Coaches = Givers

Have you watched this recent TEDTalks by Adam Grant which defined Givers and Takers (and Matchers)?  As an educational technology coach, I watched this with great interest and reflected upon Grant's model as applied to my work as a coach.  If you haven't watched it yet, then here it is . . . definitely worth the 18 minutes of your time!



Here are the key moments that I picked out from his talk . . .

• 3:40 - Givers make organisations better . . . Schools need to recognise and acknowledge this.  My previous principal always said that I was a problem finder and would immediately start working on a solution without being asked - something that was greatly appreciated.  But the work of Givers is not always appreciated - please see a previous post about what I call "guilty by competence".
• 5:30 - Protect Givers from burnout . . . As a self-identified Giver, the environment and school culture that I work in has a profound effect on me.  The act of changing schools has forced me to reflect upon this a lot this year.  How school leadership values our role as coaches and change-agents within the school, makes all of the difference with how our day-to-day work progresses and how quickly (or slowly) we "feel the burn".
• 6:30 - Encourage help-seeking behaviours . . . Get more people to act as Givers by creating/building a culture of giving, providing help, and sharing.  Again, this is all about changing the culture of the school, which comes from top through leadership and from the grassroots movements which encourage collaboration, professional sharing and growth.  Without the support for such bottom-up shifts in culture, the Takers dominate the culture of the school and the Givers get burned out.
• 7:50 - Get the right people on the bus . . . To me, this speaks about hiring practices and considering people's Mindset (in my case, mindset towards educational technology).  One way school leadership can address and build a positive school culture is through effective management of hiring practices for faculty and staff.
• 8:50 - Weed out the Takers . . . This is an inherently difficult thing to do in schools, but entirely necessary and vital for school development.  As a teacher for almost 3 decades, I have seen the ineffective/disgruntled/unmotivated/coasting/bully teacher at every school that I have worked in across 3 continents.  Admit it, this is a problem at every school in the world no matter how big or small, how affluent or inner-city, how well resourced or under-funded.  School leadership needs to be able to move someone on who is detrimental to the organisation as a whole.  More easily said then done, I know . . . but just because it is difficult doesn't mean that it isn't necessary.
• 9:10 - Characteristic of Agreeableness . . . I only bring this part up because I am Canadian, eh?! ;-)  Sorry about that . . . 

My takeaways from this?  Coaches are generally Givers by nature (there are a few that I have met who I would classify more as a Matcher though) and they are not the only ones in the building.  As such, schools need to protect them and cultivate a culture of giving/helping which will benefit school growth and development through building a positive school culture.  Would you classify yourself as a Giver?  Have you ever worked in a school where the Takers stand out and dominate the school culture?  If so, how did you survive in that kind of environment?  Or did you hit burnout and move on, as changing the school culture is just too hard or too long of a process?

Changing Mindsets . . . but not in a good way!

What do you do when someone's ambition and vision, collides with their skill set and technical abilities?  As a coach, what do you do when a person's mindset changes right before your eyes?  [this is the change that isn't very good to see]

So here's the story, the situation, the conundrum that I find myself thinking about for the last few days.  I will try to keep this as anonymous as possible, as I think this through as a write it all down.   But don't expect any answers here . . . I haven't got that far with my thinking.  Maybe you might have some input on all of this for me . . .

There is a colleague that I work with who embarked on a big project to revamp the online presence for part of the school.  They inherited a spaghetti map of different systems and platforms which wove together a piecemeal online existence, from their predecessor.  That previous colleague essentially built bits and pieces of the overall resource over a number of years, using whatever tool was on-hand, convenient, or in their field of view at the time.  In short, it is/was a mess and needed to be completely overhauled and replaced.

Enter my new colleague who fought and fought with maintaining this old plate of spaghetti, and came to hate it.  Once they had reached their tipping point where they wanted to fix it, change it, update it and make it their own, we started working on it together through regular coaching sessions.  My new colleague (how about I just call them Bob from now on) . . . Bob . . . started conducting a ton of research into what other schools were doing, their look and feel, their functionality and content, and their audience.  Bob also had a pretty good idea about what they wanted, as he had done a similar project at their previous school with much success.  The big difference between these two projects, is that the previous school did not have a system/platform already in place and they hired a developer to build everything for the school.  In the here and now, there is no big budget to pay someone, and the culture is more of a DIY project.

