Using the 5Rs to Be a Champion for Coaches

Using the 5Rs to be a Champion for Coaches

Vanessa Maanao-French: Welcome to our webinar, the fourth in our Education Manager webinar series, and this time we are focusing on how we can use the 5Rs to be a champion for coaches. If you've been attending the webinars, you might recognize my face. My name is Vanessa Maanao-French, and I'm with the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning. I have a new sidekick today. I'll give you a second to introduce yourself, Virginia.

Virginia Tse: Thank you, Vanessa. My name is Virginia Tse and I'm also with the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning, and I am thrilled to be here with you today. Thank you for having me.

Vanessa: Of course, many people may not know this, but Virginia and I go way back. We were in the program together when I was working as an education leader within a program, and Virginia was there too. It's so great that our careers have come full circle. Just know that you are with Head Start love people, we love, love, love Head Start. We come from a space of being in program and in leadership positions, so you're speaking to your people. And speaking of people, we've got some people behind the scenes who you cannot see. Katie Miller, who has joined us in the past webinars, was a phenomenal past Head Start leader herself.

She's manning QA for us. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out because that familiar face is behind the scenes. Also joining us is Regan McLeod, who is a one of the key designers of the Practice-Based Coaching model, and many of the resources that you use likely every day have been developed in part or in whole by Regan. We've got the A-team in the background, along with our amazing Ryan, who is our producer. If you have tech issues along the way, feel free to pop those into the Q&A, and one of the three people behind the scenes will take care of you.

With that, let's get started, and by started, I mean download your viewer's guide, because you will need this today. We have a couple places where we're going to ask for you to do some reflection. The viewer's guide is the perfect spot to catch those reflections. You can go back later and share them with others, but it also has some of the content. We only have an hour with you. We're going to speed through some things, some things we'll be able to pause on, but if there are places you want to go and get more information, the useful resources at the end will help immensely, please download that now.

We’ll refer to it from time to time. What are we going to do today? We're going to help you, as education leaders, become a stronger champion for your coaches. We all know coaches are so important in our program, so today we're going to take a pause. We are going to connect the 5Rs, which are our strategies as early learning leaders, to the work of coaching, and specifically our coaches. I am so excited to be doing this webinar. Before we get into the content, we think it's important for us to take a little pause to show a little gratitude, maybe sit and bask in the moment of having amazing coaches in your program, and have just a space for thanking them, even if they're not in the space with you, hold them in your mind.

I like to use Dr. Adolph Brown's approach to expressing gratitude. His phrase is, “I am because of you.” Because of our coaches, what do we have? We have teachers, we have educators, family child care providers, home visitors, who have a safe space to ask questions, to feel challenged in their practice in the best possible way. I want to stretch; how do I do that? Or I feel I failed in my classroom today, what could I do differently? They have a soft space to land, to be able to improve their practice. Because of coaches, educators have a person to celebrate with.

They're able to step back, sit side by side, and go, look what I did. That's fantastic. Both of those things, whether you're working to improve your practice or celebrating improvements that you've made, and you're seeing the results in the way that children interact, that's because of coaches. We know that not all staff receive that individualized coaching and that's why we have a coaching system. We need our coaches to make that happen. We need you as education leaders to make that happen. Because of you, and because of our coaches, Head Start works.  We keep getting better every single day. Feel grateful. I do. I totally do.

Let's move on. Now that we're all gratitude-ed up, time for a quick little poll. We want to figure out who is in the room with us. Typically, it's mixed who joins us for these education manager webinars. We're curious if you're a supervisor of coaches, if you provide oversight, maybe you're a coach yourself, or maybe you are the person who's receiving coaches. If none of those seem to fit you, you're welcome to use other. Let us know by using this poll who you are out there in the virtual world.

Virginia: We can see some coming in.

Vanessa: Here it comes. Coaches heard their name.

Virginia: They sure did.

Vanessa: They are joining us today. We'll be talking about you in front of your back today, in the best possible way. Excellent. Thank you all for being here and for joining us. Our goal is to connect Practice-Based Coaching and the tools developed to support that model along with the 5Rs. For our coaches, as we have quite a few coaches, if you're unfamiliar with the 5Rs, it is the way that we describe those essential, those critical core practices of learning leaders that helps them to be effective. By way of running down them, we'll touch on them throughout the webinar.

If you are an effective early learning leader, you build Responsive Relationships with your staff that help create this sense of we are all in this together. You're a unified group of educators, professionals, doing their very best work. It's a place where trust, safety, and wellness are prioritized. That's responsive relationships. The next is Reason. Effective early learning leaders pair the reason why we do things or the why we do things to the policies, practices, and procedures, especially those that feel tedious. Documentation ring a bell? What if we know why. It helps propel us, helps us feel committed to doing that work.

