What Do You Now Believe to Be True? Coaching for Adaptive Expertise

Shane: Well good afternoon, good evening, good morning wherever you are in the world. Welcome to Coaching Dunwell with me Jim Thompson. Jim Thompson it is the end of season three can you believe it?

Jim Thompson: I tell you, time flies when you're having fun. we are having fun here. And and we are blessed with this Titanic trifecta of coaching, international coaching. We're really blessed. This is a real must-see show out there. and ⁓ can't him enough for being here. Jas we always talk about the weather. We finally got about three days where there's sunshine and no rain in upstate New York, but we're gonna have clouds and storm tomorrow. So, you know, I don't know how it is in Shanghai or the rest of the world, but you know, we're the weather is always good at coaching done well. So thank you.

Shane: Jim, I love that so much, so much. I am just thrilled because of course I'm here in Shanghai where it's nice, hot, sticky and humid at the minute and it's late at night but this always just brings me back my energy so that I can't sleep. I just know that on these nights I just don't get a good sleep afterwards because I'm always buzzing with ideas and I know this episode will be no exception because my, my goodness, we are so giddy with excitement to welcome Sarah, Adam and Haile. to the show. It's so good to see you. I wonder if I could pass it to Sarah, then Adam, then Haile. Say hello, introduce yourself, and of course, tell us where you are and how the weather is.

Sarah Cottinghatt: Hello, thank you so much for having us. We're really, really happy to be here. And it's been in the diary for quite a while. We've all been gearing up for it. So it's lovely. name's Sarah Cottinghat. ⁓ work for an organization called StepLab and do with various schools on professional development. And yeah, had pleasure of writing a book with Adam and Haile, which comes out this year, which I'm sure we'll talk about a bit later. ⁓ and I live in London and the weather is nice. It is like, yeah, it's really nice. And I think there's gonna be a heat wave soon. So very happy, cannot complain, all good.

Shane: Hold that weather because I'm back in the UK in a couple of weeks time. So yeah, don't don't move on I know the UK weather is changeable. So we can't we can't hope for too much, but that'd be awesome Adam highly is good to see you, too

Adam: Hi all, yeah, so I'm, it's lovely to be here. I'm Adam Colbeck. work for an organization called Children Learning Trust. ⁓ we're a trust of about schools across the of England, like areas like Bedford and Luton and places like that. So ⁓ I'm actually the day today in Milton Keynes, where it's, yeah, it's really, it's pretty nice weather in Milton Keynes. Milton Keynes, like Bizarre is one of these places that is just like full of roundabouts. I think it's got more roundabouts than anywhere else in the world. think it's quite something to get around. But I came up on the train today, so no roundabouts ⁓ for me. guess I also do some work for the Chartered College of Teaching ⁓ I also sit ⁓ the Teaching Commission alongside Highley as well, which is like a nice little seamless transition into Highley.

Haili Hughes: Nice, Adam. My is Hila Hughes, ⁓ I two jobs ⁓ currently, I as a professor of coaching and mentoring at a university in Amsterdam called Academic and University of Applied Sciences and I work as a director of professional development at a multi-academy trust in Liverpool, so looking after PD across 11 schools, some primary, some secondary, ⁓ leading coaching. like Adam do lots of work for different educational organisations. I'm a bit of an education ringer, guess, including charter college and ⁓ commission. And as Sarah said, being very, very lucky to count ⁓ two amazing people on the call as collaborators on this book and friends as well.

Shane: Well, between the three of you, we are just so giddy. Like what a lot of experience in the room. And I know that over the next half an hour or so, we're going to dig into just a couple of those themes and maybe explore a little bit what you feel about coaching done well. But it's not just a show where we're going to be talking because I'm looking to my left now. I'm seeing people already. I see you all there. There you are. You're all joining us on LinkedIn too. I see you. Welcome. Say hello in the chat. And also it's your chance to ask some questions to these brilliant people. So if you have any questions, any thoughts, any reflections, bring them in. We will try bring them into the conversation. I'll hand it over to you Jim. Jim, where do you want to start with this? Where do you start?

