Episode 14: Restoring Teachers through Coaching

The rate of professional burnout among teachers is high. Some are planning to retire sooner than originally planned, while others have left the profession entirely.  Kati Vaughn is the founder of Stay the Course. In this episode, she discusses the practice of Restorative Coaching, which helps educators build their resilience and reignite their passion for teaching. Kati also shares ways that school and district leaders can show teachers that they are being seen, heard, and, above all else, appreciated. 

Connect with Kati Vaughn on LinkedIn: Kati Vaughn's Profile

To learn about Stay the Course, visit http://stay-the-course.com/

Transcript

Announcer:

You're listening to the Voices In Education Podcast powered by Securly, where we hear from new voices and explore new ideas about how we can reimagine education to support whole student success. Education is at an inflection point. As we grapple with complex challenges like funding and enrollment, as well as diversity, equity, and safety, we also have an opportunity, an opportunity to reimagine education. Now more than ever, we know the importance that students’ overall wellbeing plays in their success. They need to feel supported and safe and connected to be able to engage in their learning and achieve their full potential. Join your host, Casey Agena, a former teacher turned instructional coach and technologist, as he interviews inspirational educators, school leaders, wellness professionals, and more to amplify their voices. You'll learn about the innovative work they're doing to support student safety, engagement, and overall wellness. And who knows, you may even spark a new idea of your own. Ready to reimagine education? Let's go.

Casey Intro: 

I'm Casey Agena and we have another wonderful guest joining us today. At her service provider, Stay the Course, Kati Vaughn seeks to work with schools and districts to improve talent retention through restorative coaching for teachers and school leaders. Her previous leadership work at all levels and all sectors of education have helped her to develop much of her resources for everyone, including a webinar series called Beyond Self-Care: Rethinking the Approach to Teacher Retention, which we'll discuss. Welcome Kati. Glad to have you here.

Kati:

Thanks, Casey. I'm happy to be here.

Casey:

So we discussed a little bit about mental health and self care and it was really kind of, I think, a guiding compass for us for our discussion today. Youth mental health issues, as we know are impacting young people in our classrooms. And many times some of those stressors begin not with the students themselves, but with the adults who surround them. So tell us a little bit about your work, why it's so vital for schools and leaders to embrace this, not just ideology, but really programmatically the idea of taking care of our educators in schools.

Kati:

Yes, I love that question and I will hopefully talk your ears off today about it. Well, why does it matter? Students thrive in places and in spaces that feel safe and secure. In order for the learning parts of their brains to be activated, they need to feel seen and cared forward and valued. They need to feel part of a community. So to be able to create those productive and inclusive learning spaces for kids, we have to make sure the adults in the building are also feeling taken care of. And that's my entry point through the work. Before we get into the details, I heard you say the name of my business out loud, my company, Stay the Course. I wanted to share where that comes from.

Casey:

Sure.

Kati:

My background is in early childhood. I was a preschool teacher. My mom was a preschool teacher for 20 years. And my very first year in the classroom, I really struggled. And these are three and four year olds just running my whole day. I found it incredibly rewarding and I still think fondly of my students over the years. I use their names as passwords to my computer. They left such an impact on me, as did their parents and families. But man, that work was hard. I would finish up work on Fridays, my voice was hoarse. I would take a nap before I could do anything else to start my weekend. It was hard and there were moments where I would sit in my car before work started, I'd call my mom and I'm like, "Mom, I don't know if I can go in." And I'd say, "I don't feel successful. I feel like I'm failing. I feel like I don't know what I'm doing." And she just told me to stay the course.

She just told me one day at a time, one quarter at a time. Whatever steps I could make in that moment. She said, "As long as you continue to show up and love on your kids, you're doing good work." And so that phrase, stay the course really stuck with me. And that sentiment is what drives my work now, working for anybody who works on behalf of teachers, supporting teachers, training teachers, teachers themselves directly wanting to acknowledge it's such incredibly rewarding and powerful work. It also requires a lot of emotional labor. There's a lot that goes into... We bring our full selves into the classroom.

