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Schools

Pomatto a Coach on the Field ... and Now a Coach Inside Lisle High School

Longtime math teacher at Lisle Senior High School, and head coach of the 2011 Class 2A state tournament qualifying Lions softball team, is the school's new Interventionist/Problem Solving Coach.

Jen Pomatto has served Lisle Senior High School as a math instructor since 1998, and also took over as the head varsity softball coach a few years ago.

When classes begin this fall, Pomatto will remain Lisle’s softball coach, but she’ll no longer be teaching math.

That’s because Pomatto has been named the school’s full-time Interventionist/Problem Solving Coach—a newly created position in which she will be working directly with the administration, faculty and students to promote student success.

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Over the years, Pomatto has served on Lisle’s Response to Intervention (RtI) team and has actively been involved in school improvement activities. RtI is a federal mandated program that, according to Dr. George Batsche—a national expert on the program—is “the practice of providing high-quality instruction and interventions matched to student need, monitoring progress frequently to make decisions about changes in instruction or goals, and applying child response data to important education decisions.”

The state required each school district to implement RtI last year.

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Pomatto said she applied for the position when it first was posted back in March.

“I’m excited about it,” she said. “I’ve been involved in different programs and initiatives promoting student success, and this will allow me to be more involved in that.”

In her new role, Pomatto will be working directly with faculty and students to identify specific characteristics of successful students, and then develop and implement new programs to promote student growth academically, socially and behaviorally.

“It’ll be interesting to leave the classroom,” she said. “I enjoyed my time there, but I’ll be looking forward to helping more students and working with teachers in the classroom to help them find the resources they need to continue to promote student growth.”

, Lisle High School principal, said Pomatto’s background in education, combined with the leadership she’s displayed at Lisle, will serve her well as Interventionist/Problem Solving Coach.

“I think that Lisle, like every school, is looking for ways to provide additional opportunities for student success,” Sullivan said. “Having this position will be an important position to Lisle Senior High School in its effort to answer those questions. Jen will be very important to us in answering those questions.

“We wanted to make sure the person we tabbed (for this position) was an excellent teacher, and we’re fortunate to have someone of Jen’s caliber in this position. Jen can help us in terms of tracking students’ success as well as working with faculty and the administration to create additional support for students.”

Analyzing data, and then using that data to support students who might be struggling, will be an important part of Pomatto’s duties, he said.

“One of the things I think she can do is work with individual teachers as well as teams of teachers to identify patterns of student achievement,” Sullivan said. “There will be a lot of analyzing, working with the Lisle leadership team to identify patterns of student achievement, and working with faculty and administration.”

Pomatto starts her new position when classes for the 2011-12 school year begin Thursday, Aug. 18.

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