initiatives, all of those things really help them to learn and get what they need to be successful in achieving their goals.

We're excited to dig into that and see how we and how coaching and as coaches how we can support that, support our coachees as they're supporting children and families. All that to say, we're digging into where we're going to be in the space that we're going to be for our time together today. That Approaches to Learning domain, it is divided into these four subdomains, and you see those here. That's that emotional and – emotional and behavioral self-regulation. There's cognitive self-regulation or that executive functioning. There's initiative and curiosity, and there's creativity. And we're going to be focusing in on today into that first subdomain of emotional and behavioral self-regulation. That's really where we're going to hone in our conversation for today.

We know that research really show us that children who are able to regulate or manage their emotions and behaviors do better in school and really have an easier time getting along with their peers. Children who are able to self-regulate can also do things like handle strong emotions, even tolerate frustration, impulse control, ability to follow rules. All of those great things can come from within this space. We know that if children can regulate themselves, that they're really able to use different learning approaches more effectively. This is helping to lay some of that groundwork there.

Now also want to recognize here and just put out there that the goals are broad statements when we're looking at the ELOF, that these goals and statements are really broad about the expectations that are laid out for children's learning and development. And the goals describe these broader, bigger skills, behaviors, and concepts within that subdomain. And we know that it's important for success in school. These are sometimes referred to as standards in state early learning guidelines. It's just a little bit of different vocabulary. But we do want to say that while those are bigger statements about children learning and what we want children to do, that these goals should not be confused with a coachee's goal. That the goals must be a starting point where we're thinking about what we want children to do, that that's a starting point for writing an action plan. But the goal on an action plan would be focused on an effective teaching and/or home-visiting practice and how and what the coach and a coachee will do to support that child learning.

When we're thinking about coaching, we're still focusing in on that effective teaching or home-visiting practice. That in turn, by doing that, that's how we're supporting that child's learning and for them to reach their own goals. We just wanted to mention that as well. Here you see the goals for infants and toddlers for the subdomain for emotional and behavioral self-regulation. You can see it says, "Child manages feelings and emotions with support of familiar adults." That's just an example there. And then also, in the ELOF, it lays out goals for preschoolers for this subdomain. There are some goals there, and you see that there. And one thing that you're going to notice that's the same about three of these goals, that preschoolers are going to do one, two, and four with increasing independence. We wanted to be sure and point this out because it helps us to understand that children aren't expected to use these skills completely independently but that the adult is responsible for supporting the development of those skills.

And when we think about these different goals, there's something that we call a “developmental progression.” That progression really describes the skills, the behaviors, and the concepts that children are going to demonstrate as they progress towards a given goal. It's not that they're just – not that they're just going to do it, but it's about progressing towards that goal – thinking to progression within a certain age period. And when we think about emerging, the term “emerging” is used for the youngest infant age when specific skills or behaviors or those concepts haven't yet emerged or are not yet observable.

Also, the developmental progression is going to be important to consider when we're writing action plans with coaches. You'll want the coachee to really think about where the child or the children that they're working with are related to the progression of the skills related to that subdomain. And that could impact how your specific goal is written in that how – how they're looking to implement a certain teaching practice to support that child and of accomplishing their goal or working towards accomplishing their goal.

I know that was a lot. If you say, "Man, I want to know more about approaches to learning," now again we have, in your resource list, there are some – there's some more resources that you can really dig into that domain with. With all that being said, I'm going to turn it over now to Sarah, who's going to talk to us about our Mindful Moment.

Sarah Basler: Thanks, Joyce. Wow. Now that Joyce has given us a great explanation about how emotional and behavioral self-regulation is described in the ELOF and a little bit about how the ELOF is organized, we're going to take just a minute to think about your own emotional and behavioral self-regulation. All right. We know that your job as a coach can be – it can be challenging. It can be stressful and that you may have multiple roles. You might wear very – you might wear lots of different hats. And those roles that you serve in might be competing for your time. Your well-being is really important, and it helps to contribute to your own ability to self-regulate. It's so important that it's included in the PBC Coaching Competencies.