So to try to be succinct here, the work that I do is bringing more person-centered coaching, professional development and consulting to schools and districts and again, anyone who's working alongside teachers. So that we push the conversation around teacher wellbeing beyond these surface level self-care strategies, which are still important and still matter. Go get the massage on the weekends. Go to that yoga class or treat your teachers to lunch every once in a while. But how do we make the job itself sustainable? Where are the decision points throughout the school day where we can value teachers time and energy? How do we increase the professional aspects of the work? It is a caregiving profession, but it's a profession.

Casey:

And to your point, I mean we'll talk about current reality, but I mean this idea of staying the course and that grit that teachers kind of learn and encompasses, it's not this new idea. I mean, this is something that even you experienced early on in your career too.

Kati:

Yeah. And what I emphasize when people acknowledge that part of the work that I do, that it is promoting resilience in schools. It's more than just being tough in the face of challenge. It's more than just putting your head down and suffering through challenge. There are actually habits and skills and mindsets that you can practice and strengthen to make it a little easier. To make it easier to see the other side, to see yourself getting through that challenge. So skills like self awareness, emotional intelligence, cultural competence, working across lines of difference and sameness, communication styles and how you navigate conflict. So in this coaching that I offer schools and teachers, that's a big part of it. It's not just this is hard and we're going to stay in this hard place. We're actually going to do some practice to build those skills to help you navigate everything you're facing.

Casey:

I guess irony is the word that we as educators embrace that, call it a curriculum and that approach, particularly when working with kids in our classroom. Whether it's really young, we want them to be resilient. We want them to have that grit. We want them to do that. But then kind of on the other side of the coin, how much of that is part of a school's practice in taking care of the adults who are taking care of the kids in the classroom?

Kati:

It makes me think a lot about, and this might be controversial, but it makes me think a lot about the martyrdom that can be present in caring professions like teaching. And my sister and my mom, so my mom after teaching, she became a nurse. My sister's a nurse. We talk about this a lot in the medicine world as well. You are expected to work, work, work and go, go, go all the time because you care about the mission, because you care about your patients or your students or whoever that quote unquote client is.

And there is a culture of martyrdom in schools in regards to how much time teachers are expected to work, how they are compensated, how they define paths forward into the profession, like finding paths towards leadership and greater impact and things like that. And we're not really addressing that culture of martyrdom head on, especially in light of everything that's happened in the last few years. We're just told teachers are heroes. Well, they're still working 60 hours a week and deserve to be compensated appropriately. Or they deserve to have tough conversations around where their boundaries are, around the hours that they work or the difficult relationships that they're navigating or whatever it is. The problem is the martyrdom is systemic, really hard to fight against. And oftentimes we embody characteristics that are aligned with those systemic factors as well. We've internalized that martyrdom. So there's a lot of guilt that comes with pulling back or taking care of ourselves. It's often deeply tied to who we are and where we come from. I was raised Catholic and in the Catholic faith you literally pray to martyrs that suffering is glorified. So it's really hard to unlearn a lot of those inclinations.

Casey:

And I'm thinking about the past 24 months in our K-12 schools where that has always been. But, has the past 24 months amplified that to then bring it even more light to it and even more stressors and more pieces about who our teachers are, what they stand for, and what place do they have in terms of indicator of community health, too?

Kati:

Yeah. Yeah, I definitely think it's been amplified. I'll even tell clients that are coming to me now, I'll say, "Look, a two hour session on wellness is a bandaid." I'll be really honest with them and say, "I'm happy to do this session on X, Y, Z, emotional intelligence or self-awareness or whatever, team building, but that's not going to fix the problem. We've got to look at decisions and choices that are being made at this school or even district level to make,"... Again, I think alluded to this earlier... "To make that school day easier."

A good example is oftentimes teachers are required to submit lesson plans on a regular basis. Let's say when I was a teacher, it was every Thursday for the following week, and it was the same whether you were a brand new teacher or a tenured veteran. And this is one area of the quote unquote school day that I'm working with one of my partners on is recognizing, well, first let's figure out the goal of lesson plan submission. Which is both accountability, is good content being put in front of kids that meets their needs? And also coaching so staff knows where to meet their teachers. Well, can those two goals still be accomplished if a certain level of mastery has been met for lesson planning? And so is there a different cadence of submitting those lesson plans? I just use that example because should that system shift for this school that gives teachers a lot more time and influence over where they put their energy and in any given week, which means they can be more present, more prepared, and more focused in the time that they spend with their children.

