Coaching for Effective Teaching
Effective coaching can help schools maintain lasting excellence for all Michigan learners. With the current press for accountability in education, the need for professional conversation is essential to have teachers who successfully navigate the complexities of instruction, the heart of teaching and learning. It is in this arena that Coaching for Effective Teaching makes its’ greatest contribution. Coaching for Effective Teaching is a model that teaches coaches how to use specific skills of active listening to intentionally influence teachers’ thinking to impact their instruction.
District Support for Flint Community Schools
Through a grant from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, MSU’s Office of K-12 Outreach is supporting rapid district turnaround in the Flint Community Schools (FCS). In partnership with district leaders, MSU K-12 Outreach has deployed an experienced cadre of MSU faculty, principal coaches, and experienced urban practitioners to help the FCS support students with a strong focus on building early childhood collaborative partnerships and grade and building-level transitions.
In addition, MSU K-12 Outreach is assisting the FCS in implementing a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) framework and the community schools initiative to engage students and educators in a common culture focused on the student and family. MSU K-12 Outreach is helping FCS lay the foundations for future improvement and build the capacity of educators to sustain these improvements.
MSU Detroit
The MSU Office of K-12 Outreach maintains a team of veteran educators in Detroit who support the work of improving student achievement in the schools of Detroit and the surrounding areas. Working with partners like the Skillman Foundation and Detroit Public Schools Improvement Grants, MSU K-12 Outreach offers leadership coaching, data support services, and on-site services to area schools in several counties in the east and west counties around Detroit. New in 2015 is MSU’s delivery of a literacy initiative designed to improve reading competencies for adolescent students who are reading well below grade level.
Fellowship of Instructional Leaders
The Fellowship is designed using an evidence-based model to broaden and transform leadership within schools while directly addressing each school’s challenges. School leadership teams, comprised of the principal and teacher-leaders, meet throughout the school year based on their schedules and for a summer institute to work with MSU K-12 Outreach to learn practical strategies and approaches for:
- Leading turnaround and addressing low achievement in their schools with the goal of improving student achievement;
- Fostering excellence and leadership within their own teaching staffs;
- Improving daily classroom instruction and collaboration.
Since 2007, more than 1,600 teachers and principals from across Michigan have participated in the Fellowship of Instructional Leaders program. The Fellowship experience increases the capacity of principals and instructional leaders to improve all aspects of the instructional core – content being taught, the knowledge and skills of teachers, and student engagement.
The instructional core is part of MSU’s framework of instructional program coherence shown by research to be a primary characteristic of schools with significant and sustained student achievement.
The Fellowship of Instructional Leaders draws upon the extensive resources of the MSU College of Education, including faculty with the state, national, and international expertise. These faculty specialize in urban education, leadership development, teacher quality, and effective instruction, literacy and mathematics instruction, special education and inclusion, educational technology, curriculum alignment, assessment and data analysis, comprehensive school reform, and student and family support. Two independent research evaluations demonstrate that the Fellowship increases the capacity of school leadership teams to transform their own schools.