Ep #203: Data Meetings

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 203.

Welcome to The Empowered Principal Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host certified life coach Angela Kelly Robeck.

Well hello my empowered leaders. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast. I’ve got a great topic today. I just jumped off the phone with one of my clients. This conversation was so good and so relevant for this time of year that I had to just jump on here and quickly record this podcast on planning data meetings.

Many of you as school leaders have made a decision to meet with your grade levels of perhaps individual teachers and have conversations around student data. I helped one of my clients plan her data meetings, and I want to share that process with you so that if you are planning data meetings or if you’ve already had them and you’re going to have them again you can think ahead and predetermine the outcome that you want for these data meetings.

So before you attend these meetings, before you schedule them, before you talk with teachers about them, you want to get very clear about the purpose of these meetings. These meetings are an investment of your time, which means it’s an investment of the district’s money. So you are using your brainpower, your money, and your time, all of your top resources, to have these meetings. So what is the value, what is the purpose, what are the goals of these meetings?

Now when you go into these meetings without thinking this through at a deeper level, what you will think the meeting is about is reviewing student data, what’s working, what’s not, what are we going to do differently? On the surface, that works. I want to take this to a much deeper level so that you can truly determine the outcomes you want to experience for these data meetings, and you can create the result that you’re actually going for with these meetings.

So the first question I asked my client. She was telling me, “Oh I’m having these data meetings. This is my first time doing this. I’ve never done this before. I’m not really sure how to run them. I’m a little nervous because a couple of grade levels, their scores are low. What will they think? What will they feel? What’s going to happen? Maybe they’ll be upset.”

So I slowed her down and I asked her what is the purpose of the data meetings? Her response was to improve student scores, to improve instruction for students. Yes, that is a lovely outcome, but it’s much too nebulous. It’s too far out there and it’s too intangible. I asked her what is the benefit? What is the value? Why are you deciding to spend your time in this way? What’s in it for you as the school leader?

So step one is getting very clear with yourself why you’re having student meetings for you. Why are you having these student data meetings? What is the purpose for you as the school leader? What do you want to accomplish? What are you walking away from as a result of these meetings? What’s in it for you?

When you establish that, you’ll start to see oh I’m choosing to spend my time with my teachers to discuss data because I want them to know I care. I want to know the data. I want to be involved. I want to understand what’s going on. I want to feel connected with my team and my teachers.

I want to let them know that I’m in it with them. We’re in this together. We’re conversing about this together. We are creating a conversation with the intention of teachers feeling great about that conversation and coming up with a plan around that conversation so that they can go out and take action. The purpose of the planning meeting for you as the school leader is to create a safe and comfortable place for you and your teachers to honestly and openly discuss student data.

Now, you know what happens in most of these meetings. Most times the teachers dread them. They don’t see the value. They don’t feel like anything changes. They feel like they’re going to be reprimanded. They’re afraid of what you will say or do or that you’ll blame them or accuse them or criticize them. So they come in with their defenses up and their walls built.

You are feeling nervous because you’re afraid of the reaction they are going to have. Because you’re thinking the purpose is to show them the data, and then they feel bad and then they do something to fix it.

That’s not the purpose of the meetings. It’s not about the data. The student data is neutral. It’s just numbers on a spreadsheet. What each of you, meaning you and the teachers, make that data mean about yourself, about the school, about the grade level, about the teachers, about the students, about the families, about their future success. These numbers on this page, what are we making them mean about the humans that are involved here? That is what these meetings are about.

Unfortunately teachers have the belief that the data meetings are used as a vehicle to criticize them or to tell them to change. That they aren’t doing it right and they need to do something different. They’re failing. So teachers don’t value the data meetings, most of them. I’m not talking about the teachers that are all in and they’re super excited. They love data. They’re always striving. I’m not talking about your A+ teachers. I’m talking about your average B+/A- teacher who does a great job, but is scared to death of failing, of doing it wrong, of losing his or her job.

So the purpose of these meetings is for you to get clearer about your purpose. Why are you as the principal choosing to be involved in these meetings? Why are you having them? Why are you expecting teachers to attend them? What is the outcome you desire? What’s the long and short term goal here?

Again, I understand you’re trying to create results for kids meaning improved test scores. You’re looking at the numbers and you want them to go up. When you ask yourself why am I choosing to spend my time in this way today right now. What you’ll find is that you want to feel a certain way. You want to feel like you’re in the know, that you have a grasp of how your kids are doing. You want to understand where your teachers are, what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling, what they believe the obstacles are, what they think the problem is, what they think the solution is.

The meetings are designed to create a safe space for teachers to be honest with you about their thoughts and their feelings and what they perceive as obstacles and what they perceive as solutions. These meetings are helping you understand your teacher’s STEER cycle.

For those of you who are new to the podcast or new to life coaching. The STEER cycle is modeled after Brooke Castillo’s work called the model. It’s a life coach school tool that she created and that I have adapted for school leaders called the STEER cycle.

Basically the STEER cycle is people’s thoughts trigger emotions. Those emotions influence the way they act, the way they approach things. The way they act and the way they approach things determines the results they create. You want to get in your teacher’s heads and understand what are they thinking and feeling right now that’s creating the current result, which is this current student data.

