Feedback is essential for learning and a key component of career-long growth. Tailoring feedback formats is important to meet educators' unique needs and stages of development. Drawing on the authors' professional practice, three categories of feedback are defined and illustrated: (1) rapid response formats; (2) moderate engagement formats; and…

After several years of operating in crisis mode, many teachers are feeling exhausted and burned out. More than ever, they need to feel appreciated, valued, and respected to be resilient in the face of ongoing stress. One of the best ways to show appreciation for teachers is to value their professional growth and provide support to address their…

How would instruction and student learning improve if educators made the time to really understand and practice a new curriculum before implementing it in classrooms with students? In Orange County, California, educators are finding out by testing an approach of preimplementation professional learning for a full year before applying a new…

A school is much more than a collection of individual classrooms. Fostering a collaborative and learning-oriented culture can improve teachers' and students' success. In model classrooms, teachers who have participated in professional learning open their classroom doors and agree to have others observe as they work to integrate the targeted new…

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are crucial facilitators of undergraduate education, yet many begin their teaching appointments with minimal knowledge of teaching practices. Chemistry Instructional Coaching offers GTAs at the University of Michigan an opportunity to develop their instructional practice through a collaborative, nonevaluative,…

For teachers and coaches, co-teaching can be exciting, rewarding, and full of powerful learning. It offers teachers supported experiences to apply new knowledge in their own contexts, exemplifying active engagement in job-embedded professional learning. Co-teaching requires the coach and teacher to make continuous, intentional decisions about how…

Behavior skills training (BST) with ongoing coaching is an effective form of professional development that creates sustained educator practice change and improves student outcomes. We provide a model for how BST can be used to improve the implementation of evidence-based practices with both teachers and paraprofessionals, the latter of whom often…

In the third edition of this longtime bestseller, nationally recognized education leader Kim Marshall offers a framework for supervisors who want to motivate and inspire their colleagues and bring more good teaching to more classrooms more of the time. "Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation" shows you how to break away from…

Although instructional coaches are deeply committed to continuous improvement, they rarely have access to professional learning themselves. Rarer still is differentiated professional learning that meets coaches where they are in their careers and their professional growth. Just as Florida's Orange County Public Schools accentuates the importance…

While coaches can have a positive impact on teachers' practice and students' learning, in many school districts teachers have the autonomy to decide whether and when to work with a coach. Coaches then must work to gain access to teachers' classrooms. In a recent study of 28 content-focused coaches, researchers Jen Munson and Evthokia Stephanie…

Supporting beginning teachers continues to be problematic for education systems across the nation. Issues concerning recruitment and retention have long plagued the profession. The onset of the global pandemic exacerbated these issues, particularly across rural communities. Researchers continue to advocate for the need to provide beginning…

At the start of the 2020-21 school year, six months after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic changed the lives of everyone, the author and the other instructional coaches in her district were temporarily reassigned to virtual teaching positions. In this article, the author shares what she learned about the kinds of support teachers need and how…

To help grow the capacity of their teachers to maximize the growth of their students, Keller (Texas) Independent School District used video to provide personalized professional learning to teachers across the career continuum, from new teachers to veteran teachers looking to improve their practice. Their decision to use video-based professional…

Many instructional coaching and teacher training sessions center around myths that can actually hinder teacher and student growth. Authors Rashaida Melvin and Lauren Vargas discuss four of these myths and offer new practices to increase teacher efficacy and equity in the classroom.

Course design academies are typically intensive, offered in multi-day format, integrate an explicit backward design framework, and leverage multi-disciplinary participation. This article describes an "unbundled" course design academy model that considers the impacts of COVID-19 on faculty members: trauma, and their increased design…