Content-specific and sustained professional learning is supported in the form of face-to-face and/or virtual professional development with one-on-one follow-up between our Instructional Specialists and teachers within each partnering school. These ongoing relationships allow for more contextualized learning and collaboration to best support educators in meeting the needs of their students. 

Intensive partnerships (2-3 days each week) in which teachers and our instructional coaches engage in weekly collaborative planning, co-teaching and reflection on student data. This format helps teachers to understand the design and intent of their set of curricular materials in an active way while situating all of their professional learning in the relevant context of working with their own students. This format, when paired with PLC’s, can support departments to better understand the incremental learning that takes place within their curriculum.

In-depth lesson planning with course-specific groups of teachers to collaborate on ways in which lessons within your chosen curriculum can best be enacted to support student learning. Our Instructional Specialists partner with teams of teachers to engage in in-depth planning around common lessons, visit classrooms and facilitate evidence-based reflections to support educators in being attentive to and meeting the needs of diverse learners. 

Intensive Summer School partnerships in which teachers and our instructional coaches engage in daily collaborative planning, co-teaching and reflection on student data using a school summer school site and students. This format helps teachers to understand the design and intent of their set of curricular materials in an active way while situating all of their professional learning in the relevant context of working with their own students. 

Learning walks involve groups of teachers observing a peers’ instruction in a non-evaluative manner through the lens of a previously agreed upon goal or practice (i.e. providing opportunities for all students to engage in discourse). Data collection is performed during these walks to support reflection meetings in which educators can discuss which ideas they might change from their own teaching, ideas they thought worked well and ideas from a peer’s room that they would like to incorporate into their own classroom. 

SSC Instructional Specialists can work side by side with school-based coaches to develop knowledge, skills, and mindset around strong mathematics instruction to support teachers implementing goal-focused, student- responsive lessons. This work is job-embedded and targets building the capacity of school-based coaches to use effective coaching strategies to support teachers to plan, implement and debrief high quality instruction. One way we do this is to work closely with school-based coaches to build their capacity to plan for and facilitate deep, specific lesson planning discussions with teachers, collect observational data, and plan for and facilitate debriefing discussions and collaborative goal-setting.

Our Instructional Specialists work with teachers to plan lessons, and are also present to collect evidence and provide educators with in-the-moment feedback. Real-time coaching feedback supports teachers in making immediate adjustments to instruction that will best support students’ mathematical learning. This live, non-disruptive type of support often comes in the form of sidebar conversations (or teacher time out) between the Instructional Specialist and teacher while students grapple with a math task or discuss their mathematical thinking with a partner.