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Better Conversations: Reflection Guide - Instructional Coaching Group

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Better conversations stand at the heart of professional learning in schools. Instructional coaches who learn to be better at listening, questioning, building emotional connections, and fostering dialogue become more effective. Communication is the lifeblood of coaching, and the more effectively coaches communicate, the more effectively everyone learns.

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Conversation starters for teachers to use with families

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Conversation starters for teachers to use with families

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By Amanda Morin

As an educator, you know the importance of collaborative partnerships with families. But when it comes time to talk about a concern you have about a student, it can be hard to know how to start. How do you say it? There are a few things to keep in mind:

Be clear.

Be specific.

Share information and examples.

Ask questions.

Listen, and respond with follow-up questions.

Remember that these conversations can be equally difficult for families. While it may be the first time you're bringing up a challenging behavior or an academic concern, it may not be the first time a parent or caregiver has heard about it.

Family members may feel blamed or expected to fix it. They may have had past experiences with schools that led to mistrust. And some families may have different cultural expectations about school-family partnerships.

There is no one right way to engage with families. But there are some ways to make the conversation as collaborative and productive as possible. Below is a guide for how to have these conversations with families.

Whether by phone call, email, or other message, start by introducing yourself. Ask if you are reaching out to the right person. (Make sure to double-check that you're using the correct name. Students don't always share a last name with their parents or caregivers.) For example, "Hi, this is Ms. Morgan, Layla's teacher. Are you [name]?" Then, use sentence starters like:

[Student] is fine. I was hoping for a few minutes of your time.

This isn't an emergency. I was wondering if you have some time to talk about some challenges I've observed lately.

Do you have a few minutes to talk now? Or can you suggest a better time when we can talk?

How you start a conversation sets the tone for everything else to follow. That's why it's key to begin in a calm, respectful, reassuring way.

Thanks for talking with me.

I'd like to share something I observed during [subject/time period] to get your take on it.

I'm reaching out to ask for your help so I can better understand some challenges I've observed [student] having with....

As you describe what you've noticed, provide context, be direct, and share specific examples of the behavioral or academic struggles you've observed. Explain any steps you've already taken to try to address the concern. Use sentence starters like:

Today during [subject/time period], I noticed that [student] really struggled with [behavior/skill]. In the moment, we handled it by....

Recently, I've noticed that in class, [student]is [describe concern]. I've been trying some strategies to provide extra support. They include [describe specific strategies you have used and the outcome].

I've observed a change in [student]'s behavior/progress/motivation/ability in the past [time frame]. They were [describe what was going well] and now they are [describe the change].

The parent or caregiver may have noticed something similar - or different - at home. Take the time to ask for their input. When you do, you'll invite family members to have an equal voice in the conversation. Because they know their child best, their observations are very useful. Continue the conversation with questions like:

Is this something you've noticed at home, too?

Have you and your child talked about this? Are you comfortable sharing with me how [student] described the situation?

Is there anything else you've observed at home that you think may be related?

Has [student] had this challenge in the past? Can you share what has helped?

Ask for the family's help in an open-ended way that doesn't impose your viewpoint. Make it clear you're not blaming them or asking them for a "fix." Keep the focus on finding solutions together. Use conversation starters like:

What are your thoughts on the situation?

Are there things you do at home that might work at school?

Are there things that you know won't go over well that I should avoid?

Is there a teacher who knows/works well with your child that you'd suggest I talk to?

Be clear about next steps as you end the conversation. This is especially important if you'll be meeting in person or asking other staff members for advice.

Leave the door open for more communication and close out the conversation honestly. For example, don't say "This has been a great conversation" if it didn't go as well as you had hoped. Instead, say something like "I know this was tough to talk about. I appreciate your input." Use sentence starters like:

Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. As we discussed, I'm going to [confirm next steps you agreed on].

I'm glad we're able to work together to support [student]. So, at home, you'll [summarize discussed strategies] and at school, I'm going to [summarize].

I feel like this was a good start. I'll speak with [any additional staff], and we'll set up a time to continue this conversation.

Thank you for your time. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you think of anything else.

