ELP Pilot Update: Successes, Lessons Learned and What’s Next

As with any new endeavor, we have encountered a few bumps along the road in launching the ELP pilot program. Because we believe in full transparency, we wanted to share an update on what has worked, what has not, what we learned and where we go from here.

Our original plan

We spent a year preparing for the pilot, looking for and talking to partners and designing the program and processes. We defined four goals during this time to keep us focused and set us up for a successful pilot launch.

First, we wanted to engage a diverse group of 14 Locals/Districts spread across seven states in the Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Ohio). Ideally, we wanted two to three Locals/Districts per state to implement our pilot program.

Second and third, we wanted to support Locals/Districts as they recruited 140 New Teachers to participate in the pilot and 14 experienced teachers to serve as Building Mentors to New Teachers.

Fourth, we wanted to work with state associations to select and define 28 Virtual Instructional Coaches to work with New Teachers in their specific content area and grade level.

We have achieved most of these goals. Because all participants - New Teachers, Building Mentors and Virtual Instructional Coaches - are volunteers, we consider this a great accomplishment.

Our final group of pilot participants closed with 10 Locals/Districts: two in Indiana, one in Iowa, one in Michigan, three in Minnesota, two in Nebraska, and one in Ohio. Illinois is currently participating in a pilot-before-the-pilot program.

To date, we have received confirmation from nearly 90 New Teachers and 24 Building Mentors (plus 2 prospects). Twenty-three Virtual Instructional Coaches have been matched with New Teachers. Five out of six orientation sessions for New Teachers, Building Mentors, and matched Virtual Instructional Coaches have been completed, along with training for Virtual Instructional Coaches and Building Mentors.

Locals/Districts have been very engaged throughout the process. We want to create a safe space for teachers to share the challenges they’re facing, and Locals/Districts understood this need and embraced the initiative. We look forward to seeing how these partnerships develop.

Teacher response has been enthusiastic. Locals/Districts have told us that once invites are sent to New Teachers, the majority reply quickly with a yes. In a couple of cases, the local president called New Teachers who didn’t reply. That individual contact also resulted in many yes’s.

The selection process for Virtual Instructional Coaches has worked beautifully. We are reaching them, they have the skills we are looking for and they meet the requirements: they have at least five years of teaching experience, a proven record of achievement, active union membership and active teacher licenses in the state where they applied. We are pleased to have such a talented pool of candidates in each state. In our program, New Teachers choose their Virtual Instructional Coaches, and feedback around with the matching process has been positive so far.

So that’s the good news! Many pilot launch activities are on-going, and we continue to learn every day. Here are the bumps we’ve encountered to date.

We needed to expand the number of participating schools 

Our plan almost immediately ran into a roadblock. When we started talking to Locals/Districts, we requested they each bring 10 new teachers from one school from their district. “That’s not realistic,” they told us. “I don’t think any one school has 10 new teachers!”

Unfortunately, we were constrained by our budget. Because each Building Mentor receives a stipend, we needed to concentrate New Teachers in as few schools as possible. “Are two or three schools doable?” we asked. “Yes, that should work,” they told us. One challenge overcome!

Some teachers have very specific content areas

We learned that some New Teachers who accepted the invitation to participate have very specific profiles. In one Local/District, for example, a New Teacher teaches agriculture in high school. When we attempted to align the teacher with Virtual Instructional Coaches who have the same content area and grade level expertise, we noticed our pool of coaches includes a lot of high school teachers but none that teaches agriculture.

Because each New Teacher gets to choose their Virtual Instructional Coach, we want to offer them two or three options for coaches that not only have experience but are currently working in their content area and grade level. This makes the search for coaches a little more challenging than we anticipated, but it’s been a valuable learning experience for us.

We have reopened the application window to find Virtual Instructional Coaches with the specific content area expertise some New Teachers need, and we are currently conducting interviews to fill those gaps.

New Teacher recruitment takes longer than we thought

Locals/Districts have been fantastic partners that have worked very hard to recruit participants to the pilot. We are so thankful for their efforts and time. Speaking of which, we learned that they need more time to identify and share information about the pilot with New Teachers than we thought. There are always staffing changes right up to the first day of school, and that impacts our timeline as well. We are currently working with Locals/Districts to rethink the timeline so we can close our New Teachers group.

We need to manage coaches’ expectations

We also realized we need to rethink our communications with Virtual Instructional Coaches. Those who applied very early in the process (April and May) haven’t heard from us in a while, while those who just applied last month feel like things are moving along. We want to make sure we keep all candidates engaged during the process, so we don’t lose any.

While the application process and timeline are clear for Virtual Instructional Coaches, we need to do a better job managing expectations around their program participation. A coach may be invited to participate, but it’s up to a New Teacher to choose them. We need to emphasize this point.

We may open application to retired teachers

Some states have had a more difficult time finding Virtual Instructional Coach candidates. Right now, we are only accepting coaches who are active teachers. Recently retired teachers have also shown interest, and because so many are valuable sources of information and wisdom, we are rethinking this restriction. As long as they maintain their status as an active union member, they may be eligible in the future.

Looking ahead

We had hoped to launch the pilot in August so we could hold the orientation and training sessions before the school year began. Delays in recruitment mean we’ll have rolling launch dates starting in September. However, launch dates depend on how quickly New Teachers choose Virtual Instructional Coaches and how quickly we find new Virtual Instructional Coaches candidates to fill in content area gaps. We have been emailing participants to let them know about the delays, but of course there’s a risk that we’ll lose candidates.

We feel like students ourselves, continually learning as we begin to test our theory of change in real time. We set out to create an innovative support program for new teachers that is different and impactful, and we will continue to report on our progress.

If you have any questions about ELP or our pilot test, please email us at info@educatorsleading.org.