Coaching Roles & Goals
Wee! Because I am now on summer break, and I am finished prepping for conferences I can now start working on this series again. Molly is in love with her summer day camp, which frees me up during the day to get some work done! I know it is weird to be excited about having voluntary work to do on your vacation time but honestly, I have been wanting to finish this series and I simply fell out of time to do it. So I am excited to say I am back in the saddle again, for the series and posting on the blog! Here we go! Picking up where I left off back in January or February, I am not very far into the modules but excited none-the-less.Some highlights from this module:
“Make an environment where the teachers can ask the questions and get the answers that they need to move closer to being an independent user of technology in their classroom.”- From the Video in Part B
You must understand that you can’t know all the answers and you have to be willing to learn right along with people that you are coaching. I know that if I don’t know the answers, which I imagine will happen often as I am working with peers outside my content area that I have to listen, and provide a give & take situation where I seek out the answers from my PLN when I don’t know the answer.
“Open the classroom doors and start talking about the good things that this person or that person is doing.” - From the Video in Part B
Observing teachers in the classroom is one of the things that I am most excited about as I move forward in this role. Added to that the idea of getting more of the staff to observe each other in the classroom, and open that communication/collaboration and sharing within departments as well as across contents using technology makes this easier than ever!
Goals for next year as a tech coach?
My goals for next year will be to work on mentoring a handful of teachers throughout the whole school year, as well as work on helping the collaboration and observation throughout the building happen. Observation was touched upon this school year but not implemented because we just frankly ran out of time at the end of the year. It was something admin was pushing each department to do, we started talking about vulnerability and fixed vs. growth mindset, which was a step in the right direction, but many people in the building are still too terrified of opening their doors. If observation is a focus for next school year though I think it would be really beneficial in moving everybody forward not just with technology but with innovating their teaching practices as a whole. I would also love to start moving around during our late start Wednesdays and working with departments specifically, this is just very hard for me to do when I am still needed in my own English department meetings. Setting up time and just being a part of their conversation as they lesson plan would be awesome, I just have to figure out how to make it happen.
