The school coach model

Schools do not change simply because a programme arrives. They change when the people inside them choose to, and leaders are central to that choice. The Initiative created two dedicated roles so that the choice had support behind it.

Coaching leadership

E3 coaches worked directly with school and district leaders. Their support covered visioning and planning, research and evaluation, the development of instructional leadership, and the collection and interpretation of data. The aim was not to hand leaders a template but to help them think clearly about their own school and its own students.

Building instructional capacity

Each partner school also identified a Teaching and Learning Facilitator. These were teachers with a strong record in the classroom who stepped into a peer role. They sat in on lessons, gave colleagues concrete feedback, and helped teams study curriculum, instruction and assessment together. The role was deliberately positioned as a peer relationship rather than an evaluation, which made it possible for teachers to open their practice to one another.

Why two roles

Leadership and classroom practice are connected, but they are not the same thing. By resourcing both at once, the Initiative could support a principal in redesigning a master schedule while also supporting a teacher in reworking how students demonstrate what they know. The two strands reinforced each other, and both depended on the same principle: change is more durable when it is grown from within.