Relationships Come Before Ed Tech Results
Successful technology integration starts with understanding people and priorities, not selecting tools. Our partnership with Gallup-McKinley began by listening — to district priorities, teachers’ needs and the cultural context of each classroom. Rather than arriving with a predetermined technology plan, we adjusted lessons based on teacher feedback, strengthening both the instruction and the relationship over time.
We developed a relationship with the HLC teachers so that they trusted our trainers, and that was a huge part of our success in this project. Without that trust, technology would have been just another initiative layered onto teachers’ existing responsibilities.
The partnership succeeded because each side brought different expertise: NCCE provided the instructional coaching, while HLC teachers brought deep linguistic and cultural knowledge.
READ MORE: Smart technology investments can reduce teacher burnout.
Meet Teachers Where They Are
The HLC teachers’ technological abilities varied widely, and success looked different in every classroom. Some were ready for video editing, while others celebrated just being able to use their interactive whiteboard. A lesson for a fifth-grade student at one school can look totally different from one at another school.
Our personalized coaching allowed our trainers to meet each teacher at their individual level and build on their strengths, while also letting the teacher’s voice come through with the cultural subject matter. We used technology to amplify what they were already doing, not to teach something brand-new.
One teacher had taped posters on her classroom’s interactive whiteboard. During each coaching visit, we removed the posters to model how the board could support instruction. By the fourth lesson, the posters were gone. That was a huge win.
When Instruction Leads, Technology Follows
With the teachers’ strengths reflected in the coaching, it became much easier to meaningfully integrate technology into lessons.
Leaders often chase the brightest and shiniest object and expect teachers to be able to make it fit into their lessons. But instead of asking what technology we should use, we asked a different question: What technology offers real value?
If it didn’t have value — because there were some lessons in which the technology was distracting — we worked with the teacher to pull it back.
When technology did have value, it served as a tool for expression and reflection, rather than driving the lesson. For example, in one fifth grade classroom, students explored the Navajo legend of Spider Woman by recording their ideas, creating visual responses, and using Google Earth to connect the story to local landmarks.
The technology piece came in as a way for students to express their thinking — not drive it.
Success is when teachers have the confidence to make the learning their own.
When teachers feel supported, the coaching begins to outlast the classroom visits. Perhaps the clearest sign of success wasn’t that teachers mastered a new tool, but that they began asking how they could adapt strategies on their own. The coaching had shifted from demonstration to ownership.
For example, after a lesson using a digital learning app, one teacher told us, “I want to do that in my next class.” So after returning home, we met with the teacher virtually to help plan a lesson. You really know it was a hit when they take it from a canned experience and then put it into what they’re doing in other classrooms, other topics.
That shift from implementing someone else’s lesson to designing their own was the ultimate goal of the partnership. Our coaching was designed to give teachers the confidence to adapt new strategies, incorporate technology with purpose and continue innovating long after the classroom visits ended.
