February 19, 2024 • 36 mins
Welcome to episode 166 of the Leader of Learning Podcast. In this episode, our host Dan engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Becca Silver, founder and CEO of The Whole Educator. Together, they explore the intricacies of addressing resistance to change in professional development, particularly in the field of education. Becca shares her expertise in the neuroscience behind habit formation and discusses strategies for empowering educators to overcome resistance. The episode delves into the importance of trust, active listening, and celebrating small wins to create a supportive environment for educators.
Guest Information:
Becca Silver is the founder and CEO of The Whole Educator and host of the podcast Coaching the Whole Educator. She is a highly energetic and knowledgeable trainer who approaches leadership development with coaching skills and strategies that get at the root cause of ineffectiveness and burnout. Becca is a former educator, instructional coach, life coach and performance coach. Currently, she consults in a variety of states nationally and internationally working with instructional coaches and all levels of school, district and state-wide leadership. Her work focuses on helping coaches and leaders better support teachers, increasing job satisfaction, retention, resilience and growth.
Episode Resources:
Becca's Website
Becca’s Free Resources
Understanding Resistance to Change Blog Post
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The Leader Of Learning Podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network. For more information and to find other great podcasts, visit https://teachbetterpodcastnetwork.com
Music credits: https://www.purple-planet.com
Guest Information:
Becca Silver is the founder and CEO of The Whole Educator and host of the podcast Coaching the Whole Educator. She is a highly energetic and knowledgeable trainer who approaches leadership development with coaching skills and strategies that get at the root cause of ineffectiveness and burnout. Becca is a former educator, instructional coach, life coach and performance coach. Currently, she consults in a variety of states nationally and internationally working with instructional coaches and all levels of school, district and state-wide leadership. Her work focuses on helping coaches and leaders better support teachers, increasing job satisfaction, retention, resilience and growth.
Episode Resources:
Becca's Website
Becca’s Free Resources
Understanding Resistance to Change Blog Post
*************************************************
ACCESS MY INSPIRING RESOURCES:
SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL
Sign up for my email newsletter
The Teacher’s Guide to Becoming a School Leader“
Lead to Inspire Growth” eBook
FREE “Unlock Your Leadership Potential” course
*************************************************
Consider Becoming an Official Show Sponsor - https://leaderoflearning.com/press-kit
Talk Studio is my recording platform of choice for video, audio, and even live streaming. For more information about Talk Studio and to receive 20% off your first billing cycle on ANY paid plan you sign up for, visit https://leaderoflearning.com/melon
Follow Dr. Dan Kreiness on Social Media:
Youtube Channel
Twitter/X
TikTok
The Leader Of Learning Podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network. For more information and to find other great podcasts, visit https://teachbetterpodcastnetwork.com
Music credits: https://www.purple-planet.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm not going in with a thing, and I'm gonna make you do my
thing. I'm gonna understand how youwork as a human right. Welcome to
the Leader of Learning podcast. I'myour host, doctor Dan Krenis, and
this is where I help educators growtheir impact as instructional leaders because my research
and leadership experiences have led me tounderstand that someone like you, regardless of
(00:23):
your role or your title, canhave a tremendous impact on your organization.
I chat with inspiring guests who aretruly making an impact as instructional leaders.
Whether this is your first time listeningor you've come back for more, I
hope you've subscribed to this show onyour preferred podcast app so you don't miss
any of the great episodes, topics, or guests. Anyway, I'm so
(00:46):
glad you've tuned in. Now let'sget started. Welcome in Leader of Learning
to episode one sixty six. Asyou can tell, I am back and
I am ready to put out episodesas consistently as I used to. You
(01:07):
can definitely expect moving forward that episodesnew episodes will come out every two weeks.
Here in episode one sixty six,I interview an amazing guest, Becca
Silver. But before I get there, I just want to mention that I've
come out with a new live webinarcalled Unlock your Leadership Potential. In that
(01:29):
webinar, which is just under anhour, you'll learn how to grow your
impact as a leader by prioritizing andvaluing a high level of trust in your
organization. In this under an hourwebinar, you'll learn things like how trust
is the foundation of relationships and otheraspects of organizational success. Analyze the interconnection
(01:52):
between trust and respect, Recognize thedangers of artificial harmony and what to do
to avoid it, and refer leton your next steps as you carved your
path as a leader. Anyway,I really hope you'll consider registering. I
know you're gonna get a lot ofvalue out of it. If you are
head to Dankrinis dot com slash webinarto register. Now, speaking of getting
(02:17):
a lot of value, I knowthat you are really gonna love this episode.
My guest, Becca Silver, isa seasoned consultant and entrepreneur who left
the school system to pursue her passionfor coaching and leadership. With years of
experience, she's traveled across the USand internationally working with school coaches, leaders
(02:38):
and districts to create a curriculum thatfocuses on mindset and motivation. Her work
aims to better impact teachers and helpthem overcome resistance. I really really enjoyed
this conversation, and this is definitelya real high impact episode because we talk
(02:58):
about a passion of mine which ishelping educators and really helping anyone kind of
break through the resistance that they havetoward change. I don't want to give
too much away, so let's jumpright in and after these messages is my
interview with Beca Silver. Welcome back, Leader of Learning. I am very
excited to bring on another guest herein episode one sixty six of the Leader
(03:22):
of Learning podcast, Becca Silver,who is the founder and CEO of The
Whole Educator. She is also apodcast host. She hosts a podcast called
Coaching the Whole Educator. And I'mreally looking forward to speaking with her about
some topics that you know that Iam passionate about already, things like of
(03:43):
course coaching educators and then more specificallyworking with educators to really push through resistance
and resistance to change, having agrowth mindset, so I'm eager to dive
into it, but beca. Iknow I didn't give you enough of an
introduct so if you could fill thisin a little bit more on who you
are, where you are, andwhat you'd do, awesome and thanks for
(04:05):
having me on. I'm excited tohave this conversation with you. I think
it's going to be really exciting.So I'm Becka Silver. I was a
teacher for ten years and after Ileft the classroom, I became a coach
at a school, and at thesame time, I also started life coach,
and I discovered there were some crossoverskills that were really helpful in my
(04:29):
life coaching development that helped me inmy instructional coaching development. And I was
like, why did I not learnthis right Because I'm like running around trying
to make people do what I tellthem to do. And I was like,
there's this like mindset stuff and motivationstuff. I was learning about how
humans think. And so I leftthe school system, became a consultant,
and I started my own business andcreated a whole curriculum for coaches and leaders
(04:54):
to better impact teachers, including theirmindsets and mode innovations. And that's definitely
part of the conversation we're going tohave today around resistance. So I'm excited
to be here. I've been doingthis for over seven years. I travel
around the US and internationally working withschool coaches, school leaders, school districts,
sometimes entire statewide entity as well.I'm curious about what you do more
(05:20):
on a more granular level. Whenyou say you travel around and you help
schools, what does that look like? Who exactly are you working with and
how and what are you doing withthem? And I the reason I'm so
curious too is because obviously you knowyou know this, I'm sure as well.
