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How Can We Transform Our PLCs to Disrupt the Cognitive Redline Classroom?

Masterclass Course Held over 4 sessions:
March 13, 2025 - april 3, 2025

Coaching to Disrupt Cognitive Redlining in the Instructional Core

Building Your Skill and Capacity to Elevate the “Responsive” in Culturally Responsive Teaching

When it comes to liberatory education, we know there is a  “hidden curriculum” that some students get and others don’t. It’s  learning to learn skills. Over time, this hidden curriculum has created a cognitive redline hiding in plain sight in too many schools. Our charge is to provide these enabling skills to all students. While many school districts are embracing culturally responsive teaching to improve student outcomes, most focus too narrowly on relationships and belonging rather than on instruction.

They ignore the chasm between students who are powerful learners who can carry the cognitive load during instruction and those who cannot. Too often by the beginning of high school, for many students there’s no viable path toward becoming a cognitively independent learner. This chasm is what I’m calling the “cognitive redline” in my upcoming book, (Re)Building Student Learning Power: Teaching for Instructional Equity and Cognitive Justice (in press, 2025).

 

This masterclass series will give instructional coaches a sneak peek between the covers, at the core concepts and tools I advocate for closing the chasm between dependent learners and independent learners. In Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, I aimed to deepen educators’ conceptual understanding of culturally responsive teaching that leads to instructional equity. In (Re)Building Student Learning Power: Teaching for Instructional Equity and Cognitive Justice, I offer the complimentary how-to part of that process. This book is a roadmap to restructuring instruction so teachers have the capacity to teach learn-how-to-learn skills alongside subject matter content and grade-level standards at any grade level. 

In it, I lay out the process and steps that teachers, teacher-leaders, and Instructional coaches can follow to help schools move beyond performative culturally responsive teaching by embracing the instructionally- oriented “responsive” part of CRT so  teachers can become the warm demanders of students’ cognitive development.

Register for the Masterclass Course

Registration Closes March 11th at 6pm ET

Course Includes 4 Sessions:

$995/per person
March 13, 2025
March 20, 2025
March 27, 2025
April 3, 2025

 

11am–1pm PST / 12pm–2pm MST
1pm–3pm CST / 2pm–4pm EST

REGISTRATION CLOSED

About the Masterclass Sessions

During this masterclass course, you will be introduced to a set of stances, processes, and tools designed to complement your foundational coaching skills so that you can more confidently coach teachers to become more effective in helping students level up their learning.

Participants will examine the technical-pedagogical elements of instructional equity that improve and how to coach toward instructional decision-making,  not just the implementation of strategies. In our sessions, we will use the Ignite-Chunk-Chew-Review™ frame as a lens to understand foundational structures and routines to level up our PLCs.

Each class is 2 hours

Opportunities to Get Coached

Asynchronous Discussions in Private Community

Session 1

MARCH 13, 2025

Recognizing the Cognitive Redlines that Hide in Plain Sight

In this opening session, we will unpack the idea of cognitive redlining. We will look at ways in which student cognition is underdeveloped despite district equity initiatives and schools’ commitment to culturally responsive teaching.  

You’ll be introduced to the portrait of a good information processor and the six essential learn-to-learn skills teachers must develop in all students.  

Coaches will learn:
  • The learning progression that outlines the student path to becoming cognitively independent.
  • How to recognize the right and wrong way to scaffold instruction for effective student learning and shift teacher practice. 
  • The importance of cultivating an alliance between student and teacher so the teacher can offer care and push.
  • Protocols for shifting from PLC Lite to an equity-focused PLC focus on student learning, agency, and instructional improvement. 
Session 2

MARCH 20, 2025

Rematriating Classrooms with Cognitive Apprenticeship 

In session 2, we will look at the role that cognitive apprenticeship plays in building student efficacy. We will get a better understanding of how to support teacher growth in their ability to coach students into and through their zone of proximal development within a cognitive apprenticeship. We will build on the notion of a community of learners from the Ready for Rigor™ framework.

 Coaches will learn:

  • The key structures, processes, and rituals within a classroom organized around cognitive apprenticeship. 
  • Steps to help a teacher set up a cognitive apprenticeship within the classroom.
  • The five collectivist learning principles™ that drive a cognitive apprenticeship.
  • The change management formula for disrupting status quo teaching and learning.
Session 3

MARCH 27, 2025

Shifting from PLC Lite to an Instructionally-focused PLC

In this session, we will explore ways to strengthen the connection between what teachers learn in school-wide PD, the work inside our PLCs, and shifts in classroom instruction. Research points to the fact that what teachers experience in PD sessions isn’t transferring into changed practice in classrooms at a deeper level.

We will review the change management for equity formula as a method for closing the knowing-doing gap between PD and classroom practice. You’ll get suggestions for how to integrate this formula into your PLC structure to build this capacity, not to simply look at data.

Coaches will learn:
  • The basics of change management for equity. 
  • How to center instructional decision-making in PLC work.
  • How to move teachers beyond simplistic Plan-Do-Act-Study cycles toward collaborative analysis of student learning for greater insight and impact on student learning.
Session 4

APRIL 3, 2025

Supporting Teachers Through the First Pancake

In our final session, we will explore what it means to strive for 1% improvement per grading period.  We will use protocols to review and share our action plans for making 1-2 small but high leverage changes in our coaching practice.

Coaches will learn:
  • How to construct an action plan for closing their own knowing-doing gaps.
  • To develop scripts for talking to teachers about rebuilding students’ learning power. 
  • How to engineer 1% improvements in teacher practice through habit development.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Register for the Masterclass Course

Registration Closes March 11th at 6pm ET

Course Includes 4 Sessions:

$995/per person
March 13, 2025
March 20, 2025
March 27, 2025
April 3, 2025
 
11am–1pm PST / 12pm–2pm MST
1pm–3pm CST / 2pm–4pm EST
REGISTRATION CLOSED

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