Instructional Coaching Through Change: Supporting Teachers in Action

You’ll join Harvard faculty and experienced instructional coaches who work directly with beginning and veteran teachers to hone their teaching and instructional leadership practice. You’ll contribute your own expertise and learn from your fellow practitioners as you address the following questions:

• If teachers are, in fact, authors of their own change, what is the role of coaches? How do coaches promote, and, at times, even direct teacher agency toward its intended outcomes?
• What does it mean to coach with curiosity? How do coaches collect appropriate evidence to enable understanding and prevent assumptions and bias?
• How do coaches leverage strategies specific to particular situations with teacher identity in mind?
• How do coaches sift through the complexity of classroom instruction to gather evidence and inform adjustments that benefit student learning?
• What would a picture of the impact of an individual coaching relationship look like?

The course is divided into six one-week modules. You’ll start by naming the problems of practice that you are encountering. Then, in collaboration with others, you’ll build tools and techniques to better address those problems of practice. 

Each week consists of approximately three hours of online work and one practice challenge, during which you’ll apply your learning in your real-world context. Through the weekly modules, you’ll uncover five pillars of coaching that guide the collaborative learning experience. Though they are not the only five aspects to focus on when coaching, they are a curated framework, honed by course faculty and aimed at growing the relationship-building skills and practical lenses necessary to coaching. 

• Week 1: Introduction to Our Pillars
• Week 2: Agency - a teacher's ability to act in the world to be an agent of change
• Week 3: Enactment - the practical, why, how, and what of coaching
• Week 4: Inquiry - a stance to help you coach with humility and curiosity
• Week 5: Observation - the power of witnessing teachers in their contexts
• Week 6: Understanding - the impact of coaching on learning — for students, teachers, and coaches

• Reflect on individual strengths and growth edges that help set goals for your learning and development as an instructional coach.
• Understand teacher agency as a fundamental driver of sustained instructional improvement.
• Articulate student-centered versus teacher-centered coaching goals.
• Anticipate the benefits and limitations of different coaching strategies as tools in different situations or contexts.
• Use questions to identify important but otherwise invisible data.
• Develop explicit awareness of the lenses through which we view classrooms as we move up the ladder of inference.

• Teacher leaders or teachers with an interest in leadership
• Education professionals who support teachers in their work, such as mentors, instructional coaches, grade-level or department leads, supervisors, or teachers in other leadership roles

This program welcomes registrations from both individuals and teams. First-time registrants need to create a Professional Education account to register.

Individuals: Click the "Register" button at the top of this page to log into your Professional Education account and access the registration page. Proceed with the individual form until submission. Invoices will be immediately available upon the submission of the form.

Teams:

Step 1: Designate one participant or an administrative staff member as the Coordinator.

• The Coordinator should click the "Register" button at the top of this page to log into their Professional Education account and access the registration page.
• Proceed with the team form, including providing the name, email address, and job title of each participant in your team.
• The Coordinator can choose to receive a team invoice
• The invoice will be immediately available upon the submission of the form. Contact us if you are eligible for the group discount. 
• Contact us if you need to make any changes to your team after submitting the form.

Step 2: Upon the submission of the team application, all team members will receive an email notification with a link to their personal registration form. Team members should complete their forms promptly to access the program’s Community Group for updates and Canvas course access. 

Professional Education is excited to offer Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for your successful participation in this program. The Continuing Education Unit (CEU) is a nationally and internationally recognized unit of measurement for non-credit continuing education programs. As an IACET Accredited Provider, Professional Education offers IACET CEUs for its learning events that comply with the ANSI/IACET Continuing Education and Training Standard.

Requirements to be eligible to earn CEUs:

• Attend or view all program sessions.
• Complete program evaluation.
• Successfully complete all program requirements.

Upon successfully meeting all requirements outlined above, you will be notified via email that you have A) earned the certificate of completion for the program and B) are now eligible to earn CEUs. This email will contain the link to complete the required reflection assignment if you wish to receive CEUs, along with a submission deadline and time frame for receiving your CEUs. After submitting your reflection assignment, we will notify you via email of your CEU status, and if you have met all requirements, you will be able to download and view your CEU certificate at this point in time. ILC modules are eligible for 2 CEUs.

Note: Professional Education is accredited by the International Accreditors for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) and offers IACET CEUs for its learning events that comply with the ANSI/IACET Continuing Education and Training Standard. IACET is recognized internationally as a standard development organization and accrediting body that promotes the quality of continuing education and training.

Starting in 2024, ILC course tuition will be adjusted to $399 per person per course. However, if you have already taken at least one ILC course before or in 2023, you will continue enjoying the price of $349 per person per course for all iterations during 2024 through the use of a discount code. The code will be shared with all eligible participants via email. If you are eligible and don’t have it, please contact us so we can send it to you again. Click here for instructions on how to apply the code.