Podcast: Coaching – It’s Not About Me with Dr. Jessica Wise and Sonja Pullen

This episode brings Dr. Jessica Wise and Sonja Pullen of the Instructional Coaching Group into conversation with co-host Collette Sylvestre and Dr. Rick Gilson about what actually happens when we sit down with another educator. Dr. Wise has presented several times in person and on-line in Alberta in her work with the Instructional Coaching Group and is Co-Host with Jim Knight on their Podcast (linked below).  Sonja Pullen is now Canada’s first point of contact with the Instructional Coaching Group and has been working with educators in this capacity around the world.

Sonja described the pressure she felt early in her coaching career to be a fountain of knowledge, to fill every silence with something that sounded smart — and what shifted when she realized the work was never about her at all. Jessica took us to the moment when she watched a video of herself coaching and heard how much of the noise in the room was her own. That led us into video as a tool for seeing the current reality of a classroom rather than someone else’s account of it, into the resistance teachers reasonably feel toward being recorded and how choice softens that resistance, and into listening as something that involves ears, mind, and heart. Jessica’s answer to why any of us keep learning closes the episode well: we aren’t teaching the children we taught fifteen years ago, so we keep learning for the students we serve. Jessica, Sonja, and Collette share a wealth of resources and books to help us as instructional coaches.  If you are not officially a coach, just as the first person you lead is yourself, the first person you coach is yourself, there is something here for everyone who wants to be better in all their interactions and in their support of others in the classroom and out. Thanks for listening.