Teaching is complex work. It is shaped in the moment, through the decisions teachers make with students in front of them, how to respond when something doesn’t land, how to adjust instruction, and how to push student thinking further.
That work develops over time through practice, reflection, and collaboration with other educators. It becomes stronger when teachers have the chance to work through real classroom moments together and refine their approach in response.
Summer creates a unique opportunity to do that work well. With a shorter timeline and a different structure, it allows teachers to focus on a small set of instructional moves, try them in real classrooms, and reflect on what is happening with students in real time.
In NSSI’s summer programs, that process is intentional. Mentor teachers and classroom teachers work side by side before the program begins and throughout the summer, studying the curriculum, planning for instruction, and working through classroom moments together as they unfold.
Roberto de Leon, a mentor teacher with NSSI and instructional leader at Laguna Middle School in San Luis Obispo, California, and Tracy Carness, a high school English teacher at Alliance College-Ready Public Schools in Los Angeles, California, are part of this work. Their roles are different, but both are engaged in improving teaching alongside other educators.
Teaching Gets Better Through Practice, Reflection, and Support
Teaching is often described as something you prepare for. In practice, experienced educators describe it as something you learn by doing, alongside other teachers, over time.
Each day brings a new set of decisions. How to respond when a student takes a discussion in an unexpected direction. Whether to press on an idea or let it sit. When to adjust a lesson that isn’t landing the way you expected.
Drawing on his experience coaching baseball, Roberto describes teaching as a profession without a practice field. There are no repetitions before the game begins, no time to rehearse decisions before they matter.
“It’s just live games every single time,” he said.
That leaves little room for preparation alone to carry the work, especially in a short summer window where teachers are building momentum quickly. Even with strong planning, instruction unfolds in real time, shaped by the students in the room, the energy of the day, and the choices a teacher makes moment to moment.
Tracy points to a different challenge. After years in the classroom, the work still requires openness, the ability to listen, to adjust, and to recognize that there is always more to learn.
“I think the hardest part is being open to saying that I don’t know everything. There’s something to learn here,” she said.
That stance of paying attention, staying responsive, and continuing to refine practice is central to the work and clarifies how teaching improves. Growth comes through trying something with students, seeing how it plays out, and working through it with other educators who understand the complexity of the classroom. Collaboration is a key part of how teachers make sense of what’s happening and decide what to do next.
Mentor Teachers Make the Work Visible and Sharable
If teaching improves through practice, the question becomes how teachers make sense of that practice while it’s happening. That reality becomes even more pronounced in a summer setting, where teachers have only a few weeks to build momentum with students.
In NSSI’s summer programs, that responsibility sits in part with mentor teachers. Before the summer begins, mentor teachers study the curriculum closely so teachers can start strong on day one. They read the texts, work through the questions, and prepare to lead sessions with classroom teachers. The goal is partially to help with familiarity with materials, but also create clarity about the instructional moves that will matter most in the first days of the program.
That work continues during the two-day institute, where mentor teachers lead professional learning sessions and begin building relationships with the teachers they will support. The focus is practical. What will students be asked to do? What will strong instruction look like on the first day? Where are teachers likely to need to adjust?
Summer also creates space for teachers to try approaches they may not use during the school year, and to reflect on those choices with other educators.
Roberto describes sessions where teachers come together to share what actually happened in their classrooms: what worked, what didn’t, what students understood, and where they struggled.
“It is like the best possible type of professional development,” he said. “Teachers… all talking and able to communicate with each other.”
Professional development is one of the largest ongoing investments in K–12 systems, yet it often has limited impact on classroom practice. Much of it happens away from the work itself, in one-time sessions that are difficult to apply once teachers return to their classrooms. What tends to be more effective is sustained, collaborative, job-embedded learning, where teachers can work through real classroom moments together and refine their approach over time. What he’s describing is an example of that in practice.
Teachers bring specific moments from their classrooms and work through them together, with mentor teachers guiding the discussion, asking questions, and offering perspective.
