Seeing Teaching Through a Different Lens: The MyTeachingPartner-Secondary Coaching Model highlights the voices of coaches and teachers to provide information about an instructional coaching program that is helping educators improve interactions with students in ways that increase student engagement and achievement. The MyTeachingPartner (MTP) coaching program has a solid evidence base and a history of maximizing teachers’ strengths.
For the past three years, Learning Forward has engaged in a federally funded project led by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to better understand the model, especially the secondary version, MTP-Secondary (MTP-S). A key goal for Learning Forward in this partnership is to elevate the voices of the coaches and teachers who are using the program to complement the research base.
Three key elements
This paper highlights three elements of the MTP-S program that have a positive impact on their teaching and on student learning:
- The innovative use of short video clips that allows teachers to observe and analyze their own instruction;
- The intentional focus on teachers’ successes in the classroom as a basis for coaching that is strengths-based; and
- The systematic attention to how classroom interactions can be used to improve student engagement and learning.
MTP-S coaching is effective professional learning in that it is sustained over time, embedded in the daily work of educators, and focused on building the capacity of educators to implement their curriculum so that all students can learn. The innovations in the model that focus on teacher strengths and purposeful use of video clips make the program exciting and engaging as well as effective, and is strategic in the use of time, a busy educator’s most critical resource.
