Editors note: This article was previously published in volume 91, issue 2 of the Clarion hardcopy.
Starting in the 2023-2024 school year, Riverside Brookfield High School will adopt a new instructional leadership model. After contract negotiations between the Riverside Brookfield Education Association and the district, including the Board of Education, the two year plan was agreed to. This model emphasizes support for teachers, maximizing academic opportunities for students and productivity within the classroom.
RB’s current instructional leadership model includes members of the administrative team, along with seven instructional coaches for the majority of the core educational departments. The seven departments include English, Math, Science, History, Special Education, Applied Arts/World Languages, and Wellness/Fine Arts. Assistant Principal of Curriculum and Instruction Kylie Lindquist recognizes the restrictions that this current model has.
“What we’ve figured out within that model is that we weren’t necessarily able to dedicate the time that we wanted to supporting teachers and really setting a strong foundation of instruction and assessment and what all of that should look like instructional programming within that model,” Lindquist said.
The newly assumed structure eliminates the seven instructional coaches and replaces them with four division heads. The four divisions are Humanities, STEM, Special Education, and Career Technical Education (CTE). Humanities covers the English, Social Studies, and World Languages departments. STEM includes the Math and Science departments. Special Education is focused solely on the Special Education department.
“The last division head we call the division head for CTE, which stands for Career in Technical Education, and typically that umbrella term of CTE is used pretty exclusively for Applied Arts,” Lindquist said. “We have also included Wellness and Fine Arts under that division head’s [CTE’s] responsibility.”
This model was selected in an effort to maximize productivity for students and teachers alike.
“I think that people went into [these] conversations thinking we could do more for teachers and for students. I think collaboratively the teachers union and the district tried to figure out what that looks like, and this is what they ended up landing on,” Lindquist said.
Those filling the division head roles are still members of the teaching faculty and are not considered administrators. Some of the responsibilities the division heads will be taking on include material coordination, support for students and their fellow teachers, planning institute days and faculty meetings, along with all other nuances of their respective department.
“They will kind of be the front line of defense to make sure that they address everyone’s needs and remove any barriers that teachers or students might have to access learning,” Lindquist said.
In order to balance their additional duties, division heads will teach a reduced amount of classes and have additional release periods. Lindsay Mynaugh is currently the instructional coach for RB’s Math department and will be taking on the role of STEM division head next fall.
“I’ll be teaching less than I currently teach, so it will give me more time to do that and kind of help support teachers with that as well as determine what professional development or support teachers need with instruction, different resources, things along those lines,” Mynaugh said.
Mynaugh looks forward to connecting the Math and Science departments and promoting positive instructional practices and outcomes for students.
“I think it’s going to be really cool to see how, once I’m in classrooms with both departments, to be able to see like, ‘Hey, this person does this and it’s really beneficial and would work in this classroom,’” Mynaugh said.
English teacher Marc Helgeson is set to fill the part of Humanities division head. Kendra Cagle, currently a teacher at Hampshire High School, will assume the CTE division head role. Special education teacher and current instructional coach Mark Ori will be the Special Education division head.
“My role doesn’t change a whole lot. I guess the idea would be that we would have more avenues to reach our admin for our needs for what we need for students. I guess everything goes back to what we’re trying to do for you guys, right?” Ori said.
One of the most impactful aspects of this new model involves the CTE division due to its ties with a state mandate that requires high schools to offer career pathways for students by 2025.
“So what the state is asking schools in Illinois to do is create pathways where if I’m coming into a school as a freshman, and I’ve identified what I might want to do, I enter the right pathway for that,” Lindquist said.
Within the mandate from the state, there is emphasis on expanding opportunities for work-based learning for students. This includes providing internships, apprenticeships, and opportunities for dual credit. The new instructional model hopes to aid this endeavor.
“I think it [new instructional model] will allow us to better understand the needs of our students and help to intervene with students who maybe are off track or need a little support to get their skills where they need to be before they graduate,” Lindquist said. “I think that another outgrowth, I hope, will be teachers feeling better supported because everything that teachers do, the more we can support teachers, the more impactful they are in those classrooms. So that indirectly, but directly at the same time, impacts learning and impacts kids.”
A predominant objective of this new model is providing teachers with support in order to promote professional growth and create strong academic outcomes for students.
“My main goal always is to support teachers. Nothing that we do in high school works without teachers. And if teachers don’t have their needs met and they don’t have opportunities to grow and to develop, then they aren’t at their best for kids. And we want all of our teachers to not have to worry about the minutiae but really be able to focus on kids and focus on their instruction,” Lindquist said.
Lindquist is excited to see how RB’s academics and student opportunities evolve.
“Wherever there’s a big change coming, I think sometimes people get nervous and there’s always the unknown. In this case, I’m really excited about this change. We have some really great people that have been hired for these positions, and I think it’s just going to continue to evolve into something that creates new experiences for kids, and that’s really something that I’m most excited about,” Lindquist said.
The new model’s objective aligns with RB’s academic goals and values.
“I think that the shift really represents RB’s commitment to trying to maximize opportunities for students and really putting a team together that has the time, capacity, and the bandwidth to do that in a meaningful way while also supporting the really good instruction that we already offer at RB,” Lindquist said.