How One Coach Achieved High Impact While Supporting Two Schools

Being an instructional technology coach (ITC) is both challenging and deeply rewarding. Over the past three years, I have navigated a split-coach model, supporting approximately 100 teachers between Jasper County High School and Jasper County Middle School in Monticello, Georgia—both Verizon Innovative Learning Schools. This role has required balancing time, building trust with two distinct staffs, and demonstrating how technology can transform teaching and learning. Most importantly, it has reinforced a powerful truth: when students are given agency, purpose, opportunities to be curious, and space to connect, learning becomes truly powerful. Consistency, follow-through, and building meaningful relationships with teachers aren’t always easy, but the impact of coaching on both educators and students makes the effort worthwhile.

I approach my role with transparency and a focus on student-centered learning. I model instructional technology practices in classrooms, showing how student agency, curiosity, and collaboration can transform learning. By co-planning and co-teaching lessons, providing timely feedback, and sharing tools aligned to standards within professional learning communities (PLCs), I have built credibility on both campuses. While a few teachers remain resistant to my support, I believe my persistence creates trust, strengthens teacher confidence, and creates classrooms where students are engaged, empowered, and taking ownership of their learning.

Working with two schools simultaneously is demanding in and of itself, but supporting a large, departmentalized high school staff presents a unique challenge: I quickly learned that credibility is paramount, and generalized advice is rarely effective. My high school teachers are deep content experts, and they need to see technology integration that is relevant and practical, and that directly enhances their specific curriculum. For me, establishing this credibility required a sustained commitment to modeling best practices rather than simply telling teachers what they should do.

I built a foundation of trust by ensuring I had a consistent presence in weekly PLCs. This wasn’t about dominating the discussion; it was about shifting my role from an external “expert” to a departmental partner. Two important strategies in this shift were active listening and targeted resource curation.

• Active Listening and Support: Rather than arriving with a fixed agenda, my first step was always to ask: “How can I support your students’ learning this week?” and “What are your biggest pain points right now?” This simple, consistent inquiry signaled that my purpose was to serve the department’s existing goals.
• Targeted Resource Curation: I didn’t wait to be asked. I actively requested information about upcoming units, standards, and learning objectives from PLC leaders. I then responded with timely, curated digital resources—tools, strategies, or models that directly aligned to those specific standards (e.g., a data visualization tool for a statistics unit or a digital storytelling platform for a history project).

The ultimate strategy for building credibility and demonstrating the transformative power of technology was getting into the classroom. I knew that a teacher seeing a new strategy modeled with their own students is far more impactful than a one-off after-school training session.

I consistently offered concrete, non-threatening entry points for collaboration:

1. I offered to work directly with students on a specific skill (e.g., teaching them how to create a Canva infographic for an English project).
2. I offered to co-teach a lesson, splitting the instructional load and modeling the new tool or technique live.
3. I offered to model a full lesson using technology while the teacher observed.

By showing how technology could immediately address a challenge—whether increasing student engagement, offering a new path to content mastery, or streamlining the feedback process—I turned skeptical teachers into advocates, creating classrooms where students are not just consuming digital content, but creating, collaborating, and driving their own powerful learning experiences.

The daily challenges of the split-coach model—the constant travel, the time balancing, and the relational work—all fade when I see the impact of our efforts. The true reward is witnessing the moment a veteran teacher who has taught for more than 30 years uses podcasting with her students to amplify student voice, creating an artifact that engages the entire school community. It’s watching an English teacher confidently integrate AI tools to generate diverse writing samples that students can collaboratively analyze and deconstruct, deepening their critical thinking skills. And it’s the sheer pride in seeing a foreign language class move beyond rote memorization to create and publish their own digital books in Spanish, becoming both authors and global communicators.

These moments demonstrate profound transformation: Students are benefiting from engaging, relevant experiences; teachers are growing confident as designers of learning; and classrooms are transforming into dynamic centers of inquiry and creation. My key takeaway for any instructional technology coach or school leader is this: Consistency and relationship-building are non-negotiable. But the greatest advice I can offer, drawn from three years of navigating two campuses, is the critical need for a dedicated ITC for each campus. The sustained, embedded, and highly specific support required to truly shift instructional practice and fulfill the promise of initiatives like Verizon Innovative Learning Schools demands a full-time, focused presence. When we invest fully in this role, we don’t just integrate technology—we catalyze a movement where student agency and powerful learning become the standard, not the exception.

Learn more about Verizon Innovative Learning Schools.

Thanks to Dr. Nicole Adell for her contributions to this blog post!