Scribd
Upload
43 views

Haskell Instructional Coach Vignette

1) Historically, sheltered instruction for English Learners (ELs) has led to high failure rates and low expectations, but this model shows how a team approach focused on inclusion and collaboration can successfully integrate ELs. 2) The author worked with a team of teachers over 5 years to provide rigorous and accessible instruction to all students through coaching, relationship building, and training. This reversed failure rates for ELs and improved outcomes for other groups. 3) The team met over the summer to plan how to support student engagement and success through culturally sustaining pedagogy and established roles and norms for collaborative teaching and learning. Their process was not perfect but reflection and documenting student success kept them focused

Uploaded by

Hilary Kathryn
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
43 views

Haskell Instructional Coach Vignette

1) Historically, sheltered instruction for English Learners (ELs) has led to high failure rates and low expectations, but this model shows how a team approach focused on inclusion and collaboration can successfully integrate ELs. 2) The author worked with a team of teachers over 5 years to provide rigorous and accessible instruction to all students through coaching, relationship building, and training. This reversed failure rates for ELs and improved outcomes for other groups. 3) The team met over the summer to plan how to support student engagement and success through culturally sustaining pedagogy and established roles and norms for collaborative teaching and learning. Their process was not perfect but reflection and documenting student success kept them focused

Uploaded by

Hilary Kathryn
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Hilary Haskell, EL Instructional Coach, Appleton North High School

Historically, sheltered instruction for English Learners (ELs) has led to high failure
rates and consistent tracking into courses with low expectations, but this doesn’t need
to be the case. Very often, teachers are expected to support newcomers, students with
refugee backgrounds, and ELs in their classrooms without any preparation or support.
Typically, content area teachers are not trained in the kinds of differentiation or
literacy-based instruction that ELs need to succeed, and the thought of successful
integration can seem impossible. However, with a deep level of trust and collaboration
across teaching and administrative teams, a model of inclusion can offer a different
reality. Over the past 5 years I worked with a team of educators who shared a common
and radical vision for EL student success. My content area colleagues and I partnered
through a coaching, team-based setting to provide rigorous, accessible instruction to all
students regardless of language, background knowledge, or dis/ability. This involved
on-the-spot coaching throughout the school year, relationship building, and training
before we entered the classroom together. We were able to not only reverse the failure
rates for EL students, but also increase engagement and success for students with
IEPs, and improve peer relationships across all groups.

Our team of Civics teachers responded to this model with enthusiasm. In


previous years, students with specific learning needs were scheduled into courses
without any additional support or training for the teachers. They now had that dedicated
instructional support. My highest priority was establishing a trusting relationship built on
the shared norms of student engagement and success for all learners. The summer
before we began co-teaching, the team and I spent time dreaming over coffee about the
pride we would feel halfway through the year when students who had never spoken with
their peers before would have the courage and support to make an argument for
legislation supporting DACA. This dreaming led us to discuss the optimal conditions
needed for successful intergroup interactions and to build our classrooms in such a way
that students had many opportunities to form social capital through bonding within and
bridging across identity affinity groups. We set up group work to help students reduce
prejudices and build authentic relationships.

These chats then led into a book study1 as well as a summer seminar when I
modeled hands-on approaches to learning content through a literacy lens as well as
establishing important background for teachers on culturally sustaining pedagogy and
information about ELs. We also reviewed best practices around co-teaching and
collaboration which set our roles and norms as to how we would work as a team to plan,
deliver, and reflect on the teaching and learning in our classrooms. We set goals for
daily instruction such as displaying clear and specific learning objectives, pre-teaching

1
Collaborating for English Learners: A Foundational Guide to integrative practices, Honigsfeld & Dove;
Unlocking English Learners Potential: Strategies for Making Content Accessible, Staehr Fenner & Snyder;
EL Excellence Every Day, Singer; and No More Low Expectations for English Learners, Nora &
Echevarria
vocabulary, monitoring the ratio between teacher and student talk time, and providing
an opportunity for students to show learning.

Once the school year started, we met weekly to write lesson plans, divide and
conquer assignment creation, discuss instructional strategies, and problem solve
sticking points in implementation. I led these discussions as a coach, providing
templates for planning which enabled quality online collaboration and clarified unit
objectives and teaching strategies. I also supported them as an EL teacher to create
differentiated notes, assignments, and projects so that our students had accessible
versions meeting the same learning targets while focusing on language acquisition.

This process was not without difficulties. Our lessons weren’t always perfect. It
took a few weeks to hold students accountable to incorporating daily vocabulary in their
writing while also providing authentic and timely feedback to 120 students. We didn’t hit
every mark we set for ourselves. Sometimes we had to regroup with our level 1 ELs
outside of class to fill in background knowledge. There were days when we were
dismayed by a lack of time to complete projects or when we had to scrap what we came
up with and start over. Despite these setbacks, our consistent reflection and
documentation of student success kept us focused on what was possible for our
beginning ELs as well as our high-achieving native English speakers.

An EL Instructional Coach can not only support individual teachers though daily
co-teaching and lesson modeling, they can also support school-wide teams to dissect
assessment data, address leadership challenges, and look at the school-wide culture of
learning through an equity lens. A coaching model can enable teaching and
administrative staff to move closer to the goal of meeting the needs of all students while
reducing persistent inequities. If we truly seek to transform our classrooms into places
of belonging for all students, we need a flexible and responsive systems-wide approach
that supports teachers in their individual mindset and skillset development and sets
transformative priorities for teaching and learning.

You might also like