Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Coaching

DIY Coaching empowers teachers to film their classroom instruction to identify their strengths and next steps to impact student learning. 

Due to funding and time constraints, teachers receive vastly different rates of instructional coaching.  According to Boston Public Schools Insight survey data, only 63% of teachers receive enough feedback on their instructional practice.  This lack of consistent feedback results in varied growth for teachers and students alike. DIY Coaching's goal is to re-frame this problem by shifting who we view as a coach and how coaching is executed for teachers.

These limited opportunities for coaching pose a significant obstacle to meeting the needs of the most marginalized students.  EdVestors survey data from Fall 2015 shows a direct correlation between students’ 8th grade math proficiency and the rate of coaching at their schools. Teachers are a critical factor affecting student achievement; therefore, we need to ensure consistent coaching supports to move teacher practice forward.

DIY Coaching is a different approach to coaching, one that addresses the challenges posed earlier. Rather than relying on administrators as the sole providers of feedback and coaching for teachers, we activate teachers as coaches for themselves and one another through the use of classroom video. DIY Coaching is:

• Intensive:  teachers video record themselves at least twice per month,
• Sustained:  supports continue for the entire semester,
• Context-specific: supports are rooted in videos from each teacher’s classroom, and
• Focused: in content-specific pairs, peer-to-peer conversations are focused on instructional techniques to move the learning of our marginalized students forward.

Beginning in September, DIY Coaching gathers a cohort of 10-12 teachers who teach similar content areas in different schools for monthly in-person sessions, led by a facilitator. In conjunction with the twice-monthly videos, teachers complete readings that help position them as experts in their classrooms and as professionals who use evidence to determine their most important areas of growth to impact student learning. As teachers develop relationships within their cohorts, they form coaching triads that meet from January through June.  Teachers share one of their videos with the members of their coaching triad, who then provide feedback on the video.  Because teachers have a shared content area, these peer-to-peer coaching conversations help advance participants’ pedagogical content knowledge, equipping them to meet their students’ learning needs. 

DIY Coaching is a new application of existing video technology.  Often, administrators are viewed as the only educational experts, and DIY Coaching positions teachers as the experts in their classrooms.  By positioning teachers as coaches, DIY Coaching enables teachers to provide themselves and each other at least four times as much feedback as a typical full time instructional coach, for the same cost.  The DIY Coaching technology and process are simple and low-cost, yet they allow teachers to leverage their experience and become empowered as the instructional leaders of their classrooms.  

Through DIY Coaching, teachers use video to record themselves teaching and then watch the videos to reflect on instruction and make changes to practice.  Without the video technology, teachers are not able to have a full understanding of what is happening in their classrooms, and are less equipped to make the most impactful changes.  The comment feature on the video platform allows for more in-depth analysis of instruction.  Video sharing technology supports teacher collaboration by allowing teachers within the same school to see each other.  It is the only sustainable way for teachers across schools to observe one another's instruction.

For the 2018-19 school year, we are expanding to 60+ participants, up from 28 participants during the 2017-18 school year.  These 60+ participants will be completing either the DIY Coaching course or our new course for alums of DIY Coaching, called DIY 2.0.  In this course, which is retaining 50% of our DIY participants from the 2017-18 school year, participants will continue building on the reflective and coaching skills they developed through the DIY Coaching experience.  They will each prioritize one goal to focus on for the duration of the academic year in order to dig deeper into their practice.  

For the 2019-20 school year, we will create a course called DIY 3.0 for alums of DIY 2.0 who wish to pursue National Board Certification.  In addition, we hope to double the number of teacher participants in DIY Coaching each of the next 3-5 years.  We also plan to build out our school-based supports to help schools implement DIY Coaching within their communities.  In these ways, we hope to increase the number of teachers and students who benefit from DIY Coaching, and we also hope to increase the impact each individual teacher can have by offering longer-term opportunities for them.

Currently, we rely on word-of-mouth methods and listservs within Boston Public Schools for finding teachers to participate in DIY Coaching.  Our plan to build out our school-based support model will help us get more teachers involved and will help us with proof of concept and networking.  We know there are potentially many other teachers who would be interested in participating in DIY Coaching, and we would love to find other methods of reaching those educators.

From our pilot in Spring 2017 to our Year 1 efforts in school year 2017-18, DIY Coaching has grown from 8 teachers in 5 schools serving 400 students to 28 teachers in 22 schools for a total of 1,600 students impacted. All of these students are in Title 1 (low income) schools in Boston Public Schools and Boston-based charter schools.  Students in Title 1 schools face a severe "opportunity gap" compared to their peers in more affluent areas.  DIY Coaching is one way to ensure that these underserved students are receiving equitable instruction that can help advance their educational opportunities.

We hope to double our impact in school year 2018-19, from 28 teachers working with 1,600 students total to 60+ teachers working with 3,200 students total.  In 2018-19, we are supporting Boston Public Schools in implementing the school-based model and hope to work with 2-3 schools in that capacity.  Over the next 3 years, we hope to build partnerships with large school districts to help develop their instructional leadership capacity at the teacher level through our cost-effective model.  We aim to help them create the same network we are developing in Boston for cross-school collaboration and school-based models. 

Everyone on our team is an educator; therefore, we all deeply understand teachers' desire to grow professionally and the challenges that can hinder that growth.  All four of us have classroom teaching experience (three are current classroom teachers), yet we have different backgrounds within education, including teaching in urban and rural districts, teaching internationally, and serving in administrative roles at the district and non-profit levels.  These experiences help us see the challenges facing teacher development from different angles.

Currently, our revenue comes entirely from grants.  We are investigating other sources so we are able to ensure long-term sustainability.  Our school-based support model is one area we are expanding this school year to further develop our revenue stream.  Another possible source is partnering directly with school districts to provide this coaching model for teachers.  The DIY Coaching model is significantly less expensive than traditional coaching models, and this cost-effectiveness would be appealing to many districts.  

Solve would allow us to connect with other people and organizations using technology to address problems in education. It would connect us with a network that could help us measure our impact and implement the DIY Coaching Model with teachers outside of Boston. We know anecdotally that teachers are responding positively to the DIY Coaching Model and we wish to formalize our assessment methods to present our evidence convincingly. We are interested in implementing creative technology applications to incorporate assessment that will be easy and useful. Solve offers access to expertise in these areas.

Our biggest barriers are securing enough funding and finding ways to measure our effectiveness. If we can identify solid metrics of our impact on student and teacher growth, we will be better able to secure funding. Additional funding will allow us to recruit more participants, which will help us affect more students. We believe teachers are and will continue to be invested in this work, so we want to ensure we can keep offering this opportunity.