The next is Resources. We talk about resources in terms of the tangible things that you can put your hands on. The tools, your computer, your time, Coaching Companion, which we'll talk about. But we also want to emphasize that resources are the people, and how do we leverage our collective knowledge and expertise to become a better collective unit? The next is Reflective Dialogues. I always talk about this being one of my favorites, but this is VR where learning leaders help to really propel data into an active space.

It is data that helps us to be curious, to ask questions, to wonder what if, and create hypotheses, and then get excited about testing them. Get excited about seeing what happens as a result of what we've done. Who wouldn't like reflective dialogues? It's your favorite, too. The last one is Recognition. And recognition you can think about in terms of seeing somebody's work well done and acknowledging it. That's one way to think about it. It is also the way that we make sure that every staff person feels visible, valued, and validated for who they are as a person, as well as who they are as a professional.

With that little review of the 5Rs, let's start connecting some thoughts. If we think about the Practice-Based Coaching Theory of Change, we feel like the 5Rs sits right on top, because it's those practices from those early learning leaders who are practicing responsive relationships, who are connecting practice to the reason, offering resources, using data to inform practice. Then, celebrating with staff when they've done work that is effective in helping children to learn and to thrive. The 5Rs connect directly to the ways that early learning leaders build professional development plans with a coaching system. Without those leaders to make that work, it can flounder. Without the support of coaches, we have a system without any oomph. We want oomph.

Virginia: Yes, we do.

Vanessa: I think that's a technical term that I just made up. You're welcome.

Virginia: I love it.

Vanessa: If we have those in place, we have a coaching system that then helps educators be able to make the most use of the framework for effective practice. That we are really grounded in the foundation of relationships and environments that are responsive to children. We're able to use those research-based curricula and teaching approaches, use our data, then individualize for children who need it most. If we're able to do those two things, then we're going to see the outcomes as described in the early learning outcomes framework, and our kids will be ready for school.

That's where we see the 5Rs fitting. It's not a new thing. It's not an add-on. Likely things you're already doing. We just get to call attention to it for the next hour. As we think about the theory of change for this webinar in particular, we're going to call out one of our favorite tools, which is the Practice-Based Coaching Coach Competencies. There are a couple of tools underneath that that we're also going to be pointing to, but we feel this is where we can see the connection between what leaders can do for their coaches to support their growth in the areas of coach competencies.

What are the Coach Competencies? I feel I may be talking to the wrong crowd, because they probably already know, because we have so many, 70% coaches out there. If you want to, feel free and type in the Q&A. You tell me what the Coach Competencies are. We know that this is a way to really help define what those effective practices look like when you are effective as a coach. It describes the behaviors that you would see from a coach with a coachee. It includes these elements outside, a little bit outside of that coaching relationship.

Because these begin with preparation. How do we support a coach to succeed from the very start? How are we recruiting, onboarding, supporting through ongoing professional development, our coaches to make sure that they're continually feeling that they are prepared to be a coach with their educators. You'll see that these follow more of the coaching model. If you're familiar with PBC, this will be like, yeah, I know that. Collaborative partnerships, goal setting and action planning, focused observation, reflection, and feedback, and finally, professional development.

We rounded out with this beautiful circle of preparation, the do of being a coach, but then never leaving professional development because we're all continuing to grow in our practice. We're going to hold on to these We're going to touch base on these throughout the webinar and show how they connect with the 5Rs. I hope that sounds good because that's the plan. I'll start us off then I'll hand it over to you for the next R. Sound good?

Virginia: Sounds good.

Vanessa: Responsive relationships. It's perfect that we start with relationships because everything in Head Start, we say is grounded in relationship. One of the core practices of the 5Rs is honoring and respecting education staff needs. That's both personal and professional. I think we focus more on the personal side, especially as we’re coming out of the pandemic. How are we taking care of our staff? We continue to place wellness in this space when we consider responsive relationships. For this webinar, we're going to focus a little bit more on the professional side. How are we being responsive in understanding what our coaches in particular need? That falls beautifully under the coaching competency of preparation.

The tool that we really want to highlight here is the PBC Coach Competencies, Strengths, and Assessment tool. Let me move us onto that next slide so you can see it a little bit more closely. Some of you may have seen this before. You may be already using it. Do know that this is in the viewer's guide? If you haven't already downloaded it, now you're inspired to do that because we have links to these tools in that guide for you. What we love about this assessment tool is it walks through each of the competencies, and it provides an opportunity to self-reflect, to self-assess. Do I feel like I have this practice? Do I feel confident in my ability to work with another staff person with this? Do I demonstrate this behavior sometimes? Or do I feel I really am confident in doing that frequently? 

