Grow In Your Craft

APS is on a mission to be the best place for teachers to impact students and maximize their potential.  Through a comprehensive and interconnected system of supports and development, all APS teachers have opportunities to be their best.

Definition of Teaching Excellence

APS’ Definition of Teaching Excellence framework combines insights from APS’ best teachers and leaders and national best practice to cast an ambitious vision for excellent instruction.  APS’ coaching and development systems work together to support all APS teachers to achieve this vision for excellent instruction.

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DTE

What is APS’ Definition of Teaching Excellence and why are we updating it for the 2018-19 school year?

Definition of Teaching Excellence (DTE) was created to articulate APS’ collective and aspirational vision for excellent teaching and give us shared language to collaboratively work towards achieving this vision. As our vision for excellent teaching evolves, based on observed excellence in APS classrooms and classrooms across the nation, we will ensure our Definition of Excellence evolves with it.

Instructional Coaching

APS strives to ensure all teachers receive content-specific, actionable and helpful coaching that accelerates their growth and impact. 

Teachers receive coaching from instructional leaders throughout the year in the form of helpful feedback, co-planning, data analysis and real-time coaching. 

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New Teacher Support

Being a new teacher is challenging and APS is committed to ensuring all new APS teachers get off to a strong start. New teachers receive a comprehensive summer induction program that supports their development on core instructional skills. In addition, new teachers receive focused support over their first 90 days to ensure they quickly establish strong culture and instructional practices.

Professional Learning Communities

Collaborative teacher teams, led by content experts are at the center of APS’ teacher development strategy.  APS aspires to ensure all teachers have consistent collaborative time to:

  • Set collaborative student achievement goals for their grade and content
  • Purposefully plan to launch instructional units 
  • Rehearse and tune lesson plans
  • Collaboratively analyze and respond to student work

Data-Driven Instruction

APS teachers are provided with training, data systems and technology to regularly gather, analyze and respond to data to inform their instruction.  Some examples of APS’ approach to data-driven instruction include:

  • Gathering real-time data during classroom instruction using clear monitoring pathways
  • Analyzing data side-by-side with instructional coaches to identify content for re-teaching
  • Collaborating with content-specific Professional Learning Communities to analyze common assessment data to identify common student misconceptions and develop re-teaching plans

87% of APS teachers strongly agree or agree that “At my school student achievement data is used to inform daily/weekly instruction.