Teaching Profession Resources

This US Department of Education blog focuses on how one Senior High School is approaching supporting continual learning for teachers. Following are key areas identified for school site leaders:

• Empowering teacher leaders to model and support other teachers.
• Identify weaknesses and provide learning opportunities.
• Coaching and mentoring teachers to lead them to success.
• Providing continuous, ongoing professional development.
• Building focused and productive Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) to increase collaboration.

The following systems are put into place at Lehigh Senior High School (Lehigh Acres, Florida):

Common Planning PLCs: Common planning for all teachers of like subject areas. Weekly, educators meet to unpack their standards, create common assessments, share and review data and to create engaging lessons. They work off of shared norms, set goals, talk through challenges and make plans to solve them.

Instructional Leaders: Each department has an instructional coach funded through the Teacher Incentive Fund, TIF Grant. This grant supports recruitment of the most talented teachers to teach half of the time and to coach other educators the remaining time.

Strategy Walks: Monthly, the administration and instructional leaders discuss what areas need support based on classroom visits. Then teachers in the building are identified that can model exceptionally well the teaching strategies that teachers need. Teachers are provided with options to visit classrooms during their planning time and watch the strategies in action.

Targeted Weekly Training: Each week we provide optional training after school on Wednesdays, so that teachers have the opportunity to build skills. During coaching sessions, the administration or instructional leaders may suggest certain opportunities to teachers or teachers may go to engage in learning on their own.

Apples Program: Lehigh SHS has a first-year teacher induction program, called Apples. New teachers “apples” are met with once a month for hands-on professional development. Novice teachers walk out with relevant strategies they can take back to the classroom. Apples are also provided with an experienced mentor teacher who assists them as they build classroom systems and coaches them during their first year.

Coaching: The building leaders function as coaches. The top priority is visiting classrooms frequently and having ongoing discussions about teaching and learning. Whether a new or veteran teacher, all teachers need to experience affirmation and opportunities to grow. Lehigh’s approach is to coach and build trusting relationships with teachers, offering constructive and meaningful feedback.
 

Culture for Learning: Lehigh is an AVID National Demonstration School. Instructional practices are framed around WICOR: Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization and Reading. Teachers work to develop lessons and focus their development around learning content-specific strategies that link to these five areas. Other educators are welcomed to come and learn best practices real time in our classrooms, creating a collaborative culture focused on continual learning.