Context - Part I

As the 2018-2019 school year came to a close, I finished my 13th year of teaching. I have been lucky to work for the same district all 13 years as a third grade teacher for three years and a second grade teacher for the last ten. As a lower elementary teacher, I have had the pleasure of teaching all the different subject areas.

Our school is in a rural agricultural part of Montana, but with fewer and fewer students coming from an agricultural background. Each year we seem to have more and more transient families that come and go several times a year. We provide education to many students from low socio-economic homes with our free and reduced lunch students making up 42% of our K-6 population. Our district is a K-12 district on a single campus.

Many years ago our school participated in the Reading First Grant and moved to an ability grouping model for teaching reading. Over the years we have continued to ability group students for reading and many grade levels now ability group their students for math. We are in the process of working towards becoming an MTSS (Multi-Tiered Systems of Support) school and have many of the components in place already as we were previously an RTI (Response to Intervention) school.

I serve on several committees at our school that has helped me grow my leadership skills. I am the chair of our elementary leadership team and we work to identify areas of need for teachers and address them though a variety of different solutions. I am also a member of our district technology committee and our role is to assess our technology needs throughout the district, make decisions to continually move forward in the ever changing world of technology, and to provide training to staff members on how to effectively utilize the different technology components we have available.

Context - Part II

How does awareness of your own biases, experience of privilege, and personal values inform your chosen instruction project?

Using the tools provided and after self reflecting I found that I do not hold biases towards any particular group of people. I did find that I struggle to relate to colleagues that believe there is only one effective and successful way to teach students and are not open to listening to ideas different than their own. This idea that there was only one way to successfully teach students clashed with my philosophy on problem solving and belief that different students learn in different ways. I had to do more listening and asking questions to help me find the root of their thinking to help me better understand where they were coming from.

At which level (emerging, developing, performing, or transforming) in the progressions are you currently for each of your four chosen competences?

Exploring and Challenging Inequity - I chose Exploring and Challenging Inequity as my Foundational Competency and I believe that I am emerging. I am becoming more and more aware of the inequalities within our school, but am wanting to learn more how to not only combat those inequalities within my classroom but also as a district.

Interpersonal Effectiveness - My first Overarching Competency is Interpersonal Effectiveness. At the beginning of the project I would have rated myself at emerging, but as I had more difficult conversations with colleagues I found that I was actually more at the pre-emergent stage of development.

Communication - Communication is my second Overarching Competency and I would rate myself as emerging. Through surveys, school data, and student observations I am aware of some high need areas in our school, however I am still finding my way when it comes to inspiring others and building a shared vision with colleagues.

Facilitating Collaborative Relationships - Within the Instructional Leadership Competency I chose Facilitating Collaborative Relationships. Again, I feel that I am still emerging in this area. I was able to build several very strong collaborative relationships with a few, but not enough to push me into the developing category.

Context - Part III

Describe your work with diverse stakeholders, shared learning experiences, and how you anticipate your instructional mindset might evolve during the TLI process.

The main stakeholder I will be working with during this project is my fellow colleagues. We would be working together to benefit the most important stakeholder, the students. I believe one of the areas I will grow the most is by stepping out of my comfort zone and engaging in tough conversations for the greater good of students. Questioning the status quo is never easy, but I hope to ask enough questions to truly understand the perspectives of my colleagues and to effectively explain and describe the issues I am seeing so that we can together find a solution that will provide a more equitable education for all students regardless of social class, ability level, or behavior.

Describe how your awareness of those from different cultures, experiences, and backgrounds inform your chosen project.

My awareness of others' experiences and backgrounds are two fold. First, I thought it was just thinking about student experiences and backgrounds and challenging the inequities of the tracking system we have in place. Then I realized, that I also need to consider the experiences and backgrounds of my colleagues and ask myself why the veteran teachers made the push twenty years ago to ability group and why the new teachers to our district agree with them that it is the only effective way to teach students successfully.