Casey:

So I think it's a good jumping off point in terms of right now is where it's a self reflection for a lot of school leaders or district leaders on, wow, we thought last year was challenging, this year was pretty challenging. And then looking ahead on what challenges may lay ahead in terms of the 2022-23 school year, knowing that there are some gaps and some stressors that are current for the staff that they're working with. What does it look like in saying, "Hey, I want to help my school stay the course." And I've listened to this, I've kind of looked at some of the resources that are out. What happens next with that school leader who wants to help his teachers stay the course?

Kati:

Oh yeah, that's a great question. I love how you framed that just to help them stay the course. And I love that we're thinking now beyond, because ideally I have sense a shift in the schools and the teams I work with. I have sensed a shift that people are really hopeful about next year. And we were hopeful about last year and last year was really tough, if not maybe the hardest year yet for a lot of school based folks. So we're cautiously hopeful for next year.

If I were to have school leaders in front of me listening to what they can do next, I think, I just was taking notes as you were asking your question, there's two things that I would say to that. The first is to understand the pain points that your staff is experiencing right now. Ask them, survey them until they are blue in the face. Hear what is causing them the most stress, burden, weight? What needs to change to allow them to feel like they're bringing their best to work every single day next year? There are four buckets of teacher stress that have been compiled by... There was a study done a few years ago that I often refer back to. The four buckets are school leadership and culture, job demands, autonomy and decision making, and social and emotional competence, referring to the teacher's own abilities in that area.

Casey:

I like those buckets.

Kati:

Yeah. So if you were to survey your teachers on each of those buckets, what would they say are the biggest pain points? That's where I would start. Because those are then the decisions you want to be thinking about as it relates to what's happening in your school day or across a school year.

Casey:

And potentially different when you're doing, I mean out where you're at California and in Iowa it might be different in terms of what data comes in from these surveys, which will then help guide you towards X.

Kati:

Yeah, exactly. And then I think this might be really broad, but the relationships are everything. And to narrow down even further, and maybe this goes along with the idea of surveying, but listening really matters. Listening with empathy, listening with a genuineness or an authenticity, listening with unconditional positive regard, leaving judgment out of it. Creating opportunities for your teachers to feel heard, to feel understood individually and as a collective, that goes a really long way. So at the beginning I talked about the importance of security for students to be able to engage in their learning. We also need to create security for teachers to feel supported and sustained at work. So you as the leaders are in charge of creating those conditions for teachers to feel secure. And secure can be interpreted in any number of ways. Is their job secure? Are they feeling like somebody at work cares about them and their development? So I think looking at your school year next year and deciding where those opportunities are for you to be present for your people, to be consistent and create space for you to really hear and see them.

Casey:

And we're really overt in creating those safe spaces and places for kids, whether it's via-

Kati:

Yes, we are.

Casey:

... the friendship bench or that-

Kati:

The calm down corner.

Casey:

... counselor time, calm down corner. Or even with some of the folks that we've talked to here on this podcast on the technology side of really having those safeguards when they're online and they're seeking out the multitude of platforms and TikTok and whatever. And trying to create those connections with books that they both know and unbeknownst to them and creating those connections. Are we doing the same thing for the adults who are also in those classrooms taking care of those kids and having those safe places and spaces for them?

Kati:

And encouraged too. It's as simple as, have you encouraged your staff to take advantage of their PTO or do you make it really hard for people to take off? Do you make time for staff conversations? Not just in the spring when people are thinking about their plans for next year, but starting in October? What do you want out of this year? How do we make this school a place you want to stay a long time? And really listen to those things. How do you acknowledge and celebrate wins?

I was a coach for seven years for early childhood and elementary teachers. You're so hyper focused on what needs to be fixed or where you can grow or where we're going to go from here. How about just sitting across from that teacher and saying, "I saw you do X, Y happened to the students in your classroom. The learning went up, or I saw the look on this kid's face, or I saw the smile that popped up." Why not just spend some time to celebrate? There's always more work to do, but we don't need to subscribe to this culture of nonstop urgency, go, go, go. That's not how people operate. And we need to be treating our teachers as people.

Casey:

So some of the things that you're talking about and the resources that you have to share, it can be packaged really nicely I think for school leaders and for educators that can help move the needle within their schools. You have a webinar called Beyond Self Care: Rethinking the Approach to Teacher Retention. Tell us about that and how this kind of fits in with your work.

