Brianna Hodges is the edtech coordinator for Eanes ISD in Austin, Texas, as well as an edtech consultant and storyteller. She will be leading the FETC Coaches Summit at FETC 2020 in Miami this coming January.
The Coaches Summit is created to foster and build a network of coaches from across the country. Although the coaching world has seen growth in popularity, Hodges speaks to a field still in need of better numbers.
“There are 3.5 million teachers and 42,000 instructional coaches. There’s a disparity there, and always will be. If you have one coach and a team of 18 basketball players [for instance], there will be some offset no matter what. But it’s easy to feel out of touch, overwhelmed or isolated as a coach because, sometimes, we’re seeing only one coach per district.”
All districts are different, and she remembers serving an entire K-12 district as a coach and traveling between multiple campuses trying to differentiate, absorb, and process in various environments. On the other side of things, areas with numerous coaches allow for more specialization between high school and elementary situations.
Through it all, Hodges remains steadfast in her belief of coaching as a key component to professional development.