This can be a fantastic way to not only learn about new coaches or staff who have become new coaches. We know that happens often. Also, along the way with your coaches who have maybe been with you for years. This is not just a one time, let's see where you're at. This can be a tool used to measure progress. To be responsive, we think it would be a fantastic tool to use quarterly, at least annually, and paired up with your individualized professional development plan for your coaches.

Let's do a quick pulse check to see — I have to move my little mouse way over here to get it. There we go, I got it. A pulse check, and you can give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down on this to let us know if you are already using this needs assessment of coach competencies in your program. Or if you are not yet, you can give us a thumbs down on that. Let us know, are you using this needs assessment? We got some votes coming in here.

Virginia: You know, it's curious.

Vanessa: We know there's a little bit of a pause. Excellent. We'll give it just a few more seconds. Because what it seems like, it's a little bit tipped more towards not quite using yet than using. This may be a tool that is new to you, and that is totally fine. We are thrilled to bring it out to you. It looks evenly split. If this is a tool that's new to you, please check it out. We think it could be super helpful in how you support your coaches. Thank you for that. I will get us back to our regularly scheduled programming. Only have three more of those. Let's talk a little bit about responsive relationships, but from a slightly different angle.

I want to talk about the core practices within responsive relationships of being an available and trusted source, a resource. I think about that often when it comes to reflective supervision, or just having that open door to ask the question. The PBC Competency domain that we see this in is in that collaborative coaching partnership and that behavior of being able to seek and offer help. This brings me to a question I wanted to toss out for QA for you all. A little reflection and a one-word response. This is nice and easy. When it comes to asking questions, it can sometimes be challenging. We want you to think about the last time that you asked for help at work. How did it make you feel? Describe in one word how it made you feel to ask for help at work. We'll pause and give you a little bit of time to respond.

Virginia: Unprepared. Discouraged. Supported. Vulnerable. Incompetent. Frustrated. Anxious. Guilty.

Vanessa: I saw that one roll in. Inadequate. Self-conscious. Frustrated again. Dissatisfied. Unsure. We want you to know that your responses, you are not alone in feeling this way. We're also seeing a little balance of I felt supported, I felt heard. We also see two coming at the same time, nearly one that says I felt judged. Another one said I felt encouraged. These are all real feelings, and you are not alone. I certainly felt that way this week. All the feelings I felt this week.

Let's flip the script a little bit. This was about you asking for help. This next question, same format, one word, how did it make you feel to provide help at work? We know people, maybe I've just been typing in the last one, we'll take a meaningful pause and see if the answers come through. Remember, this is your one word about how you felt to provide support or help.

Virginia: Where's that from? I can't tell which one. Got it. I've got to take a meaningful pause.

Vanessa: Resourceful. Good. Valued.

Virginia: Purposeful. I like that. This is amazing. Empowered.

Vanessa: Amazing came through as I said it.

Virginia: You foresaw that one. Confident.

Vanessa: Needed.

Virginia: Useful. Proud.

Vanessa: I love that, yes.

Virginia: Appreciated. Oh my gosh, such good one words. One word is so powerful.

Vanessa: I'm going to make this into a word cloud, I'm serious, and I'm going to put this on MyPeers for us. What is fascinating to me is that that's the switch. Asking for help. Then, how it feels to provide help. It shouldn't be surprising, because that's what research tells us, that even though asking for help can be hard, there can be many reasons why asking for help can be hard, that research says that people are ready, willing, want to help more than we know.

We underestimate how much people want to provide help. It's all about how we create, as leaders, that responsive relationship, that unified culture, that trusted space, where questions aren't just encouraged, they're expected. Asking for help is part of being a team, especially when it comes to our coaches. I may say this a couple more times during the webinar, often coaches are looked to as the person that has all the answers, not necessarily the person who's going to be asking the questions or needing the help. That is a place for us to consider.

How do we create that responsive relationship, unified cultural space for all? This is a question not so much for QA, more for you to consider, do your coaches, and if you have more than one, do each of your coaches have a source to ask for help? That could be you, it could be in a community of practice, it could be maybe they're connected to their regional TA person, but do they have a person that they can go to? Who is their trusted resource for help? 

I can't emphasize this enough; help is a good thing. It's actually got some fun, brainy benefits. It releases some amazing hormones into our brains, oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, and suppresses cortisol, which is a stress hormone. When you were typing in fast and furiously about how it made you feel good, it made you feel validated, needed, happy, came through multiple times, that is true. There is neurobiology to support the value of help. Help each other out. Make sure that that becomes the culture in your program, expected and encouraged. I love that. Toss it over to you.

