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Coaching for Technology Innovation in Education

1. The document discusses a coaching experience where the author coached her husband, a teacher, on implementing strategies to increase student engagement during writing assignments. 2. As part of the coaching, the author researched and recommended using a comic book creation tool to have students depict the process of a bill becoming law. They developed a joint activity for students to complete the task. 3. The author learned that coaching takes time and effort from both parties. They also learned to balance enthusiasm for sharing techniques with not overwhelming the teacher. The coaching experience helped develop the author and her husband's teaching practices.

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21 views2 pages

Coaching for Technology Innovation in Education

1. The document discusses a coaching experience where the author coached her husband, a teacher, on implementing strategies to increase student engagement during writing assignments. 2. As part of the coaching, the author researched and recommended using a comic book creation tool to have students depict the process of a bill becoming law. They developed a joint activity for students to complete the task. 3. The author learned that coaching takes time and effort from both parties. They also learned to balance enthusiasm for sharing techniques with not overwhelming the teacher. The coaching experience helped develop the author and her husband's teaching practices.

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Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
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Caitlin Maynard

ITEC 7500
Reflection – Standard 1.4

1.4 Diffusion of Innovations and Change - research, recommend, and implement strategies for
initiating and sustaining technology innovations and for managing the change process in schools.
______________________________________________________________________________

During ITEC 7460, Professional Learning and Technology Innovation, we were given the
opportunity to coach a colleague at our schools during the Fall of 2019. While we completed the
coaching experience, we had to log the time we spent completing a current reality analysis,
observing lessons and providing feedback, documenting progress, and meeting regularly to set
and review goals. For my personal experience, I coached my husband, also a teacher at Russell
Middle School. He teaches 8th Grade Gifted/Advanced Science and Social Studies and wanted
to find ways to increase student engagement during writing assignments. I met with him three
times to discuss his progress throughout the course of the semester and helped to guide him in
reaching his goal.

As part of the Visionary Leadership standard, Element 1.4 requires research,


recommendation, and implementation of strategies for initiating and sustaining technology
innovations. Additionally, candidates are to demonstrate the ability to manage change process in
schools. After developing the goal of student engagement with my colleague, I researched web
tools that could help with writing tasks in the Social Studies classes. At the time, his students
were working on the process of a bill becoming law, so I recommended a comic book type
activity using Book Creator. To implement the strategy, we developed a joint productive activity
(JPA) for his students to complete: small group work to describe the steps of law creation, create
a comic strip depicting the process, and then writing a co-construction to demonstrate mastery of
the standard. As we met to discuss student progress and mastery, we discovered areas that had
successfully improved and areas that we needed to change a bit for the sake of student learning.

While completing this artifact, I learned that coaching is hard work. It isn’t necessarily
difficult, but it takes time to properly help a colleague and to pour into them what they need to
succeed. Both parties, the coach and the teacher, have to be prepared for the coaching sessions
to be meaningful and effective. I also learned that the coach’s position is a tricky one to manage
due to the amount of enthusiasm to share techniques and resources and the perceived authority
that can overwhelm and dissuade others. If I could have changed anything about this experience,
I would have chosen to work with someone else simply to provide a truer sense of coaching. In
the Fall of 2019, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer before the coaching experience began and
out of necessity with my surgery schedule, I worked with my husband. While he was a good
candidate and our working relationship maintain professionalism, I do wonder what type of
responses I would have received from someone outside of my bubble.

The coaching experience impacted faculty development in two ways. First, I worked on my
own development as a coach. Even though I have been on school leadership for six years, this
was my first coaching opportunity and the techniques that I learned from it continued to help me
through the rest of the 2019-2020 school year and beyond. The start of this year has been
particularly challenging, but I’ve been able to work with my peers in a confident and reassuring
manner, built on trust and respect. Second, the experience also helped my husband re-energize
his teaching practices and to give him the push needed to be a technology leader within his
content team. He is now very excited to try new technologies in his lessons and share those
resources with his students. The impact of both can be measured by faculty and student
feedback about activities in the classroom and coaching sessions.

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