Professional Development Presentation

Professional Development Presentation Elisabeth A. Page Grand Canyon University EDU 585: Designing Effective Professional Development Dr. Ieisha Davis August 21, 2024

Understanding Personal expectations and Bias in Coaching

How our personalities, expectations, & biases play a role in our instructional coaching & how we can support ourselves as coaches.

START

Before We Begin.......

Step 2. What do you hope to gain from today's session? Do you have any goals today? Go to... https://jamboard.google.com/d/1bmWO0YDYM_ToqiWV4mMSx-LsuGnpUjy9mKAq2NXtCa8/edit?usp=sharing and write down your goal or hope for today on a digital post it note.

Step 4. For yourself only, write down what you need to do to stay present and engaged in today's work. Share if you feel comfortable.

Step 1. Take a moment to think about why you are here today.

Next

Our Purpose Together

• Identify our professional strengths and areas of growth

• Understanding our expectations and biases

• Recognizing the impact of these in our coaching practice

• Resources to maintain awareness and challenge our expectations and biases

Presenter's Notes

Next

index

Self Awareness

Biases & Expectations

Impact on Coaching

Resources

Future PD

References

Feedback

Self-Awareness: Knowing my strengths and areas of growth

What are my strengths? What do I bring to my teachers, students, and school district that set me apart? What areas do I still need support? Am I able to communicate these needs? Take a moment to complete the "True Color Personality Test". Record your results in your journal. Answer the following question: What might your test result be saying about you as an educator and instructional coach?

Presenter's Notes

Presenter's Notes

From my results.......

• Areas of growth: stubborn and ridged when following a plan or structure
• disregard other’s insights if not align to my schedule.
• tendency to judge others on their work ethic
• personal expectations for performance on others

• My color is Gold
• personal strengths: organization, handling detailed tasks,
• Value: structure and order, dedication and hard work, safe learning environment

Remember.... this is about how we interact with others. We are responsible for our own behavior and reactions when triggered (Cordeaux & Ammenti, 2022).

Take a Selfie!

Presenter's Notes

Index

What are Your Expectations and Biases?

We all have our own expectations of ourselves and how we preform in this life; whether at work or privately. We have values we hold to and personal biases that shape how we view and/or interact with others. Being aware of these allows us to recognize when we are triggered and how we can better respond (Safir, 2016).

Knowledge is power, but what you do with it makes a difference ...

Presenter's Notes

Take 20 minutes with your elbow partner to share your test results. Include the following:

• Your color result
• A strength
• A growth
• A value, expectation, and a personal bias
• How you might respond when that value or expectation is challenged or you are confronted with your bias?

Index

Impact on Coaching

How we interact with each other and see the world are in part formed by our experiences. These experiences can become the starting points for some of our personal biases. According to Noelle Cordeaux and Jen Ammenti in Unconscious Bias in Coaching podcast (2022) , we see our biases in...

• Assumptions and judgements about other people
• Assigning inaccurate motivations to others
• Making quick and automatic decisions without thought
• Drawing conclusions about other's needs or wants

• Evaluating a situation based on memories or past experiences instead on what is truly happening in the present moment

We must be aware that these practices, while perhaps done unconsciously, will not build trusting relationships with our teachers.

Presenter's Notes

Trust is Key

As coaches we must be able to recognize our own expectations and biases if we are to build trusting relationships with our teachers. We must practice compassion, empathy, understanding, a willingness to walk alongside our teachers (Cardenas, 2024) without judgment if we are to build a truly collaborative partnership.

Just as we meet our students where they are, so to must we meet our teachers where they are in their professional journey.

Presenter's Notes

Index

Resources

Teachers need coaches who understand their own biases and expectations. They need coaches who can recognize when they are being influenced by past experiences or bias and can make adjustments to mitigate any negative impact they may have on the partnership (Larson, Chaturvedi, et al., 2023).

Presenter's Notes

Ways to maintain awareness and challenge expectations and biases

Educat Self

Have Compassion

Be Aware

• Use online tools and assessments to determine personal bias
• Be ready to pause and reflect when feeling triggered
• Pay attention where you are seeing biases in your school culture and take steps to address it

• Understand that this process takes time
• See if others coaches or teachers will join you on this path
• Seek a mentor who can help you unpack past experiences and biases

• Have appropriate conversations about biases with other professionals in the field
• Attend workshops on the topic through local ESD or Union
• Read/Listen to books and podcasts

Presenter's Notes

Thankfulness

Self-Care

Mindful Breathing

The opposite of anxiety is thankfulness. Practice repeating what you are thankful for before and after moments of stress or anxiety (Larson, Chaturvedi, et al., 2023).

Take a breath! It is ok to refocus yourself during or before what might be a stressful conversation. Taking a deep breath is shown to calm the nervous system (Larson, Chaturvedi, et al., 2023).

When you are feeling triggered by a teacher you are coaching, it is ok to take a minute to pause. Kindly excuse yourself to the bathroom or take a drink or water.

Index

Continuing the conversation....

We will be holding a round table discussion next month on the 17th at the District Office. Our purpose is to check in with each other, review the personal steps we have taken to support ourselves since this development session, and choose a book for our coaches book study. Please join us in supporting each other and to continue developing our skills as instructional coaches!