And you see here one of those competencies that can be found in Domain 1 of Preparation. The item is that a coach demonstrates the ability to regulate personal emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in different situations. Not only are these self-regulation skills important in that we foster and support children to use, they're also skills that lead us into adulthood. They're skills that we as adults can also working on and try to strengthen.

We're going to watch a short video from MindWell, and it's going to walk us through the stress-bucket analogy. As you're watching, think about some strategies that you really like to use to reduce your stress levels so that you are able to appropriately self-regulate in those stressful situations. You ... There's a spot in your Viewer's Guide to write down some of the strategies that you hear. And then when we come back, we'll share some of what our favorite strategies that we like and what maybe we heard from the video.

[Video begins]

[Music]

Man: Stress is something that we all experience sometimes. When problems and pressures get too much, we can start to feel overwhelmed and struggle to cope. Everyday pressures like work, money, and family worries can place huge demands on us, as can big life events like losing your job, family breakdown, or the death of someone close. The stress bucket is a helpful way of thinking about your problems and finding different ways of looking at what's causing your stress. Imagine that you carry a bucket with you. As the day goes by, different problems and demands fill up your bucket. When your bucket overflows, the stress can make you angry, anxious, or sad.

The good news is, there are things that you can do to manage these problems and stop your bucket overflowing. Try and exercise a bit more, eat well, and get more sleep. Get support by talking to someone you trust and telling them how you feel. Make a list to help break problems down and think about your priorities. What small tasks should you tackle first? Try the relaxation ideas on the MindWell website. Take a short break. Practice breathing techniques and find the things that work for you. Making these small changes can feel good, like turning on a tap to release some of the pressure you're feeling. Explore the MindWell website for more helpful tools and ideas for coping with stress and keeping your buckets from overflowing.

[Video ends]

Sarah: Awesome. I really like that analogy. It's a really helpful way to think about how those daily stressors really contribute to our overall well-being. When stress levels get low, that's when we might find ourselves having some challenging behavior. We might get angry or frustrated or yell. We might cry. We might lose sleep. We might be so stressed. We might – it might cause us to be unable to complete work. We want to hear from you. Use the Q&A widget to tell us, what are some of your favorite ways to keep your stress bucket from overflowing?

Joyce: Sarah, what are some ways that you keep your bucket from overflowing?

Sarah: There was one that was mentioned in the video that is really helpful to me. Often when I get stressed, I feel like I can't even think about where I need to begin with tasks or what I should do first or where I should start. I like to make lists when I get stressed. And even before I get stressed, I like to make lists, and I like to prioritize the things on that list. I do it by highlighting what needs to get completed first, like what has to happen so that I can focus in. I also really like to go for a walk, do some exercising. Yeah. What are some of the things that you like to do to keep your bucket from overflowing?

Joyce: I love making a list, especially if I feel like I'm going through a season of my bucket feeling fuller. I especially like to start my day with a list of what ... I know many things I can't control, but I can get through these things on my list. I also just like to try to step outside or find a little bit of sunlight somewhere. That – that tends to make me feel better and reset a little bit. Those are my two go-tos. If I had a little bit more time, I love to do puzzles too. That really helps to empty my bucket quite a bit. I'm a big puzzler. That's another one for me.

Sarah: That must ... Yeah, my dad is a puzzler too. That's his way to destress. I see lots of great responses here. I have, "Go for a walk during lunchtime.” Then I see, "Going for a walk," "Deep breaths," "Singing," "Listening to music.” I see some people saying ...

Joyce: Lauren says, "Exercise.”

Sarah: Yes, "Exercising," "Deep breathing," "Spending time with my chickens.” That sounds so much fun. "Soothing music.”

Joyce: I want to spend time with your chickens.