Jim Thompson: Well, you know, this this is a a special moment for us because the pillars of our idea and ideal of coaching done well are to advance student success and well being, to give the coachy a place to do their best thinking and and maybe most importantly on this journey together to become better versions of ourselves. And I I can't think of three better people to have coffee with this ⁓ today, on this kind of ⁓ internet Starbucks, if you will. ⁓ to talk about this good stuff. Well the first question I I just stole from Michael Bunga Steinier. It's Grand Theft Auto. I stole the question right from him. It's his brand new question. Michael, thank you so much for offering it out. Michael's new question is, what do you now believe to be true? And I I just love it because I'm gonna try to incorporate it in my coaching. So you know I I I'm gonna ask our our our our our folks right off to be right Now th that that question, folks, what do you now know to be true about the idea and ideal of coaching done well? So Haley, you're you're gonna be moving to Australia pretty soon, so why don't we ask you first since since you're moving away first ⁓ w what what's your take on that question?

Haili Hughes: Yeah, and if you follow me on LinkedIn, you will have noticed that because I'm moving away, I'm probably being more honest and caustic than I've ever been. So it's probably probably best asking me for starters. I guess what I now know to be true about coaching is that coaching done well is not a polishing of teacher behaviors. It's actually the development of teacher judgment. And that is a big, big change in my attitude towards coaching over the last five years. I'm not arguing against coaching here, obviously I love coaching, but I'm arguing against what I would position as like a hollowed out version of coaching that can sometimes look quite busy. can be really measurable and we can see consistency, but actually I feel like that kind of coaching sometimes leaves the teachers thinking untouched. So. Coaching done well in this respect, I believe, comes from the belief that teaching is really complex and teachers are not just simply choosing from like a laminated menu of techniques. I've been writing about this a lot at the moment. They're making those decisions in real time in relation to pupils, the curriculum, the subject, classroom culture. So I guess we'll talk about this a bit later on, but adaptive expertise for me is not just the knowing what to do and doing it with precision. It's also knowing when the usual move fits, it doesn't, ⁓ what to do within the classroom moment when those things changes. So it's out with that kind of old idea that I had of coaching, of compliance, really. It's not just, know, ⁓ I saw cold calling in your lesson, ⁓ or use mini whiteboards. Those things absolutely do matter, those routines, those techniques, but they're not enough. And I think for me, coaching mutates when that visible presence of a technique becomes the proxy for quality and what we need to do instead is reach beneath the action ask the teachers, know, what were you trying to secure? What did you notice? What happened as a result? And that protects that mechanism behind the practice ⁓ keeps attention on that purpose and those contextual rather than just asking whether that technique appeared and that's something I've really learned in the last five years.

Jim Thompson: I I love the notion of protecting the messiness behind the practice. I love it. I I love it. Sarah, you talked about that beautiful weather in London. So could we go to you next? What's on your mind ⁓ when you're asked ⁓ what do you now believe to be true about the idea and idea of coaching done well?

Sarah Cottinghatt: Yeah, and I think it builds a lot, probably unsurprisingly, on kind of what Haile said there. really focused in the book on this idea of decision making being that's not perhaps talked enough in teaching. And as Haile said, like, it's really complex ⁓ what teachers trying to do. And The full word of the book is written by Dr Neil Gilbride, who's studied complexity science and actually this idea that complex doesn't just mean really hard, it's actually got quite a specific meaning to it that any teacher would resonate with when they think about how teaching happens. And if you don't have with your decision making, then ⁓ really means that... you're essentially just focusing, like Haile said, on the actions rather than actually what's driving those actions. then this comes back to something that Adam talks about a lot, which is ⁓ and professionalism. And I think that ⁓ done well ⁓ focused on, ⁓ Haile said, teacher judgment, teacher decision-making, because that is essentially what makes them professionals. ⁓ is that you can't just hand them, like Heidi said, like a laminated list of techniques and say, here's how to teach. There is so much more behind that. There is so much more that goes into that, that makes teachers professionals. And our attempt in coaching for ⁓ adaptive expertise is to really get at how to support that decision making so that teachers can feel that they're really growing that professionalism.

Jim Thompson: I love it how you're kind of surfacing the secret sauce of of helping teachers with that decision making. It it's lovely. Now, Adam last but certainly not least, Adam, what's on your mind with this great Michael question? What do you now believe to be true about the idea and idea of coaching done?

