Episode 033: Compassionate Coaching with Kenny McKee
Apr 23, 2024
Tammy Musiowsky-Borneman
Transform your instructional coaching methods with the wisdom of Kenny McKee, our special guest, who brings the power of compassionate coaching into the spotlight. Get ready to harness the 'rule of two' through our discussion, ensuring that your coaching aligns seamlessly with teachers' goals and tackles the universal struggle with time constraints. Kenny provides a deep dive into personalized support, the kind that recognizes the unique hurdles educators face and cultivates their professional growth. Feel the warmth of nostalgia as we reminisce about our early leadership days back in 2014, threading our past insights into today's challenges within instructional coaching.
Venture with us into the heart of diverse school cultures, where Kenny and I unravel the complexity of environments from stagnant to outright toxic. Learn how to awaken a culture of openness and shared learning among educators using public teaching practices, and realize the patience required to see transformative change—it can take years, but it's worth the dedication. We discuss the often-overlooked personal side of coaching, highlighting key strategies for finding support networks and mental exercises to keep perspective when the going gets tough. Discover how to leverage the digital world and professional gatherings for ongoing support and growth, ensuring you stay refreshed and ready to inspire as an educational coach.
Kenny McKee is a National Board Certified Teacher, an instructional coaching author, and an experienced curriculum and content designer. For over a decade, Kenny worked as a high school literacy and instructional coach supporting classroom teachers and other school faculty in professional growth. His classroom teaching career was in middle and high school English language arts. He has also served as a Teaching Instructor for the department of Literacy, English, and History Education at East Carolina University. Kenny has partnered with private schools, public schools, districts, state departments, nonprofits, and education companies in various consulting and leadership roles throughout his career. He currently works as Customer Success Manager with Newsela.
Transform your instructional coaching methods with the wisdom of Kenny McKee, our special guest, who brings the power of compassionate coaching into the spotlight. Get ready to harness the 'rule of two' through our discussion, ensuring that your coaching aligns seamlessly with teachers' goals and tackles the universal struggle with time constraints. Kenny provides a deep dive into personalized support, the kind that recognizes the unique hurdles educators face and cultivates their professional growth. Feel the warmth of nostalgia as we reminisce about our early leadership days back in 2014, threading our past insights into today's challenges within instructional coaching.
Venture with us into the heart of diverse school cultures, where Kenny and I unravel the complexity of environments from stagnant to outright toxic. Learn how to awaken a culture of openness and shared learning among educators using public teaching practices, and realize the patience required to see transformative change—it can take years, but it's worth the dedication. We discuss the often-overlooked personal side of coaching, highlighting key strategies for finding support networks and mental exercises to keep perspective when the going gets tough. Discover how to leverage the digital world and professional gatherings for ongoing support and growth, ensuring you stay refreshed and ready to inspire as an educational coach.
Kenny McKee is a National Board Certified Teacher, an instructional coaching author, and an experienced curriculum and content designer. For over a decade, Kenny worked as a high school literacy and instructional coach supporting classroom teachers and other school faculty in professional growth. His classroom teaching career was in middle and high school English language arts. He has also served as a Teaching Instructor for the department of Literacy, English, and History Education at East Carolina University. Kenny has partnered with private schools, public schools, districts, state departments, nonprofits, and education companies in various consulting and leadership roles throughout his career. He currently works as Customer Success Manager with Newsela.
Welcome to the Minimalist Educator Podcast, a podcast about pairing down to refocus on the purpose and priorities in our roles with co-hosts and co-authors of the Minimalist Teacher Book, Tammy Musiowsky-Borniman and Christine Arnold.
Speaker 2:
In today's episode, kenny discusses compassionate coaching with us. He discusses some common barriers to coaching and what we can do about them. His pair down pointer is the rule of two. Kenny McKee is a national board certified teacher, an instructional coaching author and an experienced curriculum and content designer. For over a decade, kenny worked as a high school literacy and instructional coach, supporting classroom teachers and other school faculty in professional growth. His classroom teaching career was in middle and high school English language arts. He has also served as a teaching instructor for the Department of Literacy, english and History Education at East Carolina University. Kenny has partnered with private schools, public schools, districts, state departments, nonprofits and education companies in various consulting and leadership roles throughout his career. He currently works as customer success manager with Newzella.
