Southeastern California Conference
Continued Excellence:
SECC’s Instructional Coaching Team Partners with Teachers By Becky St. Clair
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our years ago, Amy Cornwall became Southeastern California Conference’s first director of instructional coaching, located at Mesa Grande Academy. This unique position was created in an effort to better support K-12 teachers.
“Instructional coaches work sideby-side with teachers on instructional goals in the classroom, as well as on their professional development,” Cornwall explained. “We work both one-on-one and in a group as a school.” Though initially Cornwall was the only instructional coach in the conference, interest grew, and today there are five in total. The other four are Vicki Karsten at La Sierra Academy, Aime Cuevas at Orangewood Academy, Heather Blaire at Redlands Adventist Academy, and Rachel Romero, SECC small schools coach, who rotates between three schools. When COVID-19 closed school doors, the coaches knew they needed to expand their work. “Though our dream is that every school has an instructional coach, that isn’t a reality yet,” she said. “With traditional school temporarily on hold, we knew we had to help our teachers adjust and adapt to the new educational reality.” First, they established grade-level brainstorming sessions so teachers could talk through what distance learning would look like for their kids. Second, they sent out a survey, asking teachers what would be helpful, which yielded many excellent ideas. They set up a series of online professional development
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PA C I F I C U N I O N R E CO R D E R
Third-grade teachers and instructional coaches gather for their round table discussion through a Zoom meeting during the pandemic. opportunities, starting with the basics of how to use online educational tools such as Zoom, SeeSaw, Flipgrid, Class Dojo, and Google Classroom at various class levels. “These are all common vocabulary now,” Cornwall pointed out, “but two months ago, many of us knew nothing about them.” Teachers who were already experts at using various online platforms presented training sessions, as did the coaches. Altogether they’ve produced over 30 online workshops and training sessions on teaching various subjects Maria Stratton, teacher at Loma Linda Academy, presents a workshop on how to use and maximize Google classroom.
and managing class projects and AP classes. Each live session is recorded for those who can’t attend, and nearly 200 people have attended/watched the training videos. “This wouldn’t have happened without everyone coming together,” Cornwall stated. “If one teacher knows how to do something and another doesn’t, they show them how. All of our teachers are really pitching in, utilizing all these different methods to make sure the instruction they’re providing is at the same high level they and the students are used to.” It’s not just on the academic side that teachers are striving for continued excellence; Cornwall points out that across the conference, schools are taking steps to ensure the valued spiritual connection is still present, too. “We all want everyone to be successful, and we want to be there for our kids,” she added. “They’re why we’re here.”
