Snapshots of our Impact 2013-2014

Andrea Rousso, Hidden Sparks coach and veteran educator, was paired with Rabbi D. of yeshiva Darchei Menachem in his first year of teaching. Being new to teaching in a school where the students have behavioral and/or learning challenges, Rabbi D. was eager to receive Hidden Sparks coaching. Andrea quickly saw that Rabbi D. was a friendly, thoughtful and reflective teacher who very much wanted to meet the needs of all his students. One of the areas that Andrea focused on with Rabbi D was creating smooth transitions in class. Transitions from one activity to another can be challenging for all students, particularly for those that have some special needs. Working with Andrea, Rabbi D found that with implementing targeted strategies, such as slowing students down when entering and leaving the classroom, and meeting students at the door led to students settling down and focusing much faster than before. Other strategies that they developed together, such as creating a clear protocol for requesting and receiving assistance during a lesson, created a calm, quiet and structured classroom and helped students self-regulate their mood and behaviors. In addition, Andrea provided guidance on adjusting assessments so that the amount of text on each page was reduced and therefore less daunting for students who struggled with reading or who got anxious at the thought of not doing well. Rabbi D was pleased to see improvements in student functioning and competency over the course of the year. Andrea already has plans for next year when she and Rabbi D can focus together on creating lessons that involve more interactions between and among students, are game-like in their structures and allow for more student self-expression and active engagement.

The practice of Collaborative Problem Solving, whereby teachers (and parents) work together with children to solve problems that arise, is an important component of Hidden Sparks practice but rarely taught in traditional teacher training programs. In many traditional school settings, when a teacher identifies a problem, they impose a solution or consequence- which meets with mixed results. When Dr. Sara Reichman, Hidden Sparks coach, trains teachers in Bnos Beis Yaakov of Far Rockaway to practice collaborative problem solving she provides them with the tools they need to approach and engage their students affectively. She notes that there have been times when she and a teacher prepare in advance for a conversation the teacher will be having with a student independently, and other times, when the teacher needs additional support, Dr. Reichman coaches the teacher through the conversation as it takes place. Dr. Reichman recalls a student in the classroom of one of the teachers that she worked with who was acting out frequently and engaging in attention seeking behaviors. It was becoming difficult for the teacher to maintain an orderly classroom, the child herself was having difficulty learning and her peers were beginning to mimic her negative behaviors. Through the collaborative problem solving process the teacher was able to gain further insight into what was prompting the behaviors and was better equipped to speak with the student’s parents so that they could become a part of the collaborative process as well. With time, and a collaborative plan, the child’s behavior improved as did communication with her parents. Dr. Reichman reflects, “The teacher saw Collaborative Problem solving as a process that she could embrace- because she saw, hands-on, how successful it could be.”

Over the course of the final year of the 5-year External Coach Program in Bnos Beis Yaakov of Far Rockaway, fostering sustainability of the Hidden Sparks approach was at the forefront of the goals of Hidden Spark’s coach, Dr. Sara Reichman. She reflects, “When I started at the school five years ago, the Hidden Sparks approach and the coaching model was foreign to teachers. I established myself as a partner, a ‘second pair of eyes’”, and with time the practice of teachers coming together on a monthly basis to discuss their observations of students and share strategies became a valued component of the teachers’ practice. In her final months coaching at the school, Dr. Reichman met frequently with faculty trained by Hidden Sparks to be Internal Coaches (an additional component of sustainability), to role-play the collaborative meetings they would continue to host on their own, utilizing a tool that she had developed to help guide teacher conversation and strategizing. Throughout her years at the school, teachers have appreciated her coaching and have seen the benefits to their work as teachers, and Dr. Reichman was celebrated at an end of year luncheon hosted by the school. Bnos Beis Yaakov principals are very supportive of continuing to utilize the HS approach even though the formal program has officially ended. Says Dr. Reichman, “Next year, I will provide periodic support to the Internal Coaches in the school- and will come to some meetings, but not others- I want the teachers to be independent.”

The developmental demands of a Chumash curriculum can be taxing for any child, particularly for first graders making the transition out of pre-school and learning to function in a typical classroom. Thinking of a 6 year-old boy whose second language is English, and third language is Hebrew, imagine how daunting the task of learning Chumash vocabulary can be. Helping educators understand the demands that language based activities make on a child in a Judaic Studies classroom is a typical coaching focus for Hidden Sparks coaches. When Dr. Tamar Bauman, Hidden Sparks Coach, was partnered with a classroom Rebbe in Yeshiva Shaare Torah, whose student was experiencing the challenges mentioned earlier, helping to pinpoint the exact nature of the challenge, and coaching the Rebbe as to how he might access the student’s strengths to compensate, became the goal. In this case, with the creation of multi-sensory vocabulary activities, the child who was struggling, began to develop and thrive.

While this Rebbe found that specific students had specific needs, he also found that his students shared common challenges, related to their age and developmental stage. While most familiar with a traditional classroom model that utilized a frontal lesson approach, the Rebbe found that his students were more interested in interacting with each other than sitting quietly and still while listening to him teach. With Dr. Bauman’s guidance in seeing this desire for socialization as a strength rather than a weakness, the Rebbe implemented a highly successful chavruta (paired learning) system allowing students to review together, along with additional hands-on group activities. This shift in classroom activities has allowed more students to be actively learning at one time and has minimized disruption in the classroom. While the Rebbe was a creative thinker coming in to his coaching sessions, he readily agreed that the support had expanded the way he thought about educating his students and inspired his creativity and desire to meet the needs of all the students in his classroom.