When starting a new role, it is imperative to build strong relationships with both internal and external stakeholder groups. I start this by focusing on building relationships that focus on report and trust. I build these qualities with stakeholders by ensuring open communication that is regular, transparent and two way, prioritizing time with the stakeholders to actively listen with empathy in order to learn their diverse perspectives and build a community of collaboration and involvement as a team. By doing this, naturally, trust is built through accountability and sets the framework for working together long term, to establish common ground for compromise and active participation, and aids me with the information necessary to anticipate and address common concerns with relevant information and evidence.
When completing a classroom walk through, I focus on instructional purpose, classroom environment, and student engagement.
For instructional purpose, I am looking for evidence that students know what they are learning, outcomes, and why they are learning this. I am looking for evidence to ensure the learning is connected to state standards and district expectations such as scope and sequence and instructional framework.
For the classroom environment, I am looking for age and content appropriate materials that support instruction and student learning, a climate that is welcoming and inclusive for all, and limits distractions. I especially like to see clear expectations for students and evidence of student work to contribute to the positive climate and culture in the room.
Additionally, I look for student engagement through peer to peer discourse, differentiation of strategies, and student-teacher interactions. Sometimes engagement strategies do not go as expected, especially the first time, but seeing teachers incorporating them and having a willing to try something new is very positive during a classroom walk through. It is clear that students learn best when highly engaging instruction and activities, when students are doing the heavy lifting and thinking, and learn together.
Previously, I was a music and media teacher in New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation reservation, we had a high percentage of Navajo students. I created and implemented a 4 year curriculum for media that had the foundation focused on highlighting and celebrating the customs and culture of the Navajo students in my room while also providing projects that could be altered to meet of any transient student that joined our class that may not be Navajo. Each project could be tied to culture and heritage of the population around the community and be adapted for individuals while ensuring an authentic assessment of knowledge and skills.
As a fine arts specialist, I have worked with staff and community partners to bring in an HBCU, Lincoln University, to perform alongside out middle school and high school band students at our largest band event of the year. This was a first visit and performance of an HBCU band to the Quad Cities in our history and drew audiences form Iowa and Illinois. We have plans to bring back Lincoln University as well as do an elementary tour, to show younger students getting ready to sign up for band, that representation does matter.
I have set a protocol for submitting plays and musical requests for our high schools, to be vetted by a committee to ensure the appropriateness of the selection and that the musical is culturally appropriate and representative of the school.
For art shows, the art teachers and I have had extensive discussions on celebrating all student artwork and shows representing the diversity in the building appropriately.
This is a similar precedent we have set for our annual Holiday Concert, to ensure we are selecting secular music that is diverse in composer race and gender.
Finally, I sit on the board of Quad City Arts for the Visiting Artist Series, ensuring we bring a variety of arts and cultural backgrounds. I set up a partnership with DCSD, Davenport Foundation, and Quad City Arts to secure the funding to bring at least one visiting artist to each building.
The critical factors I look for when hiring employees I supervise is passion and enthusiasm, interpersonal skills, adaptability, flexibility, and being coachable.
Excellent educators must first and foremost love what they do and bring that enthusiasm and passion into the classroom in order to engage students. An excellent educator must have interpersonal skills to build relationships with students, staff, and stakeholders. Adaptability, flexibility, and coachable are also critical factors I look for when hiring.
I view these factor as critical because an education concept or skills can be taught but they will not translate to the classroom or implemented effectively if the candidate is not passionate and enthusiastic about their work, are not coachable, and do not have a relationship with the students that drives the want to grow to increase their skills an classroom abilities.
To be an outstanding and effective instructional leader, one must be passionate about instructional leadership, have a clear vision, and plan how to achieve the vision utilizing data and resources that are scientifically provided to support student achievement. To do this though, the leader must also understand the importance of and build community within the building, to empower teachers and cultivate leadership skills among staff. Doing this not only builds positive culture and creates buy in from staff, but the whole building is working together and are much more likely to make positive contributions to achieving the vision and plan. To build community, the instructional leader must create collaborative and inclusive learning environments for all, encourage risk taking, and lead by example by being a life long learner with perseverance.
