Reflect - Part I

At which level (emerging, developing, performing, or transforming) in the progressions do you NOW place yourself for each of your four chosen competences?

Interpersonal Effectiveness - Emerging

As I began TLI I felt that I was pre-emerging for most competencies including Interpersonal Effectiveness and now I feel that I am in the emerging stage. While on paper it doesn't seem like a great deal of growth and it is far from the amount of growth I wanted to make, but I have learned a lot about myself as a teacher, teacher leader, and about our school communication culture as a result of TLI. I feel TLI has made me more aware of successful techniques for working with colleagues effectively. I have found that I cannot come in like a bulldozer and get rid of things I don't agree with and make major changes within a year. I spent more time listening to colleagues to truly understand their perspectives instead of assuming why they had the perspectives they did or assuming why they engaged in their various teaching practices. I was able to more confidently express my vision for a more successful instructional model for our school even though that was very difficult to do at times. While I feel I am firmly planted in the emerging stage right now I also crossed over into the developing stage in some ways. I was able to support several colleagues by listening to their ideas, struggles, and hopes for the future. Unfortunately, I don't feel it was enough people to be considered developing. I think in conjunction with my team teaching partner we shared a vision based on student needs and were able to share that vision with others, but that vision was not a school wide shared vision. I was also able to develop strong relationships with several colleagues that was built on trust but a shared vision was not always present.

Communication - Emerging

Like my previous competency I feel I am now emerging in Communication. Without having read what strong communication really entailed I would have felt I had stronger communication skills that I really do. At the beginning of TLI I also felt our school had a strong culture of communication. However, after going through the TLI process I found that our school's and my communication was merely superficial. Going through the TLI process I realized the need for needs assessments to identify issues based on what the majority of the staff found as issues. As part of the Leadership team we administered two separate surveys and analyzed the results to find the most important issues that needed to be addressed in our school. It was difficult to accept that even though our results showed that our groups were not flexible people did not feel that was an issue and so as a team and staff we decided to focus on a couple other issues. I would like to continue improving my communication skills so that I can inspire others about a shared vision through various methods.

Explore and Challenge Inequity - Emerging

The TLI process helped me become hyper aware of the inequalities in our school, but to also make me more aware of the biases I make on a daily basis. The TLI process provided me with opportunities to evaluate my own biases. I feel that I am still in the emerging stage even though I have become more aware myself and am continuing to self-educate myself about inequalities and biases. One biases that I discovered I had was not one towards students, but one towards colleagues. I have tried to correct that bias by asking more questions and listening to colleagues' perspectives about various teaching practices and philosophies. Once I became aware of the biases we have towards students I felt the conversations addressing those biases were most difficult. I had a difficult time understanding how to address the biases so we could provide each student with a more equitable education without offending the other teacher. I do think my team teaching partner and I were able to explore in the developing stage as we were able to implement a plan that addressed the inequality of pulling students out of the general classroom and provide differentiated instruction and support to help them be successful within the general classroom. The next step would be to continue growing the vision that we can support students effectively without segregating them.

Facilitating Collaborative Relationships

As with my other competencies I feel I am finishing the TLI process in the emerging stage of development but have practiced some qualities from the developing stage. I was able to build some strong relationships that led to a small collaborative culture. I would like to continue developing those skills so that I can help transform our school culture to one of collaboration. I found that as I expressed some different views on teaching philosophies this year our over all school culture seems okay until there are people that disagree. Disagreement brought on a feeling of fear from many colleagues and I would like to continue finding opportunities to learn how to engage in positive collaborative discussions. I was able to meet with several colleagues in one on one or small group settings to engage in discussion about learning and teaching. We were able to develop a collaborative meeting time with k-2 teachers and 3-5 teachers to engage in collaborative discussion about various issues. Many of our discussions seemed to try and figure out how we could get students to be more compliant or successful within our current systems rather than evaluating our teaching practices to determine the most appropriate way to address issues. This is an area I would like to continue improving upon.

See Artifacts 3, 4, and 5

How did the TLI experience--both curriculum and Capstone project--impact your growth as a teacher leader in each of your four chosen competencies? What evidence supports your claims?

I think my biggest take away from the TLI process is that it has started me on the journey of looking beyond making improvements to myself and my classroom practices, but looking to how we can create a school-wide system of innovative, engaging, and equitable education for all students. I felt that the TLI process helped me reflect and evaluate myself as a teacher and teacher leader. While I aspire to be a positive teacher leader this process has made it clear that being a teacher leader is not easy and there are many varying levels of teacher leaders. At the beginning of the process I saw myself as a teacher leader in my school because I stay current on best teaching practices and not afraid to implement new practices in my classroom and offer support when others are implementing something new. I was also a teacher that many of my colleagues reached out to with questions especially dealing with technology. I felt that I was respected by most of my colleagues. Going through the TLI process I was humbled and had my eyes opened to the false leadership I thought I held. I found that people were willing to listen and learn about new technology implementations because it could be implemented on a individual level. Teachers could respect me for wanting to try something new and for sharing it but they could implement or not. However, when my teaching partner and I implemented a push-in model to replace our current grouping practice it received a completely different response from teachers. Teachers became fearful because this was something that could potentially affect them and there was a fear that if they were asked to change to an alternative grouping model they would not feel successful in meeting the needs in a mixed ability classroom. This helped me realized that our culture supports collaboration if we all agree with what we currently have in place. We do not have a culture that is open to evaluation of many current practices. This also made me realize that much of the respect I felt from peers was superficial and that my relationships with colleagues weren't strong enough to engage in discussions about differing teaching practices and philosophies.

What are your next steps to continue your growth as a teacher leader?

As I continue my journey towards being a teacher leader I want to continue developing strong relationships with more and more of my colleagues. I also want to work more closely with my administration to work towards improving our culture so that we can engage in difficult conversations of evaluation, problem solving, and implementing positive change. I have a great deal of learning left to do in the realm of becoming an effective teacher leader. I plan on reading several texts before the beginning of next year to assist me in the process. While I do not want to abandon the plan of evaluating and looking for alternative grouping models I want to be a strong teammate and work towards addressing the issues we identified from our staff surveys.

See Artifact 8

What was the most valuable part of the TLI process for you?

It is hard to identify the most valuable part of the TLI process because I felt I grew and became much more aware because of all portions of the TLI process. While I felt most successful in the do part if I think just about the part of implementing a new grouping model with my team teaching partner. However, the reflect portion of the process was probably the most valuable. Without the reflect portion I wouldn't have been aware of the perceptions, culture realities, and status of relationships I had with colleagues.