By Michaela Bishop
Northeast News
August 26, 2015

KANSAS CITY, Missouri — With a new school year, comes new academic strategies for Frontier Charter schools.

For the new school year, Frontier hired six new instructional coaches. Instructional coaches are individuals who help teachers plan curriculum and help prepare them to be more effective teachers for the students. The coaches also give guidance and feedback to teachers on how they are teaching students.

Since all of the instructional coaches are new, during their first year, they will focus on building relationships with teachers and showing them they are available if and when they need any guidance. Karen Smith, one of the six new instructional coaches, said their future goal is to eventually have modeling in the classroom, which means if the teachers and students don’t understand something, then the instructional coach will come in and show them different strategies. The coaches are all assigned to different subjects such as math, science, social studies, and more.

“Instructional coaches give non-evaluative support to help teachers grow,” Smith said. “They are an extra set of eyes looking for things that need to be fine tuned.”

Smith also added that instructional coaches are especially important when the principal does not have enough time to give guidance to the teachers. The sixth through eighth grade instructional coaches plan to travel between Frontier School of Innovation and Frontier Schools of Excellence.

Dr. Jimmie Bullard, another new instructional coach, said coaches are great people to have if you have the budget for one. Bullard previously worked as a principal and did not have a vice principal, but instead she had an instructional coach.

“We are not working directly with students,” Bullard said. ”We are working with strengthening the teacher’s skills to build their capacity to work with students.”

Jennifer Watson, Executive Assistant and District Public Relations Coordinator for the Frontier Schools, sat in on a five minute lesson with each of the instructional coaches. Watson believes this group of people will help students apply what they learn so they can understand what they are learning.

“I think the instructional coaches will really help our school and raise us above the bar,” Watson said.