Reflection 2

One of the biggest pitfalls that I see for myself as a leader, is trying to make too many changes at once. I want to fix everything at once and that is not always possible and is probably never advisable. I like the way we took one small goal for this class and worked it through in so much detail. To me, as I am in “real life” our goal was too little. I wanted to do more and plan bigger than the team wanted to do. I hope that my lesson from this class will stay with me in the days ahead. By taking a small thing at first, we were able to really work through it in great detail and I think that if we were doing it in the school, it would have been hugely successful. I will make myself slow down and take things in steps rather than making big leaps to “fix everything” that in fact could cause nothing to succeed.
This class has modeled and practiced true 21st century collaboration and team work throughout. It has really been a perfect practice for the life of an administrator. I used my previous experience and skills in better ways and added to my ability to disaggregate. In my school system we always are looking at straight pass or fail in test data. Because the school we used was so high, it was necessary to delve deeper. That was a great experience for me and made me reconsider how I look at data. I was very pleased with the idea of looking at comparative growth rather than just pass and fail. Throughout all of our team work, we went back to that and how things are and why. I was most pleased with our goal because it was aimed at the specific educational area of concerns for targeted groups and yet would benefit all students. Even better, the engagement with the UDL activities had the extra benefit of reducing behavior issues, a problem mentioned by many in the school climate survey. In addition, it allows students to feel (rightly) that their unique abilities and talents are being appreciated. To me, it was literally the perfect intervention because it covered every single issue, used an incredible amount of technology and 21st century skills and has minimal cost! What more could any principal want?!Our leadership plan is full of teacher, family and stakeholder involvement in decisions and ongoing decisions. This is one of the strongest parts of our plan and will help it be more successful. By using the diversity that exists as resources, we can reach all students with appropriate and successful strategies. Staff and community involvement in included in every part of the plan.