You want to understand what do teachers need to think and need to feel in order to take actions and to approach teaching and learning in a way that adjusts those outcomes? That changes the outcomes you are currently looking at. Improved test scores is the long term goal.

When you bring it back to what is your immediate goal for these meetings and why are you in these meetings with teachers. You’re in there to create a sense of safety and certainty and comfort so that teachers can express the truth of what they’re thinking. You want to know what they’re thinking, how they’re feeling.

Then from there you want to understand what it is they think they need in order to be more successful. They’re going to need to think, “We’re on the same team. My principal cares about me. She supports me. She values me. She listens to me. She considers my input. She is also taking responsibility for these scores. We are all taking full responsibility for the scores. It’s not just on my shoulders to bear.”

How refreshing as a teacher would that be for a principal to be, “We’re 100% in this together. We’re 100% on the same team. I’m not leaving you out to dry. We’re not going to blame or criticize here. We’re simply going to look at the numbers, and we’re going to talk about how we feel about those numbers, what we’re thinking about those numbers, and what do we need to think and feel to adjust our approach ever so slightly to shift those numbers?”

Because emotions always drive actions 100% of the time. If you aren’t interested in what your teachers are feeling and how they’re thinking then you’re not going to get a change in action. So this starts with you understanding what you want them to think and feel.

This is what I did with my client Amy. I said, “How do you want teachers to feel walking out of that meeting? How do you want them to experience the data meetings?” She had her own goals. She wants the meetings to go well. She wants people to enjoy them. She wants people to want to do them.

So she had to create an understanding of the value of the meeting for her as the principal and then the value of the meeting for the teachers. What’s in it for them? Why should they invest their time and energy and effort and brainpower into these meetings? If they’re just going to come in to be criticized or blamed, they don’t see blame in that. Nothing really changes for them.

But if they come into the meeting and you’re like, “Tell me all the things. I really want to know. I want to hear. I want to know what you’re thinking. I want to hear how you’re feeling. What do you love about data? What do you not love about it?” You get them into a space where they feel they can trust you and they feel trusted by their principal. Then you can start to have real conversations.

Once they know the data’s not going to be used against them as a weapon, as a threat, as something hanging over their head, as a burden, then they can feel safe and honest and hope. I call it the HOW method. Honest, open, and willing. You want to create an environment that creates honest, open, and willing conversations.

So once you know what outcomes you’re trying to create for these meetings, meaning I want my teachers to feel safe and supported and secure. I want them to feel trusted by me. I want them to trust me. I want them to tell me the truth of what they’re thinking so we can get to the core of the matter. I want to know how they’re feeling. I want to know how they want to feel about their data and what results they’re trying to create.

This isn’t just about your goal for that student data. This is also about what are the teacher’s goals for the data? What do they think is reasonable? What do they think is possible? What do they believe in themselves about themselves? What do they think about students? What do they think students are capable of achieving?  You want to know as the school leader. You want them to see that you want to know. That helps you build connection with them.

Then once you understand what it is for the teachers to think and feel and how you want them to experience the meeting, you’ve got to get to work at what you have to be thinking and feeling in order to create that environment. In order to create that experience.

How do you want to feel in the meeting? What’s the outcome you’re looking for? What do you want to change as a result of spending your time in these meetings? What’s in this for you? How do you have to show up for your teachers to create this environment of safety and calmness and care and support? What do you have to be thinking?

So when you are planning data meetings, they aren’t really about the data. It’s about what people think about the data. It’s about how they feel about the data. It’s what they do in reaction to those thoughts and feelings about the data. People are afraid to look at data when they think it means something is wrong with them inherently. When they’re a bad teacher, when they can’t figure it out, when their test scores haven’t gone up, they have done something wrong. They aren’t worthy. They’re not working up to par.

We make that data mean something very personal about us. What you want to do as a school leader is you want to help your teachers see that the data is neutral. At the same time while the data is neutral, we also want to own that data as our own as a collective and as an individual. Because if we own the data, which is owning the problem in this case, then we also have ownership of the solution.

So if we’re willing to look and see our part in what’s not working. Like oh I was thinking kids couldn’t learn this. I was thinking I didn’t know how to teach math. I was thinking that I’m not really good at teaching phonics. When you start to see the beliefs that teachers have about themselves, beliefs they have about their kids, beliefs they have about different kinds of learning styles of learning ways.

Different kids learn in different ways. They come from different backgrounds. They have different languages. We have all of these thoughts and feelings about how kids learn, how we teach, the curriculums we use, how much time we have in our day, how we spend our time. There are a lot of thoughts that are obstacle thoughts, I call them, that prevent teachers from being more successful or from students achieving higher scores.

We all know at the end of the day, yes. The scores and the data matter, but it’s not the only thing. What really deeply matters is how teachers are thinking and feeling and how they’re showing up as a result of that, and how students think and feel about themselves and how they’re showing up as a result of that.

