August 19, 2024 Blog Post: The Parallel Process of Great Coaching

Greetings Children’s Champions! I cannot believe it is time to return to school. I know that if you are on a school year schedule, you are feeling the same way! New classes, new kiddos, and even some new coworkers most likely. That’s a lot of new people to get to know.

Relationships are really at the heart of all good child care and early education, as you know. My Latest Podcast is entitled “Creating Joyful Classrooms: Enhancing Child Relationships and Educator Well-Being” and it is all about YOU, your relationships with your students, and YOURSELF. For this blog, I want to share with you a bit about ME, as a Coach. When I think about all the relationships I’ve made over the course of my career, it amounts to hundreds of children and teachers probably in the hundreds too! I still communicate with many of the former teachers I coached or worked with in various centers over the years, and I cherish these friendships. My biggest aim has always been to be a SUPPORTER and ENCOURAGER to them. You know, good coaching is not about “telling you what to do,” but it IS about making trusting relationships and collaborating together to learn and try the strategies that work the best for your children. Every coaching relationship is different; just like every teacher:child relationship is different. But there is a parallel process at work – everything we wish for teachers to do with and for children, we coaches need to be willing to do with and for the teacher.

Borrowing from the PreK CLASS lens, as a good coach I try to:

• Establish a very positive climate / which means getting to know you well, having fun, providing positive energy to your work, and having mutual respect.
• To be highly sensitive to your needs. That means inquiring and finding out about how things are going, troubleshooting with you, and being concerned and attuned to your feelings and experiences; doing my best to help with your needs.
• Exercising good, positive regard for you and your individual likes, dislikes, ideas, points of views and perspectives. Good coaches provide options and give you room to explore your own talents and interests, while supporting you to do your best as an individual.
• Providing guidance where needed – when wanted. Being clear with expectations and the frameworks we work within (for me it’s the Pyramid Model, the CLASS, the ECERS, and the Creative Curriculum). But I would never cram anything down your throat – I only give guidance when its asked for or if I first ask permission.
• Staying productive by being on time, keeping our appointments, and keeping the coaching session focused on the topic at hand.
• Staying engaged with you and working hard for your engagement in the process. I want it to be fun AND useful – not a waste of your time!
• Asking challenging questions, brainstorming possibilities with you, and collaborating to create plans that you can implement with your students;
• Giving you my honest and accurate feedback about what I see, what I’m hearing from you, and adding in more information to help you create a full picture of possibilities when it comes to teaching and guidance practices – always with a heavy dose of encouragement and affirmation!
• Sharing with you the language of the tools (such as Pyramid Model practices, the CLASS, the ECERS, the Creative Curriculum, or TSGold) so that you can expand on these and integrate them altogether as an early childhood professional.

My goal is to partner with you and support you to be the happiest, most satisfied, and best teacher you can possibly be! If it’s not fun and rewarding, then we’ve got to change that!

I hope that you are having a good start to your new school year. I hope you are building those relationships quickly and that they are POSITIVE. I hope that you are remembering to HAVE FUN each and every day!! Many blessings to you.