DISCLAIMER: Raw, unedited transcript from webinar. No guarantees are made for the accuracy of the content. 

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>> We are at the top of the hour. This is Robbin Bull with  NCDB. I want to begin by welcoming everyone.  I am going to go through some housekeeping items before I handed over to Kristi, who will be kicking off today's webinar.  To begin with, all phone lines are muted to reduce background noise. The question and answer session will occur at the end of the presentation. However, you can write your questions in the chat box at any time during the presentation. It will be monitored throughout the webinar in preparation for the question and answer session. I want to let you know this webinar will be recorded and archived for future viewing. I will start the recording now. Kristi you will hear an announcement and that will be your cue to start. 
>>  Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We are here for the webinar on Improving the Use of Effective Practices Through Coaching . Myself and Carlie Rhoads will be doing the presentation.  Carlie is the national leadership consortium  and sensory disability scholar who is pursuing her doctorate degree at Vanderbilt University. I am with the national Center on deaf/blindness. To get started, I will tell you a little bit. This is the agenda for today. We will briefly discuss evidence regarding coaching. We will also give you a description of coaching. Carlie did a literature review, so she will discuss that a little bit.  That will help you plan for the future as we wait for this RSA to come out. We will talk about how the national Center used the lit review information. This is for best practices in coaching. The national Center suggestions for successful coaching. We will also go over pretty in depth the coaching package we released recently. We will and with a few minutes for questions and answers. We have a lot packed into this time. We are excited to share it with you. I will mute myself so that Carlie can take over. 
>>  Thank you so much, Kristi.  To leap into this. Just some background information. I want to talk about some of the evidence for coaching and where this really starts is with evidence-based practices. I'm sure most of you as educators know what really drives our practice is using evidence-based practices in the classroom. We are intervention and practices that we know for a fact are effective and work and are based on high-quality research. It is absolutely essential to include practices that have high-quality research backing them up. This falls under the umbrella of [Indiscernible] as visual impairment. Within all of these areas there is limited research-based information to guide the practice. We have some ideas for practices and some things we know anecdotally are good practices. We don't have a lack - - a lot of hard evidence to back these things up. Without extensive training and support, special educators and paraprofessionals implement very few evidence-based practices. When they do implement them, just due to the lack of information that is out there, they are often implemented with inconsistent fidelity. If you implement something with inconsistent fidelity it's not effective because it is not done correctly which is an issue. 
>> There really is a gap between research and implementation. I will break down this topic. We can talk about this specifically with special educators and then paraprofessionals and interveners. Let's talk about special educators. As we know, most special educators are expected to use evidence-based practices in the classroom and with their students. We have these expectations and then combined with the initial lack of experience we have with evidence-based practices, and also the lack of support to implement these evidence-based practices, a lot of time special educators are left feeling overwhelmed and unsuccessful. The very few practices we do have are not widely known and there is not a lot of evidence in the schedule for how to train people to use these and be effective with them in the classroom. There is a big gap between the research we are doing at Vanderbilt with researchers in getting that to educators in the classroom. As a result of this it translates into less than optimal job performance with education in the classroom. Again if you don't have the proper tools you can't implement these  evidence-based practices in the classroom.  Specifically especially with new educators, that work with the types of students that we typically work with with moderate to severe disabilities. There are specific challenges. A lot of the students have very complex and highly individualized needs. Just because a specific population was found to be effective with one practice doesn't mean it will work with all of those. As we say in the visual impairment world there's not [Indiscernible] students they are all individual and it can be difficult to generalize practices between these. It is really important to keep some of these issues in mind and to choose meaningful practices that will work with the students that you have. Additionally, like paraprofessionals in the classroom, special educators can be undertrained and unprepared for implement during - - implementing evidence-based practices. Our research for these population of students is very limited. We don't have a lot of resources to learn how to do the intervention let alone do it successfully. 
