The Power of Collaboration: Creating a Non-Evaluative Teaching Culture

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A well developed coaching and mentoring program should be one of your top priorities if you're looking at building a high performance team now apply that concept. Into the K through 12 education space, one where funding is limited and you're faced with a crisis of educators exiting the field. And you've just ramped up the degree of difficulty beyond what's typical in the private sector.

tion We have charlie earnest [: 00:01:00

Let me give you a little bit of background on charlie's story He's an accomplished educational leader with over 25 years of experience in the field So that's part of the reason why he's on the show today because we are inviting The superintendents of the top 100 school districts and across the country to share their best practices.

t school district serves over: 1700

And he also established the concept of instructional rounds. Charlie holds a PhD. So that's a newsflash. You have two nerds on this conversation. So that's, is going to be fun for you. His [00:02:00] doctoral research is in educational leadership and policy analysis from the university of Wisconsin, Madison, Charlie.

Welcome to the show.

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[00:02:08] Dr. Jim: One of the things that's going to be really interesting about this conversation is the discussion that we're going to have about the role of coaching, and mentoring and its impact on employee retention outcomes, and specifically in this case is going to be teacher retention outcomes.

The main reason why I find it interesting is that people talk about this a lot, but they don't really define what good coaching and good mentoring looks like. So I think mapping that out is going to be really useful for a lot of our listeners. But before we dive into that it's tough to, Distill a 25 year plus year career into a handful of sentences.

So what I'd like you to do is share with our listeners a little bit more about your story, some of the things that really influenced your philosophy when it came to educational leadership and leadership in general.

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And one thing that made a huge impact on me was a class that I took it was a UW Madison class. And Colleen Capper, Dr. Colleen Capper was the the teacher and that was on inclusive practices. And that really shaped my career. I was able to get a principal job right after, shortly after that, when I finished up my master's degree and able to do that work at Broadhead Middle School, inclusive practices.

And now it's known as Integrated Comprehensive Systems for Equity. And because the world has a sense of humor the teacher in that, Colleen Capper I mentioned, she ended up being my Ph. D. advisor. And I see her as a mentor, and I still work with her today in a different capacity.

trict doing some of her work [: 00:04:00

[00:04:02] Dr. Jim: You spent some time as an educator in Arizona, and then you move back into Wisconsin. I don't know if there's any relationships in terms of the Arizona educational environment versus the Wisconsin educational environment. But I'm curious to see how that experience as an educator in that environment prepared you to be a more effective leader when you actually started going through the administrative path.

So share with us any key things that you picked up from that experience as an educator that prepared you well for that leadership track.

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So that's the coaching I received [00:05:00] from a veteran team. I saw others on other teams that maybe weren't so fortunate to have some good mentoring from the start. So I was able to get some training, which back then I think it was a little bit by luck, but it turned out to be a highly effective for me.

And what's funny is some of the onboarding that you use back then, it was Harry Wong's book, The First Day of School, and he just recently passed away. That's still used in schools today. A lot of the good stuff is still around and it's still high quality.

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[00:05:53] Charlie Urness: yeah we're really selective about who we choose as our mentors they have to be quality educators to begin with. And that [00:06:00] was my experience. I didn't have an official mentor. But these three other teachers on my teaching team, they're all core educators. They took me under their wing.

And what's interesting is then in my third year as a teacher, I became a mentor myself to new teachers because the district saw the need for that. That was the district in Yuma that saw the need for that and to have the quality people helping out new teachers. There's a lot of research on teacher efficacy, the first one, two, three years if it goes well, they learn the good habits and what to do.

If not, that's where you see some of the statistics out there where people are leaving the profession after three years. Yeah.

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They either are here for less than three years and out of the profession or stay longer than three years and they provide a A [00:07:00] feeder system to the broader leadership community that we're trying to cultivate within within our districts. i'd like to go back to something else that you mentioned an influential Class that you took and that was inclusive practices tell us a little bit more about how that class impacted you And how that impact shows up in how you've built out your district, because you're part of a top 100 district. So I'm curious about the relationships there.

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So then that helps with your culture and your climate and everything is connected. And so that class as I was taking that, I thought, you know what, when I become an administrator, that's What's going to be one of [00:08:00] my main focus as an administrator, and it was to the point where that was a key component of the work, so you're doing what's right for kids, and the equity work is high quality teaching and learning.

