Leadership and Technology Blog

After reading the summaries of chapter two from The Tipping Point, by Malcom Gladwell, I came to understand the different roles of mavens, connectors and salesmen in the process of the spread of information and trends. Mavens are people who accumulate knowledge and are recognized by others as having truthful and reliable information. When I think about Mavens in my own personal network, I think about a literacy interventionist at my school. She has been at my school for eight years and has a background in special education. She has also been trained in Reading Recovery and LLI approaches to literacy intervention. Whenever I have questions about the validity of approaches, I can go to her and know that she has a wealth of knowledge in the area of literacy intervention. When I think about connectors , I think about our tech team. We have an incredible IT guy who works hard to support our school community. He is always seeking out opportunities to share out the wonderful things happenin...

I have to begin by admitting that I am relatively new to Twitter. In 2016, I had a Communications Internship with a literacy non-profit. I felt comfortable with all of our platforms for communication, except for Twitter. I taught myself the basics and used scheduled releases to release the same information to Facebook, Twitter and our blog - but I didn't interact with others often on Twitter. Again, in 2019, I took a class within the EDCI program and dabbled with Twitter, but soon abandoned it as a platform for gaining access to new information and content. This is my third go around with Twitter. I appreciated the variety in tasks for the week because it seemed like a valuable learning task. If I were to ask my students to use Twitter, designing a similar task would make sense. I had to troubleshoot issues and learn how to navigate the site, while expanding my network. Creating a professional network already gave me some responsibility to myself and others to post content and inte...

After listening to Simon Sinek discuss his ideas about effective leadership, one thing that really resonated with me is the idea that authority does not equate to leadership. This reminded me of a particular work environment where one of my coworkers was more of a leader, in many ways, than the person with the greatest decision-making power. When Sinek discussed how leadership is really a human experience and good leaders are empathetic people who are capable of placing themselves in the shoes of others and work hard to create a positive and safe work environment even in the toughest times, it reminded me of a particular past coworker. When I began at the non-profit, this coworker took time (although not in her job description) to help me acclimate to the company. She also took time each week to sit down with me and review current projects, answer questions and connect me with resources and/or people that could help me to meet my goals. She served as a facilitator. She also offered me ...

When I think about who I am as a leader, I think about myself as a leader in my classroom and a teacher-leader within my grade-level team. This is actually only my third year teaching, but I am currently mentoring a new first grade teacher. We are the only two members of our team and so this year I have worked hard to create year-long plans with critical standards, essential questions, enduring understandings and learning targets (something my school did not have previously at the first grade level). This work took a lot of time, but long-term organization and student success was at the forefront of my planning. By establishing clear timelines for teaching certain units, I was able to identify multiple assessment opportunities and more easily identify students who are in need of additional support. With this work, I am also better equipped to help my mentee identify students who are in need of additional support. When it comes to effective systems, I am always one to take the time to s...