>> To talk a little bit about paraprofessionals. Obviously paraprofessionals and special educators are different. There are different responsibilities and roles to fill in the classroom. There are some similarities. Paraprofessionals are expected to have responsibilities in the classroom and to even sometimes implement intervention and collect data in certain circumstances. Often times paraprofessionals are one-on-one because they know the student very well. While they have all of this responsibility, they often receive little to no training. I know from my years as an educator, that was very true. There is absolutely no training for a paraprofessional. This can lead to frustration and a general feeling of being unprepared to meet the needs of the students.  Again, there is a lack of training and understanding and knowledge and they will not be able to successfully meet the needs of these complex and highly individualized students. That is just like on specifics talking about  evidence-based practices for a specific student. Even if you are talking about  general  instructional strategies, educators don't even get training on those types of things. They continue to be undertrained or even not trained at all. Again I know from my own experience, paraprofessionals don't get the training that they need. A lot of these paraprofessionals pull into the classroom and have no experience with these types of students and no foundational knowledge. Without this necessary training, a lot of studies have paraprofessional store - - support has not been shown to improve the outcomes of students with disabilities and may in fact hinder them. It may be well-intentioned but they may be unknowledgeable people they could be hindering the success and that is a real problem. 
>> Now we come to interveners and teachers of children who are Deaf/blind, a category onto their own.  We have a picture on the screen for this slide of a black hole. There is no information for helping these educational professionals. There is no research. There are no resources. Again this is where NCDB is stepping in  and with some of the coaching resources we are talking about. They come in to offer support. Right now they don't have a lot of options. There's not a lot of information or research. Hopefully, we can start to change that with more research and truly bridging that gap between research and implementation. I often think especially with these low incidence populations at the university level, we find interventions and practices that can potentially be successful and work in the classroom. Really implement them with researchers or graduate students. There's not as much information about can teachers be taught to do this?  Can teachers implement this with fidelity in the classroom cracks that is the piece we are missing right now. This is especially true of interveners and teachers of children who are Deaf-blind.  
>> One wonderful answer to this is potentially coaching. The research showed that the typical model where we send our professional education is off to a one day or two day workshop and they come out and have no support. That's not effective. Those interventions if they are implemented at all are usually implemented without fidelity. There is no reinforcement. There is no support and no motivation to do this if you don't really and truly know what you're doing. The great answer to help with this is coaching where you have a knowledgeable individual who is actively supporting you in implementing the intervention so the students enjoy success in the classroom. 
>> What is coaching? I know it is kind of a buzzword right now. A lot of you have been hearing educators talk about it, but what is it?  One definition I got from the literature I looked at is coaching basically involves an expert providing individualized support to an educational professional after an initial training occurs. Basically you go to a workshop or professional development session or something like that. Then you take what you learned and implemented in the classroom and you have someone who knows what you are doing offering support. Like motivation, encouragement and constructive criticism so you can continue to improve and implement with fidelity. Again that fidelity is so important. Coaching is increasingly being used as a professional development strategy. 
>> Overall the literature suggests that coaching can positively impact educational professionals. Particularly those who work with students with moderate to severe disabilities. And within that umbrella is where the deaf blindness Follis. A lot of literature suggest that having that extra coaching helps teachers and paraprofessionals implement fidelity. Again that fidelity piece is so critical to making sure the students are being served with proper intervention and it is being implemented successfully. 
>> While coaching has generally been shown to be an effective way of implementation. Fidelity, fidelity, fidelity. That remains the biggest issue. There is a fantastic review by Brock and Carter a few years ago and they found the number one issue was procedural fidelity within the studies. Basically if there is no support there is no fidelity. Like very few professionals are able to take what they heard one time briefly in a workshop and translate that into a changed educational practice in their classroom that results in successful student outcomes. Given the importance of fidelity and including achievement it is critical for us to examine specific models of improving accuracy. This can result in changes in classroom practices. Again this is where coaching comes in. We typically will have someone observing directly what you are doing in the classroom and based on that they are able to offer constructive criticism like we need to do this to make sure that goes more smoothly and have all kinds of helpful input. 
