Sustainable Capacity Building

Sustainable
Capacity Building

On a monthly basis, instructional coaches are brought together, along with their Assistant Principal/Dean and/or Lead Teacher, depending on the school, to deepen learning and implementation of the core systems involved in significant impact for adult practice and student results. These full day sessions dive into unit planning; backwards mapping assessments to identity instructional and formative assessment needs; and data analysis to calibrate the leaders on mastery and how to drive instruction afterward. The purpose is to build capacity within a distributed leadership model, ensuring priorities communicated by the principal are echoed and reinforced from all corners of leadership. Instructional coaches have a unique role to play in school transformation situations. Their side-by-side work with teachers, while also being privy to the strategy and keys to unlock dramatic and lasting results, means many more teachers are reached than by the principal alone.

As with any learning experience, a gradual release of responsibility ensures the learner has had the necessary support in place before they fly solo. With Instructional Coaches this can take various forms. It may be that the Consultant builds capacity by co-planning with the teacher, because there is already some strong practice but some adjustments are needed. Or, the teacher may need it modeled with her/his students before they can give it a try. Or, a leader may be ready to start implementing, so they would benefit from observation and feedback to know what is working effectively and what pinpointed areas would positively shift results. Or maybe co-leading a lesson planning session would be best, so they can understand in real time the shifts to make. In other words, The Impact Team shows up to support all leaders who coach teachers as they need us to – as with good teaching, we are responsive to each leader’s growing edge.

The benefits of our ‘analytic partner’ approach are that it is both cost-efficient and leverages existing roles in the school, building the capacity of all instructional leaders. By working closely in leaders’ contexts, Consultants help create enduring change and develop their metacognition and sense of efficacy, as coaches understand how to become better instructional leaders and how to work with various types of educators for a positive culture that gets results.