Starting from the Core: Identifying Your Beliefs About Coaching Administrators

Sim Loh is a family partnership coordinator at Children’s Village, a nationally-accredited Keystone 4 STARS early learning and school-age enrichment program in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, serving about 350 children. She supports children and families, including non-English speaking families of immigrant status, by ensuring equitable access to education, health, employment, and legal information and resources on a day-to-day basis. She is a member of the Children First Racial Equity Early Childhood Education Provider Council, a community member representative of Philadelphia School District Multilingual Advisory Council, and a board member of Historic Philadelphia.
Sim explains, “I ensure families know their rights and educate them on ways to speak up for themselves and request for interpretation/translation services. I share families’ stories and experiences with legislators and decision-makers so that their needs are understood. Attending Leadership Connections will help me strengthen and grow my skills in all domains by interacting with and hearing from experienced leaders in different positions. With newly acquired skills, I seek to learn about the systems level while paying close attention to the accessibility and barriers of different systems and resources and their impacts on young children and their families.”
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How often do you take the time to examine your beliefs related to your work as a coach? If you are like many coaches in the field of early childhood education, you may not have ever done this. And, even if you have never taken time to reflect on your “coaching beliefs” they still exist. Beliefs are ideas that you cherish and regard highly. They influence your thoughts, how you communicate, the decisions you make, and the course of actions you follow. Knowing what you believe about your role as a coach and your beliefs about administrators is critical because it lays the foundation for your work. The following resource, Beliefs About Coaching Administrators, provides an opportunity for you to reflect on your beliefs as well as your attitudes and values about coaching.
Points to Ponder
The Beliefs About Coaching Administrators Questionnaire is designed to encourage reflection, promote clarification, and build self-awareness in your role as a coach. After completing the resource, you can reflect even more on your role with the following prompts:
- Identify the origin of some of your core values and beliefs about coaching.
- How have your beliefs about coaching positively and/or negatively influenced past coaching experiences?
- Do you want to change any of your beliefs about coaching and if so, how might you begin?
If you are interested in learning more about strategies for coaching, register for Transformative TA: Strategies and Tools for Supporting Program Leaders.
Jill Bella, Ed.D., is Director of Professional Learning for the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership and Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at National Louis University (NLU). In these roles, she oversees professional learning, conducts research, and consults for local and state initiatives on the Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES), the Program Administration Scale (PAS), the Business Administration Scale for Family Child Care (BAS), and leadership topics in early care and education. Dr. Bella is also the co-author of several books and trainer’s guides including A Great Place to Work and Inspiring Peak Performance.