Coaching Journal- Jacobs 1

Coaching Journal

Christy Jacobs

PL & Technology Innovation

Kennesaw State University

Ed.S. Instructional Technology, Spring 2017

Coaching Session 1: Tuesday, March 7th, 2017

Strategies

My job title as a media specialist allows me to build relationships with all staff members

to provide information, time, and support that leads to collaborative implementation of

content. However, as a media specialist I am having to re-design my role in the school as my

predecessor was not inviting nor did he collaborate with staff. Breaking this mold has been

most effective when acting as an instructional coach and through implementing strategies

explained in Jeff Knights Instructional Coaching text such as equality, voice, dialogue, and

praxis. Through my knowledge of who was comfortable with using technology in the classroom,

I was led to working with a peer whom has technology goals for herself. Goals which are not

required by the administration, but rather personal goals that will bring her classroom to a level

that prepares her honors students for college classes. Goals that bring her classroom into the

digital age of the 21st century and push the rigor of content with the medium that students are

most comfortable with; technology. Therefore, the first session scheduled included myself and

Ms. Parker where I encouraged the implementation of technology to meet the goals she had for

herself by the end of the school year. This encouragement, as Knight states, is meant to

accelerate teaching learning; (using) five activities (which) are particularly effective:

collaborating, modeling, observing, providing feedback, and providing support (Knight, 2007,

pg. 27). Through talking with Ms. Parker about her goals for technology integration and use, I

was able to effectively encourage her to use Office 365 digital notebooks to turn her classroom

into a digital environment where all coursework would take place digitally. Through discussion

of how implementation would take place, we were enforcing the partnership philosophy where
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we were both demonstrating equality, choice, voice, dialogue, and reciprocity with the

expectation of having completed reflection and praxis through the duration of our coaching

sessions together.

Skill and Affective Changes

Ms. Parker wanted to implement digital notebooks at the beginning of the school year

however, due to the eight-period day schedule, her various preps, becoming gifted certified,

and being a member of the PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention and Support) team and SACS

(Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) accreditation team, she ran out of energy and

time to make this goal a reality. The biggest change that was witnessed, was the excitement of

having the coaching help and partner available to implement her goal of becoming an online

classroom and effectively implementing digital notebooks.

Reflection on Challenges and Solution

The challenges now, are getting all the materials together to create the digital notebook

before the students begin their study of George Orwells 1984. The setup time will be

somewhat rushed as it is our goal to work together to have the notebook completed before the

implementation of the content and unit occur. To do this, Ms. Parker and myself have set a

timeline and goals of what each of our roles are in the compilation and creation of the

notebook to have it finished on time.

Coaching Session 2: Friday, March 10th, 2017

Strategies

Prior to the next coaching session, I set up Ms. Parkers digital notebooks through

obtaining her class rosters. Once each student had a notebook, Ms. Parker and myself were
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both included as teachers to effectively coach Ms. Parker through this new implementation.

During our coaching session, I went through and demonstrated the differences between the

teacher notebooks and the student notebooks. I modeled how the collaboration space worked

and the differences in this space as compared to the content library. Once we were both aware

of the basic setup of the digital notebook, we could collectively prepare for the materials that

needed to be included to turn or flip her classroom into that of a digital environment. The

coaching session later led to the inclusion and implementation of student blogs during our

process of mapping content, depicting and connecting all information to be learned in a

course, unit, or lesson (Knight, 2007, pg. 152). As it is a literature classroom, Ms. Parker

decided that she wanted to implement educational blogs to allow for weekly communication of

ideas and opinions between her students based on the text they were reading. The student

blogs would be included under the collaboration space to allow students to respond to each

others post. Class resources and digital handouts would be included under the content library

as it is more of a digital housing space for resources that all students need access to, but they

will not have access to add to or edit the content in any way. Therefore, this coaching session

greater detailed our mapping of the content to complete the notebook and have it ready for

students.

Skill and Affective Changes

Ms. Parker was overwhelmed and had trouble seeing the final product of the

notebooks from the basic shell that we went through today. She had trouble distinguishing

between the collaboration section of the notebook and the content library. Since we have not

had the opportunity to implement the notebook with students, it is difficult to comprehend
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how it will work and if it will be effective. However, due to our complete opposite

personalities, this is where my extravert and bubbly personality (which is opposite from my

peer and her personality trait of being an introvert) could convince Ms. Parker that it was all

going to come together and it would be an amazing tool that she could use each year with

modifications. I also believe that trying to get the entire six weeks of curriculum into the

notebook before it was taught was overwhelming, but the thought of having it finished

reassured Ms. Parker that the hard work up front would be rewarding in the end.