Speaker 3:
Welcome everyone to today's episode of the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Today we are speaking with Kenny McKee, who is a fellow emerging leader same class, 2014. Woo, woo for us. So we've known each other for quite a long time. Kenny, how are you today?
Speaker 4:
I'm good. You know, it's really funny, Tammy, I almost sent you a picture the other day because I don't know if you remember this, but when you and I were in the emerging leaders, we got that little yearbook.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 4:
And when you open it up, you and I are on opposite pages.
Speaker 3:
Oh, that's nice.
Speaker 4:
So it was really sweet to see like this, many years later, us being still connected, even connected much stronger now. Yeah, and all that time nine years later.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, it's crazy how the time has flown by and, yeah, we've been through quite a journey with just like different things that we've done together and in with ASCD and outside of ASCD, which is really awesome. So, and it's fun that you finally get to meet my co-author for this episode, so that's really exciting and we're excited to talk about some of your ideas from your book Compassionate Coaching and just you know things in general with some of the roles that you've worked in and how things kind of all loop together. So let's start, kenny, with some of your ideas behind your book, compassionate Coaching, which is a really valuable read for coaches, instructional leaders, admin, teachers, even because your approach to coaching, you know we're in, we're talking about working with people who work with younger people, and so you and your co-author, kathy, how did you come about the idea of focusing on compassion in coaching?
Speaker 4:
Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 4:
So we felt that there was a robust amount of research now in the field related to instructional coaching and that you could if anyone who wanted to be a student of that information in the field could easily find a book by one of its leaders, like Jim Knight or, you know, elena Aguilar, diane Sweeney.
Speaker 4:
These are people that we revere, have learned a lot from.
Speaker 4:
But one of the things we were thinking about was what actually happens when you've kind of got a good framework for coaching and you've got everything kind of set in place for it to be successful, yet it's not successful because of a specific need or barrier that the teacher is facing in some way.
Speaker 4:
And so the book is really about honing in on the situational context that teachers find themselves in that make growth hard, and how can coaching basically be differentiated or personalized to support those teachers in moving forward. So that's kind of a high level way of explaining the why of the book, because we just kept saying you know, in this situation you've really got to lean into these practices. In this situation you really have to lean into these practices. And so we started reading a lot more from those authors I cited earlier, a lot of research on motivation and achievement and goal setting, as well as like looking at our experiences as coaches and what had been successful and interviewing lots of people to kind of figure out, like, what are the moves that you make as a instructional coach or someone that supports teachers and professional growth, whether that's in a coaching role or not?
Speaker 2:
So at my current school we do have some instructional coaches, were very lucky to have some already in place and they have done some surveys about why our teachers do or do not engage in a coaching cycle, and the number one reason that people do not engage is time. So the teachers are reporting back that they feel like it's an extra thing and they don't have time to fit it in. So would you agree that it is an extra thing, or, and how would we combat that feeling of we don't have the time to do this?
Speaker 4:
Oh, great, yeah, that's a. That's a good question. And so you know extra thing, I think really depends on the goals and the nature of the coaching. So, for example, if, as a coach, you know my main role is to have folks comply with something that seems out of their daily work, that would probably seem extra. Or if, as a coach, I have an internal goal that's in conflict with the goals of the educator and their students, then that would also be something extra right. And so I think one of the biggest, one of the biggest things you have to do is to make sure that you're in synchronicity with the teachers goals. Now that takes time, like to actually know what their goals are and uncover them right. So so you know it's.
