The Reach Institute for School Leadership offers four sequential programs. Educators may enter Reach training for a sequence of components or for a single segment:

• Intern Credential Program
• Professional Teacher Induction Program
• Coaching Academy
• School Leadership Coaching

Program Practices
Studies have found a recurring positive relationship between student learning and teachers' flexibility, creativity, or adaptability. Successful teachers tend to be those who are able to use a range of teaching strategies and who use a mix of interaction styles, rather than a single, rigid approach. In a focused effort to develop flexible and dynamic teachers, all Reach Institute programs employ six central Program Practices:

1. Job Embedded Coaching: Participants are regularly observed in the classroom by coaches and peers, and in turn observe peers and master teachers. Observations are structured to identify specific practices and are debriefed to maximize learning.
2. Personalized Professional Development: Each participant develops and implements, with the help of peers, master teachers, and coaches, an Individualized Learning Plan.
3. Need to Know Content Knowledge: Based on the practice of Emergent Curriculum, content knowledge (including the CCTC Teacher Preparation Standards), is selected, studied and discussed as topics become relevant to the teachers’ practice.
4. Coaching & Mentoring: Emphasis is placed on the participant through questioning, challenging, feedback, and help from master teachers and coaches.
5. Collaborative Work: Participants work both in cohorts of 8-12 new teachers and in small subgroups of 3 or 4 teachers. Cohort groups meet in dialogical seminars and reflection meetings to discuss theory, practice, and obstacles to great work. Sub-groups meet to co-plan lessons, develop projects, and provide ongoing support.
6. Reflection: Participants discuss their practice and the obstacles to great work in order to achieve “high performance.”

Addressing Current Challenges to Teacher Training

California is currently experiencing a crisis among its corps of new and potential teachers. This crisis is heightened by three major problems facing schools and school reform:

No Child Left Behind Highly Qualified Teacher Requirements & Teacher Shortage:
As of July 1, 2006, all teachers must be highly qualified, including holding a credential AND demonstrating subject area expertise. There are not enough qualified teachers to fill the available positions and there are not enough intern programs to support working teachers while they complete their preliminary credentials. The problem is immediate and is especially acute for small schools that do not have the ability to shuffle around teetering assignments to fill the gaps. A teacher shortage crisis is upon us.

Failure of Traditional Programs:
According to the National Research Council (How People Learn, 2000), professional development and preparation programs fail to be learner centered, assessment centered, or community centered. This leads to failure on two levels: first, teachers are not adequately prepared, and second, the programs model the least effective teaching strategies for new teachers. Partly because of this inadequate preparation, and the subsequent lack of support teachers receive, the national center for educational research stated that 30% of all teachers and 50% of urban teachers will have left the field within their first 5 years, further exacerbating the teacher shortage.