CED 565 Week 5

I've been pursuing additional leadership opportunities within my district. Luckily, the administration seems to be responsive to this request. I'm hoping to be able to create a long range plan to implement new efficiencies within the district. I know that I'll need to work with departments throughout the organization in order to be successful. I'll focus on building relationships and consensus. I'll solicit the feelings and needs of others. Wish me luck!

CED 565 Week 4

I found the leadership came very interesting. Coming to consensus on how to move forward through the game was challenging in of itself. It'll be interesting to see how we do next week. It was kind of to read the descriptions of the characters. I can see some of them reflected in those at my district. Maybe I'll pick up some pointers from the game!

CED 565 Week 3

How to Thrive as a Teacher Leader is the first book that I've read about leadership in schools. There are lots of books on leadership in general, but I haven't seem many about leadership in schools. Many elements of leadership are the same no matter what environment you're in, but schools are a unique environment.

Leadership is largely about people skills. The author relayed a story where a leader attempted to solve problems immediately instead of thinking carefully. As a result, the leader portrayed an image of not considering teammates thoughts or alternative solutions. I've been very guilty of the same thing. Early in my career I thought solving problems immediately was the right thing to do. Solving problems quickly - isn't that what leaders do? I've learned that most situations don't need to addressed immediately. It generally bodes well to consider alternative solutions and if appropriate, consult multiple perspectives, and then make a decision.

CED 565 Week 2

What can I say - I love data! I love to collect it and look at it in many different ways. Still, data is only valuable if it's being used to help kids. We should never lose sight that children aren't numbers. Data should be used for their direct benefit.

Our district is working hard to put more data in the hands of teachers. Our district hasn't always had a strong data culture. The conversation has begun to turn. I'm now having more frequent conversations with administration to co-ordinate the integration of data into our culture.

CED 565 Week 1

Leadership in my position can be varied. I'm currently the Data Manager for my school district. When I came into the position, I discovered that we were duplicating data entry and people weren't able to obtain the student data that they needed in order to accomplish their daily tasks. Access to student data was kept under very tight control and people had to constantly go to a select few people to get what they needed. I carefully reviewed what needed to be under tight control and what didn't. I strongly believe in building capacity in others. So I give up control of what I can and support others in learning how to make their own tasks easier.

Sometimes we find that our student information system and grade books don't have all the functionality that we need. I often have to look 6 months to a year into the future to obtain the functionality. I use my strong relationship with the company that makes the software to get what we need. This often involves visiting the company and working with higher level executives. The administration and teachers don't often see the results until a year later. In order to obtain what our teachers and administrators need, and avoid paying for it, I have to be very persistent and work well with others.

CED 555 Week 3

Time has gotten away from me with this blog post. The month of April just seemed to slip away.

Going through the process of planning my culminating project has helped me feel better about being able to complete it successfully. I've begun to collect resources. As part of the project I'm going to include the project lessons in my portfolio. Making the portfolio part of the project will help break additional focus to it's design. I recently went to a job fair where young hopefuls had portfolios two inches thick. While I'm not sure that more is better in the case of portfolios, I would like to bring some more strength to mine.

CED 555 Blog 1 April 15

I've started to consider the elements that I'll use in my on-line portfolio. As I go through the list of classes that we've taken it's difficult to believe that we're almost at the end of the program. I've chosen to focus on the Wisconsin teacher's standards. By focusing on these standards I'll be able to see the work that we've done in the program through a different lens. Everything that's done in the classroom should be directly tied to the standards. This exercise will be good practice for me.

I've also been reviewing the requirements of the culminating project. One of the steps is to design a rubric with which the project will be evaluated. This makes me consider designing the rubric first. What should be the criteria for demonstrating mastery of the topic that I'll be working on? Perhaps if I focus on what constitutes acceptable evidence of mastery, the process will become less intimidating.