Virginia: Thanks, Vanessa. We're going to move on to the second R of our 5Rs, the second one is reason. Reason is about inspiring the conviction to practice by providing the why, as Vanessa eloquently mentioned at the beginning. It means earning credibility by explaining, defining, and providing meaning about the essential components of effective practice. It means understanding and modeling how to think through actions, their impact on children, and asking educational staff critical questions and providing meaningful reasons for asking.

This can connect to the Practice-Based Coaching Theory of Change. The reason or the why connects directly to Head Start's mission, which is supporting effective practice leads to improved outcomes for children and families. In the Practice-Based Coaching Theory of Change, professional development, which includes coaching, can impact education staff use of effective practice, thus impacting child learning. If we're drawing in the 5Rs, one reason coaches are inspired and committed to coach is that their work impacts program quality and helps prepare children and their families for success in not only school, but in life. Positive child and family outcomes are what drives our collective work in Head Start.

We want to hear from you, what are some other reasons that inspire coaches? We'll give you a few minutes to type in your responses. When I was thinking about this, one story came to my mind of a coach I had and something she shared with me when I was in a preschool classroom. She said it was the relationship that we had that was inspiring to her. I always just get the feels when I think of my coach, Coach Stacey. I think I saw her on a plane heading to one of the conferences. Stacey, if you're out there. As a coachee, it just felt so good to know that our relationship was what inspired her to do her work. Let's see what you are sharing. Building strong, supportive relationships. Rings true.

Vanessa: Sarah says she wants to be the coach that she needed. You're bringing it forward. Love that. Helping others.

Virginia: Empower teachers to do their best in the classrooms. Thank you, Tina. Seeing teachers succeed inspires coaches. Absolutely. Thank you, Katie.

Vanessa: Seeing quality teaching. These are so great.

Virginia: Thank you so much. I think our amazing QA team will continue to push these out so you can see other people's responses because they're truly heartwarming and give me the feels and reminds me of being in the classroom. I love these. Keep your responses coming in. We’ll share them out. When we have asked this question in other training settings, here are some of the responses that we've heard. They seem very similar to what you all are sharing today. Coaches are inspired when a teacher has an “aha” moment in their practice. When a family child care provider asks to try a new strategy after being reluctant in the past. Seeing the change in a home visitor's confidence to engage with families. When we watch video clips together on Coaching Companion and talk about how much their practice has changed or improved. When I can tell a teacher feels proud of their child outcomes data, they know that their efforts are making a difference. I just love those anecdotes. They're just amazing.

Vanessa: They mirror much of what came through the Q&A. I love that there was one that was specific. Made a difference for a child.

Virginia: A child.

Vanessa: That's really what we do. A child at a time. Love it.

Virginia: We're going to invite a moment for a pause and reflection. We encourage you to use your viewer's guide to jot down your ideas or your thoughts. Healthy coaches connect to the profound ways in which their work directly impacts your program goals to improve outcomes for children and families gives their work a deeper purpose. Connecting to their personal why helps coaches stay motivated, inspired, and joyful in their work. Pause to consider, how can we connect coaches to their why? Do you know the why or the reason that drives your coaches commitment to their work in Head Start? When do coaches have opportunities to talk about what inspires their daily work? Inspiration and motivation are good for our brains, as Vanessa beautifully explained.

When motivation and inspiration is high, we benefit from high dopamine levels, a neurotransmitter that's essential for learning. It's also essential for processing what is rewarding to us and planful action. It serves as a chemical messenger, keeping our eyes on the prize and enjoying what we do. This neurochemistry provides the perfect neural connection for sustaining engagement and focus through uncertainty in times of change. Effective early learning leaders meaningfully connect the reason to coaching, to keep coaches motivated, inspired, and committed to high-quality practice. When coaches can see, hear, and feel how their work contributes to their why, they are energized to do their best work.

Vanessa: Thanks, Virginia. Two down, three to go with our Rs. I have resources. Resources can be your computer, your time, this pen, this paper, the training we send staff to, et cetera. For this webinar, we want to focus on leveraging people as resources, and how do we learn from one another. We see that lovely connection over to professional development under the PBC Competencies, and ongoing professional development that helps coaches to continually support their practice to improve to be more culturally responsive and reflective.

