Background. U.S. state and district policies increasingly mandate the teaching of computer science (CS) in K-12 classrooms. To ensure all students benefit from computing education, we recognized the crucial need for teachers’ to adopt equity-focused practices. Leveraging a researcher practitioner partnership (RPP), we launched a pilot program providing teachers with individualized coaching.

Intervention. Our RPP developed and piloted a coaching program for high school CS teachers ($n=15$). The program enabled teachers to explore meeting problems of equity they experienced in their classrooms that they wanted to resolve.

Key Observations. Coachees reported higher competence in their equity and inclusion practices. Most coachees advanced their self-assessed equity and inclusion practices from “Developing” or “Competent” to “Competent,” with an average pre- to post-intervention difference indicating a medium effect.

Lessons Learned. The pilot study’s results indicate that the program may positively impact teachers’ classroom practices. Challenges we encountered included a lack of time built into the schedule for coachees and coaches to build rapport and methods for coachees and coaches to record their sessions consistently. Further, having a control group would provide us the data needed to empirically state whether the program impacts classroom practices.

Implications and Recommendations. As a result of this project, we are developing a set of free, publicly available guides for educators who want to engage teachers in one-on-one coaching.