From Walkthroughs to Wins with Justin Baeder—Connecting Coaches’ Cognition (C3) Podcast

I was honored to be invited to speak with Courtney Groskin and Sandy Heiser for the Connecting Coaches’ Cognition (C3) podcast.

From Walkthroughs to Wins with Justin Baeder

Full Transcript:

Courtney Groskin (00:21):

Welcome back to another episode of C3. I’m Courtney Groskin and I’m here with

Sandy (00:26):

Sandy Heiser.

Courtney Groskin (00:28):

We’re so excited to welcome Sandy to the podcast. Sandy, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up here?

Sandy (00:35):

Sure. I’m happy to be here. This happens to be my 30th year in education. I started as a high school social studies teacher, but I’ve taught high school, middle school, and I became a middle school instructional coach in 2009, and it really changed the way I looked at education. I loved that job so much. From there, I ended up going into administration, so I’ve been an assistant principal at the middle high school level. I’ve been a middle school principal, and then currently I am serving as an assistant principal at Skyline High School here in St. Brain

Courtney Groskin (01:16):

Bring. So you really bring an administrative perspective along with your coaching perspective as well as that middle school perspective as well. So you’re going to really help in us to deepen our conversations on C3.

Sandy (01:29):

Yeah, I hope so. I definitely know the administrator side of things, really do try to approach it with a coaching perspective as much as I can.

Courtney Groskin (01:39):

Yeah, thank you for that. We would like to welcome Justin Baeder to C3. Dr. Justin Baeder is the director of The Principal Center and organization dedicated to enhancing instructional leadership in K to 12 education with a PhD in educational leadership and policy studies from the University of Washington and a master’s in curriculum and instruction from Seattle University. Dr. Baeder combines academic expertise with practical experience. He previously served as a principal and teacher in Seattle Public Schools. Dr. Baeder is the creator of the Instructional Leadership Challenge, a program that has supported over 10,000 school leaders across 50 countries in making daily classroom visits a consistent practice. He is also the author of, now We’re Talking 21 Days to High Performance Instructional Leadership and co-author of mapping professional practice added to develop instructional frameworks to support teacher growth. Welcome Justin. Thanks so much for being on C3. Can you tell us about yourself?

Justin Baeder (02:39):

Sure thing. Well, thank you Courtney. I’m honored to be here and excited to talk about instructional leadership. I’m driven by, I don’t want to say regret, but reflection on my own time as a teacher and principal and always wanting to be the one who gives good feedback. I think every principal wants to give good feedback. Every instructional coach wants to give good feedback and we all have that. If I knew then what I think I know now, maybe things could have been even better than they were. But I had a great experience as a principal, got to work with a lot of great teachers in Seattle Public Schools and for the last 13 years I’ve been an independent consultant and author at The Principal Center where I try to help administrators get into classrooms and have good feedback, conversations that change teacher practice and as a result of that, make better decisions at the school level. I think that’s a lot of the connection for me is decision-making at the school level. If we can get into conversations with teachers every single day, every decision we make as leaders is going to be better. So that’s kind where I’m coming from

Courtney Groskin (03:47):

And I know I can tell this is resonating with Sandy, she’s an administrator, so I can see her eye lighting up of like, tell me all the things.

Sandy (03:55):

Well, it’s that time too, right? I was in classrooms today doing some informal observ and it’s goal setting time as well, so it’s so relevant what you’re talking about.

Justin Baeder (04:05):

Well, I think so much of what we do in the evaluation process from goal setting to formal observations to written evaluations is so high stakes precisely because we have so few at bats, we might do one or two formal observations and that’s it for the year. So there’s a lot of stress, understandably, around this process for teachers. There’s a lot of stress for administrators, and my general take is that the more we make this a normal thing to do, the less stressful each individual interaction is, and that really increases the chances that it’ll be a good interaction, that it’ll be a good conversation. It’s kind of like saying, alright, you’re going to meet the love of your life, but you only get to go on one date and then you have to make a decision. It’s like, well, that sounds like a good setup for a reality TV show, but not how I would want to live my life.

Sandy (04:53):

Oh my gosh, you’re so right. And I feel like with all the administrators I’ve ever worked with, the area where they typically feel the most unsure is teacher evaluation every time. So your work is so important

Justin Baeder (05:13):

And it’s full of high stakes decisions that are based on only a fraction of the information that exists, right? If I’m good at observations, I do everything I’m supposed to do, I’m still going to see what 0.1% of a teacher’s teaching in a given year, and if I’m really consistent in getting in the classrooms, I might see 1%, and yet we have to make decisions on the basis of that tiny, tiny proportion of the whole that we see. So yeah, I think the more we can get perspective from teachers, the better decisions we’re going to make. Yeah.

