Coaching Teachers To Use Technology More Effectively

It has been heard in the United States of America that classrooms have more access to technology so that they may learn more. Teachers also participate fully and keep asking for more professional development on regular basis about different ways of using the tools that the districts buy. The large skill-based workshops are not actually the most effective way to get teachers have exposure to technology and its implementation. It has been noticed that though teachers have full excitement about learning new in their professional development or at any conference, workshops and sessions, yet they find it difficult to implement the same in real life with daily challenges of the classroom. However this does not really mean that devices and apps are always in use.

A new program called the Dynamic Learning Project (DLP) is in progress in order to prove that classroom-based coaching is always a better and more effective way of helping teachers integrate new tools. DLP program is designed on the basis of the research about coaching and the experiences of veteran coaches who had great learning how to be effective by doing it. In its first year, the partnership between Google, Digital Promise and EdTechTeam had worked in collaboration with coaches in 50 schools across the U.S. and has provided individual coaching to the teachers in their buildings. However the program has expanded to 101 schools in the upcoming year. Kelli Coons, a technology coach at Inman Intermediate in South Carolina, said that “The approach we really stand by is setting up individualized development plans for each teacher.”  The DLP program works with participating principals of the schools and make them understand that coaches are not part of the administration and hence they should not be reporting on teachers. A trusting relationship between teacher and coach is imperative that let the teachers feel comfortable enough to try new things and fail along the way. Coons also mentioned that “In any coaching position, and any teaching position really, it is building those relationships so they’re welcoming to have you in their classroom on a daily basis.” It is about taking out time to know more about the teacher’s life outside of school, arranging to being more snacks to meetings, and delivering on promised support. This not only helps to show teachers data on how much time they are saving but also to know how much more the students are gaining which makes with the case for why new approaches are worth the effort. Coons has teachers working on very different focus areas in their classrooms out of which some are really working hard to learn the technology to give students a choice in how they express their learning.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/52648/coaching-teaachers-to-become-powerful-users-of-classroom-tech