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MATTHEW HALL
1ST Session
Strategies:
During our first session, I observed Mrs. G in her Math classroom and saw
some examples of how she typically includes technology into her lessons. She is
very open to new ideas and suggestions and quick to learn, but struggles with true
technology implementation. She has a SmartBoard in her classroom and uses it
often to project examples of work. While this exposure is helpful for the students,
they are lacking personal interaction with the technology. Mrs. G expressed her
needs in that she needs help finding ways for her young students to be able to
interact with the SmartBoard as a whole group.
Through this classroom observation and interview, we discovered that Ms.
Gibbs would benefit the most from the Identifying Strategy. Through my
collaboration with Mrs. G, we together identified a particular best practice that has
the greatest chance of making a difference for her students at this time and skill
level.
Skill and Affective Changes:
The skill we worked on this session was very simple. Mrs. G was unaware of
the mass of free resources that are available through simple online searches and
possibly registering for a fee free accounts. She had used some of these activities
before, but only saw them as fun games to do during down time. I worked with her
in showing how these games could be GA Standard specific and were great assets
to her daily lesson plans. Mrs. G was so excited to have that reinforcement to use
these type activities often in her lessons. She embraced the suggestions and has
now started building a bank of resources she pulls daily to use as warm-up or
closing activities. The students are enjoying the personal interaction with the
technology and seem to be more engaged in the lessons being taught.
Reflection on Challenges and Solution:
This coaching session was successful, but not in my opinion a huge gain.
Mrs. G was extremely easy to work with and open to everything I was advising her
to do. The area I struggled with was my personal opinion of coaching and feeling
like I should be showing her more advanced ways to incorporate her technology
rather than just introducing a few game-based learning activities/resources. I do
however see this as a victory and definitely a positive connection for an IC. Her
sharing about her positive experience working with a coach may possibly open
others up to the coaching process.

2nd Session
Strategies:
The second session I had with Mrs. G was a great follow-up to our previous
experience. Mrs. G has been using the ideas I presented to her and began sharing
some resources with fellow teachers. During this session, we discussed ways for

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Mrs. G to expose her students to using the Google Chromebooks she has in her
classroom. Through the Identifying Strategy, Mrs. G and I realized that these tools
are not being utilized in an educational manner and so far and been truly wasted.
Through questions and discussions with Mrs. G I learned that a lot of the
reasoning why she does not use the Chromebooks is the lack of prior knowledge her
students have on them. These class sets of Chromebooks are not in any of the
Kindergarten classrooms. We discussed that our initial task would be to primarily
expose the students to the Chromebooks and their basic operations.
Skill and Affective Changes:
During this session, I think Ms. G did get the intention of my coaching.
However, I feel that she was hesitant to take the time to embrace the suggestions.
I did not see any change in her practice. There may have been some spark of
change in intention, but her focus was more on available time. She was unsure of
when she was going to be able to take time to teach the students how to work a
computer so it was easier to just leave them out.
Reflection on Challenges and Solution:
After such a positive first experience, I was a little disappointed this time. Ms.
G seemed to be rushed and not as open to experimenting with ideas or suggestions.
We identified a problem of her students not being familiar with the basic operations
of a laptop. This lack of experience hindered her from using the computers as
learning tools in class. My solution to this was to incorporate some lessons on basic
skills of the computer into her daily schedule for a week or so. Mrs. G thought this
was a good idea, but argued that it would waste a lot of her valuable instructional
time. It was interesting to me to see that even though she was so responsive
during the 1st session that I almost had to back track and begin an Enrolling
Strategy with her to get buy-in to my ideas. This correlates well with Knights (2007)
descriptions of a teacher in the preparation stage. While it was not as positive as
the first, I saw this session as a challenge to really help the teacher figure out an
effective solution.

3rd Session
Strategies:
This third session is basically a continuation of session two. I am going back
to Mrs. Gs classroom to help her schedule some introductory learning for her
students using the Google Chromebooks. I have went through several strategies to
get to this phase of the coaching. During this session I used the support strategy
and partnership approach. Through these aspects of coaching, I was able to be
there to work with the teacher to make her classroom schedule fit around their
technology needs. In reference to Knight (2007), by positioning themselves as
listeners during the interviews, ICs have a chance to make many bids for emotional
connection with participants (Gottman, 2001). I opened myself up to be strictly a
listener for our discussion and Mrs. G shared her stress. I supported Mrs. G by

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MATTHEW HALL
taking a little extra time to come by at set times throughout the week in order to
help her with some small-group instruction/progress monitoring that had to be
completed. Since there were two of us providing the progress monitoring it cut that
instruction time in half an opened up some flexibility in the schedule at the end of
the week. Mrs. G was overwhelmed during our weekly interview when I offered her
my assistance throughout the week. We then worked together to decide what all
needed to be taken care of during the week in order to have some training time
later. With this partnership, we were able to take some testing time away from her
normal Friday schedule and use it to play with the Chromebooks with her
students.
Skill and Affective Changes:
Mrs. G was once again on board for my coaching. She seemed to jump right
into the work I was presenting and we connected almost as team-teachers in
guiding her students in basic operations of using a Chromebook. She was hesitant
at first, but after some tweaking to her normal schedule I was able to guide Mrs. G
into changes in her intention and practice. When in the past she would have rather
not used the Chromebooks because her students were not familiar with them, Mrs.
G was having fun teaching her students how to work to computers. I think these
changes took place due to the support she was receiving throughout her day-to-day
work. It was not just someone coming in one time and telling her all these magic
tricks to do.
Reflection on Challenges and Solution:
Due to her resistance from the last session, I was cautious at how I
approached Mrs. G with this session again. When we discussed these ideas the first
time, she kept brushing them off with obvious disinterest. This was not a huge skill
that needed to be taught to her students, but I still struggled with deciding on how
to approach the teacher with something as simple as this when she was not openly
excited about the concept. I had to decide what I could do to pursue this topic and
not become a hindrance to the teacher. I knew if I started becoming too aggressive
and aggravating to the teachers then they would start shutting me and my ideas
out. I decided to change my schedule a little to make time to go to Mrs. G
throughout the week and help her with some daily activities to free up more time to
introduce some technology lessons. This helped me to truly appreciate the
Partnership approach in a whole new way. In a way, I was not working WITH her,
but FOR her. When Mrs. G saw that I thought so much about teaching her students
to use the Chromebooks that I was willing to take my time to help her with daily
activities she became very appreciative and supportive. She respected the aspect
and embraced the suggestions all because she saw that I was truly there to help
and not just hand out my opinion.

