New job title

After a seriously bad losing season, the head football coach at the University of Minnesota was "released from his contract" not long ago. It took two million dollars to do so.

I put the bug in my superintendent's ear last week that I want my job title changed from Director of Technology to Head Technology Coach. I don't think he was terribly keen on the idea.

And unfortunately we seem to be having a winning season in the department so far this year...

• Teachers are loving the 73 SmartClassrooms we installed this summer. A recent PTO meeting had 60 some parents come to see the things in action. Teachers are already asking for applications for next year.
• After what seems like forever, we had a very successful data mining workshop this week. This has been one for the longest, most frustrating and complex projects we've taken on.
  
• Our new ASP web solution that includes pages for individual teachers to create threaded discussion, post online lessons, and materials simply and conveniently is picking up steam.

I take little credit for any of this other than that I have had the incredibly good fortune to hire talented people in my department. Johnson’s First Law of Effective Supervision: Hire people who don’t need to be supervised. (More rules)

But I still think putting coach in my job title is a good move. Maybe if I started wearing a whistle? 

Comments

[Tim]

For the past few years we have been pushing the idea that the tech trainers in our elementary schools are actually "instructional technology coaches". Since elementary teachers don't get large blocks of planning time like those in high school, they don't do a lot of large group training. It's more a one-on-one and team approach of the kind a coach might do.

It must be working since this year for the first time in the six since we created the position, a majority of teachers we surveyed classified them as part of the instructional staff rather than in IT.

Ah, progress! :-)

[Dennis Fermoyle]

Great idea, Coach Johnson! The only problem is that I don't know any high school coaches who have gotten a dime for getting the boot. I'm afraid you'll have to strictly become a college guy to get that deal.