Instructional Support Instructional Skills Coach
Job Description
For Immediate Hire
Background
NYC Skills Lab is an initiative funded by the GE Foundation and managed by the NYC Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Readiness. The purpose of NYC Skills Lab is to help educators and their partners – both youth employers and youth serving professionals – incorporate 21st century skills (1) development into their work with students to prepare them for college and career success.
About the Skills Fellowship
The Skills Fellowship was launched in 2016 to provide teachers with the opportunity to receive customized coaching support to enhance their pedagogical practices in integrating 21st century skills into their curricula and instruction. In addition to coaching, the fellowship offers each accepted fellow financial support to enhance the learning experiences offered to students through customized classroom initiatives that enable students to build towards mastery of 21st century skills. The two objectives of the Skills Fellowship are to build teacher capacity to:
- effectively design and execute scalable instruction, feedback, and assessment practices for 21st century skills development.
- support students in gaining and internalizing transferable 21st century skills.
Instructional Skills Coach Position
During the 2017-2018 school year, the Skills Coach will play a vital role in supporting a cohort of up to 14 high school teachers (Skills Fellows). The Skills Coach will provide 1-on-1 coaching and whole group professional development to enhance Skills Fellows instructional practice with regards to integrating 21st century skills into content curriculum, feedback practices, and assessment strategies. The purpose of this support is to make skills development more transparent, meaningful, and attainable for students.
Primary Responsibilities
Depending on the size of the cohort and program scope, the Skills Coach role will be a part-time or full-time consultant position, or it will transition from a part-time to a full-time consultant position. Candidates seeking either are encouraged to apply.
The primary responsibility of the Skills Coach will be to:
- support each Skills Fellow to achieve their instructional goals aimed towards building students mastery of 21st century skills.
- plan and facilitate 1.5 hour 1-on-1 monthly coaching meetings with each Skills Fellow to integrate instructional strategies and resources for teaching, assessing, and giving feedback on 21st century skills within the context of an already planned unit, task, or project.
- perform monthly classroom visits to provide feedback on execution of planned skills instruction.
- shift Skills Fellows as necessary from a traditional academic content-based learning approach to one more concerned with the development and mastery of skills.
- collaborate with other Skills Coaches to plan and lead quarterly whole group trainings and workshops for Skills Fellows and other stakeholders.
- organize and share knowledge with the cohort, provide collective opportunities for problem-solving, innovation, and development.
- document teacher progress and strategies used to enhance instruction.
- support Skills Fellows as they plan and execute classroom initiatives with NYC Skills Lab funds.
- document funding usage and impact on student development of skills.
- interpret and frame the work while it occurs as expressions of NYC Skills Lab’s overall mission.
Instructional Skills Coach Selection Criteria
Ideal candidates will have a deep interest in leveraging coaching to build teacher capacity to support student development of 21st century skills (refer to skills framework on page 3). Additionally s/he:
- D has 4+ years of strong teaching experience.
- has 3+ years of providing coaching to teachers around enhancing instructional practices.
- has experience working with a group / community of teachers.
- has experience working to invest and build relationships with teachers and school leaders.
- has experience working with and bringing together a variety of stakeholders.
- has experience with competency-based education / project based learning.
- understands the principles of mastery-based teaching and learning.
- has some experience with integrating 21st century skills into student learning experiences.
- is able to brainstorm strategies for aligning skill building opportunities between Skills Fellows and their partners to strengthen student learning experiences.
- is able to navigate and resolve conflicts that may arise with the implementation of Skills Fellows practice and classroom initiatives.
- wants to see 21st century skills more explicitly and rigorously incorporated in student learning.
- believes strongly in creating equity of education resources and opportunities for historically underserved students.
(1) NYC Skills Lab uses MHA’s Labs skills framework “The Building Blocks” which includes a focus on six core building blocks: planning for success, social awareness, personal mindset, verbal communication, problem solving and collaboration.
