Getting to Cooperation: Using Practice-Based Coaching to Support Social Problem-Solving Skills

Getting to Cooperation:
Using Practice-Based Coaching to Support Social Problem Solving Coaching Corner Webinar

Kathleen Artman-Meeker: Thank you for joining the Coaching Corner webinar this month. I'm Kathleen Artman-Meeker, and I'm here from the University of Washington, where I am a member of the NCQTL coaching team. And I am helping host this webinar series for coaches. And I am so pleased this month to be joined by September Gerety, who has been a teacher for many years and a Head Start coach, and she is currently the practice-based coaching coordinator for NCQTL. She is also been working directly with grantees in Region 11 on implementing practice-based coaching. So she has got a ton of great experience that I'm excited to hear about today and that we're excited to share.

Before we get started today, we did want to let you all know that we are missing a crucial member of our support team today due to a serious health event that happened just days after our last webinar. So we are missing her today, and we are sending thoughts and wishes her way. And just, we only say that — but if today's webinar doesn't look quite as pretty or run quite as smoothly as typical, it's just a testament to the amazing team that we have and how much we miss kind of one of our leaders. So we ask for your patience today and we try and do our best in her absence.

So just as a reminder about our series and our time together today, this is an ongoing webinar series that's offered monthly. And each month, we introduce a topic specific to practice-based coaching as a form of professional development, as a way to bridge toward best practice, and improving knowledge and outcomes for those who work with young children. So today's topic is social problem-solving, and we are going to walk through the components of practice-based coaching related to helping teachers help children solve problems as well as identify effective approaches and strategies that coaches can use with teachers, so they can be more intentional in their use of practice-based coaching.

And just like every month, we like to share a little bit about ourselves so that you can get to know a face perhaps or the personality behind the voices that you hear. And so this month I was thinking about social problem-solving, as I like to think about our topic, and I stumbled across a common scenario in our house these days, that my husband's love of Legos has been reawakened. And our 3-year-old's love of Legos is just kind of blossoming, and she really likes to help. And it takes some negotiating on both parts when there is a really big kid with an idea about what he wants to build and a little kid who wants to build with her toys, so it sometimes takes a little bit of negotiation and facilitating and problem- solving in our house as well.

So that was my little reflection on social problem-solving in my personal life this month. And I'm excited, like I said, to have September with us today. So, September, I see some great photos. Can you tell us about yourself?

September Gerety: Sure, Kathleen. Thanks. I did the same thing that you did, thinking about social problem-solving and how that sometimes comes up in our home as well as in our classroom. So this was a series of pictures that we took as we were doing family holiday photos. And you can see in the picture on the top left that maybe I wasn't doing quite a job I should have been doing of being aware and anticipating some problems. So just moments after this picture was taken, the reindeer antlers fell into the creek below us and we had to do some problem-solving to get them out of the creek, and then we had some wet, dripping shoulders. But we did enough social problem-solving that we did come out with a final product that we were okay with.

Kathleen: That's awesome. So, September, what did you notice in the chat boxes today about the two friends on the slide and our connection to problem-solving?

September: So I noticed that safety was something that came up a lot as we were looking at that picture. And certainly when we think about problem-solving, very often there are safety concerns that come up. So there was some teamwork happening, and people were maybe a little bit worried that if the team didn't continue working together well, that one of the children might get hurt, there was the possibility of falling. So just like the two children in that image or the picture that we saw of each of our families, we can find instances of possible problems at any time.

So today we'll be discussing ways that teachers can help children through those moments. We'll use examples to help you think through how you can provide coaching around social problem-solving using our practice-based coaching cycle. You are probably familiar with the cycle if you are on the webinar with us right now. This is the framework that we are going to use to think about supporting social problem-solving. So it always takes place in the context of the collaborative coaching partnership, and we'll walk through each step of the practice-based coaching cycle, and you will leave the webinar today with tools and resources you can use to help teachers implement practices related to problem-solving.

Kathleen: So we are going to show you a brief clip. And remember, if you are listening in on the phone, you'll need to switch on your computer speakers so that you can hear the sound. But as we watch, what we'd like you to do is kind of live chat the strategies that you see this teacher using. And so we have the video that we'll play, and you should see this chat box right below it. What strategies do you see the teacher use? So this is about a 1-minute-long video that we'll watch, and as you're watching, just start chatting in the strategies as you see them.

[Video begins]

Megan: [Sarah cries] Oh, I know. We can keep room.

