Dallas ISD/IFL Network for School Improvement: Lessons Learned

Dallas ISD/IFL Network for School Improvement: Lessons Learned

The Dallas ISD/IFL Network for School Improvement has been working together for the past five years to improve 9th grade on-track literacy for college and career readiness for African American and Hispanic students, as well as those in living in poverty. In our first article, we shared a little about the work we’ve done with teachers to understand the problems of practice in ELA in DISD schools; how we’ve partnered with teachers to enact instructional changes; and how those changes have had an impact on student achievement. In this article, we share a little about the lessons we’ve learned about coaching for improvement, developing instructional coherence, and adaptive integration.

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Remote Coaching for Rigorous and Engaging Online Classroom Discussions: Layering New Forums with Fresh Insights

Remote Coaching for Rigorous and Engaging Online Classroom Discussions: Layering New Forums with Fresh Insights

Coaches have a critical role in assisting teachers in continuing, rather than abandoning, important pedagogies while teaching online. Read about what is being learned through ongoing research at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center on how coaches can support teachers remotely to engage students in rigorous and interactive online discussions.

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Principals Leading with a Coaching Lens

Principals Leading with a Coaching Lens

Before becoming building principals, we were instructional coaches, each of us having coached either mathematics or ELA. Instruction was always the focus of our coaching work. After several years as principals, we realized that though supporting teaching and learning was a component of our work, it was no longer the focus. Once we came to that realization, we knew that we needed to make some changes.

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Supporting Coaches to Lead Change Efforts at Their Schools

Supporting Coaches to Lead Change Efforts at Their Schools

As part of the Networks for School Improvement (NSI) work, I’ve been working directly with 8th grade coaches and their grade-level professional learning community (PLC) teams in the Dallas Independent School District (ISD) to understand and use two protocols that first work to honor the knowledge and day-to-day lived experiences that teachers bring with them to their PLCs, and then ask teachers to critically reflect on classroom experiences and student work to increase professional knowledge and enhance student learning (Vescio, Ross, & Adams, 2008).

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Conferring with Teachers & Coaches Requires Setting Clear Learning Goals

Conferring with Teachers & Coaches Requires Setting Clear Learning Goals

Conferring with teachers in advance of observing a lesson is a critical component of the Content-Focused Coaching® (CFC) cycle. These “pre-conferences” are opportunities for the coach and the teacher to reflect together about a teacher’s lesson plan, and thus are a rich opportunity for teacher learning. Lesson planning is specifically important for facilitating rigorous Accountable Talk® classroom discussions.

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A District’s Perspective: CFC and Differentiation

A District’s Perspective: CFC and Differentiation

Coaching, at its best, bolsters district goals while supporting individual needs, gracefully weaving coherence and differentiation into a tapestry of continuous learning. With Content-Focused Coaching® (CFC), both the culture and the instruction are positioned to evolve in ever-increasing complexity through the interdependence of people—coaches supporting teachers through individual conferring and teachers supporting one another during PLCs that are truly collaborative pursuits.

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Coaching Moves Practice

Coaching Moves Practice

Recently, the Institute for Learning was selected to bring its expertise and extensive experience with instructional coaching to mathematics educators in the state of Tennessee. More specifically, IFL provided instruction around coaching moves that support high-quality teaching, resulting in improved student learning.

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Building a Coaching Model that Works

Building a Coaching Model that Works

Through a three-year Institute of Education Sciences (IES) grant with the TN Department of Education, the Institute for Learning (IFL) and researchers at the Learning Research and Development Center explored and studied coaching in mathematics.

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