Can't think of a better way to celebrate National Instructional Coaching Day than sharing this conversation with you all! Michelle Yerkes, Field Specialist in Maricopa County (Arizona), joined us to share the successes of her coaching team. Over the course of the past three years, they have been on a path of learning, coaching, and growing kids! Her excitement is contagious, and we can't wait for you to hear her story...enjoy!

Welcome back! We hope your school year is off to a fantastic start...full of smiling faces on kids that are hungry to learn! For those of you that might feel discouraged by that last sentence because you don't feel like that's your current reality YET, I think you're going to enjoy hearing from Shelley Bond, Principal at Maple Grove Elementary in Boise, ID. The focus of our time together was discussing the role of the principal in creating a culture for coaching in the building, from partnering with the coach to setting up and protecting the different roles. We also spent time talking about about Maple Grove specifically, and their building goal around JOY. We hope that listening to Shelley and her passion to bring joy to her building will leave you thinking about how you can add joy to all you do, as well as help others around you do the same! Thanks for listening!

The school year is quickly approaching and this is an episode that should be listened to every year at this time. Launching your year of Student-Centered Coaching successfully has such a tremendous impact on the work that will take place throughout the entire school year! Listen in as Diane's co-authors, Leanna Harris and Julie Steele discuss their book, Moves for Launching a New Year of Student-Centered Coaching.  ------------- Diane's new book (or maybe we should call it a "resource" - you need to listen to better understand that reference), Moves for Launching a New Year of Student-Centered Coaching, is now available for preorder! They will arrive on August 1...just in time for the start of school. While you're waiting for it to arrive, we hope you enjoy our conversation with the other two co-authors, Leanna Harris (@leannaharris22) and Julie Steele (@JulieTier1). They discuss the structure, new thinking that is included, and ways that coaches can utilize this to make their start to the year the best one yet! Hope you enjoy, and click here to grab your own copy!

It has been a while since Diane and Brandon have done a Q/A episode. What better time than the last week of school as we are wrapping up our year and thinking about/planning the next? Questions came in from our Facebook group, as well as The Hub for Student-Centered Coaching. Questions ranged from celebrating success to culture within a building. We hope this finds all of you well...enjoy your summer with family and friends! Links from episode: dianesweeney.com The Hub for Student-Centered Coaching  Facebook: A Community for Student-Centered Coaching

We wanted to rerelease this episode with Chris Cutrona, CEO of EdSightful, from July 18, 2024. If you didn't get a chance to listen, we wanted to put it in front of you again. If you tuned in last summer and were able to utilize the Results-Based Coaching Tool (RBCT) this school year, listening again can be valuable as well as you now enter this conversation through a different lens. Regardless, we hope you enjoy!  ------- We've talked about measuring the impact of coaching using the Results-Based Coaching Tool (RBCT), but we've never talked about it like this! Joining Diane and Brandon on this episode is Chris Cutrona, CEO of EdSightful to discuss how he has taken the RBCT and transformed it into an amazing dashboard for coaches to utilize to measure their impact. Chris and Diane also just released a blogpost on the same topic that includes links to demos, where you can see it in action as well. We hope you enjoy this conversation! EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT!!! If you're interested in purchasing the RBCT dashboard, you can now contact the EdSightful team directly on their website or by emailing them at chris.cutrona@edsightful.com. Diane also referenced a previous blogpost (Student-Centered Coaching Cycles) in the episode. For all blogposts, don't forget to check them out at dianesweeney.com!

There's nothing better than sitting down for a conversation with someone to talk about their passion! Amber Birch-Trujillo's happens to be the topic of the "Asset-Based Mindset." It comes out in work. It comes out in her friendships. It is the very essence of who Amber is. This conversation has already caused many changes in my (Brandon) work with teachers and students, and we know that it will do the same for you as well!

"When teachers believe, student achieve!" It was this mantra that ignited Glenn Forbes, principal from Queensland, Australia and his pursuit to learn more about Collective Teacher Efficacy. Through reaching out to Jenni Donohoo, best-selling author and learning facilitator, and learning more from her, his passion continue to grow and ultimately led to the much anticipated release of their new book, Collective Impact! Join Diane and Brandon as they dig into the new text with Jenni and Glenn and uncover so many opportunities for "slaying the enemies!" We hope you enjoy! Click here to get your copy of Collective Impact. Click here for more information on this year's Student-Centered Coaching: The Workshop in Denver, CO.

You know that feeling you get when you see something successful and you just have to tell others about it? That's how we feel when we partner with Brittany Gonser and her team of instructional coaches in the Shawnee Mission School District. Join Brittany, Director of Professional Learning at SMSD, as she sits down with us and discusses so many factors, from a systems point of view all the way down to how her past experiences shape the decisions she makes, that has led to their team being what it is today.  We hope this episode finds you well as you enter the holiday season! Enjoy!

