We sat down with Charlie Josephson, a third-year special education teacher, and her instructional coach for the last two years, Jess Robinson of Minnesota’s Southwest West Central Service Cooperative. Among the many insights they shared was how mutually beneficial and professionally fulfilling their collaboration is.

Can you remember those first couple of days, weeks, months in the classroom?

Charlie: I was just thinking about that the other day … whenever the boss would walk in, I’d ask my paras [paraprofessionals] to lead whatever I was doing because I was so nervous. Now, I feel pretty comfortable and confident in what I’m doing, but I relied on them pretty heavily those first few months.

How many paraprofessionals were in your classroom?

Charlie: Five.

Jess: Charlie teaches in a Students with Unique Needs (SUN) program serving students with significant cognitive or communication issues, autism, or medical issues, so most of her students have one-on-one support.

What are some of the ways your coach supported you in that first year?

Charlie: She helped me set up my student goals and shared what resources I could use, how to use them. She showed me how to work with the students. We would sit with a student, and she would model how to present the work. We watched a lot of videos from our curriculum program. If we were working together, we would videotape, and then we’d go back and rewatch and talk about it: “Okay. I would do this or this differently….”

Can you think of some examples of lasting lessons you learned from your coach?

Charlie: Often, I would be thinking “I have to get this done,” but when something’s not working for a student, obviously you’re not going to keep forcing it. My coaches helped me understand that it’s okay to just come back to it when they’re ready.

My coaches also helped with transitions, finding different motivators, reinforcements. There’s lots of different tools and things that I haven’t tried, and I’m just like, “oh, okay,” or I’m mad because I haven’t been using it. I tell Jess all the time, “why haven’t I already been doing this?”

Jess: What’s hard, and I would say this for all SUN teachers, is the students are so diverse. When we talk about learner variability, you may have six or eight students in your classroom, and they all have completely different needs. You might use one sort of intervention for one student and another intervention for another. You can get this feeling you’re almost like a jack of all trades, but master of none. You are always asking yourself “how do I know what intervention to use with what student?” So, it just takes time, experimenting, building a toolset. And I think Charlie does a very good job of trying something for a long enough time period to really see whether it works or not. It’s hard. You want to fast forward, but sometimes it really does take time.

Can you give an example of some of the challenges?

Charlie: I think the hardest part is having students with several different needs, and they’re all at different abilities. Trying to keep that in line, meet all of the students’ needs and abilities. It’s hard with the students with medical needs too. It’s just, it’s a lot.

And they change all the time. When this year started off, my kids were doing super great. We were doing whole group for four or five months, all working together. Then suddenly we couldn’t do whole group work for 10 minutes. I was like, “okay, what are we doing wrong here?” So then we went to more independent work, we focused on different skills with each student, and then, at the end of the year, we’re back to everyone participating and doing whole group. It’s interesting how the kids are so motivated by one thing one minute, and then they aren’t.

What advice would you have for a new special education teacher?

Charlie: Definitely don’t be afraid to ask questions. Use your resources. There’s always going to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Things aren’t always going to go as planned. I sometimes struggle with that, where I get very focused on where I should be, but it’s okay, you’re going to get there. Don’t give up. I rely on my resources a lot, and I’m not ashamed to ask for help or be like, “oh, I messed this up.” Just talk to someone about it.

What are some skills that are especially important in the special education classroom?

Jess: Charlie is very good about scaffolding. She’s always looking for what that next step is, even if it’s really small, so she has things planned in advance so that every student can participate at their maximum potential. I think that’s one of her best skills — being responsive in the moment and being able to make those adaptations on the fly.

It’s also important to understand special education teachers are trying to balance tracking IEP (Individualized Education Program) goals because those are identified needs based on a legal document that we have to follow. So in a lot of ways that has to be the priority. But then we’re also trying to use the functional teaching standards. It’s not always grade-level standards, but functional standards. You just have to kind of teeter totter back and forth. Like Charlie said, it’s a lot to try to balance that.

Besides Knowing Students, what NTC tools do you tend to use together?

Jess: Charlie is always focused on “what’s the next step,” and if you’re going to propose a new goal, you have to have that baseline data. I think the coaching tools are amazing for that. The Analyzing Student Learning tool has been fabulous for taking some baseline data on a potential learning objective that you want to target and being able to see if there was growth and what we might need to tweak.

I would say we use the Planning Conversation Guide the most, looking at what knowledge and skills we want students to have gained at the end of the lesson and looking at IEP goals. A lot of it is almost a combination of scope and sequence so that Charlie always has the arrow pointed in the direction of growth with those kids. And all the tools support data gathering for IEPs.

Can you talk about how you work together?

Charlie: It’s just talking with each other really. We sit and talk all the time, even when it’s past 3:30 p.m., and I’m calling for help. It’s been really helpful to relax and just focus on what I need to do and control what I can control and just keep assessing the students, looking at resources.

Jess: And as I’m driving home, I have this flash, what if we did this? Or what if we tried that? Or maybe we need to change this reinforcer. I’ve learned as much from the teachers I coach as they do from me. I feel like we lean on each other. I really do. It’s just about collaboration. And it is impressive, the learning that happens. Charlie does not like to brag, but I will. At the end of the school year, she had so many students that had either met goals or were very close to meeting goals. There’s tons and tons of growth. Sometimes our students kind of get written off. They don’t get seen as contributing to society. But these are real people. They have real lives. They are out in the community. They’re just like us.

Charlie: There’s so much potential.

Jess: I’m just so proud.

Charlie: Yeah. It’s cool.