So Bob took it upon himself to rebuild everything from scratch, and made this their goal last year.  By the end of last year, we had built parts of the new system, but had not "released" it for use yet.  In other words, the old plate of spaghetti was still on the table and was still being served to the school.  At the start of this year, Bob really wanted to focus on building the last remaining pieces of the system and to get everything up and running as soon as possible.  As the beginning of the school year got busier and busier (as they do), this project got put on the back burner to simmer and stew.  We revisited it and worked on it periodically during our coaching sessions, but more often than not, something else would take precedence and would be more immediate.  When we did work on the project, development was often slow or at a standstill.  In Bob's own words, he often "could not remember how to do something" or "could not make a decision on what he wanted."  It was one step forward and three steps back, but we kept com in back to it, as it was/is important.

Then Bob dropped the bomb on me . . . he told me that he is so stressed out by the project and his inability to make any progress on it, that it is affecting his health.  Boom!  In order to preserve his health, he was going to drop the while thing, and perhaps we can salvage some of the pieces that we have already built.  "Thank you for your time and effort and patience in coaching me, but I can't work on this any longer."  Boom!!

What do you do when someone's ambition and vision, collides with their skill set and technical abilities?  The project involved rebuilding resources which are really important to the school, which support teaching and learning across school divisions.  Bob has a vision for what this could be, and would use it in his teaching everyday.  However, Bob really does not understand why he could not grasp how to use these tools to build his vision, and why it is so hard for him.  This is the clash or the difference between what they want to do, and having the skills/expertise to accomplish that goal.  As a tech coach, I see this as part of my job - to bridge the gap, which is what we have been working on for almost a year now.

What do you do when a person's mindset changes right before your eyes?  In the beginning, Bob clearly had an growth mindset towards this project - he saw it as a challenge and a point of deep learning on his part to work through it.  But all of that changed gradually as the frustration grew and the health issues started building.  Are these two things connected?  Bob seems to think so.  I, on the other hand, think that it has more to do with the steep learning curve that the project represents, combined with growing health issues related to his age . . . both difficult subjects to brooch in a conversation or coaching session.  With Bob's growing frustration and lack of progress, this turned into a downwards spiral which resulted in his mindset flipping over into the fixed position.  He is now thinking that he cannot learn these skills and tools, and that this project is just too big for him the tackle.  He even said that he will just leave it for someone else to fix and build once they are gone.  Totally defeated.  Bob no longer sees it has job to do this kind of work, and knows the school is not going to pay a developer to build it for him.  Totally stuck.

So what do I do with this project?  On one hand I could jump in and build it for Bob, but that is not my role or my job, and does not really involve coaching in any way.  Furthermore, Bob would not be in a position to maintain and further develop their system from whatever point I brought it up to . . . I would be signing up to be the gatekeeper and custodian for his system.  On the other hand, I could just accept that Bob is giving up and try to salvage some of the work we have already done, but that would effectively making part of the plate of spaghetti taste a little better, while at the same time making the plate bigger.  Not a very good outcome.  So what should I do, to move forward with this project and with Bob as a colleague whom I coach?  Any ideas?

Unprofessional Development

In thinking about and reflecting upon last year as a tech coach, it is hard not to dwell on the bad bits and negative stuff that happened over the year.  It's not that there wasn't anything good to think about . . . there were lots of victories and advancements big and small.  In fact, I would characterise last year as a series of really high-highs and low-lows.  Kind of a Karsh mountain-scape straight out of China.  Everyone always remembers the bad bits though - it's just human nature.  Last year, I had three events where people acted unprofessionally towards me, so I am going to devote my first posting of the school year to reflecting on some positive take-aways from those events.  First off though, I will not be getting into the who said/did what . . . no airing of dirty laundry here.  I have moved past all of that now - the perspective of time does wonders.