Adam: Yeah, I think, I think what I really like about that question first is, is this emphasis on what do you now know to be true, right? Because I think what it does is it kind of gives you permission to have changed your mind on what you've on what you've previously thought about it. Because when I think back to the coaching that I did at the start of my coaching career, if you like, I kind of look back on it now and I think, oh, I was doing it, I was doing it wrong. But actually, I probably wasn't doing it wrong. was just doing it differently in my thinking and has evolved over time. So I think it gives you that permission to think about your practice in that way. I think, I guess I would probably pick up on this idea of purpose that Sarah mentioned and yeah, at Chilton, which is again, the trust that I work at, my role there is director of teacher quality. So it's all about trying to essentially like create a framework and a shared language a shared framework of how we think about teaching, understand teaching, talk about teaching. And I think that when you do those three things, through the lens of what teachers are actually trying to achieve in a particular moment. What you very quickly get to is that purpose, what they're trying to achieve, what they're trying to get at in that moment, that's the thing that's driving their decision making. So I think the first thing would be that what I now know to be true is that coaching has to get to the heart of why teachers have done certain things in lessons in certain situations. And I think at the heart, that is purpose. I think that by doing that though, I think you also get to another thing that's really important about coaching, which I now believe to be true, which is that you've got to honor the expertise of teachers. think that historically, and actually this is probably still the case in some cases, instructional coaching models have become quite directive. And I think when you talk to people about why they're doing instructional coaching in the way that they are, often they say, oh, it's about trying to develop great teaching. I think often what it's actually about is it's about trying to limit bad teaching, which kind of goes to the assumption of teachers might well get this wrong unless we like really try and control this quite, quite tightly. And I think that's a deficit mindset that A, like doesn't ever get anybody, any teacher believing in the process that you want to take them through as part of coaching. And B also just doesn't reflect like the vast majority of classrooms that I go into. We also know that like tightly linked to those two things around purpose and honouring expertise is this idea of agency and like Haile writes beautifully about this and about the difference between agency and autonomy. And ⁓ fact that actually, you know, if teaching is happening in a really complex environment, as Sarah said, that means that expert teachers are really highly skilled decision makers, but you can't be a really highly skilled decision maker unless you've got agency. And so agency isn't just about teachers feeling good about themselves and being more likely to stay in the profession. And it is important for that, right? Because if, people feel more agentic, they're more likely to stay in. We've got a retention problem with teaching in this country, at least anyway. But it's also fundamentally about the fact that coaching that equips teachers with agency that helps them to achieve agency is more likely to improve practice in the conditions in which, in the environment in which that teaching is taking place. because the environment is so complex, we need to have teachers that have got agency because that's the only way they can do their very best work. So I kind of stole three there, purpose, honouring the teachers, expertise and an agency sitting at the heart of everything. I think those would be my three things I now believe to be true.

Jim Thompson: I think that's lovely, Adam. You know, what the how destructive that is of agency when a teacher goes away from a coaching conference. Well, I I limited my bad teaching, you know. I mean that just it just don't sit well. Well, we're gonna ask y'all one more question and then we're gonna have our international interlocutor, Shane, to kind of get weave into the DNA of all this. But I just love going to the movies. I don't know about you, but let let's say the movie's supposed to start at three o'clock.

Adam: Yeah.

Jim Thompson: Well, I get there at three o'clock and for the next half hour I see movie trailers. I c I used to call And they're pr they're kind of movie trailers of about nine different kind of movies. So I I I ask you ahead of time, could each of you give us a snip a movie trailer, small movie trailer, ⁓ about that wonderful new book coming out, Coaching for Adaptive Expertise, Developing Teachers Who Make Better Decisions. And we're excited so excited about that. But But Sarah, can we start out with you? w ⁓ us a little movie trailer of that book. ⁓ were some things, ⁓ takeaways and why'd you write it, and then we'll have each of you talk about that and bring it over to Shane.

Sarah Cottinghatt: God, I'm so horribly boring that I don't think I could do this movie, the movie trailer ⁓ ⁓

Shane: Ha ha ha! in a world where coaching is done well.

