At that moment, I decided to take back control. My future goals were not clearly defined, but I knew I wanted to be back in the driver seat. That lead me to the Lamar Digital Learning and Leading Program. I had several friends who also went through the program. It resonated with me. Looking back at my very first post makes me smile. I knew who I was but wasn’t quite sure about who I wanted to be. I was also not very tuned in to who I had been. I’ve always had an excitement and energy that allowed me to chart my own course. Often, I was charting this course alone whether I wanted to or not. I was given the OK to start several programs on campus. The district wanted to encourage my innovation and drive. They liked being able to show the program. At the same time, we could never find people to take that journey with me. I could spend hours getting into all of the missteps I took. That’s neither here nor there. The fact remains that many times, I inadvertently built a “house of cards.” If I wasn’t working day and night to keep it going, it would all fall down.
That first semester of the DLL program was an eye opener for me. As we talked about ePortfolios, technology, learner choice, and significant learning environments, I saw all of those goals I had been missing coming closer. I had always attempted portfolios in class but was never really successful with it. I had always given my learners a lot of choice and ownership in class, but it never resulted in completed projects and obviously successful outcomes. The successes were mostly anecdotal. That semester, my classroom started to take on a new focus. Things started coming together. In the spring, my principal asked me what I wanted for myself professionally. I didn’t really have an answer. It was a tough pill to swallow. I spent a lot of time searching within and talking with friends. I realized that I still loved the classroom but was starting to gain the true strengths to be a leader in a curriculum and instruction role. Over the years, it was clear that what I lacked in true leadership I made up for in energy. Something one of my administrators said years ago stuck with me, but never made sense until last spring. We were getting ready for a student showcase and she told my principal, “see, he’s showing he does have leadership.” It makes sense now. This page on change and leadership is in stark contrast to myself at that time.
It’s still a messy experience, but for the first time it is one that others can duplicate. I am now working with two other teachers to create a guide to help teachers bring app prototyping into their classroom. One of the team is a teacher from the summer coding academies.
As I wrap up this semester, I feel much different about my leadership abilities. They are not dependent upon what I know or my technical skill. It really doesn’t matter now. My leadership is coming from a place of knowing how to prepare properly and what the roles are. I wasn’t before, but now I am a leader. Now when people ask me about where I am going. I have a definitive answer. I want to be in a leadership position where I can work over time to have a sustained and measurable impact on teachers and learners.
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Looking at these questions, there are two that resonate, “What could you do better?” and “Are you courageous enough to abandon the past?”. Both of those are intertwined for me. The last two years have been hard for me. I have been working hard at saying “no” to things. I am not good at that. If someone asks me for something, I feel compelled to help them out. I can’t explain it. At the same time, when I start something, I don’t want to stop until it is completely finished and done well. There are some programs that I started at school that put me at a huge disadvantage. There were those that needed more support that wasn’t there. There were others that the time was not right. It has been a long, hard struggle. I didn’t want to give up. At the same time, there was always a “good reason” to keep going. Even if it benefitted one person, I kept at it. Whatever the cost was, I absorbed it and kept going. I’ve finally started putting these things aside. It’s hard. I know I needed to do it. At the same time, I need to be more strategic in what I take on and chase down. Moving forward is tough. It’s necessary, but tough.
If I had to sum up my experience over the last 18 months, it would be “growth”. I am really amazed at how far I have come over this time frame. I am not running around the district doing new things and pushing new ideas. I’ve done that since I started. I am always trying something new and bringing in fresh takes on things. What is different is my perspective and focus. In the past, I would run too fast. At the same time, I wasn’t usually bringing others along with me. It wasn’t intentional or for my own benefit. It was more from a place of ignorance. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. In that sense, I made a lot of mistakes that led to problems creeping up all the time. Things are different now.
