Tag: edtech coach

The Givachit Scale

Yesterday, John Stevens and I have a workshop for the lovely math teachers of Madera County. It was fantastic.

John walks a crew through Barbie Zipline.

“Which one is more Mullety?

The drive up and down gave us plenty of time in the car to listen to Jimmy Fallon skits and female-fronted rockB bands, but also time to discuss our new roles as EdTech Coaches in our respective districts.

Our conversation landed on:

Policing Student Behavior

We knew of coaches (and other adults on school campus) that tend to bark at students for wrong-doing. When we were children, the “it takes a village” mindset was pervasive;

…kids didn’t misbehave around adults quite as much. There was a good chance they’d tell your parents or just take care of discipline themselves.

In the last couple decades, many parents have been empowered to give their kids whatever the hell they want and to bark atB other adults for offering co-parenting when they’re unavailable.

Comedian Chris Titus has a lot to say on the parenting shift of the last 30 years, but this part stands out to me:

I never misbehaved in my neighborhood, even though my dad worked a lot. You know why? Because I had neighbors. And if my dad wasn’t around to beat my ass… someone would pinch-hit for him.

As Coaches, we often go into classes to support teachers.

Teachers who need support have disproportionately… rowdy classes.

Today, I watched a 3rd-grade boy slap a girl on the thigh when she wasn’t looking, she squealed and hit him in the arm. No harm done.

At the high-school level, a colleague of mine watched a boy make disparaging remarks about a girlB all period, until the girlB stood, clocked him in the face, and screamed, “Fuck you!”

The Givachit Scale

Here’s why I wouldn’t take those students to the office if I were standing in the back of the room.

Students have a bunch of adults in their lives. The graph below (which, like all my material, is copiouslyB researched and not at all made up on the spot) describes the Givachit value for each group.

During my teaching career, many more students “Givachit” what their siblings think of their behavior than their pastor. Teachers will have the highest return by contacting those members of the student’s social circle with the largest slice. I’ve told Grandma about a student’s behavior and gotten much more mileage than with Mom.

Notice how tiny the slice is for District Stooge? That’s why I don’t intervene with students. Because the exchange will likely go like this:

Vaudrey (tough teacherB voice): Watch your mouth.
Unruly Youth: Who the hell are you?
Vaudrey: I’m a teacher on special assignment to coach other teachers on effective integration of technology into the classroom. Watch your mouth.
Unruly Youth: What if I don’t?
Vaudrey: Then we go to the office and you get written up for defiance. What’s your name?
Unruly Youth: Barack Obama
Vaudrey: Okay, that’s it. Let’s go to the office
Unruly Youth: [continues sipping sugary drink]
Vaudrey: Okay… I’m gonna go find a security officer to escort you. Don’t move.

My family is not one to gamble, but I’d wager over half my interactions would end similarly. Odds are pretty high that the student who will curse in front of a stranger in a tie isn’t afraid of the consequences.

Also, it’s not worth my time to correct a strange teenager, considering the reciprocal scale guidingB my actions:

~Matt “Go ahead and chew gum in class” Vaudrey

March 10, 2015
What’s Missing?

This tweet caught my eye last week.

@mr_stadel @robertkaplinsky @Jstevens009 @MrVaudrey do you guys think you would be more effective coaches if you taught one period a day?

b Tim McCaffrey (@timsmccaffrey) November 14, 2014

Three things on that.

1.) I’d be a way better coach

All four people tagged in that tweet can testify that credibility is the most precious commodity for an educational trainer.

Skeptics can smell B a desk jockey the minute they walk into the conference room wearing dress shoes or heels.

THIS is what teachers wear.

I’m guilty of this skepticism, too. B For the last eight years, I’ve attended CMC-South every fall, and some of the presenters are…

well….

professors.

Good… uh…. good afternoon. We… um… we received a grant in 2006…

I’d scoff silently and see if any other–more interesting–sessions were taking place in that time slot. I’m a teacher, I told myself. I’m not going to waste 90 minutes listening to this district stooge talk about “rigor”.

Now I’m the district stooge.

Teaching one period a day would allow me 55 minutes to try out those ideas that Twitter and Voxer find for me: those ideas that sound awesome and I want to immediately try in the classroom.

Teaching, however, is a lot like making fudge.

Photo credit in the link.

Every fall, I make fudge for my students before Winter Break. I buy the ingredients, set up my double boiler, line the cooling tray with wax paper, and chop almonds and walnuts.

When I had 200 students, I made 5 batches of fudge.
When I had 80 students, I made 3 batches of fudge.
This year, I’ll probably make two batches of fudge.¹

All the prep is the same, it’s just repeatingB the steps.

While I daydream about doing both roles, in reality…

2.) I’d be aB wayB worse coach.

If I taught one period of students, I’m still prepping the lesson, entering grades, hanging student work on the wall, developing seating charts, and cutting out colored paper for aB class set of congruentB triangle cards.

All for only one batch of fudge.
Seems like an awful waste of energy.

As a one-period-per-day teacher, I have department meetings, IEPs, back-to-school night, and a heavenly host of other duties that keep me from meeting teachers as a coach.