We want to understand. What do teachers think about school, the culture, coming to work? What do they think about their principal? What do they think about their principal? What do they think about other grade levels? What do they think about the curriculum? All of those thoughts are having an impact on that data. The same is true with what students are thinking. The goal of data meetings is not to look at the data. It’s to understand the thoughts behind the data, the thoughts about the data, and how that’s impacting the way your teachers are feeling.

Now approaching data meetings in this way, I call it approaching the data meetings with love. You’re coming at them out of love versus fear. When you approach data meetings with this pressure, this top down approach. Your superintendent tells you your scores are too low, and you better get them up.

Then you freak out because you’re scared for your job. You tell the teachers, “You better figure it out. What’s with this data? This is low. You failed. You gotta get better at this. Figure it out.” They feel the pressure from you feeling the pressure from your superintendent. Then they go back to their classrooms and guess what they do? They pressure the kids.

They push down on the kids, and the kids have nowhere to go with the pressure so guess what? The result of superintendent pressures you, you pressure teachers, teachers pressure kids and families. Kids have nowhere to put that pressure. It comes out, it releases as misbehavior, as resistance. I don’t want to learn. I don’t like school. I don’t want to do this. I’m not going to comply with your request, this pressure. I can’t take the pressure. That’s what happens when we use pressure. It doesn’t work.

So instead of leading data meetings out of fear, lead them out of love. What I mean by that is the HOW method. Honest, open, willing. Just like the teachers, you are going to have to model honest feedback, being open to receiving feedback. Being willing to experience the vulnerability that comes with talking about data and full ownership and responsibility and sit in the discomfort of number one, not having all the answers.

You as the principal don’t have all the answers. You’re not supposed to. So there are going to be questions that your teachers have that you can’t answer. That’s okay. You can sit in that discomfort and say, “I don’t know. I’m not sure. That’s a great point. Good question. Let’s figure it out together.”

Number two, you have to sit in the discomfort of not solving all the problems for them. A lot of especially new leaders we think—Actually I’m going to say veterans too. Because I did this the more veteran I became. I figured out the solutions, and I just started giving them to teachers because it was faster for me.

What I wasn’t doing was empowering them to believe that they had the ability to find out the solutions for themselves. Because I could give 10 answers to a problem. If the teacher didn’t believe that that was the solution or it didn’t work for him or her, they’re not going to implement it.

So you also have to sit in the discomfort of not solving the problem for them. Of going through the motions and taking the time it takes to support teachers to find out the answers that will work for them. They’ve got to come up with them. You can support and facilitate that process, but they’ve got to figure it out. Letting them know, “Hey, we’re in this together. We’re going to problem solve together. We’re going to own this data together equally.” That’s when the magic happens.

One last thing I want to say. Approaching data meetings out of love and belief in your teachers and what you need to think and feel about teachers and what you need to think and feel about kids. Approaching them in this way doesn’t mean that you’re placating them or sugarcoating the conversation. It’s the opposite.

Because when you establish an environment where people get together, and they meet and they’re vulnerably talking about their data, and it does feel personal. When you’ve established that safety and trust, it’s going to require you to also be vulnerable. You need to tell the truth to your teachers. You need to hold space for people’s fears and emotions in talking about data. There’s a lot of fear around data.

We want to establish some safety and trust, reduce that fear, but also understand that that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to feel negative emotions. We’re not just going to pretend there’s nothing wrong. We’re going to have honest conversations about it, and that people will still feel bad some of the time. They’re going to look at their data, and they’re going to feel disappointed. They’re going to feel discouraged.

But it’s coming from the place of wanting to have the conversation, of wanting to achieve that result, for being on the team and knowing maybe I didn’t do my part or maybe I missed something or maybe I have something yet to figure out. Sorry team. I’m going to keep working on it.

Feeling disappointed about a failure is okay. Teachers can feel disappointment while also still trusting you. So there are going to be data conversations you have that are going to feel disappointing for you and for teachers and maybe for kids too. You can feel disappointed and still feel safe and trusting. You want your kids to feel disappointed that they haven’t yet reached a goal or that their scores dropped.

Disappointment is part of learning and growing. It’s a part of failure. We’re going to fail until we succeed. With that comes the disappointment and the failure. The disappointment is not coming from shame or guilt or fear or intimidation. We’re simply neutralizing creating a safe space and neutralizing that data so that we have that ability to have that conversation and decide what’s working and what’s not and what we’re going to try next. That’s it.

Your goal in these data meetings is to create a warm, welcoming, comforting space where teachers feel refreshingly surprised and happy, and they want those meetings. Think about how cool it’s going to be when you approach meetings in this way. They are going to want to have the meetings.

They’re going to want to come, and problem solve with you. They’re going to want to tell you what they’re thinking, how they’re feeling, what kids are thinking and how kids are feeling, what’s working, what’s not, what we want to try next. That’s it. This is all coming from a place of love and trust and support and full ownership. That is the goal of data meetings.

I hope this has been helpful. My client is raring to go with her data meetings. It was so fun to plan this with her. If you want to have a coach to help you plan your data meetings, schedule a consult with me. Let’s do this. There’s no time like the present. Let’s go. Have a great week. Talk to you next week. Bye.

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