STRIVE Collegiate Academy: Creating a Culture of Feedback to Support Teacher and Leader Development

How STRIVE Collegiate Academy created a culture of feedback to support teacher and leader development.

Location: Nashville, TN
Website: STRIVE Collegiate
Enrollment: 351
Demographics: NCES Data

The Challenge

STRIVE Collegiate Academy is a mid-sized charter school in Nashville, TN, that serves 351 students in grades 5–8.

After founding the school in 2015, founder and principal LaKendra Butler attended Relay’s National Principal Academy Fellowship (NPAF) program to build instructional leadership skills and learn best practices for coaching and supporting teachers.

Butler quickly realized that to create a sustainable culture of feedback and best support both teachers and leaders, they needed a system to help manage their observation and feedback processes.

The Solution

• Acquire SchoolMint Grow, a customizable, online platform for observations and instructional coaching to support the Relay program.
• Find one digital hub to house all professional development communications and feedback.
• Create consistency and measurable follow-ups within coaching practices.
• Leverage data to make informed decisions.

“Relay helped us put more structure around coaching and teacher growth. We took that structure (aka, rubrics) and put it into the [SchoolMint] system and that let us simply and honestly link what was happening in the classroom to the components of the rubrics. Linking observations directly to the rubrics was powerful for our teachers.”
— LaKendra Butler, STRIVE Collegiate Academy Founder

The Results

Total Touchpoints to Date: 1,009
Meetings Held: 340
Action Steps Given (with approx. 60% mastered to date): 180
Monthly Goal Met for Coaching Expectations: 81%

• Meetings, feedback, goals, and action steps were all held on the same observation and coaching platform.
• Created an effective and consistent culture of feedback between staff and administration.
• Used the Relay program in SchoolMint’s platform.
• Linked observations directly to the classroom rubrics.