Tell us what interests you

About the author

About the author

Amanda Morin is the author of "The Everything Parent's Guide to Special Education" and the former director of thought leadership at Understood. As an expert and writer, she helped build Understood from its earliest days.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

Rayma Griffin, MA, MEd has spent 40 years working with children with learning and thinking differences in the classroom and as an administrator.

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As an educator, you know the importance of collaborative partnerships with families. But when it comes time to talk about a concern you have about a student, it can be hard to know how to start. How do you say it? There are a few things to keep in mind: Be clear.

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Ideas for Better Parent/Educator Communication

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Ideas for Better Parent/Educator Communication

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KEYS to Coaching Conversations (links to resources)

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KEYS to Coaching Conversations (links to resources)

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No One is Talking to the Mentees (11:34)

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No One is Talking to the Mentees (11:34)

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No One is Talking to the Mentees | Victoria Black | TEDxTexasStateUniversity

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OVERVIEW OF ACL What exactly is an assessment capable learner? ACL is a term invented by New Zealand department of education to emphasize student involvement. The goal is that students will feel deeply accountable for their own progress and become motivated, effective, self-regulating learners. Assessment capable learners: Coaching Companion Tool/Handout: Characteristics of Assessment Capable Visible [...]

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Diane Sweeney's Tools for Student-Centered Coaching

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Diane Sweeney's Tools for Student-Centered Coaching

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Tools for Student-Centered Coaching - Diane Sweeney

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Our top 5 Student-Centered Coaching tools for instructional coaches.

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"The Impacts of Teacher Expectations on Student Outcomes:

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"The Impacts of Teacher Expectations on Student Outcomes:

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A Practitioner's Literature Review"

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The Impacts of Teacher Expectations on Student Outcomes - TNTP

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Explore our publications shaping America’s PK-12 education conversations. We couple decades of experience with deep research-driven insights. Download now.

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Student Work Library (Learn to distinguish between high- and low-quality assignments)

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Student Work Library (Learn to distinguish between high- and low-quality assignments)

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Check out our teacher- and student-focused toolkits, full of valuable resources, how-to tips, worksheets, and other actionable guidance.

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TNTP is the nation's leading research, policy, and consulting organization dedicated to transforming America's public education system so that every young person thrives.

Today, we work side-by-side with educators, system leaders, and communities across 39 states and over 6,000 districts nationwide to reach ambitious goals for student success.

Yet the possibilities we imagine push far beyond the walls of school and the education field alone. We are catalyzing a movement across sectors to create multiple pathways for young people to achieve academic, economic, and social mobility.

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Action Guide for Educators: Belonging - TNTP

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Check out our teacher- and student-focused toolkits, full of valuable resources, how-to tips, worksheets, and other actionable guidance.

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Knowing Students — A tool for coaching special education teachers

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Knowing Students — A tool for coaching special education teachers

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Knowing Students Across Multiple Dimensions

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Knowing Students Across Multiple Dimensions

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A Review of Best Practices in New Teacher Mentoring

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A Review of Best Practices in New Teacher Mentoring

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Led by Jim Knight and over 20 years of research, the Instructional Coaching Group specializes in professional development for coaches, teachers, and leaders to impact student learning and lives. Our research has helped us identify seven factors that are essential for developing and sustaining a great coaching program. Jim Knight and ICG consultants have worked with over 150,000 coaches worldwide to learn and implement these factors through workshops, institutes, and customized professional development. Visit instructionalcoaching.com to learn more about our work, partner with us, read our blog, listen to our podcast, and access free resources. The content on this site is the exclusive intellectual property of the Instructional Coaching Group, LLC. It is meant for individual use only. Replication of this content for any other purpose is expressly prohibited. The Instructional Coaching Group, LLC takes this very seriously and will pursue legal remedies should any violation occur.

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More on the Phases of First-Year Teaching

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More on the Phases of First-Year Teaching

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Phases of First-Year Teaching

First‐year teaching is a difficult challenge. Equally challenging is figuring out ways to support and assist beginning teachers as they enter the profession. Starting in 1988, the Santa Cruz New Teacher Project (eventually shifting to become the New Teacher Center) worked to support the efforts of new teachers.

