The School District of
Osceola County, FL
Melba Luciano,
Superintendent
Press
Release
August 27, 2014 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Dana Schafer, Public
Information Officer - Osceola School District -- 407-870-4007 or 407-908-8811
(cell)
Osceola
School District's Professional Development Department Recognized As Leader In
The State
The Osceola School
District has been selected as the recipient of the 2014 Outstanding
Professional Learning Practices Award given by the Florida Association for
Staff Development (FASD). The selection committee was very impressed with the
district's Instructional Coaching Series with TeachLivE, and commended the
Osceola School District's Professional Development Department for its diligent
work in providing exemplary professional development to teachers and staff.
The Osceola School District will be recognized at the 2014 FASD Fall
Leadership Conference Awards Luncheon on Tuesday, September 23, in St.
Petersburg. During the luncheon, a FASD award plaque will be presented to
the district by the FASD Awards Committee.
The Instructional Coaching
Series is a professional development experience provided in the Spring of 2014
to instructional coaches in the Osceola School District. This unique
learning opportunity focused on the four instructional coaching tenets
developed by Dr. Cherie Behrens, University of Central Florida Visiting
Lecturer and Consultant. The four tenets are: Operating as a Coach;
Facilitating a Culture of Learners; Supporting a Data Focus; and Promoting
Student Success. In this three-day series presented by Dr. Behrens, instructional
coaches learned how to use coaching language with teachers, build relationships
with teachers, create peer coaching cadres, and utilize data to problem solve
in professional learning communities (PLCs). The instructional coaches were
guided through a series of centers designed to ignite and build background
knowledge and provide opportunities to practice.
The most impactful
technology utilized during the sessions was called TLE TeachLivE™, funded by
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. TeachLivE is a classroom simulator
populated with specifically-designed avatars that interact with educators.
TeachLivE uses differentiated learning techniques and a formative assessment
feedback model to provide each user or user groups with a different experience
that changes based on the actions of the educator(s) in the simulation. During
each session, TeachLivE was a center on its own where coaches could further
hone their abilities coaching teachers, practicing what was learned in the
sessions, utilizing "look for" documents for further coaching
conversations, and more. This was done in an unpredictable but realistic
way using a mixed-reality environment. Emerging research suggest that teachers
receiving professional development that utilizes TeachLivE increased in targeted
teaching skills as compared to teachers who do not receive TeachLivE (Dr.
Carrie Straub, 2014).
The Instructional Coaching
Series will be continued during the Fall 2014 for a new cohort of instructional
coaches. The series will be provided as a train-the-trainer model where
district coaches will be able to provide the training to school-level coaches.
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