Outgrowing Tech Integration with a Teaching and Learning Coach

At our school we are now moving from the Academic Technology Coordinator position to the Teaching and Learning Coach position. So the next step will be to clarify this transition for teachers, which in my case means High School. The first clarification is on what is a Teaching and Learning Coach, and also what it is not. The HaikuDeck below was created to explain the idea and highlight main attributes of this role:

• Thinking partner
• Source of ideas
• Student data analysis support
• Another set of eyes for curriculum planning
• A professional learning facilitator
• Support for reflective practice

The two highlighted attributes, support for student data analysis and reflective practice, are the ones which will differ most from the Academic Technology role and will be explained in more detail on a later post.

In order to explain the changes represented by the transition from Academic Tech  to Instructional Coach, I created the following Infographic. It stresses the smooth transition from one role to the other, as the work done from the perspective of an Academic Technology Coordinator feeds into the role of  Teaching and Learning Coach. In our 1:1 environment, learning is seen as a redefinition of the traditional into modern literacies, or 21st century learning ans many people call it. This past year, we have started to use the SAMR Model developed by Ruben Puentedura, as a way to help teachers visualize how learning can be redefined through the development of modern literacies. This idea of redefining learning in the SAMR model will continue with the role of  Teaching and Learning Coach, adding the layer of student data analysis mentioned above in what is called “Coaching Cycles”.  A Coaching Cycle will be better explained on a later post, but basically we can say that it follows a cycle similar to action research, but in a more informal way:

Coaching Cycle < — > Action Research

• Goal: Identify student learning needs based on student data
• Plan: action steps
• Action: execute plan
• Observation:  impact of action steps on students
• Debrief : review action steps based on student data gathered during observation stage

These steps can be quite smooth and intertwined, so I will get back to those in a later post. For now, you can get the picture of where we are going with what schools many times call “technology integration”. In our case, we have moved past  “technology” to go deeper into learning in the modern world.