After supporting nearly 1,500 new teachers, they noted a number of developmental phases. While not every new teacher goes through this exact sequence, these phases are very useful in helping everyone involved-administrators, other support personnel, and teacher education faculty-in the process of supporting new teachers. These teachers move through several phases-from anticipation, to survival, to disillusionment, to rejuvenation, to reflection, then back to anticipation. Here's a look at the stages through which new teachers move during that crucial first year. New teacher quotations are taken from journal entries and end‐of‐year program evaluations.

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Phases of First-Year Teaching - New Teacher Center

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While not every new teacher goes through this exact sequence, these phases of first-year teaching are very useful in helping everyone involved - administrators, other support personnel, and teacher education faculty - in the process of supporting new teachers.

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Teacher Leadership | Ohio Department of Education and Workforce

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Teacher leaders are essential to the advancement of teaching and learning in Ohio’s schools. They help drive efforts for change and improvement in schools and enhance success.

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Student-Centered Coaching as a Pathway to Equity

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Student-Centered Coaching as a Pathway to Equity

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(part 1 of a 3 part series)
Written by Julie Steele, Consultant with Diane Sweeney Consulting
In the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, a spotlight has illuminated many, formerly less visible, issues around equity. While this blog will address how instructional coaching can mitigate against some of these realities, we do not kid ourselves into thinking that instructional coaching provides all the answers to the myriad of inequalities in our school systems. What we do know is that Student-Centered Coaching provides pathways for coaches and teachers to work together to remove barriers through strategies that include questioning, listening, observing, reflecting, and revising plans for student learning.

Student-Centered Coaching is an evidence-based model for instructional coaching. We believe that instructional coaches are not content or strategy experts. Instead, we partner with teachers to co-plan and co-teach around goals and targets that focus on leading students to achieve mastery. This provides the necessary context to partner with teachers to look at student learning from an asset-based stance and make evidence-based decisions around their needs and readiness, thus working together to remove unnecessary obstacles that our students face. We are called to serve all students through coaching, and if the coaching model doesn't focus on students, then why do we bother?

Coaching into Standards-Based Goals Through a Student-Centered Lens
Because we believe that every student in our schools is worthy of high-quality instruction, our coaching stance is to partner with teachers to co-create standards-based goals focused on student learning. This attention to rigorous goals and high expectations is an equity practice that requires intentional conversations that focus on creating the highest levels of learning so that every student leaves your institution prepared for the next phase of their life.

One can argue that all schools work to create lessons centered around a rigorous curriculum that is aligned to state standards, and we don't disagree. The difference is that Student-Centered Coaching provides the necessary discourse for coaches and teachers to gain clarity around the standards in order to unpack them and co-create high-quality learning targets. This equity practice ensures that our instructional lens is hyper-focused on the students and their needs; academic, behavioral, and social-emotional, and prevents us from wavering from the high expectations we established early on.

When implementing Student-Centered Coaching, we work from positive assumptions about teachers and students. We believe that all students can master the learning which leads coaches and teachers to work together to develop strategies that serve each student. When we coach from this stance, conversations are focused on students, their learning, and where they fall in terms of progressing toward the learning targets. Students are not at risk of falling through the cracks because, with this type of partnership and commitment to the work, no student is in danger of being unseen.
Coaching Questions to Set Student-Centered Standards-Based Goals:

What do you hope the students will learn as a result of our partnership?

Let's look at the standards. How might they help us choose a focus?

What do we want to see the students doing as readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, etc.?

Is there any student work or data that could inform us as we set a goal?

Is there a specific unit in the curriculum that the goal addresses?

Many coaches ask how they can support teachers in setting goals that are standard-based and drive toward equity. The following list provides questions that can get the conversation started.

How We Define 'Mastery Learning'
Mastery learning is a term that can be used in many ways, sometimes with negative connotations. In its simplest form, mastery learning suggests that students move to new learning once they have demonstrated mastery of previous learning outlined in the standards, curriculum, or learning targets. This is somewhat contrary to the practice of assigning students to a grade level based solely on their chronological age.

