Equity from the Start: Coaching Welcome Meetings
The work towards educational equity is an everyday process. It’s not one and done; it’s not a big showy event. Educational equity is worked out in the day-to-day details and consistency across time. Coaching should center issues of equity, well-being, oppression, and justice to support classrooms where all kids can thrive. Unfortunately, we all too often leave equity work to the consultants who run one-time workshops. But typically little changes in practice as a result of these workshops, and that’s where we come in as coaches. As I wrote with my colleague Rashaida Melvin in Educational Leadership about a teacher’s growth towards an equitable classroom: “it took seeing the data about inequitable practices in her own classroom and having a coach who offered concrete solutions to really change and teach more equitably.” When teachers are supported well in coaching, they are empowered to make their classrooms more equitable learning spaces.
Since most of us are not trained on how to center equity in our coaching partnerships, figuring out how to do this can be tricky. Here I’ll explain how I incorporate equity into the very first meeting I have with teachers (or coaches or leaders) to start a partnership: the Welcome Meeting. (I’ll continue to share more equity-centered coaching resources, but check out my post on the equity-centered reflection questions I use to support teacher’s reflection on classroom data.)
Welcome Meetings are the space where coaches initially connect with teachers, building rapport in order to create an openness to growth. Shannon McGrath writes that “the truth of the matter is, we can’t get anywhere with teachers unless they trust us and know we’re down-to-earth humans whose true goal is to support them and their students.” I see the purpose of the Welcome Meeting being three-fold: 1) to connect with the teacher by asking and answering questions (the bulk of the meeting), 2) to clarify any logistical details related to the coaching process, and 3) to establish next steps to launch the partnership.
Centering Equity in the Welcome Meeting
Within these bigger goals of the Welcome Meeting, coaches can center equity in these practical ways:
Preemptively name that equity will be discussed in coaching. This helps teachers know what is coming and not feel so put on the spot the first time they’re expected to discuss something like race with you. This is what this might sound like, “I just want to name that in our coaching meetings we’ll often be connecting to issues related to equity, identity, and race, gender and other social identifiers. We’ll do this because these concepts are deeply intertwined with our work to make sure that every kid can thrive and be successful in school every day. I want to invite your questions and ideas around equity as they come up. There are no wrong questions here - this is a space for learning.”
Discuss self-defined identity markers: By asking a question, make space for teachers to name their own sociopolitical identity markers, especially those that are most salient, and share your response as well. (See the question I ask in the “Sample Connection Questions” below.)
Listen actively and humbly. In the teacher’s response to your connection questions, listen carefully for where you can start to learn more about a teacher’s critical consciousness, biases, or views on equity. Notice how they respond to why they are educators (are they there to “save” the children?) and to how they speak about students. While there is a lot we can learn in a short time, remember to listen with humility. We don’t want to walk away from the Welcome Meeting having put the teacher in a box, thinking “oh he’s just like all other X.”
Model equity in your meeting. We want teachers to strive for classrooms where students are known and loved as their true selves, where student voice is heard and important, and where students provide feedback and are listened to. These are a few of the ways we see equity live in the classroom. We can model these same concepts in our coaching meetings: building meaningful relationships with teachers, truly listening to them and taking their feedback, and making space for teacher voice and for teachers to be themselves.
When teachers are supported well in coaching, they are empowered to make their classrooms more equitable learning spaces.
To get a big picture of what a Welcome Meeting looks like, here’s a simplified version of the agenda I use for my Welcome Meetings with teachers:
Abbreviated Welcome Meeting Agenda (30 minutes total)
Connect (20 min)
Set a positive tone: “Thanks for meeting with me! I’m looking forward to our conversation and our coaching partnership.”
Give the purpose of the Welcome Meeting
State the agenda for the Welcome Meeting
Connection questions (teacher shares first, then coach shares too!)
Name that we’ll be regularly discussing equity, race and gender in coaching meetings because we want to make sure we get to the root of why some students are thriving and others are not.
Coaching Process (5 min)
Discuss any details of your given coaching partnership
Establish the teacher’s goals: “What goals do you have for our coaching partnership? What would you like to accomplish through coaching?”
Invite questions
Name that coaching is about growing one step at a time, we’re all growing in the process
Next Steps (5 min)
Set up first classroom observation
Set up next coaching meeting
Invite feedback: “Do you have any feedback for me about how this session went for you?”
The bulk of the Welcome Meeting is spent connecting with teachers, primarily through asking and answering questions. Typically, I’ll ask a question, invite teachers to respond, and then share a brief answer for myself so that teachers can connect with me too. (I do mean brief - we don’t want to do the majority of talking in this meeting. Teachers should certainly do most of the talking.) Here are some examples of connection questions that coaches can use:
Sample Connection Questions:
Tell me about yourself as an educator. Why did you become a teacher?
What have been some of your most significant successes with teaching? What made these successful?
What does your ideal classroom (learning environment) look like and sound like?
Tell me about your students.
To help me understand a bigger picture of who you are, I’d love to hear more about your life outside of school. What is most important to you outside of teaching? What kind of things do you do for enjoyment?
I’m curious how you identify in terms of your sociopolitical identity markers - race, class, gender, and so on. Of your identity markers, which ones feel most important to you, or play the biggest role in your daily experiences? (This question is modified from Elena Aguilar’s work, Coaching for Equity)
Depending on your personality, experience, and context, there may be any number of other ways you could center equity from the very start of your coaching partnership. I’d love to hear about them! I hope this provides you with a few tools and ideas for incorporating the work around equity into your regular coaching partnerships, especially from the very start.