Kati:

Yeah, thank you for asking about it. It was something that I started to put out feelers in January, February being like, "Hey everybody, I've learned a lot supporting teachers in schools for this pandemic. I got to tell you what I learned." And it takes this idea of the conversation around self care and shifts it to self preservation. There's a lot of similarities there. We're looking out for ourselves. One is a lot more surface level and temporary and it's often the first thing to go. That yoga class gets scheduled over real fast when you're busy and exhausted and stressed at work. Whereas self preservation is an orientation and isn't always cushy and comfortable. Maybe it means having tough conversations about boundaries or giving critical feedback to a manager or setting blocks on your calendar to make sure you can get the tasks done that you need to.

But anyways, it's about this shift to a more sustainable way of looking out for ourselves and our teams. And it starts off by focusing on that leader, that participant, and reflecting on what self preservation means to this person, this individual. Then we go into the team. At the team level, we do a little bit of an audit and we say, "What are your team's biggest hopes right now? Biggest needs?" We get really specific with strategies. And then towards the end it's a lot of planning and a lot of... Because again, I don't want this conversation to stop after three sessions. What are you going to do now that we've defined self preservation, us preservation as a team, What are you going to do with it? So my hope, it feels like a little bit of a balance where people feel that it's a privilege to be able to sit and think about yourself for a little while and there's something that can be energizing about it. So my hope is that it's like a productive space for individuals, but also is tangible and practical to bring back to their unique context.

Casey:

I feel like you've been able to transcend a lot of the things that were taking place in executive coaching in their businesses where that was kind of missing in terms of the coaching or professional learning in the K12 space where it was more like content driven but not necessarily about context driven. And that's something that, again, looking back at the past 24 months maybe it really kind of highlighted that piece. But I think even opportunity for school leaders to say, "Hey, I believe in that. How can this be part of what we believe in and what we do, not just for our teachers but with our teachers so that they can be awesome in the classroom kind of moving forward?"

Kati:

Yeah. Because I'm of the belief again, the way that our learning brains work, when those secure attachments, when those connections, when that support is there for anybody in school buildings, kids or teachers, good things are going to happen. So I have an early childhood background, but I coach teachers all the way up through 12th grade over the course of my time supporting teachers. And I always believe the content will come. There's going to be a resource, there's going to be a training, there's going to be somebody who does that really well that you can learn from. But what are the habits and dispositions that you need to unlock that learning brain?

And a lot of times what I've found in the pandemic, it's just time to sit and think about you for a minute. What is going well? Where are you struggling? What do you need? We often race through those thoughts ourselves in our head, or we talk about it with somebody outside of education. So a partner or a family member or even sometimes a therapist. Sometimes we send our teachers to clinical counseling and therapy. I mean, I'm a big proponent of therapy myself and that's hugely important. But oftentimes when you speak with people outside of education the conversation shifts to you're really stressed. This is a really hard job for you. Maybe you should go find another job. So you have to-

Casey:

And we're seeing some of that kind of exodus-

Kati:

Yes.

Casey:

... in the K12 sector now, right?

Kati:

Yes, yes. And I'm of the belief that we can create those same therapeutic, not clinical necessarily, but the same therapeutic conditions in a school building so that teachers can manage the really tough times.

Casey:

Well, I want to highlight a couple of things that really kind of resonate with me. And definitely for our listeners, this idea of staying the course. I think about it, the analogy of almost like a road and these guide rails for us. That it's an open road, but there aren't these guide rails for us to help us stay the course and leaders are able to take advantage of what you have to offer. And again, not just thinking about the now, but strategically being able to give school leadership, give educators a lens so that they can look ahead and they can rethink and approach that is beyond self care. So Kati, I want to thank you for joining us.

Kati:

Thank you for the conversation. I feel energized. I feel excited to get this work out there and appreciate your time in this space.

Announcer:

Thanks for tuning in to the Voices In Education Podcast powered by Securly, where we hear from new voices and explore new ideas about how we can reimagine education to support whole student success. If you enjoyed today's episode, we hope you'll consider subscribing to the podcast and sharing it with others who would benefit from listening. Even a small act of support helps us reach more people and make a bigger impact. For the resources from today's episode and additional details about the podcast, please visit www.securly.com/podcast. Until next time, thanks for listening.