Speaker 4:
It's kind of a double edged sword a little bit, but you know, one of the things I think that's a real issue for teachers is in the book we talk about overload. That's one of the situational aspects that might impact a teacher being able to meet their goals, like they got too many things and they don't have enough time. So we go through this goal setting exercise with teachers to help them basically try to prioritize their goals and then and then us work to help support, like whatever is number one on that list. And so we ask a couple of questions to do that. You know, the first question we generally ask is why is most pressing, which is not everybody's first question, but you know, from my own experience working with teachers, I found that that is the thing that's on their mind, is the thing that's weighing them down, and if you don't address it and try to help make a plan for it, you actually probably can't get to anything deeper or more important in the grand scale of things. So we focus on what is most pressing, and then the second priority is what is most important, and so we talk about that next, and then usually we'll ask a question like is there another goal you have that would make a difference for your students? And that one becomes number three, because hopefully the first two make a difference for students, but we always try to ground it in students if we can.
Speaker 4:
And then there's a couple of questions that we asked to help eliminate things, and so those questions are things like if, especially around goals. So a question might be is that are there going to be professional repercussions if I don't do this? And so if there are, then it's probably important, but it may not be one of your top goals. But it also means that you can't just like scratch it off the list, right? Another question is will this make a difference for students? That's a question to ask yourself as a teacher, right? So if it doesn't, maybe that's a goal that you can cross off your list, maybe it's not important.
Speaker 4:
We call those the distractors, the things that can be crossed off. And if you answer yes to some of those questions right, like there are professional repercussions or it does matter to students, we call those the not nows. So they're still important, we still hold them somewhere, but we just can't get to them in this moment, and I think that helps. That helps people prioritize where they should focus their energies on completing things first, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and so the, the overload or the prioritization can really help with that overload, because then you're you're finding focus in particular goals. One of the other barriers you have six that you've written about in the book is there another one? Because I feel like overload is a big one, like just teachers are everywhere, are overwhelmed, overloaded, too much is happening. It can really feel like why am I meeting with my the instructional coach right now when I have like all this stuff to do with my students and they can't tap into? Well, it's because we're meeting, because it's going to benefit your students, right? So how do you? And maybe that's like a mindset barrier or like something about maybe a the lack in confidence. I don't know if there's a connection there, maybe, but yeah, I was going to actually disconnect and thinking right.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, I was actually going to highlight that when you said, is there another one? And what I was going to say is the two of the ones in the book that kind of surface the same in how you might see someone react are lack of confidence or overload, because they both kind of, when you're feeling that way, either of those it can seem. Like you know the teachers under a lot of stress. They seem to like feel a little bit like things are out of control and they can't get a good handle on them. But you have to dig deeper to find out why. So you know, we talk, we have some statements in the book, so like, for example, if it's overload, that means I don't have the time to do my job well, but when it's lack of confidence, it's I don't have the skills to do my job well. Those are two different root causes.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, when you think of lack of confidence, a lot of that happens when you've got somebody who's new to the role. They're either a brand new teacher, or there's somebody who they're doing something different for the first time. Maybe they taught second grade, they moved up to fifth grade, maybe they were a teacher and now they're an instructional coach they're trying to figure out how to master the skills on the job, essentially. So, when we look at that in the book, our focus is really to lean more into partnership. Now, partnership should be a part of every type of coaching, but it becomes really important when somebody feels lack of confidence.
Speaker 4:
They really need to feel like they have a partner who's going to be with them every step of the way. They need to feel like they can be vulnerable with that person. If you're the coach, you also need to share your vulnerability with them. A lot of it feels like action research, collaborative action research where you take the stance of, yes, as a coach, you might be helping someone learn a new skill, but you don't necessarily know how that's going to work out in their classroom context or with those certain students. So you take an approach of hey, we're going to do this together and if we succeed, we're going to succeed together, and if we fail, we're going to fail together and we're going to learn from it together. So trying to take an approach like that is really the best in those situations.
Speaker 2:
Another one of the barriers that are mentioned there is the school culture being a potential challenge. Is that around organizational trust issues or admin teacher roles? What sort of challenges are we seeing in the school culture?