Sarah: Yeah, that sounds very fun. It sounds like you guys have lots of great strategies for helping to keep your stress bucket from overflowing. And it's really important that you utilize those strategies before your bucket is overflowing because often when our bucket is overflowing, we're unable to regulate. We often will snap at people, or we're not able to really be in the forefront of our mind. Make sure to take care of yourself, and when you have time, do those things to keep yourself from overflowing.

All right. Now we're going to move into our Coaching and Practice. We talked about ways that you can manage your stress and help to self-regulate, and now we're going to dive into these practices that Joyce shared with us in the – from the ELOF. All right. Here you see a needs assessment that was completed. It has teaching practices on it that are related to the emotional and behavioral self-regulation subdomain on the ELOF. And developing a needs assessment that's related to the practices that your program is going to be focusing on for coaching is really going to be helpful to identify those areas of strengths and those areas that coachees might be interested in improving or enhancing. We're going to take a look at this, and let's see how this teacher rated their use of these practices.

We see here that it's on a five-point scale, with one being that the coachee isn't using these practices at all, and five being that they're using the practices all the time. And we see that there's a section to rank the priority from one to five for ... How big of a priority do they think that this practice is that they'd like to work on? And also, they can write notes about what their thoughts are about these items. I'm going to take – give you just a second to find that page in your Viewer's Guide. Look at it. See how this coachee has rated themselves, and put your ... Look at it through your coaching lens and think about where you might start with your coachee. If this was your coachee, what practice might you say, "Hmm, I think that looks like a good place to start"?

All right. Let's hear what you think. We've got a poll, and in this poll, we've put some of the practices from the needs assessment. What practices do you think – what practice do you think would be a good place to start to write an action plan with this teacher based on how they assess themselves in their needs assessment? Would you say, "Use role play to help a child practice experiencing strong emotions"? That was rated a one. Would you say, "B, pair a child with more fully developed emotional and behavioral self-regulation skills with other children"? That's rated a three. The “provide props and materials,” that's rated a two. Remember one means not at all. Five means all the time. Let's ... I'm going to give you a second to see which one you would select. One, they use this practice not at all. Five, they rate – they use it all the time.

Great. Still have some time, and I see here, just as I expected, that we have varying responses here. And that doesn't surprise me because the cool thing about needs assessments are is that there's a variety of reasons and ways that we might get to the practice that we select. We have ... Participants have selected almost all of these. Like, it's pretty much split between A and C, but the good news is that there's really no right or wrong choice for selecting a practice. There's lots of factors that go into it. There are definitely some more obvious selection criteria. For example, if a coachee is going to say that they use a practice frequently, that might not really be somewhere you want to work with that coachee. However, there could be reasons why you would want to select that. If you – if the coachee may be new to coaching or has had potentially a negative experience with coaching in the past, you might want to do a quick lens, you might select a practice that they might just need to tweak or refine. Maybe they've rated themselves a little higher.

You don't always have to choose the skill that the coachee is implementing not at all. You might not want to start there. It might be that there are ... Starting at one of something that they've ranked as that they don't do at all, might mean that there's prerequisite skills that they need to have or foundational skills that they need before they can implement that. You want to take that into consideration. But ultimately, you want to consider the coachee's choice and their input. We wouldn't select a goal for a coachee. We definitely are working within that collaborative partnership, and we're taking into account their thoughts and their – and their needs and what they want to work on. Because if we choose a goal for our coachee, there –they may not see the value in it. They may not feel very motivated to work on it. We just want to make sure that we're doing it – we're doing it in collaboration with them. We're selecting something that they have – that they want to work on.

