In Their Own Words, Stories from the Field

In Their Own Words, Stories from the Field

Oct 11, 2022 | ,

Here we are mid-October and the excitement and nerves that come with a fresh school year have given way to the joy that grows out of learning and the comfort from predictable classroom routines.
As teachers move further into the year, we wanted to create space to share some of their stories. We reached out to educators and posed the following to questions to get their thoughts.
• What led you to education?
• What goals do you have for the work you do?
• How does your work reflect you?
The following are excerpts from several responses. We invite you to read, pause, celebrate, and reflect on their stories.

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“Esto Si lo Puedo Hacer!”: Creating Opportuinities for Success when Teaching Academic Vocabulary in Mathematics

“Esto Si lo Puedo Hacer!”: Creating Opportuinities for Success when Teaching Academic Vocabulary in Mathematics

Mar 1, 2022 | ,

Too often we hear the suggestion to pre-teach math terms to multilingual students, an action that prefences memorization over meaning making. Though well intended, this approach limits opportunities for students to engage in sense making of the mathematical concepts and relationships they are studying. There is a better and more equitable way! This article shares four pedalogical choices that foster student success in the math classroom while positioning multilingual learners as leaders.

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Raising the Score: Structuring a school for a student-centered math intervention program

Raising the Score: Structuring a school for a student-centered math intervention program

Nov 16, 2021 | , ,

Changing the system changes the outcomes is the premise by which one school approached reorganizing their resources to maximize mathematics interventions. This meant getting everyone on board to increase and improve mathematical understanding for all learners. This article is the second of a two-part series the explores one school’s efforts to change their system of mathematics intervention to better meet the needs of every student (and every teacher) across all tiers of instruction.

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Letting The Students’ Work Lead: Designing a student-centered math intervention program

Letting The Students’ Work Lead: Designing a student-centered math intervention program

Nov 2, 2021 | ,

If you want the results to be different, then you must do things in a different way. For one school, this meant taking a hard look at the types of opportunities provided to students to think and reason about mathematics across tiers of instruction. They knew that wanting to increase and improve mathematical understanding for all learners, meant systemic changes related to the instructional materials, teaching practices, and school scheduling. It also meant that everyone had to be on board! This article is the first of a two-part series that explores one school’s efforts to change their system of mathematics intervention to better meet the needs of every student (and every teacher) across all tiers of instruction.

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Building Allyship Among Educators

Building Allyship Among Educators

Mar 30, 2021 |

As educators our goals are to inspire, motivate, and empower the students we interact with every day. Can any of these goals be truly accomplished when we have educators in our schools that feel disenfranchised, alone, and unsupported by their colleagues? Becoming an effective educational ally is a journey that requires substantial self-reflection, a strong sense of self-identity, and a willingness to step up and advocate for a colleague.

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Mathematical Representations: A Window into Student Thinking

Mathematical Representations: A Window into Student Thinking

Mar 2, 2021 |

Representations are windows into student thinking and reasoning. In a time of virtual classrooms, using visual representations is more complex, but as important as ever. If a teacher values students’ thinking, they need to consider how to make it possible for all students to represent that thinking. This article addresses the use of representations and the questions that help students connect representations to deepen understanding of math concepts.

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IFL Partner Captures Connecticut Superintendent of the Year Award

IFL Partner Captures Connecticut Superintendent of the Year Award

Feb 16, 2021 |

Dr. Paul Freeman, a life-long educator and long-time partner with the IFL, was recently recognized as Connecticut’s Superintendent of the Year. In this article, he reflects on his career and the choices that lead to a more inclusive learning environment. He also recognizes dedicated work of teachers and the whole school community to move toward a more equitable system.

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A New Take on the Learning Walk® Routine to Get Smarter About Teaching and Learning in the Cloud

A New Take on the Learning Walk® Routine to Get Smarter About Teaching and Learning in the Cloud

Oct 6, 2020 |

Many school districts have moved to virtual or hybrid models of instruction and we recognize that using the typical Learning Walk routine, which asks district and school leaders to visit classrooms and provide targeted feedback, doesn’t quite fit in a virtual space. However, we also recognize the need to continue to support district leaders in helping teachers provide high-quality instruction to every student.

