Teach

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.” - Wendy Mass

Everyone feels stress from time to time, and this stress can prevent them from doing their best work. As a Training & Curriculum Specialist (T&CS), you can help staff members do their best every day. You can help them learn the skills and strategies they need to support the learning of children and youth, and you can also help them learn to respond to stress in a healthy manner. Imagine staff members come to you showing signs of doubt, stress, and concerns like the following:

• Brady: I just feel like I’m really bad at everything right now. I’m not the mom I want to be, and I’m not the teacher I want to be. I just can’t balance it all since the baby was born.
• Juniper: Nobody cares about what I have to say here. I get treated like a babysitter.
• Will: I can’t keep up with all the paperwork. It takes away so much time from the important stuff—like spending time with the kids.
• Mary: I have told management how I feel about this problem several times, and nothing has changed. It’s so frustrating.

How do these comments make you feel? What impressions do they give you of the speaker? How would you respond if one of these individuals were your good friend? Have you ever felt like any of these individuals? What did you need to help you feel better?

How you respond to statements like these can make a big difference in the professional lives of your colleagues. Staff members at your program need to feel heard, supported, and trusted. They need to feel acknowledged for the important work they do every day. You can be one of the people who makes these feelings a reality. It is not always easy, though, to support others in this way. You might experience some difficult feelings yourself; you may feel overwhelmed, doubt your abilities, or feel helpless at times. These feelings are natural, and these feelings can help you relate to staff members and families. This lesson will help you think about ways experiences promote positive relationships and help each individual child, staff member, and family member take pride in his or her identity. This lesson will focus on three key experiences: supporting staff members through coaching, supporting families through family-centered practices, and supporting yourself by managing stress.

Model

Supporting Staff Members Through Effective Coaching

Healthy, nurturing relationships are just as important for adults as they are for children. Through coaching, you have an opportunity to build professional relationships with staff members. In the context of those relationships, staff members reflect on their work, challenge themselves, grapple with new ideas, and express their beliefs. It is a supportive process that facilitates high-quality care for children in your programs.

In many ways, you can think of your work as modeling for staff members. As a T&CS you want staff members to be emotionally supportive of children and families. You want them to reflect on their practice and continually improve. You have a chance to model this process. You emotionally support staff members as they reflect on their practice. Effective coaching is very similar to a management approach known as reflective supervision (Cox, Harrison, and Neilson-Gatti (2011), which is characterized by:

• Noticing and labeling a staff members’ feelings about an event or situation
• Acknowledging professional competence
• Staying rooted in the experiences of children or youth
• Providing a structure for reflection within and between sessions

While T&CSs are not “supervisors”, in many ways you supervise staff members’ professional learning and the experiences they design for children, youth, and families. The Family Connections Project at Boston Children’s Hospital identified eight steps to help leaders build a supportive relationship within reflective supervision, and many of the principles apply to the work you do to support staff members’ learning and professional growth. The following list is adapted from the 2008 short paper, “Supportive Supervision: Promoting staff and family growth through positive relationships”:

• Establish a regular and protected time for coaching meetings with staff members. Set appointments and keep them. Make sure staff members know your time with them is valued and important.
• Share the power. Work together to decide how trainings and coaching meetings will be structured, what goals are set, how progress is monitored, etc.
• Accentuate the positive. Make sure staff members know you appreciate the work they do—and that they are good at it. Encourage staff members and spend time really noticing what is going well in your programs.
• Try to listen without judging. Notice staff members’ emotions as they talk to you, but do not assign your own values to how they are feeling. Do not get angry if they are unhappy about something at work. Just listen.
• Model healthy ways to manage conflict. Give yourself the space and time to talk about problems. Work together to solve them efficiently.
• Make time for reflection inside and outside of coaching. Think about how your conversations with staff members went. Practice how you might say something differently if it came up again.
• Remember that you are not alone. You have many resources at your fingertips: family advocacy programs, mental health services, etc. Help staff find the resources they need.
• Establish healthy boundaries. Take care of yourself. If you don’t know the answer to a question, say so.

Embracing Staff Members’ Multiple Social Identities

The staff members you coach all have a complex sense of self and multiple social identities. While you may primarily view direct care staff as “an infant and toddler caregiver,” or a “school-age provider,” each staff member is much more than their program role. It is important to remember that staff members may more strongly identify with other parts of their identities. For example, staff members may identify strongly with their faith community or have strong bonds with an ethnic community. You may coach staff members who have other jobs, are parents, are community leaders, or are passionate about specific interests and hobbies.

As you build relationships with the direct care staff you coach, encourage them to embrace their full set of social identities, in addition to that of a child care staff member. This helps them strengthen their own sense of self and may help them see that the children they care for also have multiple social identities. Caregivers, teachers, and providers all influence how children see themselves, and it’s important for these role models, in a positive and encouraging way, to help children understand that they too have many traits and interests. Children and adults whose multiple social identities are acknowledged may be more flexible when thinking about others’ identities and may develop better problem-solving skills. Flexible thinking can help them come up with more creative solutions to everyday problems.

