The Path We Have Chosen

"So how's the new job treating ya?"

Inevitably and understandably, some people have been asking me that question in the last few months. I am fortunate to be working at West Leyden, a school that his given me everything an educator could ask for. I've taught some awesome kids and worked alongside some amazing colleagues and mentors. I've been gifted all the professional development I can handle and recently, the job of Assistant Principal too. Truthfully, I hope I can give half as much to my job as my job has given me.

"But really, are you getting the hang of it?"

I've tried to embrace the vulnerability that comes with honesty in life, because honestly, I am not very good at what I do yet. I've arrived at school for the past 97 days not really leading anything, but trying to learn from decades of leadership experience around me.  I am new. I am inexperienced. And for the most part, I don't know what I am doing. I walk away from conversations second guessing what I said. I've put so many filters through my emails and letters that I've departed from who I want to be as a school leader. I hear the cynics and skeptics. I try really hard to make it through the day, and then get up the next day and do it again.

Hopefully my transparency can connect me to others who have felt the same way at some point in time, not just with their careers but with their lives. I remember bringing my son home from the hospital for the first time with a restless feeling. So what do we do with him now? How can I stop him from crying, and where did we put that pack of diapers again? Luckily for me, I had the help of my wife and together we are erasing the early self-doubts of parenthood one day at a time. I think.

Like becoming a new parent, learning a new job can be really tough, especially as a first year teacher, coach, or administrator. Having worked here for a few years, I'm lucky to have existing relationships with colleagues around me. There is nothing that we cannot do together. Our secretaries, maintenance staff, teachers, and administrators can attest to that- as I've experienced formal and informal mentoring in these first three months. I am grateful for those moments and can only hope that I will add something to their skill set too. We have to build each other up.

"Do you miss teaching?"

Of course. The best part of our jobs is the daily interaction with our kids, just ask anyone who works at a school in the summer. I miss the kids but still try to manufacture interactions with students whenever I can. I'm convinced that teaching five classes for 35 years is the toughest job in education, but I also believe that being a teacher is the most rewarding job in the world. Our kids fill our souls in ways that we cannot quantify -and that, of course, is something I miss.

"Well, you will get the hang of it eventually..."

I know. I just hope I can look back at the totality of these days and find humor in it all. Until then, I appreciate the patience and collegiality of all my peers as I make the journey.

"This is the path we have chosen. We are responsible for modeling what we expect from others, especially when we don't get it right. Let us not be fools when the criticism comes, but take time to reflect and make the necessary changes in order to grow."

-Jimmy Casas. 

Innovation and Inspiration

One of my colleagues and twitter mentors, George Couros (@gcouros) once asked a group of our teachers, "Could you really spend an entire day as a student in your classroom?" I think questions like this really help us reflect on the intentions of our practice as educators. As a teacher, there were days when I was bored with my own lessons by the end of the day. I cannot imagine how my students felt. What are we doing to combat student boredom in our classes- and better yet, how are we fostering an innovative mindset with our teachers?

I am fortunate to spend time evaluating teachers at our school. It helps connect me to kids and affords me the opportunity to watch amazing teachers inspire our students. All our team members collectively look for the highlights of the Danielson model including student engagement, a strong culture for learning, and creative classroom discussion. While these areas provide great insight into the strengths of the classroom teacher, they don't necessarily include an important element of all 21st century classrooms: innovation.

Can we make room on our evaluation models for innovation?

Innovation doesn't necessarily mean engagement. And great teachers could certainly make a case that engagement doesn't always require innovation. 

Yet, innovative teachers are the driving force behind new curriculum changes. These teachers are the risk takers who present their ideas at conferences and lead others in their departments. Moreover, discovery and creation inspires kids- and an inspired student can accomplish anything.

The process of becoming an innovative educator exposes students to underlying skills beyond the context of curriculum or content. Ultimately, innovating involves failure- an important life and career lesson for many of us. Innovation also involves patience. There will be frustrating moments in the journey.

I give credit to all those that try.

A lesson that is well intentioned, managed and assessed plays well with any evaluation model. But a lesson that takes a chance on something innovative and inspiring speaks to the greater intent of the designer, and it's in that intention that we find the true purpose of our instruction...

Inspiration.

"Could you spend an entire day as a student in your classroom?"

#SAVMP: Our Perspectives

I wanted to post some collective thoughts on the School Administrator Virtual Mentoring Program I have been a part of for the past year. #SAVMP connects current and aspiring administrators from around the world and I was so lucky to even participate in the program. My fellow mentee (@JohnFritzky) and my mentor (@TonySinanis) wanted to contribute a collaborative blog post that summarized our experience learning from each other.

 

You will find similiar posts to mine on John's blog here:

http://www.jfritzky.blogspot.com/

And on Tony's blog here:

http://leadingmotivatedlearners.blogspot.com/

 

I am looking forward to expanding #savmp within my own school district and am so grateful to the work of George Couros and Amber Teamann to connect us. This was an awesome example of how a PLN can really help us grow together.

 

 

 

1. Why did I sign up for #SAVMP?

Andrew: I was an Assistant Dean and Social Studies teacher in a high school setting  when I first heard about #SAVMP. I knew it was a great opportunity for me to learn and grow as a school leader. I was interested in connecting with people from outside my PLN and outside my district. I think the perspective that the program offered afforded me a great opportunity to learn more about leadership. I did not know what to expect when we first started but I knew that I had absolutely nothing to lose by signing up.

