The eCoach Program- Empowering Teachers at a Time Since 2004

by Debbie Ray, Teacher Specialist, Office of Instructional Technology

If you're as old as me or have been with the school system for a while you will remember NCLB otherwise known as No Child Left Behind. You are probably wondering what does NCLB have to do with Anne Arundel County’s eCoach program? Well, that is how the program started back in 2004. NCLB wanted every eighth grader to be technology literate by the end of 2006. The Maryland Department of Education (MSDE) created the Maryland Technology Literacy Consortium for the counties to work on achieving the requests of NCLB. The Office of Instructional Technology (OIT) represented Anne Arundel County in the consortium. We decided the best use of funding would be to provide professional development for our teachers. How could you have literate students if teachers weren’t integrating technology or even using it?

However, we knew that we could not alone provide this professional development. Thus the creation of the eCoach Program, Empowering One Teacher at a Time. Through the grant funding we were able to fund an eCoach for every elementary and middle school. In the beginning of the program, participants were required to attend a full day of training as well as participate in a one credit course. eCoaches were and still are the liaison between the school and OIT. By attending the training, they were then asked to share their learnings with the staff. This model has evolved into an orientation evening for new eCoaches and two days of professional development for all eCoaches a year and is now locally funded. We hope to see our eCoaches some time this year as we had to cancel the fall professional development. OIT shares information via email with the eCoaches to share with their staff. We hope to resume the synchronous professional development soon.

What are eCoach Days like? Our eCoach days (mini-conferences) are amazing! OIT has so much fun planning, organizing, decorating, and presenting. I know it is one of the highlights of the year for my teammates and for me. Not only is the best possible professional development provided for our eCoaches, we provide them with an atmosphere that celebrates them. We have themed days such as: Htting it Out of the Ballpark with Technology (Sports); We’re Mad About Technology (Alice in Wonderland); A Decade of Digital (10 years of the ecoach Program); Welcome to GoogleVerse, (Google); eCoach Spooktechular (Halloween); Cafe ‘o’ IT (Food and cafe); AACPS eCoaches are Super (Super Heroes); and another the Wonderful World of Technology (Disney). The Wonderful World of Tech day touches my heart. My mom and Mickey would have been 90 in the same year. She passed away the year before and didn’t get to celebrate Mickey’s birthday. She would have loved seeing the pictures and hearing about this day. This was the first one she missed hearing about. She actually loved it when I told her about our eCoach Days!

During these days, not only do the fantastic specialists from OIT present, we have outside presenters including PBS (Thinkport); Scott Loomis from (Wixie) Tech4Learning, Angela Navarro from the Smithsonian Institute; Heather Schrader from SMART technologies; Patti Duncan, Discovery Education; the Baltimore Orioles Groundskeeper, Nicole Sherry; Eric Curts, CTRL ALT Achieve, Microsoft representatives, Nearpod representatives, Central Office guests and especially our own eCoaches. We are tremendously proud of the eCoaches that present during our mini-conference. What a great professional growth opportunity for them!!

Our goal for our eCoaches is to model the appropriate use of technology as well as give them strategies and tools to use to innovate and integrate the use of technology. As they use these tools and strategies, we hope they are empowering the staff in their schools to use technology with their students. We believe in this quote by Vanessa Vega, an Edutopia Research Analyst, and model it as we plan professional development sessions, “At the heart of effective technology, integrating technology offers opportunities to be more actively involved in the learning experience."

eCoaches, as recognized leaders in their schools, are expected to share what they learned with their staff. The eCoach program leads to many great leadership opportunities! These opportunities include working with OIT, school staff, vendors (Discovery/Wixie/SMART/Nearpod/Microsoft) and central office.

Many of our eCoaches have moved on from their schools. Just to name a few: Stephanie Kelly, Kerri Lambert, Matthew Nickerson (Liaison) and Darren Towers, joined the Office of Instructional Technology; Kelli Welch, Library Media; Kris Hanks, Integrated Curriculum; Tara Rose, Triple E Resource; Kristin Addleman, Reading/Integrated Literacy; Justin Serota, Computer Science Resource; Wendy Smith, Assistant Principal; Chad Skeele, Assistant Principal; Rebecca Hutchinson, Assistant Principal.

Did you know that these principals were former eCoaches? Kyle Butler, Jamie Miller, Colleen MacFarland, and Linda Toth.

Amanda Salveron, Coordinator of Integrated Math; Andrea Sporre; Coordinator of Digital Media and Kevin Wajek, Director of Curriculum all have the eCoach program proudly on their resumes.

The eCoach Program has been one of the most rewarding experiences that I have had in my career. I will never forget the special days, and working with this extraordinary group of leaders. As teacher leaders, they have the ability to be creative and to maximize the resources available to them. We have learned that teamwork is essential to our success. Together we can make sure that technology integration is part of the everyday classroom.