Shared Goals and Action Planning
[Music]
Woman: ...like something like an ant or something.
Narrator: Practice-based coaching is a non-evaluative approach to support a teacher, home visitor, or any practitioner to best implement specific practices when working with children. The first step in the cycle is shared goals and action planning. It's essentially a road map that's developed to promote adoption of practices as intended, leading to better learning outcomes.
Darbianne Shannon: When I sit down to work with a coachee, we always start with the strengths and needs assessment, and so that's a document that kind of lays out the targeted teaching practices. And it provides the coachee with an opportunity to say, "This is what I'm doing really well, and here are the areas where I'd like some additional support, and I really would like for you to provide me with some feedback."
Narrator: When identifying shared goals, it's important to zero in on a specific area the practitioner wants support around.
Dr. Lise Fox: There could be 100 practices a teacher really wants to implement, but we define the set of practices that are the priorities.
Narrator: The shared goals can be focused on anything, from a particular learning domain like literacy, to children's social, emotional development, but the practitioner's input is essential.
Eunice Lopez: Conversation is this shared, collaborative teaming, really, to be able to figure out what would be best to change or maybe improve some of the teaching practices in the classroom, so it's definitely an opportunity to work together.
Narrator: Once shared goals are established, the coach and coachee collaborate on what is needed to accomplish the shared goals by creating the action plan.
Julie Gretchen: Action plans are really important because they are the driving force. So you can have this big goal and have no idea how to get there. The action plan is really the steps that enable the coach and coachee to get there together, and so you work with the coachee to identify what might help them get there along the way. So some of those things may be supports that you, as the coach, are providing. It may be also the coachee identifying what they will need, so if it's resources or time or even people, additional people to bring in, that will help them reach their goal in the long run.
Narrator: Shared goals and action planning are essential as a goal on paper starts to take shape in a space that promotes child development.
Lily Hutchinson: I love the action plan, how it was broken into, like, smaller, narrower steps, like, first the implementation of the goal. We implement. We think about the goal, what goal I'm picking up, and then what is the criteria. And what are the steps I need to finish to achieve those goals, so action plan was perfect.
Narrator: Supporting practitioners by helping focus goals and create an action plan so she can eventually implement a set of specific practices with fidelity.
The shared goals and action planning process in the Practice-Based Coaching cycle takes place when education staff and coaches identify and write specific, observable, and achievable goals that guide coaching. This video shows how coaches and teachers collaborate to develop goals and action plans specific to the teachers’ strengths and needs to support achieving their goals.