Sandy (05:50):

Well, with that, why don’t start our question. Importance of feedback being both clear, actionable. So what do you see as the key ingredients of a feedback conversation that actually leads to a shift in practice?

Justin Baeder (06:05):

I think the first key to a feedback conversation that changes practice, and this is going to be kind of step zero, is it has to actually happen. And when I talk to people about their goals for classroom walkthroughs or their goals or feedback conversations, they often describe to me a very complex process that doesn’t seem very doable. And I think we often let the perfect be the enemy of the good. So we generate these very complex processes that don’t seem likely to be sustainable, that don’t seem likely to occur on a consistent basis. So I think the first design consideration when we’re planning how we’re going to approach conversations, is this something that realistically we can do over and over again every single day or pretty close to every single day. And from there, we can build in the elements that are going to have the impact that we want, but often we work the opposite direction and we think, how could I achieve all of my wildest dreams as an instructional leader in one conversation go, and then we develop a process that’s so complex, so cumbersome that it just doesn’t happen. And I think that’s the number one scenario. The number one circumstance that people find themselves in is that they have a really great process that they never actually do.

Courtney Groskin (07:23):

And if you can’t carry it forward, why are we going through the motions we have to launch? Right,

Justin Baeder (07:29):

Exactly.

Courtney Groskin (07:30):

So many leaders worry about balancing encouragement with constructive critique. How can feedback conversations strike the right tone so that teachers feel supported but also motivated to make change?

Justin Baeder (07:41):

I think there does come a time when we need to share critical information with someone, either because they are not aware of it and we need to make them aware so that they can decide what to do or after they’re aware if they haven’t done anything about it, so that we can push for that change that needs to occur. I think most of the time though, these conversations can happen without that kind of positive and negative judgment on the part of the coach or administrator. And that’s the best case scenario to me because I think in order to change their practice, we want teachers to have as much ownership as possible. We want teachers to say, okay, I’m a self-directed learner. You can help me a lot by being in my classroom and talking with me about my practice, but I as a professional am going to improve faster if I retain ownership of that practice.

(08:33):

And that doesn’t always work. People sometimes don’t retain ownership of their practice, but that’s what we want to strive for, that people can be professionals, that people can be self-directed. So I think the framework that I use for thinking about that issue is one of autonomy, and I think of it like a two by two grid, and I’ve gotten this published in an article here or there, but I think about attention and control, and I think for most teachers, they don’t get paid very much attention to. And I remember in my final year in the classroom thinking, you know what? Nobody’s really paying that much attention to what I’m doing day to day as a teacher. So I think the norm is that people don’t pay very much attention to teachers. Most of the time they’re in their classroom with their students and nobody else is paying attention.

(09:17):

So if you are getting into classrooms, if you are talking with teachers, you’re definitely in that small percentage of people who are approaching it differently. So I think our obligation as instructional leaders is to pay attention, to show up, to engage, to talk, to listen, to be curious, and to get teachers telling us about their practice and about their thinking. The second axis of the autonomy matrix is control. And sometimes we do need to exert control because unacceptable things are happening. We do need to be directive and say, Hey, this is really not okay. You can’t do that, or You need to be doing this and you’re not. So it’s appropriate sometimes to be directive, but I think often when we’re directive, we take away the autonomy that teachers need to actually do the professional work of teaching and make their own decisions. And I think we can look at a couple of different things that can change as a result of feedback.

(10:09):

And the most basic one is behavior. So if we have a behavior that is unacceptable on the teacher’s part and the behavior needs to change, well, that is a time when we could give directive feedback and be critical and say, Hey, this is not working, or this is not acceptable. I really need you to do X, Y, Z. And we kind of know those situations when we come to them, they tend to be those kind of bright lines that stand out to us, but they don’t apply that directive frame. That directive relationship doesn’t really apply to most of the decisions that teachers make to most of what we see, especially for people who are doing fine. If you have someone who’s doing fine, it doesn’t really help for me to be the decision maker about your practice. We need teachers to retain that ownership of their practice so that we can be a reflective partner.

