I’m starting to think further about how to implement my goal
of doing more coaching in the second half of the school year. Having worked with teachers for a number of
years to improve their technology skills and build their confidence in using technology
to transform student learning, I’m trying to identify what has already been
achieved to create the right conditions for success in this area.
One of the important things that I think I’m always clear on
is that while I may be the person with a greater knowledge of the technology,
the classroom teachers are the ones with the deeper knowledge about their units
of inquiry and their students. When we
co-plan it involves dialogue, sharing our ideas and making decisions
collaboratively. In class the students
know which teacher will be most able to help them with their questions – it is
a technical question about how to do something or is it a question about the
content or how they can show their understanding? While the model used so far has been one of
co-planning, co-teaching and co-assessing rather than actually coaching, the
relationships that we have already built up will be the foundation for moving
forward in the second half of the year.
Over the past 2 years I’ve worked hard on giving
choices. Last year I encouraged teachers
in a grade level team to think hard about the choices they were making about
how technology could support what they wanted to do. Each teacher in the grade level was
encouraged to make his or her own choices.
For some the technology was used more for the tuning in or finding out
parts of the inquiry cycle, other teachers wanted to concentrate more on using
technology to help students sort out what they had investigated or perhaps to
show their understanding. Even when IT
was used by all students as part of their summative assessment, I encouraged
teachers to give the students a choice of what they wanted to use. Again I think that handing over of the
decision making to teachers and their students has played an important role in
setting the groundwork for the choices that teachers will be making as part of
a coaching process. When teachers feel
they are in control of their own learning, a coach is someone who can suggest different
options and it is up to the teacher to make the most meaningful choices for
their students.
Seeing classroom teachers
as equal partners in a coaching model, and allowing these teachers to make
their own choices is easy as our relationship is already based on mutual trust
and respect. At our collaborative
planning meetings teachers can express their opinions and also their
concerns. Often when a teacher wants
to do something but has concerns about how it will actually work, trust is the
most important factor in being able to move forward. I’ve had teachers who have initially been
skeptical about an outcome, but have trusted that it would work, and then been
enthusiastic with the results. Sometimes
it’s just a matter of changing practice by trying something new and seeing how
successful it is, but in order to make that leap there has to be trust. Encouraging teachers to then reflect on why
these changes have been so successful, empowers them to learn from this
experience and to plan on using technology in other new ways in the future. This way, the teachers have not only adopted
new practices, they have also made them their own.
Photo Credit: More than Pride: Equality, equal rights by Timothy K Hamilton 
No comments:
Post a Comment