Like teaching is tough, it alwayshas been, but it's been probably
(05:42):
even harder over the past couple ofyears. And I think now more than
ever, we need in education foreducators to feel like they are being supported,
I think in the ways that youare. So that's why I'm really
curious. Yeah, So who Iwork with are instructional coaches and gosh leaders
(06:02):
of all levels of school leaders,region leaders, district leaders, and also
state wide leaders. And what Ido with them. I'm always customizing what
I do, so it's never exactlythe same. I don't believe in one
size fits all, and what Ido with them is teach them how the
brain works. And I have allthese different modules and so I have the
(06:24):
whole educator Academy and bring people throughunderstanding how do we intentionally build trust the
fact that we actually need to startwith a foundation of trust and relationships.
We shifting mindsets towards a coaching mindset, away from what I call task centered
coaching, towards human centered coaching.So shift you know, I'm not going
in with a thing and I'm goingto make you do my thing. I'm
(06:46):
going to understand how you work asa human and I'm going through that.
I'm going to empower you improve.So helping school coaches, school leaders gain
those skills and practice them. Thesuper uncomfortable role playing we there's a lot
of self awareness that I do uncovering. There's always aha moments with the folks
(07:09):
that I work with. So,yeah, transfer and you, you and
I were talking about this earlier.It's really transformational learning that happens in most
of my workshops, much more thaninfernal learning. I'm curious, what do
you think in general, educators teachersare in need of when it comes to
(07:30):
coaching at this point and has thatand does it or has it changed over
time that since you've been doing this? So what are you You're asking what
are educators? What kind of coachingare educators in need of? Yeah?
Okay, oh that's so great.Oh I have not been asked that question
that way. Usually it's like,what do coaches need to be doing?
(07:53):
Here's the reason I asked this conversation. I didn't tell you this ahead of
time, and I wasn't sure Iwas going to bring it up on so
to speak. But this conversation isreally timely because I am an instructional coach.
I'm an instructional coach for digital learning, which means that usually I'm helping
educators break through resistance and break throughbarriers when it comes to taking risks,
(08:15):
trying new things, innovating their instructionalpractices with technology and with sort of future
ready learning. However, sometimes,and it doesn't happen often, but sometimes
I need to coach teachers in otherways. And one shining example that just
happened, very relevant, very timely, is that I think I'd like to
(08:37):
think, I hope that a closecolleague that I work with in my school
that I just kind of talked himout of potentially leaving not just the school
but the profession. And that wasa coaching conversation that I wasn't expecting and
you know, really drastically shifted fromwhat you might expect a digital learning coach
(08:58):
or instructional coach for technology to beworking with a teacher on. So that's
really kind of what was the basisfor me asking like, what are you
seeing out there when you're in schoolsand working with coaches? What are they
needing to provide to teachers the most? I think in any situation where someone's
(09:22):
feeling so burnt out they want toquit, they're experiencing resistance. I think,
first of all, developed making surethat we are growing our trust and
relationships with people and having them feelingheard. Step one, like I hear
you. Step one right, Andthere's ways of listening, like actively listening,
(09:45):
not just saying I hear you.I recently a coach that thought active
listening was saying I hear you andthen moving on like no, no,
no, that's not listening right.Making sure people really and there's something there's
neurologically, something that happens to ourbrains when that happened, and has anyone
done the hand thing with you?No? Oh, you're gonna love this.
Okay, this is so great.So there's two important parts of our
(10:05):
brain that are kind of important inthis relationship. There's a what my friend
calls the smart part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, and then in
the center of our brains are migdalSo when we feel stressed out, when
we don't trust someone, when wefeel unsafe and anyway, if I feel
like someone's making me do something thatI don't want to do, we essentially
(10:26):
flip our lid. And what Imean by that is our prefrontal cortex is
in charge of critical thing logic,ability to be adaptable and flexible and pivot
when we need to adapt to chain. Our smart part, the part we
need online for coaching and teaching.Our migdala is in charge of our survival.
So that's where we get those emotionalalmost like irrational emotional responses to things.
(10:50):
Right when we're getting when we feelunsafe, it's like I've got to
get out of here, or I'vegot to protect myself fight, flight,
freeze, fond that that all liveshere. Okay, So we feel un
and safe. Boom, I flippedmy lid. My smart part of my
brain is offline. And so asa coach, if I if I don't
have trust with the teacher and Ishow up, I'm like, hey,
we're going to be using near podtoday. And the teacher's like, pen
(11:13):
and paper has been great for youfor the last twenty years, right,
Boom, I don't trust you,don't tell me what to do. And
then the coach is like, no, logically, here are the reasons why
we should be using near pod.This is what it does to their brain.
We're resisting them, right, andwhen we feel seen and heard,
this is actually what happens. Wehelp put people, help people put their
(11:35):
lid down, get the smart partof their brain back online, so we
can have a conversation about imprint.So now we're really getting into the meat
and potatoes. All right, let'stake it back a second, because I
want to I want to work backup to what you were saying and really
get into the how behind how towork with educators coach teachers on breaking through
(11:56):
that resistance, feeling more comfortable,feeling more confident. But first, let's
make sure that the listeners understand whatwe mean by resistance and resistance to change.
As I told you before we hitrecord here, I've done a lot
of work in this area over thepast handful of years. It went into
my research, my dissertation blog posts, lots of things that I've written and
(12:18):
spoken about. So it's definitely apassion area of mine and clearly connected to
my working with and coaching teachers ontaking risks and and kind of just you
know, helping them feel more comfortablein certain areas. So I'm curious to
know what what your take on itis, how you would define it,
(12:39):
and how how it shows up inyour line of work. So how I
would define resistance to change? Ohmy god, I don't. I don't
think I've ever actually like defined it. That's so great. First of all,
before I do that, I wantto acknowledge language that you've used.
That's fantastic, and I have notheard another human I use exact same language,
And I want to, like,I don't know, highlight it,
(13:01):
which is you say breaking through resistance. A lot of people use language around
overcome resistance or you know there's likea like we're going to I don't know,
like fixing, pushing, forcing languageright, and we want to be
careful that we're not resisting the resistancewhich is actually happens. So I just
(13:24):
I wanted to say, yes,we use the same light scrape. So
how do I how do how doI mean? How do I define?
This is like off the cuff.This is not Becka being polished at all.
But if I was going to tofind someone experiencing resistance to change,
which is an experience, right,a human is not I'm not I'm not
resistant, and you're not resistant.We're not. This is not my label,
(13:46):
right. So if I'm experiencing resistanceto change, which everyone does,
by the way, there's some IfI'm resisting change, I uh, there's
there's a part of me in mybrain that doesn't want to do it.
There's a I have a motivation thatI don't want to do it, right,
(14:07):
So I might say something like,if I'm looking at cost benefit analysis,
like the benefit of staying the sameis higher than the cost, or
I think the benefit of staying thesame is higher than the cost of that.
Yeah, you know, I wantto look this up. When I
was doing my research, I tookfrom the research of another researcher and who
(14:31):
studies this and I want to sayit was back in episode sixty nine of
the podcast I talked about this.It was a solo episode, no guest,
just me and I kind of justgot it all out there. You
know, this is what I've learnedabout resistance and why it's significant in education,
and I want to go back andtake a look. But what's really
cool is the researcher who whose workI used in my dissertation in my work
(14:58):
actually reached out to me because hefound that that at least the blog post,
if not the podcast episodes. Sothat was really cool. It meant
a lot. But you know,I think it's sound. It sounds obvious,
but research shows that the more veteranteachers are the likeliest resistors, unfortunately,
(15:20):
And I think to really boil itdown and put some human language on
it, and in Layman's terms,it's you. You get in your comfort
zone, and I don't I don'tsay you you know not not you listening?