>> At Vanderbilt I conducted a literature review specifically looking at coaching practices for students with moderate to severe disabilities. I widened that to be moderate to severe because I feel like that population in particular has been overlooked. I think it is really important to make sure the low incidence disability groups are the students that are typically overlooked. How can we make sure getting the interventions they need?  I know they say coaching can be helpful but I was really excited to see that first how they use coaching in these interventions. Coaching feels like a nebulous idea where we know it is some kind of supported measure. What does that look like in the classroom cracks it really varies widely depending on what you are doing and what kind of support you have available to you. I also wanted to look at these studies to identify implications for research and practice. Just to see, are these interventions successful?  Are they measuring student outcomes in our students classes and are they learning support. I looked at - - I think I found about 15 and 18 studies that actually applied to moderate and severe populations and used a coaching strategy of some sort within their intervention. What's interesting is the types of interventions the educational professionals use and that was either the special educator or a paraprofessional. They were asked to improvement - - implement a varied amount of things. That speaks to coaching because it can be a supportive tool for almost any type of intervention you can think of. Largely the interventions used in these studies were either academic or behavior specific. They really vary quite widely. They were all very different. They wanted to increase behaviors for the educational professionals. This include - - includes opportunities to respond and opportunities to participate. The facilitation of peer support arrangements, and increasing paraprofessional implementation of practices which included prompting Constantine delay. This really can be used along side with coaching. It is something that you can implement in just about any classroom setting. It can be successful. 
>> That I broke down the components. They used a wide variety of components. I think again that speaks to the versatility of coaching. You can pick and choose different practices depending on what is most affected for the adults and students who are working for. You can tailor it and make it individualized. Again working with this population of students is very important. The most frequently used coaching component was constructive feedback. That just makes sense. If you have a coaching component it - - if you are offering constructive feedback based on what you are seeing as a form of support. That is the core of what coaching really is. 15 of the 18 studies included a description of the intervention study. That is a vital chain - - thing to include in the training part of the coaching. You have the training and then the support. If you don't have an adequate description of the intervention strategy, the adults who will implement it can't truly understand what they are doing. I would almost say a step-by-step guide of what to refer to so they know this is what we are supposed to be doing and this is what it looks like and this is how I can achieve fidelity with it. That leads to the next component is a fidelity checklist. I think that would be a great tool for educational professionals to have a list that you did this or that. So they know that they are implementing correctly. Within the training part of the coaching, intervention, a lot of the studies included modeling and role-playing which are proven and research-based facets of coaching that really work. That is definitely something to consider when you are running your professional development. Tentative studies included a planning component and again I think that is vital to the populations that we work with because again, it's highly individualized. If you do planning at the beginning so you know you are meeting their needs, the intervention is more likely to be successful because you have chosen the proper intervention to implement with. 
>> We talked about role-playing. A few of the studies like other components that didn't really fall into any categories I had. Again as long as it got a supportive quality added to it and you are offering feedback, it does fall under the coaching components. I know from the studies like videos in those types of things fell into the other category. With the technology we have available today it is a great piece that we can use. We don't have to do life coaching. We can take videos and have someone give feedback on that. There are a lot of options and opportunities. This means we don't necessarily have to pay someone to do an observation or meeting. I think this is where a lot of school districts fall down on the coaching thing because they don't want to spend that extra money even though we know it works. There are workarounds with things we can use to help our educators in the field. 
>> Self-monitoring is a great piece to include. It works with a lot of students. There are lots of studies to support it. It works with adults. I think it is a great piece to include with teachers because it helps to learn to monitor their own behavior so one that coaching support gets stopped they are still able to keep themselves on track. That of cult - - a couple of studies used specific intervention strategies that you may need to include. I know like with a time delay. You have to say specific things based on what they say so you know which font to give them. 