Speaker 4:
You could talk about school culture so many different ways. In the book we categorize three types of cultures that we think that coaching might have a role in helping teachers kind of survive and thrive, depending on how bad it is. The first type of school culture challenge is related to a shifting culture, and so this is when, for example, a school has gotten a new administrator and they have new goals and people aren't used to whatever those goals are, or there's a new curriculum or new resource that's being implemented, or, like we talked about, we wrote, throughout 2020 and 2021. So everyone has to shift to remote learning, but something is introduced into the mix that causes change, and it's usually external force that's forcing the change. Another type of school culture challenge is a stagnant culture. It's almost the opposite. It's where people have basically done the same thing all along and it may not be serving students well, but everyone's comfortable, and so that's a different type of school culture challenge. And then the third one we talk about is really toxic culture, where it's just a very negative environment that makes it really hard for kids to learn in and for teachers to feel safe, to grow and ask questions even and that's a whole other type of culture, but for all three types of school culture challenges we always emphasize coaching moves around openness how can we open up the school culture more to learn from one another?
Speaker 4:
And so a lot of that deals with what we call public teaching practices, and all teaching is public. Sometimes teachers laugh because you'll say public teaching I'm teaching a friend of kids every day. It's all public. But when we're talking about public teaching we're really talking about opening up the classroom for other teachers to learn from one another and believing that teaching itself is a practice that's worth studying, and the best way to do that is to actually observe someone else to do it right. There's a hierarchy there, so like if a school really isn't very used to this and it's a very toxic environment, you know you might have a more controlled setting that starts a little smaller.
Speaker 4:
Maybe you do a couple of learning walks and you know there's not necessarily feedback given to the teachers, but like people talk about what are the things they learned from that right, and it's more of an internal discussion with the group all the way to the other end of the spectrum of having, you know, peer coaching, where you know you have worked on building the culture up to a point where people feel comfortable asking for support, saying this is their focus, getting strategies from one another, etc. But yeah, that's where that whole idea of like school culture challenges comes from. Is these different cultures that you know. You hope that the practices that you have will actually impact culture change over time and we've seen that. We've seen that in some of the schools that we've worked with. I can't say it always happens, and so sometimes it's about helping people find one another so they can thrive together in an environment that may not be ideal for that.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and we know that to have any kind of transformative change like that, you know it takes like some persistence and perseverance and you know three to five years to see actual change. So in the roles that you've had as coach, working with admin, other coaches how do you, in your role, or like the previous role that you had, keep yourself from feeling burnt out because you're trying to work through these barriers with so many teachers and teams? Like that's taxing on a coach.
Speaker 3:
And so, like what are some of the things that you found you had to do to maintain your sanity right? Because it's working with a lot of people, different barriers, different levels of adoption versus resistance right and just trying to get everybody to kind of move along together.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, you know I I would have to say that one of the most important things was fighting, like, your network of people who are outside of that. You know, I had some really great teacher leaders I worked with. That, you know, obviously you could share with. But it's different, like even like I always viewed myself, as you know, a lateral position to them and like on paper I was. But there still is kind of a power dynamic that exists. So, like, when you're coaching people, you can't totally always be open with them in a way that you might be with somebody else who does your job. And so there were coaches in my district that I could kind of bounce ideas with and talk through issues with and strategize with, and that was great too. But also there's kind of a layer there too of what exists in that network that you're working with is a knowledge based and experience that, while it's very important, it is limited. So that is why I think it's really important that if you're in a coaching role, that you connect with people outside, outside of your immediate surroundings, your district, your whatever ecosystem that you're working in, and so that it's been really important to make connections and contacts beyond that, and so I've been very fortunate to be able to do that a lot of different ways.
Speaker 4:
Now I will say I used to. I used to get a lot of ideas and experiences and talking through things through Twitter. That was how I found a lot of people. Twitter, to me, is not the same as it used to be, and so, although it's still, you know well, and it's X now, by the way, it's not the same thing and it's not that that's a useless tool. Now I think there's still a lot of thriving education communities on there. It's just that I'm not in the mix with those as much.