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Principals Leading with a Coaching Lens

Principals Leading with a Coaching Lens

Jun 8, 2020 |

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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The Principles of Learning in Action

The Principles of Learning in Action

Feb 17, 2020 |

The Guilford Public Schools’ vision is that of a professional learning community where instruction invites effort and supports academic rigor for all students and educators. To that end, our daily work in classrooms is rooted in and supported by the Principles of Learning (POLs).

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Using Student-Centered Classroom Routines to Improve Comprehension of Complex Texts

Using Student-Centered Classroom Routines to Improve Comprehension of Complex Texts

Feb 17, 2020 |

The Networks for School Improvement (NSI) work taking place among Dallas ISD (DISD), the Institute for Learning, the University of Pittsburgh School of Education Center for Urban Education, and the Learning Research and Development Center, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has largely focused efforts on improving instructional rigor, providing better supports for English language learners, and improving cultural relevance.

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Implementing Accountable Talk® discussions in math

Implementing Accountable Talk® discussions in math

Aug 25, 2019 |

“It definitely makes my heart smile when I hear a teacher say, ‘I just stopped what I was doing because the student knew more than I did and just took over!’ or ‘I began to feel frustrated because we were not able to work through the content the way that I originally planned, but I learned so much about what they know and have experienced by re-framing some of my questioning and allowing them to create the questions too.

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Increasing High-Quality Student Talk

Increasing High-Quality Student Talk

Aug 25, 2019 |

The Institute for Learning (IFL) and Schenectady City School District have worked collaboratively for several years, and this year, we continued our ongoing partnership with a focus on using improvement science methodology to “get better at getting better.” District-wide, there is a focus on using improvement science to work on persistent problems of practice.

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Differentiation Across Tiers of Math Instruction

Differentiation Across Tiers of Math Instruction

Apr 25, 2019 |

What does it mean to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of every learner in a mathematics classroom? Giving different students different tasks does not yield a common learning experience; therefore, the availability of holding rich mathematical conversations with the whole class is lacking.

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District Uses Improvement Science Principles to Increase Math Scores

District Uses Improvement Science Principles to Increase Math Scores

Apr 25, 2019 |

When a district successfully shifts their trajectory of students’ performance, many people ask how they did it. New Brunswick Public Schools’ use of strategic decision-making, grounded in improvement science principles, and greater collaboration across role groups resulted in impressive gains in mathematics scores across the district.

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A District’s Perspective: CFC and Differentiation

A District’s Perspective: CFC and Differentiation

Apr 25, 2019 |

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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Working Toward Rigor: Implementing High-Level Math Tasks

Working Toward Rigor: Implementing High-Level Math Tasks

Feb 24, 2019 |

Designing for academic rigor in a thinking classroom starts with the choice of task with which students will engage. Likewise when striving to improve student achievement, we ask our school partners to begin by analyzing the tasks students experience. If we want students to truly understand mathematics, as opposed to a series of tricks, sayings, and acronyms, then we have to ensure they have a regular diet of high-level tasks that require thinking and reasoning about mathematics.

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Searching for the Root Cause: An interview with Bridget Goree, NSI Coordinator for North Dallas High School

Searching for the Root Cause: An interview with Bridget Goree, NSI Coordinator for North Dallas High School

Feb 9, 2019 |

Campus Network for School Improvement (NSI) coordinators learn to discover and understand the root causes of a problem of practice and find that understanding the problem takes time and requires a cultural shift. In this interview, Bridget Goree, an instructional coach at North Dallas High School, shares her own experience learning to approach this work. She discusses three considerations—what to stop doing, what is important to do, and what they are learning to build.

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Math, a Journey of Understanding

Math, a Journey of Understanding

Dec 24, 2018 |

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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PDSA Cycles Reveal Hard Truths About Deep Science Instruction

PDSA Cycles Reveal Hard Truths About Deep Science Instruction

Dec 24, 2018 |

Paterson Public School’s Guiding Coalition, a working group in academic services composed of content area senior staff, began its journey with improvement science in the fall of 2016. As we examined the various issues that we faced in curriculum and instruction, one flash point was the extraordinarily low state achievement test scores in science on the Grade 8 and high school biology assessments.

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Building a Coaching Model that Works

Building a Coaching Model that Works

Oct 24, 2018 |

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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