School Improvement, Instructional Coaching and Customized Professional Development Through Our Equitable Instruction for All™ Framework

Equitable Instruction for All™ is an instructional framework that is robust in its learning outcomes across disciplines and grade/age levels of students. It is a coherent program of pedagogical strategies.

Equitable Instruction for All™ targets equity and, in particular, three ideas:

1. All students are smart

2. Issues of Status, who is perceived as smart and who is not, interfere with students’ participation and learning

3. It is teachers’ responsibility to provide all students with opportunities to reveal how they are smart and develop/recognize new ways of being smart.

Student Engagement Strategies

Alphabet Brainstorming
Anticipation Reaction Guide
Chalk Talk
Collaborative Poster
Consensus Board
Helping Curriculum
Say Something
Shaping Up Summary (A)
Shaping Up Summary (B)
Silent Gallery Walk
Silent Interview
Sketch to Stretch

Vocabulary Strategies

Alphabet Brainstorming
Flyswatter Vocabulary
Generative Sentences
Grouping Cards
Hot Seat Vocabulary
Rate That Word
Text Impressions
TIP Charts
Vocabulary Graffiti
Vocabulary Link
Vocabulary Race

Our process for building and sustaining a district-wide equitable instruction plan takes place in three distinct phases:

Phase One: Needs
Assessment Audit

Phase Two: Creating & Building the Blueprint Plan

During this phase, we conduct a Needs Assessment Audit to determine the current implementation of district instructional goals, programs, practices, policies and procedures. This includes meeting with all stakeholders such as the Superintendent, the Superintendent’s cabinet, principals, teachers, students and parents.

The audit pinpoints where the district currently is in order to then implement a process of organized relinquishment of ineffective instructional practices, policies, programs and procedures in order to meet the district’s new instructional foci and goals.

Classroom

Students Working

During this phase, a blueprint of programs, practices, policies and procedures is written to align with the student achievement foci based on the analysis of the data from the audit. A process of systemic relinquishment is used to design the desired structure based on the new district foci for equitable student achievement. This phase involves district and school-level teams, including the Superintendents’ cabinet, students, teachers and parents.

Phase Three: Implementing the Blueprint Plan:

This stage involves a district level "Roll-out" of the blueprint. This phase is the longest and most difficult, and ultimately the most crucial. This phase includes school and district leadership teams that include teacher leaders, instructional coaches, principals and district administration that engage in targeted professional development in order to implement and sustain the new blueprint plan.

Our Equitable Instruction for All™ instructional framework is used during this phase.

Increased Pedagogical Skills Through Our Professional Development Framework

Graduation

STAR Graduation

Research has shown that professional development focused on reforming individual teachers or administrators is not very effective when the goals for change require a cultural shift in both beliefs and practices. However, learning communities have been shown to have a profound impact on student and teacher learning alike. In these communities, participants find reinforcement for their beliefs and collectively generate teaching practices. Our framework for professional development learning includes activities that support teacher teams and instructional coaching teams as well as individuals. Activities vary in structure, but they are connected by common objectives, language, and practices that intellectually feed teachers and instructional leader communities.

Our professional learning activities are all mutually reinforcing components in the difficult work of “re-culturing” teaching to significantly improve student achievement. Each component contributes to an interconnected web of support to move instructional staff away from hierarchical and exclusive ideas about ability and the cultural norms of teacher isolation, toward the collaboration and inclusion that create access to rich learning for all students. Our framework includes the following professional learning activities:

30 Hour Professional Learning Institute Using Our Equitable Instruction for All™ Instructional Framework
Research Based Student Engagement Strategies
Follow-Up On-Site Instructional Coaching Support
Feedback & Formative Assessment Learning
Peer Observations/Lesson Studies
Professional Learning Community Support
Cross-Site Professional Development, Collaboration & Video Club
Collaboration Days with Coaches, Principal and District Instructional Leadership

Professional Development Workshops

Our on and off-site customized professional development workshops include working with both administrators and teachers and are tailored to meet the needs of the school, district or individual educator. On-the-ground workshops are highly interactive allowing teachers and administrators to collaborate with each other and to experience each strategy as both students and professionals.

Online re-certification modules allow the busy educator to be in charge of their own professional learning and time from the comfort of their homes.

Some of the professional development that we provide on-ground and online include:

Accountable Talk
AP/IB Cambridge Classes
Cognitive Demand/Rigor
Content Area Literacy Development
Differentiated Instruction
Feedback & Formative Assessment
Gradual Release of Responsibility Modes of Instruction
Groupworthy Tasks
Growth Mindsets
Instructional Leadership

Instructional Technology
Literacy Rich Classrooms
Low Floor & High Ceiling Tasks
Positive Discipline Practices
Problematizing Learning
Productive Failure
Productive Group Work
Professional Learning Communities
Project Based Learning
Purposeful & Flexible Student Groupings

Purposeful Classrooms
Response to Intervention
School Systems & Culture
Status Interventions
STEM Education
Teacher/Student Relationships
Tier 2 & Tier 3 Vocabulary Development
Using Data to Make Instructional Decisions