CED0565 week 6

While this course was informative and just like any class you take away information, I wouldn't say this course has altered my definition of a leader or teacher leadership.  I feel a teachers' role is to educate students and with that comes various other responsibilities.  I've always seen teachers as managers, if you will.  Instead of working with profit and loss statements, we work with people.  We have budgets and need to work as efficiently as any other profession.  I've always viewed teachers as leaders, some better at it than others.  Teachers, hopefully, are involved in their school, district, and community.  We are constantly learning and integrating that new knowledge.  Just like any leader we need to listen and communicate, grow, and collaborate.  It is through this that we will improve education from within.  If we work as a team, changes will take place.  Teachers do need to make more of an effort to learn, grow, meet, and collaborate.  Unlike in other professions we aren't always given time during our "work day", so we need to make that time.  It's during that time that real changes happen, even though it can be challenging and difficult at times.  I wouldn't say that my leadership potential has changed.  I'm constantly trying new things, collaborate with my peers, and have joined various teams that I feel play a leadership role in our building.  I'm always look for ways to grow and to use that knowledge in my profession.

CED0565 Week 5

This week we finished the simulation.  While it was interesting, it would have been better if the material was there sooner to figure it out.  I wouldn't blindly walk into a meeting of this magnitude without being prepared.  If you did you would get what we did, trial and error (blindly) sometimes.  Change is always interesting, and many times the people involved in the changes are too.  The part that was missing for me was the "change" in the simulation.  What were we changing?  Depending on the change their are usually different "key" players.  Having worked in other professions and positions, I'm aware to some degree how changes take place.  Schools are different in some ways because the stakeholders are different, and their are a lot more of them.  Isn't that the part that we teachers like?

So am I leader?  I would say yes.  I've been fortunate, or unfortunate depending on how you look at it, to have held leadership positions.  Now as a teacher I feel I've brought that experience with me and I'm a leader in the classroom and technology.  A skill I've learned fairly well is to look outside the box at the broader picture.  I feel this isn't as common these days, especially in school settings.  So many times we are only focused on the here and now.  I been a leader in various capacities.  In my younger years I would have been a more subtle leader (quieter and more soft spoken.)  Today, I can be more vocal when I need to be and feel I need to be.  This helps in special education when I feel I need to advocate for the student or students.  So many times we think of teachers as leaders only in the classroom, but teachers are leaders in meetings, their school building, their school districts, and in the community.