One of Teaching Lab’s core values is Responsiveness, meaning that based on your local leadership priorities and context, Teaching Lab adjusts to meet ambitious goals related to effectively implementing OpenSciEd to improve teacher practice and student learning. Essentially, Teaching Lab employs a goal-driven and do-whatever-it-takes approach by consistently analyzing data to adjust plans to ensure that implementation strategies are leading to improvement. Teaching Lab uses a multi-tier approach, working with teachers, content coaches, and school and district leaders to develop a coherent, sustainable utilization of OpenSciEd curriculum.

All of Teaching Lab’s professional learning and coaching support teachers to learn to leverage the unique assets and address the unique needs of learners, including English Language Learners and Students with Disabilities. For instance, Teaching Lab collaborated with ELSF to create the Framework for Designing Professional Learning Inclusive of English Learners, which supports professional learning providers to integrate the evidence base supporting English learners and multilingual learners.

Teaching Lab’s coaching always supports teachers in teaching students with disabilities, including dyslexia and other disabilities that can impede reading proficiency. For instance, we support teachers and local coaches to analyze and use formative data to identify students who need additional or targeted explicit skills instruction.

Teaching Lab also supports teachers and school leaders in employing an MTSS approach to ensure all students get the tiered support necessary to access grade-level content and achieve ambitious learning goals. In Teaching Lab’s coaching model developed for our NYC partnerships, for instance, it is very common for the coaches to work with the co-teachers on planning to facilitate lessons that:

1. Meet the rigor of the curriculum and grade-level content.
2. Accelerate learning for students who need “just-in-time” support to access the rigor of their curriculum.

Teaching Lab works at all levels of school systems to ensure teachers, content specialists, and leaders can sustain improvements beyond the partnership. Teaching Lab supports teachers to develop “Labs,” or groups of teachers teaching the same grade/subject who collaborate to learn evidence-based practices and improve their teaching and learning. Teaching Lab also has extensive experience building up local coach or teacher leadership over “Labs,” that engage in unit study, lesson study, and data analysis grounded in high-quality science curriculum. For instance, Teaching Lab has been supporting science curriculum implementation in Chicago for the last two years. We have created science instructional coherence across teacher professional learning implementation, school leader professional learning, and district leader support. As part of this, Teaching Lab conducts biweekly consultancy meetings with the science content area team at Chicago Public Schools. In these meetings, Teaching Lab supports district leaders to refine teacher and leader professional learning, review data on professional learning attendance, satisfaction, and impact, and to ensure that coherence is achieved across Chicago Public Schools implementing the science curriculum. Additionally, and similar to executive coaching, this is an opportunity for Teaching Lab to help content area specialists work through change management instructional support.