Edtech coaches often find themselves coming up with their own game plan and advocating for their importance. Coaches need information to be able to guide their work with teachers (Where are the teachers at? What do they need?) to be most effective. Additionally, it’s important for a coach to be able to prove their impact in schools, even though it is really hard to do. This makes data-driven coaching really important.
While there’s no good substitute for boots on the ground knowledge, we can find ourselves relying on our gut checks a little too much when it comes to making decisions about the professional learning needs of educators and the effect it has on changing their practice. Pairing your qualitative knowledge as a coach with some cold, hard, quantitative data can make a perfect impact storm!
And, while it may be tough to swallow, tech coaches are still often seen as a luxury position as opposed to a critical piece of the puzzle. If we can’t prove that we’re making an impact, then we have to face the fact that the funding for our positions may be on the chopping block if cuts need to be made.
I would strongly encourage any coach to track and collect data related to their coaching efforts. When I first started out, I only collected and used feedback from my group PD sessions. While I would still encourage any coach to do this, it’s only a teeny tiny piece of the puzzle.
My next step was to start logging all of my interactions in a Google Form with teachers, so I could prove how busy I was if I was ever asked. This was a great step because I was able to have a record for myself on each teacher I met with and when, so I would know if I hadn’t seen a teacher recently. I was able to track overall topics that I was discussing across the board, and I was able to provide records to admin so they could issue contact hours to teachers for their time working with me. But, it became a bit of a nightmare when you wanted to be able to start making more robust data-driven coaching decisions.
A few years ago, my coaching team at Forward Edge started using a product called ConnectHub, created by a former tech coach herself, Suzana Somers. This program has changed the way we are able to make meaningful data-informed coaching decisions. We just log all the interactions we have with teachers throughout the day- who we’re working with, for how long, and what we worked on. From there, the system creates a visual dashboard to help you make those crucial data-driven coaching decisions. There is even a section to track growth for formal coaching cycles and flag interactions as bright spots to share with your administrators. Speaking of administrators, there is a “principal” account type that allows your building and district admin to see aggregate data that can aide in goal-setting discussions while also protecting the teacher-coach relationship. Below is a snapshot of one of the visuals you get from the engagement dashboard. There are free and paid versions; we use the paid to get full functionality. I can’t recommend this tool enough for coaches!
Regardless of how you collect data about your work with teachers, below are some guiding questions our team uses at Forward Edge to make better data-informed coaching decisions:
- Which buildings am I spending most of my time?
- Am I spending more time with some teachers vs others?
- Are these teachers in coaching cycles? Are there teachers I’ve never met with?
- How do I spend most of my time (research vs PD vs coaching vs meetings), and do I need to allocate time elsewhere?
- What topics & tools am I spending most of my time with my teachers?
- Do these topics line up with the districts goals?
- Group PD decisions
- What are the common questions I’ve been getting that would be beneficial to clarify with a group?
- Am I working on previously covered PD topics? Do we need a group refresher?
- Is there a group of teachers who are ready for the “next step” with a certain topic or tool?
- Which tools has the district purchased or is pushing teachers to use? Am I spending enough time with teachers on those tools? Am I spending time with teachers on replacements for those tools?
- What are the bright spots recently?
- Have I discussed any of this with admin recently?
If you’re curious to hear more about ConnectHub, tips on collecting and making sense of data in general, or to learn more about Suzana Somers, you can listen to episode 14 of the Restart Recharge Podcast (psst… there might even be a promo code for ConnectHub mentioned in the episode 😉).
So what strategies have you found to collect your interactions as a coach? How do you use the information you collect to make data-driven coaching decisions? How has it helped you advocate for your position? Let me know in the comments below.
Tech To You Later!
-Katie, Ed.D.