Context

Introduction:

Part A My educational context

Hello my name is Mercedes Courchesne-Stedman,I started my college career at Missoula College but shortly then I moved over to the Main Campus to finish my Degree. I went through a very traumatic time in my life where I needed to make the decision whether or not to finish my Senior year of College. My brother shot and killed himself my junior year of college but I knew that I needed to finish no matter what because I wasn't a quitter. He always used to push me to be a better person.

I currently work in the Extended Resource Classroom at Russell Elementary in Missoula, MT. I applied for my first job in the district back on April 13th, 2018 to be a substitute paraprofessional while I was still in college. After spending a couple months as a sub, I was approached by one of the School Admin's saying you should apply for a full time para position in the district. I was so worried because I was still in school and wasn't sure how I was going to finish my senior year of college and work full time. So i bounce idea off my mom at that point and she said you could do anything you set you're mind to. So in August of 2018, I accepted my full time position here at Russell Elementary School as a 3-5 Extended Resource Para. I was originally going to be doing K-2 Extended Resource Para but after spending the first couple weeks in the classroom, I had a thought of these are my people.

My current elementary school has approximately 400 students in grades k-5. Our recent enrollment information indicates that all of Missoula County Public Schools for 2021-2022 will still receive free breakfast and lunches. Our school also qualifies for the snack program which provides healthy snacks usually everyday that we are in school. Our school has roughly 360 students that attend this year. Out of the 360 kiddos 57 students that receive Special Education Supports and we have 10 ELL students who also receive services. Some of our kids are refugees, some are native Americans and some students that speak another language who might have been born in the U.S or not.

Why TLI? Part B. Connecting Self-Assessment to Your Context

I have leaned so much for my personal and professional learning by working on this project. I had an opportunity to participate in the 2021 MFPE Educator conference where they start talking about TLI. I reached out to Amanda and she told me that I should apply. I also was selected to attend the NEA ESP conference education support professionals across the nation. I have been on several other boards and organizations like Youth Activation Committee to empower other youth to get involved with kids and people with intellectual disabilities, and The Meth Project where we took action to stop the use of meth in young kids.The project is a large scale prevention program aimed at reducing first time teen Meth use through the public service and different committees. I also was selected to attend the NEA ESP conference education support professionals across the nation.I learned so much while I was attending it even tho it was virtual because of the world we are currently in. I have always thought about my self being a leader and where could I go to make some changes within in our educational setting as a para educator so for the last couple of years I have been expanding my mind set on how.

How does awareness of your own biases, experiences of privilege, and personal values inform your chosen Capstone Project? I have been working on my own biases by seeking multiple opportunities to have conversations with my learn more about their values and needs of my colleagues. It has forced me to set up out of my comfort zone and talk to some of the staff that I wouldn't normally talk to.

At the beginning of the TLI program, at which level (emerging, developing, performing, or transforming) in the progressions did you place yourself for each of your four chosen competencies? Provide a rationale for each competencies. At the beginning of this project, I personally didn't know anything about these term and what they mean because as a para we don't have the same requirements as teachers.

Where did I begin?

Overarching Competency #1 Interpersonal Effectiveness to seek opportunities and become more effective when supporting coworkers. I want to create opportunities for teachers to feel like they are getting the support they need. I want to work on understanding of others because we all come from different backgrounds and cultural aspects. We should be able to understand the different leadership styles, personal strengths and passion as we all bring different tools to the table when working together in a education setting. I have been working on adapting to all situations and remembering that we are not only here for the kids but we are here for the other staff in the building too. Because we need to have balance of all the roles that we have work on while maintain meaningful work with the students.

Overarching Competency #2 Personal Effectiveness to adapt to all situations with familiarity of the skills that we need to help support our staff and colleague. I want to help with creating a feeling of balance. I also want to work on resilience.

Diversity- Equity-Cultural Competence: Explore and Challenge Inequity and Collaborate purposefully.

Policy Competency: Policy Making because some of our policies haven't been updated in years.

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

This has been a challenge for sure as i haven't feel like i have had good experiences and bad experience with my diverse stakeholders. I was told no so many times when i asked my principle for help to the point where i went out side the box to come up with some evidence. One thing I can say I learned from working with diversestakeholdersis that we should listen and learn more about our staff and their experience in life. We all have different tools that we bring to the table.

Describe how your awareness of those from different culture, experience, and background inform your chosen project.

This project has helped me come out of my comfort zone and start having a voice for my self and other staff that this has been effecting over the last couple of years. After my divorce from someone so bad i learned that i have a voice and people in the education setting need to be heard. Being aware of my project will help me add more things to bring to the table for my project to be successful.

The top picture is our current enrollment for 2022.

The bottom picture is from 2019.

There is a drop in numbers for both staff and students because of covid, some of our staff and some of students chose to do the MOA program for their own protection.