Reflection on Challenges and Solution

The challenge is trying to produce a product with Ms. Parker that she envisions for

effective use in her classroom. While collaborating, she is providing me with all the resources

to include in the notebook and I am compiling the notebook into sections and including visuals

and video to make the notebook as interactive as possible. I did, however, run into

complications with our technology department as they were not aware of how to use Delve,

the blog portion of Microsoft Office 365. Instead of wanting to use the product which we have

integrated with our schools, Microsoft Office 365, the technology team was wanting to

implement a separate blog. This however, would take away from the internal security of our

students and their ideas and put it into an external blog. While there are examples of effective

blog sites that are external, this project was moving so quickly that we (Ms. Parker and I)

wanted to use Office 365 and have the students share their links instead of having to use

another technology tool. To sway our technology team, I made a personal blog using Delve and

I shared the link with them. Once they saw the ease of use inside of Microsoft and the overall
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appeal of the blog, they agreed that it was an excellent feature despite from their initial

skepticism.

Coaching Session 3: Monday, March 20th

Strategies

While there were several small coaching sessions which took place between the two

previous sessions and the implementation session, the implementation and modeling was the

most beneficial to watch. As Ms. Parker and I have been implementing the partnership

philosophy, we took this a step further and implemented the initial lesson as co-teachers to

best model how to use the notebook and the purpose of the notebook with the content and

curriculum standards being taught.

The students came in as normal and began logging into their assigned laptops. Once the

students were instructed to login to Microsoft 365, I took over and introduced the students to

the idea of a digital notebook. We went over the different sections and what each student

could see on their own and what the teacher was able to see. The students were shocked at all

the content and how the notebook was laid out for the remainder of the school year; even their

final project rubrics and instructions were included and we were just beginning. After leading

the students through the basic setup of the notebook, they were introduced to the idea of a

blog and what they would be doing. Ms. Parker and myself continued to go back and forth

while dialoguing with the students on our vision for the fourth quarter of the school year and

the digital turn that would take place in her classroom. While it was still all very new and

intimidating, through modeling together the process that would take place in each classroom

(Knight, 2007, pg. 114-116), including high-level questions (Knight, 2007, pg. 165) and quality
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assignments, (Knight, 2007, pg. 166-168) Ms. Parker was confident that she was providing her

students with rigorous content at various levels and simply using technology as the medium of

implementation.

Skill and Affective Changes

Across the board one-hundred percent engagement! I have never seen anything like it

from a class of thirty high school students and I got chill-bumps from watching them navigate

through their notebooks. Seeing their initial reaction also confirmed to Ms. Parker the benefits

of using technology as a medium for instruction. There were obvious reactions of surprise and

relief from Ms. Parker that it was going so smoothly. The best reaction, however, was when

Ms. Parker expressed how wonderful it was to see the students completely engaged and that

they were receiving quality assignments at high levels of depth of knowledge. Due to the effort

we both put in through our peer partnership, we could see and sense positive reactions from all

parties involved; teachers, students, and administration.

Reflection on Challenges and Solution

While there were challenges that took place during the implementation and modeling

sessions with the students, having two teachers in the classroom allowed myself to trouble

shoot with the students while Ms. Parker would continue with the vision and direction for the

digital notebook and the remainder of the school year. The peer partnership was the perfect

combination for our opposite personalities that allowed for an unbelievable project to come

together. While it is not always suggested nor will it always work to partner with someone who

is completely opposite from you, our chemistry together allowed for trust and mutual respect

to flow from both parties to produce an amazing product. We have continued to work together
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since this initial modeling lesson to work with students on how to blog and respond to each

other. It is amazing to see the collaboration aspect of our notebook grow each week through

the work being produced in the classroom. Since implementation, our technology team and

administration has come in to view what we are doing together and has asked about the

coaching I completed with Ms. Parker to turn her classroom into a digital format. We are

considering writing a formal document of all that we have implemented together as we have

not been able to find examples of blogging in the high school classroom in any research

journals. We have, however, already applied to present at the GA Educational Technology

Consortium and are anxious to see if what we have completed together this semester will earn

us a spot.
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References

Knight, J. (2007). Instructional coaching: A partnership approach to improving

instruction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.