Source: Hidden Sparks Fund
Designed to support a school’s long term ability to address the needs of struggling learners, the ICP program provides training in understanding and teaching to diverse learning styles, behavior management, facilitation skills, and mentoring to selected faculty members to be resident Hidden Sparks “Internal Coaches.” Internal Coaches develop the expertise to become school-based resources on diverse learners. They receive training to facilitate monthly class-level meetings, and workshops on diverse learning styles. Internal Coaches provide coaching to classroom teachers to help identify specific learning strategies for students struggling in school.
Training begins Spring 2015 to prepare Internal Coaches to begin coaching in their schools during the 2015-16 school year.
Hidden Sparks was founded in with the goal of increasing the capacity of Jewish Day Schools to address the varied needs of children with learning and/or behavioral difficulties, particularly children whose struggles might otherwise elude identification. Its premier program, the External Coach Program (ECP), is a school - based teacher training and coaching initiative currently operating in 13 Jewish day schools in New York, three in Baltimore and two in Chicago.
In order to both deepen the capacity in the ECP schools and to broaden its reach to include new schools, HIDDEN SPARKS developed the Internal Coach Program (ICP), now operating in 36 schools. These programs, and the HIDDEN SPARKS philosophy, are based on the principle that all children learn differently and that effective programs for helping those with learning difficulties will ultimately help all children in the school. They also reflect the HIDDEN SPARKS goal of building long term capacity within schools by providing teachers with the tools and teaching strategies to better understand, identify early, and teach children with social, emotional and learning differences, and by nurturing a cadre of “trained experts” in the school, teacher - leaders from within the school.
Read more about the Hidden Sparks ICP proram at the Hidden Sparks website.