5.2 Your Leadership Style

In order to better analyze my organization's ability to foster and facilitate more technology in the classroom, I completed the Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology’s Personalized Professional Learning for Future Ready Leaders assessment. The following are the results of said assessment.

My leadership style would seem to slightly off compared to what my district prioritizes. The only area which the district and myself share are the importance of the collaborative leadership community. There is a massive push for professional learning communities, PLC, within the district. A well functioning group can truly analyze how student learning is developing and create new engaging lessons for students to consume. The main thing limiting the district in collaborative leadership is the lack of time they give to foster PLCs. Since so little time is given for PLC and planning, teachers struggle to complete all that is required by the school and district in order to be compliant with rules and regulations. 

Personalized Student learning is an area which I constantly reflect on. I have learned a lot in my short time in this new district about student choice and learning strengths. It is interesting to see how students develop when given the choice on what to learn. Many students shine significantly, but quite a few end up under developed in other areas. As Couros said that strengths should be highlighted, but weaknesses should never be ignored (2015, Chapter 8). I see this happening in the district. I am very much a proponent of developing all skills for a more well rounded individual, this way students get exposed to many different skills in life, and they just might find something they love which they would never have been exposed to by focusing just on strengths.

Infrastructure is the district's weakest point. Their mission is to develop 21st century learners, but there is no plan in place to integrate technology into the classroom at all. This is where my strength comes in as someone who plans, designs and implements technology into the classroom. I can develop as a leader in this field for the district so students can have better and more reliable access to digital tools in the classroom. This year is all about establishing myself as a technology facilitator who knows what they are doing and have the classroom experience to prove I know how to successfully integrate technology into lessons and students’ lives. I have constantly reserved chrome books to try out new apps, to sad results because of poor internet connections. I have utilized student personal tech to get students to leverage more tech with their learning. I wish to write some grants to bring in my technology into the classroom. Grant writing is an area which needs massive improvement in my books.

Personalized Professional Learning is a double edged sword. Yes it allows educators to play to our strengths, but as human beings we tend to feign away from new and unknown ideas. Choice is important, because it gives us validation that we are in control of our lives. It has taken me years to realize that when given the time, I pick my strengths, but that limited me in many fields. Forcing myself to develop new areas of skills has expanded my horizons significantly. There are many educators who won’t develop a skill unless told to do so. A measure of choice and requirement in my opinion is important to a fantastic professional learning experience.

References

Couros, G. (2015). The Innovator's Mindset: empower learning, unleash talent, and lead a culture of creativity. San Diego, CA: Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc.