Instructional Coaching: Seeding District-Wide Innovation (Transcript)

Katie: Having an Instructional Coach has been the biggest help that I could have had this year. Because she not only helps me with lesson plans, but she helps me think through why I’m going to teach that way.

Pam: Our Instructional Coaches work very closely with teachers across the School Division to help them really figure out what we call our Seven Pathways to Learning. Whether it’s Make-a-Work, or whether it’s giving kids the opportunity to have choice in their work. Our coaches really are a lynchpin in the work that we do across the system.

Debora: Instructional Coaches connecting teachers from one school to another is very important because we feel like that’s how innovative practices spread. We have 24 Instructional Coaches, but no one coach is at one building. Every building has at least three coaches. Every coach has at least three schools.

Lisa: Trish has been with us for four years. And Trish is an Instructional Coach for the Division. She’s actually works in three schools. Woodbrook is just one of her schools.

Trish: So if I’m learning from these twelve teachers at this school, I take all of that learning with me to the other two schools. When I get together with the coaches, I’m able to share.

Trish: So I just want to show you the first activity on this Fractions Number Chart resource is a skip counting activity.

Katie: That’s what Karen was talking to me about at recess the other day.

Trish: Okay!

Debora: Our teachers might have a Project Based Learning Unit that they’re doing and they want to bring more technology in, and they want to bring some different instructional strategies. And they would approach a coach, and talk a little bit about that.

Trish: Kate came to me and said, “I’d love to do a Project Based Unit coming up on Life Processes.”

Katie: The Project Based Learning Unit that Trish Moya and I have been working on is a unit on plant and animal life cycles. Project Based Learning is pretty new for me, so Trish brings a whole nother level of expertise to the board.

Trish: And so what will you be looking for on your notes?

Katie: I’ll be looking for them to develop vocabulary.

Trish: Okay!

Katie: In the plant or animal that they’re researching.

Trish: Excellent! Is there anything from the Critical Thinking Rubric that you might be able to use then?

Katie: I can use, “Feedback from my friends and teacher to improve my work.”

Trish: It always comes back to the teacher getting to tell you what they need. So that’s always where I begin.

Tony: So whether it comes to them modeling instructional lesson plans to help the teachers see what it might look like, or moving into more of an observation role, where the teacher’s trying it out and looking for feedback. Either way, the whole process is based on what the teacher’s looking for.

Katie: Let’s get to it. Step 1, gather all your materials.

Katie: I’m really excited about the unit, because the kids are going to be doing it in such an authentic way. They’re going to be creating videos, and doing their own research. They’re going to be posting their own things on a blog or a website. Just something that they’ll always remember. Working with Trish I learned that kids really can drive their learning.

Student: We were learning about the life cycle of animals.

Student: I’m learning about squirrels. And I picked squirrels because I actually like squirrels.

Student: And I learned that there’s many different cats.

Trish: And they were so excited about what they had learned. Did you notice that everybody was up on their knees.

Katie: They were all up on their knees!

Trish: Nobody was sitting down. They were all like, “I want to share! I want to share!” That was great.

Katie: That was the cool part.

Tony: How these coaches then become a conduit for those ideas and those values to move from classroom to classroom, from school to school, that permeate the entire District, is a really powerful thing. And that it comes from the teacher’s goals, and the teacher-centered approach really does allow for the bottom-up growth that you’d really hope to be able to see.