My district, Forsyth County Schools, hosts professional development once a quarter called District Collaboration Day, or DCD. DCD is broken up by school level (elementary, middle, high) and then also by subject area. There are many different courses offered during DCD, and they are typically led by teachers throughout Forsyth County. This year, instead of attending regular DCD sessions, I was fortunate enough to meet with a cohort of about 10 other teachers. This cohort was hand-selected and tasked with creating a "Teacher Profile" for our district. This was a very humbling experience as I got to work closely with some incredible teachers from across my district. In the past, I have attended some incredible sessions on collecting data for IEP's, helping struggling readers, sentence writing strategies, and much more.

My school, Vickery Creek Elementary, held in-house professional development opportunities called VCU. VCU was one of my absolute favorite forms of professional development because the sessions were led by my colleagues and often addressed issues or learning that were specific to my school. This was very helpful because we could choose which session to go to that would be most beneficial for us. Some session examples were yoga and breathing, led by our guidance counselors, power goal practice with our reading curriculum, ARC, how to lead effective Math Talks, led by our instructional coaches, and much more! To the left, you can see one of the presentations I put together and delivered during VCU. This presentation was geared toward our special education and inclusion teachers. I also had administration that wanted to sit in on this one and I received great feedback from this.

During the 2019-2020 school year, my school was a part of a district-level personalized learning cohort. A group of teachers worked with district leaders to move our school toward a personalized learning model. Unfortunately, when Covid hit, this cohort and any work around it came to a screeching halt, as everyone was just trying to keep their heads above water. Thankfully, my principal is very passionate about personalized learning and has resurrected our work around PL at our school. At the end of the 2020-2021 school year, she formed a group of teachers at our school to continue this work.

Image source: TeachThought

Professional Learning Networks (PLNs) are such an incredibly important piece to life-long learning for educators. According to Heick (2022), a professional learning network is a group of people that you connect with to learn from. You connect with them to learn their ideas, learn their questions, learn their strategies, and learn their reflections. The graphic to the left gives ten great reasons why every educator should have a PLN. My journey with PLNs truly began back in 2012-2013. EdCamps were all the buzz in the world of educational technology and I was part of a group of amazing educators that worked to launch the very first EdCamp in the county where I lived in Florida. It was called EdCamp Leon. It was so amazing to be surrounded by so many like-minded people and learn alongside them. Take a look at the photos below from our very first EdCamp.

My time thus far in the KSU ITEC program has truly given me the tools and the confidence to really put myself out there as a teacher leader. I have felt more confident about integrating tools with my students, sharing ideas and tools with my team, curating and creating resources, and also reaching out to my principal about my thoughts and ideas. One way recently that I have done this is I have shared things I have created with our learning coaches and my principal (see example to the right). I have shown them the why behind the things I have created and also been receptive to feedback. Doing this over time has, in turn, shown my principal that I am passionate about personalized learning and I am also passionate about helping move our school in that direction. The result of that has been that my principal has indicated giving me more of a leadership role next year in terms of personalized learning. She wants me to be the "boots on the ground", working closely with teachers to help promote personalized learning. We have a meeting set up to discuss ideas and what my role will look like. However, this would have never come about if I did not seek and create opportunities for my skill set to be recognized.