Assignment 5.2 Albemarle County Public Schools

Albemarle County Public Schools seem to have a great grasp on how the coaching process and cycle should function in order to be the most successful. They really stress the importance of Phase 1: Establish the Need. Numerous times throughout the video, coaches talked at length about they operate by having the teacher share their needs and questions they have with a coach they feel comfortable with. There are three coaches per school and each coach has three schools they're assigned to, so I think they've done a good job ensuring that everyone can find a good fit and help address Phase 2: Create Partnerships.

Once teachers are partnered with a coach and have identified the need, they then enter Phase 3: Target Differentiated Partnerships. This entails brainstorming together to come up with whatever tool or instructional strategy the teacher would like to implement to address the need identified in Phase 1. Then, the coach can either model that instructional strategy for the teacher or the teacher could implement it and get specific feedback from the coach. Once this has happened, they can then assess the progress (Phase 4) to see if students are making progress towards the goal. Finally, the program ensures that both the teacher and coach are reflecting throughout the process (Phase 5) and sharing their experience with others at various schools to help ideas spread and more significant progress to be made.

My biggest takeaway regarding why this program is so successful is that they are constantly stressing that it is all about the teacher identifying a need and them approaching a coach of their choosing to gain insight for help related to that need. In turn, the teacher's need is always centered on student learning and student-centric ideas. This makes the process much less intimidating and makes it apparent to the teacher that the coaches are there to guide and help, not make judgments. I also like the idea of spreading coaches out across multiple schools and having coaches discourse with each other too about ideas or strategies they've seen at other schools. That seems to lead to great collaboration and the creation of innovative ideas. 

I encourage you all to take about five minutes to view the Albermarle County Public Schools Video below!

Albermarle County Public Schools Instructional Coaching Video