(10:58):

So I think of that role as much more of a coaching role where it’s our job to get at the decision making that teachers are doing and have an influence at the level of decision making rather than simply just second guess and critique what we saw. I’m very much about that teacher autonomy. I think when we get a high degree of information, we’re paying a lot of attention, but we’re not exercising a lot of control over the teacher’s practice. We’re not being directive when we don’t need to be. That’s when we have what I call professional autonomy. Now in the shift from ignoring teachers and staying out of their classrooms and leaving them completely alone, sometimes we go to the opposite extreme and go from low attention, low control, to high attention, high control. And I think sometimes we aspire to that because we think it would give us the opportunity to help people improve more.

(11:47):

But what I think that often turns out to be is micromanagement when we exert a high degree of control over someone else’s professional work. I don’t know a better term for that than micromanagement because if it’s professional work, the professional needs to own it and the professional who needs to own, it’s not me, it’s the teacher in the classroom doing the teaching. So I think we need to, as much as possible, avoid grabbing the steering wheel in teachers’ classrooms unless there’s a serious issue that needs an immediate change. I think we want teachers to have their hands on the wheel most of the time.

Sandy (12:19):

No kidding. Courtney, this is making me think so much about cognitive coaching right now. Courtney and I are facilitating the foundation seminar right now of cognitive coaching and everything you’re saying, Justin, just trying to create self-directed people and have people own their own journey and their own progress. It’s everything you just said, Sandy. It’s like you were reading my mind. Yes. In your experience, what are some common pitfalls leaders fall into during feedback conversations that maybe make them less effective or even counterproductive?

Justin Baeder (12:56):

Yeah. I think one choice that we make sometimes is to do a postmortem on the lesson rather than to just get the teacher’s reflections on the lesson. And sometimes we do that postmortem so that we have the opportunity to suggest what could have been done differently. But I think that type of feedback or that type of critique is too late to really make any difference in terms of what actually happens during the lesson. The lesson is over. Our opportunity in these conversations is really at the level of teacher judgment, right? When we’re trying to improve teaching, we’re not just focused on the physical actions, the things that took place on that particular day. Our big leverage on teaching practice is on professional judgment because professional judgment is what guides those decisions every single day. So if I saw something in a lesson that I didn’t think was very great, maybe time was wasted, maybe something was unclear, maybe I didn’t like the way behavior was handled, I can critique that, but I have to recognize that that’s a postmortem.

(13:59):

It’s second guessing what the teacher did. And what I’m really interested in for the purposes of change and growth and improvement is what’s the judgment behind that decision? What’s going on in the teacher’s mind that led to that choice that I didn’t particularly love? That’s what I’m interested in. And yet, we have to be very careful about how we ask that because if we’re not careful, that can be What were you thinking? Why did you do that? And of course, that’s kind of a confrontational question. So I think a better way to frame that is curiosity. Tell me about what went into that. Tell me what was kind of going through your mind when that student got up and started walking around the room. And if we press for elaboration rather than justification, we learn a lot more and we can figure out, okay, why did they do what they did?

(14:46):

It’s not enough for me to just say, you should have done something different. I’m trying to develop a person who will independently have judgment that I’m happier with that I don’t have to come around and second guess because we’re on the same page as far as the thinking and the decision making, but often we don’t get to the why behind the decision and asking why directly makes people defensive. So I think we’ve really got to press for elaboration and ask open-ended questions that get people to share their thinking. I think that’s the most valuable thing we can do in a feedback conversation is get the teacher to share their thinking because their thinking is what produced the teaching that we saw.

Courtney Groskin (15:23):

Yeah, it’s so important to give them the space for self-reflection and then to walk through that metacognitive process of what were the decisions that you made? If you were to go back again, would you make that same decision and really get them to recognize those metacognitive cues of what would be different maybe the next time?

Justin Baeder (15:42):

Well, and I think often the answers that we get when we press for elaboration or the insights that we get about the teacher’s thinking, leave us wanting to change something that we may not be able to change in the moment. We want to immediately fix it. We want to give advice. And when it comes to professional judgment, often there’s not a quick fix. I can’t just tell someone do better. It’s a very limited ability that teachers have to just do better when we say, do better, you made a dumb decision. Don’t make dumb decisions. Well, that’s not very, we would be pretty upset if a coach told our kid that on the field, and that’s not especially useful. So we have to unpack the background. For example, one reason I think that at the elementary level, we often see teachers struggle to teach math is that they don’t have a strong content background in math.

