Supporting Teacher Growth & Development

Overview

For the formal evaluative coaching process, the Culture of Rigor Framework (CRF) rubric is used for the teacher’s self- assessment as well as the coach’s assessment of the teacher. They both assess using our Human Resources platform called PayCom. For the informal weekly coaching cycle, the coach comes in with an iPad to record 20-30 minutes of the teacher’s lesson. The coach would capture 3-4 “glows and grows” as well as next steps to send to the teacher in an email that day. Then, in our weekly scheduled 1:1 meetings, the coach would allow time for teachers to ask any questions top of mind or quick hits, and then review the “glows and grows” and next steps. In this upcoming school year, we are rolling out a new teacher observation tool that breaks down each component of the Culture of Rigor framework including Routines & Rituals, Intellectually & Socially Safe Environments, and Learning Partnerships. There is a key on the bottom of the observation form that includes the following: present & strong, present but weak, not present or not observable.There is also a space on the bottom for qualitative notes that has a section for “Glows and Grows”. Teachers have the flexibility to create the 1:1 weekly agendas with their coach if they so choose. If not, the coach will create the agenda for the meeting. As for the informal after school huddle, there is no written document. The teachers sit in a circle to review the coach-selected 5 minute clip of a teacher’s instructional practice.

Main Activities:

One big challenge that I faced in conducting a coaching cycle with my volunteer teacher is timing and logistics. I am her instructional coach, however I also teach 1st grade STEM and I am the EL Teacher Leader. I have about an hour lunch block during my bell schedule in which I can come observe and provide feedback. However, if she wants to focus on a different block in her day, there is a high probability that I will be teaching myself. A strategy to address this challenge is to work with my coach (our principal) to potentially allow more preparation time in my day to come and observe her. In addition, I can collaborate with one of our apprentice teachers to help cover my class on certain days. My volunteer teacher could also switch around blocks in her day to fit during my lunch hour as a last resort and if she is willing. Another challenge that I have faced is that I am a new coach myself and am still learning the coaching cycle process. To overcome any issues that I may encounter because this process is relatively new, I will actively seek advice from my coach/administrator on how to have productive and constructive conversations and advice on best practices for observation. One barrier I foresee is how and what questions to ask to lead my volunteer teacher to uncover their own strengths and areas of improvement. I was trained this past summer on cognitive coaching and I will review the professional development slide deck and practice with my coach to ensure that I go into my conversations with my volunteer teacher confident and prepared.

Reflection:

Based on this experience and the feedback that I elicited from my volunteer teacher on my instructional coaching abilities during the post-observation meeting, I have identified two coaching strengths and two coaching areas of growth. Drawing specifically upon the feedback given to me by my volunteer teacher when asked about pieces from the coaching cycle that she found helpful, I believe that giving teachers a roadmap of the overall process in a coaching cycle is a strength of mine. This gives the teacher a chance to see the big picture and allows opportunities for questions. My volunteer teacher mentioned that explaining the coaching cycle and CSTP framework was very helpful for her, given that she has not had consistent coaching in the past and given that this is her first time interacting with CSTP. My ability to explain how the coaching cycle worked and use an informative stance on what the CSTP is and how we can utilize it in our partnership together alleviated potential stressors or confusion and allowed for a clear and structured coaching cycle process with my volunteer teacher. Taking this informative stance by explaining clearly the process will help me in future conversations with her and other teachers that I am supporting with coaching because it will ensure that they feel comfortable and allow for any questions to clear up any confusion that might arise from the beginning.

In addition, another strength of mine is grounding the teachers that I coach in the student experience, meaning focusing teachers on the student perspective and allows teachers to see their practices through the student lens. I want all of my teachers that I coach to understand the context of the classroom and always plan with how students are going to experience the lesson. Drawing again upon feedback given to me by my volunteer teacher, she mentioned that it helped her to visualize what students had to do in order to be successful when engaging in a routine or procedure. Specifically with CSTP 2.6, she mentioned that it was helpful to start with criteria for success for any given routine or procedure and backwards plan from there. As an example, I intentionally asked her what it would look like, feel like and sound like for students to successfully participate in a think-pair-share routine (as noted in the pre-observation video annotations). This was purposeful to ground ourselves in our students, allow my volunteer teacher to begin to backwards plan her routine and improve her instructional practice related to CSTP 2.6.

As for areas of growth, drawing from my volunteer teacher’s direct feedback but also my own reflections, I can improve my coaching abilities by tailoring the coaching experience more to the volunteer teacher’s learning modalities. In this specific coaching cycle example, a piece of feedback from my volunteer teacher was that what she would have appreciated was a model. In our coaching cycle, I did not model or offer to model for her, but instead spoke about what it could look or sound like. Although I consider this one of my strengths by grounding coaching conversations in student outcomes, I can take this one step further by modeling if necessary for my volunteer teacher. Providing this option for a model up front gives a more clear picture of one way that CSTP 2.6 could look, but also gives opportunities for any questions of clarification. In the future, by capitalizing on the teacher’s own learning modalities, I can preplan some opportunities for development based on the individual volunteer teacher’s preferences, whether it be modeling, scripting or drawing out what a CSTP could look like.

Another area of growth that I have identified based on experience in this coaching cycle is specificity with the CSTP. I noticed specifically when I was observing for CSTP 2.6 in her classroom, I noticed myself getting distracted with other CSTP elements and had to remind myself to only focus on the CSTP that we agreed upon prior to the video observation. For example, I found myself wanting to coach my volunteer teacher on her level of questioning for her think-pair-share and had to remember to only focus on giving clear directions and rolling out the procedure of think-pair-share that was aligned to CSTP 2.6. For future cycles, I need to remember that in order to support teacher growth and development, I must be specific, concrete and focus solely on the agreed upon observation

If I were to use another coaching model/framework, I would like to explore Elena Aguilar’s The Art of Coaching (2013) framework. She incorporates a lot of dialogue around equity in her coaching conversations and creates a framework that allows coaches to acknowledge how interconnected and complex educational components can be. I believe that before we begin to see systemic change that benefits our students, we must understand how these elements play off of each other. As an equity-driven leader and instructional coach, maintaining this reflective process will be important for schools to apply a systems-based approach and help us not only illuminate personal teacher’s strengths and areas of growth, but also begin to understand some of the complexities of our educational system.

CAPES

Supporting Documents