What began as an opportunity in order to enhance my skill set as a professional educator turned into a journey of so much more.  During the past year, I have begun to look at education through another lense. Within my classroom, enhancing my teaching with updated research strategies was forefront.  Now, I recognize the need to broaden this horizon to reach those within my school setting, along with the community and professional world. Embracing the roles of a leader, observer and coach will guide my life long learning years after receiving my masters degree.

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One often thinks of a leader as someone who is at the forefront of a project. Yet, I have grown to see that a leader is a person who brings out the best in another. This could be by modeling, arranging events for another to be successful, guiding explicitly, or even providing a push to attempt a new adventure. Actively participating in reaching a goal provides such opportunities. Within my professional context, I would like to take this moment to address digital portfolios in google classroom.  As we move to one to one instruction, I feel that this would be a great tool to monitor growth of the Title students over the years. In order to make this happen, I will need to create a rubric to share with my team, along with sharing key pieces which we can include as digital documentation in portfolios and provide consistency with grading.  Recognizing that our staff is at different places within the use of digital resources, I will organize, train if necessary, and assist with implementation. Along this train of thought, I will also provide parents with access to their child’s portfolio in order to develop transparency with their child’s learning. Utilizing the strength of our staff members knowledge while embracing digital tools of now and to come, I hope to provide an outlet for us to share with our students and families the growth being made over time.

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Next, I will continue to be observant to the changing world of education. Resources, tools and networking are constantly altering. In order to change with this “live” world, I will be observant to learning about new concepts via networks such as twitter feeds, journals within the university and administration libraries, along with dialogue with peers.  I realize that it takes a risk to branch out of our comfort zone, however, I feel that these are the moments in which I have grown the most. Therefore, I will continue to learn, explore and share in any branch of learning.

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Lastly, I intend to discover more regarding administration roles of community support and instructional coaching.  During exploration with diverse families, I recognized the value of our community. That said, I realize the need to strengthen our bonds with parents as a resource tool of information.  In addition, we need to support those who work with our students through educational services, such as the YMCA, 4-H, and Boys and Girls Club.

At the same time, I have become very interested in instructional coaching within literacy and math for elementary students.  While incorporating knowledge gathered during my coursework, I plan to share this within networks such as professional learning communities and professional development programs. I believe that teamwork is needed in order to create the best scenarios for our student learning.  Utilizing strengths while providing support in areas of improvement, I hope to share understanding of how to use our data to guide our instruction. In addition, I will share links of professional resources in literacy and math through medias such as twitter links (#MAED, school twitter), google classroom, along with dialogue with peers. Additionally, I will foster the concept of learning, exploring, creating and sharing. Providing support to those within our school, along with district will be my starting point. In the future, I hope to branch out to be more involved in state level boards, such as the Indiana Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

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Lifelong learning reminds me that I need to consider others' perspectives while recognizing that we are all at different points within our learning process. It involves being observant as to if this is a moment where I can be a leader to show, observer who will gather more information, or the coach who will support along the process with prompts in different directions.  Embracing these ideas, I will take the risk outside the comfort zone of my classroom to expand learning in all areas of my life.