Some of the big take-aways as I look back are in the area of the ePortfolio, building PL, and planning. I am doing portfolios so much better in my class than I ever have. They have a much stronger foundation and clearer purpose. A lot of the things we have done in class, I have brought over to my class. I use my own portfolio as an example for my learners to see what I am talking about. In doing PL for my campus, district, and other schools, I have become much more focused. I still get excited and have a lot of energy. Now, I have a clearer picture of how to channel that for people who are not like me. I knew that other’s didn’t think and work like I do, but I wasn’t good at meeting their needs. I’ve been getting better. Finally, my planning and implementation of initiatives and work is getting better. I have always been a planner, but things are more focused and clear now. I am getting better at communicating my plans to others. That has always been a problem for me. I’m coming along. I am able to see things better in my planning and other people’s as well. Many times, I am called on to help drive someone else’s plan. This new understanding and knowledge is helping me do that better. All the way around, I can see positive change. As I look back at my plan, there are a lot of ups and downs with twists and turns. The links to the right will take you to various parts of the plan. There is information about the original plan and my initial proposal in the links. Below, I give an overview of the original plan followed by a discussion of the changes over the last year that had effects on the execution of the original plan. I follow that up with a discussion of the current state of things at school. The changes have altered my timeline and work, but have not stopped me from moving forward toward the original goal. Finally, I give a look at what the next steps are. Just because things change doesn't mean that the goals are not good. It just means that things need to be adjusted.
Revised outline
Like so many other projects and plans, this one has had more than its share of adjustments. This is not something that concerns me, though. I seem to live in a constant state of change and motion. Even though things have adjusted, the plans I made have been in use. They have been modified a lot, but they are still being used.
To start with, the teacher I was going to start working with at the beginning of the plan went on maternity leave and all of our plans got changed. We are getting plans back together, but it is taking time. She is also teaching a new ELA level and wrapping her head around what to do. On the other hand, our work together didn’t go unnoticed. One of our Digital Learning Coaches was excited and started working with other teachers. Several teachers across the campus are using Sphero’s throughout their curriculum to give learners choices in their class projects. It’s not the way I envisioned it, but the effect was still the same. Others are jumping in without me needing to be the main driver of the work. On the Professional Learning front, that has not gone near as expected either. I had been working with my campus admin on being able to provide some PL opportunities for teachers to learn to use Sphero and other coding activities in their classroom. I have have been able to give similar presentations at conferences around the country. My admin wanted me to provide the same opportunities to our teachers. Along the way, that all went out the window. While renewing our 1-to-1 program, it became clear that most of our teachers do not really know what they can do with an iPad in their classroom. For me and some of our other teachers, using an iPad is easy and natural. I teach in a computer lab, but still use the iPad daily for project enhancements that could never be done on a computer. In the spring, I have been put to use by my Admin to work with teachers on iPad basics and integration within the classroom. At first glance, it looks like all of the work I did putting computational thinking PL together went out the window. As I look deeper at it, that is not the case. I am still teaching technology integration to get to deeper learning in work. The tool is different, but the goal is the same. It turned out the be very useful. I am also using a lot of my plans as I work with schools putting coding into their schools. The environment and situation has changed a lot. The goals have not.
(https://stemtoolkit.weebly.com/creating-significant-learning-environments/part-of-the-puzzle). To help this, we look at the standards before we begin. I want them to be aware of what they need to get out of the project as we move along. It’s not enough to just complete the project. They have to learn certain things from it as well. I am finding that they are now being more intentional about their work and feeling better about what they have accomplished. Our work with ePortfolios at the beginning of the program has been a huge part of this (https://stemtoolkit.weebly.com/applying-ed-tech-eportfolios).
