The Hidden Sparks External Coach Program (ECP) is Hidden Sparks’ most comprehensive model for professional development and student success, and is limited to eight schools a year. This 5-year program is geared to educators in kindergarten through eighth grade.
Through this program, a senior Hidden Sparks “external coach” spends a day a week working with teams of Judaic and general studies teachers, conducts classroom based student observations, provides mentoring for teachers, and facilitates monthly collaborative Hidden Sparks meetings to review learning profiles and teaching strategies for struggling learners.
Throughout the year, teachers learn about the components of the Learning Lenses®, neurodevelopment, temperament and ecology, in order to deepen their understanding of students. Specifically, they explore topics such as attention, memory, language, sequencing, social cognition, higher order thinking, and temperament as well as strategies for working with students whose challenges are impacting their learning.
The coach also mentors faculty in training to serve as Hidden Sparks “Internal Coaches” or “Peer Coaches” and prepares teacher teams with the skills to manage their own meetings so that they can continue to productively discuss students even when the Hidden Spark coach moves on to work with other grades.
Schools contribute to the cost of the program and are expected to select faculty members for training to be coaches.
If you have questions about or are interested in becoming a participating ECP school, please contact Tamar Appel, Director of Education, at tamar@hiddensparks.org or 212-767-7707.
