Bring ICG To Your District

For more than 25 years, Jim Knight and his colleagues have been developing, refining, and studying instructional coaching. In his newest book, The Definitive Guide to Instructional Coaching, Jim has summarized that research in seven success factors that need to be a part of any successful coaching program. In this overview course, Jim and consultants from the Instructional Coaching Group will introduce each factor, explain why it's essential for success, and summarize how it can be implemented.

Effective coaches, leaders, and educators communicate their message clearly, build healthy emotional connections with others, and maneuver through emotionally complex situations in ways that allow them to speak the truth so they will be heard. This workshop introduces 6 beliefs and 10 habits that promote healthy and productive relationships.

This session asks participants to think of themselves as change leaders—people who lead themselves, other adults, and students through inevitable change by getting clear on what they are trying to accomplish and how to make that happen, and how to navigate through the complexities of change.

After attending initial instructional coaching institutes or workshops, coaches are often unsure about next steps. This intensive session is designed to explore the specific skills instructional coaches use to go through the coaching cycle, and as such, it serves as the next step in professional development for coaches.

Research has shown that control over students is not an effective model. Instead, creating a positive culture in the classroom that is based on respect and that honors students’ autonomy has proven to lead to improved student learning. Based on the Data Toolkit in The Impact Cycle (2017) and chapters 10-15 in High-Impact Instruction (2012) by Jim Knight, this workshop focuses on increasing behavioral engagement, including strategies coaches can use to help teachers create positive learning communities in the classroom.

It is crucial that we take care of our own mental well-being, as well as promoting mental health to those around us. Register for this ‘zen moment for the brain’ and learn how to help teachers reduce anxiety, regardless of where they are.

Instructional coaches aim to help teachers make a greater positive impact on the lives of students. One of the most direct ways to do that is to focus on student achievement. Based on the Data Toolkit in The Impact Cycle (2017) and chapters 2-4 in High-Impact Instruction (2012) by Jim Knight, this workshop presents strategies to increase achievement that ensure teachers will remain in touch with student progress toward clearly established goals. Implementing these strategies enables coaches to help teachers adjust their practices to the specific needs of the students.

Student engagement is an important aspect of learning, and addressing it through instructional coaching is an effective way to improve instruction. Based on the Data Toolkit in The Impact Cycle (2017) and chapters 5-9 in High-Impact Instruction (2012) by Jim Knight, this workshop focuses on defining the different types of engagement, how to measure them, and using teaching strategies to hit corresponding goals.

Just as teachers need coaches to help them learn and implement new instructional strategies, coaches, administrators, and other educators need coaches to help them develop and support flourishing coaching programs. And it is often during application – not just in a workshop – that they can truly benefit from having a coach. To meet this need, we offer one-to-one personalized sessions.

In settings where a clearly defined set of teaching strategies already exists, this workshop guides coaches and others (e.g., administrators) through the development of an instructional playbook. This workshop is based on The Instructional Playbook: The Missing Link for Translating Research Into Practice (2019) by Jim Knight, Ann Hoffman, Michelle Harris, and Sharon Thomas. Instructional playbooks are packed with tools to facilitate the coaching process, but instead of reducing teaching or coaching to following a script, they provide a framework to apply and adjust to the specific needs of a given teacher and his or her classroom.

This workshop describes how presenters can work from the Partnership Principles to build relationships with an audience, and guides participants through important strategies for designing and delivering presentations by providing them an opportunity to create their own.

In order to set up our partnership schools and districts to have the most success, we’ve created follow-up workshops for embedded coaching. We know that after the excitement of an event day wears off, there can be a bit of a “what next” feeling. Embedded coaching days provide on-the-spot professional learning with an ICG senior consultant, focused on the needs of each coach.

The Evaluating Instructional Coaching workshop aims to address one of our most frequently asked questions: how to evaluate coaches as employees and how to evaluate coaching programs around best practices in both coaching and best practices in human resources. This workshop can be tailored to focus on particular elements of evaluation as well as practice for evaluators in using our tools and resources.

Data gathering is critical to effective instructional coaching because it helps make the invisible visible by providing the capacity to assess the kinds of questions being asked in the classroom, the use of instructional time, and student engagement. Based on the Data Toolkit in The Impact Cycle (2017) and the data-gathering information included in Focus on Teaching (2014) by Jim Knight, this workshop presents the data points needed to help teachers obtain a clear picture of reality, set goals, and monitor progress toward goals. Participants will be guided through several methods of gathering data and learn how to effectively analyze data to determine specific areas for improvement.

When it comes to improving instruction, educators have literally hundreds of options, and it can be difficult to know which teaching practices have the greatest potential to improve student learning. Based on the book High-Impact Instruction (2012) by Jim Knight and research from the Impact Research Lab, this workshop provides an overview of high-yield strategies teachers can use to plan instruction, assess learning, increase student mastery and engagement, and create positive learning communities in the classroom.

The quality of the conversations in an organization can critically influence the organization’s effectiveness. This session explores how a coaching orientation, together with a strong coaching process and key coaching skills, can make a significant and immediate difference in the conversations in which school leaders engage every day.

Instructional coaching and the use of video are both acknowledged to be evidence-based practices for professional development for teachers. Unfortunately, school resources often do not allow for a coaching program, and many educators are unclear on how to use video to best help teachers.

Based on The Impact Cycle (2017) by Jim Knight, this workshop describes the coaching cycle proposed for instructional coaches. All teachers, schools, and classrooms face their own unique challenges. An established process for guiding the coaching experience ensures that instructional coaches have all of the tools they need to help teachers set and achieve their goals. The Impact Cycle–the product of 20 years of ICG research, (see instructionalcoaching.com/research)–provides a framework for any coaching scenario. Participants in this workshop will learn why the cycle is successful, and gain experience using it through examples and guided exercises.

The Instructional Coaching Institute is a comprehensive foundational course that gives coaches and administrators, from start to finish, everything they need to know to become successful coaching partners. It is backed by more than 20 years of research conducted by Jim Knight and researchers at The Instructional Coaching Group.

Change agents who make an impact know what they believe and act in ways that are consistent with their beliefs. For this reason, people learning how to lead change need to think carefully about the principles that guide their actions. In this course, participants learn about the research-validated partnership principles of equality, choice, voice, dialogue, reflection, praxis, and reciprocity, and how they can use these principles to shape and form professional development for learning. Additionally, participants learn how adults change and learn as they often move through the stages of optimism, to pessimism, to success. Change leaders need to understand change, and they need to understand the beliefs that lead to transformation and learning. This course delivers that content through highly engaging explanations, reflections, discussions, and applications.

Professional development has undergone three major advances in recent years–computers, the internet, and video. Based on the book Focus on Teaching (2014) by Jim Knight, this workshop describes how video can be used to support learning.

The impact coaches have is directly related to how effectively they are supported (or not supported) by their administrators. For that reason, it is crucial that administrators participate in professional development that clarifies what coaches do and how they can be supported. This workshop provides a deep understanding of how administrators and instructional coaches can collaborate to ensure that coaches have an unmistakably positive impact on teachers’ teaching and students’ learning.

Neither teachers nor coaches want to waste time or find themselves in unsuccessful conversations. Whether face-to-face or via a virtual platform, helping adults sometimes is often more difficult than helping students. Why do adults resist? This virtual workshop focuses on why helping for change is complex and what research says about what we can do to lessen resistance to change.