The Schoenblog

A few weeks ago, I published The Coaching Chronicles: Breaking Down Walls, the first in an intended series. It’s gotten a great response and led to an #EdcampNJ session on coaching, along with plenty of future blog posts. This afternoon, I received a great surprise, and learned that the first Coaching Chronicles post won an Editor’s Choice Content Award from ASCD SmartBrief. You can learn more about SmartBrief and the other winners this year at SmartBrief Honors Education Bloggers.

Thanks to SmartBrief and to all of my readers for reading, commenting, and sharing. I look forward to continuing to share and learn with you.

It’s great timing, too, since I had planned on a second Coaching Chronicles post this week. November’s Tech Tuesday drop-in professional learning took place yesterday. Last time, I wrote about the struggle in getting attendance for this kind of optional time. This week, there were three participants. Only three. And it was wonderful.

Small Victories, Big Impact

I would love the day when there are dozens of educators in and out of Tech Tuesday, but as a classroom teacher I know how busy we are. I know that it’s hard to find the time to drop in when there’s always grading, planning, and so much more to do. And it all matters.

So with a positive attitude and lots of hope, I opened the office door to wait for the drop ins. And over the course of the day, three teachers came in. Only three. Over the course of eight periods, we only worked with three teachers.

But we worked together for almost three hours. That’s around four class periods. One teacher stayed for a half an hour to learn about Pear Deck. Two more spent time designing lessons with Pear Deck and Scrible. Those two both came back for a second period. All three asked follow up questions and wanted more coaching help.

Sure, we only worked with three teachers, but all three left with new ideas, technology skills, and a strong pedagogy to implement the tools in their classroom. We focused the time on integrating technology to support learning objectives; to promoting active student engagement; and for more meaningful formative assessment. I’m proud of the work I’ve done as a coach, but too little of it involves actual coaching. But this work really did--this was the coaching that I’ve hoped for.

Make Every Interaction Count

Did I only work with three teachers? Or did I have the opportunity to dig deep into working with three teachers? Imagine the disappointment in my tone for the first question and the accomplishment of the second.

To help make things count moving forward, we’ve decided to focus most of our opt-in professional learning, like Tech Tuesdays, on purposeful use of our two new tech tools: Pear Deck and Scrible. The goal is to help build capacity in their use to promote active learning, engagement, and meaningful data.

We will keep the momentum growing, but I’m happy to count the work with these teachers as a success.

Towards Teaching Tech Tuesday

In two weeks, we will return to the Teaching Teach Tuesday described in the first post. My hope is to be able to encourage other teachers to open their doors, so that educators can experience technology used effectively across subject areas. Instead of being the model classroom and coach, I want to help build capacity for technology leadership and growth everywhere.

How do you make the most of your time working with teachers and students? Share your tips, feedback, and experiences in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

This post is the start of a series that’s been forming in my mind for over a year. So often, I write about and reflect on my experiences as a teacher but I rarely write explicitly about my work as an instructional technology coach. This is my second year in a split position, teaching three periods of high school English and working the rest of my day to support teachers in their use of technology. In some ways, it’s the best of both worlds. As a classroom teacher, my coaching is built from my own experiences and relevant, practical teaching and learning.

Breaking Down Walls

Last year, a lot of my job focused on meetings and appointments or supporting infrastructure and curriculum. Simply put, I wasn’t in as many classrooms as regularly as I wanted to be. I wanted to be an embedded coach, working with teachers and students in appointments and meetings, but also in real coaching: co-teaching, push-ins, observations, and so much more. I hoped that by breaking down these walls, I could widen my impact.

And in this time, I’ve learned a lot about working with and supporting teachers. I think (and hope) I’ve grown a lot, too. This year, the challenge of breaking down walls became a priority for me and my team. How could we encourage teachers to seek out coaching? To invite us into classrooms? How do we ask teachers to commit their valuable planning time to coaching without making it an extra burden?

Our teachers are great. I’m sure yours are, too. But a reality of today’s public school system is that we are so often asked to do more with less. There are so many competing initiatives and interests on top of the wonderful work we do with students. How do we find the time?

From Tech Tuesday to Teaching Tech Tuesday

One of our growing initiatives to promote purposeful technology use has been Tech Tuesdays. Once a month, we schedule a day of drop-in professional learning on topics that can impact teaching and learning. Sometimes we focus on a tool like Pear Deck, and other times on a concept like online formative assessment tools. Teachers drop in for a few minutes or a full period to meet their needs.

Although our attendance has been spotty, it’s definitely growing, and we are making an impact. It’s also a fantastic way to gauge future needs for professional learning and to work with staff in a stress-free, individualized setting.

We are annotating with @scrible at @OHSPride today #SchoenTell #OssiningPride pic.twitter.com/qaTXTqmiSH

— Adam Schoenbart (@MrSchoenbart) November 15, 2016

The most common complaint to follow any of our professional learning this year, though, was something like this: “It was good but I need more time to understand it, practice, or see it used.” Sound familiar? For me, this perfectly logical and important comment set off bells in my head: we need to model the technology in authentic classrooms, not just in artificial settings.

Drop in PD and meetings can be great, but we all need to see these tools and strategies in action. Our students need models and scaffolding to grow--and teachers need the same to be effective learners.

Today was the first of our new Teaching Tech Tuesdays. Instead of meeting in an office, we invited teachers into fifteen different classrooms throughout the school day to see students use the annotation and citation tool Scrible. Our hope is to rotate the tool or skill and to recruit different teachers each month to open their doors as model classrooms. This way, we can demonstrate how technology use might look different across subject areas and share successes throughout the building. Meeting in an office with a coach or two is great, but we can do better.

There were a handful of teachers who took advantage of today’s opportunity. Next time, I hope there will be more. Teaching Tech Tuesday is just one idea, but I hope to see it take off as an inspiration for more collaboration, open doors, and risk taking with technology.

On Tuesdays, we’ve been working on getting the teachers to come to us. In the next Coaching Chronicles post, I’ll explore how I’m trying to go to them and get into more classrooms this school year.

How do you encourage a culture of collaboration and risk taking? Share your challenges or successes with breaking down the walls in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.