From the World Map to a Goodnotes Page in the Classroom

— How an Apple Learning Coach Sees “Global × Local”

One day, I opened Apple’s education website and scrolled through the Apple Learning Coach success stories. As I was scrolling, I suddenly saw a very familiar scene—

In the classroom, a student was holding an Apple Pencil, sketching and writing in GoodNotes Classroom. Behind them, a teacher was crouching down, leaning in to look at the screen and discuss the work together.

That wasn’t a staged photo from some faraway country. It was:Ruifang Junior High School, New Taipei City.It was the same group of students who, every day between the mountains and the sea, learn alongside me and try to make learning feel a little different.

In that moment, I felt something very concrete:“Wow, everything we’ve been doing here has quietly connected to the global map of education.”

Over 5,000 Coaches Worldwide, All Working on the Same Thing

Before I became an Apple Learning Coach, I was like many other teachers—I assumed “international case studies” were something distant and unrelated to my classroom.

The website says there are more than 5,000 Apple Learning Coaches around the world, supporting over 120,000 teachers and impacting more than 3 million students. Those numbers sound impressive, but what really resonated with me were the specific stories behind them.

• In the United States, some districts treat the coaching program as a long-term investment, building a complete coaching pipeline so innovation doesn’t rely solely on a handful of passionate teachers.

• In resource-constrained districts, leaders chose to spend limited budgets on coaches. In return, they saw the entire teaching culture rise together, with some schools even ranking in the top 10% statewide.

• In parts of Europe and Southeast Asia, government agencies see Apple Learning Coach as part of educational equity, using coaching to narrow urban–rural and resource gaps—instead of just buying a batch of new devices and calling it done.

When I read these stories, one sentence often popped up in my mind:

“So I’m not the only one constantly muttering, ‘Teachers deserve to be properly supported.’”

Zooming In: Back to Every Single Lesson at Ruifang

If those global case studies showed me that “this framework really works around the world,” then the place I can describe most clearly will always be Ruifang Junior High.

Our school is located in the northeast corner of Taiwan, with mountains on one side and the ocean on the other. For many people, the phrase “rural junior high school” is usually tied to:

• High teacher turnover

• Large gaps in student achievement

• Intense exam pressure and limited resources

And Apple Learning Coach happens to sit in a very interesting position:It’s not a superhero that comes to “solve all the problems,” but rather a structure that helps “good things happen more easily.”

1. The Coaching Cycle: From “Being Evaluated” to “Watching the Lesson Together”

In Ruifang, the thing I do most often is not “showing off how powerful an app is,” but walking with teachers through coaching cycle after coaching cycle:

1. Co-plan a lesson together

2. Go into the classroom (or record the lesson first)

3. Sit down afterwards and review students’ learning traces and the lesson video, then ask:

   • At which moments did students’ eyes light up?

   • Where did they clearly get lost?

   • Which part of the lesson could be improved with one more question or a simple tool?

At first, many teachers felt a lot of pressure around recording lessons. It felt like evaluation and inspection.But once we shifted the focus to: “Let’s see what happened for the students,” the atmosphere changed completely.

Once, we replayed a math lesson and noticed a student working through a problem in GoodNotes. She suddenly paused for two minutes. The teacher initially thought she was distracted, but when we zoomed in on her pen strokes, we realized—She was actually re-structuring her solution, and she even wrote a small note in the margin: “This way is easier to calculate.”

At that moment, the teacher smiled and said, “So she was thinking. It’s just that on paper I never would’ve seen it so clearly before.”

That’s the magic of the coaching cycle:We’re not just switching to a new set of tools—we’re switching to a new way of seeing students.

2. Goodnotes Classroom: Not Just “Digital Worksheets,” but a “Magnifying Glass for Thinking”

Ruifang Junior High is one of the first schools in the world to adopt GoodNotes Classroom.To me, it feels nothing like a traditional “assignment submission platform.” It’s more like:

“A system that lets you project the whole class’s brains onto a big touchscreen so everyone can think together.”

In math lessons, teachers project students’ solution pages in real time—not just the “perfect answers,” but intentionally those “wrong turns that actually show interesting thinking.”Students were nervous at first, but slowly got used to being asked:

• “Why did you think this way?”