You you're listening because you want togrow yourself as an educator. But
some educators find themselves more often thannot don't mind my dog in the background.
(15:43):
They find themselves more often than notin positions where they've been doing it
for a while. Uh, Thereforethey're comfortable with what they've been doing,
or they're comfortable with certain curriculum orcertain digital technological tools that they know the
best, and when it comes tolearning something new, that's when it requires
(16:07):
sort of that that breakthrough, thatbreaking through the resistance, and they need
a lot of help with that.So I guess really that's why where I
wanted to take the conversation next,how do you or how do you support
coaches and educational leaders then help theseresistant teachers to break through that and to
feel more comfortable with something that theyneed to do instructionally speaking. M yeah,
(16:33):
So helping teachers experience resistance, Iuse the model that I'm made.
I use a couple models, butthe model I mainly use is doctor Anthony
Mohammad's levels of resistance. Do youknow those? No? Oh, you're
gonna love them. Okay, it'sfantastic. He's a he's also a researcher.
And so there are four levels.I think it's on a pyramid,
(16:56):
and they go from least of resistanceto most severe resistance. So level one
resistance is motivated by I don't understandwhy the changes happen. And so it's
the thing that I train coaches andleaders to do is communicate. This is
(17:18):
the communicate. The skill that needsto be strengthened is communication, communicating the
why. And the very important thingthat I say very often is it doesn't
matter what you say. Doesn't matterthat you told them why. It matters
what they hear. And that isdistinct. It does not matter what you
say. Right. So I've workedwith lots of like district leaders all that,
and I'm like, I told them, I told them why? How
(17:40):
many times? In what ways haveyou told them? Why? Have you
figured out a way that they canhear? If they're still resisting, they
have not integrated it for themselves,right. So that's the least severe form
of resistance. The next one leveltwo resistance is I don't trust you,
so or they don't trust the change. So they might not trust the person
that chose to make the change,they might not trust the person implementing the
(18:04):
change. But trust is lacking,and so the thing to do is build
the skills to build trust. Andit's so funny in this kind of realm
of working with school coaches, schoolleaders, we talk a lot about building
trust, but I don't see alot of professional develop on how and we
need. The methodology I use tobuild trust is from the Speed of Trust.
(18:26):
Stephen m rcovey love his work.I just think it's he defines trust
as the confidence we have in someone'scharacter and competence. This is great,
right, we can intentionally build it. Level three is someone's resisting trust because
they don't they're not worth they're notthey're not sure it's worth the risk.
(18:47):
So there's a couple buckets here.They could not be sure it's worth the
risk because they don't think they cando it. It might be a confidence
issue or that they actually can't doit. It's a competence issue. So
the thing to do is work withthe teacher to have the confidence and competence
to do with build capacity. Andthen level four is the motivation of resistance.
(19:10):
Is I identify as a resistor.And here's the thing I say in
all my workshops are on resistance.Do not go there. I have my
frustrated principles or like it's definitely thatthey are definitely lettle for and I'm like,
you're not allowed to say this person'sLevel four resistor unless you have gone
through and really addressed do they understandwhy is there a trust issued? You
(19:32):
know, is it competence or confidence? Right? You can't actually say if
they identify if you haven't gone throughall those and it's kind of an easy
almost like an easy way out ifyou're just going to label someone and the
thing to do then is hold someoneaccountable and say, look, the change
is happening and at the end ofthe day, you have to comply.
This podcast is a proud member ofthe Teach Better podcast Network, Better Today,
(19:56):
Better Tomorrow, and the podcast toGet You That. Explore more podcasts
at www dot Teach Better Podcastnetwork dotcom. Now let's get back to the
episode. I agree with a lotof what you're saying. It makes so
much sense to me and what Ikept thinking about, not just as you
went through the levels, but especiallyas it relates to a more resistant or
(20:22):
reluctant educator kind of realizing that aboutthemselves is the fact that at the end
of the day, in order toreally quote unquote move the needle with that
person and help them break through thatresistance, ultimately they need to not just
internalize it, but to start feelingsome kind of like intrinsic motivation for themselves
(20:44):
to want to be able to takethe next step toward whatever it is that
they're working on right, whatever itis that they've been resistant too. I
did find that as you were talkingthe old episode and blog posts that I
wrote about understanding resistance to change,and it's up at dankrinis dot com.
(21:06):
It's episode sixty nine of the podcast. And the researcher that I was referring
to before, whose work I reallypulled a lot from is Richard R.
Snyder from Wartburg Wartburg College. Butthere was some more research that I looked
into too, and I want tomention I want to highlight this one part
(21:27):
of it. There were some researcherswho noted the importance of what they consider
rewards when it comes to teacher beliefsand resistance to change, and so they
identified these types of rewards that areassociated with it was really associated with the
selection of careers. But the typesof rewards are as follows in Extrinsic rewards
(21:52):
which focused on income, level ofprestige, and potential power. Ancillary rewards
include work schedule and conditions. Psychicrewards are the internal feeling of fulfillment,
and then they broke that down furtherinto two types of specific to teachers,
two types of teacher nostalgia that kindof fit in with these extrinsic rewards.
(22:18):
There's social nostalgia and then there's politicalnostalgia. And I think that a lot
of times teachers get caught up inthese, especially that social nostalgia, like,
well, I feel comfortable and mycolleagues feel comfortable doing something one way,
and we're also it's like it's almostlike peer pressure with among kids teenagers,
like well if we're all kind ofdoing it this one way, like
(22:40):
who are you to say that weneed to do in another way? So
there's that reward system, right,And when you think about how it becomes
an intrinsic reward, it's like,well, what's in it for me?
What do I get out of it? And I think sometimes not just teachers,
but so many people have a hardtime at first first seeing what's in
(23:02):
it for them. You talked aboutlike the why behind why you're asking someone
to do something new. So Ithink having said all that, what I
naturally need to ask you next isthe how how can we start working with
teachers? More specifically, to getthem to internalize it more, get them
(23:22):
to kind of feel that intrinsic rewardand motivation for making some sort of change.
Yeah. Well, I think onething I want to presence is the
context that all this is happening within. There's something I call the a compliance
culture. I think our schools,our school systems are really structurally based around
(23:42):
a compliance culture. And what Imean by that is, someone at the
tippy tops spends a couple million dollarson a new reading curriculum. Right,
Someone of the top made a decisionor maybe they had a little committee that
helped them make a decision, right, and then it gets filtered through,
right, and then all the principlesneed to just like middle people that you
know, and then the principles needto implement this this curriculum that the district
(24:07):
bought, right, and then thedeaders have to implement you know, they
didn't choose it right. It's it'sthe like I I chose this, and
I want you to do it right. So use terms like buy in instead
of owners a lot, right,I want you to buy into the change
that someone else decided to make.Like the term empowerment. It's a little
more, in my opinion, it'sa little more growth mindset. Y Oh,
(24:30):
it for sure is empowerment is andit's acknowledging though. And I use
the term buying all the time becausethat's that's the context we're in, right,
And I much prefer empowerment right now. I'm not here to inspire someone,
I'm here to empower them, rightAnd I love I love that you
said that too. Okay, Sohow do we work with educators? I
(24:52):
think we need to figure out whatthey need? What what inside of them
has them not wanting to implement thischange that they didn't decide? Right?
