Culturally Responsive/Student Driven Instructional Coach

Job Description

Job Description

Note : Before you read on, please read the Commitments to Educational Equity that AVC strives to adopt across our organization. We seek to add leaders to our team who can help us make these commitments a reality so that they influence how we lead, learn, innovate, design, collaborate, create, and serve our students, families, partners, and communities. Still interested? See below:

Who We Are:

Assabet Valley Collaborative (AVC) is a Metrowest/Central Massachusetts educational service agency. Our services include school programs (including Orchard Street Academy, see below), wraparound services, transportation services, professional development, cooperative purchasing, and consulting. We are in the process of developing a shared leadership model to engage stakeholders across the organization in learning, leading, designing, and decision-making. To achieve shared leadership, we need to engage in continuous study of the principles of cultural proficiency, culturally responsive practices, human-centered design, design thinking, and social innovation.

AVC's Orchard Street Academy (OSA) is a small public therapeutic school (grades 6th-12th). OSA’s programming includes academics, individual and group counseling, art and music therapy, a range of high-interest electives, and community development seminars.

Context:

• Serves 62 students from more than 30 sending school districts. 
• All students receive specialized services through Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).
• Students are enrolled in OSA and/or SOAR extended evaluation programs.
• Classes taken at OSA transfer as a credit to sending school districts. 
• Well known for our focus on Expressive Therapies (music, art, drama). 
• The building is old but with amenities - gymnasium, track, basketball court, music room, art room.
• Many faculty have had access to training in Cultural Proficiency, Restorative Justice, Shared Leadership, Trauma Informed Care, Healing and Wellness, and Student-driving/Student-centered Learning.
• A few faculty have had access to training in Culturally Responsive Teaching, and Deep Learning.
• Despite commitments to equity, OSA continues to reproduce many inequitable outcomes: limited staff diversity; disparities in student outcomes (by gender, race, sexual orientation, income level, disability type, etc.); and inconsistent family engagement in need of strengthening. 
• AVC and OSA are seeking leaders to support continued transformation and redesign for teaching and learning.

Purpose Statement:

The Instructional Coach serves as a leader and as a learner: a team member who is flexible, resourceful, thrives in a fast-paced, non-traditional, collaborative environment, and who understands educational and human service institutions. This person demonstrates a learning and collaborative mindset and the ability to receive feedback, self-reflect, and adapt, as well as an ability to effectively facilitate the learning of others by pushing their thinking, building their skills, and sparking their self-reflection and curiosity. This role includes direct and indirect support of students, staff, and caregivers.

The primary role of the Instructional Coach is to support an increase in educational outcomes for historically underrepresented students; (including students with social emotional disabilities and complex learning profiles). The coach must have a lens that is able to encompass special education support in their coaching cycles, consisting of supporting teachers implementing IEPs, with a strong focus on: IEP accommodations, scaffolding of lesson plans, responsive classroom behavior models, co-teaching models and rigor within executive functioning skill teaching. 

The Instructional Coach would support teachers in creating culturally responsive curriculum, serve as a resource to others; developing professional learning opportunities; achieving defined objectives by planning, evaluating, developing, implementing and maintaining services in compliance with established guidelines.

This is a non-evaluative role - however, accountability through giving and receiving feedback is an essential function. It’s also important to note that we are a small community, and it’s crucial that every member of our team is comfortable wearing many hats including some administrative, hands-on, and detail-related responsibilities.

Job Responsibilities: 

• Provide coaching to academic teachers of our community. (In time, the goal is for this to build towards coaching for paraeducators, clinicians, and related service providers).
• Co-create and share in the responsibility of the development and implementation of culturally responsive pedagogy and curriculum for the purpose of strengthening curricular and instructional expertise to advance educational equity.
• Analyzes and utilizes student academic data for the purpose of developing or co-developing appropriate curriculum and guiding instructional conversations.
• Collaborate on the development of student-centered data systems that redefine how and what we measure and define as meaningful data, for the purpose to support student success.
• Analyzing and surfacing the personal, interpersonal, and instructional barriers that contribute to harmful outcomes for our students.
• Understands and identifies barriers in classroom instructional practices that contribute to inequitable outcomes for historically underrepresented youth for the purpose of providing recommendations and supports. 

• Facilitates professional learning, workshops, seminars, etc. (e.g. effective practices for emergent bilinguals, prominent literacy practices for non-standard English-speaking students, culturally responsive teaching modules) for the purpose of sharing best practices, identifying issues, developing recommendations, disseminating curriculum, and supporting staff.
• Be an active member of our Instructional Leadership Team (academic teachers and Co-Director)
• Completes necessary documentation.
• Complies with collaborative-wide policies and procedures.
• Performs all other duties and responsibilities as assigned.
  

Qualifications:

Ideal candidates have:

• Fluency in cultural proficiency, culturally responsive practices, and/or educational equity; a deep working knowledge of systemic inequity and social change practices.
• Familiarity with trauma-informed care, restorative practices, and/or other human-centered design approaches. 
• Experience in special education settings
• Experience in therapeutic day schools highly preferred
• Demonstrated success leading educators, through coaching and partnership, by implementing culturally responsive curriculum, and understanding the complexities of educational equity. 
• Demonstrated success in directly teaching marginalized and underrepresented students in a classroom setting. 

• A minimum of 8+ years of relevant, professional experience.
• Advanced scholarship/inquiry (formal or informal) in topics related to educational equity in learning theory (neuroscience, psychology, instructional design, etc.).
• Massachusetts DESE License (or eligibility for) strongly desired.
• Excellent written communication skills.
• Extremely strong verbal communication skills, both with large groups and interpersonally.
• A passion for interdisciplinary work and intercultural collaborations.
• Ability to work through conflict honestly and openly and accept clear and direct feedback.
• Bilingual or multilingual is a plus.

Schedule : 185 day schedule; 8 hour school day; 7:30am-3:30pm. Summer hours are also available, but not required.

Competitive Benefits Include:  

• Compensation competitive within the public school employees sector - $72K-$111,675. 
• 3 personal days, 10 sick days.
• 75% health insurance premiums covered by AVC.
• Participation in MA state pension systems (MTRS or MSERS).
• Voluntary benefits: Flex Spending, Life, Short-term, Long-term Insurance; Dental.