New this year to the Pius X staff there are two instructional coaches, Anthony Miranda and Ken Heinz.
Instructional coach is a new position to Pius X aimed towards assisting priests and sisters in a variety of ways.
“The instructional coaches are meant to assist specifically the theology teachers to help improve their ability to teach,” Co-Chaplin Father Samuel Beardslee said. “When our Priests and sisters come in they don’t have any formal background in teaching, this is all new for them. They are very good with their knowledge of the faith, but teaching is not easy and that’s where the instructional coaches come in.”
Both Miranda and Heinz have years of experience in the classroom which mixes well with the teachers’ knowledge of faith.
“As an instructional coach one of the things I do is fill in for theology teachers on their days off,” Heinz said.
Before instructional coaches were implemented, every Tuesday in a theology class was spent doing an unrelated video assignment in another teacher’s classroom.
“Every Tuesday last year we spent theology watching a video and doing a worksheet or packet in another class that wasn’t relevant to what we were learning.” junior Steven Doan said.
Now class continues as if the priest was still there, notes and conversation carry on normally instead of an irrelevant assignment.
“It’s nice having Tuesday be like a regular day now, I enjoy learning more than doing a random assignment,” junior Macy Abel said.
Not only do instructional coaches’ sub on Tuesday, but they also sit in on classes.
“Other than covering days off, I also sit in multiple theology classes on a regular day,” Miranda said.
Sitting in looks like Miranda or Heinz seated in the back taking notes and learning material just as students would.
“I can go into a father or Sister’s class and learn what’s being taught so I can better teach the students, opposed to just showing them a video and giving an assignment,” Miranda said.
Father Christian Schwenka stated with an instructional coach his class is never behind.
“The other thing we do is help teachers teach more effectively,” Heinz said. “That is us identifying teaching strategies and helping implement them into the classroom, giving a lot of constructive feedback and showing them what they did well.”
The constructive feedback and strategies are then used when creating lesson plans and curriculum.
“Having Ken and Anthony on the team helps me feel as if I’m not trying to figure this all out by myself which is a very common thing for all teachers to have,” Beardslee said. “I’m very confident that their presence is not only going to boost up the quality of our teaching but also boost confidence, and of course to help provide a better education for the students.”
