Course Reflection

For this course we were given the chance to work from an administrative point of view. It was fun to put on my "Principal Hat" for a little while to design faculty meetings, professional development, and walk-through forms. However, I've also learned from this course that I'm happy being a teacher and stepping into an administrative role is not for me. At least not right now.

One of the assignments that I really enjoyed was designing a day of professional development to teach about digital learning in the classroom. It's only been a year since I sat down during our very first class of this cohort with hardly any knowledge of digital learning. So when I planned this PD it wasn't too hard for me to remember how clueless I was, which helped me select the resources and activities that I wanted to use. We've all had some pretty lack-luster PD experiences, so I wanted to balance out "sit and get" with "explore and try" as much as I could.

Professional Development Workshop Design

Another assignment that I thought was a lot of fun and informative was designing a faculty meeting. We have hour-long faculty meetings every week, which are hit-and-miss as far as engagement and new learning goes. However, those meetings are oftentimes the only chance that principals have to communicate ideas and initiatives to the entire staff at once (sometimes emails can be deleted without being read, you know) so fitting everything into one hour can be really difficult. That was my big realization when I designed my K-2 1:1 iPad rollout initiative as a faculty meeting. It was a challenge to include everything that I wanted to do.

Faculty Meeting Design

I'm so surprised that another course is already over! I'm excited to see what we'll be learning next!