John: I saw a post on Twitter from George Couros about developing a mentorship program for new administrators. At the time I was finishing up my Educational Leadership program and wanted to continue to learn from others, I knew this would be a great way to continue my learning.
 

Tony: I was entering my ninth year as an elementary level building administrator and for the first time in my career, I genuinely felt like I might have something to offer a new or aspiring educational leader. The possibility of mentoring someone was of interest to me because as an educator I feel it is my responsibility to support and encourage those new to the field - to possibly help them avoid some of the landmines I hit during the early stages of my career and meet with greater levels of success. Also, it was clear to me that being paired with people through a mentoring program meant that I would do a lot of learning myself and that is always a priority for me. The appeal of #SAVMP was that it was using Twitter as the platform for the mentoring experience and that definitely spoke to my interests and made me feel like it would be much more manageable.

2. How did #SAVMP help you learn and grow as an administrator?

Andrew: I am one of those people who claim, “I have never won anything in my life”... until now. I won the lottery by getting Tony Sinanis as my mentor. He immediately reached out to me through twitter and we began learning together right away. He gave me feedback on my blog posts and encouraged me to stretch my thinking as a school leader. I think more than anything, #SAVMP exposed me to a different type of school leader than I have observed in my career. There’s power in learning from someone across the country who works with a different population. There’s agency in a process that encourages sharing of ideas and leadership styles. My interaction with my mentor provided all of that, and more. As I began to interview for different administrative jobs, I scheduled Google Hangouts and phone calls with my mentor. Tony was an amazing asset to have in my corner- always coaching me on the logistics of answering questions but also giving me the confidence I needed to be successful.

John: By taking on a mentor who is completely outside of my own school, district, and state I knew it would allow me a chance to look at education, and leadership through a completely different lense. When I was partnered with Tony Sinanis, I knew I was extremely fortunate. Tony reached out to me and immediately began to develop a relationship with me that went beyond the world of Twitter. Tony invited me to his school to see how his school functions and what a typical day looks like for him. I was immediately blown away. It is easy for someone to state what they believe on Twitter or in a blog post, but it another thing completely to turn those beliefs into reality. That is what Tony Sinanis has done at Cantiague Elementary school in Jericho, New York. We spent the entire day in classrooms and I was treated like a celebrity by the student just because I knew Mr. Sinanis. The students at his school absolutely love him because Tony sees them as children, not test scores. He knows EVERY student’s name and can talk to them about their individual interests. I left Cantiague knowing I had a great of work to do to build these types of relationships at my own school. However, I was comforted by the fact that I had seen a great school in action and if Tony could do it, so could I. Throughout the year I would throw questions at Tony about how he would handle different situations and no matter how busy he was, he was always able to get back to me and give me a piece of advice.

Tony: From my vantage point, it is clear that I learned so much more from Andrew and John than they did from me. Their enthusiasm, passion and willingness to take risks in their current roles was an incredible inspiration for me. They provided me opportunities to dialogue about leadership, the current landscape of public education, pedagogy and a bunch of other topics that I am incredibly passionate about and love discussing. Through our conversations and exchanges - whether through email, Voxer, text, in person, through a GHO, I was able to deliberate with them and broaden my point of view and perspectives, which helped me become a better leader and educator. I have done a lot of research about the idea of social learning and the power of learning through social interactions with other like-minded people and the #SAVMP became just that for me - I was learning something through every interaction I had with John and Andrew and was fortunate to be associated with them. Being that I technically had the title of mentor in this relationship, the highlights for me were the successes that Andrew and John experienced this year - John successfully completing his first year as a building administrator; Andrew securing his first administrative position; John pushing me to participate in national podcasts with our kids; and Andrew becoming a father. These are just some of the highlights and in the end, it is an honor to be associated with these incredible educators who have become friends and mentors for me.  
 

3. What will this program mean for you going forward?

Andrew: I am so thankful to Amber and George for helping me connect to some great leaders in our field. I would love to continue on as a #SAVMP mentor or mentee to continue learning and blogging. I was not able to answer all of the blog topics every week so I am excited to double back to some of them in the future. I would also like to start a mini-admin mentoring program in my own school district using #SAVMP as a model.

John: I am grateful for the opportunity Amber Teamann and George Courus provided me with, to connect and learn from Tony. I feel as though we have developed a stronger relationship than I could have ever expected when I started this program. Moving forward I feel like I am just as lucky to be connected with Andrew. I was lucky to have Tony as a mentor and hear his words of wisdom, but having Andrew to learn with will be an added bonus that I did not foresee when I started #SAVMP. I can’t wait to schedule an #Edcamp where the three of us can get together face to face for the first time.

Tony: There is no doubt that going forward the #SAVMP experience has left an indelible mark on me - both personally and professionally. First off, a special thank you to George Couros and Amber Teamann for facilitating this experience because once again, they helped push me out of my comfort zone and gave me access to experiences that helped me learn and grow. Second of all, I now have access to two awesome educators from different parts of the country who I can rely on for support, perspective and ideas and that is definitely a critical part of the PLN. Finally, participating in #SAVMP has given me two new friends who make my world a better place - I cannot wait until the next time I get to collaborate with John and Andrew! ROCK ON!