Sarah Cottinghatt: where teachers make great decisions all of the time. Yeah. just, ⁓ lead into being like horribly dry and then like, Haley and Adam can be exciting. But essentially the book is, it's a handbook, right? So like, imagine you want to improve your coaching practice and you want a book that you can essentially pick up. you know, fold the corner down and like that's your chapter on like a bit of your coaching at a time and you can read it. We aren't just discussing coaching. We've given techniques and we've given scenarios where you can see those techniques in action. So it's a really practical book. It's not just, it's not necessarily a book to be, you just sit down and read cover to cover. probably read part one. get all the theory, understand where we're coming from, and then you'll dip into part two as you improve each stage of your coaching practice. And it gives you kind of what you need and the tools to do that. So we were kind of thinking about how do coaches use this book and use it so they can improve bit by bit, but also how do leaders their coaches to actually get better and how do they train them? So we've kind of carved it up. to enable leaders to do that in a really practical way. And we're just really, were really excited and interested in the idea of kind of codifying coaching techniques and how they can be used and used flexibly by coaches the same way that we think like some codification of teaching has been really useful to teachers. ⁓ And we want coaching to feel like this, this intangible, ⁓ immeasurable kind of thing that you're either good at or you're not good at. We wanted it to be something that people can systematically improve at. So the book, treat it like a handbook, read part one, get that real grounding in kind of why and the sort of purpose of the book, and then treat part two like a handbook where you can kind of pick it up and use it and develop your practice. that would be my, more of a sort of elevator pitch than a movie trailer. But there we go.

Jim Thompson: I love it. Adam, can we go to you? Then we'll have ⁓ Halley kinda wrap it up and put a bow around this movie trailer. Adam, what's your movie trailer look like?

Adam: Right, well, got three ⁓ aspects to it. There's definitely two camera angles in this movie trailer, right? So you've got to have one on the coach and one on me early in my career, right? And we're going to flick back and forth across the trailer from coach to early career Adam. You've got like favorable lighting and like some well-paid experienced hairstylist trying to... conceal my receding hairline from the audience. But aside from that, you've got these two cameras, right? And it starts off on the teacher, sorry, on the coach. And the coach gives this like really vague praise to me. And they're like, ⁓ you know, Adam, you just like, you know, come into your lesson and like, the relationships you've got with the kids, it's just great. It's just really lovely to see, like absolutely like spot on. And then the camera cuts to me and I've got this sort of confused face of like, okay. ⁓ sounds good. Good, great. I'm glad that there's something positive that you've taken from like being being in my classroom. Then it go back to the to the coach again. And then the coach will say like something this like big broad like quite unhelpful question like, so how do you think the lesson went? And then like you'd cut to like back the camera back to me. But this time it's like an internal monologue where I'm panicking quickly of like what, do they think went wrong with my lesson? How close can I get with my answer to what's in their head? So I don't look like a complete idiot. I've got to try and guess what's there if I possibly can. And like that sort of goes on and on. You probably like have like a zoomed in bit on like speeds of sweat coming down my face. And then you go back to the, back to the coach one last time. And the coach gives me this feedback, which is like basically just their personal preference, which is, I really like it when I come in, see, I see teachers using mini whiteboards to check for understanding. I just think that's just the best way to do it. So, you know, maybe give that a go next time. And it goes back to me and I'm like, yeah, sure. Absolutely. do that. Absolutely right. And then I'm just relieved to get out of the room because ⁓ for me, ⁓ what ⁓ my experience of feedback early on in my career was. And that's what this book tries to kind of rally against really, is it's like, like we've all had, I think like feedback trauma, anybody that's been in teaching for longer than like 10, 15 years, we've all got feedback trauma of really rubbish feedback, like I've just described. This book is about like identifying what these pitfalls of that are. So, you know, personal preference is a pitfall as part of the, as part of a coaching conversation. We write about that in the book. But what do you replace that with? How do you avoid these pitfalls because they're really, really, really common. And they're not common because coaches are trying to do a bad job or leaders just don't care about it. They're just really easy to fall into. that would be my movie trailer. Let's highlight these like things we've all probably experienced with feedback. And then like this book is about showing you how to avoid these pitfalls and do coaching in a way ⁓ that surfaces gets to the heart of purpose. taps into agency and honours the expertise of teachers.