Tracy points to the impact of that structure. The work does not stay in the session. “When the sessions are done, there’s always something I’m going to do the next day,” she said.
That immediacy shapes how teachers engage, as each day builds quickly on the last. They are not preparing for a future moment. They are responding to what is happening with students right now.
Over time, those cycles, trying, reflecting, adjusting, begin to build a shared understanding of what strong instruction looks like. Mentor teachers help make that process visible and consistent, while leaving space for teachers to adapt the work for their own students.
Strong Teaching Comes From Adapting, Not Following
As teachers work through lessons with students, another pattern becomes clear. Strong instruction is not about following a plan exactly as written. It is about making decisions in response to what students need. That often means taking something designed on paper and reshaping it in practice.
Roberto describes the goal as helping teachers move beyond replicating a model or mirroring someone else’s approach, to take what is useful and make it their own.
“I’m not trying to make little clones of my teaching style,” he said. “I’m trying to help you see it yourself and make it yours.”
Tracy approaches the work in the same way. When she first read one of the novels used in the program, she was unsure whether her students would connect with it. The context felt distant from their lives. Instead of discarding it, she adjusted how she introduced the text and how she framed the experience for her students. Over time, their responses shifted.
That shift did not come from changing the material itself, but from how she approached it, how she invited students into the work, and how she responded to what they brought to it.
Across classrooms, that kind of adaptation shows up in different ways. Teachers connect texts to students’ experiences. They redesign activities to make ideas more tangible. They adjust pacing, questioning, and discussion based on what they are seeing in the moment.
Mentor teachers support that process by helping teachers think through those decisions. They offer perspective, ask questions, and share what they have seen work in other classrooms. At the same time, they leave space for teachers to shape the work in ways that fit their students.
Over time, that balance, structure paired with professional judgment, allows teaching to become more responsive and more effective.
The Work Centers on Student Thinking and Experience
As teachers refine their practice, the impact shows up most clearly in how students engage with the work. Early on, many students approach tasks by looking for the right answer. They summarize instead of analyzing. They complete assignments without fully engaging with the ideas behind them.
Part of the work for teachers is shifting that pattern.
Tracy describes pushing for deeper thinking throughout the program, helping students move beyond surface responses and into connections across texts, their own experiences, and the world around them. “So how do we get it a little deeper? Every time just a little deeper,” she said.
That shift is gradual. It happens through the questions teachers ask, the way they structure discussions, and the expectations they set for student thinking.
It also shows up in moments that are harder to measure. Students begin to talk about characters as if they know them. They connect scenes in a novel to their own lives. They ask for more time to write because they have more to say. “They won’t remember the unit assessment,” Tracy said. “They will remember when we all cried.”
Roberto points to the same outcome from a different angle. When students are engaged in this way, they are not responding to a prompt for the sake of completion. They are responding because the work has meaning for them. “You have something to say because you feel it,” he said.
Those moments, when students are thinking, feeling, and contributing in meaningful ways, are the result of dozens of decisions teachers have made along the way. They are also the reason the work matters.
The work Tracy and Roberto describe develops through practice, reflection, and working alongside other educators in real classroom contexts.
In NSSI’s summer programs, that process is structured on purpose. Mentor teachers work alongside classroom teachers before the program begins and throughout the summer, helping them internalize the curriculum, plan for instruction, and reflect on what is happening in real time. The result is a form of professional development that is embedded in the work itself, rather than separate from it.
Summer creates a different kind of learning environment for both students and teachers, one that can serve as a foundation for stronger instruction throughout the year. It offers a chance to try new approaches, to build relationships, and to see what is possible when instruction is both intentional and responsive.
When professional learning is structured this way, it not only strengthens instruction, it can also make the work more sustainable for teachers, giving them clearer feedback, stronger support, and a greater sense of progress in their practice.
That is what allows a short window of learning to lead to meaningful growth for students and continued development for teachers.
