Plano educator graduated from teaching students to instructing teachers ‘still learning’

Plano instructional coach Nicole Ciesla has graduated from teaching students to assisting teachers. She is in her 25th year in education and, while she misses having her own students, she loves her position and feels she still has a lot to learn.

Nicole Ciesla is an instructional coach for English language arts and social sciences in Plano School District 88. She works with several teachers in the district to create lesson plans and educational programs at Plano Middle School and Plano High School.

Ciesla grew up in Roscoe, where she graduated from Hononegah Community High School before earning her bachelor’s degree in secondary English education from the University of Illinois. She said while she did not decide to become a teacher until her freshman year of college, she always knew that is what she would do.

Her father was a high school English teacher, so Ciesla said growing up and following in his footsteps seemed like the easy approach. Ciesla recalled her father bringing home big stacks of papers to grade and also playing school at home as a child.

Ciesla said while her father was her first influence toward a career as an educator, she also had a series of great teachers who inspired her.

Ciesla said being an English teacher was an obvious choice, because she has always loved literature and reading all kinds of books.

“I find that you can learn so much from reading and you get so much experience that you can’t possibly get in your own life by reading.”

After graduating from the University of Illinois, she started teaching English at Yorkville High School in 1998, where she taught for 20 years. While teaching in Yorkville, she earned her master’s degree in literature at Northern Illinois University, and a second master’s degree in educational leadership from Aurora University in 2011.

By the time she started working in Plano, Ciesla had been teaching high school English for 21 years. She was hired by the Plano School District in 2019 and is in her fourth year as an instructional coach.

“When you are a classroom teacher, you feel very needed all the time. But when you work with adults who are already self-sufficient, it is definitely a difficult shift of just not feeling needed the way that you do when you’re a classroom teacher.”

—  Nicole Ciesla, Plano School District 88 instructional coach

After the pandemic stopped everything in her first year in Plano, the district spent a couple of years in limbo, trying to transition back from online learning. Ciesla said last year was the first year that felt like what she had imagined.

Ciesla said she spent most of her time off of work during COVID-19 reading books, studying and going to webinars, trying to get better at her job and understanding everything it entails. After two years of online learning and transitioning back, the students fully returned last year.

Ciesla is one of six instructional coaches in District 88 and she works with about 24 teachers in 12 different classes between the two schools. She said the job of an instructional coach is not so much teaching teachers as it is about collaborating with them. She said most of the work she does is in a small group or with individual teachers, working to create lesson plans or analyzing data.

There are two sides to the job of instructional coach, Ciesla said. On one side, she works weekly or biweekly with the departments to analyze data and form the objectives and lesson plans. On the other side, they work consistently with individual teachers throughout the semester to provide differentiated instruction for specific students and classes. Ciesla said this side is where her passion lies.

“Creating and teaching activities and lessons, learning the best way to provide differentiated instruction and understanding the process of teaching students and how to help them understand the material and build the skills, that’s what I love,” Ciesla said. Differentiated instruction is offers different options for different instructional strategies to meet the needs of individual students in the same classroom.

Ciesla said the change from classroom teacher to instructional coach was difficult at first after so many years teaching the same subject.

“I definitely felt like a fish out of water when I started in this position,” Ciesla said. “I had been on a bell schedule for over 20 years.” In addition to a new schedule style, Ciesla said getting used to not working with kids every day was one of the hardest parts of the change.

“When you are a classroom teacher, you feel very needed all the time. But when you work with adults who are already self-sufficient, it is definitely a difficult shift of just not feeling needed the way that you do when you’re a classroom teacher.”

Ciesla said while she misses having her own students, she is growing more comfortable in the position of instructional coach. In her fourth year in the role, she said she is so busy, she misses being a classroom teacher less than she used to.

“I definitely miss that aspect of it. But it’s just a totally different job.”

Ciesla said while she has 24 teachers who can choose to work with her, she couldn’t possibly work with all 24 every day. She works consistently with about six teachers in the district in a variety of classes.

She said she enjoys working with teachers and classes daily because she gets to see the students’ progress.

“For a long time I did not intend to leave the classroom, but having said that, it’s actually been the coolest thing to leave the classroom,” Ciesla said. “It has definitely increased my excitement, motivation and interest in ways I couldn’t have imagined.”

Ciesla said her new role has helped her to look at education in ways she hadn’t in the past. She said being exposed to different methods and trends in education, has helped her understanding education from a big-picture perspective, a lot better than when she was a teacher in the classroom.

“It made me realize that change is not so scary,” Ciesla said. “Its been really cool. It’s been really invigorating for me, but I didn’t expect to do that.”

Ciesla said she has seen a lot of changes in education in her 25 years. Teaching has gone from being very content-focused to being very skills-focused, technology has evolved and parent involvement has become much more prevalent.

“Education is extremely different from when I started teaching in 1998. How you can present material to your students is very different.”

Ciesla said she really admires the new teachers coming into the job because in addition to the increased duties and responsibilities for teachers today, there are countless more training sessions and basic requirements that didn’t exist 24 years ago.

“You’re still teaching the same number of classes and subjects, and grading the same number of papers, and yet there are all these new duties on top of that,” Ciesla said. “So I feel like it’s really become a much more intense job than it used to be.”

Ciesla said the biggest misconception she has heard throughout her career as an educator is that kids are terrible. She said it is astounding the number of people who have a negative reaction when she tells them she works with teenagers.

“A lot of people think teenagers are these awful human beings, and they really really are not,” Ciesla said. “It’s so offensive to me, that they would just think of this entire part of our society as this horrible group of people. It’s ridiculous, kids are great. Do they have bad days? Yes, but they’re kids. Adults have bad days, too.”

Ciesla said while there has been a shift toward more parent involvement, students are pretty much the same as they were in 1998.

“I don’t think that kids have changed. I think parents have changed.”

Ciesla said she has no plans for another career change as she still has a lot to learn in her current role.

“Moving into this position has been the most growth I think I’ve ever experienced in this short amount of time. I have been a sponge.”