EDLD+5397

=Internship=



** Week 1 Assignment, Part 5 **  ** Reflection Paper ** As I reflect on the NETS-A survey I see that my strength in each category tend to be in promoting, modeling and encouraging.In the area of Visionary Leadership, technology and the use of various technology tools in the classroom is a natural passion for me, which lends to my ability to share this with my colleagues. I love to inspire a shared vision of purposeful change towards digital-age resources. I know this is the future of education and I want to train others to be ready to meet the needs of our learners through the use of technology. Training teachers how to designing lessons for the classroom using technology will be an important aspect of my instructional guidance in the future. Digital-Age Learning Culture is probably my strongest area. I love to model and promote the frequent use of technology in the classroom. My goal is to be a technology trainer for the district or for a company that supplies the learning programs. Encouraging others is a natural part of my instructional practice. Excellence in Professional Practice is another area of strength for me as I have participated in my PLC as a leader this year. I am on the CIDC site based committee and I am the Technology Liaison for my department. It is my job to communicate with my team about decisions the committee makes as well as keep the team up to date on the latest technology training. One area that I see myself needing improvement in is in respect to Digital Age Culture.I have not participated in any activity at state or national learning communities. I need to continue to work with our local campus and district technology committees and broaden my goals to work toward a state and national level of understanding. Along those same lines, with in the Visionary Leadership Competency, I believe that I need to be more involved in promoting technology policies, programs and funding, not only at the district level, but also with the state organizations to develop, promote and implement technology plans that will benefit the future of education. I also need improvement in the area of Systemic Improvement. Establishing and leveraging strategic partnerships to support systemic improvement is my weakest area. I do not have a salesperson’s personality. It is hard for me to solicit help and support. With increased involvement and shadowing of administrators who do have the capacity to build partnerships, I can continue to learn and improve my knowledge regarding systemic improvement in this area. Another area that I could improve in is the area of Digital Citizenship. Although I am aware of issues that kids have ethically when working with technology, there are always ways I can improve my understanding as well as practices regarding the social, ethical and legal aspects of technology use. After reflecting on the Practice of Leadership Skill assessments I see that my strengths lie in the areas of Developing trusting Relationships, Making Quality Decisions, Motivating and Developing Others and Initiating Change. I have done many activities even on a daily basis that have improved my skills in these areas. My work this year as the 7th grade team leader in our PLC had given me the opportunity to build trusting relationships and encourage others to do so as well. I have worked with several teachers for four years that until this year I really could not talk freely with. I now have built a relationship with these teachers and because of that we have work together on writing assignments, test and curriculum better than ever before. I am a member of our site base decision making committee that has given me the opportunity to really use my quality decision making skills. One major issue that we have worked on was the decision of how we would input lesson plans online. We collected work samples, evaluated them as a group and narrowed our choices down to several designs then we took the options to our teams to talk with them and allow for input and opinions then we took the information back to the committee. This was a wonderful experience of the decision making process. I have had the opportunity to do some technology training on my campus. This allows me to not only teach the educators how to implement technology in the classroom but also to motivate them with the importance of this advancement in education. These tasks also allow me to initiate change. The world of technology changes so fast that it is a challenge for any teacher to keep up and to keep moving forward. It is important to take steps to reduce resistance to move forward the advancement of technology. I believe the Practice of Leadership skills that I need to work further on are in the areas of Resolving Conflict and Issues and Evaluation Personnel and Program Performance. In both of these areas I need to shadow administrators who have been in their positions to perform these tasks on a regular basis. I think both of these areas require a lot of practice to be comfortable with. Being a classroom teacher, I have had to resolve a lot of conflict but it has always been with children and not adults. It will take a while for me to be comfortable to deal with personnel that have issues. The same is true for evaluating personnel, it will take time and practice. I will work closely with my mentor on these areas. To work on my areas of weakness I will add the following activities to my internship plan:
 * 1) Work with our local campus and district technology committees and broaden my goals to work toward a state and national level of understanding of TATEKS.
 * 2) I need to be more involved in promoting technology policies, programs and funding, not only at the district level, but also with the state organizations to develop, promote and implement technology plans that will benefit the future of education. I will join a national organization and attend meetings to gain understanding of policies and programs.
 * 3) Shadow an administrator who has the capacity to build partnerships. I can continue to learn and improve my knowledge regarding systemic improvement in this area.
 * 4) Subscribe to an RSS feed to update me on current practices regarding the social, ethical and legal aspects of technology use.
 * 5) Shadow an administrator while he is dealing with conflict involving personnel. I will work on making decisions that will help to resolve issues as a leader on my campus.
 * 6) I will volunteer to help with evaluation at my campus to gain experience in this area by working alongside the administrators.
 * 7) I will include being a PLC team leader in my internship that gives me the opportunity to use the decisions making process.
 * 8) I will add technology host to my internship which gave me the opportunity to encourage others to ensure instructional innovation focused on continuous improvement of digital-age learning.