In last week’s post I wrote about a thought-provoking activity, Banned Words. This week I want to discuss a powerful follow up to addressing Banned Words/deficit language. Elena Aguilar’s Coaching Sentence Stems is one of the most useful tools in my coaching toolkit. When used within a trusting partnership or team situation, the stems can lead to shifts in language and in the focus of a conversation.
As I was preparing for my PLC meetings on Monday, I chose several stems that might be useful. I considered past conversations, our Working Agreements, and the topics on the agenda, when selecting high-leverage stems. Then I wrote them on a post it note to have out as I was attending the meetings. Stems included:
- “What do you mean by ___?
- What’s another way ___?
- What criteria did you use?
- It’s sometimes helpful to ___.”
The most impactful question this week was: “What do you mean by __.” This question was also popular when our facilitator team came together to use the stems.
Our facilitator team met this week to look at our Banned Words and develop next steps in addressing language. We brainstormed asset-based language that was the flip side of every Banned Word. For example: “low kids” because “kids who are strong at __ and working on ___.” Next, the Coaching Stems were introduced. I’ve introduced these before in isolation, but this time was different because we had a context from which to connect the stems. As the team looked over the stems, considering one to use next week as a focus, a theme emerged: All of our focus questions came from the “Probing” and “Confrontational (Interrupting)” categories.
In upcoming weeks, we will continue to use the Stems and go deeper by examining the results of using each stem and impact on conversations. In future work, I also want to call attention to the “Survival Phrases” found at the bottom of the document.
Aguilar writes:
“Cultural competence is the ability to understand, appreciate, and interact with people from cultures or belief systems different from one’s own; it is the ability to navigate cross-cultural differences in order to do something—be that teach students, collaborate with colleagues, or socialize with friends.”
She also writes about how every conversation is a conversation about equity. I truly believe in the power of language and calling out times when I, or others, may need to examine our language. This is complex work and using tools like the Stems can help greatly. By doing this, we can begin to address our impact and our beliefs.
Over the past year I have included “Use asset-based language” as an agreement in the meetings and professional development sessions I have facilitated. In every meeting, I have either heard (or used) deficit language and been able to address it through questioning or data, or I have seen participants actually change their language mid-sentence to use more asset-based words. By calling awareness to our language, we speak with more intention, which eventually becomes part of our internalized beliefs. This awareness often shifts the conversation into a productive, deeper terrain. This is the power of coaching, of language, and of rich collaboration.
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