About Me
When teachers stop learning, so do students.
- Jim Knight
As an evolving educator, I look for ways to add to my learning and leadership. In the past school year, I exemplified my abilities to coach and lead in various ways including:
- built effective discipline practices, ensuring solid relationships with administrators, teachers, students, and parents
- created and designed professional development sessions for book studies/Twitter Chats for the MHS staff; #mhsabc #mhsgm
- facilitated the development of teachers through PLCs, helping put student experience and learning first
- developed multiple sessions of social-emotional-learning (SEL) student-focused tutorial programs that are/will be implemented with the entire MHS student body
- worked with developing teachers, such as training first-year science teachers and mentoring a student teacher, to build strong classroom management practices and intentional lesson cycles to enhance student learning and experiences
- coordinated 300+ volunteers for Back to School Fair for LISD
By integrating these skills with my secondary and elementary teaching experience and curriculum-building skills, I will strive to coach and strengthen LISD teachers providing professional learning opportunities that in turn positively impact our students' learning.
As an instructional leader and facilitator, my goal is to:
help teachers develop effective discipline and classroom management practices, ensuring solid relationships between teachers, students and parents within the school
support the development of teachers through PLCs and professional development, helping put student experience and learning first
build consensus and willingness to shift from WHAT to HOW we "do school" through professional development
- investigate (and use) the best instructional practices and connect this practice to curriculum
- embed powerful professional development in the curriculum development process (teachers have to learn and DO before they can model and guide students)
facilitate communication between intra-district stakeholders, such as learning and teaching, campus administrators, and teachers, to provide clear understanding of current expectations and future visions
exemplify and apply my strong educational practice
- Teacher of the Year finalist in MS and HS
- invited to train first-year science teachers for LISD in 2016
- PBL practitioner and participant in 2-year grant for Teacher Excellence
- recipient of LEF Dr. Jerry Roy Fellowship
be a match in personality and drive
- exhibit my even temperament with joy and passion for everything I do
- develop and grow myself, the program, and the people involved
- implement learning frameworks based on best educational practices
- support effective programs initiatives and be willing to guide change
School systems should base their curriculum not on the idea of separate subjects, but on the much more fertile idea of disciplines... which makes possible a fluid and dynamic curriculum that is interdisciplinary.
- Ken Robinson
“Team learning is vital because teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations…unless teams can learn, the organization cannot learn.”
- Peter Senge
The role of a creative leader is not to have all the ideas; it's to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they're valued.
- Ken Robinson
As educators, we are only as effective as what we know. If we have no working knowledge of what students studied in previous years, how can we build on their learning? If we have no insight into the curriculum in later grades, how can we prepare learners for future classes?
- Heidi Hayes Jacobs
all text and artwork copyright C. Croll 2017