CEDO 565 - Week 6

Mostly my definition of leadership has been reinforced. I understand the importance of leadership, and have always tried to be a leader since I was in high school. My parents always taught me, "be a leader, not a follower". However, I think my definition of teacher leadership has changed a little bit. Although I have always tried to be a leader at my job, I have sometimes taken the stance that, "I can't do anything about that. That's just the way it is." I now believe that we can all make more of a difference than I had originally thought. The video we watched the first week with Patrick Awuah really inspired my philosophy about leadership potential. He really made me realize that everyone can make a difference, no matter how small or insignificant they think they are. I do agree with what our textbook said about improving education from within. Although certain things seem to be out of our control, like funding, we can even affect that somewhat, through being informed voters, and contacting our legislatures about school issues. I believe we can improve education from within if we all try to take some kind of leadership role in our schools, which is what I plan to do. Currently I am a teacher trainer for technology, which I will continue to do to improve technology education in my district.

CEDO 565 - Week 5

This week I spoke with my group about data that our schools collect and how it could possibly be done better. Currently, we collect data on our students through state testing, and screeners we conduct for the new RTI initiative. We have a data retreat each year, but only a few teachers are involved. The findings are shared at the first inservice of each new year, and then we collect more data to share the next fall. Even though I truly believe we all try to improve those scores that matter at the state level, there are better ways to collect data that would be more meaningful and drive our instruction better. We've recently implemented CBMs, which are Curriculum Based Measurements, which will hopefully be a better screener for our students and help us meet all of our students' needs better.

CEDO 565 - Week 4

This week I learned about school climate, environment, and morale, and how it affects teaching and learning. The school I work in now has great morale, and my colleagues and I work together very well as a team. I have worked in schools with terrible morale in the past, and it made me want to stay home from work every day. I know it affected my students, because I'm sure they could sense my unhappiness and it stunted their learning. The building of community and positive morale has to come from the leadership, and the school I was in with bad morale had very poor leadership. Our principal was not a strong leader, she did not work at building community, she pitted people against each other, and she did not support her teachers to the parents. All of these things combined made for very poor working conditions and a staff that could not work as a team or trust each other. I'm very grateful to be at the wonderful school I'm in now.