We have shared the next couple of slides before. I may whip through these a little bit more quickly than in the past. We wanted to circle back to a webinar that Katie and I did back in February, on motivating staff, inspiring staff, and wanting to get into the brain mechanisms of all of that. That's the good news and some bad news. I'm showing you the Ebbinghaus curve of forgetting. This is the unfortunate byproduct of anything we do that's a one-hit type thing, including this webinar, unless you watch it again. I'll explain why.

About a month from now, you will forget about 80% of what Virginia and I have shared with you. If you remember to download the viewer's guide and keep that, that's the best 20% that you could do, because it has all the resources and most of the things we say. It's true, there is gradual loss of the content knowledge that happens over the course of the month, to the point where you end up holding on to very little of it, the Cliff Notes version, if we're lucky.

There is a way to disrupt that curve of forgetting. If you're worried, oh, no, I've got pre-service coming up in a few weeks, is it worth my time to have training of staff? The answer is yes. Because we can disrupt that curve of forgetting if we include spaced and meaningful repetition of the content or practice with a new behavior or skill. Luckily, that is what coaches do. You probably have seen this before, so we will run through this quickly. We've seen this graphic before where it shows the impact. If we do just training alone, we're just working on building knowledge, we're not going to see that use in the classroom, we're just not going to see it.

If we include some demonstration, some role playing, for example, in a training, we'll be able to see some skills demonstration, but will there be anything happening in the classroom? No, maybe not, minimal. If we're able to provide practice and feedback in the session, not just role playing, but getting feedback on how that went and ways to improve and tweak, we get a little bump, I'm talking a little bump of actually seeing that translate from training to classroom or to home visiting setting or to your family child care program.

When we see coaching added into the mix, that's where we see practice comes alive. Training then has a connection point; we have basically used Ebbinghaus's curve of forgetting. We have disrupted it with this spaced opportunity to practice and revisit content. Virginia is going to talk about Coaching Companion as another way to hold on to some of that content. I'm excited about that. All of that to say was a roundabout way to say, coaching works. Coaching is phenomenal for changing practice. How do we do this for our coaches? If we have our coaches go through some of the resources we have, we have iPD courses on the Practice-Based Coaching model, beautifully walks through all the steps.

If we have our coaches do another one of our iPD courses on the competencies themselves or any of the other content, we have to help them engage with staff. And yet there's no opportunity to have that spaced repetition opportunity for feedback, what are we missing for our coaches? This is a question we'd love for some QA response on this. How do coaches, your coaches in your program, and if you're a coach right now, how are you doing this? How are you engaging in reflection and peer consultation for your own professional development?

We know we do that for others, your coachees, but how do you do that for yourself? I am especially curious to learn from programs that maybe you have only one coach, or you're rural and remote, and you have 10 coaches, but they are separated by literally hundreds of miles. Coming together in person is challenging. Tell us some of your strategies for coaches to have that reflection and feedback opportunity to disrupt that forgetting cycle. You've both chaired team meetings. Ooh, like on Teams, or just team meetings. I'm making it technical. Maybe it can be very analog.

Virginia: I love coach meetings. For those who are talking about meetings, you can pop in how often your coaches have an opportunity to meet. Because meetings mean more than one. If you're meeting monthly, that'd be awesome.

Monthly. Monthly again. Individual and group meetings.

Vanessa: Meeting with a mental health consultant. Love that.

Virginia: Virtual meetings too.

Vanessa: Answering about monthly. Thank you. Weekly. I see weekly. Weekly feels luxurious. Wouldn't it be lovely if we all could meet weekly? Thank you all for your responses. All that you put into the Q&A widget, I'm going to roll up into a MyPeers post so we can continue to share if other ideas get sparked. Or if you want to, I shouldn't say steal — if you want to, borrow and test out, take for a test drive, an idea that is shared here, you certainly can. I'm going to pass it back to you for R number four.

Virginia: We're on to number four. That goes so quickly. Number four of the 5Rs is reflective dialogue. Reflective dialogue is about the practice of helping staff identify when they're effective so that they can feel it themselves. To do this, learning leaders use data as provocation for team discussion. Data is not used to evaluate, but rather to inspire curiosity. This can connect to the Practice-Based Coaching tool of the Head Start Coaching Companion.

The Head Start Coaching Companion is a web-based video annotation platform that's free that allows coaches, coachees, peer coaching teams, and really any education staff to use the power of video and observation as data to spark conversation. We have a quick poll for you. Just curiosity. We've just got to pause for a second to learn more about your current use of the Head Start Coaching Companion. In your program, let us know, do you use the Head Start Coaching Companion to support individualized coaching for education staff? Do you use it for coordinating and sharing video in group coaching?

