Site Supervisor Interviews

1. Name of technology coordinator being interviewed.

Kathy Petersen

2. What is your title?

I have double titles, so it’s teacher on special assignment so it’s TOSA for technology
and that means that I help out teachers with technology whether its hardware, software, how to
teach remotely, how to teach hybrid all of that. Then my other position is kindergarten through
fifth grade independent study teacher, so that’s my other half job.

3. What type of degree is required for your position?

For me it’s just my teaching credentials, so having a bachelor's degree and a teaching
credential but I’ve been teaching for 20 years and I’ve always been involved with technology
from the beginning. My degrees in business and so I came from a different lens than coming
straight out of college to be a teacher. So I’ve always interacted with technology so I think that
my experience pushed me into the role rather than me following a school path.

4. What are your job responsibilities?

Alright so currently my job responsibilities it’s somewhat of an undefined job description
this year but’s to provide support for teachers, principals, families with hardware and software
issues. Creating a bi-weekly newsletter to present best practices with technology, new ideas,
providing resources for staff. I’ve also done professional development training for staff and for
families. I ran a parent night helping families with distance learning with their students. Another
part is I’m testing out hardware systems for hybrid teaching and coming up with a plan for the
teachers and then the other half is teaching six grades remotely while they are doing
independent study. So I’m designing curriculum, managing curriculum, and presenting
information for families to work with their student and then I meet with students once a week to
help fill in any gaps and teach them anything new and give them support.

5. How are you meeting the needs of faculty and staff during the transition to remote
learning this semester?
So in the beginning we had different trainings I’ve teachers will contact me with questions like
“how do I do this or this isn’t working and I’ve made them videos and sent that to them so they
can then know how to use a new software program or set up a roster whatever it may be with
what they are using. I’ve done the same with families; teachers, families are having a hard time
connecting, teachers will put me in contact with them and I will help them troubleshoot. And like
I’ve said doing a bunch of research connecting with other technology community leaders and
providing resources for them. Did I get all the parts of your question, I think so?

6. How are you meeting the remote learning needs of students and parents?
 So for the independent studies those are for families where students either they the
parents work schedule didn’t work well with the Zoom meetings or the kids couldn’t tolerate that
much screen time, it was just too difficult for them to manage. So then I work with the grade
level teams to follow their curriculum to keep the kids on pace, design a curriculum, I created a
matrix of what to do each day and how much time it takes you know essentially a checklist for
the kids and I manage Google Classroom where I post out assignments and then I check their
work, give them advice, meet with them once a week and support them in so yea just managing
a lot of curriculum.

7. What are typical daily activities for your job?

Well at the beginning of the year it shifted so we knew starting my TOSA roll that it was
mostly going to be TOSA and a little bit of independent studies and then as the year shifted and
teachers became more confident it would become more independent study and less TOSA, and
that’s happening. So my days are not typical so days you know I’m preparing materials for new
students, this week I’ve been having students come in so I can assess their reading levels and
math skills for kindergarten, first, and second grade cause it’s harder to do distance learning,
even though I have it set up. You know I’ve taken all our staff assessment and made them
digital families to come in, so I’ve been doing that. Yesterday was meeting after meeting after
meeting I started at 6:30 I was done at 4:30 and I had a meeting with a potential independent
study family, I had a family a meeting with a new one to go over curriculum, I can’t even
remember it was like you know oh I also met with iXL, so one of our venders and I’ll be meeting
with NewELA this afternoon another vender so to find out what trainings are available or tips
and then I share those with people. So it’s just kind of all over the map, posting assignments,
trying out equipment, troubleshooting.

8. Do you have a budget that you control? How do you make decisions on selecting
resources for your stakeholders?
I don’t have a budget that I control the assistant superintendent controls the budget so
when I need curriculum what we’ve been doing is pulling from what’s in inventory from either
school site if we have anything in inventory and then back filling from there, so I’ve had to order
curriculum for the independent study students and to test out hybrid equipment I just make a
request to the assistant superintendent “hey I want to try this, come up with a plan for teachers
in case we go to hybrid, test it out and so they purchased it, it was nominal nominal expenses it
wasn’t expensive at all.

9. Have you had an opportunity to impact technology implementation throughout your

school? Would you describe a specific example?
I know right, I keep repeating myself, the next thing is the hybrid so you know testing that
out and seeing if it’s going to work for teachers. I did speak to the admin about teachers need a
laptop that’s not a Chromebook so you can run Zoom. That we should have a separate monitor ,
we should all have a functioning document camera so that it all just plugs in and then we can
teach. I even suggested an external mouse and keyboard just to make it easier. So I do share
what my thoughts are and what I practice to make it easier for teachers. And then the other part
is with the software I upload all the rosters and set them up and get the kids in their classes for
our variety of platforms that we use.

10. Does your school have a technology committee?

Yes we do, and you’re a part of it. Yea we do, we meet once every couple of months it’s
not very often. We look at the scope and sequence, a technology plan, find out what each
school site needs and try to make decisions from there.

11. How are technology decisions made?

That’s an administrative thing that happens at the district office so I haven’t been part of
that. I think they listen to the teachers on the technology committee and then the IT director
would make decisions in conjunction with the superintendent.

12. What is the best part of your job?

This year it’s finding solutions to problems, yea.

13. What do you find to be the most challenging part of your job?
Yea. I think that it was because my job was born last minute and it was like quick we
have a problem, this is our solution Kathy can you do it? So there wasn't any pre planning for
my position so it’s figuring out as I go and I like systems processes and so you know I’m
stumbling my way through it to make those things happen or there can be a monkey wrench
that throws that shows up, somebody’s system went down and your in the middle of working on
curriculum because I have two jobs they kind of conflict but they don’t so that’s it.

14. (Add any additional questions that you find helpful.)

I don’t think so