So do they not believe in theefficacy of themselves? And they not have
their own self efficacy? Do theynot believe in the efficacy of the thing
they're being asked to implement? Sofor me, I'll give I'm gonna give
(25:12):
a personal example. I lived,I taught abroad for three years and two
of those years were in Africa andEast African yea, And there every day,
I didn't have power for a littlebit every day, and I came
So I was there for two yearsand I came back to the States and
I was gone during the time thateveryone got a smart board, a smart
(25:33):
I came back with my flip phoneand I was like, what is this?
And I asked for the one trailerthat didn't have a smart board.
I was anti technology for a wholeyear and no matter how much, and
I'm very pro technology now, butfor a whole year I resisted technology because
I didn't understand why if I couldteach without electricity, why would I need
(25:56):
to teach with technology? Right?And so it was I level one resister.
I didn't understand why. So thatwhat I got, what the support
I got was a lot of professionaldevelopments on the latest app and they would
model and they would have us practice. There was a little skill building,
but no one set me down andwas like, hey, this is why
we're doing so all of that tosay, what educators need is someone to
(26:22):
sit with them and figure out whatdo they need support in which and you
know, my my frameworks, thelevels, so you know, it's just
like what what's motivating the rests.So I'm an instructional coach and I'm working
with a teacher named Becca, andshe's a really great teacher. Maybe she's
been doing it a while, butthere's something that is holding her back from
some new initiative. Maybe it's anew technology. Where do I Where do
(26:45):
I start with Becca? How dohow do I get her to help kind
of get her get out of herown way when it comes to trying something
new. I get to know Becca. Hey, how's it going? Do
you wind if I hang out inyour class passroom for a little bit.
I stopped by Becca's classroom at leastonce a week, hopefully multiple times a
week. Hey, how's it going? Can I come hang out for a
(27:07):
little bit? Oh great? Whatdo you think about this? I co
plan with Becca? What do youthink about this? I get I listen,
listen, listen, listen to Becca. I hear the words she's saying.
I hear the words she's not saying. I hear she talks about things.
I figure out what's going inside oninside of her head that's causing her
to not want to imp this change. There's not a one size fits all
(27:30):
with After I did my dissertation,I took the themes from it and I
kind of packaged those up into anacronym because we're educators. That's what we
do, called scope and the seain scope is honestly speaking, and my
humble opinion, one of the thingsthat is most missed when it comes to
coaching teachers through through resistance or tryingto build growth mindsets, and that's just
(27:55):
trying to make someone feel comfortable andby addressing their discomfort. So it's a
lot of what you were just saying. Some of the things that I heard
you saying within the last few minutesare first and foremost getting to the why
behind why someone is being asked toimplement something new. Listening. I heard
(28:15):
you say that a few times,Right, listen, get to know them
really, like really listen. Andthen I also heard you say I think
co plan. So I take thatto mean you put yourself alongside of them,
right, You're not better, You'renot in front, you're not behind,
(28:36):
you are there with them. Ilove that, And you know,
I'll just throw in a couple otherthings too, because I do find I
do consider myself a little bit ofan expert in this area as well.
I find small ways in so takesmall baby steps and treat each each step
of the way as incremental changes.You know, you definitely don't want to
(28:57):
ask somebody to do too much tooquickly. But then the part of that
too that I think people miss thatI really love to highlight is to celebrate
small wins too. If someone istrying something new, especially when they've been
resistant to it, if you don'ttake every opportunity you can to celebrate them,
(29:18):
it's gonna be really tough to breakthrough that. And again, I'll
go back to the conversation that Ihad with a teacher that I work with
at my school recently about basically,why, you know, why would you
even think about leaving the school orultimately the profession. And I needed to
listen, like you said, andput myself right alongside that teacher and what
(29:41):
where I normally would not like sharinga lot of oh, well, this
is what I went through when Iwas in the classroom. I found myself
having to do that with this teacherjust because I think that I think it
helped kind of put us on alevel playing field and be like, listen,
you're not the only one who's gonethrough some of the things that you're
(30:02):
going through. But my point is, if I, I think, if
I didn't try with this teacher topoint out all the really great things that
he's done and celebrate even small victoriesthat he's had over the years. I
think it would have been difficult forhim to kind of internalize that, like
we were talking about a little whileago, hmm, agreed. And that's
(30:23):
the the brain science around developing ahabit actually is what you do when you're
developing a new habit is you youwant to develop a trigger, like what
triggers me to do I don't know. I put on my pajamas and then
it's my trigger to brush my teeth. Right, the habit the new habit,
and once you do the habit tohave that, actually, there's you
celebrate that you did the habit isit. There's a chemicals that are released
(30:47):
in your brain. They're like,ooh, we want to we want to
do this again, right, thehabit is you want it subconsciously doing it
again. And so I you weretalking about kind of having a teacher not
leave right and celebrating what they're doing. And then there's also the just tiny
tweaks and micro movements that we're havingteachers do when even if they're not trying
to quit, and celebrating those wins. Yeah, there's something in our brains
(31:11):
when we're burnt out or I don'tknow what that teacher was dealing with that
we can filter the negative stuff,like it's actually hard for us to see
the positive stuff. As we startto wrap up a little bit, I'm
going back to the blog post thatI wrote based on the episode I did
around understanding resistance to change, andI kind of wrap that up by saying,
(31:34):
you know, I don't necessarily believewe can just end resistance, but
it's something that you know, especiallyin education, things change all the time.
We know that, right, Whatdo they say, like the only
constant in education is that it changesso much? But I do think,
of course, that there are waysto work with educators to help not eliminate,
(31:59):
but sign unificantly reduce the amount ofresistance. And I think we've mentioned
some of those things already. Ifyou still have more back, i'd be
interested to hear what else you mightthink that we could do. But if
there's anything else that you haven't sharedwith us yet, maybe about the work
that you do or the work thatyou're inspiring coaches to do with teachers,
(32:19):
i'd appreciate that. Otherwise, Iwould really like for our listeners to know
how they can connect with you andreach out to you if necessary, and
just learn more about what you're doingthere with the Whole Educator. Absolutely.
So one other piece I haven't sharedaround resistance that I do work around is
Crucial Conversations Work, And it's abook. It's fantastic, it's very meaty,
(32:42):
it's like, it's very intense work, and there's a piece about we
need to help people feel safe inconversation and so there are strategies for doing
that, understanding and identifying mutual purposeand mutual respect in COMversations and that neurologically
signals to our brain, oh I'msafe in this when someone's experiencing resistance,
(33:06):
remember the're flipping lid right. Sothat's also another piece that I do with
school districts, school years. Soyeah, I want I wanted to share
that. Where people can find meis the Whole Educator dot com. You
can check out my podcast Coaching theWhole Educator. Yeah, I'm on Instagram
at the Whole Educator, Twitter,Beca Silver, Underscore du I'm LinkedIn with
(33:30):
Beca Silver and yeah, I wouldlove There's a lot of free resources on
my website. Feel free to gocheck those out. I also something ilse
share with you Dan if it's appreciated. Is I have a free download of
the Levels of Resistance that I sharethat people can look through as well,
so I can send that to you. That'd be great. Yeah, I
mean, i'll definitely put the linkto your website and your socials in the
(33:53):
show notes, but i'll drop thelink to that resource as well. Yeah.
Awesome. And just I'd say,like the thing that most impacts my
coaches and leaders is the whole educatoracademy, which is it's not a one
stop It's not like I come infor one PD and I leave and everything.