So here is my list of top-three take-aways from last year:

1. Perception can be everything - As the first tech coach in the HS here, how the people that I work with view and understand my position/role might not coincide with my day-to-day reality.  I am always there to help with anything tech-related, be it big or small, complex or simple, physical or digital, systems or tools based.  As a result, some people see me as being in charge of anything and everything that goes "bing", has a screen on it, or uses electricity (this is part of what I am talking about when I say "guilty by competence").  One of the incidents from last year revolved around what a faculty member thought was my job, as I was helping them with a number of issues and challenges.  But in fact, I was just trying to help mediate between Tech Services and the teacher, and support both sides of the equation.  This  ended up in a big mess and some heated talk when some decisions were made which were not in the teacher's favour.  My take-away . . . try to ensure that the people I work with understand my role, what I am in charge of and when I am merely a facilitator or mediator.  Being a teacher is so much simpler as everyone knows what your "job description" is . . . being a coach is a lot more fuzzy in many people's minds!
2. Sometimes you can't fix it and you just have to wait - Last year, I was put in a very uncomfortable position with an administrator where I had to sit on my hands and wait it out, no matter how illogical and irrational the "process" became.  I was unable to affect any positive change in the situation, nor could I inject any rational thought into the matter at hand.  Instead, I had to just wait for the year to end so that positive change could happen with the start of the new year.  My take-away . . . have faith that cooler/rational heads will prevail in the long run, and that things will be "put right" with time and patience.  Sometimes it is hard to give up that time, to have that patience, and to have confidence that things will get sorted out properly . . . this is one case that I will look back on that worked out in the long run.
3. You can't help everyone, and you can't make everyone happy - As a coach, my position means working with the entire HS faculty.  But what do you with a faculty member who is in a really bad place, and who is negative about everything concerning the school?  On a sports team, this would be like having the un-coachable player on the team . . . and there are no cuts and no trades.  Working with this faculty member became impossible as the year wore on, as they were prone to very unprofessional outbursts and rants directed at anyone nearby.  Unfortunately, I was on the end of one of those outbursts . . . but had no recourse other than to report it and move on.  Not a satisfactory conclusion by any means, but the person in question was leaving at the end of the year anyways so Admin thought it was best left alone.  My take-away . . . when working with faculty, they have to be in the right mindset in order to be receptive to coaching, must be internally motivated to learn and grow, and timing is everything (just-in-time learning rules).  If any one of these conditions is amiss for any reason (let alone all three of them), then the act of coaching may be poorly received or ignored altogether.  And sometimes, these conditions and the mindset of the faculty are completely out of your control.

Have you ever had negative incidents at school which were unprofessional in nature, that seemed to overshadow everything?  Did these incidents cause you to doubt yourself, or make you think that you somehow doing a poor job?  Was it hard to move past these kinds of incidents?  Reflecting upon them, and trying to pull some "lessons learned" from them is the best way to move on and take charge of things which you have no control over.  What stories do you have?

Morphing from a Tech Coach into an Instructional Coach . . . is it worth it?

As the Technology Coach for the HS, everything that "plugs in or goes bing" (as my former principal used to say) falls into my domain.  But sometimes, the boundaries seem to get stretched, blurred, bent and twisted out of shape so that other non-tech things seem to end up on my plate, for better or for worse.  Case in point . . . over a year ago I was asked to lead a committee for examining how our school could move towards Standards-based assessment and reporting, and to eliminate some of the toxic grading practices of the traditional gradebook.  The committee that I was asked to lead was focussed on separating a student's Approaches to Learning (AtL) grade from their Achievement grade, and how to assess the AtLs by creating a rubric that the whole school could use and adapt.  I was chosen to lead this committee because I have a lot of experience in the classroom working in a Standards-based system, and I was already well-versed in separating the AtL behaviours from a student's Achievement.  The committee did its job and fulfilled these two huge goals successfully, but I think that this was the starting point for my transition from being a Tech Coach, into an Instructional Coach . . . it all started here.

