At conferences and in trainings across the country, I hear from coaches who are nervous; they need to support teachers in developing Instructional Support skills, but doubt the depth of their own Instructional Support knowledge. This is a common situation and Teachstone has online learning experiences to help!
Firstly, don’t lose confidence in your skills as a coach. Instructional Support is tough; many of us didn’t encounter effective Instructional Support when we were students ourselves so we often don’t have great models. You can deepen your own understanding and nurture your teachers’ use of Instructional Support at the same time.
We recommend a two-pronged approach: Instructional Support Strategies for teachers and coaches. We’ve created a teacher program that builds on teachers’ own experiences, demonstrates video of real teachers practicing Instructional Support, and provides concrete strategies for use in the classroom. A complementary program for coaches both deepens coaches’ knowledge of Instructional Support and uses modeling and reflection on videos of real teachers and coaches to promote coaching skills specific to Instructional Support.
Some of the specific ways in which the ISS teacher and coach programs complement each other are:
- Teachers learn to use the when/then strategy in ISS-Teacher; coaches learn to facilitate the when/then strategy in ISS. Coaches use their knowledge to support teachers in extending use of this strategy to additional objectives, times of day, and areas of the classroom.
- On-demand access to specific indicators allows coaches and teachers to target indicators of focus. Coaches may request that teachers preview content prior to a teacher-coach conference focused on introducing a new indicator. Coaches may also suggest content as follow-up to observational feedback.
- Teachers create goals within the program and can email these directly to a coach for support and motivation.
So if you’re concerned about your own Instructional Support knowledge, but want to get started promoting this knowledge with teachers right away, the Instructional Support package for teacher and coaches may be right for you.