Speaker 4:
But I will say that for me, that was a place where I could find a lot of people. It could be something different. I mean, some folks find folks like that through Facebook groups. Some people use, you know, some people can connect through Instagram or LinkedIn, and I think that all those social media tools are really helpful. But also like in-person events, like if you can go to a conference and meet somebody, especially if you're in coaching and you can find a coaching conference, that's a great ideal place to like make connections with people, right. So I think that's really, really important to do. And also, you know I always take the stance. This is something I learned from one of Jill Knight's books and it's an exercise I use. I've used it in almost every job I've had and I used it accidentally as a teacher a lot, and you two might be familiar with this, but he has something that he calls going to the balcony and I'm not sure if you're familiar with this, what it?
Speaker 3:
means I can't, no, no.
Speaker 4:
But what it basically means is like when you're in a situation and it's really intense, instead of being there with your feelings, you try to step out of your mind to like an observer who's on a balcony, who's watching over this situation happening and you try to think as that observer on the balcony, what should this person do in this situation? Because they have some distance from it, right. And so whenever things feel a little intense for me, I try to like shift my thinking to an observer and think about how would this observer, what are they witnessing? And like if you react, if you like, get upset with someone, like how's that person going to interpret that? Versus like if you're open to learning or if you're patient or if you're asking questions. It kind of keeps me in check a little bit. I can't say I'm 100% successful with that, but I'd say after many years of practice, I'm maybe 80% successful.
Speaker 2:
That sounds like such a good strategy to be able to take a step back away from your immediate emotions and whatever might be triggering you at that moment and think about it from a different perspective. That's a really good tip. Thank you for that one. Before we wrap things up today, we like to ask our guests to give us a pare down pointer, so it could be building on something that you've already mentioned or something that you use personally in your life. To pay back and get back to the essentials.
Speaker 4:
So what I would share is what I call the rule of two, and so the idea is that when you're coaching someone, first of all whenever you're coaching someone. I want to back it up a little bit, so I'm going to do two things here. But you know, it's always good, first of all, it's always good to ask questions. As a coach Like that's what I lean into I ask a question. So, rather than plowing into giving someone suggestions and telling them how you think they should work on whatever they're working on or to solve it, I always like to ask first, you know, would you like suggestions? And then, if they say yes, then I use the rule of two, which means that I will give them two things and no more and no less. And the reason for that is one I want to show them that they still have a choice in the decision-making process, and so giving them two possibilities helps them kind of think through things. Also, if you give them too many, there's that paralysis, the was it analysis paralysis that occurs Like I worked with a coach.
Speaker 4:
She was awesome coach, good friend, awesome human being, but I remember like when she was my coach, she would tell me like 12 things and like six of them. I didn't know what they meant, like I'd never heard of them before, right, like some Google in the names, and then I couldn't do anything. So there is a danger of telling giving someone too many ideas because then they feel overwhelmed, right, but giving them one. One idea also communicates. This is like I believe this is the way to solve this, and so I feel like two always gives them some options and with those two, also the option to opt out and say I think this is actually a third, better way. So that's the rule of two. It's pretty simple.
Speaker 3:
We like simple and paradigm. We just don't need to overcomplicate things sometimes.
Speaker 4:
No, no. There's too many things that are complicated in the world, so, like let's, let's figure out how we can limit those while still making good decisions.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for being with us today, Kenny. That was a great conversation.
Speaker 4:
Hey, thank you both for having me. I appreciated being here.
Speaker 2:
Today's episode was brought to you by Plan Z Professional Learning Services Forward Thinking Educator Support. Find out more at PlanZPLServicescom.
Speaker 1:
Be sure to join Tammy and Christine and guests for more episodes of the minimalist educator podcast. They would love to hear about your journey with minimalism. Connect with them at Plan Z PLS on Twitter or Instagram. The music for the podcast has been written and performed by Gaia Moretti.