Bowie Middle School teachers Da’Niel Beauchamp and Monica Olivas have taken Ector County ISD’s LEAP program head on.
LEAP stands for Leadership for Ector’s Accelerated Performance. Its goal is to sharpen teachers’ skills to help them become more effective and strengthen campuses’ instructional leadership teams. More skilled leaders and teachers will result in higher achievement in math and English language arts/reading for students.
LEAP is initially focused on 10 schools that have a high percentage of economically disadvantaged students. It will provide professional development for teachers and leaders and through a highly competitive, multi-year, $9 million grant and will reward those who improve their practice and increase student growth with significant stipends.
In her 23rd year of teaching, Beauchamp said she has taught in five different states.
Beauchamp said they are two of four people given the opportunity to work with Principal Amy Russell to go throughout the campus, do learning walks, look for needs and figure out what actions can be taken. The other two are seventh-grade math teacher Viviana Rivera and sixth-grade English teacher Hannah Kidd.
Russell said this was a chance for teachers to learn from peer teachers who share the same students and parents.
Both Beauchamp and Olivas are multiclassroom leaders. Part of their day includes coaching other teachers and sharing best practices. Olivas has been working with eighth-grade math because they don’t have an MCL and Beauchamp has been working with sixth-grade language arts as they don’t have an MCL either.
Being multiclassroom leaders, they have seen their team grow in terms of teaching skills and now that they’re branching out, they are seeing the same thing. A lot of first and second-year teachers are seeing growth faster.
Beauchamp said she has personally grown as a multiclassroom leader more in the year and a half she has been in Ector County than she has in decades.
“That’s because of the support system, the professional development. … Friday when we do our professional development, we have to know the ins and outs and then we have to have samples and we have to have evidence that we are doing these things in our classrooms if we’re going to get the teacher buy-in to implement and try these strategies,” Beauchamp added. What they are already seeing is that teachers who are coached, given feedback and taught specific strategies are finding that their data has increased. They are hoping it translates into higher test scores and helps with teacher retention.
“The more successful you feel with your students, the longer you’re going to stay and the higher your chances are that your students are going to meet that targeted growth. Then with the LEAP team there’s an incentive for the math and reading teachers. Each teacher under reading and math, if they hit certain marks with student growth, they’ll be able to qualify for additional funds just like the TIA (Teacher Incentive Allotment), so there’s also a monetary incentive for those teachers to want to work with us and change some of their practices because it could translate to extra money,” Beauchamp said.
Olivas noted that when feedback comes from a teacher, it feels less “evaluative, it’s not as threatening or as scary.”
“It’s like it’s a safe place for them to ask questions, to not know, to get better, to perfect their craft if it’s a safe place,” Olivas said.
Olivas, who is in her third year at Bowie and her 11th year of teaching, added that when you can be very direct and very intentional, it makes a world of difference with teachers.
She added that they have seen movement already and there are more opportunities for teachers to get support and learn from a team of teachers that know how their days work. Plus, there are financial incentives.
They both hope this is a way to draw more teachers to the district.
“I agree with with Monica. I think that it’s going to provide us an opportunity to fill in spots where we have a high turnover and more teachers leave. Perhaps with this grant money and the opportunity to hone in on certain skill sets and to be rewarded for your work in addition to the TIA (Teacher Incentive Allotment) … it should make us more marketable,” Beauchamp said. “Sometimes it’s harder to get teachers to buy into a school that has such high eco-dis (economically disadvantaged students) that’s climbing its way out of where we were before. It’s easier to jump on board at a campus where you have high ratings and the children know everything. That’s easier than coming to the schools that are still climbing and clawing their way out. I think that come the spring, us being able to say we have this LEAP program, we have extra supports in place, and to incentivize that, I think that’s going to make us more marketable in the district. And for some teachers that are really good teachers, but maybe wouldn’t have given us a chance will give us a chance with this LEAP grant,” Beauchamp said.
ECISD was one of just 29 educational entities in the United States to earn one of these awards.
More skilled leaders and teachers will result in higher achievement in math and English language arts/reading for students. There are four groups of staff members participating in professional development provided by the grant.
One is a group of four teacher leaders from each of the schools participating; one is the group of 10 principals from the participating schools; one is identified “novice” teachers and their mentors from the 10 LEAP schools; and one is a group of 12 up-and-coming teacher leaders from across ECISD. The groups will meet at least once a month for the duration of the three-year grant.
The grant rewards educators who improve their practice and increase student growth with significant stipends. It also rewards effective educators and principals who take on positions at high-need schools serving a diverse student population.
Executive Director of Talent Development Jaime Miller said it builds the capacity of both leaders and teachers.
“There are some programs that do run through LEAP that affect teachers who aren’t at the 10 campuses. One of those was called ATLA, Advanced Teacher Leadership Academy. Twelve teachers from around the district are in that and they get to work with just amazing leaders and work on their leadership skills. We meet at least once a month. We just had a big conference style, three days of working together,” Miller said. “They receive a $5,000 stipend for going through this program, but it’s not only helping them, they’re going to go back and it’s really going to help build the capacity of leadership on their campuses.”
She added that they are also working on mentoring. There are Acceleration Instructional Leadership Teams (AILT), groups on the 10 campuses that are looking at instruction and defining what good teaching looks like.
They are looking at data on those 10 campuses, identifying learning gaps and seeing what the district or the campus needs to do to ensure that they have high-quality teachers in every classroom, Miller said.
“They also get a $5,000 stipend for being in that,” she added.
When ECISD was writing the grant, they worked with a firm called CTAC, which stands for Community Training and Assistance Center to choose the campuses that would participate in LEAP.
“They said that we were a district on the rise, that we have done so many things that have helped ECISD to become better, so they felt that we were a really good candidate for this grant. We looked at schools that are high-need schools that have students from low-income families, diverse students, and that are continuing to grow, that we want to grow even more. Not only grow on tests, but get to proficiency is what we wanted. We looked at historical data up until data today, and then we picked the 10 schools that we would be working with because we do have all this promising growth, but we want to be above the state, not just equal to the state,” Miller said.
The grant is for three years, but ECISD has the opportunity after three years if they are doing well, that they can ask for an additional two years.
“That’s what we’re going to do is we’re going to do a very good job with the three years that we have and that way we can actually have five years of the grant,” Miller said.
The goal is to expand the initiative out to all ECISD campuses and keep this going.
“For instance, when we’re looking at really revitalizing our mentor program, we’ll do it with these 10 campuses. But the goal is that this becomes ECISD’s way of doing things, working with the Advanced Teacher Leadership Academy. We want to keep that going well after the grant has gone, so this is just going to help get us a burst to get this going throughout the whole district and ensure that our novice teachers that we’re working with them for three years. … We know being a first-year teacher is hard, but your second year is hard too and your third year is hard. We want to keep that mentoring going for at least three years. … What happens after that, really get the culture of coaching within our district where it needs to be,” Miller said.