Jim Thompson: ⁓ I like your candor. All right, Haley, you're gonna put a big bow around this movie trailer here. What's your movie trailer gonna be?

Haili Hughes: So obviously because I'm a complete extra geek, I've done mine in the Style of a Jaws movie trailer in horror and it's short, so I'll go for it. In schools everywhere, something is circling beneath the surface. Coaching. Once a promise of growth, now spreading through improvement plans, training rooms and leadership meetings. But as it grows stronger... Something is being strut away. this. Practice Rehearse the move. Tighten the routine. Precision matters. Feedback matters. But teaching is not a mechanical performance. It is split second judgment in unpredictable waters. Coaching for adaptive expertise dives into the danger of reducing teachers to compliance because the real mission is bigger. To help teachers think, notice, decide. ⁓ and adapt before the model swallows them whole.

Jim Thompson: I love it, man. You gotta put that on a promo for your book. Lord. This is dazzling, just dazzling. Now I I I wanna g hand it over to my ⁓ co-conspirator there in Shanghai. ⁓ what's on your mind hearing all this stuff, Shane?

Adam: Okay.

Shane: We are recording this.

Haili Hughes: I

Shane: I'm just a bit taken aback. just know there's a lot of people joining us online. I know everyone has just added Coaching for Adaptive Expertise right into their basket because that was the most awesomest three part trailer I think I've ever heard from. ⁓ it is definitely the best trailer I've ever heard for an education book. You've won that award. We've got people. We've got ⁓ Maria saying hello. We've got Jason really happy to be here. We got Laura. We got a A new listener to the show, or maybe he listens in quietly, but he's not usually quiet, Chris Passi. He says, woo, a screen full of legends of my favorite people, awesome episode. There's a lot of good people joining in ⁓ online right now. And my mind is absolutely buzzing with thoughts from what you were all saying. It's so interesting to hear you talk about this book and to hear you all talk first about coaching done well. and thinking about teacher judgment, I've written words down, the professionalism, decision making with purpose, with expertise. I just think, you know, this just signifies what you see is needed in our teacher. And that is ⁓ teachers to be treated as the professionals that they are. And that doesn't mean leaving them alone, but it equally doesn't mean the constant kind of telling approach, which is maybe understandable from from some leaders. And I just love that question that you raised, Jim, at the beginning, because I think it brought up so much the brilliant Michael's question, what do you now know to be true? And I just wonder, as coaches, if we ask ourselves that, would that help us just take a step back in our coaching practice? What do I now know to be true? And go, do you know what? Maybe in a few years' time, I'm going to be knowing some different things to be true. And what I think is the right thing right now just might. just might change. Well, it probably will if we think about it. And I think that's really exciting. I love the fact that you have created this, as you said, Sarah, this practical handbook of strategies, lovely codified strategies that we can apply, but always with the lens that the teacher is the professional. This book is so, needed. And I'm just really excited that you're bringing it to the world. Thank you so much.

Jim Thompson: It's a it it's a th w what wonderful stuff going on. I know we haven't got a lot of time left. I know Haley's ⁓ on the road pretty soon, but I got a couple of focus questions wanna wind up with you. And and again, we cannot thank you enough for sharing your your your expertise and what Roland Barth called craft knowledge with us. It it's priceless. Haley, ⁓ could you share a little bit with our audience this notion ⁓ of mental models? you know, what are they and and why are they important?

