[Simtrainer-l] Looking for info and advice

[Woodruff Susan]

Hello Everyone…
I am working at a “special” school providing instructional coaching to a group of ancillary staff who have been charged with moving instructional and best practices for students with moderate and severe disabilities.  They, in effect, are coaches each within their own domain.  The coaching team is made up of two SLPs, an OT, a Curriculum Specialist (who was a former teacher in the building), a behavior therapist, an MSW, and a PT.  Both of the administrators also attended a full two days of instructional coaching that focused on their specific needs.  I can’t begin to go into the problems they have had as these poor people had NO professional development in coaching.  They have been doing their best, but spinning their wheels.  They have some very specific practices that they need to see in place in every classroom - which includes language development, movement and motion, writing, and a few others.  I was extremely impressed with the group, and they are open to doing what it may take.  Since I haven’t worked with this type of situation in quite a long time, I have a couple of specific questions.  They relate more to coaching than SIM, but many of you are also instructional coaches, so I will give it a go.

First of all, there is a two leveled dynamic.  Most of the certified teachers also work with their classroom based teams.  Every one of the teachers works with at least 3 paras and a few of the classrooms have up to 5 based on the needs in the room.  They serve students with a range of disabilities.  In fact, they have a few students who are actually reading close to grade level.  (My guess is that they are actually decoding at grade level, but I will save that issue for another day.)  The staff tends to be on the average of 20-25 years younger than the para staff.  I haven’t met the entire staff, but I understand that there are some extremely difficult paras that basically refuse to do what they are asked to do.  (Believe me - I questioned this, but that is what they said for now.)  One of the main problems is a huge conflict of interest.  The teachers actually DO the evaluations of their paras.  Talk about a difficult work environment!  I wondered if any of you have seen that practice.  I have talked with the principal about it, and she was also going to work on this.

Would it make sense to any of you to get the teachers together and do a mini coaching workshop to help them become coaches of the paras?  

I have a half day with the leadership team in a week or so.  We are going to talk about how the first few weeks have gone and go a little further with some of the aspects of coaching.  I really want to listen and find out what there over-arching issues are.  At the completion of the first two days I spent with them, they loved the idea of an instructional playbook.  They have begun to put that together.  Also, the principal was going to introduce this new way of working with the staff.  She reported that the initial meeting went really well.

I know this was long, and I thank you for reading it through … if anyone has any advice, I would sure appreciate it.
Thanks so much,
Sue