![]() Juan Carlos Zayas, who is completing his internship at The Ogden International School of Chicago and has been in the district for 14 years, said his coach has been a good sounding board as he thinks about his career and in helping him understand the district’s equity framework. “We cover the gamut-but we talk about it from that equity lens,” Watkins said. Those are areas on which principals are evaluated.Ĭoaches also cover the day-to-day aspects of the job, finding solutions to common trends that other principals have reported to their coaches, and on individual and school-specific leadership challenges. Part of the role of the coaches is to help their charges understand and put into practice the district’s equity framework, along with the state’s culturally responsive teaching and learning standards, which were implemented in 2021, Gibson said.Ĭonversations and supports between coaches and their charges are as diverse as the principals, their experiences, and the students they serve, Watkins and Gibson said.Ĭoaches also cover areas like giving feedback to teachers, engaging with parents, and addressing equity, including the needs of students with Individualized Education Plans, those in gifted and talented education programs and those with social-emotional learning challenges. In addition to increasing the number of male Black and Latino leaders, a key objective is ensuring that leaders can run schools committed to equitable practices. Align the support for leaders with district goals “We wanted this to be a service that we could provide, and having Cheryl, having conversations to reflect on the program-how we could improve, how we could meet the needs of the district-it shifted to more program-coordination and collaboration.”Ģ. “We didn’t want to be one of those institutions where we are going into a school district, we collect data for our own purpose, you never see us again,” Gibson said. Gibson, an associate professor at National Louis who runs the program, said the university wanted to ensure that it was filling a district need. “That made all the difference,” Watkins said. Many of the coaches had ties to the district, she said. ![]() That hesitance was smoothed out over several meetings to understand the university’s goals as well as the backgrounds of the coaches who’d be working with the district’s leaders, Watkins said. But even with the same goals, there was a learning phase, where each side had to get comfortable with the other, she said. Watkins, who was then working for the district, said it was easy for the district to sign on to the coaching partnership because both shared a similar objective-diversifying the leadership corps and increasing retention. It was through that existing relationship that the university saw the mismatch between the district’s student demographics and its leadership corps. And students in its preparation program do a one-year residency-essentially an internship-in the district, where they are matched with a coach and a mentor principal. The university recruits from the district’s pool of teachers, assistant principals and principals for its educational leadership programs. National Louis had had a partnership with the Chicago district since 2016. Work with the district to define the issue Here are six important lessons the university learned about being responsive to the district’s needs: 1. Of the 28 school leaders who are receiving support, 11 are Black and 8 are Latinx. Two of the coaches are Black men, three are Black women, and two are Latino. In the new program, the university added six coaches, who’ve worked in the district and know its ways, culture, and customs, to its faculty to provide targeted support to leaders of color with the day-to-day aspects of the job, along with guidance on career mapping, interview preparation, and assistance with promoting equitable practices in their schools. Male principals are also underrepresented: Only 9 percent of Black principals are men, while 7 percent of Latinx principals are men. And while 47 percent of students were Latinx, only 18 percent of principals were from the same background in the 2021-22 school year. The majority of Chicago’s students are non-white, but nearly half of the district’s teachers are white. The program is one of several initiatives underway to diversify the school system’s leadership ranks-where there’s a gap between school leaders and students, especially between Latinx students and leaders. She’s been one of the key links in a targeted coaching partnership between the Chicago school district and National Louis University to increase and retain the number of male principals from Black and Latino backgrounds.
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