Change

This week I have learned a lot about change. Being a Millenial, I don't fear change, I actually embrace it! I have never taught the exact same thing twice. As the times and tech change, so does my curriculum. Now, that's not to say I need to try the "big shiny" (aka the newest thing to flash in front of my face) as Kylie puts it :) , however, I do like to dabble in the newest of the new and see how it fits into my curriculum.

Millenials take this quiz ;) My millenial score is 84!

We are going through massive changes in education right now. The budget "crisis" is forcing our districts to make some tough decisions that will impact all of us. How we handle these changes defines who we are. I, for one, plan to overcome any hardship that may occur in my life due to these circumstances. I will change for the better. I will still make my classroom productive and fun, no matter how many children I have to teach at once. I will still find a way to make a connection to each child and help them succeed.

The leadership in my district has been doing a pretty good job during this change. They have kept us informed and optimistic, but not overly so. They are being honest with us and letting us know the 'what if's'.

I am in the process of creating some change in my district in our curriculum. I am getting resistance from the "senior" members of our team, but the curriculum director and assistant superintendent want me to take this leadership opportunity and make these changes. I am going to need all that I am learning in this course to make this work!

Data, data, data!

This week I have looked at so much school data. I've looked at my school, my district, and the state, as well as taking a little stroll down to visit the the national scores. I am disheartened to see that the achievement gap between Hispanics, African Americans, and whites still prevails. I see it in my district's test scores.

The reading scores of 17 years old's nationally show the startling gap that has prevailed over the years.

The question is, what do we do to close this gap? I know in my district we have interventions in place at all grade levels, but with class sizes increasing, it is hard to make certain that you are meeting the needs of all children. I know that most teachers "catch" the lower scoring student quickly, but it can be hard to get services for the most severe cases ie. special ed referral. There are those "bad" teachers who do nothing and notice nothing, but they are not the norm, at least not in my school.
I enjoyed the chapters that I read in the book this week. They were interesting so they were an easy read and very informative. I don't know if I'll ever be a formal teacher leader, but all of these skills will help me to be a better informal one.

All of this data talk got me thinking about the data we keep in the Technology department of our elementary schools. It's minimal. We formally assess the fourth and fifth graders on their typing skills and technology enrichment projects. I feel as though we should be assessing each grade level based on the national and/or state standards. The issue with this is getting everyone on board and that would be hard because we each have 14-25 different classrooms that we teach. That is a lot of individual assessing. I think it would be worth it, though, to be able to make sure that each student was getting the opportunity to learn the technology that we teach. I also think we need to be doing common formative assessments at fourth and fifth grade so that we can be sure all students are leaving us for the middle schools with a similar skill set. This would be immensely helpful for the middle school computer teachers.

Leadership and Planning Week 1

Where to begin?!

This week I learned a lot about what it takes to be a good leader, theoretically. I learned about the qualities and virtues a good leader must possess, and what leadership qualities I possess. I was happy with the qualities that I was found to have through the assessment that we did. I was not, however, pleased with my virtues placement. I was told that I would not be a good leader because of the Supportive part of Dynamic Supportive. However, in the book, it says that good leaders are supportive, so that was really confusing to me.

I do need to learn to be more impartial. I have very strong opinions, though I am willing to listen to others, I tend to keep my own opinion, at least I see this politically. I constantly get into fights with Republicans :)

I'm not a humble person. It's just the way it is. I don't think I'm the cat's meow or anything, but I'm not submissive by any means. I can laugh at myself and I am vulnerable. I own up to my mistakes [when I make them ;) ] I really enjoyed this blog article about humility. It made me feel better about myself.


So far, I am really liking the book. The first chapter gave me a great overview about what makes a good leader. There is SO much information out on the Internet about leadership and leadership qualities, that I find it hard to discern it all. I found this great post about being a teacher leader at Edutopia :) You might enjoy it as well.