It's like, no, we actuallydo consistent work. So I want
to leave everyone with if you're reallycommitted to breaking through resistance, it takes
(34:17):
continuous work. Wow. That's areally great conversations. I'm so passionate about
this work my listeners and know allthat I've been talking about it for six
years plus that i've been doing thispodcast. So I really appreciate you reaching
out, and I'm really glad thatwe were able to get this scheduled.
And just I love the work thatyou're doing. I really do, because
(34:37):
I think it's so important and that'swhy I have committed to very similar work
myself over the years. So thankyou for that work that you're doing,
and thank you for your time herein this episode. Thank you so much
for having me. This is afun conversation. Well that's it for this
episode. Thank you so much forlistening. If you haven't done so yet,
(35:00):
don't forget to subscribe to this showon your favorite podcast app. If
you enjoy the content covered on thisshow, I want to ask you to
do this one thing for me.Please share it. The biggest favor you
could ever do for me is toplease let others know about what I'm doing
and how I'm helping educators grow theirimpact as instructional leaders. I hope you
(35:21):
can share this podcast with other educators, leaders, friends, or anyone you
think would love listening and learning.If you're interested in leaving a positive rating
and review of this show, linksto do so are always in the show
notes for every episode. For moreinformation about me or this show, and
to access the great content that Ishare, please visit my website at Leader
(35:43):
of Learning dot com. That's whereyou can find my online courses, YouTube
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merchandise. Thanks again, and rememberno matter who you are or where you
are, you are a leader oflearning.
I'm not going in with a thing, and I'm gonna make you do my
thing. I'm gonna understand how youwork as a human right. Welcome to
the Leader of Learning podcast. I'myour host, doctor Dan Krenis, and
this is where I help educators growtheir impact as instructional leaders because my research
and leadership experiences have led me tounderstand that someone like you, regardless of
(00:23):
your role or your title, canhave a tremendous impact on your organization.
I chat with inspiring guests who aretruly making an impact as instructional leaders.
Whether this is your first time listeningor you've come back for more, I
hope you've subscribed to this show onyour preferred podcast app so you don't miss
any of the great episodes, topics, or guests. Anyway, I'm so
(00:46):
glad you've tuned in. Now let'sget started. Welcome in Leader of Learning
to episode one sixty six. Asyou can tell, I am back and
I am ready to put out episodesas consistently as I used to. You
(01:07):
can definitely expect moving forward that episodesnew episodes will come out every two weeks.
Here in episode one sixty six,I interview an amazing guest, Becca
Silver. But before I get there, I just want to mention that I've
come out with a new live webinarcalled Unlock your Leadership Potential. In that
(01:29):
webinar, which is just under anhour, you'll learn how to grow your
impact as a leader by prioritizing andvaluing a high level of trust in your
organization. In this under an hourwebinar, you'll learn things like how trust
is the foundation of relationships and otheraspects of organizational success. Analyze the interconnection
(01:52):
between trust and respect, Recognize thedangers of artificial harmony and what to do
to avoid it, and refer leton your next steps as you carved your
path as a leader. Anyway,I really hope you'll consider registering. I
know you're gonna get a lot ofvalue out of it. If you are
head to Dankrinis dot com slash webinarto register. Now, speaking of getting
(02:17):
a lot of value, I knowthat you are really gonna love this episode.
My guest, Becca Silver, isa seasoned consultant and entrepreneur who left
the school system to pursue her passionfor coaching and leadership. With years of
experience, she's traveled across the USand internationally working with school coaches, leaders
(02:38):
and districts to create a curriculum thatfocuses on mindset and motivation. Her work
aims to better impact teachers and helpthem overcome resistance. I really really enjoyed
this conversation, and this is definitelya real high impact episode because we talk
(02:58):
about a passion of mine which ishelping educators and really helping anyone kind of
break through the resistance that they havetoward change. I don't want to give
too much away, so let's jumpright in and after these messages is my
interview with Beca Silver. Welcome back, Leader of Learning. I am very
excited to bring on another guest herein episode one sixty six of the Leader
(03:22):
of Learning podcast, Becca Silver,who is the founder and CEO of The
Whole Educator. She is also apodcast host. She hosts a podcast called
Coaching the Whole Educator. And I'mreally looking forward to speaking with her about
some topics that you know that Iam passionate about already, things like of
(03:43):
course coaching educators and then more specificallyworking with educators to really push through resistance
and resistance to change, having agrowth mindset, so I'm eager to dive
into it, but beca. Iknow I didn't give you enough of an
introduct so if you could fill thisin a little bit more on who you
are, where you are, andwhat you'd do, awesome and thanks for
(04:05):
having me on. I'm excited tohave this conversation with you. I think
it's going to be really exciting.So I'm Becka Silver. I was a
teacher for ten years and after Ileft the classroom, I became a coach
at a school, and at thesame time, I also started life coach,
and I discovered there were some crossoverskills that were really helpful in my
(04:29):
life coaching development that helped me inmy instructional coaching development. And I was
like, why did I not learnthis right Because I'm like running around trying
to make people do what I tellthem to do. And I was like,
there's this like mindset stuff and motivationstuff. I was learning about how
humans think. And so I leftthe school system, became a consultant,
and I started my own business andcreated a whole curriculum for coaches and leaders
(04:54):
to better impact teachers, including theirmindsets and mode innovations. And that's definitely
part of the conversation we're going tohave today around resistance. So I'm excited
to be here. I've been doingthis for over seven years. I travel
around the US and internationally working withschool coaches, school leaders, school districts,
sometimes entire statewide entity as well.I'm curious about what you do more
(05:20):
on a more granular level. Whenyou say you travel around and you help
schools, what does that look like? Who exactly are you working with and
how and what are you doing withthem? And I the reason I'm so
curious too is because obviously you knowyou know this, I'm sure as well.
Like teaching is tough, it alwayshas been, but it's been probably
(05:42):
even harder over the past couple ofyears. And I think now more than
ever, we need in education foreducators to feel like they are being supported,
I think in the ways that youare. So that's why I'm really
curious. Yeah, So who Iwork with are instructional coaches and gosh leaders
(06:02):
of all levels of school leaders,region leaders, district leaders, and also
state wide leaders. And what Ido with them. I'm always customizing what
I do, so it's never exactlythe same. I don't believe in one
size fits all, and what Ido with them is teach them how the
brain works. And I have allthese different modules and so I have the
(06:24):
whole educator Academy and bring people throughunderstanding how do we intentionally build trust the
fact that we actually need to startwith a foundation of trust and relationships.
We shifting mindsets towards a coaching mindset, away from what I call task centered
coaching, towards human centered coaching.So shift you know, I'm not going
in with a thing and I'm goingto make you do my thing. I'm
(06:46):
going to understand how you work asa human and I'm going through that.
I'm going to empower you improve.So helping school coaches, school leaders gain
those skills and practice them. Thesuper uncomfortable role playing we there's a lot
of self awareness that I do uncovering. There's always aha moments with the folks
(07:09):
that I work with. So,yeah, transfer and you, you and
I were talking about this earlier.It's really transformational learning that happens in most
of my workshops, much more thaninfernal learning. I'm curious, what do
you think in general, educators teachersare in need of when it comes to
(07:30):
coaching at this point and has thatand does it or has it changed over
time that since you've been doing this? So what are you You're asking what
are educators? What kind of coachingare educators in need of? Yeah?
Okay, oh that's so great.Oh I have not been asked that question
that way. Usually it's like,what do coaches need to be doing?
