This document provides three scenarios in which instructional coaches are faced with challenges. For each scenario this document depicts how coaches can use Edthena to more efficiently provide feedback to teachers, facilitate teacher collaboration, and even organize materials submitted by the teachers.
For more information on how to create Explorations, click here.
For more information on what an Exploration is, click here.
Scenario 1: Regular Feedback Cycles
Charlie works with a cohort of teachers and has a regularly scheduled, monthly in-person observation with each. As part of the post-observation conversation, Charlie and the teacher agree on a priority strategy to implement in the classroom. Charlie asks teachers to put the strategy into practice within two weeks.
Charlie wants to observe the attempts to implement the strategies, but the demands of his ongoing observations make this challenging. His teachers report being frustrated that they don’t get feedback on their attempts to change their instructional practice.
>> Without Edthena
In order to do a follow-up observation, Charlie spends several hours trying to map out when he can return to the teachers’ classrooms outside the normal observation schedule. He supports several schools. This makes being in the right place at the right time very challenging. Because of limited time, he finds himself having to prioritize a small subset of his teachers for a follow-up observation.
>> With Edthena
Charlie asks all teachers to upload video of their attempts to implement the priority strategy for his feedback.
Scenario 2: Peer Observation and Collaboration
Tammy is a content team leader at her school. Amongst her team of science teachers, she wants to foster collaboration by having her teachers observe and provide feedback to each other.
>> Without Edthena
Tammy’s teachers generally teach at the same time, and to observe each other in action they need to find coverage for their classes. Forcing teachers to leave their classes also disrupts learning.
Making things more challenging, the support staff at Tammy’s school is small and already stretched thin. They can only cover a teacher’s class for a short period of time, limiting the length of the teachers’ observations of each other.
>> With Edthena
Tammy asks the teachers to upload videos of their teaching along with lesson plans as part of an Exploration. Tammy also requests the teachers comment on their teammates’ videos. Tammy’s team can now collaborate without ever having to leave their classrooms.
Scenario 3: Document Collection and Review
Susan works with 25 teachers and needs to provide feedback on a series of documents from each.
>> Without Edthena
To collect these documents, Susan typically sends an email to all her teachers, and then, from their scattered responses, collects and assembles all those documents locally on her computer.
>> With Edthena
Susan creates an Exploration that enables her teachers to submit these documents. She's then able to review and provide feedback on each document all within the same platform.
Scenario 4: Example Analysis
Ryan is a grade-level team-leader at his school. He noticed that some of the teachers on his team use only one or two techniques to respond to student misbehaviors. He wants to help them add more strategies to their practice. He also believes that by standardizing management techniques across the grade level, it will lead to classrooms that are easier to manage overall.
>> Without Edthena
Ryan discusses two specific strategies with the teachers in their grade-level meeting. He spends thirty minutes describing the strategies and answering the teachers’ questions.
Because there are additional questions, the conversation ultimately consumes the entire team meeting.
As a result of how long this takes, Ryan has to skip other important items he’d planned to discuss during the meeting. Additionally, he is not convinced that the teachers on his team have a shared vision on how to implement the strategies starting the following week.
>> With Edthena
Ryan creates an Exploration and includes a video of several veteran teachers executing the strategy as Example Analysis. Ryan briefly introduces the new strategy in the grade-level meeting, and then asks for the teachers on his team to comment on the videos before the end of the week.
Ryan is alerted when each teacher finishes, and has a chance to provide individualized feedback to each teacher. Now he can ensure everyone on the team gets the coaching he or she needs to confidently implement the strategy in the classroom.