In using the above definition, mastery learning forces educators to design outcomes that are driven by the learning not by the teaching. With the push toward personalized learning, blended learning, and other innovative teaching methods, our instructional systems and practices would be best aligned with the tenets of mastery learning rather than traditional ideas of seat time, pacing guides, and grades based on averages. However, this paradigm shift, along with the recent changes to the educational landscape dictated by the pandemic, forces us to think outside the one-size-fits-all traditional education box we've been working in for centuries. Student-Centered Coaching provides the partnership necessary to do this type of thinking and realignment.

To make this concept more visual, consider times in our lives when we are required to demonstrate mastery performance and not an average score based on multiple attempts at a goal. The most basic event adults have experienced would be learning to drive a car and then proceeding to take the "white knuckle mastery learning experience" we call a driver's test. Would you want someone to be given a driver's license who barely met the "average" score of a qualified driver after a handful of low-performing attempts, or would you expect someone to keep trying until they have met the high-level standard of safely navigating an automobile? (and parallel parking doesn't count.)

Just like drivers and passengers on the road, all students deserve the type of education that ensures the necessary practice time to demonstrate mastery learning in order to move forward in their education. We receive many questions about the idea of remaining student-centered by teaching to levels of mastery when some schools and districts subscribe to a pacing guide or packaged instructional resource that dictates instruction down to the day. While we certainly don't advise that teachers "go rogue" against the details of their teaching contract, we do recommend that teachers stay connected to their goals and learning targets by utilizing current student evidence to drive instructional decisions to move on.

The old adage, "go slow to move fast" applies here. If we don't slow down to provide students the time they need to achieve the learning they need today, how can we ever expect them to move forward without carrying those struggles with them? We are not suggesting stalling out instruction for all in order to help a handful of students. However, we can provide teachers coaching support that creates a plan for reteaching or intervention with the students who need more time to solidify their learning.
Coaching Questions to Establish Mastery:

What are the learning targets (success criteria) that will help the students reach the goal?

What will we look for to measure mastery? What evidence will students produce to defend their learning?

Do the learning targets address a balance of know, understand, and do? Do they go beyond lessons and activities?

How will we communicate the success criteria to students?

How can we continue to offer additional support for students when evidence shows the need?

Dialogue around establishing mastery is crucial in the planning phase of teaching so that all parties are clear on the expectations required for learning. Consider using the following questions to guide this phase of the coaching conversation.

Final Thoughts
We are in a time when teachers feel overwhelmed and exhausted. Many are at a loss for how to meet the needs of their students given the changes in how they are learning. Others feel they are being asked to do the work of two or three different instructional delivery models at one time, leaving them wondering if they are making any impact at all. Yet, they still desire to do what's right for their students. As Almarode and Vandas write (2018), "The gap between our desire to have an impact is determined by our willingness to struggle and persist with these decisions until we identify what works best for each and every learner in our schools and classrooms" ( p. 2). Student-Centered Coaching provides the space for teachers and coaches to lean into the important work of creating clarity around learning, thereby closing the gap for all students.

Read part 2 of this series where we discuss coaching to remove barriers and the necessary skills coaches can leverage in order to better support learning.

Almarode, J. and Vandas, K. (2018). Clarity For Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Julie Steele is a certified Student-Centered Coaching consulting with Diane Sweeney Consulting.

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Student-Centered Coaching as a Pathway to Equity

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(part 1 of a 3 part series) Written by Julie Steele, Consultant with Diane Sweeney Consulting In the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, a spotlight has illuminated many, formerly less visible, issues around equity.

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Ohio Department of Education & Workforce Learning Management System 

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Ohio Department of Education & Workforce Learning Management System 

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Through the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce's LMS, educators have access to free courses and professional development opportunities, available anytime and anywhere. The LMS provides a variety of free courses and professional development on important state education initiatives.

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Web application providing a professional learning directory service

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Instructional Strategies that Push Students to Own the Thinking

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Instructional Strategies that Push Students to Own the Thinking

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Strategies That Push Students to Own the Thinking - TNTP

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Check out our teacher- and student-focused toolkits, full of valuable resources, how-to tips, worksheets, and other actionable guidance.

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Equity, Diversity, Inclusion Training and Professional Development

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We offer equity, diversity, inclusion, and beloning training, professional development, and assistance for educators and for schools, school districts, and other educational organizations. We also offer equity assessment, policy analysis, and more.