(07:53):
Here's the reason I asked this conversation. I didn't tell you this ahead of
time, and I wasn't sure Iwas going to bring it up on so
to speak. But this conversation isreally timely because I am an instructional coach.
I'm an instructional coach for digital learning, which means that usually I'm helping
educators break through resistance and break throughbarriers when it comes to taking risks,
(08:15):
trying new things, innovating their instructionalpractices with technology and with sort of future
ready learning. However, sometimes,and it doesn't happen often, but sometimes
I need to coach teachers in otherways. And one shining example that just
happened, very relevant, very timely, is that I think I'd like to
(08:37):
think, I hope that a closecolleague that I work with in my school
that I just kind of talked himout of potentially leaving not just the school
but the profession. And that wasa coaching conversation that I wasn't expecting and
you know, really drastically shifted fromwhat you might expect a digital learning coach
(08:58):
or instructional coach for technology to beworking with a teacher on. So that's
really kind of what was the basisfor me asking like, what are you
seeing out there when you're in schoolsand working with coaches? What are they
needing to provide to teachers the most? I think in any situation where someone's
(09:22):
feeling so burnt out they want toquit, they're experiencing resistance. I think,
first of all, developed making surethat we are growing our trust and
relationships with people and having them feelingheard. Step one, like I hear
you. Step one right, Andthere's ways of listening, like actively listening,
(09:45):
not just saying I hear you.I recently a coach that thought active
listening was saying I hear you andthen moving on like no, no,
no, that's not listening right.Making sure people really and there's something there's
neurologically, something that happens to ourbrains when that happened, and has anyone
done the hand thing with you?No? Oh, you're gonna love this.
Okay, this is so great.So there's two important parts of our
(10:05):
brain that are kind of important inthis relationship. There's a what my friend
calls the smart part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, and then in
the center of our brains are migdalSo when we feel stressed out, when
we don't trust someone, when wefeel unsafe and anyway, if I feel
like someone's making me do something thatI don't want to do, we essentially
(10:26):
flip our lid. And what Imean by that is our prefrontal cortex is
in charge of critical thing logic,ability to be adaptable and flexible and pivot
when we need to adapt to chain. Our smart part, the part we
need online for coaching and teaching.Our migdala is in charge of our survival.
So that's where we get those emotionalalmost like irrational emotional responses to things.
(10:50):
Right when we're getting when we feelunsafe, it's like I've got to
get out of here, or I'vegot to protect myself fight, flight,
freeze, fond that that all liveshere. Okay, So we feel un
and safe. Boom, I flippedmy lid. My smart part of my
brain is offline. And so asa coach, if I if I don't
have trust with the teacher and Ishow up, I'm like, hey,
we're going to be using near podtoday. And the teacher's like, pen
(11:13):
and paper has been great for youfor the last twenty years, right,
Boom, I don't trust you,don't tell me what to do. And
then the coach is like, no, logically, here are the reasons why
we should be using near pod.This is what it does to their brain.
We're resisting them, right, andwhen we feel seen and heard,
this is actually what happens. Wehelp put people, help people put their
(11:35):
lid down, get the smart partof their brain back online, so we
can have a conversation about imprint.So now we're really getting into the meat
and potatoes. All right, let'stake it back a second, because I
want to I want to work backup to what you were saying and really
get into the how behind how towork with educators coach teachers on breaking through
(11:56):
that resistance, feeling more comfortable,feeling more confident. But first, let's
make sure that the listeners understand whatwe mean by resistance and resistance to change.
As I told you before we hitrecord here, I've done a lot
of work in this area over thepast handful of years. It went into
my research, my dissertation blog posts, lots of things that I've written and
(12:18):
spoken about. So it's definitely apassion area of mine and clearly connected to
my working with and coaching teachers ontaking risks and and kind of just you
know, helping them feel more comfortablein certain areas. So I'm curious to
know what what your take on itis, how you would define it,
(12:39):
and how how it shows up inyour line of work. So how I
would define resistance to change? Ohmy god, I don't. I don't
think I've ever actually like defined it. That's so great. First of all,
before I do that, I wantto acknowledge language that you've used.
That's fantastic, and I have notheard another human I use exact same language,
And I want to, like,I don't know, highlight it,
(13:01):
which is you say breaking through resistance. A lot of people use language around
overcome resistance or you know there's likea like we're going to I don't know,
like fixing, pushing, forcing languageright, and we want to be
careful that we're not resisting the resistancewhich is actually happens. So I just
(13:24):
I wanted to say, yes,we use the same light scrape. So
how do I how do how doI mean? How do I define?
This is like off the cuff.This is not Becka being polished at all.
But if I was going to tofind someone experiencing resistance to change,
which is an experience, right,a human is not I'm not I'm not
resistant, and you're not resistant.We're not. This is not my label,
(13:46):
right. So if I'm experiencing resistanceto change, which everyone does,
by the way, there's some IfI'm resisting change, I uh, there's
there's a part of me in mybrain that doesn't want to do it.
There's a I have a motivation thatI don't want to do it, right,
(14:07):
So I might say something like,if I'm looking at cost benefit analysis,
like the benefit of staying the sameis higher than the cost, or
I think the benefit of staying thesame is higher than the cost of that.
Yeah, you know, I wantto look this up. When I
was doing my research, I tookfrom the research of another researcher and who
(14:31):
studies this and I want to sayit was back in episode sixty nine of
the podcast I talked about this.It was a solo episode, no guest,
just me and I kind of justgot it all out there. You
know, this is what I've learnedabout resistance and why it's significant in education,
and I want to go back andtake a look. But what's really
cool is the researcher who whose workI used in my dissertation in my work
(14:58):
actually reached out to me because hefound that that at least the blog post,
if not the podcast episodes. Sothat was really cool. It meant
a lot. But you know,I think it's sound. It sounds obvious,
but research shows that the more veteranteachers are the likeliest resistors, unfortunately,
(15:20):
And I think to really boil itdown and put some human language on
it, and in Layman's terms,it's you. You get in your comfort
zone, and I don't I don'tsay you you know not not you listening?
You you're listening because you want togrow yourself as an educator. But
some educators find themselves more often thannot don't mind my dog in the background.
(15:43):
They find themselves more often than notin positions where they've been doing it
for a while. Uh, Thereforethey're comfortable with what they've been doing,
or they're comfortable with certain curriculum orcertain digital technological tools that they know the
best, and when it comes tolearning something new, that's when it requires
(16:07):
sort of that that breakthrough, thatbreaking through the resistance, and they need
a lot of help with that.So I guess really that's why where I
wanted to take the conversation next,how do you or how do you support
coaches and educational leaders then help theseresistant teachers to break through that and to
feel more comfortable with something that theyneed to do instructionally speaking. M yeah,
(16:33):
So helping teachers experience resistance, Iuse the model that I'm made.
I use a couple models, butthe model I mainly use is doctor Anthony
Mohammad's levels of resistance. Do youknow those? No? Oh, you're
gonna love them. Okay, it'sfantastic. He's a he's also a researcher.