All right. For the purposes of our activity in our coaching practice today, we selected practice five, which is using role play to help a child practice how to act and what to say when experiencing strong emotions. We see that the coachee marked as a high priority in the notes, and they said they wanted to work on this first. Although practice six, we see that they marked themselves as not doing that practice at all. We see that the priority rankings come into play here. We see that this is something that the coachee said they wanted to work on. We decided that's where we're going to start. Let's take a look at the completed action plan, and this is also included in your Viewer's Guide. And we're going to practice in a little bit. If you haven't already gotten your Viewer's Guide out, it might be helpful to pull that out.

After some discussion with the teacher, the coach and the coachee decided that the best place to start – where they wanted to go first – was to teach calming strategies to use when children are experiencing strong emotions. The teacher reported that they already have a safe space in the classroom, a place for students to go when they're experiencing strong emotions. The teacher felt like it would be easy to incorporate another practice in the needs assessment as a step in the action plan. The teacher wanted to add visuals and other materials that children could use to go to or use when they need to calm down.

All right. We're going to talk a little bit about some of the data that you could collect around this action plan. Based on this action plan, some of the types of data that might be helpful to collect would definitely be looking at those resources or those steps and seeing, were there materials that the coachee wanted to incorporate or use? And if so, did the coach, the coachee have those posted? Were they referred to during the observation? Here we also see ... I'm going to go back for just one moment to say that this coach and coachee selected that they're going to teach children to calm down when they're experiencing strong emotions, and they've identified some emotions like anger, sadness, excitement, anxiety. And the coachee is going to teach these by modeling how to use the strategies, using visual supports and prompting children in the moment, and providing feedback to children when they use those strategies.

Knowing that, let's talk a little bit about some data to collect there. I already mentioned that if a coachee selected that they were going to use materials, that that would be definitely something I would want to look for. Here we would probably want to check and see are there visuals posted? Does the coachee refer to them? Related to this goal, it mentioned that the teacher was going to model practices, so I would watch in my focused observation if a – if the teacher was actually modeling the use of these calming strategies. Joyce, are there any strategies that maybe you might look for in a focused observation related to this goal? I think you're muted. Sorry.

Joyce: Whoops. Sorry. I was just talking away. I said ... I know, right? I was just saying that – I was just thinking about some of the things that you had just mentioned about the materials, see if they prompted children to use any of those calming strategies. All of those really great things are good to look for. There was also a question that came up in the Q&A, Sarah, that I wanted to bring up that ties in here of, "How often should you fill out a needs assessment with a coachee and also the action plan?”

Sarah: Mm, those are really great questions. For a needs assessment, typically, I mean, you can fill them out as many as ... Like, I mean, I would say you would at least want to fill it out at the beginning of the coaching year. Once those practices have been selected by your program, and this is decided. This is the focus of coaching. We've decided who's getting coached. We would have teachers fill these out when – at the beginning of the year. I usually have them fill it out at another point in time, closer either to mid-year or the end of the year, to see how they're feeling about the practices. But there's not a set number of times that you should fill a needs assessment out. However, you definitely want to do it to have a starting point. And it's also really good to see where – how they feel or how they've changed in their knowledge or comfortability using those practices, I like to do it at least twice.

And then as far as how often do you need to write an action plan, that really depends on the coachee's needs and the goals that you're writing. But we typically say that an action plan should be accomplished within two to three cycles. If you are finding that coachees are having a tough time being able to complete action plans within two to three coaching sessions, you might look to see if your practices or the action-plan goals are specific enough and that they're something that is achievable. Sometimes, we make these big goals that we're not able to complete in two to three cycles. Do you have thoughts, anything to add, Joyce?

Joyce: No, I was just going to say yes, going back to the sample one that we just propped up. It's a very specific goal, and it's something that we can observe and look for – look to see if it's happening. It's nothing that we have to look at across a couple of months or even a year. We just had a couple of questions. I wanted to pop those in there.

Sarah: Perfect. Thank you. And I just want to note, I'm seeing lots of questions about the needs assessments in general. And there are needs assessments for preschool, infants and toddlers, and home visiting – or actually there are action plans for home visiting – but needs assessments for infants and toddlers and preschool age based on the ELOF – some of the practices from the ELOF in your Viewer's Guide. Those are just samples that you could see how you might want to develop one.