(16:38):

Math was not their favorite subject. They didn’t do particularly well in math, and that’s not something we can fix by giving feedback, Hey, be better at math. Well, that is absolutely useless as feedback, but what it is useful for is our decision making. We might realize at the school level, or I might have a few people that I need to send for training in a particular area. That’s the kind of action that we could take that would actually improve the teacher’s judgment, me saying, Hey, be better at this, or, don’t do what you did. Do what I would’ve done in your shoes. That’s not going to be nearly as helpful.

Courtney Groskin (17:11):

Yeah. Nine times out of 10, most teachers know their areas of weakness. So instead of highlighting them, how do we build capacity and get them what they need so they can elevate their practice?

Justin Baeder (17:23):

And if it was something that is fixable through second guessing, who’s the best person to do that? Second guessing, right? It’s the teacher who is sitting there reflecting with you and is eager to show that they’re ready and willing to improve. So often we don’t need to be the ones grabbing the steering wheel there. If people know, Hey, here’s an opportunity I missed. Here’s what I could do differently. Here’s what I’ll be on the lookout for next time.

Courtney Groskin (17:47):

And building this culture of reflection helps people to start doing that on their own and coming into a space ready to admit maybe some things that didn’t go as great versus a situation where they feel they have to come in on the defensive and be ready to plead their case of why things didn’t go the way they had wanted.

Justin Baeder (18:06):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Courtney Groskin (18:09):

So you alluded to this a little bit earlier, but if you could go a little deeper, how can school leaders or coaches ensure that feedback isn’t just a one-time conversation, but part of an ongoing cycle that results in measurable improvement in classroom instruction?

Justin Baeder (18:24):

I think we want that impact and we want it quickly, and we want it every time. So we think, well, I’ve been getting into classrooms and observing teachers once or twice a year. Well, what if I just did that a lot more often? Well, one thing that we’re going to have to accept is that many of those interactions are not going to lead to much. And I think that’s okay. And I think accepting that is really essential to being consistent about it, to saying, okay, this is not going to be life-changing every single time. Sometimes it’s going to be a dud. Sometimes I’m going to come into the classroom and the kids are working on essays and they’re doing great. They’re using their time productively. They’re using what the teacher taught them, but there’s not really a lot of teaching that I can give feedback on, and that’s okay.

(19:09):

If I’m afraid of that reality, then I’m going to avoid getting in the classroom in the first place. I have to be willing to say, Hey, I stopped by today. Looks like students are hard at work. I’ll see you later. That kind of thing is going to happen all the time if you’re in classrooms all the time. It doesn’t happen if we set it up and say, okay, this is the day. This is the high stakes day when you’re going to be observed and evaluated. Well then of course people put on a dog and pony show to make sure that we see something good, but it’s kind of fake. It’s a little bit artificial, and hopefully it’s indicative of what the teacher’s capable of. But I think everybody knows it’s not a normal day because it’s been set aside for this purpose because it’s been so prepared for and anticipated.

(19:52):

So I think on a normal basis, we just have to expect it’s going to be hit or miss. We’re going to see some things that are really worth talking about, and we’re going to come when kids are taking a test and there’s almost nothing to talk about. And what I think some people do in those situations is they try to find something, anything, and that does not work If you try to give somebody a suggestion when you don’t have any suggestions or you try to give somebody a compliment when you don’t have any compliments, people can tell that it’s fake, right? People can tell that you don’t really mean it. You just had to say something, you had a box to fill in your mind or on paper, and it just doesn’t ring true. And I think because we know that we tend to just not engage, we just tend to not show up at all when we know, and this is not going to be real feedback, but I have to give feedback. So I might as well say something kind of pointless. Well, you’re going to find something else to do as a school leader, you’ve got plenty else to do and it’s going to keep you from getting into classrooms at all. So I think we’ve just got to lower the stakes and be okay with only some of the time feeling like we’re having a real impact through those conversations.

Sandy (20:56):

I love that, Justin, because you’re talking about, it’s almost as permission as an administrator if you are a little bit stressed or insecure about instructional leadership or evaluation. It’s like you’re giving tools to help people get better at it, but also in a way, give yourself some grace. Give yourself a break. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Justin Baeder (21:18):

Absolutely. And I think we have in our minds this sweet spot where there’s low hanging fruit for improvement. We see something that we can say something about, and just by saying it, just by having a conversation, we can make somebody better. That does happen. That does happen sometimes, especially with new teachers who are making obvious mistakes that we’ll be able to see, give them some good advice on. We can actually see some pretty big improvement. But that’s kind of rare. You might have a significant number of new teachers and you could stay busy with that for a while. But if you have lots of veteran teachers who are very strong, that was my situation as a principal. I had lots of people who had been in the building for 10 years, 20 years, 25 years, and were just really, really good. So they weren’t making obvious mistakes.