And so there are four levels.I think it's on a pyramid,
(16:56):
and they go from least of resistanceto most severe resistance. So level one
resistance is motivated by I don't understandwhy the changes happen. And so it's
the thing that I train coaches andleaders to do is communicate. This is
(17:18):
the communicate. The skill that needsto be strengthened is communication, communicating the
why. And the very important thingthat I say very often is it doesn't
matter what you say. Doesn't matterthat you told them why. It matters
what they hear. And that isdistinct. It does not matter what you
say. Right. So I've workedwith lots of like district leaders all that,
and I'm like, I told them, I told them why? How
(17:40):
many times? In what ways haveyou told them? Why? Have you
figured out a way that they canhear? If they're still resisting, they
have not integrated it for themselves,right. So that's the least severe form
of resistance. The next one leveltwo resistance is I don't trust you,
so or they don't trust the change. So they might not trust the person
that chose to make the change,they might not trust the person implementing the
(18:04):
change. But trust is lacking,and so the thing to do is build
the skills to build trust. Andit's so funny in this kind of realm
of working with school coaches, schoolleaders, we talk a lot about building
trust, but I don't see alot of professional develop on how and we
need. The methodology I use tobuild trust is from the Speed of Trust.
(18:26):
Stephen m rcovey love his work.I just think it's he defines trust
as the confidence we have in someone'scharacter and competence. This is great,
right, we can intentionally build it. Level three is someone's resisting trust because
they don't they're not worth they're notthey're not sure it's worth the risk.
(18:47):
So there's a couple buckets here.They could not be sure it's worth the
risk because they don't think they cando it. It might be a confidence
issue or that they actually can't doit. It's a competence issue. So
the thing to do is work withthe teacher to have the confidence and competence
to do with build capacity. Andthen level four is the motivation of resistance.
(19:10):
Is I identify as a resistor.And here's the thing I say in
all my workshops are on resistance.Do not go there. I have my
frustrated principles or like it's definitely thatthey are definitely lettle for and I'm like,
you're not allowed to say this person'sLevel four resistor unless you have gone
through and really addressed do they understandwhy is there a trust issued? You
(19:32):
know, is it competence or confidence? Right? You can't actually say if
they identify if you haven't gone throughall those and it's kind of an easy
almost like an easy way out ifyou're just going to label someone and the
thing to do then is hold someoneaccountable and say, look, the change
is happening and at the end ofthe day, you have to comply.
This podcast is a proud member ofthe Teach Better podcast Network, Better Today,
(19:56):
Better Tomorrow, and the podcast toGet You That. Explore more podcasts
at www dot Teach Better Podcastnetwork dotcom. Now let's get back to the
episode. I agree with a lotof what you're saying. It makes so
much sense to me and what Ikept thinking about, not just as you
went through the levels, but especiallyas it relates to a more resistant or
(20:22):
reluctant educator kind of realizing that aboutthemselves is the fact that at the end
of the day, in order toreally quote unquote move the needle with that
person and help them break through thatresistance, ultimately they need to not just
internalize it, but to start feelingsome kind of like intrinsic motivation for themselves
(20:44):
to want to be able to takethe next step toward whatever it is that
they're working on right, whatever itis that they've been resistant too. I
did find that as you were talkingthe old episode and blog posts that I
wrote about understanding resistance to change,and it's up at dankrinis dot com.
(21:06):
It's episode sixty nine of the podcast. And the researcher that I was referring
to before, whose work I reallypulled a lot from is Richard R.
Snyder from Wartburg Wartburg College. Butthere was some more research that I looked
into too, and I want tomention I want to highlight this one part
(21:27):
of it. There were some researcherswho noted the importance of what they consider
rewards when it comes to teacher beliefsand resistance to change, and so they
identified these types of rewards that areassociated with it was really associated with the
selection of careers. But the typesof rewards are as follows in Extrinsic rewards
(21:52):
which focused on income, level ofprestige, and potential power. Ancillary rewards
include work schedule and conditions. Psychicrewards are the internal feeling of fulfillment,
and then they broke that down furtherinto two types of specific to teachers,
two types of teacher nostalgia that kindof fit in with these extrinsic rewards.
(22:18):
There's social nostalgia and then there's politicalnostalgia. And I think that a lot
of times teachers get caught up inthese, especially that social nostalgia, like,
well, I feel comfortable and mycolleagues feel comfortable doing something one way,
and we're also it's like it's almostlike peer pressure with among kids teenagers,
like well if we're all kind ofdoing it this one way, like
(22:40):
who are you to say that weneed to do in another way? So
there's that reward system, right,And when you think about how it becomes
an intrinsic reward, it's like,well, what's in it for me?
What do I get out of it? And I think sometimes not just teachers,
but so many people have a hardtime at first first seeing what's in
(23:02):
it for them. You talked aboutlike the why behind why you're asking someone
to do something new. So Ithink having said all that, what I
naturally need to ask you next isthe how how can we start working with
teachers? More specifically, to getthem to internalize it more, get them
(23:22):
to kind of feel that intrinsic rewardand motivation for making some sort of change.
Yeah. Well, I think onething I want to presence is the
context that all this is happening within. There's something I call the a compliance
culture. I think our schools,our school systems are really structurally based around
(23:42):
a compliance culture. And what Imean by that is, someone at the
tippy tops spends a couple million dollarson a new reading curriculum. Right,
Someone of the top made a decisionor maybe they had a little committee that
helped them make a decision, right, and then it gets filtered through,
right, and then all the principlesneed to just like middle people that you
know, and then the principles needto implement this this curriculum that the district
(24:07):
bought, right, and then thedeaders have to implement you know, they
didn't choose it right. It's it'sthe like I I chose this, and
I want you to do it right. So use terms like buy in instead
of owners a lot, right,I want you to buy into the change
that someone else decided to make.Like the term empowerment. It's a little
more, in my opinion, it'sa little more growth mindset. Y Oh,
(24:30):
it for sure is empowerment is andit's acknowledging though. And I use
the term buying all the time becausethat's that's the context we're in, right,
And I much prefer empowerment right now. I'm not here to inspire someone,
I'm here to empower them, rightAnd I love I love that you
said that too. Okay, Sohow do we work with educators? I
(24:52):
think we need to figure out whatthey need? What what inside of them
has them not wanting to implement thischange that they didn't decide? Right?
So do they not believe in theefficacy of themselves? And they not have
their own self efficacy? Do theynot believe in the efficacy of the thing
they're being asked to implement? Sofor me, I'll give I'm gonna give
(25:12):
a personal example. I lived,I taught abroad for three years and two
of those years were in Africa andEast African yea, And there every day,
I didn't have power for a littlebit every day, and I came
So I was there for two yearsand I came back to the States and
I was gone during the time thateveryone got a smart board, a smart
(25:33):
I came back with my flip phoneand I was like, what is this?
And I asked for the one trailerthat didn't have a smart board.
I was anti technology for a wholeyear and no matter how much, and
I'm very pro technology now, butfor a whole year I resisted technology because
I didn't understand why if I couldteach without electricity, why would I need
(25:56):
to teach with technology? Right?And so it was I level one resister.
I didn't understand why. So thatwhat I got, what the support
I got was a lot of professionaldevelopments on the latest app and they would
model and they would have us practice. There was a little skill building,
but no one set me down andwas like, hey, this is why
we're doing so all of that tosay, what educators need is someone to
(26:22):
sit with them and figure out whatdo they need support in which and you
know, my my frameworks, thelevels, so you know, it's just
like what what's motivating the rests.So I'm an instructional coach and I'm working
with a teacher named Becca, andshe's a really great teacher. Maybe she's
been doing it a while, butthere's something that is holding her back from
some new initiative. Maybe it's anew technology. Where do I Where do
(26:45):
I start with Becca? How dohow do I get her to help kind
of get her get out of herown way when it comes to trying something
new. I get to know Becca. Hey, how's it going? Do
you wind if I hang out inyour class passroom for a little bit.
