The goal of instructional coaching is to improve classroom instruction for learners and to increase teacher effectiveness. To do this many facets of instruction, relationships, and technology must be considered. These include a basic understanding of technology tools, exploration, an awareness of coaching models, and an understanding of diversity, equity, and cultural competence. But most importantly, it entails melding those things with the needs of your coachees and school district.    Throughout the course, you will create a needs assessment to identify gaps in which teachers may grow, design a plan to improve partnerships, increase student success, and reflect using a digital product – like the ones you will learn about and practice as a coach. Read more

Instructional coaches act as change agents by supporting teachers as they grow in their professional skills. Effective coaching encourages personal growth through questioning, goal-setting, observation, and reflection. Coaching in a virtual environment requires that both the coach and the coachee commit to working in this new environment. As an instructional coach, you can leverage digital tools to impact teachers and students alike. Through this course, you will capitalize on your current skill set as you move your coaching to the virtual environment. Read more

In this course, you will explore making the transition from teacher to teacher leader. You will also survey the foundational beliefs of coaching in the context of education, data-driven decisions, assessments, communication, collaboration, and using coaching models. Read more

In this course, you will explore research-based strategies for coaching and developing teams. You will coach teams and team leaders. You will also develop activities that align with the organizational goals. Read more

This course is for anyone building, leading, or facilitating teams and for those who hope to build the capacity of others to do so. This is for instructional coaches, professional learning community facilitators, grade-level leads, data team coaches, department heads, committee leads, and anyone else in a formal leadership position.  This course could be considered the companion to the Introduction to Coaching Course, since it expands on many of the approaches described for working one-on-one with another educator; for this reason, it is determined as a prerequisite before diving into the Leadership Developing Course. Read more

The Strategies for Effective Conversations Course was written with the goal that we can coach ourselves to improve our communication skills; therefore, you will have an opportunity to learn and implement the strategies for effective conversations described in this course. In order to do this, first, you will read and analyze the key elements of each strategy, then decide how you would like to implement it during a subsequent conversation. During this process, we highly suggest video recording your conversations and then analyzing your videos using some guiding questions that will help you to organize your thoughts while explaining your rationale as a way to reflect about the implementation and learning process. Read more