All right. Now we get to the fun part. We're going to let you practice, turn on your coaching skills, and we're going to watch a video of a teacher using the practices from this action plan and prompting children to use calming strategies in the moment. If you want to take a peek at your action plan again and your Viewer's Guide and take notes as you watch the clip. We're going to … Take notes on what you see, and then we'll review it as a group – some of the things that we noticed related to the action plan.

[Video begins]

Teacher: I need this one put away, too. Thank you so much, Winnie.

Nova: This one is a bad puppy.

Child: He's not a bad puppy.

Teacher: It's not a bad puppy? Oh, goodness, I notice you guys are bumping them. I remember that our classroom rule says to be safe, which means we use gentle hands. How can we be gentle with our toys?

Nova: Be safe.

Teacher: Yeah, be safe. Be gentle. That means we may not bump them, but we can build together, or we can drive them. Yeah, but bumping them may not be a safe choice because someone might get hurt. And we want to stay safe, don't we?

Nova: But it hit with that thing.

Teacher: Oh, goodness, he hit it with his toys? How did that make you feel?

Nova: Sad.

Teacher: Sad. Did you tell Daniel that?

Nova: Yeah.

Daniel: I tell him, "You need to move your hands.”

Teacher: Oh, but you hurt his hand. What can we say to make him feel better?

Child: I have the blue.

Daniel: No, I have an idea. Maybe the flower.

Teacher: Oh, maybe breathe like the flower? Yeah, but you hurt his hand. What can you say to Nova to help him feel better? Can you say, "I'm sorry"?

Daniel: The butterfly.

Teacher: We'll help him breathe in just a second, but could we say, "I'm sorry"?

Daniel: I'm sorry, and the butterfly, and he can feel better.

Teacher: Did you hear him? He said, "I'm sorry, and you can do butterfly to feel better.” Do you want to do butterfly? OK. Come on. Ready? Deep breath in. Blow it out. Deep breath in. Blow it out. Do we need to do another time, or are you OK? OK. Do you feel better? Great job solving the problem, and great job using your voice to tell your friend.

[Video ends]

Sarah: All right. I just love that clip. Feel free to use the Q&A to type in what were some of the things that you noticed about this video related to this teacher's action-plan goal? You can share out some of the things maybe that you think went well, things that stood out to you, maybe share what you might say to this coachee.

Joyce: Sarah, what are some of the things that you noticed – while we're waiting on our friends to put in their responses in the Q&A – what are some of the things that you've noticed in this video?

Sarah: Yeah, one of the things that stood out to me is that it doesn't ... I see that the children are pointing to something in the video, I can assume that – and they keep pointing – that it's a visual. But I really noticed that not only does this teacher model the breathing exercises and walks them through what to do, the children seem to really know these strategies. This is not the first time that this teacher or these children have used these strategies, so that really sticks out to me. And it feels like this is a practice that maybe they do often in that room. And I also really like how she checks in with the child to see if, "Is this the way you want to calm down?” She's like, "Do you want to do butterfly?” And then I also noticed that she asks if the child wants to do the exercise again like, "Do you feel better? Do you need to do it one more time?” All those are really great strategies that I noticed.

Let's see. Oh, Kara says, "She did really well letting the children solve their problems with their own words while supporting them and giving them guidance, and it wasn't staged. It seemed genuine," and I agree. I really like this video because of that. Like, it feels – it feels like real life, and those children knew what to do.

Joyce: Yeah, they were all about the butterfly. They were like, "We know what to do.”

