Job-Embedded Training

The Jane Schaffer Writing Program® provides job-embedded professional development as a follow-up component to workshops and webinars. After training teachers in collaborative, whole-group environments, Jane Schaffer® national consultants and master teachers demonstrate the instructional writing process in real time with current students; the training is centered on issues of actual practice in teachers’ classrooms.

• Job-embedded training (“JET”) may be performed with consultants floating to different classrooms or remaining in one classroom where students and teachers congregate each period.

• After each job-embedded training session, the trainer conducts a formal feedback session.

JET Scenarios

• Modeling: While a national trainer delivers  a lesson to a school’s students, teachers sit on the periphery of the classroom and observe the pacing and student interaction that typically occur in the application of JSWP. Schools provide class sets of copies for students, color-coded pens, and tent cards with names of students on students’ desks.

  • Model Lessons are writing lessons that have already been designed and included in the JSWP packets. Teachers learn the writing program with model lessons and experience the same lessons in a job-embedded training session.

  • Customized Lessons are writing lessons designed to complement teachers’ lesson cycles. For example, if a teacher’s lesson plan calls for a writing supplement for a specific fictional piece or nonfictional idea or issue, LEC will design a job-embedded training session that pertains specifically to that lesson, working with the teacher to maximize objectives desired and student success. If a customized lesson is preferred, LEC must know the text, the writing prompt, and the part of the process on which the teacher wants the focus at least 45 days prior to the day of instruction.

• Coaching: The trainer observes the teacher’s delivery of a writing lesson and provides feedback afterward in a whole-group or one-to-one setting. The teacher provides the trainer with areas in the lesson or lesson cycle to provide constructive criticism. In the case of a whole-group scenario, the trainer provides the feedback while the whole group listens and asks questions.

• Team Teaching: In this scenario, a teacher and a trainer work together in the classroom

  • Lesson Delivery: The teacher presents a portion of the lesson, and the trainer presents a portion of the lesson.

  • One-to-One Conferences with Students – After a teacher’s students complete a writing assignment, each student completes a Helping Hand conference guide, identifying the part of the paragraph (body, intro, or conclusion) that poses the most challenges. Teachers observe the trainer provide a one-to-one feedback session for several students. Then, teachers provide feedback while trainer observes.