Instructional Coaches

In Zinc, teachers and administrators have different roles. These roles are set up by Zinc or by your rostering system. For teachers who perform certain admin duties or work with students outside of their own class, we offer a special Instructional Coach role.

This role is often suited for positions like reading interventionists, reading specialists, coordinators, and special educators. If you have your own class but need to create assignments for students outside that class, the Instructional Coach role may be for you.

Below, learn what an Instructional Coach can do in Zinc and how to become an Instructional Coach. You can also learn about the school reports available to Instructional Coaches.

Instructional Coach Abilities

Instructional Coaches have the abilities of both a teacher and a school administrator.

Like teachers, Instructional Coaches may have their own classes and students. If your school or district uses another rostering system to create Zinc classes, Instructional Coaches will maintain their teacher role in those rosters.

Along with the ability to create assignments for their own classes, Instructional Coaches may create assignments for any students at the schools where they are rostered. Assignments may be created for individual students, groups or students, or entire classes. We recommend that Instructional Coaches communicate with the other teachers on their campus to avoid creating duplicate assignments.

Like school administrators, Instructional Coaches may generate and view school-wide reports. They can also view reports for any class and student at the school where they are rostered as a teacher.

How to become a Zinc Instructional Coach

Instructional Coach accounts must begin as teaching accounts in Zinc. The process is entirely reversible. The necessary changes will be made for you by Zinc Support regardless of how you roster with us.

If you have a teacher account and require an Instructional Coach account, you just need to contact Zinc Support by using the support contact form or by clicking the blue chat support bubble on your Zinc homepage.

If you are an administrator and need an Instructional Coach account set up for one of your teachers, you can contact us the same way. We'll just need the name of the teacher and the email address for their account.

School Reports for Instructional Coaches

Instructional Coaches have access to school-level reports for every school where they are rostered. (Instructional coaches may also view student and class reports.) To reach the Reports page, click “View Classes & Reports” in the top menu on your Zinc homepage and then click “Reports.”

School reports include your Student Performance Report, Reading Skills Report, Teacher Usage Reports, and Student Usage Reports.

With the School Level Student Performance Report, you can see the student usage and performance in specific Zinc assignment features for each teacher. You can click on the tabs for each type of assignment, and clicking on a teacher's name will take you to details about the usage and performance for each of their classes. After clicking on a class, you can click on a student's name to show you their individual use and performance.

With the School Level Reading Skills Reports, you can view a class-by-class breakdown of how students are performing on article quiz questions mapped to state standards or Zinc skills. Encourage your teachers to assign Lift Off to their students, and this page will quickly populate with data about student performance on their independent reading levels.

Tip: Use the Date Range to hone in on the beginning weeks of a grading period, then compare those percentages to the ending weeks of a grading period to see growth.

With your School Level Teacher Usage Report, you can see teacher usage at your school at a glance. You can quickly check how many teachers have logged in over the last 30 days and the last 6 months, and you can narrow down usage by adjust the date range.

The School Level Student Usage Report displays each teacher's student usage at your school broken down by Zinc activity. A handy graph makes it simple to recognize patterns of usage over time. Click any teacher to bring up an overview of Zinc usage in each of their classes.

Please Contact Us with Questions or to Request an Instructional Coach Account

For those who require it, we hope the Instructional Coach role will help you and your students find continued success in Zinc! If you have any other questions, please contact Zinc Support by clicking the blue chat bubble inside Zinc or by using the contact form.