Coaching the Whole Educator
Coaching the Whole Educator is a podcast for instructional coaches, teacher leaders, and school leaders who want to strengthen their educators’ effectiveness and resilience, especially the ones who need it most. Each week, you’ll hear quick tips, proven strategies, and coaching mindsets designed to keep you on top of your coaching game. This show is rooted in a human-centered approach, where we get things done through people’s humanity, not around it. Whether you’re new to instructional coaching or a seasoned instructional coach or leader looking for fresh perspective, you’ll learn how to focus on the mindsets and motivations driving unproductive behaviors. By getting to the root of resistance, you’ll discover how to build stronger relationships, lead with clarity, and create lasting impact in your school.
Episodes
The Ladder of Conscious Competence
- Four stages: Conscious/Unconscious Competence & Incompetence.
- This can explain why there’s a lack of knowledge transfer at your school
- Why having unconscious competence makes skills hard to teach.
The Peter Principle in Education
- People are promoted beyond their skillset (shifting from teaching children to teaching adults).
- Success in one role doesn’t guarantee succes...
Tune in for an engaging conversation with clinical psychologist Dr. Kate Lund as she joins host Becca Silver to explore perfectionism and resilience. This episode dives into how perfectionism can show up in the lives of coaches, leaders, and teachers, and why it often gets in the way of satisfaction and well-being.
Dr. Lund explains the difference between perfectionism and healthy striving, sharing how the constant urg...
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In this episode, Becca sits down with Steve Barkley, a pioneer in instructional coaching whose influence has shaped how educators think about growth, feedback, and collaboration. Together, they unpack what it really takes to create lasting change in classrooms; not through evaluation, but through curiosity and co...
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Kind Cotton: Soft, sustainable apparel, where every purchase provides a book to a child.
What separates schools that grow from those that stall? One word: trust.
In this episode, Becca unpacks research showing that strong trust can double a school’s chance of improving student learning. She breaks down the four types of trust: integrity, intent, capabilities, and results and shares how leaders can pinp...
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Kind Cotton: Soft, sustainable apparel, where every purchase provides a book to a child.
In this powerful episode, Becca sits down with Dr. Ann Ishimaru and Dr. Decoteau Irby, authors of Doing the Work of Equity Leadership for Justice and Systems Change, to unpack what it really means to lead for equity in today’s schools.
Together, they trace the evolution of equity leadership through four distinct ph...
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Kind Cotton: Soft, sustainable apparel, where every purchase provides a book to a child.
Ever wonder how the smallest moments can spark the biggest shifts in learning and leadership? In this episode of Research Rundown, Becca reveals the science behind a simple one hour intervention that slashed achievement gaps and boosted happiness for years, all by strengthening students’ sense of belonging. Discov...
[Podcast Sponsor]
Kind Cotton: Soft, sustainable apparel, where every purchase provides a book to a child.
How can schools and teams make data feel human and actually useful? In this episode, Becca talks with data culture expert Jessica Lane about approaches that move beyond dashboards and charts to create meaningful impact.
Jessica shares practical ways to start small, focus on “tiny data,” and connect every action to r...
[Podcast Sponsor]
Kind Cotton: Soft, sustainable apparel, where every purchase provides a book to a child.
Discover how teacher agency really works.
In this episode, Becca explores the research on teacher agency, showing it’s not simply a personal trait, but shaped by school leadership, collaboration, and trust. You’ll hear why true teacher ownership can’t be forced, and how creating the right conditions helps teachers ...
Get ready to see leadership and the next generation from a whole new angle. In this insightful episode, Becca sits down with author and leadership expert Tim Elmore to talk about what Gen Z is bringing to the workplace. Tim shares stories that challenge assumptions, clears up common misconceptions, and shows how Gen Z can help leaders grow sharper in their skills. You’ll hear why shortcuts sometimes represent a new ki...
Why does the same feedback spark growth in one teacher but shut down another? In this episode, Becca Silver unpacks the research on the “four ways of knowing” and how it shapes the way educators receive feedback. You’ll learn how to recognize these differences, adjust your coaching approach, and move past resistance with compassion and clarity. This conversation will help you shift feedback from frustration to connect...
What happens when a teacher leader decides to stop fixing everything and start empowering others? In this episode, I sit down with Todd Goodman, a teacher and leader who has sparked a grassroots movement of change in his school community. Todd shares how shifting away from the exhausting “fix-it mindset” freed him to build trust, empower his peers, and create real transformation for students.
You’ll hear how frameworks...
One of the biggest mistakes leaders make with new initiatives is selling the benefits without naming what it might cost teachers. Grounded in Kahneman and Tversky’s Prospect Theory, this episode explores why the fear of loss often outweighs the promise of gain. Whether it’s autonomy, time, competence, or belonging, the risks teachers anticipate can feel heavier than the advantages leaders emphasize.
Through research an...
Diagnose why your team is resisting or stuck: Take the Quiz!
In this episode, Becca Silver interviews Bethany Rees about her unique approach to leadership, using the metaphor of the "body of leadership": head (mindset), heart (relationships), hands (execution), and guts (accountability). They discuss the importance of pausing, reflection, and focusing on what truly matters ("rocks over sand") to avo...
Every coach and leader has felt the sting of teacher pushback, especially when the change you’re asking for seems so small it shouldn’t cause resistance. But here’s the catch: sometimes it’s not the change itself that sparks resistance, it’s depletion. When teachers are constantly pulled in a dozen directions, their self-control tanks become empty. That’s when even minor adjustments feel like mountains.
This episode un...
In this episode, Becca Silver is joined by Tami Shaw to discuss effective approaches to designing professional development (PD) systems. Tami shares insights from her book "Radically Simple Training," including practical activities like using quotes to foster meaningful connections among participants. The conversation explores the importance of making PD relevant and engaging, emphasizing strategies such as ...
Craig Randall shares his trust-based coaching model for educators, which integrates trust-building into the observation and feedback process. The model uses regular, strengths-based classroom visits and reflective conversations to create a safe environment for teacher growth. By focusing on teachers’ strengths and fostering open dialogue, the approach encourages risk-taking and collective teacher efficacy. Resources a...
Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe shares a deeply human approach to resilience, grounded in both research and personal experience. She introduces the five pillars of resilience—belonging, perspective, acceptance, hope, and humor—as essential anchors for navigating adversity. Rather than viewing resilience as simply “being strong,” she reframes it as the ability to recover, adapt, and move forward with intention. Her concept of ...
Learn more about *The Resistance Remedy* On Demand Course
In this episode, Dr. Donna Spangler shares the coaching breakthrough that changed everything:
She stopped trying to convince teachers, and they started showing up with purpose, ownership, and even excitement.
After going through The Resistance Remedy course, Donna realized she wasn’t dealing with a skill gap—she was missing the belief gap. Once she star...
If you feel like your days are just putting out one behavior fire after another, this one’s for you.
I sat down with Hunter Flesch, Associate Principal and host of the Ed Essentials Podcast, to talk about how he moved from 17 behavior calls a day (yes, SEVENTEEN) to just five—and did it by redesigning the system, not just responding harder.
We unpack what systems thinking really looks like when the school day ...
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