I have been doing so much more with portfolios in my class. In the past, we would add work to the portfolio and move on. Now, the portfolio is a daily part of class. Their work goes in the portfolio, they add a reflection to it, and then I look at their work and reflection together. The work may not make it into their public portfolio, but throughout the whole process, they are building a body of work that shows all of their growth and learning. As I move on, I am taking those same attributes that I am putting in my class and infusing it into my work with other schools. Periodically, I get the opportunity to work with other schools to help them with putting coding into their curriculum. It is an awesome chance to really reach out and help so many more learners. I have started really using the COVA approach with it as well. There are facets that I teach in a direct way, and others that I let the participants experience. As we work, we discuss how to give their learners more choice and ownership in the classroom. Coding classes do not need to be traditional teacher focused endeavors. They can be exploratory and very authentic. One of the keys is to measure what is truly important (https://stemtoolkit.weebly.com/assessing-digital-learning). I am taking my COVA learning and helping others implement it in their classrooms as well. The “Growth Mindset” has been so important throughout. I had done a lot of work both in class (https://stemtoolkit.weebly.com/stem-toolkit-blog/previous/2) and personally with the growth mindset. I attribute a lot of my success to it. I’ve never had the idea that I couldn’t learn to do something. I am one that will watch a video or pick up a book and learn something that I want or need and own it from there on out. As I moved through the program, the growth mindset moved from something I did myself to something I am now teaching others. I am learning to be more aware of the situations and experiences others bring as I work with them (https://stemtoolkit.weebly.com/digital-learning-globallocal-context). As I work with these other teachers, it is inspiring to hear them talk about using a growth mindset in their own practice to bring coding into their classroom and school. Finally, in my own district, my work with COVA and CSLE has been instrumental in working with my department. As the CTE department chair, I have a unique challenge. Each teacher is essentially a singleton teacher. In fact, most of them have 3 or 4 unique preps that no one else teaches. This situation has always been intimidating for me. I cannot just show them how I do things and then hope it goes well. The PL work we have done throughout has been so helpful in getting the department to move forward and be more embracing of change (https://stemtoolkit.weebly.com/leading-organizational-change). The state and the district have changed a lot of things over the years. This year, we still have changes, but we have been able to weather them better. To build on that, I have been putting together plans to help address more of the ongoing PL issues we have for our department to help them grow and take a more open approach to their subjects (https://stemtoolkit.weebly.com/developing-effective-professional-learning). It is a process and a long journey, but I feel I have to tools to do the job. I can honestly say that this has been a very practical and useful journey for me. The concepts of COVA and CSLE are not something that I was unfamiliar with. I didn’t use those words, but It did it in my room all the time. When I first started teaching, I got rid of the desks in my room right away and took the drafting tables that were being tossed out. I wanted space to work and collaborate. It has always been something that I did. I was the same way with technology. I wanted tech that helped my learners get where I knew they needed to be. It wasn’t about the device, but the opportunity it provided. The problem was that I was not always good at explaining it to my learners or to others. That has changed.
Four years ago, I changed things in my engineering program to change our programming languages. I started teaching my learners iOS app development with Swift. It wasn’t about the language itself. It was more about what the language and apps offered my learners. The language has a very simple and easy to understand syntax. If you want to print something, you simply say print(“Hello, world.”). In other languages, this can take up to six lines of code and use a slew of strange code words. With Swift, the language gets out of the way and we work on logic instead. At the same time, with apps, I am able to have my learners focus on solving authentic problems for real users. They have to focus on the end user, not themselves. This has always been a challenge for me with other projects. They want to only do things they enjoy in ways they understand. That all changed. We work on problems for our community. In that, they learn coding, working on teams, designing for others, understanding project management, and so much more. For myself, I have changed as well. In years past, people liked what they saw in my room, but always said, “I can’t do that in my school or classroom.” It wasn’t because I was doing something so secret. I just could not explain it very well. I am now able to better articulate why we are doing app development, why we are using Swift, and what they need to look for so they can derive the most benefit for themselves. Each learner has a different goal for after high school. They are all able to take away something unique and special. My journey over the last 18 months has helped me to better articulate my program to my learners and other teachers. I am also able to help other teachers implement similar programs in their schools. It has been rewarding to spread what I have learned to others. |
About 3520This course is the capstone course in the DLL program. I am reflecting on, adjusting, and making plans for the next steps in my Innovation Plan and personal growth. Innovation Plan Links
Innovation Plan Project Proposal Plan Outline Change and Leadership Professional Learning Plan ArchivesCategories |