4.3d

Coaches establish productive relationships with educators in order to improve instructional practice and learning outcomes. Coaches:

D. Personalize support for educators by planning and modeling the effective use of technology to improve student learning.

As we arrive at the last piece of ISTE Coach Standard 4, The Collaborator, we move into a space for coaches to wrap up the previous three steps and focus on creating personalized support for each of the educators they are working with in order to help with the “planning and modeling” of “effective use of technology to improve student learning”. This puts the coach back in the driver’s seat, actively introducing and representing new technology to their mentees.

1. One way in which I was able to have firsthand experience in the role of coach under indicator d was my peer coaching experience in the second year of the DEL program. Our course objective was to create a peer-coaching relationship with someone at our school, or in our school district, and work with them to improve upon a lesson or unit that they were used to teaching, while incorporating technology with the end goal of improving student learning relative to their learning objectives previously set. In my experience, I worked with a middle school STEM teacher, improving upon a lesson that focused on students writing skills when answering response questions on a test. It was an incredibly insightful experience to work through the coaching process and step into the role of mentor while my peer talked me through the learning goals of their lesson. I was able to find multiple ways in which we could use technology to enhance the students’ experience researching and writing process (it definitely helped that students were at this point fully remote due to COVID), and together we evaluated the effectiveness of the tools and found success when reflecting on student learning!
   
   
2. Another aspect of my learning that helped me to engage in this last indicator was my experience with PGP (professional growth plans). These plans allow you to create 100% personalized support for educators and walk hand in hand with them as they continue to set goals for themselves and implement new learning with their students while also improving their own practice. Read more about PGPs here: Personalized Support Through Professional Growth Plans