Staffing Structures

Claim: In service of impacting student achievement, GCCS has developed and refined the structure for professional development to promote teacher growth and collegial collaboration.

Since its inception, GCCS has held a consistent staffing structure that directly supports collegial collaboration and informal mentoring for new staff. In each classroom, there are two certified teachers and one teaching assistant who work cohesively to increase student achievement through flexible grouping structures and small group instruction. All three teachers participate in weekly professional development and there are protocols such as Professional Marriage Counseling to support effective communication and collaboration.

Co-teachers have approximately two and a half hours of common planning time to examine student assessment data to determine individual needs of students, discuss weekly and daily lesson plans, and determine differentiation strategies for students. In addition, there is one Teacher on Special Assignment specializing on ELA instruction and a Curriculum Specialist focusing on Expedition (Science and Social Studies) and Math instruction to provide on-going instructional coaching and mentoring for all classroom teachers. These accountability structures also foster teacher leadership and potentially create a pipeline for professional growth.

GCCS created an Intervention Team during the 2018-19 school year to identify and better support students in need and provide strategies and tools for classroom teachers. We also hired a part-time social worker to work directly with students and provide professional development for teachers in areas including social-emotional learning and trauma-informed teaching. We have also increased our social worker's hours each week, not only so she can work with more students, but also so she can work directly with teachers and lead lessons around social-emotional learning and deliver anti-bullying and anti-bias curriculum. This year, our intervention team is meeting with classroom teachers every four weeks to create action plans for students, particularly those in sub-groups where academic gaps are evident. In the past, we have used a consultant teacher to serve our ELL/ MLL students, but this year we have hired our own part-time ELL teacher to work with students, their families, and teachers. This has allowed a more consistent approach to ELL instruction and supporting their academic success. These new staffing structures will allow us to be more responsive to the academic needs of our students, especially our most vulnerable subgroups.