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Professional Development Resources
- By topic—see our Instructional Leadership & Excellence webpages
- By season—Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer—see the Tools & Professional Development webpage
In contrast to typical coaching and mentoring roles, Multi-Classroom Leaders (MCLs) take full responsibility for the students and the teachers on their teams.
This combination of teaching and team leadership requires new skills. MCLs told us that existing leadership programs, which focus on aspiring principals or traditional coach/mentor roles, don’t fit the MCL role well. In response, Public Impact created these free training and development sessions for MCLs. Some teacher-leaders who are not MCLs may benefit from some sessions.
New and experienced MCLs can experience these sessions in formal training, study them on their own, or study them in meetings with other MCLs.
Each MCL training session includes:
- PowerPoint presentation with embedded facilitator’s notes
- Handouts that can be completed electronically or printed
- Information about additional materials for activities (where applicable)
School and district leaders: The School Excellence Portal helps districts and schools track training and monitor and improve Opportunity Culture to achieve strong student learning. Contact Public Impact for more information.
Public Impact leads MCLs through the sessions in three or four summer days of training followed by five monthly sessions throughout the school year. Public Impact can also train trainers in your district; contact us if you would like help organizing formal training or train-the-trainer sessions and establishing a clear process for educators to support one another’s growth throughout the school year. Public Impact also offers training in subject-specific instruction based on the best research about what methods achieve higher-growth student learning.
These are the training sessions, in the sequence we recommend:
Summer Day One:
1.1 Introduction to Opportunity Culture: Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Learn about Opportunity Culture and how design teams created OC school plans.
- Review MCL, TRT, and RA job descriptions and discuss expectations for new roles.
- Learn about Public Impact’s Instructional Leadership and Excellence framework and how professional learning this summer and throughout the school year align to the framework.
1.2 Coaching Part 1: What to Coach
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Define instructional excellence and explore resources to help coach toward instructional excellence.
- Discuss how to prioritize components of excellent teaching.
- Observe teachers in action and practice choosing action steps that will make the biggest impact on students.
1.3 Coaching Part 2: How to Coach
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Define coaching and discuss the components of a coaching cycle.
- Learn about tools used during informal observations and practice using tools.
- Learn about and practice using a protocol for leading coaching conversations .
1.4 Evaluating Opportunity Culture Teacher-Leaders
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Learn about the importance of evaluation to guide and develop Opportunity Culture teachers.
- Review Opportunity Culture teacher evaluation rubrics.
- Begin discussing supports needed for MCLs and TRTs to be successful in their roles.
Session Handouts:
Summer Day Two:
2.1 Working Styles
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Identify your working style.
- Brainstorm strengths and limitations of different working styles.
- Discuss the working styles of your school team and how they can lead to positive impact on your school.
Session Handouts:
2.2 Coaching Part 3: Practicing What and How to Coach
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Observe a teacher and identify the highest-leverage teacher action step.
- Plan for and practice a coaching conversation with that teacher.
Session Handouts:
2.3 Additional Support Activities
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Brainstorm support activities to help team teachers learn and implement action steps.
- Share how support activities fall in a coaching cycle and apply to a real teaching scenario.
- Discuss best practices and potential challenges for sample support activities.
Session Handouts:
2.4 Situational Leadership
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Discuss the differences between growth and fixed mindsets.
- Introduce the Hersey-Blanchard framework for situational leadership.
- Brainstorm how to tailor your leadership depending on the mindset, skill, and will of your teachers and/or paraprofessionals.
Session Handouts:
2.5 Analyzing Student Data
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Learn about the best practices for data analysis:
- Creating a clear assessment calendar
- Setting ambitious, achievable student goals
- Tracking student progress toward goals
- Prepare for new Opportunity Culture roles:
- Scaling data analysis up for a larger student group
- Facilitating data meetings for MCL teams
Summer Day Three:
3.1 Scheduling for an Opportunity Culture
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Revisit master schedule and reflect on the extent to which it incorporates the best practices and key principles of an Opportunity Culture.
- Finalize master schedule and draft weekly schedules for MCLs, TRTs, and RAs.
3.2 Launching a Successful Team
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Discuss strategies for building a successful team.
- Draft an agenda for norm-setting meeting with team teachers.
School Year:
1 Personal Development: Beginning of Year
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Self-assess the extent to which you use the critical competencies for your role.
- Create a personal development plan that leverages strengths and improves areas of growth.
2 Coaching Teachers 2.0
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Review the Six Steps for Effective Feedback and the Situational Leadership framework.
- Discuss how to adapt coaching conversations based on the current skill and will of a particular teacher.
- Role play an upcoming coaching conversation with one of your team teachers.
3 Leading Difficult Conversations
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Introduce frameworks from the book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High to lead productive difficult conversations.
- Practice leading a difficult conversation.
4 Mid-Year Review
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Reflect on successes and challenges during the first half of the year.
- Monitor progress toward personal development, student success, and instructional leadership goals.
- Plan for priorities for second half of the year.
5 Year in Review: End-of-Year Reflection and Planning for Next Year
Session Slide Deck:
Click image to open session slide deck
Session Objectives:
- Reflect on this year’s successes and challenges.
- Monitor progress toward personal development, student success, and instructional leadership goals.
- Prepare for end-of-year meetings with your supervisor and begin planning for next year.
Note: Throughout the free training sessions posted here are references to the School Excellence Portal. However, the majority of the training activities can be completed without access to the portal.
We encourage the free use, reproduction, and distribution of our materials, but we require attribution. If you adapt the materials, you must include on every page “Adapted from OpportunityCulture.org; © Public Impact.” Materials may not be sold, leased, licensed, or otherwise distributed for compensation. See our Terms of Use page for more information.
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