Teacher: Look, she is — thinking about a plan. What did you say, Megan? Megan: I said we can keep room.

Teacher: We can keep room. How would we do that? Megan: Um, we can scoot over.

Teacher: We can scoot over. And what happens when you scoot over? Who's going to come? Megan: Maybe Aidan.

Teacher: Aidan. That is a good friend.

Sarah: And Chase. And Devon that I don't like.‌

Teacher: Well, look at you, you are calming your body down, and I can understand your words, Sarah. Sarah: You can stay in here, and I could paint it. How about that?

Teacher: What a great plan. Wow! Megan: No, I want to paint.

Sarah: Fine, we are going to do it when their turn is over. Megan: We are going to do it together.

Teacher: We do it together, but that is a great plan, Sarah.

Sarah: After their turn, it's going to be our turn with the house. We are going to paint it for them. We are going to protect it.

Teacher: What a great friend you are. Sarah: So nobody else can get in.

Teacher: Look at that. So you're opening a room for your friends, you're sharing the house, and you're saying we paint the house for them. They will be so happy about it. That's them. See.

Sarah: Chase! You can actually come in here until we are done painting the house. And we can go. Teacher: Oh, what a great friend.

[Video ends]

Kathleen: Great. So as they see you chatting in the pieces that you did, we noticed the teacher was thinking with the children about a plan, using those open-ended questions like "how." She was on their level. She praised, "what a great one." She helped them work through compromising. She was using multiple ways of communicating: signing and talking, repeated and summarized what the kids said. Very encouraging, very open-ended to let the children reflect their own emotions. And so back to our PowerPoint slide, it was great that you noticed so many things in the video that are great examples of what NCQTL recommends for problem-solving in the moment.

September: The NCQTL in-service suites teach the Think Five approach. So this, what you see on your screen is from the Tips for Teachers. This simple strategy gives teachers five big ideas for supporting social problem-solving. So you can find the link to this and other supporting resources in the follow-up document that you'll receive if you registered on the sign-in link. And you can continue to do that throughout this webinar or at the end of the webinar.

So to support social problem-solving, teachers should follow these five steps. First, anticipate. Second, be close. Third, provide support. Fifth, help children come up with — or sorry, fourth, help children come up with multiple solutions. And, fifth, celebrate success when it happens. And we definitely saw the teacher in the video doing some of these things. The first step is to expect that problem situations will arise in your classroom.

Problem situations are common when we have over a dozen children in a classroom and not a dozen adults. So children arrive from a wide variety of home settings and circumstances, and when teachers observe children closely, they are able to sense when children are experiencing difficulty and anticipate that problems might occur. So being extra responsive at those times. There are also some classroom situations that can elicit problems, like limited access to favorite toys or maybe it's distributing food at mealtimes. When teachers are aware of and anticipate those circumstances, it's easier to prevent problem situations.

The second step is to be close to the problem situation. So when a teacher is busy with a small group of children, he or she can be standing in the classroom and walking around during free choice, maybe observing to see, is there an area that I need to be close to? And a teacher can also move to where a problem is happening if something does begin to occur, and that can stop things before it escalates.

Getting close also puts the teacher near enough to prompt the child through problem-solving steps and it helps deal with some of those overwhelming emotions that can sometimes come up during a problem.

Young children also need support from the teacher to remember the problem-solving steps. So even if a teacher has taught problem-solving steps, it might be that in the moment, the children have trouble remembering what they are. So support can mean staying with the children and helping them stay in proximity to the other child or children who are involved in order to be able to work through the problem rather than maybe running away or trying to escape in a different way.

Sometimes support might mean prompting the child through problem-solving steps, saying things like, "Do you remember what we do when this happens?" Or maybe even using a puppet, like, "Let's see what our friend Rabbit does when she has a problem." So we might be doing some prompting, or providing some visual supports. So that can be done in a way that places visual supports strategically around the room to remind children of problem-solving steps that have been taught previously.

Sometimes the first solution that we come up with works wonderfully, and sometimes it doesn't. So children need to be encouraged to generate multiple solutions. And we can do that, we can assist children in doing that by providing something like a solution board, a solution box or a kit, and these are materials that provide children with picture cues of various solutions that they try. Solutions don't have to be complicated. It could be something like rock, paper, scissors, or flipping a coin or using a timer to solve a problem.