Haili Hughes: Yeah, absolutely. This kind of notion of mental models plays a big part in our book. I think when we talk about mental models, we're really talking about the internal maps ⁓ teachers use to make sense of what's happening in their classrooms. So if we go into a classroom and watch a teacher, they're never just responding to behavior or silence or a wrong answer. They're interpreting it. Can't speak today. I keep sipping water as well, folks. Sorry, I'm very nasty kidney infection, so I'm quite poorly. So they're constantly interpreting things. They're asking... quite quickly sometimes or often even subconsciously, what does this mean? Why is this happening? Is the task unclear, et cetera, et cetera. And those interpretations are very much shaped by the teacher's mental models. And when were first discussing this book, we realized that this mattered enormously because for coaching especially, because coaching is not just about what teachers do, as we've both been saying, ⁓ it's how they're actually seeing. ⁓ Because teachers can look at the same classroom moment and notice ⁓ completely different things. one teacher might see a pupil's silence as disengagement, but another one might see cognitive overload. So they interpret everything through the lens of ⁓ mental models. So me, think mental models are especially important because they sit underneath decision-making and they help teachers decide what to attend to or what to ignore or what to prioritize. Again, especially important if we're interested in adaptive expertise, because when we talk about adaptive experts, they're not just people who come up with more strategies, they're people with better ways of reading situations. So coaching has to create that space really to surface those mental models, those internal maps. And ⁓ of questions that we ⁓ in the book, some of the codified techniques that Sarah talked about, are questions that help to do that. ⁓ they move that coaching very much beyond the technique by helping teachers refine the way that they understand classrooms their mental models as well. So it's helping teachers build a much richer, more accurate, more flexible model of teaching itself because when the mental model changes, the decision changes. So yeah, that's how we've interpreted it.

Jim Thompson: I love that notion of surfacing the space. You know, what does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it sound like to the coach and the coachy? So that that's delightful. Sarah and Adam, I I I you know, you just it's just great to hear your podcast and research it all. You guys are just doing such important work. And and Adam and Sarah, you you re shared in a recent podcast about the point in the coaching conversation that seems to turn to reflecting on the coach. has seen something which hasn't gone well in the teaching. and you say how excruciatingly difficult it can be for both the coach and the coache. Well, I've been there. I've been there, done that and bought the T shirt and I'm feeling bad. Like, ooh boy, that's where things start going south like real fast. Would you share with our audience more about this idea ⁓ and and what do you do about it and how do you advance coaching with that question?

Sarah Cottinghatt: Yeah, think it's definitely a moment where I think a of coaches, like you say, Jim, sort of feel like, the tide's turning and I've got to say something that could potentially be awkward here. And think it's ⁓ fair say it's a complete fascination of all of us, like how to deal with that part of the conversation. ⁓ And it took a complete reframing of what coaching is to like get to a point where we understood the value of that part of the conversation as well. So it usually comes. after you've been talking to the teacher about a lot of stuff that you thought was quite effective about their teaching. And it feels like this big sort of stark change between like, yeah, some stuff you're doing really well here to, so great here. actually, when you kind of think about it the way that Hailey just described, which is about developing mental models, ⁓ the whole thing actually sort of flattens out into something kind of, sort of takes the emotion out of it. ⁓ So if you think about, if you're thinking about developing mental models, then you're not praising a teacher in that first part of the conversation. You're actually surfacing their mental model of a situation that seems to be going well. And it's quite a rigorous part of the conversation. So in the book, we talk about it not being pat on the back praise. It's actually quite rigorous. ⁓ about surfacing their brilliant decision-making. ⁓ about asking them, what would you have done if that was slightly different? So like thinking about how their decision-making might change that when you get to that next part of the conversation, ⁓ just surfacing their mental model, but about a different situation this time. ⁓ you're saying, you know, I want to zoom in on this situation in your teaching. ⁓ to me about what your goal was. Talk to me about what happened. And you're trying to get their kind of version of reality, their mental model of what happened in that situation. ⁓ And it doesn't feel like so much of a shift because at both points, your job is to surface the mental model and to really look together at it and see what seems to be working and why, what seems to perhaps not be working so well and why. And it stops their feeling like this, this kind of such a big shift. But I Adam's got a lot of kind of thoughts on this. I'll hand it over to him too.