It's not just for equity sake. There's a phrase that I like. It's equity and excellence. And the, one of the key words of those three, obviously all three words are important, but and is the key word. You can have equity and not have excellence. You can have excellence and not have equity, but the three together, that word and equity and excellence, that's what's doing it for all kids.

And that's where you have academic achievement and you have inclusive practices. where kids feel like they belong and the teachers see real value in what they're doing day to day.

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[00:09:07] Charlie Urness: So we use, like a lot of districts, we do the same thing. We use key questions embedded into our interview process to maybe to find out, to suss out where a person's either their already their background knowledge or at least their beliefs. to move in that direction to work in a system that has inclusion is one of its main tenants.

n learn together, and we can [: 00:10:00

[00:10:00] Dr. Jim: Are there any trends that you've noticed from a retention outcomes perspective that flow out of that hiring process? I don't know what data that you have behind it, but I would assume that a Interview process and selection process that's well designed is going to have some impact downstream. So tell us a little bit more about what you've seen on that front.

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Our colleges are doing a better job of that inclusive lens, that equity lens and making sure that people have the high quality teaching in the mindset from day one.

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[00:11:08] Charlie Urness: They're in Wisconsin. There are. Educational cooperatives are called CESAs, and we work with one. CESA 2 is the one that we work with, and they have the New Teacher Mentor Project, and they've done a great job of then training our mentors, and then our mentors can then work with new teachers. I remember, I've been in education a long time, as you mentioned, and I remember the old days were, here you are, here's your textbooks, Shut the door.

Good luck. You're expected to act like you know everything from day one. And certainly living and learning in that isolation is not healthy. So the mentorship piece where, you know, everything from where are the paperclips to how do you work on discipline? All those things are hugely important. And so we're lucky to have a grant.

supported. They're supported [: 00:12:00

[00:12:10] Dr. Jim: So when you look at that that mentorship program think when I look at an employee life cycle, one of the most critical elements of that employee life cycle is the first 90 days, usually the onboarding period. So give us a little bit more detail about what a good mentorship and coaching program looks like when it comes to life across that first 90 days.

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So there are days where they're able to work with them on that as well. So it's both scheduled in and then it's as needed throughout the year. [00:13:00] The 90 days, what's interesting is because of a school year, we do more of a 100 day plan and then we've got 65 days during the summer. But the 90 days is so important because you can be more specific with that type of, that look and that type of training.

So it's a year long process. To repeat our mentors really deserve a lot of credit for what they do with the teachers, but that's only one part of it

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Tell us a little bit more about the role that the principles play and providing continuing development outside of those mentorship sessions so that you're having that sort of culture embedded across the organization versus these point in time sessions.

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So the coaching piece is. The most important and if coaching is done well, the coaching can inform the new teacher of what the evaluation system will look like and how to be successful on the evaluation system. So the coaching is very proactive. And the evaluation is both a way to respond and a way to give feedback for our teachers.

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[00:15:12] Charlie Urness: We have an adult learning framework that we developed through work as our administrative team. And one of the great things is, at the beginning of the year, we can tell people some very simple things in a lesson to be successful. And what's great about it, it works at kindergarten, and it works with seniors.

Having some type of success starter, and it's been called a bell work, it's been called bell ringer, it's anticipatory set goes all the way back to Madeline Hunter. We're really specific about our learning targets. Again, they have different names in education as well. And then we do a nice job, I think, of teaching our teachers how to use gradual release responsibility.

on a surface level, that can [: 00:16:00

And this is how you embed it in. And oh, by the way, the learning targets are tied to the state standards. So we make sure that we've got our scope and secrets covered well for all of our classes also.

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[00:16:37] Charlie Urness: Yeah and if they go in and they see you had the learning target there, but it was, there, there's some things that we could, that we noticed and we wondered. And so I like the acronym, Now, N O W, I noticed, I observed, I wondered. So that's the type of the feedback that you can give, both on a coaching standpoint, and then also even in an evaluation type of a system.

e you say, I noticed you did [: 00:17:00

[00:17:12] Dr. Jim: So this is this is really good stuff and it actually ties back into something that I often use just in, in my spaces. So I've always been on the revenue side of of tech organizations. And when I'm building up. Teams underneath me, I use the S. O. S. Method show observe shape. So this sounds very similar to that.

