At Wayside Schools, our goal is to develop our schools into great places to learn and work so that both staff and students have the opportunity to develop into their best selves.
In many traditional schools, teachers are often confined to the four walls of their classroom with little opportunity to engage in truly meaningful and differentiated learning experiences. In this kind of environment, administrators spend little time in classrooms and are seen more as operational or discipline experts rather than instructional experts.
Part of what makes Wayside Schools unique is that we realize true professional growth cannot happen in isolation and are committed to providing the support needed for ongoing individual and team development. To make this happen, our educational model involves the key role of campus and district academics leaders being focused on coaching and development.
This means our administrators are most often found in classrooms observing instruction, coaching teachers, working with teams, and planning or leading professional development. Our district academics leaders will most often be found working with campus leaders to help them analyze data, develop specific skills, or address a key strategy for growth.
Wayside Schools is structured this way because we know that when our teachers are supported in developing their expertise, we will ultimately see this benefit our students through increased engagement in learning and improved outcomes.
One specific way that Wayside Schools supports its teachers is by providing them with instructional coaches, who help them reflect on their practice, mediate thinking, and offer supports or suggestions when needed.
“Coaches are well versed in research-based best practices, and can model or suggest these,” said Paxton Kirsch, an Instructional Coach at Wayside: REAL Learning Academy. “Coaching creates an environment where teachers can hone their craft in a non-judgmental and supportive space.”
When asked what the goal of instructional coaching is at Wayside, Kirsch expanded further, saying “The mission of coaching at Wayside is to improve student outcomes through building teacher capacity and fostering a growth mindset. This is accomplished by empowering teachers to be self-reflecting, self-directing, self-managing, and self-modifying.”
What we want, Kirsch explained, is to “help teachers become facilitators of inquiry based-learning, promoters of critical thinking, models of self-directed learning and experts on data-informed practices.”
Wayside Schools sees the work of instructional coaches and other support for teachers and administrators as critical in establishing a model that will foster long term results and college readiness for our students.
Because Wayside Schools tries to keep administrators in the classroom helping teachers develop their expertise, it may mean that they aren’t immediately available for walk-in conversations or meetings with parents.
We hope our families know that this in no way reflects the value we place on relationships with its families, but instead marks our commitment to daily growth in service to our students.