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LEADERSHIP

TECHNOLOGY

Understanding the varities of technology available and how to use these technologies, is vital for a teacher to have success in today's classroom.  By clicking the link above, I explain the many uses of technology available. Importantly, all of the technologies explained are student-centered, instead of teacher-centered.  These technologies enable students to create pieces of work, instead of watching something that a teacher created.  By doing this, students have the ability to achieve a higher level of success, since they were given the responsibility to create a piece of work.

Although student-centered technologies enable students to demonstrate understanding, teacher-centered technologies also serve a valuable purpose.  In the link above, I created a video using Windows Media Player and uploaded to Vimeo.  After creating this video about the Civil War, I realized the importance of creating more videos in the future.  These videos can be used in different capacities, including a student who will miss an extended period of time, a supplement to a lesson, or the one that I use most often as the varsity golf coach where I teach, a substitute teacher.

Currently, we are at a time in history when we need to evaluate the effectiveness of technology in education.  Just complete a quick search on the internet and it is not difficult to find a new, shiny piece of technology that insists it will help students achieve.  Also, walk into a secondary classroom today and I'm willing to guarantee that the class has a few students, if not most, who anxiously await the opportunity to peek at their phone to check their messages.  That is of course if they have not done so already.  Because of this 'threat' of cell phones, many schools institute policies to keep cell phones out of the classroom.  In the link above, I wrote about facing the challenges of technology and should we truly embrace using all forms of technology in the classroom.

We as a society always evaluate the effectiveness of teaching methods and standards used, to ensure success academically for our children.  Across the nation, many states have adopted Common Core State Standards.  Curious to see the effectiveness of Common Core and the impact of social studies, I completed a research paper on this topic.  Within the paper, I used academic journals, articles and my own classroom to compare Common Core to previous methods used.  As you will read, I believe Common Core will have some wrinkles that need to be worked out, such as testing with technology, when not all schools have the resources necessary.  However, from an academic standpoint, Common Core makes learning social studies much more rigorous than what took place in the past.

In the past, an achievement gap between the top performing students and the bottom performing students was very acceptable.  However, times have changed.  The education community has changed this philosophy, believing that all students have the ability to flourish if a teacher uses the correct teaching methods.  Within the paper linked above, I analyzed educations changing philosophy of teaching, by replacing a teacher-centered approach, with a student-centered approach.  To enable a student-centered philosophy to work, a teacher must first create a learning community where every individual feels they have the ability to make mistakes without an embarassment and share authority with the students.  Once this occurs, the teacher can then focus on student learning, with the approach using lots of cooperative learning and group work.

At one point in my teaching career, I viewed the administration as an authority figure, who simply was there to tell me what to do in the classroom.  Fortunately, this line of thinking quickly went away after cummulative work from one of my classes.  Within the paper linked above, I explain the importance of teachers to take a joint leadership role with the administration of a building.  In order for this to happen, the administration must be willing to delegate power, but the teachers must be willing to take on power.  Together as a staff, everyone needs to work as a team.  Within a team framework of a school, norms must be set and there must be a willingness to adjust, since there are many moving pieces that take place within a school from a year to year basis.

As a teacher, we serve as leaders throughout the school and classroom.  Within the classroom, we demonstrate leadership in various ways.  Most importantly, we demonstrate leadership by adding creativity to our lessons to make learning not only enjoyable, but also to make students want to continue to learn.  Within the link above, I applied various ways that I could add creativity to my lessons, while also thinking about the most important task at hand; making sure my students understand the content and have success within the class. 

As a leader within my school, I have to always examine and analyze the results of my students, but more importantly, the results of my teaching practices.  Self-reflection is of huge importance, in order to become the best at whatever you want to do.  Within the link above, I analyzed Atul Gawande's, Better:  A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, and compared this to my role as a leader and my strategies used within the classroom.  Gawande highlighted three important characteristics that we all must analyze:  Diligence, do right and ingenuity.  Regardless of profession, if you can master all three areas, you are well on your way to having a successful career.

Professional Showcase

This page will highlight pieces of work that demonstrate my expertise in the art of teaching, with the help of the Master's of Arts in Education (MAED) program at Michigan State University.  Each paper or video below highlights specific areas of focus in education that I think are extremely valuable for the future.  First, leadership is vital to the makeup of a school, so I included five different pieces of work to show my research.  Technology is also another important aspect to school in the future.  Therefore, I included three separate pieces of work showing ways technology is used in the classroom today. 

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