So I wanted to make sure I'm connecting there. So one other thing that I'm curious about when you describe that coaching. Exercise it's focused on driving student results and also on developing educators so that they're more effective delivering the material and bringing more of their students students forward.

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[00:18:10] Charlie Urness: Yeah, a little bit of art, a little bit of science. The science pieces, they're going to do well on their Educator effectiveness. That's the observation system that we use in Wisconsin. So then also the art piece is, the with it ness and that's actually a research term used in education, the with it ness that educators have, the way that they are able, are respected by their peers, the way that others perceive them, the way they work with students and parents, and so it's pretty easy.

To, and you have to take all the data, but it's pretty easy to see young educators that have that panache and have that, those that those abilities. And then it takes them, it's two factor theory, right? They have to be interested in it as well. This has to be something that they wanna do.

ht that it's something I was [: 00:19:00

And then you give small but specific learning opportunities for teachers.

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So I think it'd be helpful for you to map out. Or at least a framework for what good coaching looks like. So when you think about, hey, this is coaching that is delivered well, what are the elements of it so that people listening can take that, put it in their back pocket and apply it to their own environments when they try to put this into play?

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I'm talking about that example right there. So what is not first. So the feedback really comes back with coaching should be non evaluated unless something is way off base, unethical, unsafe, etc. Coaching should be non evaluative and it should be for the improvement. It also really needs to be self reflective on behalf of the teacher.

ailures and then making sure [: 00:21:00

[00:21:02] Dr. Jim: Yeah, I like the point that you brought out in terms of embedding technology into the coaching efforts. Is there anything standardized that you've put into place that you've seen has been really effective in upskilling, not only teacher capability, but also identifying potential for leadership within the the educator ranks within your district.

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That came through real clearly during COVID because of the virtual instruction. So hopefully, luckily, a lot of those good habits did stick with our teachers. And then we were able to say, this is why all these key components of a high quality lesson are important because they work virtually and they work in front of [00:22:00] kids and they can be adapted.

And they are, they're really the main pieces of the tenets of a quality lesson plan. Quality teaching.

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[00:22:26] Charlie Urness: Instructional rounds is something that I stumbled upon a long time ago as a principal and I remember it was really good timing because I was I Really I like being a teacher and as an administrator the way I teach is to lead professional learning And so I was in a classroom, I was in a math classroom, and the teacher was implementing something that we had just talked about in professional learning, and I'm sitting there in the back thinking, Oh my goodness, this is fantastic.

it. And I thought, how am I [: 00:23:00

Luckily, I had summed upon instructional rounds and the work out of Out of Harvard and out eastern part of the country. And so we started implementing that. And that is one of the best things I've ever done for both climate and culture. And they certainly are different. Climate and culture and a building.

So then we applied it with new teachers. So the learning curve I saw on new teachers by having them take part of an instruction around in just the first month on a job, I saw it was such a steep learning curve. As I mentioned it was better than everything, anything I've ever done before. And it's, I think it's integral to a mentoring.

project.

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[00:24:05] Charlie Urness: Four simple steps. And I want to say up front, and I talk about this all the time, it's non evaluative. So the, I'll get to the four steps. So the first thing you do is you need a high quality teacher that you want others to go in and learn from. So instead of bringing in an expert from outside and a consultant from outside, every school I can guarantee has some high quality teachers that the principal says, I wish.

More people were like him or her. So that's where you start with. You start with some of your superstars is you want other people to emulate. It's non evaluative. And so the first thing is it's a, the first step is something called the problem of practice. Problem of practice is something you're working on.

is is going in and observing [: 00:25:00

It depends on what works for you as a principal, but if you have a class period that's 60 minutes long, you might go in for just 30 minutes of it. You always want to see the beginning because the beginning of the lessons, in my opinion, are the most important, most impactful. And then the third step is the observation debrief.

