What’s the Best Title for a “Tech Coach”?

I have been supporting technology integration as a tech coach and leading tech coaches for going on ten years. And for nearly ten years, I have combatted the mistaken break fix or single platform identity. No, I cannot fix your projector. No, I am more than just the Google lady or the Schoology lady. Yes, I can do much more than show you how to upload a PDF. I have never been one to put too much weight into titles, but over the past year and a half, I really started wondering what’s the best title for a “tech coach” to more accurately portray what we can do for teachers?

Time and time again, not only are tech coaches themselves often unclear about their own job responsibilities ¹, but school administrators are frequently unclear about the expectations of the role ². This makes it difficult for teachers, who are supposed to be the beneficiaries, to fully take advantage of support personnel that they cannot even articulate who or what the coaches are there to support.

My final straw came last January when my team at Forward Edge started the Restart Recharge Podcast for coaches. I was doing a little research for the first episode, What is a Tech Coach, when I sent a tweet asking any educator who supports technology integration to share their title with me. There were a few hundred different responses in a matter of a few hours. It’s also nearly impossible to find any real stats on the number of “tech coaches” in the country, likely because their titles vary so drastically (if you have a reliable source, please share!).

I had a moment of if you think it’s everyone else, maybe it’s you… and that’s when I decided that maybe there is more to a title than I had once thought.

So, I went to my team of (formerly known as) Technology Integration Specialists, and told them I was thinking about changing their titles to take “technology” out of it altogether. There was unanimous glee and support of the idea because, they too, were tired of constantly clarifying and re-clarifying (and re-re-clarifying) what they were in schools to do. After some serious debate and discussion, these were some words that were hot topics:

• Technology– We wanted to totally remove this word because “technology” immediately induces anxiety and feelings of resentment for many teachers. We also felt it pigeon-holed us into being approached to help with break fix tasks that required teachers to submit a help desk ticket to their IT team or very surface level integration support. It made us an addition to the plate more often than helping with the deep work of changing instruction.
• Innovation– This felt a bit too much like a buzzword that might scare off some of our hesitant or tech-resistant teachers from working with us.
• Blended– this was too close to technology.
• Coach– we definitely wanted to include the word coach to signal that we are there to help support and guide, not to judge or to do the work for them.
• Instruction– this word felt like it needed to be front and center to signal that we are there to support high quality instruction, first and foremost. As my colleague Michael Roush has said (much more eloquently than my paraphrasing here), “we’re nearly a quarter of the way into the ’21st Century.’ Stop talking about ’21st Century Skills’ as if they are in the future… it’s already here!” In other words, high quality instruction won’t always include technology, but high quality instruction should absolutely include technology when it can make something more accessible, authentic, or make something possible that was previously inconceivable.
• Design– We really liked this word because it put the focus on designing meaningful experiences for kids… from the seed of the smallest idea to a full blown transformed classroom.
• Unicorn– I still feel strongly that tech coaches are unicorns in schools for a number of reasons! Sadly, this one didn’t make the cut.

So, [insert drum roll here 🥁 ]… we landed on Instructional Design Coach as the new title for the “tech coaches” on our team. I’d love to hear what your title is in the comments below. Would you change it if you could? If so, what do you think is the best title for a “tech coach” to most accurately represent the work we (should) do in schools?

Tech To You Later!
-Katie, Ed.D.

References

1. Stoetzel, L., & Shedrow, S. (2020). Coaching our coaches: How online learning can address the gap in preparing K-12 instructional coaches. Teaching and Teacher Education, 88, 102959.
2. Hannan, M. Q., & Russell, J. L. (2020). Coaching in Context: Exploring Conditions That Shape Instructional Coaching Practice. Teachers College Record (1970), 122(10), 1–40.