Maybe you use it to provide opportunities for self-coaching or share resources? Or the last option, maybe you don't yet use the Head Start Coaching Companion in your program. Go ahead and fill out that poll. We will check out the answers. Not yet. It looks like 100% has not yet. We have some sharing resources, individualized coaching. Awesome. This just tells me we have lots of wonderful opportunities for helping and marketing the Head Start Coaching Companion and encouraging to use it and explore how you could use it to best benefit your needs.

Vanessa: I'm curious, this is not a planned QA moment, so QA people, be ready. I'm curious for those who are not yet using Coaching Companion in your program, what might be the potential barrier to that? Is it that this is the first time you're hearing the words Head Start Coaching Companion as a tool for coaching? That might be it. Or is it something around technological needs? Just curious, because it's a fabulous tool and you're going to be talking about it a little bit, so I won't steal your thunder. I'm curious, the number is higher than I expected that are not using it yet. We said yet. We're going to win you over today.

Virginia: Yes, we are.

Vanessa: Knowledge of how to use it. Never heard of it. First time hearing about it. Just learning about it.

The good news is for everyone out there, one of the, well, the face in my opinion of the Head Start Coaching Companion, other than our mascot Coco, is you. Virginia is our Head Start Coaching Companion liaison and ambassador, knower of all things, Head Start Coaching Companion. Listing all those things. If you have questions about it, we certainly did build it into our viewers guide. As follow up, we'll put something on MyPeers where we may be able to provide some more individualized support for those that are interested.

Virginia: Always happy to talk Coaching Companion. I love the tool. I think it's fabulous. Once you dig into it, I've heard people use it in amazing ways for video reflection, their own reflection. Thank you again for sharing. We'll dive a little bit deeper into a little bit more about what the coaching can do. As I mentioned, it's a video annotation platform. Just as this tool can be used for supporting your coaches with education staff or coaching with education staff, it can also be used in your efforts to provide professional development to coaches.

In other words, you can use the Coaching Companion for coaching coaches. For example, you can use the Coaching Companion for facilitating a community of practice for coaches. You can use it to review and provide feedback on a filmed coaching session. Of course, with the coaches', the coachees' permission and not for evaluating a coach's performance, but for the coaches' own reflection.

You can also use it for sharing resources and ideas with other coaches. You can also use it to collect or store a collection of resources that you find helpful in your coaching work for easy reference in your work with education staff or even for yourself. Resources that we've talked about today, the coaching competencies, the crosswalks, the needs assessments, those all can be found there. We're always updating that resource library to make it the most useful for you.

I'll share a little bit more. This is a screenshot of the resource library in the Head Start Coaching Companion, which houses a collection of different resources from video exemplar clips to documents such as the Coaching Competencies, crosswalks or needs assessments you can see here. You can view these resources in the resource library or add them to your own library or even to coaching cycles as part of an action plan step.

If you're new to the Head Start Coaching Companion or would love to learn more, please see our viewers guide for additional information and resources. If you have questions, we encourage you to use the help desk email address on the Head Start Coaching Companion page on the ECLKC.

I'm going to change this pulse check a little bit. Instead of, do you use it, I'm going to ask if you are now inspired or excited or curious to learn more about the Coaching Companion, give us a thumbs up. I sound like I'm on a YouTube video, give us a thumbs up. If you are still not ready yet, you can go ahead and give a thumbs down. We would love to gauge your interest in it and see if we sparked any new excitement or curiosity. We'll pause a little moment to see your pulse check responses coming in.

Vanessa: As people give their thumbs up, thumbs down - you did sound like a YouTube, like, share, and subscribe. I have to say one of my favorite features of the Coaching Companion, one that it's absolutely free. That is phenomenal. Having all the resources at the tip of your fingers to be able to send to a coachee is amazing, including little exemplar videos. Here's a practice you are working on. Here's an example of what it looks like. Helpful. To me, it is when you do the videos of the coachee in action, whether they're at a home visit or in their family child care in a classroom, and you can provide pinpoint feedback using the timestamp feature, like at minute 105, you said this. I noticed the kids did this in response. Phenomenal coaching tool. You can talk about recognition.

Virginia: Yes, absolutely.

Vanessa: I love it.

Virginia: I love that tool too, that you could just use it yourself. I know I was always a coachee that was super nervous about videotaping and being on camera, and I could just watch videos by myself and tag moments of myself like, oh, I noticed I missed a child behind me trying to get my attention or something like that. There're just amazing various ways you can use the tool.

Vanessa: It fits so beautifully with the Practice-Based Coaching model. You are walking through all of the steps, and you create the cycle and you can go back and review and you can see the progress and review the resources and see and go from September, this is your video. We've been working on it for six months. Let's look at it again. What do you see as the differences?

