Rock Star Teacher Academy Reflections: Year One

In my third year as principal at Comstock Middle School,  I had been able to cull and develop the faculty I wanted to move the school forward.  A collaborative and innovative culture was beginning to develop.  This was quite an achievement for a school and staff that had been through declining enrollment, threatened closures, white flight, and program improvement.  The teachers who remained had a strong commitment to the school.  After the first two years as principal, we increased enrollment by nearly 100 students so we were also able to hire new and fresh teachers to join the team.  Teachers who were not able to adapt to this more invigorated culture chose (some with a gentle nudge) to leave.  
 
In my previous position as Coordinator of Professional Development at the Santa Rosa City Schools district office, I developed a model classroom facilitator program.  This program highlighted four secondary teachers with exemplary classroom skills as model teachers.  They opened up their classrooms to others who wanted to observe them.  We identified areas of need and teachers observed, debriefed and determined their next steps along with the model teachers and myself.  It was a formalized version of peer coaching and the many teachers in the district who partook in this mentoring, definitely improved their practice.  I, as the district coach, was able to observe them before and after and continue to provide support for their growth.  
 
I wanted to develop a similar model of peer coaching at Comstock.  I had released three teachers for a period each day who could be the ongoing coaches, so that they could lend a supportive, non-evaluative hand.  Next I needed the classrooms to observe.
 
All of the teachers had some aspect of their practice that stood out as exemplary.  My leadership team and I wanted to encourage all teachers to open up their classrooms by identifying a specific skill they would be willing to share.  For example,  “Joe” was great at a sequential lesson delivery that provided many avenues of engagement; “Sarah” was an expert at incorporating technology; “Marie” could explain difficult concepts, check for understanding, re-explain in a different way so that many students could understand, and so forth.  The leadership team and I developed a spreadsheet with everyone’s name on it, a column for “area of expertise”, another column for best times to visit, and a plan to discuss it first by department and then sign up at our faculty meeting.  We called the program our Teacher Rockstar Academy.  Our leadership students created a logo which we used on tee-shirts for all our staff proclaiming “I am a Comstock Rockstar Teacher”.  We also identified specific types of classroom practice we wanted to reinforce that would address rigor, student engagement, and that would also support 21st century learning skills.
 
It was a surprise to me that the program failed.  It failed because our teachers did not know what they were good at.  They were reluctant to sign up to be observed; they felt self-conscious about claiming to be experts at anything, even though clearly they were.  They also felt uncomfortable about entering into another teacher’s domain.  One competent veteran teacher basically said that after all the years of program improvement and being told what she was doing wrong, she had no idea of what she was doing right.  
 
I realized then that my school had a ways to go to build a safe, supportive collaborative culture where it counts:  in the classroom delivering lessons to students.  Teachers were comfortable collaborating on lesson design, but the peer coaching model would need to be cultivated.  I also realized that my leadership team was relieved that we didn’t move forward since many of them were uncomfortable as well, but wanted to support my idea.  
 
My next step was to look at research into teacher self-esteem, how to build it, etc.  I found almost nothing that addressed this; most educational research was about student self-esteem.  My coaches and I then began to research the best qualities of teaching and how to develop them while supporting the individual personality and style of each person.  We firmly believe that the “art” of teaching is the teacher-student relationship and that we want to nurture that in our staff.  In addition, we also believe in the “science” of good instructional practices.  Our team spent last year gathering this information.  We will begin a peer-coaching model using the TOSAs next year, identifying key areas of focus by department to support each teacher individually.  

All of us benefited from this experience in that we began the dialogue on peer coaching and opened up more receptivity to the concept.   

Next year we will further develop this by focusing on lesson delivery.  We are delving into the Gradual Release of Responsibility method for our protocol.

​ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradual_release_of_responsibility