My First Self-Lead Project Meeting!

This year, In addition to my PTO creation, I will also be working to create an organized tutoring program to better optimize our advocacy period in the middle of the day. The goal is to reach children in need that would not be able to attend tutoring before or after school.

This week, I sent out my FIRST communication to the staff and set up a meeting for Thursday to attempt to work on a consensus through the staff.

I was amazed by how many teachers attended!! It really reminds me of our first course, where we really learned that a leader must also have people that are willing to follow them! What an amazing feeling!

The meeting went extremely well! Lots of great ideas, and I even got 1 teacher from each grade level to volunteer to work as a representative.

Next week, each representative will meet with their grade levels to divide up students according to data and make decisions that they feel will work best for them.

The following week, I am planning on meeting with the representatives to get started on the next step! This was something that seemed very daunting and overwhelming, but I am really amazed how well it is going so far!

My administrator even congratulated me on my first meeting! He said he thought i did very well and it was very successful! What a relief! I was so nervous!!

Thanks to all that have encouraged me! I'll keep you posted! :)

Educational Blogging: A new revolution in sharing!

I believe that educators as well as administrators could benefit a lot from the use of professional blogs. A great number of great ideas can be stored and shared through this network.
Also, by reading other's blogs, you may learn new information or problem solving techniques from someone you would never had had the opportunity to meet in person.
On a personal note, I really enjoying reading blogs in my free time. I find I learn a lot about other people and what makes them tick so to speak. I can only imagine how much you might learn about others if introduced to a group of educators blogging.

Becoming a More Effective Leader Through Action Research

Action Research: It's something we do as teachers all the time but never noticed. As a good teacher, you often use data, assessments, and even projects to determine where your students are in their learning. Then, with that information, you make adjustments....a little more time here, an extra practice there...and so on.

As an administrator in training, I must also learn to utilize this skill for my leadership. I am learning more and more that leadership is less about coming in with new ideas ready to make changes and more about really learning to look and listen to what the campus needs.

With this new knowledge, I plan to use action research to further develop my projects on my campus. I have been given the task of building a parent involvement program from the ground up. However, before this program can come to be, I must first research to find out what my school and its surrounding community needs. A traditional PTO may not be effective in the type of area that our school is located, all though a recent survey showed that more than 72 percent of parents feel that they are not connected and informed of the goings on in our school. My goal is to improve this! After finding what the community needs, I must then try to make our staffs' needs align with this. Thus I believe the process and work it will take to make this program successful is by definition action research at its finest!

Stay tuned to track my progress!