The Instructional Coaching Toolkit Series
Strategies for Successful Coaching
Multi-Part Series
DATE
WINTER COHORT
February 5, 10, and 21, and 28, 2025
SUMMER COHORT
July 21, 24, 28, and 29, 2025
TIME
WINTER COHORT
9:00 am - 12:00 pm CENTRAL time
SUMMER COHORT
9:00 am - 12:00 pm CENTRAL time
LOCATION
Sessions Occur on Zoom
Registration for Summer Cohort 3 is Closed. Please join us for Summer Cohort 2 or a Fall Cohort!
Making the decision to leave the classroom to become an Instructional Coach is exciting and terrifying all at the same time! In your classroom, you know the moves to make to lead to improved student learning. You know how to build relationships and create a nurturing environment. Stepping outside of that comfort zone to share your love of teaching can bring a great deal of uncertainty. This series is designed to help!
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Whether you are a brand new coach, or a coach looking to expand your skillset, the Instructional Coaching Toolkit Series is for you! Drawing upon a variety of coaching approaches and models, this series will support coaches in learning entry points for coaching relationships. Coaches will learn how to determine the best approach for any situation they might face.
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During these sessions, coaches will learn strategies and have the opportunity to practice these strategies within the safe environment of the group. Functioning as a professional learning community, the facilitators and fellow participants will support coaches as they try out their new learning between sessions and as they seek out the tools they need to be successful in their coaching role.
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As a result of participating in this series, Instructional Coaches will develop the confidence and the strategies they need to be the very best in their role!
Are you a coach with several years of experience looking to strengthen specific aspects of your coaching? Check out our Advanced Toolkit Options.
Toolkit Series Outcomes
The Core Coaching Capacities represent the key outcomes of the Instructional Coaching Toolkit Series and describe the skills that coaches develop and demonstrate in order to impact student learning, teacher growth, and school improvement. The Core Coaching Capacities represent ways of interacting in the school environment that are purposeful and productive. All coaches are at different places in their journey and should be allowed time to develop these Capacities.
Communicate for Understanding
Communication, both speaking and listening, ensures a shared understanding amongst all in the school environment. Through effective communication, coaches support the development of a school culture in which growth and improvement occur.
Build Relationships
Coaches build the conditions for shifts in mindsets and for taking risks by authentically developing trusting relationships marked by the sharing of perspectives and the honoring of expertise and experience.
Facilitate Excellence
Coaches build capacity in all stakeholders within the school, and encourage the use of data, so that the goals of the school, and of the teams within the school, can be met. The efforts of the coach are centered around the goals of the school.
Focus on Learning
Coaches use questioning to push teachers deeper into their understanding of student learning and the impact their instruction has on student growth. By engaging in coaching cycles, the teacher is guided to stay focused on their goals for learning.
Coach Knowledgeably
Coaches work from a range of models when providing support to teachers. They select the approach that will be most effective given the conditions in which they are coaching. Coaches develop an understanding of the instructional models being used in their setting.
Model Self-Improvement
Coaches encourage those around them to engage in self-improvement by modeling it in their own practice. Coaches seek out feedback and learning to remain relevant in the systems they seek to improve.
Presenters
Danica Lewis has over 20 years of experience in schools, serving as an elementary teacher, an instructional coach, and later as a school and district administrator, including school building leadership, early childhood leadership, special education leadership, and curriculum & assessment leadership in urban and suburban schools. Danica led the implementation of standards-aligned instruction, assessment, and grading as both a district-level and building-level administrator. Danica facilitates powerful professional learning around literacy, standards-aligned instruction and assessment, rigorous teaching, data analysis, and professional learning community leadership. In 2017, the Wisconsin Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development recognized Danica as the “Instructional Leader of the Year” for the State of Wisconsin