Adam: Yeah, I think the part of ⁓ conversation that just fascinates me, ⁓ fascinated me for years because ⁓ either you basically get one of two extremes usually, you either get the like, brick to the face, like jumping to judgment, like straight in there kind of thing. Well, like, you did this thing, and it wasn't very effective because of this. And therefore, you probably should have done this instead. Make sure you do that next time. Or you go like completely around the houses where it's like, maybe I don't know, don't know what you thought about, you know, when they came into the room, if you noticed anything there that maybe you might want to talk about, maybe not, I don't know, possibly, maybe could have been something, you just end up just never actually getting to the point. So like, finding that sweet spot is really hard. But I think that like Sarah's right in what she says around that it's not actually if you take judgment out of it, it's not about me either getting you to realize what you've done wrong, or you me having to tell you what you've done wrong. but it's actually just about creating a shared version of reality. So when we go in to observe, often what the assumption that we make, and it's a natural assumption to make, is that we are observing the reality, but actually what we're observing is our interpretation of the teacher's reality. So we're really quite far removed from what's actually happening. the teacher has also got like their version of reality as well. So they're not seeing everything. They're not completely aware of everything that's going on for obvious reasons, because there's so much going on in the room. And so like their version of reality is also kind of incomplete. So actually that that bit where we're trying to agree on like, okay, what should we work on together then? The first stage of that is like, let's agree on what actually happened. Let's agree on the nature of the reality that we're going to work with. So it's about me as the coach going, all right, well, I've probably seen way more than you have, right? Because you're doing this really difficult teaching thing. So you have to like delete out a lot of detail so you can focus on actually doing the job. I haven't got to do any teaching so I can see loads, but I don't have any of the detail or context. You're going to see less, but you're going to have rich detail and context. So let me give you my wider lens of reality where I've captured more. Now, can you add all the detail and context to that wider lens? And what we end up doing there is combining teacher's lens, coach's lens together. That becomes the shared version of reality that we then take forward and study together and go, so what is it about that reality that we want to work on? And that's what it's a far more co-constructed collaborative way of arriving at a logical point at which we can go, that's the thing we should probably work on. In the book, we talk about doing that by mapping. mapping the mental model teacher and coach alongside each other. We think that's quite a powerful tool for just that, but ⁓ all does come back down to the fact that there's no one reality here. It's coaches' reality in combination with teachers' reality. It's that that we take forward.

Jim Thompson: I I love it. I I I had the joy of working with Elena Aguilar out in Oakland a a couple of years ago and she came to a quick bottom line. She says, Nobody likes being told they suck. and sometimes teachers come away from a conference, well, ⁓ yeah. And so but I like how you confront that but you do it in a professional way and let's let's like Paco's bill, let's turn the course of this river around together. And and and that's important. ⁓ let me bring it back to our international interlocutor. ⁓ Shane, ⁓ w what's your thoughts as we kind of wrap everything up in a such a joyful way with these good folks?

Shane: Absolutely. This isn't one of those episodes that I know I need to go listen back and learn more from. Absolutely fantastic. And I really liked how we were finishing there the idea of almost perceptions. it reminds me of like a lot of the work I do, which is on change is actually initially unpacking perceptions. So to say, do you know what? I have one perception of this. There are other perceptions. Let's explore those. Let's interrogate those. Let's look what's happening there so we can come together on something. And that involves a whole lot of safety for the coachee. It involves a whole lot of humility for the coach to also be able to go along on that journey too. And ⁓ just know a lot of the strategies that you go through in your book are just going to be so deeply useful for people to start to unpack that process. And I think one of the things that I just really, really love is also just the title of your book, which I just think You know, for expertise, for example, imagine if we put that at the end of so many different things, if all the different things we were doing in schools, we were creating policies to develop expertise, we doing, you know, recruitment for expertise, we were looking at all those different things. Would that lens really help transform some of those sticky practices in schools? I think you're onto something massively good here, and I'm really excited to be following this journey. And I know other people are, Laura. comes in saying super excited with a little shooting star. That's just how excited people are this book. I wonder if there's any closing reflections from you Jim or anyone in the room ⁓ before bring this episode and this season to a close.

Jim Thompson: I always when I taught my grad courses I always wound up with a community circle and ⁓ w we just got in a big circle and we went around say what's one takeaway from so if I could go around today our our community circle and ask each one of you what's one thought that you've got from our our being together this morning. So Haley, can I ask you first what's ⁓ what's one thought, what's on your mind about our being together with us today?

