Final Week

I have never thought of myself as a leader at our school. I have known how to lead construction workers in the past, but there is a tremendous difference when leading teachers.

Now that I am comfortable with the use of wiki’s and Google docs, I look forward to being a teacher leader in these areas. I have also learned some things I will do when I am moved to the 8th grade that will start things off on the right track.

A lot of the reading was geared toward an administrator’s position and I watch carefully how strategic our principal is at each and every meeting. He seems to handle things very well and I admire that. Each day I am comfortable speaking in front of students but I get very nervous teaching in front of other teachers. My principal asked me to teach the entire staff about wiki sites at our spring staff meeting and I am very nervous about it already. People comment that I could be a good leader but I just don’t feel that way. My principal even told me that I really should get into administration. For me, that would be a very stressful and challenging roll.

This class helped me reflect on my role as a teacher leader at our school. I think that with some confidence building, I will tackle more leader-type rolls. In fact, I feel that we have an obligation to do so after completing this degree. With more experience, I think I will be able to lead.

Week 5

Week 5


Going to a restaurant for class is right up my alley! It is very nice to see colleagues outside of our usual settings. As far as the game, it made me think more like an administrator about how change happens in schools. There are many more hurdles involved that I never really thought about. I also never really looked at the budget aspect in much detail before either. At first, I was very confused by the game but we had some good members in our group that made some good calls. Another important thing that we all noticed was the fact that you will always have people who sort of buck the system and do not go along with change. You can try to get them on board but it just isn’t worth the expense some times. Some people are just too set in their ways to accept change. In the long run, the energy was best spent on others who were involved in the change. For me, it was an eye opener about what it must be like to be in administration, and I am glad I did not pursue an administrative masters program.

Week 4

This week we completed a chart explaing a change we took part in. I thought it was interesting to go through something like that and really break the change down into small steps. The change we started at my school was to revamp our sixth grade schedule. Change is not always going to make everyone happy we need to be very political as teachers to be able to make changes and not irritate other teachers. In our case, three out of four us wanted a new schedule but one did not. Once we had a meeting and discussed that it would be better for student learning, we were finally able to convince the other teacher to go along with it. There was a period of resentment that lasted for a few weeks but then it was over and change was accepted.
I think we are all resistant to change. At first we fear change until we fully understand the details of that change. For example, I have been teaching 6th grade here at TJ for the last 5 years and just last week, I was asked to move to the 8th grade. I went through all the emotions that we all go through when dealing with change and now I am totally open to it. We can look at change as something to fear or as opportunities to grow.

Week 3

The “Who Moved My Cheese?” Powerpoint had some really good points. People, (and the mice in this case), fear change and are sometimes too bullheaded to accept change. Like I teach my science classes, populations either adjust to change, adapt to it, or they die off. I keep relating it to the new PLC movement. Older teachers said it was just another thing that would pass. Well, I think this model of teams of teachers working together for common assessments and common practices is here to stay. It really is a new philosophy where we learn from the teacher who has the best practices.
In my own PLC group, I started a group wiki which is being used successfully by the 6th grade staff. I am going to take the clicker class next week because I hope to learn more about that system. I just started a wiki for my classroom and the students really love working with that system. I guess my point is that I will forge forward rather than just sitting there complaining where the cheese went. It is too easy to get caught up in old ways of doing things and we as technology leaders need to push forward. The others will just have to follow when they see the results of the change. I think that each of our fellow graduate students are willing to go out and seek the cheese, otherwise, we would not have entered this graduate program.

Week 2

This week delt with a number of different things. Chapter two dealt with team building. A large potion of the chapter was dedicated to questions one might ask a candidate at an interview. I found that some of the questions were interesting, but a bit impractical for what I would really want to know from a candidate. The third chapter was about leading teams and building a team. I liked the quote by Lambardi about teamwork, "Individual commitment to a group effort is what makes a team work, a company work, and a civilization work." I really like that statement and I think it best sums up the chapter. For me as a team leader, I need to instill that desire with the rest of my team. This chapter also contained some good advice on how to handle situations to avoid conflict and how to put more ownership on the student. Hopefully I can use some of these tools in the near future. Good communication is the key to a successful team in my mind.