Sarah: Yeah, yeah, kept pointing. They were familiar with the technique. She did a great job modeling. She does it with them and gets involved. Melissa points out that she reminds them of the expectations with the toys using the rules. In addition to that, she lets them choose the strategy that they wanted to use. Yeah, and the teacher is making deep breaths, modeling it, doing it with them. And Lisa noticed that she provided positive, descriptive feedback, which is a really great tool for helping children to know, like, "Hey, you're doing the right thing. Let's keep it up," and hopefully, it will encourage them to continue to use those strategies when they need to calm down. All right.

Joyce: Definitely.

Sarah: We're going to pop into another segment, our Focus on Equity, we want to think about ... We always want to keep equity in the forefront when we're coaching around any set of practices, but with ... When we talk about Approaches to Learning, and we talk about emotional and behavioral self-regulation, emotions and how they're expressed are – and how they're valued are really going to differ in different cultures. That's going to shape how adults view how children should manage or express these emotions. It's important that, as a coach, that you observe, and you can guide coachees to use responsive as well as equitable practices with children and families. As a reminder, equity doesn't really mean that everyone receives the same thing. That's equality. Equity is that everyone receives ... Equity is about the children or families receiving what they need to be successful in their learning environment.

Some of the ways that you can support equity related to this emotional and self-regulation is to notice and observe – notice and observe how adults are responding to children when they're expressing certain emotions. Are there certain children that are received differently by adults? Do some children have higher expectations, or they're being held to a different standard when it comes to emotions? Do certain children need more support? If you're coaching a home visitor, it's important to think about how the coachee is responding to families and the children. Are you noticing the coachee is treating families – different families differently, maybe in a negative way? You always want to take data. This helps it to remain objective. And you can look back and check in and see, like, what it is that you're noticing. You can do that by writing direct quotes of what a coachee might say to children or families. You might tally like, "I'm noticing this coachee is doing things different with different genders or certain races."

And if you're noticing that there's issues or there's things that you need to address, you want to start these conversations knowing that they can be sensitive, but asking questions with coachees because it can really help them to reflect. And it also gives you some insight about why they may be doing what they're doing. As I mentioned, it's ... All this, the way that emotions are expressed and accepted are different in different cultures. We just want to keep that in mind and just be very reflective and open about this whole process.

A resource that we've included within the guide under the resource section is the Pyramid Model Equity Coaching Guide, and it provides you some reflective questions that can help coaches identify if there's an area of concern. There's some guidance for identifying those concerns and taking data. And there's links and conversation starters. It's a really great resource that can help guide you with these potentially uncomfortable and maybe difficult conversations. Check that out. It's in the resource guide. And I'm going to turn it over to Joyce, who's going to share resources with us.

Joyce: Thank you, Sarah. We want to spend our last few minutes together just talking through a few resources that we pulled, thinking about our topic for today. And the first one are the Effective Practice Guides on the ECLKC. And this is one of our favorite resources to use, and it really is … It aligns with the ELOF, and it really brings ... Again, we said, "The ELOF.” That's ... It lays out what we want children to do. There we have the Effective Practice Guides that are organized by the domains and subdomains of the ELOF. And then within each section, it's laid out like the “know, see, do, improve.” You actually get to have – know what does that mean. There's teaching practices listed there. There's scenarios listed there for infants and toddlers, preschoolers, and home visitors.

And just a fun little fact today, the needs assessments – the sample needs assessments that we pulled together for today were developed pulling practices from the Effective Practice Guides. There was a question in the Q&A from Frederick, I believe, asking "Are there needs assessments for all of the ELOF?” And the question is, you can go to the Effective Practice Guides and really hone in on, this is where we're looking to support our children, and, I mean, it's right there for you. There's sample videos and effective practices that you can pull together for a needs assessment. There's that, and then we also have those sample action plans that Sarah mentioned. Those are actually part of your participant's guide for today, and there's one for home visiting. There's home visiting, preschoolers, and infants and toddlers are right there. Again, you can check those out as within your resource list. Those are right there.