Did I mention it's free?

Virginia: It's free. That's my favorite word. My girls always make fun of me. My favorite words are free, sale, and clearance. Thank you so much for engaging in that pulse check. I think we're going to move on to the last of our 5Rs. Vanessa?

Vanessa: No, I think it's still you.

Virginia: It's still me.

Vanessa: This one’s my favorite. I make you talk a lot about it.

Virginia: That's right. Sorry. There is one more thing that I want to call attention to in regards to reflective dialogue. That is the practice of collaborating, collaborating to make meaning of data and integrating data into practice. This connects to the Practice-Based Coaching Competency domain of goal setting and action planning, and specifically the competency of gathering, aggregating, and co-analyzing formal and informal data to support the collaborative development of goals.

When you are trying to determine how best to provide professional development for coaches or what the focus of professional development for coaches should be, there are a lot of different ways you can gather data to inform these decisions, including the Practice-Based Coaching Competencies: Strength and Needs Assessment. You can also use coaching log reviews, observational data of coaching sessions, which can include audio or video recordings. You can use child outcomes data or staff turnover data. Here's one final opportunity to pause and reflect. We encourage you to jot down your thoughts in your viewer's guide.

How are coaches engaged in designing their own professional development? For example, do you meet with coaches to review child outcomes data or staff turnover data and/or maybe goals that are documented in the Head Start Coaching Companion or a different platform to determine if there are professional development needs that can be addressed with additional training for both education staff and coaches? If you're seeing perhaps a higher rate of challenging behaviors in classrooms, teachers may need additional training on effective strategies to prevent and address these behaviors.

Likewise, coaches may also identify a need for additional training to help teachers deal with the stress of working with children whose behaviors are challenging. You may have learned that all team members could benefit from shared training on trauma-informed care so that all staff are speaking the same language and using the same messaging with families and community partners. Now, it's time.

Vanessa: She's like so ready to hand over this mouse. Before I get into the last R and wind down our time together for the hour of our webinar, we have a lot of questions coming in about Coaching Companion, which we love and more than we can possibly answer during today's webinar. What I will commit to doing is pulling up all the questions and sorting them for you, Virginia. We will post these responses to questions in the Education Manager Learning Leaders' space on MyPeers. That'll be where you can find some of these answers. Like Virginia said, if you have more questions, please feel free to reach out using that help desk because we can answer more questions there.

Last R. Another one of my favorites, maybe because it's the last one, maybe because it's about people and really seeing them and making sure they feel valued, visible, and validated for their work, but seeing them for the who they are culturally, as well as who they are professionally. It's woven in here. For today, I want to talk about the 5Rs practice of recognition and celebrating both the small and big wins, and that is subjective.

How it connects to the coach competencies of collaborative partnerships around identifying strengths and celebrating progress. You can see where we found those fit together beautifully. When it comes to this, we've talked about this before, recognition looks different for each person. It really is subjective. It could be a small win through somebody's eyes and a huge win for another.

If you're a coach working with a home visitor, they have completed their very first home visit, that is a big win. If they're coaching a home visitor, and it is their fifth year of being a home visitor, they literally have done hundreds of visits, maybe it isn't a big deal to finish the first one of the year, but it may be a big deal to hit that milestone of 100. I have spent time 100 times with families in their home and spent time with them, helping them to be the very best parent and educator and advocate for their child. Let's celebrate that. Big, small. When it comes to recognition and affirming and appreciating work well done, it can look different for each person.

We've used this framework before, but we're going to think about it for coaches this time around. There is work that was done to create these five languages of appreciation. It is linked in the viewer's guide as well. I didn't make these up, so I don't want to take full credit, but I will take credit for sharing them with you. The first is words of affirmation. This needs to be specific, and it needs to be timely. We're not talking high five in the hallway or a good job, that's a little empty. It is more, if I were to create a Coaching Companion version of it, as the education leader, supervisor, person who provides some mentorship to a coach, saying, “I noticed that you're really using the time stamping feature.

You've really figured out how to use that one. I've noticed your comments are becoming much more specific now that you're using time stamping.” I'm curious, how are the educators responding to that feedback? It's not necessarily just saying nice job. It's saying, I notice you. I see you. Often in our work, it is easy to go through an entire day and feel invisible, even though the work has been a heavy load to carry for that day. Hearing somebody say, “I see you, I noticed.” I'm curious if it made a difference, what do you think, could mean the world.

It could also be not related to coaching at all. I know that you've been a coach with us for two years, but I also know your passion is around early literacy skills for infants and toddlers. Like that is your jam. Like that is where you are in your happy place. We're having a COP, we're having a Community of Practice, and that's going to be the focus for our home visitors for training.