And the last of these teaching strategies or practices is to celebrate success. We are reinforcing a child's success. It might be something informal, like giving a child high-fives or thumbs up or a wink or a hug. Or it could be more formal, planning a little mini-celebration when a child has done a great job of problem- solving. So on your screen, you can see a certificate that might be a way to recognize some really good problem-solving, and also that could be a way to connect information as part of an ongoing assessment.

Kathleen: Okay, and we have a video to show you all of this in action so that you can see a teacher using these tools, as a resource that you perhaps could share with the teachers that you work with. And then we'll dig into the coaching side.

[Video begins]

Teacher: Uh-oh, Amy and Jami, what's the problem? Jami: I'm getting fort.

Teacher: You are getting it to make the fort, and it looks like Amy's holding it, too. Thanks, Elena, for moving so I could get up. So what are we going to do about it? You both want the same block? What are we going to do about it? How are we going to fix the problem? I'm going to hold the block for a minute while you guys help figure it out. What's your idea?

Amy: I want to play with...

Teacher: You want to play with it over there. Should we find out what Jami's idea was? What was your idea, Jami?

Jami: I want to put this...

Teacher: Oh! And she thinks she needs it for that building. So you both need this block for two different buildings. Do you want to look for an idea in the basket? Grab the book. See what you can come up with. There is another one over there, right. I think Amy's got the book. What are we going to do? She's looking. So "let's play together." So that would be building the same building together. "Take a break." So you just take a break from building and wait until she's done. "One more minute." So she would have it for a minute, and then you would have it for a minute. "You build with something else." Maybe next time. "Playing together." So you would build it together.

Amy: [inaudible]

Teacher: Do you want to build together, Jami? Look it, Amy's talking to you. Sorry, I just said it, and Amy was saying it. Sorry about that, Amy. Here. So, Amy, you're going to help — you're going to help Jami build her tower.

Amy: This is my house.

Teacher: Excellent. You guys are expert problem-solvers. [Video ends]

Kathleen: All right, so we saw some of those great strategies that September just walked you through in action in a classroom. And sometimes as a coach, that's what I need as I'm getting ready to help support teachers to use the strategy is seeing some great examples of kind of inspiration and talking points and resources to begin sharing with teachers. So now back to our PowerPoint. We have these practices in our minds, right? We've walked through those five steps of what practice-based coaching looks like from the in-service suite.

And we're ready to begin thinking about how we support teachers. Where do we start? And where we start is by getting a clear understanding of the teacher's strengths, needs, and interests. And this is known as needs assessment. And you can use needs assessment tools for any set of teaching practices. Every month we talk about needs assessment. It's one of the core pieces of practice-based coaching.

And so the tools we'll explore today are ones that you can use to help support social problem-solving in the classroom. And they can be used by a coach, but they can also be used as self-reflective tools for teachers as well.

And so the first is a sample tool from the Tools for Supervisors from the in-service suite. Great, simple tool for you that's available on ECLKC that lists those five steps that September just talked about and provides spaces for you to write an observation and recommendations, ideas, and reflections upon that observation.

Another great tool that's available is an excerpt from — this is an excerpt from the Center for the Social Emotional Foundations for Early Learning or CSEFEL that some of you are probably familiar with, and their inventory of practices. And so they have a section specifically on creating a planned approach for problem-solving within the classroom. And so here are things that you can — that you as a coach could look at. Specifically, do you see these practices happening in classrooms? And this can give you an idea of things that you can provide teachers with to self-reflect and to begin thinking about the practices that feed into social problem-solving in the classroom. Okay?

So we are going to walk through kind of a needs assessment process that we would think about with a teacher. So let's dig into an example. Let's imagine that you work with a teacher named Jordan, and he says, "I just don't know... I feel like we don't have many problems in the class. The kids know the routine and they do pretty well. They just don't have problems." But his coach Carolyn sees a slightly different perspective. She says — she notices some issues and says, "Jordan is anticipating problems, and that's a good thing. He always seems close by when problems seem likely. But he jumps right in with ideas before the children have a chance." So he might not be seeing them as opportunities for teaching and learning. They are just part of kind of the fabric of his day, and he is maybe not making the most of those opportunities.

And so the coach, Carolyn, might have this needs assessment that she is reflecting on with Jordan. And we can think about a needs assessment that's set up for kind of some self-reflection. Do you guide children through the process of generating and planning solutions to a problem? And we can see here in this little snippet of a sample needs assessment, that Jordan says he seldom does this and says it's not really somewhere where change is needed. Carolyn says he seldom does it, but says it is kind of a priority for change. So we noticed a bit of a disconnect. Carolyn thinks this would be a great strategy, but Jordan isn't necessarily on board.