Index

References

Ali, Z. B. M., Yamat, H., & Wahi, W. (2022). Partnership Principles in a Teacher Coaching Programme. Jurnal Pendidikan Malaysia, 47(1), 63–74. https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.17576/JPEN-2022-47.01SI-05

Cardenas, K. (2024). Beyond the bowl of chocolates: how to build trust in instructional coaching relationships. NWEA Teach Learn Grow the Education Blog. https://www.nwea.org/blog/2024/beyond-the-bowl-of-chocolates-how-to-build-trust-in- instructional-coaching-relationships/

References

Cordeaux, N., & Ammenti, J. (Hosts). (2022, November 11). Unconscious bias in coaching [Aduio podcast]. https://www.lumiacoaching.com/blog/unconscious-bias-in-coaching

Larson, K. E., Chaturvedi, A., Dunn, M., & Chavers, N. (2023). Using a contemplative practice intervention in teacher education courses to neutralize implicit racial bias: a feasibility study. Teaching Education, 35(2), 162–183. https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/10476210.2023.2252353

Safir, S., (2016). 5 Keys to challenging implicit bias. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/keys-to-challenging-implicit-bias-shane-safir

Index

Feedback

Please take a moment to provde feedback on today's presentation using the Google link below.... https://forms.gle/qKtekS7fJeqCeGCh9 If you have any questions, comments, or would like to leave an addtional thought, please use the "parking lot" poster and the post-its at your table.

Thank you for your time!

Resources

Once we understand what our expectations and biases are, we can look for tools and resources to help us maintain awareness of them and challenge them when they arise. We want to maintain a trusting and supportive relationship with our teachers (Cordeaux & Ammenti, 2022) so we must take steps to stay aware and proactive. It is important to understand that we are human! We will always have personal bias or expectations we unknowingly place on others. The goal though is to be able to recognize when they arise and have a toolbox of strategies we can use to help reduce their impact on ourselves and our fellow teachers (and students too!)

Knowledge is Power

What our test results can tell us about ourselves can help us better understand how we work with others. It can also help us become aware of what our values are and how our biases might play a role when those values are triggered. Knowing how we might respond in a situation gives us the power to make adjustments to our behavior before a situation becomes unhelpful to our fellow teachers (Safir, 2016). When we know ourselves, we can take steps to better ourselves. This is part of reflection that all educators must do for our students, our colleagues, and ourselves.

Goals and Objectives

The purpose of this presentation is to help instructional coaches inspire and support their colleagues in meeting their goals without allowing personal expectations or bias to color the relationship. Today we will look at identifying our professional strengths and areas of growth, The importance of understanding our expectations and biases The impact these can have in our practice as instructional coaches, And resources we can use to maintain awareness and challenge our expectations and biases so we can best support our colleagues through instructional coaching.

Personal Resources

As coaches, we will work with teachers we do not agree with, have trouble understanding or finding common ground with, or simply have a difference of values we hold to. It is up to us to use our tools and resources to meet these teachers where they are (Ali, Yamat, et al., 2022). To do this, we must take care of ourselves. We must not only know our experiences and biases and recognize when we are triggered, we must also know how we can combat these feelings so they do not negatively impact our relationship with our teachers.

Impact on Coaching

The job of an instructional coach is to support teachers' professional goals. It is a partnership that coaches must foster by honoring teachers' time, experiences, privacy, and through the building of a trusting relationship. If coaches wish for a successful and meaningful impact on teacher development and thus, student learning, they must take steps to foster a positive relationship (Cardenas, 2024). This relationship can go astray if coaches are not aware of their own values, expectations, and biases (Cordeaux, & Ammenti, 2022). This is because it is very easy to place our own beliefs onto others. We then become upset or disappointed when the other person does not live up to our own standards.

Impact on Coaching

When most of us think of biases we do think of racial or cultural biases. These are most common and cause great harm to our students and staff members. But other biases exist as well. As coaches we can hold beliefs against teachers of a certain age or background, experience levels, learning style or gender. We can also hold expectations of ourselves that we expect others to meet such as having a certain work ethic, teaching style, classroom setup, or even their dress style. However, none of these have any business coloring how we interact with and partner with our teachers. Our job as a coach is to foster equitable partnership and respectful collaboration with teachers to help them reach their professional goals (Ali, Yamat, et al., 2022).

Self-Awareness

We all have areas of personality and professional skills that we are strong in. These strengths allow us to complete our jobs well and distinguish us from others. We also all have areas we must grow and develop. Taking time to become aware of ourselves is critical when we are working with others. If we are not aware of ourselves, we may miss how we are coming across to others. This can lead to miscommunication, unintended offensives, or other breakdowns with our colleagues. Most of which can be avoided if we understand how we communicate in the workplace, our values, what matters most to us, and how we can best present these things to our colleagues

According to the test, my color is Gold, meaning my personal strengths are in organization and handling detailed tasks. I value structure and order and because I am a dedicated individual, I use these talents to create environments that feel secure and safe. One area of growth is my tendency to be stubborn and ridged. I like to stay with a chosen plan and deviating off the plan is unappealing to me. I can disregard other’s insights if I feel they do not align to my schedule. Another area of growth is my tendency to judge others on their work ethic. I am a dedicated employee which is a strength, however, I place my personal expectations for performance on others and become upset when those expectations are not met.

Knowing these features of myself, I am able to see why certain other personalities might be a challenge for me to work with. My expectations are high for myself. Which is fine and works for me! But when I place these expectations on others, I can be forcing someone to work outside of their ability or comfort level. I can sour the relationship pretty quickly. I know one personal bias comes from growing up in a hardworking but poor family. So I might be triggered if I believe the person came from a more wealthy background. I may believe they will behave a certain way because of their upbringing and inadvertently create a personality for them that does not exist. This can damage my relationship with my teacher.

Self-Accountability

We are only responsible for ourselves and the steps we take to know ourselves; are personalities, expectations, and personal biases. It is important to understand how these things could impact our relationships with our teachers (Cordeaux & Ammenti, 2022). Once we understand this, we can take steps to make sure our interactions are positive and support our teachers.