Instructional Coach

Assabet Valley Collaborative is seeking to hire a Culturally Responsive/Student Driven Instructional Coach at Orchard Street Academy

Note:

Before you read on, please read the Commitments to Educational Equity that AVC strives to adopt across our organization. We seek to add leaders to our team who can help us make these commitments a reality so that they influence how we lead, learn, innovate, design, collaborate, create, and serve our students, families, partners, and communities. Still interested? See below:

Assabet Valley Collaborative (AVC) is a Metrowest/Central Massachusetts educational service agency. Our services include school programs (including Orchard Street Academy, see below), wraparound services, transportation services, professional development, cooperative purchasing, and consulting. We are in the process of developing a shared leadership model to engage stakeholders across the organization in learning, leading, designing, and decision-making. To achieve shared leadership, we need to engage in continuous study of the principles of cultural proficiency, culturally responsive practices, human-centered design, design thinking, and social innovation.

AVC's Orchard Street Academy (OSA) is a small public therapeutic school (grades 6th-12th). OSA’s programming includes academics, individual and group counseling, art and music therapy, a range of high-interest electives, and community development seminars.

• Serves 62 students from more than 30 sending school districts.
• All students receive specialized services through Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).
• Students are enrolled in OSA and/or SOAR extended evaluation programs.
• Classes taken at OSA transfer as a credit to sending school districts.
• Well known for our focus on Expressive Therapies (music, art, drama).
• The building is old but with amenities - gymnasium, track, basketball court, music room, art room.
• Many faculty have had access to training in Cultural Proficiency, Restorative Justice, Shared Leadership, Trauma-Informed Care, Healing and Wellness, and Student-driving/Student-centered Learning.
• A few faculty have had access to training in Culturally Responsive Teaching and Deep Learning.
• Despite commitments to equity, OSA continues to reproduce many inequitable outcomes: limited staff diversity; disparities in student outcomes (by gender, race, sexual orientation, income level, disability type, etc.); and inconsistent family engagement in need of strengthening.
• AVC and OSA are seeking leaders to support continued transformation and redesign for teaching and learning.

The Instructional Coach serves as a leader and as a learner: a team member who is flexible, resourceful, thrives in a fast-paced, non-traditional, collaborative environment, and who understands educational and human service institutions. This person demonstrates a learning and collaborative mindset and the ability to receive feedback, self-reflect, and adapt, as well as an ability to effectively facilitate the learning of others by pushing their thinking, building their skills, and sparking their self-reflection and curiosity.

This role includes direct and indirect support of students, staff, and caregivers.

The primary role of the Instructional Coach is to support an increase in educational outcomes for historically underrepresented students; provide information and a culturally responsive curriculum; serve as a resource to others; develop professional learning opportunities; and achieve defined objectives by planning, evaluating, developing, implementing, and maintaining services in compliance with established guidelines. This is a non-evaluative role; however, accountability through giving and receiving feedback is an essential function.

It’s also important to note that we are a small community, and it’s crucial that every member of our team is comfortable wearing many hats, including some administrative, hands-on, and detail-related responsibilities.

• Provide coaching, teaching, and learning for/with all members of our community–teachers, para educators, clinicians, nurses, BCBAs, SLP, OT, and co-directors–using the Culturally Responsive Teaching model with adults.
• Co-create and share in the responsibility of the development and implementation of culturally responsive pedagogy and curriculum for the purpose of strengthening curricular and instructional expertise to advance educational equity.
• Analyzes and utilizes student academic data for the purpose of developing or co-developing appropriate curriculum and guiding instructional conversations.
• Supports the redesign of our daily schedule for student-centered learning.
• Collaborates on the development of student-centered data systems that redefine how and what we measure and define as meaningful data.
• Analyze and surface the personal, interpersonal, and instructional barriers that contribute to harmful outcomes for our students.
• Understands and identifies barriers in classroom…