Now, as a coach, you might not encourage a teacher to move forward on a skill that he or she isn't interested in, but it really depends on your history with the teacher, your knowledge of their classroom, and what might be considered high-impact for them, if this is something that they could really benefit from and that they're ready for as a teacher and with you as a coach. So we really do want to take the teacher's perspective to guide this process. So if they're not interested in something, we wouldn't necessarily move forward. But in some cases, there might be times where you have that conversation.

And so we wanted to dig a little deeper with you as a community of coaches about times when that might be appropriate. And so here we know that Carolyn has a strong relationship with Jordan. They've worked together all year, and she feels comfortable making a suggestion. She thinks he uses a lot of the strategies already, but — it's that situation where he doesn't know what he doesn't know. She suspects that learning some approaches to problem-solving might help him be more intentional about what he's already doing and could be something he'd really value. He just might not know that it's even an opportunity to go a little bit deeper. And he is already very emotionally connected and does a lot for the kids and the children to help them recognize and deal with emotions. And so she feels like problem- solving might be a missing link for him that would impact his work in many ways.

So this might be a reason why you have a disconnect in a self-reflective needs assessment, but you as a coach might feel comfortable moving forward and making some suggestions to a teacher about practices that might be beneficial for their classroom. So we have a chat that will pop up about how you might start this conversation.

If you were Carolyn working with Jordan, and you'd had this disconnect between what he feels about problem-solving in the classroom and what you've — noticed in your observations, and you know that he's really strong in social emotional teaching but not seeing these opportunities as opportunities for supporting problem-solving. He is not taking that time. So how do you start the conversation with that teacher? What are some of the great ideas you see on here, September?

September: So I'm noticing that a lot of our coaches are suggesting asking questions, which is a great way to sort of get teachers to reflect on their own practice. Some suggestions for videotaping so that maybe Jordan can become more aware of the fact that he's kind of stepping in before the children have an opportunity to solve social problems. And also to really build on his strengths and to think about the great things that he's already doing and the thought that he's already put and the progress he's already made, and using those as a jumping off point to invite him to dig a little bit deeper or go a little bit farther with this idea of social problem-solving.

Kathleen: That's so great, and I also noticed quite a few that focused on the kids and on their learning and what their — what they'd be ready for, which is a nice way to open those conversations, too.

Excellent. Thanks, everybody, for your contributions on that chat. So I think back, ready for the PowerPoint.

So we know where to start, but, like always, I know where, but how do I actually get started? So what are the coaching practices that can help me move forward once I've helped the teacher reflect on strengths, needs, and interests? Then, as a coach, you can begin setting goals together. And what we thought would be good this month with goal setting is taking a minute to really think about what practice-based goals are. So what are the practices? And so you see a few examples up here of ways that a coach might help a teacher write goals or action steps.

And what we want to encourage you to do is just take a few minutes and on your own jot down on a piece of paper some ideas about how you'd make those more practice-based. How would you help those be more observable or actionable or measurable so that they really focus on the practices that a teacher would use? So just take a few — little bit of time to jot down ideas on your own. And we don't have music on this one. I won't sing for you. So I'll just let you self-reflect and jot down some ideas.

September: So there are lots of different ways that we could make these goals or action steps really based on practices, so things that teachers can say or do in the classroom to help children solve problems. So rather than just saying, "Use problem-solving in the classroom," we might say something like, "Post problem-solving steps in the group area and teach those steps during large and small group time." And that could also go along with, "Make sure children know how to problem-solve." So thinking about when we'll intentionally teach the children problem-solving steps. We could say something like, "Create at least one problem situation per day and monitor how the children solve it."

So doing some practicing with children at different times of day. Anticipate potential problems. Get close and provide support during free play time. So using those practices that we talked about, the five practices, and thinking about when we'll implement them specifically. In terms of individualizing, we would say something like, "use a scripted story to teach Jerome how to problem-solve at the train table." So thinking about a time that maybe problems tend to arise or a particular child who might need some extra help with problem-solving, and how will — help that child or make that situation go more smoothly as children learn how to solve the problems.

So we might invite teachers to think about posting problem-solving materials, teaching problem-solving sets in large and small groups. We might invite them to think about individualizing supports for children who need extra help. And really go through that list of five practices and think about how would they apply in the context of this classroom, and what are some specific things that the teacher can do that will help children solve problems?

