The Louisiana Coaching Hub Replacing YouTube Searches

South Baton Rouge Charter Academy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is working to strengthen instruction across classrooms by ensuring teachers receive clear, aligned feedback rooted in a shared understanding of effective practice. As the school deepens its use of the state’s instructional framework, the Louisiana Educator Rubric (LER), coaches and instructional leaders have been searching for ways to make descriptions of classroom practice more concrete and to better prepare for coaching conversations that guide teacher growth.

For Dominique O’Conner, dean of instruction at the academy and NIET Fellow, access to videos of strong teaching has become essential. The Louisiana Educator Portal includes a number of LER video resources available for Louisiana educators. In addition, O’Conner has access to on-demand video resources available on NIET’s EE PASS coaching hub as part of her preparation for coaching and Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) meetings. With its library of hundreds of research-backed resources, EE PASS brings clarity and alignment to conversations about effective instruction and extends the range and depth of materials available.

O’Conner utilizes several videos on EE PASS that illustrate strong student engagement, as well as specific instructional practices such as lesson structure and pacing, in her coaching conversations. These videos help her refine the questions she asks teachers, the evidence she wants teams to analyze, and the strategies she aims to highlight. 

The videos strengthened her understanding of LER indicators by showing clear examples of what those indicators look like in a broad range of grade levels and subject areas. This preparation strengthened the quality of her coaching. With more precise models of effective instruction to draw from, Dominique strengthened her ability to offer clear, actionable feedback to teachers as part of an LER-aligned cycle of coaching.

Reflecting on this shift, O'Conner shared how significant it was to move away from searching online for examples that only partially met her needs. “You’re always looking for a good bank of resources, and you find yourself searching YouTube, but it never has everything you’re looking for,” she said. “What I love about EE PASS is that everything I need is right there, and if I wanted to use it verbatim, I could. It’s truly been a support.”

EE PASS resources have also played a role in deepening collaboration with her principal and other school leaders. Planning conversations became more aligned and focused, helping them support teachers more consistently across classrooms.

When I’m planning with my principal or talking through instructional trends, the examples and clarity I’ve gained from EE PASS help us get aligned more quickly. It gives us a shared sense of what effective instruction entails, which makes it easier to support teachers consistently and strengthen our overall coaching approach.

Dominique O’Conner, Dean of Instruction and NIET Fellow, South Baton Rouge Charter Academy

By using online videos and other resources aligned to LER to strengthen coaching and ILT meetings, South Baton Rouge Charter Academy is building stronger, more consistent support systems for teachers. Through EE PASS, teachers have clearer models to learn from, and leaders have a shared foundation for guiding improvement.

Explore a Free EE PASS Resource

This resource offers a model of teacher collaborative learning that helps leaders like O'Conner guide teacher growth.

Video - Elementary Cluster Meeting, Full Meeting: In this weekly teacher collaborative learning “Cluster” meeting, the leader guides teachers in reviewing student work. Teachers then work together to plan how to teach an inference strategy aligned to their reading curriculum, using clear examples modeled by the leader to support effective classroom implementation.

Bring EE PASS to Your District

Are you ready to explore our extensive, research-backed content library to strengthen coaching and professional learning in your schools? Contact info@niet.org to learn more about the tools and videos available through EE PASS (Educator Effectiveness Preparation and Support System). Louisiana educators can access the Louisiana Educator Portal here.