This year, Mills Teacher Scholars facilitated teacher learning through collaborative inquiry with fourteen different teacher scholar groups. The focus in all groups is on supporting collaboration, data analysis, and equitable student outcomes through responsive and differentiated instruction. Mills Teacher Scholars facilitators carefully adjust program design to...

On May 4th, seventy-five Mt. Eden teachers gathered in the library to learn about their colleagues’ inquiry work. Eighteen Mt. Eden teachers from eight departments are participating in the first year of Mills Teacher Scholar inquiry work. Supported by...

Aija Simmons, Associate Director of Teacher Leadership In my 1st year of teaching, I was placed in a 5th grade sheltered English immersion classroom. Knowing the importance of oral language production for English Learners, I made sure my students got ample opportunities to turn and talk. My students were turning and talking all day long, engaging in mini-conversations that would last anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes, depending on the content and purpose. In this first year, I used this “best practice” strategy to anchor lessons across disciplines without really examining if students were benefiting from it. At a certain point during my 2nd year in the classroom, I happened to overhear a conversation between two students during turn and talk that sounded completely off task and irrelevant. I, of course, intervened and got the students to go back to the topic and exchange a sentence apiece, but somewhere in the back of my mind a question began nudging at me. I found myself wondering why in the world we were turning and talking all day long when the truth was I had no idea what most of my students were even talking about and I had not developed explicit goals for this talk. This broad question, “What happens when my students turn and talk to one another?” would impact my practice in ways far deeper than just teaching students to engage in academic discourse. Using the Mills Teacher Scholars inquiry group to find the answer to this question helped me to develop my professional voice and to begin to clarify my stance as a teacher. I began to understand that the relationship between what I think I’m teaching and what my students are actually learning is quite nuanced. Closely monitoring student responses to specific lessons through collecting multiple forms of student learning data, including audio of the turn and talk conversations, helped me to clarify the reasons for my instructional decisions and to see my students in new ways. The increase in instructional confidence I gained through engaging in monthly collaborative inquiry sessions with my colleagues began to carry over into other professional spaces. In search of the answers to questions of practice, I became a teacher leader.

Associate Director Daniela Mantilla Instructional coaches come in many forms these days—from Common Core coaches to literacy coaches to technology specialists, districts are investing large sums with the hopes that targeted support of teachers will transform teaching and learning in their school systems. What we see in some of our Mills Teacher Scholars district partnerships is that on the ground this investment has some major challenges. Coaches are pulled into testing students, asked to cover classrooms when there is a sub shortage or fill other operational school needs. Often coaches are exceptional teachers who have not had the chance to build their coaching skills before given the task of working with colleagues. Moreover, and possibly most importantly, even when experienced coaches enter a school site, they find that most teachers feel that they are not “ready” to take advantage of the coaching services. I have heard teachers share that they have not had positive experiences with coaches, see the offer of coaching as an administrators’ veiled critique of their professional capacity, or simply do not feel it is worth the time investment. Coaching works when teachers possess a growth mindset, an openness to examining their practice, and a trust in the value of the collaborative process. While there is a large body of research indicating coaching’s effectiveness, the readiness factor is frequently not addressed when districts and schools set up their coaching initiatives. At most schools, it takes time and intentionality on the part of school leadership to set the conditions for teachers to hold this learning stance. Through our inquiry process Mills Teacher Scholars builds these conditions for adult learning. Teacher Scholars develop the capacity to engage in various forms of coaching and collaborations. Through 15-30 minute one-on-one coaching conversation between group inquiry sessions, facilitators (or teacher scholar leaders at our teacher-led sites) support teachers to move forward with their inquiry practice. Often, the most important part of these coaching conversations is reminding the teachers of their previous thinking and giving them the opportunity to clarify their evolving thinking through articulating the jumble of ideas they haven’t quite yet made sense of. What Does This Look Like in Practice? Implementing Broad, Inquiring Deep at Colonial Acres