So what we would do is we'd go in for the first 30 minutes of a lesson, we'd observe, and then we'd come back and then we'd debrief. And it's always to repeat for the hundredth time, non evaluative. So we talk about what you saw, what you noticed, what you wondered, what you might use in your own classroom.

chers would pick up and copy.[: 00:26:00

And I'm going to use Harry Wong again. He had this phrase, CASE, C A S E, copy and steal everything. We're not reinventing the wheel. You go and see something good, you take it and you own it and make it your own in your own classroom. And the confidence that we would, that I would see out of a first year teacher after they saw, Oh, this is how it's done at this school.

And there was no guessing game. Oh, this is what's going to work for me as well. They tweak it, make it their own and they own it. It really made a huge difference. And so we were able to take some some building wide initiatives to scale very quickly using Instructional Model.

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I think if you use and apply that principle, regardless of the role, if One of the biggest gaps in any organization in any role is defining what does good look like. So if you spent that first month of as a new employee paired up with the best of the best within your environment and doing that exercise of, what did you see what did you understand it to be?

What questions did you have? If you go through that exercise, you're really building role clarity and then after the fact, I think this is where it's important. There's a director of marketing that I follow at seismic Steve Watt, and he always says if you want to understand, if you're making an impact, listen for the echoes.

g about. See how it shows up [: 00:28:00

Are broadly applicable to any function, especially when it comes to onboarding new employees and getting them to understand what the role looks like, understanding what good looks like, and then setting them on the track to go ahead and execute those things that they're learning. So I really appreciate you bringing mapping out the the instructional rounds concept and also how you bring that to life.

One of the things that I'm curious about is when we look at educator development, educator retention, how have you seen the use of instructional rounds? Drive better retention or development outcomes within your district.

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give a little bit of my control up, which is a good thing. They're all doing it in their own, they had the basic tenets are there, but they're doing it in their own ways. We use AVID at the middle school and the high school. And if you're an educator, you know what that is. It's and there are some AVID strategies and then the high school and the middle school principal are using instructional rounds to support that implementation work of AVID and having a lot of success.

middle school right now and [: 00:30:00

[00:30:01] Dr. Jim: One of the things that I'm thinking about when you describe the impact I could imagine somebody in the audience saying charlie you're from you're from a mid sized school district. You have a lot more resources than we do i'm just a little rural district out in the middle of nowhere So how I don't think this is feasible.

What would you say to that sort of comment?

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So there is ways to be creative with this and to use. Video recording of lessons, and then to have that as a time, once again, not evaluative to use the recording to say, okay, [00:31:00] what did we learn from this recording? Of course, the host teacher would have to be comfortable with that. But there are ways to get around some of The barriers that can happen for just scheduling wise and then smaller districts.

So my thing is try it do it the you won't be you won't have any regrets when you are able to see the impact that it has it's worth every Minute that you put into it

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That's a geographically distributed. You identify the 1 or 2 key teachers record that and then you have an evergreen Teaching tool that you can use to continue developing every other instructor or educator within your district. That's actually a pretty good, I could see how that would be super, super effective.

ie, I appreciate you hanging [: 00:32:00

What are the things that they need to pay attention to bring that to life in their own organizations?

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If you look at what it costs to hire someone and what it Cots to train someone to onboard them. If you're turning over teachers at a regular rate, that has a financial impact. So you want to make sure that if you get someone good, you make sure that they have all the tools and equipment to do their job effectively.

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[00:32:59] Charlie Urness: I am on [00:33:00] LinkedIn, just put in Charles Ernest. But then also I'll give you my direct email. That's right at the school district.

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The first thing that stands out to me. Is that organizations in general, if they want to build a culture of excellence, you have to use what's good in your organization as a force multiplier to build more good. So in the case that we were talking about the instructional rounds are rooted in identifying your top instructors.

ou should be using that as a [: 00:34:00

The second thing that comes out of this conversation is that. We're no longer tied in this era of having to be physically in a location to see what good looks like. So whenever possible, if you can leverage asynchronous learning, that's always going to be a benefit for you. And then it becomes an evergreen tool for you to develop excellence within your organization.

So those two core principles, regardless of industry or sector could be carried forward into any organization and really embed that coaching and development mindset within the organization. So I appreciate you sharing that with us. For those of you who have hung out with us and listened to this conversation, we appreciate you hanging out.

eader joining us and sharing [: 00:35:00