Kathleen: Absolutely. I think that's so great. And including — when you talked about the five steps, September, it made me think about including celebration, too. That we can have goals for celebrating when kids engage in problem-solving, really recognizing that moment and making that an explicit part of the teaching process, too. So once we kind of have gone through — we are going through our practice- based coaching cycle and we've gotten to the shared goals and action planning.

And let's say we've developed an action plan, used some of those actionable goals or action steps to develop a plan with Jordan, and then we are ready for the focused observation. And so it's important to think about, just like with every teaching practice, what kind of data that you might collect during a focused observation to support Jordan's use of problem-solving. And so we might think about things like the number of opportunities for problem-solving, so the number of times children have a little bit of a conflict or the number of times there are not quite enough materials for a certain activity or for children to play a certain way, or the number of times there are too many children in — or more children want to play in a certain area than the space can accommodate. So those kinds of kind of high-interest activities that create opportunities for problem-solving.

We might collect data on Jordan's language, so the number of open-ended questions that he asks that are related to that problem-solving vocabulary. Like, "What might you try?" "What are some solutions?" "How could you solve the problem?" The number of times that children generate solutions. So the times and the ways that Jordan might do the things that we saw that teacher do in the video where she sent children — recommended that children go over to find the book or the pictures of the solution kit in a basket nearby.

So we might keep data on how often that happens and the nature of those interactions. We might also as a coach sit back and kind of have a map of the classroom and look for the spaces where problems occur so that we can come back and have a conversation about that, about whether problem-solving — problems happen most often in the block area or in the dramatic play area or the game table. Or whether Jordan's more likely to use strategies in certain areas and maybe not seeing the opportunities to apply problem-solving to the sand and water table or some other area of the classroom.

So we can approach our observation from a lot of different perspectives and really have conversations with Jordan or other teachers about what's most helpful for them in order to collect data to help them think about their practice. And so we see an example here of that Tools for Supervised documents — Tools for Supervisors document that I showed you in the needs assessment that we can now also use for focused observation.

And this is just a little snippet of it so that you can see it on the screen. But if we imagine that Carolyn observed in Jordan's classroom, and we see the notes here, she noted that he was staying close, he saw children walk and try and squeeze between, and he used some problem-solving vocabulary. He stayed close to the really popular areas. And so Carolyn noted this, her direct observations. Wrote it down, including a direct quote from the classroom so she could share that back to him and encourage and celebrate him in the next stage of the coaching process. But anecdotally, we might imagine, even though it's not really represented here, that maybe she noticed that he seemed a bit nervous about waiting for Tammy's response. Maybe it didn't seem completely comfortable or fluent yet.

And so as a coach, we are going to think about how we would process that with him. And so that gets to the reflection and feedback stage, where we always remember we want to be very mindful about how we provide feedback to teachers, that we use the data that we've collected during an observation to share back actual moments from their classroom or actual ways of seeing the practices that happen in their classroom. We use data and anecdotal notes that you collected. We may also video record and share that back with a teacher. And that we want to think about having — being really intentional about feedback.

So supportive feedback, like, "You stayed close to Tammy today at the water table. You were able to support her and Kendrick when she wanted a turn and squeezed before two children." Or, "You waited five seconds after asking the children to come up with solutions, and they managed to generate so many of their own." So praising that wait time or noticing and providing feedback on that wait time that they provide to children.

We also want to be mindful about constructive feedback. So things like, "I noticed Tammy had a hard time coming up with solutions today. So what additional supports do you think might work for her?" And the next time you might try reminding her to use solution kits before free play begins. So maybe give her a quick reminder or read a scripted story. And we also want opportunities for a reflection. So all of those open-ended questions that you provided during — those types of open-ended questions that you thought of in the needs assessment stage are also helpful here when we're thinking about, "How did it work out for you today? How were you feeling about jumping in or stepping back to allow the children to generate solutions? What went well, what might you try differently?" All of those are ways to provide reflection for teachers.

And so we have a little chat that I want you to think about that'll pop up here. So knowing that Jordan was hesitant to use this strategy, it wasn't really tops on his list, and that anecdotally, even though you saw him use the strategy, he didn't feel very comfortable yet, which is a natural part of learning a new skill. But how would you begin providing feedback knowing what you know about Jordan? All right, well, thank you all for chiming in and thinking about how you'd reflect with Jordan about this process. So what do you notice up here, September?