Consider these strategies for helping staff share and learn about one another’s social identities:

• Name Stories: During staff training or meetings, take time for each staff member to share the story of their name. Each staff member can share as much or as little information as they like. They can share about a chosen name, a given name, or a family name. Were they named in honor of a loved one? Does their name carry a meaning? Did they choose their name as an adult? Be sure that you and managers participate in this activity, as well, and share your name stories.
• Introduction Cards: Invite staff to create their own name cards for their classrooms or program spaces. Provide attractive art materials and paper or canvas. Invite staff members to share information about themselves through art. The display should include their preferred name and things they would like families, children, and coworkers to know about them. They may represent the places they have lived, their family, their education, their hobbies, etc. You can post these by each classroom door, or you can create an all-staff display for the lobby by photographing each staff member holding their name card.
• People and Place History: Spend time learning about the region you call home. Which Native peoples also call the region home? What is the history of migration and colonization in the area? What racial and ethnic traditions are active in the area? Work with staff to bring their learnings into classroom curricula and programming.
• Expand the Calendar: Many staff are aware of opportunities to highlight the leadership of their communities during special celebrations like Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Disability Awareness Month, and Pride, but also make sure that learning goes beyond these single months of the calendar. Work with staff to weave social identities and leadership thoughtfully throughout the year.

Supporting Families Through Family-Centered Practice

Families are critical partners in your programs. You have a commitment to respect families and to help each family feel proud of their identities and culture. Recall these family-centered practices that were introduced in the Families course:

These practices help families feel respected and valued. They also help families gain confidence and a sense of their role in your program.

Families everywhere go through times in their lives when they need help accessing information to help them navigate their circumstances. And you may be just the person they come to for help. A family member may have a question or concern, and you may be asked to provide information, suggestions, or recommendations about a variety of topics, such as child development, challenging behavior, literacy, in- and out-of-school activities, community connections, health-care providers, and so forth. Sometimes you will have answers and sometimes you will have to look for answers. Above all, if a family member shares a need or concern with you, respect his or her privacy.

Taking Care of Yourself While Taking Care of Others

To help others do their best work, you must be at your best, as well. Reflect on why flight attendants instruct adults to put on their own oxygen masks before helping others. Your instinct may be to jump in to help others, but you cannot be effective if you are exhausted or unwell. Burnout is a real risk. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to manage your stress and build your resilience. 

• Values and vision: Go back to lesson one of this course and think about the values that guide you. What is your mission? What do you want people to say about you at your retirement party? What parts of your work serve your mission and put you on the path you want? What parts do not? How can you start to change the parts that do not serve you?
• Energy meter: Spend some time paying attention to your own energy. What types of activities make you feel energized? What types of activities or situations drain your energy? What’s your ideal energy state?
• Build community: Seek out others who do the work you do. Can you arrange a virtual book club or coffee chat with other trainers and coaches? If you live near other coaches, gathering monthly to share joys and challenges can be very restorative. Encourage staff to do the same.
• Know your triggers: Everyone has situations that make them feel escalated or overwhelmed. Make a plan for what you can do when these feelings arise. If you need time alone, plan for a way to naturally break from the situation. Volunteer to go change the laundry or deliver meal carts. If more sustained time away is an option, can you listen to a 5min meditation on your phone? Can you take a quick walk outside?
• Plan your day: Once you know your energy and triggers, plan your day thoughtfully. Build in transition time between classrooms, breaks for yourself, and time to get caught up on paperwork. Match tasks with your energy and moods. If you like to start the day with a clean desk, spend five minutes at the end of each day organizing and preparing for tomorrow. If email drains you, schedule time specifically for responding to emails and plan something energizing afterwards.
• Fill your bucket: You likely entered this career because you loved working with children. Maybe now your career focuses largely on adults, and this is hard for you. Seek out ways to get back into classrooms. This can help “fill your bucket” and re-energize you. Make a point of spending time each day just playing with or talking to children. Rock babies while a staff member takes a break or greet the youth as they get off the bus in the afternoon.
• Play: Model the value of play and fun. Dress up with preschoolers, dance with school-agers. Put a puzzle in the staff room for staff to work together on as they pass by. Notice the way play makes you feel.

Many of us are accustomed to saying “yes” to everything that is asked of us for fear of appearing weak or uncooperative. Learning how to say “no” is a good skill to cultivate, and it shows you know your limits and are able to prioritize your needs, which will make you a better trainer or coach. Check out the Apply section for tips on saying “No.”

It is also important that you learn to let go of stress. Here are a few tips:

• Consider keeping a journal. It can be therapeutic to write the day’s events and your perspectives on paper. You might also consider keeping a gratitude journal to help you be mindful about the positive aspects of your life.
• Make connections. Reach out to friends, family, and acquaintances. Go out for lunch or a cup of coffee with a friend. Speak to the person in front of you in line at the grocery store. These small moments can help you feel connected and supported.
• Even a little regular exercise can help you feel better, sleep better, and cope better with life’s daily stressors. Healthful eating can make a difference, too.
• Remember to breathe. As we get stressed out, we tend to breathe shallower. By taking a moment to take a few deep breaths, we are not only taking time for ourselves, but helping to lower our stress levels.

As you develop your skill at reducing your own stress, you should also observe the children and staff in your program for signs of stress. The first steps in responding to stress are to recognize when there is a problem and to help access resources.

Observe

Look for these signs of stress in adults:

When you see signs of stress in yourself or others, take action. 

Let’s revisit the individuals we met at the beginning of the lesson. The four individuals were dealing with negative thoughts about their work. Watch the video that follows to see how a T&CS might help a staff member work through these feelings.

Finally, end this course by learning how others manage their stress and engage in self-care.