At the beginning of my Masters in Educational Technology (MAET) program, I planned to use my newly found knowledge towards enhancing my math teaching as well as connecting students to a world of opportunities. During the process of obtaining the degree, my goals shifted towards administration duties. Also during this time, I applied for and secured the principal position at the school I’ve been teaching at for six years. While teaching, my primary focus was on math. I also taught a handful of electives, but never dove very deeply into pedagogy of other core academic subjects. With my newfound career path within education comes a large learning gap that must be filled. To work towards filling this gap, I’ve created three learning goals for myself. First and foremost, I need to obtain a Type B Administrative Certificate to serve as my principal endorsement. My second goal is to broaden my understanding and application gained through my MAET from primarily focused on mathematics to applications throughout all academic subjects. My third goal is to increase my use of data and help the teachers apply information from data to their own classrooms and practices. In combination, I believe that meeting these goals will significantly impact my effectiveness as a principal leading to increased effectiveness from the teachers and ultimately an increase in student engagement and learning.
For my continued employment as a principal it will be imperative that I acquire the necessary education and certification for the job. To do this, I have enrolled in a Masters in Educational Leadership program through the University of Alaska, Southeast (UAS). I choose this program because I’m working in Alaska, thus choose a university within the state. Furthermore, this is a 14 month long program allowing me to obtain my credentials in the span of a single school year. The program begins in July with a month long intensive set of class in Juneau, AK, followed by online courses throughout the school year, and finishes with another month long session of classes in Juneau, the following summer. I’m currently acting as a teacher-principal in my school after having our principal leave his position in December. This experience of principal duties has taught me a lot, but my education won’t be made whole without the mandatory coursework for a Masters in Educational Leadership and type B certificate. I look forward to being employed as a principal during the time I work towards my principal endorsement. My course work should be immediately relevant and useful. The educational leadership program will continue to add tools and tactics to my profession as my degree in educational technology has.
My degree in educational technology has been heavily focused on tools for mathematics education. There have been programs, tools, technology, etc. that apply to all teaching domains and some that I learned about that were primarily for specific disciplines other than math. Despite this, throughout most of the three years I’ve been in the program, I planned on continuing to be a math teacher and thus looked at all the tools and technology with a mathematical lens. With my duties expanding beyond the math realm, so to will my perspective. My goal is to build upon the base knowledge of technology tools I’ve gained through the MAET program and expand the functional use of that knowledge to helping teachers in their particular subjects with technology integration and application. Leaning on other students from the MAET program, I believe that many of their capstone portfolio websites will give useful insight to technology use not only across various subjects, but also across various grade levels. Up to this point, I’ve taught grades 7-12, but will now be principal of two schools, a K-6 elementary as well as a 7-12 Junior/Senior High School. The capstone portfolios will highlight some of the technology tools that have been shown to be effective, many new tools, and exemplary uses for these tools across age levels and subjects.
My final goal is to increase the use of data based decision-making within my school. We currently have testing data, grades, graduation rates, attendance, drop-out rates, discipline issues and more all housed within our district grading program. We have lots of data at our fingertips, but have not consistently and effectively utilized the information. Through some in-service training the staff at our school has looked at data and made some decisions based on the data, but this is not a routine within the school. To increase the use of data and data driven decision-making, the school and I will be working with KTC Consulting. Through the Alaska’s State System of Support (SSOS) our school will be working with the KTC Consulting group. This group focuses administrative consulting for quality education in Alaska. This group should be specifically useful to my school in Aniak, as the group is built from experience in rural western Alaska, where we live.
Hopefully combining these three educational goals along with strong staff buy-in we’ll have a great school.
Images from: http://catalog.uas.alaska.edu/
edutech.msu.edu
http://ktcak.com/
For my continued employment as a principal it will be imperative that I acquire the necessary education and certification for the job. To do this, I have enrolled in a Masters in Educational Leadership program through the University of Alaska, Southeast (UAS). I choose this program because I’m working in Alaska, thus choose a university within the state. Furthermore, this is a 14 month long program allowing me to obtain my credentials in the span of a single school year. The program begins in July with a month long intensive set of class in Juneau, AK, followed by online courses throughout the school year, and finishes with another month long session of classes in Juneau, the following summer. I’m currently acting as a teacher-principal in my school after having our principal leave his position in December. This experience of principal duties has taught me a lot, but my education won’t be made whole without the mandatory coursework for a Masters in Educational Leadership and type B certificate. I look forward to being employed as a principal during the time I work towards my principal endorsement. My course work should be immediately relevant and useful. The educational leadership program will continue to add tools and tactics to my profession as my degree in educational technology has.
My degree in educational technology has been heavily focused on tools for mathematics education. There have been programs, tools, technology, etc. that apply to all teaching domains and some that I learned about that were primarily for specific disciplines other than math. Despite this, throughout most of the three years I’ve been in the program, I planned on continuing to be a math teacher and thus looked at all the tools and technology with a mathematical lens. With my duties expanding beyond the math realm, so to will my perspective. My goal is to build upon the base knowledge of technology tools I’ve gained through the MAET program and expand the functional use of that knowledge to helping teachers in their particular subjects with technology integration and application. Leaning on other students from the MAET program, I believe that many of their capstone portfolio websites will give useful insight to technology use not only across various subjects, but also across various grade levels. Up to this point, I’ve taught grades 7-12, but will now be principal of two schools, a K-6 elementary as well as a 7-12 Junior/Senior High School. The capstone portfolios will highlight some of the technology tools that have been shown to be effective, many new tools, and exemplary uses for these tools across age levels and subjects.
My final goal is to increase the use of data based decision-making within my school. We currently have testing data, grades, graduation rates, attendance, drop-out rates, discipline issues and more all housed within our district grading program. We have lots of data at our fingertips, but have not consistently and effectively utilized the information. Through some in-service training the staff at our school has looked at data and made some decisions based on the data, but this is not a routine within the school. To increase the use of data and data driven decision-making, the school and I will be working with KTC Consulting. Through the Alaska’s State System of Support (SSOS) our school will be working with the KTC Consulting group. This group focuses administrative consulting for quality education in Alaska. This group should be specifically useful to my school in Aniak, as the group is built from experience in rural western Alaska, where we live.
Hopefully combining these three educational goals along with strong staff buy-in we’ll have a great school.
Images from: http://catalog.uas.alaska.edu/
edutech.msu.edu
http://ktcak.com/