4th Session
Strategies:

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Throughout this session, Mrs. G and I continued on from the initial
Chromebook training. Her students were not completely familiar with the computer
features yet, but were comfortable enough to use them with guidance in class. The
strategy used for this fourth coaching session was to Explore. I worked with Mrs. G
to conduct some simple internet searches in hopes to finding a few simple activities
she could lead her class through on their Chromebooks. Through this exploring of
online resources, we were able to find a few game-based learning activities that
Mrs. G felt were simple enough for her beginning students to practice their newly
learned computer skills. During our interview and work together on this session,
Mrs. G was persistent to note how important she thought it was to find ways for her
students to practice all the aspects of the computers. She wanted them to have to
use the touchpad as well as type on the keyboard. She expressed to me that
helping her students use a touchpad instead of the mouse they were accustomed
to, seemed to be the hardest part.
Skill and Affective Changes:
I am really seeing change in Mrs. G so far throughout the coaching. Although
she was always a great teacher and eager to learn, she oddly strayed away from
technology use. I think this distance was not from a lack of knowledge, but more of
a lack of guidance to student exposure. After she saw that it was ok to take time to
teach students how to use certain tools and that that time was not looked at as
wasted instruction, she began to open up to more exploration and experimentation.
This openness to trying things out was huge for Mrs. G. She is normally one to
strictly follow her lesson plan through every detail.
Reflection on Challenges and Solution:
This session was fun, but also a little challenging. Mrs. G was wanting to
create ways for her students to practice on their Chromebooks and wasnt familiar
with resources that other teachers will often share in many different places online. I
think she uses technology a lot personally, but was struggling with what would be
the most effective for her to be doing with the tools in her classroom. I am
comfortable enough with the features of the SmartBoard or other sites that I could
have created something to focus on specific needs she wanted to address with her
students. Where I struggled was to not jump in and complete the searches and
tasks for her. I could have pushed her aside and done so much more in such less
time, but fought myself back to let her discover things with me just guiding and
encouraging her. I kept the old quote, you can give a man a fish and he can eat for
a day or you can teach a man to fish and he can eat for a lifetime in the back of my
mind. I wanted Mrs. G to be successful so I was making sure to be there to guide
and support her, but I still wanted to her to do this somewhat on her own so that
she felt the pride of doing it herself. Through this approach, I also hoped that it will
make her more comfortable to do these things more often on her own and not just
when I was there to remind her.

5th Session

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MATTHEW HALL
Strategies:
During my last scheduled session with Mrs. G, I chose to use the Modeling
Strategy for her and her students. We have worked together to ensure that her
students are being exposed to the technology tools that are currently in the
classroom. I wanted to take a step further and show Mrs. G how activities could be
created to cover specific standards and become personalized to exactly what she
wanted to cover instead of the general concepts we were finding online. I used her
students during a downtime to work through a WebQuest I had created over a
science lesson. It was a great opportunity for Mrs. G to see some of the ideas I had
been sharing with her. Through this modeling she actually witnessed the ideas in
action instead of just hearing them. This let her see the things she thought worked
well and also helped her to tweak areas that she wanted to improve.
Skill and Affective Changes:
Through this session, there as not much opportunity for Mrs. G to show any
changes. She was very interactive with students as I was leading the class. I also
saw her jotting down a few notes throughout my time in the room. The changes I
can see are not from me actually teaching, but for me being there to open up that
exposure to her and help her implement it effectively in her classroom.
Reflection on Challenges and Solution:
Through modeling this lesson, I really felt like I was coaching Mrs. G. All the
other times I was helping her, we went through a lot of material and I was exposing
her to new ideas, but it was more like I was just there as support. This time, I was
working with her students and let her observer so that she could see in action, some
of the strategies I had been suggesting. Just as Knight (2207) describes that
modeling is more than demonstrating a technique, you are showing them different
ways to relate to students in the action of certain teaching tools. I also like that
through modeling, the teachers can see that you as the coach understand the stress
of being in the front of a classroom because they see you in their classes or classes
of other teachers and you are actually teaching, not just spitting out your opinion of
ideas. I also found how it would be hard to stay detached as the coach. Through
the coaching sessions with Mrs. G, we developed a friendship. I felt comfortable in
her classroom and we learned to respect each others opinions. After working for a
while in all the grade levels, how can you stay detached from them? I think that
from the beginning you have to stand your ground and always show you are there
for a purpose. That does not mean to no become friends with the teachers, but to
keep that main goal always up front.