Beth

Montick 1
SPED 854: Family and Interprofessional Collaboration in Special Education
Planning a Coaching Conversation Assignment Reflection

1. Purpose:

The Planning a Coaching Conversation assignment was completed for the

course SPED 854: Family and Interprofessional Collaboration in Special Education.

The purpose of this assignment was to create a script of a mock coaching

conversation with another educational professional based on a given scenario.

2. Approach to assignment and revisions:

For this assignment, I choose 2 scenarios that I may come in contact with

based on my current position. The first scenario was with a paraprofessional in a

kindergarten classroom and the second scenario was with a general educator

regarding the physical set-up of her classroom. As a behavior consultant, I am

frequently in the position of training staff and observing in classrooms. As I

completed this assignment, I tried to envision the paraprofessional and the general

educator responding in ways that I have observed these types of professionals

respond. Early on in relationships with these individuals, it is not uncommon for

teachers or paraprofessionals to be defensive or reluctant to try different strategies.

I tried to channel those possible challenges during this assignment and show which

strategies I use to work to overcome these challenges.

I did not make any revisions on this assignment. My original submission

received a full score and the professor for SPED 854 did not note any areas that

needed improvement. I reviewed my original submission and I did not note any

areas of my submission to change besides a few typographical errors.

3. How the assignment contributed to my development as a special educator:

Beth Montick 2
SPED 854: Family and Interprofessional Collaboration in Special Education
Planning a Coaching Conversation Assignment Reflection

Coaching other people is by far the most difficult part of my job. As part of

the coaching process, you need to work with people of varying skill levels,

personalities, and The key to success in this area is to get buy-in from those

around you and often that takes time and effort. This assignment allowed me to

synthesize what I learned about collaboration with professionals into one outlined

conversation. The main idea that I want to convey during coaching conversations is

that we are a team and we are going to work together to solve the problems that

exist.

Quality supervision and collaboration is important for students who receive

special education services to have a high quality education. Often, paraprofessionals

have limited training and general education teachers may not be aware of variables

in their classroom if they have not been trained to see them. Training is such an

important component, especially as special education teachers frequently function

as consultants in general education classrooms as students are placed in inclusive

classrooms with greater frequency than in the past. As the special educator, you

have to remember that you are the expert in this area and knowing how to train

others to carry out your plans in invaluable.