Instructional Coaches
Writing
BACKGROUND: You are the Instructional Coach for Best Elementary School. Your background is that you have been a teacher for 5 years, all of those years as a 4th grade teacher at Best Elementary School. You received your Master’s degree in Academic Coaching and this is your first year as the Instructional Coach for your school. Your principal has assigned to you that you must look at the ELA grades in grade 3. After reviewing current data. You are able (through Eduphoria) to dig deeply into the data. You find that, for the most part, ELA Grade 3 teachers are doing a decent job – there are some areas that need work, but overall the task is not daunting. However, through this data dig, you have found that there is one teacher that is really the culprit of the scores. She has been with the district 10 years and is highly regarded. Parents request her their children and she always volunteers to assist at the school. This teacher leads the UIL program and volunteers to run the after-school Master Gardening Program, but her students’ performance in academics is not strong, especially for males and most especially Hispanic males. Your principal has warned you that you must work with this teacher to improve performance, but also, you must proceed with caution.
ASSIGNMENT: Your principal has asked you to outline your plan of approach (step by step) and present the plan to him before approaching the teacher. This is your chance to demonstrate the skills, techniques, and processes that you have learned through your course readings and videos. Be sure and explain how you determined that this particular teacher is a concern (begin with good data). It is understood that this data, for this activity, is fabricated but you can certainly explain the types of data you would review. You will want to demonstrate your understanding of the coaching process and especially your knowledge of developing the coaching relationship. How will you begin the coaching conversation to engage a teacher that is probably going to be reluctant? If you need to engage directive coaching, what will that look like? You will also want to evaluate effectiveness throughout the process and gain teacher feedback.
