Pride and Support Drive
Outstanding Achievement
at Covington High SchooL
“I like what you said, but I’m not changing anything that I’m doing.”
This sort of feedback should sound familiar to
many educators. It’s what Cory Concus, a math
teacher at 2015 SCORE Prize finalist Covington
High School, initially heard from a fellow faculty
member last year.
At the time, Mr. Concus had just taken on an
instructional coaching role at Covington, spending
mornings in the classroom and afternoons working
with colleagues to improve instruction. Thanks to
Covington’s instructional coaching and collaborative process, the attitude changed quickly.
Two weeks later, the reluctant colleague asked Mr.
Concus for more information, then tried something
new in his classroom – he spread a sheet of
butcher paper across a corkboard and let kids plot
out how they all solved math problems.
Students found multiple methods and stepped in
to help one another find faster paths. It became
clear to the teacher that something powerful was
happening: Students were learning how to think
about the skill being taught, and how to articulate
their processes.
“He came and said, ‘You wouldn’t believe what
happened in my class today,’” Mr. Concus recalls.
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