How to Have Data Chats With Teachers as an Instructional Coach

Throughout this series on data, we have talked a lot about collecting and organizing data: what to gather, where to keep it, how to set up a data room. A major reason why we collect and organize data as instructional coaches is simple; it helps us generate meaningful conversation with our teachers. The spreadsheets are never the point. The conversation is.

As instructional coaches, the relationships and the conversations we have with our teachers is where we make our bread and butter. When we have good relationships with teachers and can have meaningful conversations with them, coaching moves. When we don’t, it stalls, however clean the data wall looks. A data chat is where those two things meet: the data you have been gathering and the relationship you have been building.

I’m sure we have all ran into the reluctant teacher who doesn’t want or “need” our help. Data chats are one of the few tools I have found that open that door without pushing on it, and I’ll show you why below.

What is a data chat between a coach and a teacher?

A data chat is a planned, one-on-one conversation between a coach and a teacher about specific data from that teacher’s classroom. It might be a unit assessment, a benchmark, a pattern in exit tickets, or the standards report from your district’s platform. The conversation covers what the data shows, what the teacher already knows, and what the two of you will do about it together. Three things happen when you do this well.

Data chats help determine essential standards. As people in education we all can agree there are a number of standards to cover in a school year, and there is never enough time for all of them to get equal weight. Looking at data with a teacher helps you decide together which standards need more emphasis and which need less. It also gives you a starting point for a goal and a reason to start pulling resources for that teacher right away.

You create an open dialogue with your teacher. Some teachers are blissfully (or ignorantly) unaware of what their data shows. Others see it and struggle to read it. Either way, an open conversation about classroom data serves both the teacher and the coach. And with that reluctant teacher, the data does the talking. It shows what you can offer without making the teacher feel torn down, because you are looking at the numbers together, never at each other.

Data chats give you and your teacher a common goal. Sometimes when we test, teachers already know they haven’t hit a certain standard hard enough but have plans to do so. Other times a teacher taught a standard well and the results didn’t show it. There are many times we are not in the classroom. Therefore, we don’t know what the teacher has and has not done. Reviewing the data together gives both people the full picture, and you walk out with one goal you both own. I have found keeping your relationship with the teacher healthy to be effective, and a shared goal does more for that relationship than any amount of praise.

Why data chats change what happens in classrooms

Feedback without data is an opinion, and teachers know it. A data chat changes the feedback you give after a Snapshot (a short, focused, non-evaluative classroom visit), because you are both looking for the same thing and you both agreed on it ahead of time. Here is what I see once a coach and a teacher have had a few data chats together:

• You have an obvious concept to watch for during your next Snapshot.
• The teacher has a definite goal.
• Reflections become centered around a standard.
• Goals become more meaningful.
• Growth is easily shown.

That last one is the one leaders notice. When the goal came from the teacher’s own data, you can go back to the same data at the end of the Coaching Sprint (coaching cycle) and show the movement. The teacher sees it, you see it, and the principal sees it, and nobody has to take anyone’s word for it. I’m sure you are starting to see how great data chats can be.

How do you have a data chat with a teacher?

A good data chat is mostly preparation. Be honest about the reason for the meeting and give the teacher a heads-up, so nobody walks in surprised. Ask them to look at a few “below” and “above” standards before you meet, and give them time to round up resources they have tried or plan to try so you can look at them together. In the meeting itself, start with something positive, ideally data that improved on something the two of you tried together, and celebrate it. Then move to the areas that need work without going too deep too fast. One or two standards at a time is plenty, and letting the teacher choose which ones keeps them from feeling buried under a list. Leave with a goal and a game plan so you both stay accountable. The steps below are the protocol I use, and the download walks through each one with the questions to ask and a one-page sheet you fill in together.

Pull the data out and talk about it

There are so many benefits to data chats. You walk away having a solid plan, and you also have a way to measure success with the data to truly show the students’ growth in the end. So, if you haven’t taken data into the classroom, pull it out and have a conversation with your teachers about the data coming out of their classrooms. It will be worth it in the end.