Would you like to develop a 15-minute mini presentation, then lead the discussion? That acknowledgement and recognition of somebody's expertise, outside of what they do day to day, can feel good. It also offers an opportunity to be placed in a leadership position, to share what you know, and to show a different facet of who you are as a person. All that to say, words of affirmation are great.

The next one is quality time. An easy coaching example that comes to mind for me in terms of providing quality time is, one, reflective space that you provide if you are that person for a coach. Making sure that it is all about that coach for that time. Maybe the coach gets to pick where you meet. The coach may say, I don't want to meet in an office. I'm in the building all day. It is gorgeous outside. Let's go for a walk and talk. The coach gets to pick the place.

During that time, cell phones are nonexistent. If you are in your office, laptops are closed, they're turned off. We don't even have our phones on vibrate because that's not really turning off. They're not on the table. Because this whatever the time is, half-hour, 45 minutes, one hour, is quality time for that person with the goal of helping them to feel heard, valued, seen, and appreciated.

The next one is acts of service. This is something I used to do all the time back in program. I would be the bus monitor so that a coach and a teacher could meet. I can ride the bus. They can have this hour of time they wouldn't normally have together during the day. That's just one simple act of service that could be done to support a coach, especially when they're having a tough time finding those moments where you get synergy between schedules that can be challenging at any given time of the year.

The next one is tangible gifts. We've talked about this one before. It could be that you have a coach COP and that happens once a month. For that Community of Practice, you make sure they have coffee and tea. When they come in, it's the smell of coffee and tea. It automatically feels like a space people want to settle into and have dialogue.

We talked before about some of those creative awards. Like the golden flip-flop for the person who walked the extra mile or the rubber bands for the person who showed flexibility. The person who's the organizational duct tape really helped us to stay in sync with our work together. You can be creative and it doesn't have to cost money. You could go raid your office supply and have the staff create those awards and make it more meaningful. It's not about the thing, it's about the message behind the thing.

The last one is appropriate physical touch. Some people love a hug. I am a hugger, but I also know not everybody loves a hug. That may not be affirming to that person. This takes us back to the first R of responsive relationships and knowing what makes a person feel appreciated. Will that high five be appreciated? Great, because you know that about that person. If not, there are four more languages that you can choose.

As I was whipping through those, and this will be our final reflection before we end our time together, thinking about your coaches that you support or if you are a coach, which of those languages speak to you in terms of how you would like to be appreciated? You can pop that into the Q&A. We'll get a sense of the languages of appreciation out there in webinar virtual space.

As your answers come in, I’m going to give us a little bit of time for a commercial. Before I do that, please do look at your viewer's guide, there are some amazing additional resources that we just didn't have time to cover. In particular, what are we calling them? Not in-service suites. iPD courses that are specifically for coaches. We think it would be great for new coaches or even for U.S. education leaders. If you are unfamiliar with the Practice-Based Coaching model, amazing introduction. Five hours of training to be able to understand the PBC model, fantastic. Now we're seeing things come in. Words of affirmation, quality time. Thank you, Sherry. I love the quality time.

Virginia: Words of affirmation, too.

Vanessa: We should have made that one a poll. That would have been fun.

Virginia: Hindsight.

Vanessa: Hindsight. Let me take us to a commercial. I got to get my mouse. I'm not going to get this. Because timing is perfect that we are talking about using the 5Rs to be a champion for coaches. Tomorrow, literally same time, same place — different link. I shouldn't say same place — there is a coaching corner webinar happening tomorrow really focusing on Practice-Based Coaching efforts and the effects. There's a lovely tool that the team has they can share with you. We really think that if this content resonated with you, you must go to the webinar tomorrow. If you cannot attend live, please register. Then you'll get the link when it's available to watch on demand. It's such valuable information. Don't miss it. Words of affirmation are still coming in. Fantastic. Think about those ways to recognize your team as we say goodbye to you. We want to acknowledge and affirm and appreciate you.

Thank you for joining us. We know it is not easy at all to take an hour away from the work that you do to support your staff, the children, and families. We appreciate every moment we have with you. We will see you for the next webinar in 2024, believe it or not, friends. This is the last one of the season. We are excited to see you again. In the meantime, we will stay connected on MyPeers. If you're not already on MyPeers, find the information in the viewer's guide to join us there. I will get up your responses. We'll get some FAQ about the Coaching Companions.

Vanessa: We will win you over. You will be joining it. We will see you next time. Thank you all.

Virginia: Thank you.

Virginia: Of course. This was fun. This was very fun.