An outstanding educator focuses on student success by being engaging with students, has strong communication skills but listens more than talks, is adaptable and flexible to meet students needs, values real-world learning, and builds community through relationships and showing empathy. An outstanding teacher also models life long learning, risk taking, reflective practices for self improvement, and promotes a love for learning every day. Finally, an outstanding teacher knows that they are not alone and must engage in collaboration with students and colleagues to share best practices in order to continue to grow.
There are many challenges facing education today, like poverty, health and safety of students, bullying, attendance, lack of funding, and more recently remote learning, covid, and the digital divide. Above all of these, I think one of the biggest challenges facing education today is technology in the classroom, critical thinking, and life or employability skills. I am an advocate for technology in the classroom, I believe teaching technology is imperative because technology will be used in just about every industry to some extent and students being technology literate is impactful for their futures. Technology use must be done with fidelity though and may not replace the teacher or lesson, it needs to be used to enhance the lesson and connect to student lives, not to be a distraction and a barrier. Additionally, with the readily available information due to technology, the focus in education needs to shift from memorization to analyzing and using critical thinking skills. I have seen students who know how to put a complex equation into a calculator to get the answer but struggle with reading a word problem and setting up simple math equations to solve it. Education needs to focus on critical thinking, problem solving, communication, creativity, leadership, and innovative use of technology in order to prepare for student success beyond the classroom and prepare for every day life.
Technology in education is imperative, as long as it is used appropriately and to support instruction, not replace it. I believe it is important to teach how to use technology effectively as it will be an integral part of all students lives, regardless of what path they choose to take after school. If technology is not utilized to strengthen instruction and practices, we are hindering students to be prepared for their future. I have taught technology courses for the past three years, I am a Microsoft Innovative Educator and Microsoft certified as well as Adobe certified and feel equally as comfortable with google and apple products to create best practices and strengthened instruction in any educational setting.
Historically, I often have had a wide range of skills and abilities in my classroom which require strategic planning of differentiation, instructing with multiple means of representation to meet all learning styles, providing student choice and voice when possible, integrating student reflection in order to track and take ownership of their own learning, intentional grouping, and student discourse and collaboration every lesson. By providing all of these interventions, I am able to monitor each students progress through individual interactions. Finally, I believe that encouraging community support stretches the classroom and learning beyond the classroom walls and strengthens learning for all students, regardless of skills and abilities.
As a music teacher, I tend to have a unique approach to classroom teaching and school leadership. I have helped create multiple district curriculum, running many initiatives at once, and experience with innovative career pathway implementation and restricting. Additionally, I have advanced training and a masters degree in special education which helps me see a scenario form a different point of view and can support teachers in that area as well.
I believe the best conditions that best facilitate student learning include student centered instruction, students knowing what is happening for the day for them to self monitor their learning, engaging practices, cooperative and collaborative learning, student discourse, many formative assessments, and self monitoring. My regular classroom routine starts with a class and relationship builder, going over the goals for the day, an opener to begin the learning, collaboration between students, teaching the lesson with many breaks for guided student discourse to retain what was learned, independent or collaborative work time, frequent monitoring and individual checks in, and an exit ticket with student reflection. By working bell to bell with quick transitions, students engaging with one another and as a class, and frequent checks for understanding, I am able to assure maximum learning for all students.
The root of my philosophy is providing high quality, rigorous education for all students. This philosophy is what has dictated all of my actions as an educator, including continuing my education in special education and educational leadership, being a lead on restorative justice management initiatives, attending additional professional development on culturally responsive teaching and practices to support English language learners, and working with historically underserved populations. Working with historically underserved populations and seeing the issues of diversity all around me is why I continued into educational leadership, to provide equity and continue to work towards achieving my philosophy for all students. I continue to attend professional development on diversity, equity, social justice, and cultural education to ensure I am a life long learner and the best educator I can be for my students.