September: So I'm noticing that there is a lot of suggestions for acknowledging his effort and acknowledging that it's hard to try something new and really just making that real for him, that, "Wow, you tried something new." And asking him how he felt and how he thought it went, which I think is great that coaches are thinking about giving space for the teacher to reflect. Sometimes we're so quick to jump in with what we're thinking or feeling as we are observing in a classroom, and it's really important to give a teacher time to reflect on their own practice.

I also noticed some people kind of steering it back toward what we talked about earlier and thinking about how does it affect the children, and what difference does it make for the children, as well as starting with supportive feedback and thinking about what went well and then allowing him some time to reflect before maybe encouraging some tweaking.

Kathleen: And I love the parallel process that I'm seeing here, too, of kind of modeling the emotional side and modeling kind of — I'm noticing emotions, or just kind of having that side of the conversation here as well is really powerful. So great ideas, everybody. I think we are ready for the PowerPoint again.

September: So as we are giving time for reflection and feedback, we can think about all of those things that you just put into the chat. So our action steps, the practices that teachers can implement, can be to anticipate; that's the first and very important step.

Effective teachers have been described as having eyes in the back of their heads. They appear to be one step ahead of the problem. So anticipating problems is a good teaching practice to help prevent many of them. Being close — teachers are really busy in the classroom, and they can't always be physically close to every problem situation, but they can move to be near the location of the problem as soon as it occurs or as it's beginning to develop. By being near the problem situation, teachers are able to model calm, quiet, and gentle approaches to problem-solving. And providing support.

Assisting children with words to use, strategies to try, visual reminders of how to solve problems. Generating multiple solutions. Often several solutions to a problem must be tried before the right fit is found, and children need to be encouraged to persist in finding the right solution for a situation. And as Kathleen mentioned, celebrating success.

Problem-solving is hard work, and when problems are solved by children, that hard work should be recognized. So these are five very specific teaching practices that, as coaches, we can encourage teachers to implement in their classroom and we can use the practice-based coaching cycle to help them implement those practices. So helping them recognize the teachable moments and collect data on opportunities for problem-solving. And that can actually be a way to help teachers get to the point of maybe seeing the same thing that we're seeing when we're doing the needs assessment.

We talked about how maybe there was a little disconnect between Carolyn and Jordan and what they were observing in the classroom. And so doing that focused observation and collecting data on problem- solving can be a way for teachers to start to understand a broader picture of what's happening in the classroom. So there are some resources that you will receive in the follow-up document.

As we mentioned before, the Center on the Social Emotional Foundations for Early Learning has some pretty specific resources. So there is a solution kit with some pictures that can be put onto a key ring or put into a little box or a suitcase. And certainly we would want to have teachers teach children what each of these solutions is and what it looks like. The solution kit alone is not enough to really implement problem-solving, but it is a tool that can really help teachers as they think about how to show children appropriate ways to solve problems and also to work through problem-solving in the moment.

So just as we watched the video of the solution kit in use on this webinar, my experience with teachers has been that they sometimes need some help in knowing how to use the solution kit. So I've used a video in coaching for strong problem-solving as a way to introduce the idea of the solution kit to teachers, and I found that that's a great way to get buy-in, because when they see it in action, it's really exciting, like, "Oh, wow, I can use this in my classroom." So I think that's a good tool.

There are also some problem-solving steps. Putting up posters and providing some other visual aids around the classroom is a good way to implement problem-solving. The Head Start Center for Inclusion also has some problem-solving ideas and resources. So I think one thing that's important as we think about helping teachers implement practices around social problem-solving is that very often, teachers don't know how to walk children through it. And so they can use some help in coming up with ideas for, "Oh, what could I do to help children solve problems?" or "What are some different ways to solve problems?" besides just saying, "Oh, share," or some of the other things that we sometimes hear teachers saying. So as we close — sorry, go ahead, Kathleen.

Kathleen: Oh, no. I just wanted to say thank you to September for joining us today and thank you everyone who jumped on this month. We really enjoyed spending time with all of you talking about coaching and brainstorming about coaching. I think all of us on this end of the microphone share that excitement about talking about coaching.

So we are really glad that you were here to join with us. And so as we wrap up our time together today, we want to invite all of you to join us again next month, the third Thursday of the month, February 19th, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, 11:00 Pacific, for our next Coaching Corner webinar. But I do want to say thank you very much for your time. And thank you, September, for your time.

September: Thank you, Kathleen.