Instructional Coach-Decatur High School

Instructional Coach

The Instructional Coach's job is to build the capacity of CSD teachers to consistently deliver engaging, culturally responsive, relevant, and challenging instruction to students that results in achieving positive academic and social-emotional learning growth. Instructional coaches accomplish this goal through coaching teachers' standards-based, data-driven instruction, purposeful instructional planning, culturally-responsive praxis, and professional learning designed to ensure all teachers master practices outlined in the CSD Instructional Framework.

Instructional coaches accomplish this goal through coaching teachers' standards-based, data-driven instruction, purposeful instructional planning, culturally-responsive praxis, and professional learning designed to ensure all teachers master practices outlined in the CSD Instructional Framework.

Instruction:

• Sets measurable goals, in partnership with each teacher, for each coaching cycle.
• Provides on-going content/curriculum-specific coaching using a structured coaching cycle (e.g., observations, student data analysis, debrief, practice/modeling, follow-up).
• Identifies and models the highest-leverage teacher skills and action steps to focus coaching.
• Supports teachers in implementing components of the school's instructional framework of EL, International Baccalaureate (IB), or other reform models.
• Utilizes a diverse range of culturally-responsive coaching strategies (co-teaching, co-planning, modeling, scripted practice, lesson internalization, data-analysis, etc.) to effectively develop teacher skill and accelerate student achievement.
• Links the work of PLCs to coaching (e.g., observing agreed upon next steps from PLC meeting, providing feedback on instructional practice discussed with PLC members).
• Collaborates with the district Teaching and Learning Team and other Instructional Coaches to promote consistency of educational experiences.
• Provides induction support for teachers in their first three years of teaching.
• Collaborates with peers, administrators, and district leaders to plan, organize, manage and evaluate culturally-responsive instructional materials.
• Participates in the planning of school budgets.
• Assists teachers in implementing modifications and accommodations.
• Interacts in a professional manner with all Local Education Agency (LEA) stakeholders.
• Models use of oral and written language that matches professional expectations.

Curriculum & Assessment:

• Builds the capacity of teachers to plan for, gather and utilize high-quality data to inform teaching and re-teaching during the lesson (e.g., establishing monitoring pathways, administering high-quality checks for understanding).
• Builds the capacity of teachers to gather, analyze and utilize formative and summative data to inform teaching, scaffolding, and re-teaching after assessments (e.g., collaboratively reviewing daily exit ticket data to identify common student misconceptions and plan re-teach, co-analyzing end of unit assessment data to identify trends and specific strategies by student sub-groups).
• Links data-analysis trends and next steps from PLC meetings to daily instruction via observation and high-quality feedback.
• Builds the capacity of teachers to strategically prepare and plan for upcoming units/modules (e.g., using end of unit student assessment with teacher to proactively plan for student misconceptions, deconstruct standards, calendar lessons, decolonize curriculum, integrate SEL competencies, and build in time for re-teaching).
• Builds the capacity of teachers to intellectually prepare and plan for upcoming lessons (e.g., using exit ticket with teacher to proactively plan for misconceptions, create/deconstruct lesson objectives, create/modify/decolonize curricular resources, rehearse challenging portions of the lesson, and execute daily lesson planning protocol).
• Facilitates grade-level/department PLC meetings, ensuring that all teachers actively deepen content knowledge and knowledge of culturally-responsive curriculum/curricular resources.
• Facilitates or actively participates in instructional planning (unit or lesson), data analysis, skill building or other PLC structures that aligns with district initiatives and improves student outcomes.
• Supports the administrative staff by serving as a building resource in support of a culturally-responsive, standards based learning environment.

Students:

• Supports teachers in planning effective differentiation for all students, including students in specific programs such as Special Education, ESOL, GIfted, EIP, Title 1.
• Builds the capacity of teachers to openly address racist comments, jokes, or actions of students and create learning opportunities from them (this includes comments that negatively represent gender and other "isms").
• Builds the capacity of teachers to interrupt instructional practices that produce dependent learners. (E.g. engaging students in the development of cognitive skills and habits of mind that result in higher-order knowledge…