>> Across the board these interventions basically were showing positive effects. 14 of the 18 studies show positive effects for the adults. The educational professionals. Then not quite as many of the studies actually measured the student outcomes. 10 of them did and of those 10, seven reported positive effects for the students. I think we should safely say based on that information that coaching has positive effects for both adults and students when properly used in the classroom.. I think this part is for Kristi . 
>> I am always - - you did all this research, so what cracks the reason we wanted to talk about the research first was to show somewhere where we decided to start this working coaching. This is the foundation. I reached out to Trinity because I knew she did working coaching, and we have been working together since - - as colleagues for a long time but I coaching much of this past year we have been working on it. What we did was look at the literature review and talked about what are the best practices and then we took those and up plied them to the intervenor training pilot project first. What we first did was focus on coaching for interveners. We developed some practices for that. Then we went on to include other professional people who work with children that are Deaf-blind. We adopted all of the materials  to fit Deaf-blind practices.  
>> What are the best practices in coaching?  What we found were things that Carly had talked about. Giving that feedback and providing a clear definition or description of what ever intervention or strategy you are working on. Providing a fidelity checklist. Are they doing it the way they have been taught to do it. The way that has been shown to increase learner outcomes. Including modeling, planning, role-play, self-monitoring. For our practices we have a self-monitoring for the individual being coached as well as the coach themselves. We will look at those forms in a little bit. Then also we created an example intervention script. Is a script that guides you through the coaching session. We will look at that information in a little bit. 
>> What do we suggest will result in successful coaching?  I think the first thing is having well-defined practices. Because you want to promote the use of evidence or research-based practices, it is really, really important to clearly define those core components of the practices and how the person providing that should implement it. You want to have indicators of practitioner performance. Are they doing it as they are supposed to?  You define an intervention but you also include development indicators to measure how well you are implementing the practice. Then also having well-prepared coaches. Coaches who have expertise that they are coaching someone on. Someone who performed it before. Who has intimate knowledge of,  in this case, children who are Deaf-blind.  You follow - - you use the coaching to follow training. That's why we started with the intervenor training pilot project. These candidates went through training. And then now we are going to add coaching onto that. Sometimes training can be done in a group setting. We know that in school districts professional development is provided to the whole group. In some cases a coach can go in and train someone individually. That is okay as well. Another thing that creates successful coaching is being flexible. Making sure your coaching schedule and content are adaptable. You can change it as you go as a practitioner is learning the skills, you can change how your coaching is going. How they go with their rate of learning and achieving fidelity in those practices. Also making a clear distinction between the coach and the supervisor pick supervises - - supervisor should not serve as coaches. The education professional may feel like if they are not doing something correctly, the supervisor will look down on them or whatever could be. A coach is someone who should not be in a supervisory position. They work with the practitioner supervisor certainly to make sure that the protection are understands and then also to make sure the supervisor understands and is supportive of the coach and of the practices that are being coached. 