Many would re-schedule.
Most would just give up trying to get a hold of me.

“Never mind. I’ll make my own overhead transparencies.”

It wouldn’t be just 55 minutes that I’m a teacher, it’d beB closer to half the workday. That’s hoursB each week that I’m not researching 1st grade math apps for the iPads, prepping workshops for getting departments on Google Drive, or giving demo lessons to seniors on QR codes.

A part-time teacher and part-time coach is significantly less profitable for my district than a full-time teacher orB full-time coach.

What’s most likely in this scenario is…

3.) I’d do a mediocre job of both

“Sorry, students. Mr. Vaudrey is unavailable for math tutoring after school, during lunch, before school, or during prep period, andB he also leans heavily on his department and grade-level teams to pull his weight on parent-conferences, student discipline, and late work.”

“Sorry, teachers. Vaudrey understands how busy your schedule is; he’s a teacher, too! His mornings are swamped scrambling through a lesson that he delivers once. But he can’t improve it for secondB period;B there is no second period!B After a 40-minute lunch at his desk answering Tech emails, he eventually settles on supporting a teacher at his school site instead of driving across town. His teammates at the middle school get most of his Ed Tech coaching, while other schools rarely see him.”

For the time being, I must be content to beB justB a coach, and mooch classrooms for demo lessons whenever I can. Those students will never beB my students, but it’ll keep my chops sharp for the next time I present a grant summary at CMC.

While I miss the day-to-day routine of classroom teaching, I’m also thrilled to be building Google Presentations on a Chromebook while listening to SciShow and sitting on an exercise ball.

I wore costumes most of the day on Saturday.

Although… I did sillyB stuff in the classroom, too.
Silly is kinda tough to switch off.

Everyone in this pictureB coaches teachers while in costume. Only one has a mouthful of food.

~Matt “I still miss my running shoes” Vaudrey

P.S. John StevensB also wrote a response to Tim’s tweet.
P.P.S Check out Felix’s response in the comments below.

^{1. It’s not a linear relationship. The 200 students got much smaller pieces than the 80, but here’s a quick model that I’m quite sure can be improved.b)}

November 18, 2014
A Week in the Life
School started Monday.

For the first time in nigh a decade, I didn’t welcome students into Mr. Vaudrey’s class with a handshake and a smile.
I didn’t take roll and ask each student how to pronounce their name and “Do you prefer Bernardino or Bernie?”.
I didn’t prep a beginning-of-the-year icebreaker activity.
I didn’t even hang up colorful examples of student work or revise a syllabus.

Because for this first time in eight years, I’m not starting the year in the classroom.

In May, I accepted a job as Teacher Coach of Instructional Technology for Bonita Unified.

“But Matt, didn’t you just take a new job in March?”

Yep.

And I learned a lot while I was there, but it wasn’t for me. In this position, I’m in the classroom every day, I’m helping teachers with aB variety of needs, and I retain the title “Teacher”, which is important to me.

Here’s what I did in my first week asB EdTech Coach:
- Trained about 100 teachers on Music Cues in the classroom, which was well-received by manyB elementary teachers (a target market, in which I have very little experience and could use some credibility).
- Visited all but one of our district’s schoolsB and met principals and teachers, nearly all of whom had no idea that I was even hired, but were thrilled to hear it.
We have an EdTech Coach?!
- PerformedB bread-and-butter tasks with my new department (e.g. tag the Chromebook carts with District ID, follow up on tech needsB from New Teacher Orientation, deliver keyboards) and actually enjoyed it. As 33% of my department, we’ll likely get to know each other pretty well, and Kris and Cheryl are both a hoot.
Hoot.
- Visited 15 (wow… that’s a lot) classrooms to help teachers with various tech needs. Most of them Elementary, most of them for Music Cues, all of them delightful and eager to learn.
Here’s the cool part: I log each visit here and get the results in a spreadsheet (below), so I can quantify just how helpful I am in a given week. My new boss liked this form so much, she had me make her one, which she then showed toB her boss, who wants one, too.

Click to enlarge

And I can color-code the “Future Needs” column based on who I want to invite to a future training. For an upcoming Music Cues follow-up, all the teachers I visited who expressed interest are in green cells.

Next workshopB is probably Google Classroom, so I’ll change the formatting to show me those cells and inviteB those teachers.

Oh! And I can use formulas to separate out the email of those teachers using the first and last name, concatenated with the district email!

(Inhaler)

Seriously, if you haven’t used Concatenate yet in a spreadsheet, you are missing out.

It’s more funB than Revenge of the Sith.

“You were the chosen one!”
“I hate you!”
“=concatenate(left(D2,1),C2,”@bonita.k12.ca.us”)!”

Anyway, the new job is great and I’m thrilled to have it.

Next post:

What’s in my purse as I visit classes?

or

Matt Carries a Purse His Wife Tried to Donate to GoodWill

Stay tuned.

~Matt “Speadsheet and Star Wars Joke…this siteB is now complete.” Vaudrey
August 22, 2014