As the school year is getting underway around the world, many of you are entering coaching partnerships with teachers who are in year one with a new resource/curriculum. As instructional coaches, do we need to alter what we do or how we exist within our coaching work? Sarah Auld (teammate of the beloved Ben Scott from Ep. 1), from Battleground, WA joins us to talk about coaching in a resource adoption year. Through her reflective nature, she shares so many insights that will be beneficial to all coaches, not just those with a new resource.  Don't forget to join the conversation on FB: "A Community for Student-Centered Coaching www.dianesweeney.com  

We've talked about measuring the impact of coaching using the Results-Based Coaching Tool (RBCT), but we've never talked about it like this! Joining Diane and Brandon on this episode is Chris Cutrona, CEO of EdSightful to discuss how he has taken the RBCT and transformed it into an amazing dashboard for coaches to utilize to measure their impact. Chris and Diane also just released a blogpost on the same topic that includes links to demos, where you can see it in action as well. We hope you enjoy this conversation! EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT!!! If you're interested in purchasing the RBCT dashboard, you can now contact the EdSightful team directly on their website or by emailing them at chris.cutrona@edsightful.com. Diane also referenced a previous blogpost (Student-Centered Coaching Cycles) in the episode. For all blogposts, don't forget to check them out at dianesweeney.com!  

And we're back!!! Spring has been busy, but we wanted to get this out to you all before the end of the year. Tiffany Dowling, a K-3 Reading Specialist in Enterprise, AL, joins Diane and Brandon to discuss how she utilizes the Results-Based Coaching Tool to enhance her coaching partnerships with teachers (and maybe even students?)! While the RBCT was the topic of the conversation, it is full of words of wisdom that Tiffany shares about coaching and learning. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did recording it!

Happy New Year to everyone! Join Diane and Brandon as they discuss a very popular topic this time of year, goal setting! While the "new year" for educators is late summer to early fall, ringing in the actual new year on January 1 can be a great time to reflect, recalibrate, and set goals moving forward. We hope you enjoy the discussion! As mentioned in the episode, you can find Diane's latest blogpost on this topic by clicking here.

In this episode, Diane and Brandon are joined by Azra Bosnjak from Boise Schools. As a middle school learning coach, Azra discusses one of the Core Practices of Student-Centered Coaching, co-teaching. In just year 2 as a coach, it's pretty evident that she has a bright career ahead of her!  Don't forget to join the conversation on our Facebook Community and Instagram!

In Episode 16, Diane and Brandon discussed the idea of planning then (May) for "Launching the New Year." Now two months deep into the current school year, they are joined by Rachel Court, an Elementary Instructional Coach from Sioux Falls, SD to discuss the approaches she took to launch her year of coaching!    At the 23:20 mark of the episode, Diane references a list of questions from Moves for Launching a New Year of Student-Centered Coaching (Sweeney, Harris, and Steele, p. 24). They are included for you here. 

It's that time of the year again! As we enter the season of kicking off a new school year, many coaches find themselves navigating newly formed partnerships with a different administrator. Brandon jumps to the other side for this episode, alongside Rachel Hill from Tuscaloosa, AL, as they discuss their relationships with their building's newly hired principals. Diane offers many questions to consider and reflect upon, as well as her own nuggets of advice. Whether you have a new admin or not, the conversation is worth the listen. Hope you enjoy!

The school year is quickly coming to a close. What better time to start conversations for the start of next year than right now? Diane and Brandon discuss what these conversations can sound like, as well as potential ideas for coaching that will start in classrooms on the first day of school next year. Please join us for more conversations around the topics from each episode. Click here to join the Facebook group! And don't forget to follow us on Twitter @SCCoachingPod. We appreciate you all so much! -Diane & Brandon

Listen in as Diane and Brandon open up the mailbag! Questions were gathered from listeners and conversations around coaching ensued. Thanks to all that sent in questions...hope you enjoy!

Diane and Brandon were joined by Brett Twiss, Learning Coach at Capital High School in Boise, ID. Fresh off the heels of a massive investment in student-centered coaches (50 new hires in the district for this past fall), Brett shares about his early successes, his desire to amplify the great things that are taking place, and his desire to coach from the role of a learner. After hearing the conversation, it's not shocking that he has had a very successful first semester as a coach. 

Amanda Brueggeman joined us for a very insightful conversation on the partnership between the coach, the mentor, and the mentee. Her new book, Student-Centered Mentor, focuses on how to shape that partnership to make it student-centered. Amanda is also a member of Diane's consulting team, where she gets to partner with coaches around the country. Hope you enjoy it! 

Diane's new book (or maybe we should call it a "resource" - you need to listen to better understand that reference), Moves for Launching a New Year of Student-Centered Coaching, is now available for preorder! They will arrive on August 1...just in time for the start of school. While you're waiting for it to arrive, we hope you enjoy our conversation with the other two co-authors, Leanna Harris (@leannaharris22) and Julie Steele (@JulieTier1). They discuss the structure, new thinking that is included, and ways that coaches can utilize this to make their start to the year the best one yet! Hope you enjoy, and click here to grab your own copy!