>> Now we will look at the coaching practice package. On our website we have a webpage that is titled coaching practitioners of children who are Deaf-blind.  This is where you will find all of our coaching resources, forms everything you want to know. We base these on deaf blindness for teachers and their - - they are open enough or flexible enough that they don't have to be used with a teacher. You could be coaching a speech language pathologist in practices with students who are deaf line. - - Blind. The others we used were the specialty sets for interveners. I won't open these but they are PDFs and best practice examples and also a coach practitioner agreement. The agreement establishes the expectations for the coach and the person who is being coached. So they know what to expect with this relationship. Some of you have seen the intervenor coaching form. What's important to remember on this form and the form for teachers is that you don't focus on all of the skills at every session. You do a planning session before hand. Where the person being coached chooses a competency or competencies that they want to be focused on during that coaching session. You can see here in number two, it says prior to each session, the intervenor should review the competencies and put a check by those for which he or she would like to receive coaching. This is 12 pages long. It looks very overwhelming. You are not going through every single competency, every single time. How do you use this?  You send it to the person you are coaching. In this case it would be an intervenor. They choose the competencies for which they want to focus for that session. Then they send it back to the coach. The coach reviews the form and then you have a meeting between the coaching and the coach. It could be over the phone or using Adobe connect, and at that meeting you discussed the needs and modify anything on the form you think needs to be modified. We will talk about best practices and a moment. During the session the coach makes notes on this form. You will share those on the coaching session summary form. After the session, you sit down and provide feedback one-on-one. Then after you leave this session it is really important to follow up with an email to the person you have coached. In this case the intervenor. You make sure you put in these five things. A positive statement. Performance-based feedback on the correct use of the strategy or strategies addressed in that session. Suggestions for improvement. EverQuest that they acknowledged receipt of the email and expressed any questions or concerns. You are just asking them let me know you received them and if you have questions or concerns let me know what they are. Then you close with a positive statement. As you go through this form, and when you look at the teacher form, you will note these are skills. There are not knowledge competencies on here. We wanted to put the competencies on here that you can see. Knowledge comes at a different time and that would not be found on this form. 
>> Coaching best practices. Coaching best practices, this is the form or the document that I believe is found in the TA handbook. It tells you different best practices. You prepare before you go into the coaching session. You create a plan. You described this strategy. You use the coaching form. I just showed you the intervenor one. There is the teacher one as well. Then down at the bottom, it tells you coaching techniques. This is the first thing you do when you go into a coaching session. You want to make sure you establish that rapport and introduce yourself and greet them and ask a few questions to get to know them and talk about what they can expect during the coaching session. After that you will review any feedback you have from the fee - - previous coaching session. If you didn't have one then you will go straight into talking about competencies or the skills that they chose to focus on. You want to evaluate the understanding of the strategy. Let's say they want to work hand underhand. Ask them what do you do when you work on hand under hand?  You want to model it and show them how it would appropriately be used in practice the strategy. You want to observe them. After you practice and you are working one on one with that practitioner you have them work with the student you observed them. You provide feedback so you can quietly provide verbal feedback. You write on the form as well. After that time that you spend watching them, you discuss with them and asked them how you think you did and here is what I saw and just talk through it. After the session you provide written feedback. You want to encourage them to self monitor. There is a form where you collect their own performance and have them take some time to think about how they think they did. Then another thing they suggest is creating a coaching script. It's a way to make sure that you are coaching people using all of the suggested coaching techniques. I am jumping around. I am sorry about that. After you do this intervenor coaching form. This is the first one. The one you send to the intervenor or if you are using the teacher one. Where they choose what they want to focus on. There is this session summary form. You will send this to them in the email. You have the date, the coaches name, the practitioner's name, the observations that you have. They would add any notes here and you would add any notes if you had anything. Here is where it's important to list the strengths. What did you see as a strength in their practice?  Where do you think improvement needs to be had?  Then any tasks they need to work on until the next coaching session. Perhaps you give them or refer them to an [Indiscernible] module or video online or something like that. You don't have to fill this in. If you have anything they need to work on until you come back next time, this is where you put it. 
>> This is a form you will email after your session. I talked about a coach self-evaluation. It's important to make sure that you are providing coaching with high fidelity. We created a coach self-evaluation. You can evaluate yourself to make sure that you are hitting all the suggested best practices during coaching. This is really easy to use. You just have each portion and each established report. Did you introduce yourself and greet the practitioner?  Yes or no?  Not applicable?  Did you ask questions to get to know them? Did you review the coaching session. There is a place for self reflection and nose. It goes to all the different portions of best practices for coaching. This is for you. This is for you to evaluate your own coaching and make sure you are doing it with high fidelity. 
