First, a little background, my teaching experience began in K12 education at All Saints Catholic School in Antigo, WI. During my first year of teaching, I was charged with faculty professional development in technology, now known as technology coaching. I was 22 years old and a brand new teacher; I thought my administrator was crazy to ask me to teach my faculty peers. Despite my fear, the experience of working with other faculty was probably more influential in my career path than working with students. I was able to learn about other teachers’ needs in professional development, and with the support of my administrator, designed and implemented multiple strategies of technology coaching to support technology growth and development for a 4K-8 building. This experience heavily influenced me and shaped my career path in more ways than I knew possible. I learned extreme patience, strategies for working with faculty of all backgrounds, and learned how to coach and teach technology integration with a non-judgmental approach.
This will be the start of my fourth year at Marian University as a full-time assistant professor in the Educational Innovations Department that houses the Educational Technology Program and the Institute of Professional Development. Our Educational Technology Program is aligned with the International Society for Technology in Education National Educational Technology Standards for Coaches (ISTE NETS-C) and includes a Technology Coaching Certificate. We are proud of this program, but we can do MORE.
This week, I had the opportunity to attend the Chromebook Academy in Sun Prairie and EdCamp Oshkosh. At EdCamp Oshkosh, I proposed a session on Technology Coaching Frameworks. The topic of technology coaching has become quite a passion. I have focused a lot of time in the past three years learning about research-based technology coaching frameworks. As I shared my own ideas on technology coaching models based on the TPACK Framework (Koehler & Mishra, 2009), SAMR Model (Puentedura, 2014), ISTE's Technology Coaching and Community Framework (Beglau et al., 2011) and the Partnership Learning Framework (Knight, 2002), I realized that we at Marian have the ability to do more to support technology coaches.
I had a great conversation with Dr. Deb Kneser, the chairperson of our Educational Innovations Department at Marian University this morning. While I was speaking with Deb this morning, I was telling her about our wonderful experience at EdCamp and discussing the technology coaching session. Deb asked, "Who is training the coaches?" We discussed that we were offering the Technology Coaching Certificate at Marian and I explained that perhaps some of these coaches would be interested. She said, "No, we need to do more."
Thus, the Marian University Coaching Academy was born. The Marian University Educational Innovations Department is going to offer a FREE Coaching Academy that will meet at Marian University on a quarterly basis for all-day workshops, networking, and break-out session training on coaching. We want to expand this to not only Technology Coaches but STEM, Literacy, Math, Special Ed, Assessment, etc. Coaches in the surrounding areas. We are also going to help moderate an online Coaching Academy-Professional Learning Community where we can build/add on to a network of coaches in WI.
More information is soon to come. Please contact me if you are interested in this opportunity. I cannot even begin to express my excitement about providing this service to area school district coaches.
References
Beglau, M., Hare, J.C., Foltos, L., Gann, K., James, J., Jobe, H., Knight, J., Smith, B. (2011). Technology, coaching, and community. ISTE White Paper. [Special Conference Release]. http://www.instructionalcoach.org/images/downloads/ISTE_Whitepaper_June_Final_Edits.pdf
Knight, J. (2002). Partnership Learning [Fieldbook]. The Teacher-Guided Professional Development Series. The University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. http://instructionalcoach.org/images/partnership/PartnershipLearningFieldbook.pdf
Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1). http://www.citejournal.org/vol9/iss1/general/article1.cfm
Puentedura, R. R. (2014). Learning, technology and the SAMR model: Goals, processes and practice. ISTE Presentation. http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/archives/2014/06/29/LearningTechnologySAMRModel.pdf
