Thanks for checking out the video, Emily! I think the coaching focus will be driven in part by the goals the teacher sets for the year. They will need to include a goal around equitable teaching practices, but we want to address content challenges if they have them as well. Content is not a requirement, though. We're still trying to figure out exactly how to set those guidelines for the coachee, so if you have any suggestions, please share!

Hi Roxana! We are currently planning a 23.5 hour virtual training for coaches in summer 2022. It will be split into four days of sessions that will introduce the coaches to the project as well help them understand what effective coaching is as well as understand the coaching process (cycles). Our plan is to also include some sessions that will help the coaches understand how equity can be addressed in coaching, especially around supporting our three target student populations (i.e. females, students with disabilities, and english learners). The summer training is just the beginning though as we hope to help build a professional learning community among the coaches on an ongoing basis throughout the academic year. Since we'll be virtual, we're also looking into doing some asynchronous work such as a book reading. We'd love to hear your suggestions for book readings if you have them.

This sounds excellent, Pauline! I want to take part myself! 

I would highly recommend Stuck in the Shallow End and/or Power On! for book readings. I might be biased because they are written by my brilliant colleagues at UCLA Jane Margolis and Jean Ryoo, but I genuinely think they would be great for this purpose.

We invite you and others in your network to sign up https://www.cscoachingforequity.org/get-involved

Excellent recommendations! We're actually including the Power On! book for our PD Facilitator orientation this weekend and have it on the list to consider for this project as well. 

Thank you, Pauline! To clarify, is this only open to educators in MN, or our California educators can sign up, as well?

We have two programs that we are developing: Code Savvy is specifically for MN teachers and NCCSE's is national.  California educators are welcome to apply to be coaches with NCCSE or they can apply to be coached through the NCCSE program if they are teaching AP CSA or AP CSP in 2022-23. 

Fantastic! Thank you, Pauline! We at CS Equity Project at UCLA are interested in coaching administrators, so I'm very curious about the structure of your training. This is super exciting! 

Hi Jan! The coaches will be doing the observations of the teachers and the research team will be looking at the artifacts from the observations. We are planning to use CSTA's CS Instructional Practice Evidence Guide (look for tool) for the observations. The coaches will use this with the teacher to provide feedback directed at the goals the teacher had for the lesson. The researchers will sample some of the videos from the remote coaching and if possible attend a few of the in person teaching ones as well to review the use of the tool and see if coach ratings are consistent with what researchers observe as well. We intend to go over this as part of the coach professional development so we can develop some consistency in using it.

Sounds like a good approach. Looking forward to seeing the results.

Long-term, we are hoping that the coaching professional development can be scaled and offered to schools who would like to develop their own coaching programs. I think there will always be schools where providing CS-specific coaching will be a difficult ask so having a remote coaching option, e.g. for teachers in smaller, rural schools, is something that NCCSE could provide as a service to the community. 

Coaches are being recruited from alumni of our existing professional development programs (both Code Savvy and NCCSE) and are being screened against skills identified in the literature about what makes an effective coach (relationship building, asking questions, etc.) I think we will learn quite a bit in this first year about the recruiting and screening process and be able to improve it for the second cohort of coaches.