>> The other thing we created for you all is this best practice example. We created this to show you how you could create one for yourself. If I were to sit down to try to think of all the different practices to go through, and write a strategy and script for everyone, it may look different than the way you would do it. This was just an example for you to do on your own in the future. So what it does is it describes a strategy and then it gives you a sample script that you can use for a coaching session. For example, we have taken hand underhand. We included a rationale for what is hand underhand and why it's important. Then it gives a checklist. This is what Carlie was talking about before about having a fidelity checklist.  That's what this is. It just goes through step-by-step what should be done when implementing hand underhand. What the practitioner would do or what you would do as you evaluate them however you want to do that is check if they are proficient in it. Maybe they didn't - - maybe they sat across from the child. In the notes section they would write I sat across from the child and sat next to or behind them. Next time I will make sure I sit beside the child. That's what the notes section is for. Then we give you the sample coaching script. This is something that it just gives you an example of what a coaching session may look like. The first thing you do is establish rapport. This gives you an actual sentence to say to them. Then it says ask a few questions to get to know the practitioner. It gives you different example questions you can ask them. It goes through each part of a coaching session so you have everything you need right here to go through as you coach that practitioner. I think that is all the forms. That is all the forms we created and put on the website. So as you are moving forward coaching you have this information. Now I want to open it for any questions. 
>> I see that Andrea Blackwood is typing. 
>> Where do I find the forms in NCDB,  I could not read the information?  There is a coaching resource or a coaching page. I can email you the link if you would like me to do that. I will do that for you. The link is posted in the chat. 
>> While everyone is asking questions I did want to point out that all the tools that NCDB  created are very based in research. For example, the email feedback has had a lot of research in using that as a coaching support tool. It's a very great way to support your educational professionals. All of this is based in research. We know these tools will be effective and helpful. 
>> I see some people are typing in the chat pod. I am just waiting on them. Thank you for saying that. 
>> I know as we move forward, the school districts are starting school and they were trying to start base with teachers. I am hoping this will be helpful to you. Julie says this information was helpful and clearly presented. I love all the resources. I would imagine different coaches and practitioners will come up with different coaching forms. Will there be a place in the intervenor training pilot project to share resources others have developed and tried to use. 
>> We certainly can do that. Especially on interveners and personal in the form. We can do it - - the intervenor training pilot project is only open to those states. We are probably doing this more in the forum for that. I think I meant IQ P page. Yes. I think that would be fantastic 
>> I think that's great. Again like I was harping on when I talked. It's highly individualized because if something works for one team it doesn't mean it will work for everyone. 
>> Jennifer in Arkansas thank you for creating these great tools. I will use them in my project. I am familiar with the interveners coaching forms and expect to use them this fall. Fantastic. We would love to hear how they work for you. Also what your thoughts are. Thank you, Jennifer. 
>> Marcy from South Carolina. This seems like a super helpful resource. I am looking forward to using it and trying it out. 
>> Great. Let us know because anything we can do to improve them I would love to hear about it. 
>> I see Patty is typing. The examples are great. Thank you. I wanted to give you something that - - sometimes it's hard for me to read. When I am Gooding an example for you to look at and it ties it together that's what we wanted to provide examples and forms for you. Yes you are correct. You can make it your own. A lot of them are word documents. You can take things out and add things in. If you need to. I see a few more people are typing. Thank you, Carlie for the background and research. 
>> Thank you for creating these great tools.  Thank you. 
>> That is all we have for today. I don't see that anyone else is typing. I want to say thank you so much for attending today. Carlie thank you for all of your work with me.  We are happy to have you help us with this. We are excited that we really feel like these tools will be helpful and please don't hesitate to contact us. If you have any questions or any feedback we want to hear how you think the tools are working for you. Like Julie said, we would love to see anything that you created as you have done coaching and information about how that has worked for you. Thank you so much. Have a great day. 
>> Thank you, everyone. 
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