And then we also have the Digital Social Emotional Toolkit, and we love this resource so much. It's support that coaches can use that we actually have a whole – we have a whole webinar that just lays it out there on how you could use this to support your work. We have that there. There's so many resources there that really lay out, like, “OK, what resources could I use here to talk about and support coachees with supporting children in that self-regulation piece?” That's there. And then there's this ... Also, it has this awesome little legend or key there that lets us know how resources are available, if they're in English and in Spanish, if it's a family resource, what language it's available in. We have all of those pieces there within that social emotional toolkit.

Again, you have that ... You have the link there. You have the resource available, and we also have a whole webinar that you could take and dig into a little bit more as well. And then we also wanted to highlight the Head Start National Center for Inclusion. That's another great place for resources as well. And really, the Head Start Center for Inclusion really gives information and resources and materials that include web-based learning opportunities and just really evidence-based strategies. Really great stuff that works to increase competence – confidence, capacity in staff to include children with disabilities and suspected delays there. There are resources. There's a ton of resources there, including ... And here's just a few of them there.

Here's just a few things from there, and I love ... A lot of these you can even personalize and make them your own. But there's visuals there on how to regulate emotions. There's things like the dragon-brain cards there. And there's stuff too that goes beyond just deep breathing. There's also emotional visuals. There are some visuals also for expectations or rules. It really is a great spot to be able to pull resources that you can use to support coachees with as well.

And then also, we wanted to point out the Circle Time Magazine. This is one of my favorite things ever. Circle Time Magazine is really a professional development, or PD, series that offers a web-based talk show along with a magazine and online resources for each episode. Each episode has a guest speaker that's sharing their knowledge, favorite books, really great examples of learning in action, and ideas for just using everyday materials to deepen that learning experience. Season two is really focused in on positive behavior supports, and specifically episode three focuses on emotional literacy and regulation. That's what we wanted to highlight for this one. As a coach, you could share these episodes. You could share a clip from the episode with coachees. You could use the resources, the magazine. All of those things are there for you to use. Definitely something to check out there.

And we wanted to also highlight the National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations. There is just, I mean, too many things to list all in one place, but there's even a webinar series that's devoted to coaches and supporting coaching there. Lots of states are implementing Pyramid Model within the early intervention and early ed programs. There's lots of visuals. And just any resource that you really want is available there. And it really is to help support programs, that social emotional development piece. We have that and ...

Sarah: Oh, and one thing I'd like to just say with that with the ... There's … A lot of the resources are in a variety of language – Spanish, Somali, Portuguese. That's just to name a few. Very helpful for lots of different languages.

Joyce: Thank you, Sarah. I forgot to point that out. Before we leave, we promised we were going to introduce Koko. We want to introduce Koko's Corner, and Koko is going to share with us six really interesting things about the Head Start Coaching Companion to help close us out.

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Koko: Hi. My name is Koko, and I love using the Head Start Coaching Companion. I just learned six cool things about the how the Head Start Coaching Companion can support your work with children and families. Number one, did you know that the Head Start Coaching Companion aligns with Practice-Based Coaching? Number two, did you know that the Head Start Coaching Companion is flexible to support various needs, such as a community of practice? Number three, did you know that you can access the Head Start Coaching Companion on your phone or mobile device? Number four, did you know it's easy to upload your own video clips to share? Number five, did you know that you can time-stamp video clips? And finally, number six, did you know that anyone can use it anytime and anywhere? For more information, email coachingcompanion at eclkc dot info.

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Joyce: We want to say welcome, Koko, to our Coaching Corner family. And what a way to take us out. Want to remind you, if you've missed a webinar or looking for something, Push Play is definitely there for you to be able to find past webinars. We want to invite you to please check out MyPeers. Our MyPeers community is strong, and we're there to continue the conversation. We also want to say please don't close out your browser. You're going to have a prompt to join MyPeers if you're not already a part of the conversation in the community there. We want to thank you for joining us today, and we will see you on MyPeers.

Sarah: Thank you.