Coaching in the Time of the Unknown: Learning and Reimagining Together by Jennifer Ciok

On January 13, 2020, I started my new role at the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project as a coach. Full of excitement, and a little nervousness, my colleague Ashley Leonard and I were launching a new initiative called the Middle Grades Network (MGN) with the vision of cohorts of schools in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) collaborating to create more equitable and supportive educational environments where middle grades students thrive. In a few short weeks and a flurry of applications, site visits, and decision making meetings, we had chosen the first six schools to embark on a pilot journey with us to build these equitable and responsive systems using the principles of continuous improvement.  

At the end of February, we held our in-person full day kickoff with teams from each of these schools, and then day-long site visits to follow. The last of these visits took place on March 12, 2020, with conversations and concerns about this new novel virus swirling. The next day, in the midst of our internal team retreat, one by one school districts, including CPS, started closing to stop the spread of COVID-19. 

And with that everyone’s world changed in an instant.

For the Middle Grades Network, the unknown impact of COVID-19 and continued uncertainty meant that we had to pivot from our original plans centered on changing current systems in schools and become responsive to an ever shifting landscape where our educators did not know what was coming next.  This meant learning alongside our cohort of school teams what it meant to be asynchronous, then synchronous, then hybrid, and then back in person with masks and without. We had to become experts in Zoom, virtual meetings, and webinars as we all began to communicate through little boxes on a screen. 

Over the next year, as a network, we had to move away from traditional quantitative data and metrics like grades, attendance, and test scores and focus on qualitative data through surveys, empathy interviews, and focus groups. As a coach, I had to navigate supporting school teams as they built community with students they had never met in person and with educators I had met (at most) twice face to face. It was a time of survival but also a time of trying new things and reimagining what school meant beyond the four walls of a building. We were implementing change ideas to build student-educator relationships and stronger connections between school and home. During this time one school started a Student Voice Committee to better understand what students needed at school. Another school set up weekly one on one conferences to meet with students and their families to better understand their academic needs and their needs at home. School teams started to rely more on student voice and infused more choice in their curriculum based on what students had said in surveys. Educators came together in MGN network sessions to collectively share what was working and what was not, problem solve, and see that they were not alone in a time where so many were isolated.  These relationships were invaluable and led to further collaboration and continuous improvement throughout the MGN. 

Since the 2020-2021 school year, these schools, along with our second cohort who joined the Middle Grades Network in 2022, have focused on educator-student relationships, along with rebuilding peer to peer connections. They have thought critically about the learning conditions in their classrooms and how it impacts the experiences students have at school.  They continue to struggle with student attendance, new initiatives to combat the interruption to learning, and pressure to get students back on track. But through all of it, they have worked to keep students at the center. 

As this first cohort of schools, born in the pandemic, become Middle Grades Network alumni in the 2023-2024 school year, I am reflecting on what I have learned from them, with them, and about what still needs to change in education to make it more equitable and compassionate: 

• First, we need to center student voice and experience when it comes to shifting classroom learning conditions and the overall school experience. This means focusing on both qualitative and quantitative data and truly listening to what students are telling us about their experiences in and outside of school.  “The social and academic opportunities afforded to students in their classrooms, as well as how students experience these interactions and opportunities, substantially influence their motivation and cognitive engagement in learning” (Paunesku and Farrington 2020).
• Second, learning does not only happen within the four walls of a school. This means understanding that the community and families where students come from are an integral part of creating an inclusive school community where students and families feel seen, valued and heard. “Some of the positive impacts of school and family partnerships can include fostering housing, neighborhood, and community safety by creating family linkages to other neighbors, resources, and organizations,” along with creating channels for open communication and reciprocal relationships between school and home where shared decision making is handled with respect (Orta and Gutiérrez 2022). 
• Finally, educators are people and they need to connect with others to share frustrations, learnings, and collaborate through formal and informal networks. Teacher burnout is real and if we want to keep teachers in the profession, we need to give them the time and space to learn, to grow, and to connect. Effective teaching requires connection, which “means authentic, positive human relationships between every stakeholder—staff, administration, students, and community members…Education is a highly social endeavor; when relationships are strained or cultures are toxic, the whole system suffers” (Mielke 2022).

About the Scholar

As the Middle Grades Network Coach for the University of Chicago’s To&Through Middle Grades Network, Jennifer Ciok works closely with schools, partners, and the To&Through team to create more equitable and supportive educational environments where middle grades students thrive. In this role, she supports middle schools across multiple cohorts in CPS to help build these systems using both qualitative and quantitative data and research to define problems of practice and implement change ideas to better support students. Prior to her work at To&Through, Jennifer was a middle school social studies and English teacher for 15 years and a Social Emotional Learning Manager at the high school level for five. Jennifer went to Ohio University where she earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Education and her Masters in Reading Education. She also has her credentials in College and Career Advising and Gifted Education

References

Mielke, Chase. 2022. Educator Well-Being 2.0. ASCD, 79(9). www.ascd.org/el/articles/educator-well-being-2-0

Orta, David, and Vanessa Gutiérrez. Improving school-family communication and engagement: Lessons from remote schooling during the pandemic. April 2022.  University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. https://consortium.uchicago.edu/publications/improving-school-family-communication-and-engagement

Paunesku, David, and Camille A. Farrington. 2020. “Measure Learning Environments, Not Just Students, to Support Learning and Development.” Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education 122, no. 14: 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146812012201404.