Beginning My Coaching Journey

 Last year when I was applying for jobs I made the conscious effort to decline classroom job interviews, and stick to my instinct about moving into the world of EdTech coaching. The universe provided, and in a few short weeks I accepted a Technology Integration Coach job at Chadwick International (Korea) to work in a department of 2 for the Village School (elementary).

The beginning of the year was a whirlwind. Having 2 weeks of quarantine after entering the country and starting with online orientation made the foundations of my job (relationships) a little difficult. Even once we were completing the end of orientation in person, we still had to adhere to social distancing and smaller groups. The natural act of sitting beside people and "accidentally making a new friend" was pretty impossible.

For the first two months I have been attending meetings to give a little peep of a suggestion here at there, teaching a couple of digital citizenship lessons to kick off the year, and helping to administer MAP Tests in grades 1-5. We also had an IB Evidencing Learning workshop which gave me another good chance to connect with colleagues.

I also began putting together a monthly Coaches Corner. I feel this makes the coaches and pedagogy leaders in our school more visible. Each month I am asking them for submissions, then on the first of the month I email it out to the Village School and also post them in common staff areas such as collaboration rooms, staff rooms, and even bathrooms. Within this, I created a #ChadwickSlowChat on Twitter. Each month I am asking a different teacher to pose a question to our community. The start has been slow, but I am hoping to watch it grow!

This week we began our new Simply Certified sessions. This week we started with "All About Apple" where I reviewed all of the types of certifications teachers can get from Apple. At least 3 more teachers are already Apple Teachers from this session, and many more have started their journey by earning badges! Coming soon is Google, and I also sent a document out with information about Seesaw, Nearpod, Flipgrid, and more.

Now is the natural time that I have people/teams approaching me with bigger ideas. I am excited about their eagerness and am happy to dive in with them. However, as I am new to coaching, I just want to know all of the things. I bought 3 books to help guide me. The EdTech Coaching Primer by Ashley McBride, Courageous Adventures by Jennie Magiera, and The Complete EdTech Coach by Adam Juarez and Katherine Goyette. These have been a great place to start, but I found myself wanting/needing some sort of organization to document and help guide my conversations with teachers.

I started by modifying one from Magiera, and then scratched it completely and began from what was in my heart. However, a few elements still remain the same. I need to try to evidence where they are so I can meet them there. Then I need to try to outline possible solutions and key people, resources, blogs, and links that might help them get there. Teachers have a lot on their plate and if I can do some of the heavy lifting for them, I am willing (and excited!) to do that.

Below is what I have started. I spent the end of this week filling them in for people I have spoken to already, and tweaked things as I went along. This doesn't work - don't need this - need to add this. I will continue this tweaking process as I go along

While this is a large learning curve for me, and creating a coaching culture within a school may not be easy, I am excited to see where our team takes it!