(22:01):

There was not a lot of low hanging fruit. People were doing really, really well, and I realized I’m not going to be able to bluff my way through this. And if I do try to find things to critique, they’re going to be very, very petty. If you are an amazing teacher, if I force myself to critique you, that critique is going to have to be about something very minor and very petty, or I’m going to have to pick some sort of big philosophical difference to fight over, and that’s not going to be good either. So that’s one extreme. We have people who are great and don’t need that kind of low hanging fruit feedback. On the other hand, we might have people who are struggling so much that our words alone are not enough to get them where they need to be. They need some sort of more intensive help, whether that is training, whether that is coaching, whether that is somebody sitting in their classroom with them and guiding them, whether that is a change in their responsibilities. So most of the time we’re outside of that sweet spot. We’re outside of that range where there’s easy feedback that can change practice, and we’re working with people who either don’t need that feedback or it’s not enough. And I think we’ve just got to recognize that reality and not try to force those other situations into the low hanging fruit situation.

Sandy (23:13):

Well, if a leader wants to elevate their feedback practice, what is one strategy or shift you would suggest they try in their very next conversation?

Justin Baeder (23:24):

This is a strategy, but a mindset of curiosity. I think assuming that we don’t know everything based on what we saw is one of the most important things that we can do as leaders after getting into classrooms in the first place. If we just think, okay, there’s thinking here that I’m not privy to, we’re headed somewhere. The students are headed somewhere in this unit that I’m not fully up to speed on. If we can approach that interaction with the teacher with some curiosity, we will end up in much more productive places because the teacher with their hands on the steering wheel will take us there and they’ll tell us, here’s what I’m thinking. Here’s what I’m already balancing. Here are the trade-offs I’m making. Here’s where I think we’re going. Usually that takes us somewhere much more productive than if we just pick something at random to critique. So I think that curiosity really is the number one recommendation I have.

Sandy (24:21):

I love that. And just the fact that you owe a couple of things. Going back to you talking about just your attention and presence in the classroom, most, many, many teachers who’ve been in the classroom for a long time are just used to evaluation being kind of an afterthought in a lot of cases. And then also, so just your presence, your attention, and then that idea you just spoke about now, which is just acknowledging that there’s a lot going on here that I was not part of is such a big deal for teachers.

Justin Baeder (24:54):

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Courtney Groskin (24:57):

So we’re going to shift now to our rapid fire portion of the podcast. So in about 15 seconds or less, we don’t have a buzzer or anything, so no pressure. Where can we learn more from you?

Justin Baeder (25:09):

I have a lot of articles. Principal Center dot com slash FAQ has my rapid advice on classroom walkthroughs. So that’s my classroom walkthrough, FAQ Principal Center dot com slash faq, and that’s a great place to start. It’s got lots of links to other resources.

Courtney Groskin (25:24):

Thank you. What’s one strategy every coach should have in their back pocket?

Justin Baeder (25:31):

I think I would say patience and recognizing that often people need more than we can give in the conversation. So our goal in the conversation should be to try to figure out what that is, even if it means not really doing anything in the moment.

Courtney Groskin (25:46):

If you had 60 seconds with a new teacher, what’s the one thing you’d tell them?

Justin Baeder (25:50):

I would tell them this is a hard job, but it’s a rewarding one, and it’s one that has a long learning curve, but it’s worth climbing. So please don’t quit. Don’t give up. It’ll be worth it, and you’ll get there.

Courtney Groskin (26:01):

Thank you so much for your time today. We learned so much and we appreciate you joining us on C3.

Justin Baeder (26:06):

Thank you. It’s been an honor and a pleasure.

Courtney Groskin (26:08):

Thanks Justin. Justin shared great insight into how to get into classrooms and make the experience of giving feedback positive. One of the things he stressed is in the importance of consistent classroom observations and making feedback a normal low stakes practice. How might you begin to do this today as coaches? How might you support your administrators in this task? Thanks for listening to another episode of C3. Be sure to follow us on social media, C3 Connecting Coaches Cognition. Who’s thinking? Will you mediate today?

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