Haili Hughes: I think it's ⁓ the fact that we shouldn't dumb down ⁓ I think it was probably Adam that said this that we shouldn't dumb down teachers. And I've posted recently about ⁓ this and how in CPD and coaching it always seems like we're heading to the lowest common denominator. You know, a leader recently said to me, you know, you everything you do in CPD and coaching should be for your, and she actually used the word thickest teachers, and it made me furious, completely furious. and you know, Sam Gibbs has written lot about this, about the deintellectualization. of teachers. Teachers are professionals with degrees. They're often very smart. They can handle it. So yeah, I think that's what I'll take away that you know we we deserve, teachers deserve more.

Jim Thompson: Thank you. Adam, we'll go to you and then we'll have ⁓ Sarah wind it up ⁓ before final words from Shane. ⁓ Adam, what's ⁓ one thought on your mind about our time together?

Adam: I think me, I think we spend a long time trying to ⁓ things. ⁓ I think this speaks to Haley's point about, ⁓ know, the the de-intellectualization of teaching. ⁓ spend a long time trying to simplify stuff. And I think that often really well intentioned. Although, know, someone saying that ⁓ you to think about your thickest teacher is clearly not on but But often we're trying to simplify things so that they are broadly applicable and broadly understandable. But I think that by simplifying them, what we often do is lose like the beauty of the complexity. And then really what we're simplifying is no longer the thing that we're trying to work with, but it becomes like version of it that doesn't really resemble anything. that's useful to us to take forward. So I think a healthier way to view it is let's not try and simplify it as such, but let's try and gain clarity over the complexity, which I think is quite possible. I think we can gain clarity over the complexity of a situation without losing essence of what makes that situation or that system complex.

Jim Thompson: Well, that idea of clarity, it's kind of a true north for us. Sarah, well, what's on your mind with our time together today?

Sarah Cottinghatt: Yeah, think I'm just grateful for the opportunity, Shane and Jim, to come on and speak to you guys about this. Because we, as you know from writing books yourselves, it's a long process writing a book and it's a long process to get to the point where you feel like you have enough to write a book. It's very long process to then write a book and then get it published. you want it to be useful to people. And we gave the book out to reviewers. a while ago now to pretty much anyone who was good enough to read the book and review it. And so many wonderful people who did that. And I think this is just another exciting stepping stone, this podcast, in telling people about it and getting these ideas out into the world, which we have built on so many other people's ideas, which hopefully we have cited a lot in the book. And we've tried to sort of stand on the shoulders of giants. there and really kind of things in a good direction. ⁓ I really like what Shane said about the goal of adaptive expertise and the idea of expertise as a lens. ⁓ that was a kind of a North Star for us in this book of like, it's driven the entire structure of the book. ⁓ What adaptive expertise and how do we get there? ⁓ And hope that like others will kind of listen to this ⁓ podcast ⁓ really hear and resonate with with everything that Haile and Adam

Jim Thompson: We're standing on your shoulders. You're you are giants in the field and we can't thank you enough. Let me hand it over to ⁓ my wonderful co-host, my international interlocutor, Shane in Shanghai. Final words, final thoughts on this wonderful show.

Shane: So a few points just coming in from the community. Jason says, embracing complexity for purposeful progress and making the complex accessible. This was he's taking away. And Chris says, if you get this right, I'm convinced you'll be able to contribute to the retention of teachers in the face of the mass exodus. A lot of people feel quite passionate about what you do. It doesn't surprise me. I'm taking away how I can be present and lead. ⁓ and coach for adaptive expertise in as many interactions as I can. think we can't go too wrong if we keep that in mind. I'm so thankful Sarah, Adam, Heidi for this conversation. It's just been wonderful and what a high to end our season with. Hey Jim, this has just been fantastic. If you've joined us live, it's been a privilege to have you here. And I know so many of you join us on all of our live episodes, which is just wonderful. But I also know many of you join us on Spotify. on Apple podcasts and that just means the world that you're here with us on this journey. And we don't take it for granted, do we Jim? So we have got an incredible lineup already forming for our next season the holidays. Hopefully the three people in front of us will not be strangers and we'll see you again. I know highly, Sarah, you're already, this is your second time, so make it three. Adam, you've got a few to catch up. Let's make it happen. Hope you all have a wonderful day, safe travels, highly. And yeah, I will see you all soon at some point. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Jim Thompson: Beautiful cheers.