Written by: Meaghen Spencer - A School Innovation Partner

The best part of my job is the ambiguity, the unknown, the challenges of changing lesson planning, changing systems and structures, to truly change mindsets. I love being embedded at a school site, intimately involved in school reform, diagnosing problems and building the capacity of others in order to solve those problems. My work encompasses four different layers of the school: classroom, grade-level, mid-level leadership and administration.

Classroom
I work closely with teachers in their classrooms, conducting observations, examining focal student work, mapping curriculum to standards and then planning lessons with them one-on-one.

Grade Level
One step away from the classroom, I am facilitating grade-level meetings. I meet once a week with an intensive grade-level team to plan the strategic use of our Houghton Mifflin resources. Planning takes many forms, and as the intensive facilitator, I try to gauge where my team is and how best to support them. Most importantly, I challenge them to dig deeply into discovering what learning that best meets their students' needs looks, feels and sounds like in their classrooms.

Mid-Level Leaders: Resource Teachers
Mid-level leaders include Literacy Coaches, English Language Coordinators and Title I Resource Teachers hired by the district to support the school. As a SIP, I ensure that our mid-level leaders are building the skills to become effective facilitators, a role that is new to many. In some cases, I coach them to be coaches. Oftentimes, I act as a thought-partner for the Resource Teachers. I help them think through a problem or an idea and generate next steps. Examples of topics might include a teacher who is struggling with a particular lesson, or the challenges of transitioning students from Spanish-only classrooms to English ones.

Administration: Principal & Assistant Principal
My Supervisor and I work closely together to craft agendas for our weekly Thursday morning meetings with our Principal and Assistant Principal. We focus the agendas to address relevant issues and the most pressing needs we encounter at the school level. These meetings give us an opportunity to make sure that we are all on the same page in terms of our expectations of the staff and the work that needs to be done. For example, my principal sought my advice regarding implementation of the school-wide English Language Development (ELD) instructional program. Previously, teachers had been delivering ELD instruction within their own self-contained classrooms, lumping all language development levels together. I advised her to implement ELD across grade-level classrooms, grouping students by their level of language development. As a result, ELD instruction is now better tailored to meet students' individual needs, based on where they are in the continuum of English Language Development.