Coach Interview

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Coach Interview Guide

Virtual Interview Guide for Coaches in the Low and High Intensity Groups

in the Outcomes Innovation Project

Introduction

Hello [NAME]. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. My name is [PRIMARY INTERVIEWER], and I am joined by [SECONDARY INTERVIEWER]. I will be leading the interview today and [SECONDARY INTERVIEWER] is going to take notes for the call.

As you know, we are from Child Trends, an independent nonprofit research organization and we are evaluating the Ready to Learn through Relationships (RLR) intervention in partnership with the Center for Childhood Resilience (CCR) at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago (Lurie). This discussion will take around 60 minutes.

Because this is a federally funded project, I need to read a statement regarding the PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT OF 1995 (Pub. L. 104-13) STATEMENT OF PUBLIC BURDEN: The overall purpose of this information collection is to identify teacher practices for supporting children’s social-emotional development and to identify training and implementation factors that may enhance these practices. The purpose of this specific discussion is to about your experiences with the RLR program including the trainings, toolkit, and professional development supports, and how helpful you feel like it was for the teachers you worked with as well as yourself. This will help the program developers at Lurie CCR improve this program and will help the Office of Head Start design and implement future professional development programs. We are interested in your full and honest opinions.

Privacy. Before we get started, I would like to remind you that what is said in this interview is private. We will not share anything identifiable that you say with your Center or director.

Voluntary. Even though you previously agreed to meet with us today when you consented to participate in our program evaluation, it is of course voluntary, and you don’t have to share anything you don’t want to.

To help clarify our notes, we would like to record this conversation and have it transcribed. The recording would only be used to make sure that we correctly capture your responses. The only individuals who will have access to this are our Child Trends evaluation team. After we check the transcriptions and remove all information that might be identifiable like your name, we will delete the recording. We will summarize the information we get across all the Centers so that no individual or Center can be identified. Our key findings will be included in a report for the National Center for Health, Behavior Health, and Safety which is sponsoring this study, and may be included in presentations and publications.

Do you have any questions about this? Are you okay with having the conversation recorded?

START RECORDING. STATE THE DATE AND FACILITATOR NAME.

General Program Experiences

First, I would like to ask you a few questions about your experiences with the RLR Program.

1. What did you like most about being a coach for the program?

2. What would have made the program or your experience in the program better?

3. Which aspects of the program did you find most valuable (for yourself and/or the teachers you worked with)? [Probe for specific modules and specific topics and training activities]

Coaching Experience

We are now going to ask about your experience coaching teachers to utilize a trauma-informed framework and implement the strategies from the RLR Toolkit.

4. Can you tell us about what aspects of the RLR program you found most helpful in working with your teacher(s)? [Probe for their approach as well as logistics of meetings]

5. What was it like to have the Lurie consultant join your meetings with the teacher(s)?

1. How helpful was this?

2. What about the joint meetings was helpful?

3. Is there something that would have been more helpful?

Supporting a Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) Approach

I would now like to shift our discussion to your experience providing coaching for a TIC program.

6. How would you describe what it means to be trauma-informed within an early childhood education center?

7. How easy or hard was it to help teachers understand the concepts of TIC and apply this to their interactions with students? Was there anything that you found helpful with this? [Probe to find out if the explanations at the top of the activity sheets were helpful]

8. How helpful or relevant do you think a TIC approach is for the teachers and children you work with? What is most helpful about a TIC approach?

Implementation Supports and Challenges

9. What barriers or challenges did you experience in providing coaching for the RLR program [Probe for teacher buy-in, administrator support, time/scheduling]?

   1. Was there anything you found helpful in addressing these challenges?

10. How much support would you say that you had from your Center in implementing the RLR program? [Probe to assess for director and other mental health or behavior consultants as well as other coaches in their Center who were also in the program]

    1. What additional supports would you have liked to have had?

11. How much support would you say that you had from Lurie CCR staff?

    1. What additional supports would you have liked to have had?

12. Were there certain teachers for whom this program seemed to be particularly helpful? (e.g., those who are less experienced, who had more challenging students).

    1. Were there teachers for whom this program and approach didn’t seem to work? If so, can you tell us about that?

Wrap Up

13. What else would you like us to know about your experience with the program?

14. What might you want to tell another coach who is considering working with this program?

Thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. We appreciate your time and support.