Last year, the school started down the road of transitioning to a Standards-based system for assessment and reporting with the hope that we would get there in a year's time.  Ambitious for sure, and very challenging for the school community (teachers, students and parents alike) as predominantly, they were not familiar with this kind of system.  But even the best of plans sometimes fail or take unexpected turns, and this school goal did just that.  Our year-long implementation was forcefully changed into a 2 month implementation (but that is another story for another venue), which in turn forced the school to immediately implement a new online electronic gradebook which could handle Standards-based assessment and reporting.  So you can see where I come into the picture . . .

So I am put in charge of implementing and testing this new system (Easy Grade Pro Web), training the faculty to use the new electronic gradebook, and distribute the new system to the end consumers . . . our students and their parents.  All of this in the short span of a few weeks.  It was a monumental task, which I jumped on along with Tech Services who had to install the new system.  After getting the system up and running, I focussed on testing the system and nailing down how we were going to rollout, launch and train EGPWeb with the entire HS faculty.  

In conducting the gradebook set up and training with the faculty in small departmental groups and through individual workshops, most of my time was absorbed by discussions revolving around Standards-based assessment and reporting rather than "things that go bing".  We talked at length about the separation of the AtL Standards vs Achievement Standards, what the Achievement standards would be for each department or subject area, how these standards could be modelled in the gradebook, and the primary differences between a traditional gradebook and a Standards-based one.  Everyone's need to have their gradebook online and fully functional was driving the training with EGPWeb.  This in turn was forcing faculty to come to terms with Standards-based assessment, and I could not conduct the gradebook setup workshops unless departments knew what they wanted for their Standards of assessment.  And so the story goes . . . I was in charge of getting everyone up and running with their gradebooks, which quickly morphed into me being the main go-to person for anything and everything related to Standards-based assessment.

For me, the change was rapid and in many ways natural . . . I worked with the faculty to get to where we all needed to be, in a very short amount of time.  Looking back on that period of time, it was completely frenetic, full of energy (some positive and lots of negative) and brimming over with spite at times.  There was a lot of pressure - internally to get this done right, and externally to move the faculty forward when they did not want to move anywhere.  It was stressful - some teachers were simply not on board with the school-wide goal of moving to Standards-based assessment, so they resisted the training that I was trying to deliver.  My principal was very supportive with getting these individuals to step-on-board, as the ship was sailing and pulling away from the dock (so to speak).  We were all following directives that were coming from senior administration and the board, but some staff saw me as the frontman for everything Standards-based assessment, and took out their frustrations, anger and fear on me . . . not fun!

This is the part that I have been thinking about since last year . . . as the Tech Coach for the HS I have to work alongside and with all of my faculty.  Due to the volatile and contentious nature of this whole project, my changing role came as an unwelcome surprise to me, and in some ways, undermines the relationships that I have built with the faculty as a whole.  Many staff are now on-board with Standards-based assessment, but some others are still stuck in their familiar, traditional practices.  Some of these folks relate me to this whole change (which they fear and loath), rather than to educational technology.  This is where I lose.  This is where we all lose.  Something that has only loose connections with technology has negatively impacted my computing karma in the school.  As a Tech Coach, the relationships that you build with your faculty are equally as important as your NOWledge, skills and experience put together.  So is it really worth it?  I don't really know at this point.  Some faculty seem to be able to separate in their minds my role with tech and what I did for the school in terms of helping to bring in Standards-based assessment.  But others cannot.  And I am now being thrust into a similar role as the "guru" in the HS, as the MS follows our lead.  I have coined a phrase to describe this somewhat helpless feeling of being stuck in situations like this . . . "guilty by competence".  Which raises the question in my mind, do I really want to go through this again?

Have you ever been put into a role which has really changed how you work with faculty and how they perceive you?  How do you handle the negativity surrounding "the job" when it really has nothing to do with you and what you are doing?  How do keep your role compartmentalised and within the boundaries set out by your job description . . . and not be sucked into the vortex of work?