[MUSIC] Welcome back. Last week we introduced you to our formula for effective teacher coaching. And not coincidentally, over the next 3 weeks, we're going to dive deep on each of those variables, starting first with the Fixed Mindset Tax. We'd like to begin with a little story here. It's about the founder of Match Education, Mike Goldstein. So Mike was interviewing a candidate for a job ad match and about halfway through the interview day, Mike sits the candidate down to give him a little bit of feedback on his progress so far. And he says to the candidate, now, this is a direct quote, now I want you to open up your brain so I can drive a friggin' truck through it. >> The candidate gives my kind of a puzzled look, but uncaps the pen and says okay, I'm ready. >> Now, we don't always expect your feedback sessions to go like that, nor should they. But hey, good job Mike. At least you did something to prepare this candidate for the critical feedback you were about to drive through his brain and fortunately for you, he was open to it. But we don't always expect that the teachers you inherit as a coach are going to be that open to the critical feedback you need to deliver. At least not all of the time. So you actually have to do work, real work, to prepare them for taking critical feedback. So when we talk about the Fixed Mindset Tax, we're talking about the kinds of behaviors that people exhibit that prevent them from hearing information that's telling them that they have to change in some way. And that's what effective coaching is all about, right? Promoting sticky change. [BLANK_AUDIO] Now, the science of behavior change is really fascinating. There's all sorts of things written on this topic. Everything from how to improve your memory, to how to break habits, to how to change your body, to how to change your spouse. There's just all sorts of things that you can read. And no matter how good the diet, how prescriptive the exercise regiment, if the person you're coaching doesn't truly believe they're capable of making a change, you're not going to get anywhere. [BLANK_AUDIO] We covered this concept a bit in week one. It's based on Carol Dweck's research about mindset. If you recall, mindset happens across a spectrum. On one side is growth mindset. Someone with growth mindset believes that their abilities are not fixed. That over time, they can get better with the right practice, and feedback, and interventions. They can actually improve their skills. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Fixed Mindset. This person believes that their abilities and skills are innate, they sort of get what they get. They're as creative or as smart or as skillful as they're ever going to be, no matter what type of intervention you might try to get them to improve. You might also recall that growth and fixed mindset are not overall dispositions. They can change as the task change. So someone might be growth mindset about one thing, but rather fixed mindset about something else. Like our trusty TA Ross, who is growth mindset about his ability to do difficult crossword puzzles, but rather a Fixed Mindset about his ability to be a good folder of laundry. [BLANK_AUDIO] In teaching, there's a particular Fixed Mindset narrative that goes, Great teachers are born not made. Maybe you've heard that one before and, you know it's difficult to reject that entirely, but guess what? We reject it entirely. Of course, great teachers can be made. But even if you're coaching a teacher who's overcome that narrative, they might not be growth mindset about every aspect of their work. Teaching is multifaceted. You have planning. You have grading. You have building relationships with students, building relationships with parents, executing lessons, classroom management. There's so many different aspects to the job. You might have a teacher who's really growth mindset about one thing, but rather fixed mindset about something else. An effective teacher coach will not just coach teachers in the areas where they have growth mindset. An effective coach has license to coach teachers in any aspect of their work that will have a real payoff for their students. Another [UNKNOWN] about mindset is the teacher's mood. On one day, they might be feeling really optimistic about their ability to grow in a particular area. And on the next day, not so much. They feel like they've hit the wall. But effective teacher coaching is about promoting growth mindset, no matter the task and no matter the day. [BLANK_AUDIO] So in order to illustrate just how important growth mindset is in coaching teachers, we want to introduce you to a couple of people. The first is Mr. Good Coach. You might remember him from week 1. Well, we've been tutoring Mr. Good Coach, gave him a sneak preview of this move, and we think he's actually on the road to becoming Mr. Effective Coach. Let's return to our formula. The first variable is clarity of instructional vision. Well, Mr. Goodcoach is doing a really good job here, he got a sneak preview of week 3. And he now has very clear goals for the teachers he's coaching and he has a detailed rubrik which describes what's going on in the classroom. He and the teachers he coaches share a lot of the same language. So, we're going to go ahead an give Mr. Good Coach an 8 for Clarity of Instructional Vision. On to the Quality of Feedback variable. Mr. Good Coach, well he's really solid in this area. He's improved a lot since you last saw him in week 1. He's now only focusing on, one area for the coaching session. And he's picked something that's really going to have a great impact on students. He's doing a great job of modeling what that skill should look like in practice and, really give you feedback to his teacher along the way so that they know how to implement that skill in the classroom. And he still has that warm relationship, but now his interactions are much more focused with the teacher. So we're going to go ahead and give him an 8 for that variable as well. But, there's still something that's keeping Mr. Goodcoach from being effective. [BLANK_AUDIO] On to our last variable, the fixed mindset tax. Do you remember Miss McRookie from week 1? She's so positive, professional, diligent, really open and optimistic to learning. Well, that's the first person Mr. Goodcoach is coaching here and she's a pleasure. I mean even if his feedback wasn't high quality, she would probably find a way to learn from his coaching. So, we're going to go ahead and give Miss McRookie a 0.95 in this category. That means she's only paying a 5% fixed mindset tax in any given coaching session. So now when we crunch those numbers 8, 8, and 0.95, we generate 61 total units of learning and growth from Mr. Good Coach's session. That's fantastic, she's really on track to improve. I mean, at this rate by the end of the year, Miss Mc Rookie'll look like Miss Mc Second Year Teacher. That's fantastic. But we're still not ready to call Mr. Good Coach, Mr. Effective Coach. There's someone else he's coaching, and we need to look at his interactions with that teacher as well. Meet Mr. Fixed. Like Ms. McRookie, he's a first year teacher, but he couldn't be more different. He's apprehensive about lots of different aspects of teaching, so much so that even early in the year, he starting to question whether he has the talents that make it in this profession. Even when Mr. Goodcoach gives him really directed feedback and lots of clear goals on how to improve, a lot of that's lost on Mr. Fixed in a feedback session. He's exhibiting all kinds of behaviors that prevent him from really hearing the feedback and internalizing it. So much so, that probably half of that content is gone. So, we're going to give him a .5 for his fixed mindset attack score. And when you put those numbers together, an 8, an 8 and a .5, he's generating about 32 units of learning from these coaching sessions. Well that's not nothing. But he's really lagging behind Ms. McRookie here. He's not going to grow nearly as fast as she is over the course of the year from Mr. Goodcoach's coaching. [BLANK_AUDIO] So we can't yet call Mr. Goodcoach Mr. Effectivecoach, because helping Mr. Fix develop a growth mindset, well, that's part of his job. [BLANK_AUDIO] As a coach you can't just say, "Well I'll be effective with the teachers who have growth mindset." I mean you wouldn't accept it if a teacher said, "I can only be effective with certain students." The same goes for you as a teacher coach. Sometimes you need to be really proactive about addressing and changing the teacher who has a fixed mindset. And like so many other problems in life, often the first step in that journey is getting the person to admit that they have a problem with fixed mindset. Stick around in our next video, where we introduce you to the first intervention in this journey, The Four Horsemen of Fixed Mindset. [SOUND]
