Tuesday, December 05, 2017

Where Do You Invest Your Professional Time and Energy?

Last night I attended the local school committee meeting. As usual, I was inspired by the dedication of the committee as well as the many administrators, townspeople, and educators who were at the meeting. I listened carefully to the many initiatives they discussed including school start times, goals setting, goals, athletic fields, and budgets. There's lots to think about when it comes to leading a school system, and still more if you approach that work with a growth mindset.

This morning it will be more of the same deep and thoughtful investment as I listen to colleagues and school leaders discuss ideas to create an environment that's of greater help to our students who face issues of trauma as well an environment that embraces diversity and encourages respect. In addition, we'll look at our school improvement goals and learn about the WPSF grants, a resource that helps us to innovate.

As you can see there are many positive efforts in the works, and this is good. As I reflect on these efforts, I am thinking again about where I will invest my professional time and energy. Much is the same as in the past, but the focus is a bit more defined.

Local Union
As the secretary I'll continue to record information and keep the website up-to-date. I'll forward my own interest in helping educators know about the tremendous professional learning opportunities that exist via our local union professional learning website page. Further, I'll support the efforts of colleagues to speak up, discuss, and forward issues and ideas that matter.

Math Education
I'm spending a good amount of time working with individual students, small groups, and the class in math. I'm looking deeply at how students learn, and the ways that I can develop the program to engage, empower, and deeply educate students in this regard. My goal is to create more meaningful, culturally proficient, and student-centered project work as recommended by the math researcher, educator, and evangelist, Jo Boaler.

Cultural Proficiency and Community Building
With my team, I continue to work at developing our ability to teach in culturally proficient ways. Many other colleagues are contributing to this work too by sharing their research, learning, and ideas from conferences, reading, and teaching. I want to take some time over the holiday break to consider a number of resources and shares to deepen this important work. Colleagues and I are looking at planning spring events to forward this work too. As part of this is our effort to continually develop a strong and vital teaching/learning community and look for ways to broaden and deepen our collaboration to teach each student well.

Environmental Education
Last night at the school committee meeting, there was advocacy for greater environmental education. I believe in this, and I believe there is opportunity to develop our science teaching in more experiential and environmentally friendly ways. My colleagues and I have done work in this area in the past, but there has not been consistent financial or planning time support. I'll think about how we might not lose sight of this as I follow the efforts of the many who spoke at last night's meeting.