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Jounce Partners is a nonprofit training classroom coaches on sharing best teaching practices with instructors. They are working with 100 schools in 10 states, including several right here in Philadelphia, and have proven results. You can support their work or get involved here.

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Accelerating Student Acceleration

The Philly nonprofit Jounce Partners — supported by M. Night Shyamalan — coaches teachers to bring out the best in their students. The result is more learning

Accelerating Student Acceleration

The Philly nonprofit Jounce Partners — supported by M. Night Shyamalan — coaches teachers to bring out the best in their students. The result is more learning

This is the difference Jounce Partners can make in a classroom:

Earlier this school year, Jounce Partners supervisor Sarah Elder was observing an elementary school math class that had a Jounce coach as well as a regular classroom teacher. The teacher was leading the lesson about fractions, and it was clear that the students were confused.

Then the coach asked the teacher if it would be OK if she stepped in to model an alternate way to introduce the concept. With the teacher’s consent, the coach began showing pictorial representations of fractions.

“The kids could actually see what was happening, and that there are two 1/6s in every third and the 1/6 are smaller than 1/3 … And literally, around the room you could hear kids going, ‘Oooooooh,’” recalls Elder, Jounce Partners senior school acceleration partner and managing director of its Fellowship program. “Up to that point, the lesson had been more procedural and about learning the names of things, (but) the teacher was open and receptive to something new.”

Aquila Waller advises a student. Photo courtesy of Jounce Partners.
Aquila Waller advises a student. Photo courtesy of Jounce Partners.

That’s a large part of Jounce Partners’ mission. It introduces educators to the most up-to-to-date, research-based methods of teaching and learning, then helps them put them into practice. At the same time, the organization trains school administrators in best coaching practices. The results, the organization says, are greater investments in classroom excellence and improved student outcomes.

“We think it’s important that teachers understand the science behind learning,” says Paul Dean, Jounce Partners’ co-founder and executive director. “It’s not the teachers’ fault that instruction isn’t effective. Teachers, and the administrators who oversee them, are almost always doing their best, but working with very little effective science-based training on content and instruction.”

“Jounce works.”

The nonprofit Jounce Partners launched in 2011 with a different name (Student Leadership Project) and a different mission (helping middle schoolers develop leadership skills). Dean and co-founder Bobby Erzen, who met while part of the Teach for America corps in New Orleans, believed strong student leaders would serve as role models for their fellow students. Instead, they found that the student leaders were most successful in classes with strong teachers. In classrooms with weaker instructors, even the student leaders floundered.

So in 2013, they changed the organization’s mission and gave it the unusual name that speaks to the organization’s goals. Jounce is a physics term that means “the acceleration of acceleration.” Jounce Partners helps administrators accelerate teacher learning in order to accelerate student learning. They do this by providing training so these administrators become coaches who share best teaching practices with instructors.

“Teachers, and the administrators who oversee them, are almost always doing their best, but working with very little effective science-based training on content and instruction.” — Paul Dean, Jounce Partners

Since then, Jounce Partners has grown from serving 11 schools, including 10 in Philadelphia, to working with 100 schools in 10 states and impacting more than 35,000 students. (They moved to Philly after Dean’s wife started law school at Penn.)

Jounce measures success in student outcomes. Some recent results: A Columbus, OH, K to 8 school reported that math proficiency among younger students had increased by 30 percentage points in less than two years after partnering with Jounce.

Closer to home, Jounce Partners worked with Mastery Charter Schools, focusing on third grade English Language Arts (ELA) on three campuses. The schools later reported the percentage of students reaching proficient on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) increased by 10 to 20 percentage points.

The only remaining question is, “How do we get Jounce in every single school?” asks Michelle Histand, executive director of the M. Night Shyamalan Foundation, a nonprofit that supports efforts to eliminate the barriers caused by poverty and social injustice. The Foundation has supported Jounce for the past seven years.

“Jounce works — it’s that simple,” Histand says. “In Jounce Partners’ schools, kids are reading on grade level more than their peers, up to nine times more. And each year we’ve supported Jounce, we’ve watched the growing impact, reflected in the increasing number of students reached, their achievement rates, and their expanding reach to teachers and school leaders.”

Creating a culture of excellence

Wissahickon Academy Awbury Lower School Principal Kate O’Shea says not all of Jounce Partners’ success can be quantified. She says the organization has also contributed to improved student engagement and school culture in general. Since Jounce started at the school, “Most of the time, when I’m walking around, 90 to 100 percent of students are engaged and working hard,” she says.

The instructional staff has also pulled together, as “the thing about creating a culture of coaching at school is everyone knows we’re on the same team, trying to improve adult performance so students can be successful,” O’Shea adds. “[Teachers] feel like when they come here, they are pushed to excel and they become much better. Our new fourth grade teacher said, Here, everyone is an amazing teacher and you have to raise the bar for yourself. Creating that culture of excellence for educators feeds itself.”

That’s important. As the body of learning research continues to advance, teaching styles must adjust. In some cases, that means no longer following familiar past guidelines.

Creating that culture of excellence for educators feeds itself.” — Wissahickon Academy Awbury Lower School, Kate O’Shea

Since 2019, 42 states, including Pennsylvania, have passed laws requiring research-supported reading strategies. The most up-to-date research on reading instruction shows that phonics instruction — a standard for decades that was largely dismissed in the 90s — helped a higher percentage of students find success. Three years ago, Wissahickon adopted EL Education, the same curriculum the School District of Philadelphia adopted this year.

O’Shea says Jounce led the curriculum adoption process, supporting the school by creating walkthrough tools and data tracking systems to monitor the efficacy of the curriculum and its implementation. The coaches helped her teachers successfully adopt the science-backed reading instruction model — and they have well-exceeded the state’s reading goals for their students.

“You’ll literally see kids with eyes open, faces aglow,” she says. “That’s great for getting teachers invested, because it’s hard to see your students have that moment and not want more of that. So whatever you just did, I want to do that. I want that to be the way my math class feels every day.”

The key is effective coaches

Before joining the Jounce Partners team, Michael Hammond spent years in the classroom. Over time, he learned to be an effective educator by “mostly trial and error — seemingly at the expense of my students’ experience,” he says.

“Having someone supporting me with the technical and instructional expertise, doing live modeling and showing me application of techniques, that would have been a welcomed game changer for me and my students,” says Hammond, Jounce Partners’ Senior Acceleration Partner.

A typical urban school district allocates six to 10 days per year for professional development, with some of that allotment going towards grading and learning new district policies.“With the limited opportunity to impact teacher knowledge and practice, professional development and coaching tend to focus on generic moves — things that can help with instruction across all grade levels and content areas,” Dean says.

And even if new content is introduced during regular professional development, the focus is on teachers learning the new concepts, not how the concepts should be taught, Dean says. “We dig into the research on how concepts develop and how the brain learns in each content area and apply that to the context of actual teaching,” he says.

Jounce coaches spend about 500 hours each year learning the content and practice applying in a teaching context. Then they go to partner schools to support leaders and teachers with daily or weekly coaching.

Throughout the school year, the organization’s senior leadership team also serves as a research unit, monitoring the latest studies and strategies to consider.

When we do our jobs very well, we’re essentially co-teachers with the adults we’re supporting in our schools.” — Michael Hammond, Jounce Partners

While Jounce Partners is a nonprofit, 80 percent of its budget comes from its school contracts. An institution may spend between $15,000 to $100,000 for Jounce Partners’ coaches, depending on a school’s needs. The organization’s staff has grown from less than a handful of employees a decade ago to almost 20 today.

Most partnerships between schools and the nonprofit last one year, but many schools choose to retain the organization again when they see results. School administrators match Jounce Partners with the teachers and leaders who receive coaching.

Jounce Partner coaches visit their assigned schools weekly, spending at least four hours when working with administrators and more when working with teachers. Administrator coaches are then expected to pass on what they learn to their teachers to bring into the classroom. In this way, one Jounce coach can impact several classrooms and dozens of teachers.

“When we do our jobs very well, we’re essentially co-teachers with the adults we’re supporting in our schools,” Hammond says. “We work side by side with teachers and leaders to build deep and authentic relationships with students (and staff), dissect and prepare lessons, rehearse and deliver instruction, and, finally, gather and analyze student data in order to best prepare for upcoming lessons.”

Three women stand, speaking with each other in a classroom with their backs to the front of the class, where there is a large screen, wipe board and laminated papers on a wood paneled wall. These women are, Left to right: Aquila Waller, fellowship graduate and current head of School at Belmont Charter Elementary School; Sarah Elder, Jounce senior partner and managing director of fellowship; and Valerie Joell, Jounce senior partner and fellowship Director
Left to right: Aquila Waller, fellowship graduate and current head of School at Belmont Charter Elementary School; Sarah Elder, Jounce senior partner and managing director of fellowship; and Valerie Joell, Jounce senior partner and fellowship Director

Jounce Partners is also preparing the next generation of coaches through its fellowship program, a two-year, salaried training focused on developing instructional leaders, particularly members of the BIPOC community. Most fellows are teachers who aspire to leadership roles. There are about 14 fellows involved in area schools.

“The type of person we welcome into the program has a phenomenal growth mindset,” says Valerie Joell, the senior partner who directs the fellowship. “If you’ve been a teacher in the past 10 years or so, you are likely using a packaged curriculum. A high quality one, but it’s given to you … (so) you don’t spend as much mental energy thinking about what’s cultivating the learning as precisely as you do once you’re in the program. Even our strongest teachers are finding themselves deepening their content knowledge.”

Effective coaches also know how to build strong relationships with the individuals being coached. Trust is paramount, she says.

“If you don’t do what you say you’re going to do, it sends a powerful message to your team as to who you are as a leader … As a result our coaches think precisely about how to cultivate trust as this is essential to have an effective team,” she says. “If you’re not skilled at inspiring people, and bringing people along with you, it doesn’t matter how much you know.”

MORE ON MAKING OUR SCHOOL BETTER FROM THE CITIZEN

Aquila Waller (left) and Valerie Joell watch a teacher in a classroom setting.

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