Coach Conversations
After Module 3: Coaching Conversation #1
Meet with your coach partner. During the meeting you will:
Initiate your relationship-building
Review and individualize your coaching and recording agreements
Highlight 2 details that reflect the individual qualities of your coach partner and their expectations for the coaching partnership.
After Module 4: Coaching Conversation #2
Arrange to meet with your coaching partner. You will need at least one hour to complete the coaching practice. Each of you will spend 30 minutes coaching and 30 minutes being coached by your partner.
Before you meet:
Review "Encouraging Reflection Prompts" documents and write down three questions you think will help your coach partner build reflective capacity around bias.
Meet with your partner
Practice a coaching conversation focused on this reflective question: “How have your reactions to differences impacted your professional relationships?”
Practice using prompts that encourage exploration, perspective taking and raise alternatives, as well as the prompts you wrote in Step 2, above.
Based on the notes you take as your partner reflects on bias and differences, write 1-2 strengths you hear, observe, or infer. Use the following Colorado Competencies for Early Childhood Coaches around coaching awareness as your guide:
Coaching Awareness: The coach and coach partner engage in reflection so that each may become increasingly aware of their individual outlook and its potential impact on themselves and others. Using their growing awareness and continuing to reflect, they increase their ability to self-regulate.
Competency Indicators such as:
Empowering both partners to slow down and take the time to be present
Focusing on the needs of the partnership and the individual
Maintaining a warm, relaxed, present stance
Facilitating awareness of emotions and reactions
You and your partner may choose to use these strengths as you fill out the Individual Level Guiding Frames of Reference or the Summary of Teacher Strengths area in the Action Plan you’ll use in your third coach partner meeting. The Action Plan can be found in the Participant Guidebook.
After Module 6: Coaching Conversation #3
As in previous conversations, each partner will play the role of the coach for a half hour, and the coach partner for a half hour.
Each coach needs to come prepared to listen to and reflect with their partner, as well as to use the Coach Partner Action Plan jointly with your partner as outlined in steps 4-8.
Each coach partner needs to come prepared to talk through a real-life challenge from their work in early childhood.
The challenge should be one where you want to grow in your practice and receive coaching to support you in your approach to the situation.
Your challenge needs to be complex enough for two conversations, because you will continue this discussion in conversation #4 (your final, recorded conversation).
Before the conversation, one of the partners fills in the light gray section of the Action Plan with the coach partner’s name, their program or organization, the coach’s name, and the date.
Before meeting, the coach plans how to jointly develop the dark gray sections of the Action Plan. These are the Guiding Frames of Reference for their partner’s Organization, their individual frames of reference, their strengths, and their vision for improvement.
The coach uses RBPD materials such as the CARES Coaching UCD Initial Planning Conference, the Getting to Know You: Information for Your Coach, Core Values activity, Character Strengths Survey, and meeting notes on mitigating bias to reflect on what they see as their partner’s strengths and Individual Guiding Frames of Reference. Coaches may look online to find Organizational Mission, Vision, and Values, or they may ask their partners to add the information. Options for getting the dark gray section jointly agreed-upon include:
The coach emails a draft of the dark gray section, and has their partner return an edited version to the coach before they meet for meeting #3.
Coach partners fill out the dark gray section during meeting #3.
Coaches take notes about their partner’s answers during meeting #3, and transfers the Strengths, Organizational and Individual Guiding Frames of Reference they note on the Plan afterwards. They email this draft to their partner, requesting that they edit it between coaching meeting #3 and #4.
During the meeting, the coach partner describes the details of their challenge, responds to the coach’s reflective prompts, and makes decisions about their Vision for improvement, Goals, and Action Steps. The coach uses communication and reflection prompts to clarify, reframe, extend, or prompt new partner thinking, and takes notes about what their partner is saying. The coach guides their partner through their decision-making process about priorities and the order of their action research.
The coach must make time at the end of the meeting to discuss and agree on how to state the Guiding Frames of Reference, and their partner’s Strengths and Vision for Improvement. The coach must apply joint decision-making to put their partner’s ideas and information into the Action Plan.
You will not turn in your coach partner’s Plan yet, but before the end of this conversation be sure you have filled out all of the gray and dark gray areas.
To be well-prepared for your work on the Action Plan in class for Module 7, and to be ready for your recorded capstone coaching conversation, follow these steps:
After the meeting, the coach partner reflects on the coaching conversation, reviews their Action Plan, and is:
Thinking about their vision for improvement statement and reflecting on a goal they might set for their work with their coach.
Ready to talk about their challenge further at Meeting #4. The coach partner also responds to any between-conversation communications from their coach.
After the meeting, the coach reflects on the conversation and their notes, and emails the updated Action Plan to their partner as well as sends any other needed follow-up communications timely. The coach may collect materials and information or prepare for Action/Practice at the next meeting. The coach responds to between-meeting communications from their partner, and ensures that both partners are clear when their partner has made decisions on Coach Partner Action Plan items.
After Module Nine: Coaching Conversation #4
Hold and record your final coaching conversation with your coach partner
Complete and turn in the finalized Coach Partner Action Plan from the conversation
Fill in the final Coaching Competency Fidelity Self-Assessment after you watch the recording of yourself coaching and turn it in.
Once you have completed your capstone assignment and turned in all the required components, please schedule your one-on-one coaching reflection session.