I stopped by Becca's classroom at leastonce a week, hopefully multiple times a
week. Hey, how's it going? Can I come hang out for a
(27:07):
little bit? Oh great? Whatdo you think about this? I co
plan with Becca? What do youthink about this? I get I listen,
listen, listen, listen to Becca. I hear the words she's saying.
I hear the words she's not saying. I hear she talks about things.
I figure out what's going inside oninside of her head that's causing her
to not want to imp this change. There's not a one size fits all
(27:30):
with After I did my dissertation,I took the themes from it and I
kind of packaged those up into anacronym because we're educators. That's what we
do, called scope and the seain scope is honestly speaking, and my
humble opinion, one of the thingsthat is most missed when it comes to
coaching teachers through through resistance or tryingto build growth mindsets, and that's just
(27:55):
trying to make someone feel comfortable andby addressing their discomfort. So it's a
lot of what you were just saying. Some of the things that I heard
you saying within the last few minutesare first and foremost getting to the why
behind why someone is being asked toimplement something new. Listening. I heard
(28:15):
you say that a few times,Right, listen, get to know them
really, like really listen. Andthen I also heard you say I think
co plan. So I take thatto mean you put yourself alongside of them,
right, You're not better, You'renot in front, you're not behind,
(28:36):
you are there with them. Ilove that, And you know,
I'll just throw in a couple otherthings too, because I do find I
do consider myself a little bit ofan expert in this area as well.
I find small ways in so takesmall baby steps and treat each each step
of the way as incremental changes.You know, you definitely don't want to
(28:57):
ask somebody to do too much tooquickly. But then the part of that
too that I think people miss thatI really love to highlight is to celebrate
small wins too. If someone istrying something new, especially when they've been
resistant to it, if you don'ttake every opportunity you can to celebrate them,
(29:18):
it's gonna be really tough to breakthrough that. And again, I'll
go back to the conversation that Ihad with a teacher that I work with
at my school recently about basically,why, you know, why would you
even think about leaving the school orultimately the profession. And I needed to
listen, like you said, andput myself right alongside that teacher and what
(29:41):
where I normally would not like sharinga lot of oh, well, this
is what I went through when Iwas in the classroom. I found myself
having to do that with this teacherjust because I think that I think it
helped kind of put us on alevel playing field and be like, listen,
you're not the only one who's gonethrough some of the things that you're
(30:02):
going through. But my point is, if I, I think, if
I didn't try with this teacher topoint out all the really great things that
he's done and celebrate even small victoriesthat he's had over the years. I
think it would have been difficult forhim to kind of internalize that, like
we were talking about a little whileago, hmm, agreed. And that's
(30:23):
the the brain science around developing ahabit actually is what you do when you're
developing a new habit is you youwant to develop a trigger, like what
triggers me to do I don't know. I put on my pajamas and then
it's my trigger to brush my teeth. Right, the habit the new habit,
and once you do the habit tohave that, actually, there's you
celebrate that you did the habit isit. There's a chemicals that are released
(30:47):
in your brain. They're like,ooh, we want to we want to
do this again, right, thehabit is you want it subconsciously doing it
again. And so I you weretalking about kind of having a teacher not
leave right and celebrating what they're doing. And then there's also the just tiny
tweaks and micro movements that we're havingteachers do when even if they're not trying
to quit, and celebrating those wins. Yeah, there's something in our brains
(31:11):
when we're burnt out or I don'tknow what that teacher was dealing with that
we can filter the negative stuff,like it's actually hard for us to see
the positive stuff. As we startto wrap up a little bit, I'm
going back to the blog post thatI wrote based on the episode I did
around understanding resistance to change, andI kind of wrap that up by saying,
(31:34):
you know, I don't necessarily believewe can just end resistance, but
it's something that you know, especiallyin education, things change all the time.
We know that, right, Whatdo they say, like the only
constant in education is that it changesso much? But I do think,
of course, that there are waysto work with educators to help not eliminate,
(31:59):
but sign unificantly reduce the amount ofresistance. And I think we've mentioned
some of those things already. Ifyou still have more back, i'd be
interested to hear what else you mightthink that we could do. But if
there's anything else that you haven't sharedwith us yet, maybe about the work
that you do or the work thatyou're inspiring coaches to do with teachers,
(32:19):
i'd appreciate that. Otherwise, Iwould really like for our listeners to know
how they can connect with you andreach out to you if necessary, and
just learn more about what you're doingthere with the Whole Educator. Absolutely.
So one other piece I haven't sharedaround resistance that I do work around is
Crucial Conversations Work, And it's abook. It's fantastic, it's very meaty,
(32:42):
it's like, it's very intense work, and there's a piece about we
need to help people feel safe inconversation and so there are strategies for doing
that, understanding and identifying mutual purposeand mutual respect in COMversations and that neurologically
signals to our brain, oh I'msafe in this when someone's experiencing resistance,
(33:06):
remember the're flipping lid right. Sothat's also another piece that I do with
school districts, school years. Soyeah, I want I wanted to share
that. Where people can find meis the Whole Educator dot com. You
can check out my podcast Coaching theWhole Educator. Yeah, I'm on Instagram
at the Whole Educator, Twitter,Beca Silver, Underscore du I'm LinkedIn with
(33:30):
Beca Silver and yeah, I wouldlove There's a lot of free resources on
my website. Feel free to gocheck those out. I also something ilse
share with you Dan if it's appreciated. Is I have a free download of
the Levels of Resistance that I sharethat people can look through as well,
so I can send that to you. That'd be great. Yeah, I
mean, i'll definitely put the linkto your website and your socials in the
(33:53):
show notes, but i'll drop thelink to that resource as well. Yeah.
Awesome. And just I'd say,like the thing that most impacts my
coaches and leaders is the whole educatoracademy, which is it's not a one
stop It's not like I come infor one PD and I leave and everything.
It's like, no, we actuallydo consistent work. So I want
to leave everyone with if you're reallycommitted to breaking through resistance, it takes
(34:17):
continuous work. Wow. That's areally great conversations. I'm so passionate about
this work my listeners and know allthat I've been talking about it for six
years plus that i've been doing thispodcast. So I really appreciate you reaching
out, and I'm really glad thatwe were able to get this scheduled.
And just I love the work thatyou're doing. I really do, because
(34:37):
I think it's so important and that'swhy I have committed to very similar work
myself over the years. So thankyou for that work that you're doing,
and thank you for your time herein this episode. Thank you so much
for having me. This is afun conversation. Well that's it for this
episode. Thank you so much forlistening. If you haven't done so yet,
(35:00):
don't forget to subscribe to this showon your favorite podcast app. If
you enjoy the content covered on thisshow, I want to ask you to
do this one thing for me.Please share it. The biggest favor you
could ever do for me is toplease let others know about what I'm doing
and how I'm helping educators grow theirimpact as instructional leaders. I hope you
(35:21):
can share this podcast with other educators, leaders, friends, or anyone you
think would love listening and learning.If you're interested in leaving a positive rating
and review of this show, linksto do so are always in the show
notes for every episode. For moreinformation about me or this show, and
to access the great content that Ishare, please visit my website at Leader
(35:43):
of Learning dot com. That's whereyou can find my online courses, YouTube
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ways that you can support the show, like donating or purchasing leader of learning
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