Coaching and Technology……
When I started the “coaching” process for this class, I thought it was a “new” experience, but as I have discovered, it is something I have been doing in my school for some time. Like Marzano and Simms point out, “the term coaching can be used in a variety of ways” (2013, p.7). I thought about classroom coaching as what our instructional coach does or what formal mentors do for their mentees, but I have discovered it is something that goes on informally quite often in schools everywhere. In my school, it happens for me in the area of technology on a regular basis. I was the first person in my building to get a SMART board. I applied for a grant and got the money to purchase it and loved using it interactively with my students. Naturally, several years later, when our school received the money to install them school-wide, I was the go-to person for basic how-to information and getting everyone started. Thus, my technology coaching experience began simply because I had experience with something nobody else had worked with before. This continued as I was chosen to pilot Chromebooks for our district before we started making large purchases of them. Now I am the assistant principal, but before that change, I moved from unofficially being the tech-helper to the tech go-to person for administration and teachers to the official technology coordinator for our building. There were many teachers who had never seen a SMART board who are now using them everyday for their morning calendar routines. Some teachers had never used any of the SMART notebook software and now many can hardly function without it if we lose Internet and I was part of that. I realized that during all of these transitions there had to be certain things in place in order for me to help others learn and become confident in using technology. First, I had to have the knowledge. I had to be interested in new technology and not be afraid to try new things and get my students involved. I had to learn the ins and outs of any new technology before I could help others learn. I also had to learn to troubleshoot it so that I could help others do the same. I also had to become trustworthy. According to Marzano and Simms (2013) “trust is an important aspect of effective coaching relationships and effective schools”(p. 10). I had to be someone that the other teachers knew they could depend on to be able to help them when they needed it. I had to be someone they could trust to be vulnerable in front of and someone that they could trust to help them find answers or express their frustrations to. I learned early on in these “coaching” relationships that trust was a huge factor and that if I did not know the answer it was okay to say so, but that I would have to be able to find it. So, if by definition coaching is helping teachers become better at what they do, then an informal coaching relationship was what I was beginning with these teachers.
Bates, Mark. "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers Who Use Educational Technology Infographic - E-Learning Infographics." ELearning Infographics. Alwaysprepped.com, 28 Feb. 2014. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.
Marzano, Robert J., and Julia A. Simms. Coaching Classroom Instruction. Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research, 2013. Print.
"BLACKLINE REVIEW: Technology Teachers Redefine the Innovative Classroom." YouTube. Web. 19 Oct. 2015. <https://youtu.be/kGtw_xxtKnw>.