• “If you tried again, is there another way to solve it?”

Over time, students weren’t just “handing in homework”; they were practicing how to explain their thinking.

In English class, teachers ask students to handwrite example sentences for vocabulary, adding colors, symbols, or small drawings to turn them into personal “visual word books.”One student told me, “Teacher, I remember things better when I’ve drawn them myself.”

These everyday moments may look ordinary, but they are gradually reshaping the whole school:

• Students are willing to try one more time.

• Teachers can see the process, not just the final score.

• Coaches have enough “evidence” to start deeper conversations with teachers, rather than relying only on impressions.

3. From Data to “The Stories Behind the Exam Scores”

Over the past few years, in New Taipei City’s “Reduce C Program” (a support initiative focusing on students at risk of underachievement), Ruifang Junior High’s numbers have steadily improved:The proportion of students requiring particular attention has slowly decreased.

But for me, what matters more than the numbers is this:When we thoughtfully weave tools like iPad, GoodNotes, Kahoot, and video creation into lesson design, students gradually start to believe:

“I can actually find a sense of achievement in learning.”

For example:There was a student who used to have very low confidence in English. Later, he created his own “English comic book” in GoodNotes, using simple sentences with hand-drawn storyboards.When he finished, he said quietly, “Teacher, I don’t feel as scared of English this time.”

Changes like this don’t show up on a report card right away, but they’re deeply written into his memory of learning.

4. From “One Person Who Can Use an iPad” to “A Team Designing Lessons Together”

Apple Learning Coach comes with a crucial mission:It’s not about being “the person who’s best at using the iPad” in the school, but about being “the person who helps more teachers feel ready to try something new with the iPad.”

In Ruifang, a growing group of colleagues is stepping into that space:

• A Chinese teacher guides students to use Keynote to create “storyboards for poetry,” turning classical poems into short animations.

• An English teacher collaborates with a foreign teacher to design “podcast recording assignments,” inviting students to tell stories in their own voices.

• A math teacher collects students’ mistakes into a “mistake gallery,” which then becomes material for the next review session.

We no longer just “demo the features of some app.” Instead, we often start with a simple question:

“What’s the part of your current unit that feels most stuck?”

Then we think together:

• Which Apple tool could help here?

• Which Everyone Can Create project could be adapted?

• How should we co-plan the lesson so that students truly “learn by creating”?

When more and more of these conversations happen in a school, the coach is no longer just a “role”—It becomes a way of working and being with one another.

Being Seen Is Not the Finish Line—It’s the Starting Point

Right before World Teachers’ Day in 2025, Apple shared Ruifang Junior High’s story on its official website.Many friends sent me screenshots saying, “Wow, you’re on the Apple site!”

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t moved.But an even stronger feeling was this:

“We just showed the world a small slice of what happens in our classrooms every day.”

To me, Apple Learning Coach has never just been a certificate. It’s a constant reminder:

• Devices will be updated, apps will be redesigned—but “sitting down with teachers to think through lessons” is something that should never stop.

• Coaches aren’t meant to stand in front “teaching teachers how to use technology,” but to sit beside them, watching what students are actually learning.

• The most powerful moments aren’t the digital effects on screen, but those invisible ones—when a student suddenly understands,when a teacher suddenly smiles,when an entire class suddenly quiets down to listen to one classmate share.

Wondering If Your School Could Grow a “Coaching Culture”?

To end, I’d like to leave you—who are reading this on iPadART—with three small questions:

1. In your school, is there someone quietly doing the work of a “coach”? They might not have the title yet, but they’re already walking alongside colleagues as they try new things.

2. The next time you want to try a new tool or redesign a unit, could you invite a partner to look at student work together and debrief afterwards, instead of carrying it all alone?

3. If your school is planning professional development, could it be more than a series of “tool training workshops,” and instead include spaces for peer observation, dialogue, and co-planning?

The greatest gift Apple Learning Coach has given me is both a framework and a belief:

“Educational change doesn’t rely on one spectacular project.It grows out of many honest, everyday conversations.”

And I feel very lucky that, in this place between the mountains and the sea in Ruifang, I get to accumulate those conversations into stories together with my students and colleagues.

If this article has kept you company for a moment, as you think about “coaching” and “local change” in your own context, then it has already done its job.