Improving Quality in Virtual Teaching Across a Network: Part 2 — Training

I’m excited people are asking for help. … It tells me that they see value in it, and want to do this well from the beginning.

To learn how Jeanine Zitta led the charge to create digital content to support teachers’ remote instruction, see Part 1.

The Pointed Problem: Building Teachers’ Skills in an Unfamiliar Medium

Jeanine Zitta knew teachers faced a steep learning curve. In the spring, she’d seen how teachers in her network of nine elementary schools struggled to teach in a medium they’d never used before. With remote learning set to continue, she had to build their capacity to deliver rigorous remote instruction.

The Innovation: Virtual PD That Mimics Remote Teaching

For Zitta, the keys to effective PD are modeling and practice. So she tasked a group of expert teachers with creating PD that included both: opportunities to see and experience the kind of virtual lessons they’d be teaching; and the chance to practice teaching ahead of time in a supportive environment.

Her thinking: Giving teachers the chance to see and experience effective virtual lessons would clarify expectations and how to meet them, and thereby ensure greater rigor and consistency for students.

The Story: Training as Learning by Doing

‍Non-negotiables

In her vision of virtual learning, Zitta doesn’t compromise on the core elements of effective instruction. Like effective PD, every lesson must include modeling, practice, and group work — whether in-person or online. And, teachers should give students immediate feedback on the work.

But Zitta knew how different it is to do those things when you’re not in the same room with students. That’s a major reason why she recruited a group of expert teachers — a “Curriculum Cohort” — to spend a month developing a comprehensive set of digital content to support effective virtual lessons, as described in Part 1.

Making it Real for Teachers

To create and lead the PD, Zitta tapped the same cohort of 28 teachers. They included teachers from each grade level, so the training could be grade-level specific, for ELA and math. Her guidance to them in developing the training:

• Employ the same platforms teachers would be using with students, and in the same ways. Given the circumstances it was a given that the PD be delivered virtually. But the PD was also designed so teachers would set up their screens and engage with such platforms as Zoom, Nearpod, Microsoft Teams and OneNote, just as students would.
• Model an actual lesson. The PD included a mock lesson, based on one of the detailed plans and associated materials the teacher had created over the summer. In this, a PD leader played the role of teacher and participants played the role of the students. The modeling included every component of the lesson, including the launch, student collaboration/guided practice, and independent practice.
• Give teachers practice preparing for a virtual lesson. During the PD, teachers set up all the digital content for a lesson. That meant creating accounts with the platforms they’d utilize and downloading lesson materials created by the Curriculum Cohort.
• Give teachers practice delivering a lesson. In breakout rooms with pairs of teachers, each took a turn leading a lesson with one of the Nearpod presentations Zitta’s team had created for each day of instruction of the first quarter. After each turn, teachers provided feedback to each other.

Although initially launched just for the nine schools in her network, the ELA PD wound up being delivered over two days to all teachers in 25 of the district’s elementary schools, and for math in 37 schools.

Reaction was overwhelming. In surveys, almost all teachers agreed they’d be able to apply what they’d learned in their virtual classrooms. One wrote: “The practical aspect of this session was fantastic! Practicing what we have to be able to do in the session was most helpful to me in this session today.”

Many teachers also asked to take part in booster trainings, which Zitta takes as further evidence of success: “It tells me that they see value in it, and want to do this well from the beginning.”

Ramping Up to Monitor Implementation

Teachers spent the first week of instruction on introductions and getting students set up with the learning platforms. When curriculum-based instruction began the following week, Zitta started virtual observations to make sure they were using the digital content. All but one she observed was.

By week three she turned more to the quality of teacher’s delivery, already noticing a gap to address: too much “teacher talk” during some lessons. In response, she encouraged principals to coach teachers on time-stamping their lesson plans and sticking to the key points in the lesson’s suggested language.

Going forward, she plans to focus more on the quality of student work, which she can monitor via students’ online Classroom Notebooks. Says Zitta: “I’d like to get into the leaders providing feedback based on what students are producing back to the teacher.”